School Board Workshop: July 26, 2021

001okay good afternoon it is monday july 26th we are at the school board workshop it is 201 and today's order of business is one health and safety 2021 2022 protocols prioritizing workshop topics and a gender review of the july 27 2021 regular agenda and if we may go ahead and get started miss patricka are you online rika okay not seeing her we're still gonna go ahead and start and miss stillwell if you will go ahead and then begin and everyone please introduce yourself just for those who may not know who you are thank you all righty good afternoon board members superintendent savage and attorney dupree bruno i'm lauren stillwell i am the chief of staff for the school district good afternoon i'm beth with i'm health services coordinator for the lee county school district good

002afternoon dave newland executive director of safety and security thank you and we're here to present i feel like i should like the health and safety protocols for the 21-22 school year this year is definitely going to look more normal quote unquote than last year for sure but we have worked with our healthcare providers and staff in order to put some protocols in place to work towards ensuring the health and safety of students employees as we continue through the pandemic please know that the protocols that we present to you today may change throughout the year we will let you know if that happens but that would happen based on health conditions updated guidance from medical professionals and any governmental mandates so really as we kept asking people last year the favorite word i think of the

003year was pivot this year we're just going to say flexible that we just need to stay flexible as we move through in order to make sure that our students and employees remain safe and healthy through the year so with that i'm going to kind of turn it over to beth and she's going to talk a little bit about last year's data the current data and how we're going to handle positive cases exposures and symptomatic kiddos and employees thank you miss stillwell before we dive in i just wanted to give you a snapshot of the data that we have from last school year and this is up until july 16th of this year you can see on the screen there the number of positive cases and the number of exposures are on the screen it's important

004to note that these numbers are in total we have no way of knowing whether the transmission was from family members from the community or from our schools directly we do know from our partners at the department of health here in lee county that secondary transmission was very low in our schools and our goal is to keep it that way for this year as well the current data that we have on the screen is from july 9 2021 to july 15 2021. you can see this is a report from the state of our current numbers and our vaccination rate for those 12 and over sits at approximately 57 percent the data for this week which or i'm sorry for last week which was july 16th through july 22nd i just received those numbers this morning we're

005up to 58 percent of vaccinated for those 12 and older so we are heading in the right direction you'll also see on the screen there that there was a little over a thousand new positive cases for the week of july 9th through july 15th our current number for week of july 16th through the 22nd we're at 1650 so we are not heading in the right direction there but our positivity rate for the week of july 9th through july 15th we were at 10.8 percent for the county the week of july 16th through the 22nd we are at 14.7 percent so we do notice a trend of that increasing we do know that the delta variant is bringing covert numbers up our overarching message no matter what the numbers are is that we are working very

006hard to keep our students and our staff safe we want to remind our students and employees as well as all of our staff that if you are sick to please stay home this will help keep down our positivity numbers and our exposure numbers in our school the number one way to prevent the spread and not just of covid but of any other illnesses is if you stay home when you have any symptoms and that brings me to the next slide of our symptoms for covid you'll see on the screen that we have divided symptoms into high risk symptoms as well as low risk symptoms so we are going to be differentiating those for this school year a study from the washington university pediatric and adolescent ambulatory research consortium very long word lists these different categories

007and so when consulting with our healthcare providers in the community they also agreed that this is a good measure of high-risk symptoms versus low-risk symptoms for covid you will remember this past year no matter whether they had a high risk or low risk symptom we did require both students and employees to remain out of school at least 10 days plus they had to be 24 hours symptom free the only way that they could return was to isolate for those 10 days if they did not have a doctor's note to return for this year we will be differentiating and going according to our high risk symptoms and low risk symptoms if a student or employee has any of the low risk symptoms that are listed there we are asking asking them to stay home and they

008must be symptom free for at least 24 hours without medication before they return they will not need a doctor's note for these symptoms to return this was one of the asks that we had from our health care providers in the community and it benefits our students since they will have less lost instructional time we may have to shift some of our low-risk symptoms back to high-risk symptoms if we are advised to do so by the cdc and the florida department of health lee county moving from symptomatic cases to exposures this process remains the same as last year unless the person is vaccinated if an employee or a student is fully vaccinating vaccinated meaning that it has been at least two weeks since their second dose of a vaccine they will not have to quarantine if

009they are not vaccinated they will have to quarantine for the 10 days returning on day 11. it is possible to reduce the quarantine time to seven days returning on the eighth day if they have a negative pcr test on day six or later after exposure the florida department of health determines the dates of return for exposure cases and at this point the classroom teacher determines how lessons are accessed while under quarantine unless something different is bargained if someone is diagnosed with cova 19 the process remains the same from last year they will need to isolate and remain out of school for 10 days assuming that no symptoms develop if symptoms develop the time will most likely be longer the length of time is also determined by the florida department of health contact tracers thank you

010so the symptom-based isolation protocols that beth talked about are pretty much a major change from last year where there's no doctor's note that is required to return for the low risk symptoms as you remember received communication from the fldoe last april asking us about masks and so that also is probably the biggest change for families going into this school year and i have the memo on the on the screen there from the department of health excuse me from the department of education and then this one is the state surgeon general's memo that we all received which rescinded prior public health advisories about masking so with that the district went to voluntary masking in late june voluntary masking will remain in place for the 2021 school 22 school year but we are encouraging masking particularly for

011those who are not vaccinated and that is per cdc guidance but again really it's up to the families and our employees to determine what's best for them for those who do decide to wear face covering it must follow the guidelines for apparel in the code of conduct which was the same as last year and if a student is sent to the isolation room he or she may be asked to wear a mask while waiting for their parent to pick them up so those are really the difference for face coverings for the 2021-22 school year and mr nolan is going to talk a little bit more about other general requirements for health and safety protocols so for other protocols that will be in place social distancing to the greatest extent possible cohorting will continue but there

012will be more flexibility to put classes together this year with accurate seating charts will be kept in all classrooms on the bus and at lunch an isolation room will be maintained at schools for those who have coveted like symptoms hand sanitizer will remain a staple in schools and students are allowed to bring their own we will continue to remind students about the importance of hand washing and respiratory etiquette and we encourage students to bring their own water bottles to limit the use of drinking fountains in addition there'll be a high frequency clean of common surfaces will continue positive case triggered cleaning protocols will be followed when an individual has been diagnosed positive and has been in our vehicles or buildings within 24 hours cleaning products that kill the cova 19 virus and are approved by

013the epa will be used areas where food is prepared stored and served will be regularly cleaned with food safe agents and quarterly air filtration replacements will continue playgrounds will be disinfected at the end of each day and students will wash hands of use hand sanitizer before and after play school buses will be cleaned and disinfected after running both the morning and the afternoon and athletic facilities locker rooms and gyms will open and school staff will work to develop appropriate cleaning schedules for those areas and finally for visitors unlike last year we allowed only essential visitors into the schools this year we will relax that protocol if a school is welcoming visitors or volunteers a health screening form must be completed inaccurate information must be kept regarding where the visitor or volunteer is working and the

014students they are working with cdc guidelines suggests that we do not that we do limit non-essential visitors volunteers and activities involving external groups or organizations with people who are not fully vaccinated so we are asking visitors who are not vaccinated to wear mass in social distance while on campus in addition visitors and volunteers who have symptoms of infectious illness are asked to please not come to school and refer to their health care provider for testing and care this protocol will be reviewed on an ongoing basis and may change all right so just like last year we're continuing to work with our partners at lee health golisano children's hospital and the florida department of health to provide covenant testing and vaccine to students and employees these are all optional opportunities that employees and families can take

015advantage of in every case a parent or guardian must be present for a student to receive a test and or the vaccine and when we have those kinds of opportunities the district will be communicating those out to the families and the employees in the district and information also will be obtained by calling our covet 19 information center so that is something that worked out really well for us last year for those of you who visited the command center beth and her team were in there every day from 8 a.m until 4 30 and sometimes longer answering phone calls from employees phone calls from families things about our protocols and all that stuff and that was very good for us we felt in a good outreach so we are going to provide that again this year

016the hours are on your screen 8 am to 4 30 pm although we will be probably extending those hours for the first week or so of school because we expect that we'll probably get a lot of phone calls from families at that point just trying to remember and understand what those protocols are and then finally for communication last but definitely not least just like last year communication is going to be sent to families if there is a positive case at the school if employees or students are impacted by that positive case they will be notified by the florida department of health and they will be provided guidance as of what to do in addition the criteria for closing a classroom school zone or district will remain the same as you'll remember we did have to

017quarantine classrooms last year and that was normally in a situation where we had five percent of teachers students or staff in that classroom positive with covid within a 10-day period we do take a look at secondary transmission in that case and also whether the case was in the contagious period during the time that they were in the classroom so that protocol will remain the same knock on wood we will be closing less classrooms this year and last year we did not have to close any schools or any zones or the district and so we are looking forward to a school year where we will not be doing that so all of those stay the same and will be enumerated and in the protocols so the next steps for us based on the questions and the

018discussion that you all want to have this afternoon is that we are creating a page on the district's website we are creating graphic banners for all of the schools and within the week what we will do is that we will send all of that information to the schools so that they can delete any 20 20 21 protocols from the website linked directly to this site which we will manage here at the district and then that way if anything changes as we move forward it'll immediately update it and the schools won't be responsible for having to update every little change that happens so that would be the next step and they would be posted by the end of the week great thank you and with that we'll open it up for any questions okay miss vaughn

019please thank thank you for the report i have several questions will cafeteria workers wear mass at this point all masking is voluntary i'm sorry at this point all masking is voluntary including those people who are preparing food okay i'm gonna say that's something i object to all right secondly if a student okay slide said if a student is sent to the isolation room he or she may be asked to wear a mask if that person has exhibited enough symptoms to be sent to the isolation room out of an abundance of caution would we not say you will wear a mask until your parents come and pick you up why does it say may there be some of the symptoms are not respiratory symptoms such as a headache diarrhea run you know those type of symptoms

020so we may not ask them to wear a mask if they're exhibiting those symptoms most likely any respiratory symptoms such as cough runny nose sneezing those type of things if they're exhibiting those we would ask them to to protect our staff and other students in the clinic at that time okay and i'm going to say you know i'm very honest i'm going to say to me that makes no sense because if they have covet and it may exhibit itself in headache and have covid even if they're not coughing that breath that's coming out of them in an isolation room which would be a smaller room would be detrimental to the nurse or clinic assistant who's in there two more you keep referencing if people are fully vaccinated since we are not allowed to ask for

021proof in the state of florida how do we know we're go you know personally if i go to target or somewhere like that and it says we if you are fully vaccinated it's optional to wear a mask that's not a big deal to me i decide wear a mask or not but these are our schools and they're going to be people that say no problem safe so we're just going on the honor system is that correct at this point my understanding is we don't have any standing to be able to ask people to show their vaccination card so yes we would have to go on the honor system okay and that's another racket up for another problem which probably goes to tallahassee and our government there more than it does to our district and finally

022one of the first slides had the situation the weekly situation report on the number of people age 12 and over vaccinated i keep up with very specific data on this and i can tell you that you know first of all as everybody knows we have very high percentage of 65 and over population including me in in lee county i'm going to bet that when you look at the 65 plus as i have for not just lee county but florida and other states it's a really high percentage if you look at the children between 12 and 18 i'll bet there's a small percentage and if you look at in general the people who are likely to be in our schools as any kind of staff it's a much lower percent than that 57 so i find

023that a little bit misleading and i feel like when you see 57 percent advertised out there it gives people a sense of well-being oh 57 percent and i know there have been many more people who in the weeks since the 9th is it the 9th that it was something like that have been vaccinated because i'm watching all the time on tv for instance the mom who is being interviewed in tears standing next to her 13 year old daughter who is intimated saying i wish i'd paid more attention so i know i'm asking questions i'm also giving my public service announcement which i know is not popular with some people but i'm here for the good of our staff and our children and everyone in the community and so i'm hoping as we're seeing this spike

024every week going up from the delta variant and we're seeing people who are vaccinated with breakthrough infections that may be asymptomatic that we are a little more proactive i'm not going to go as far as saying mandatory masking but that were a little more proactive and something that i had emailed several weeks ago is i feel like we need to do a better job at educating our community on the facts and being very proactive and in educating on on the dangers so that's the end of my speech and the end of my questions thank you miss vaughn and if we could try to keep to like a three minute so that way everyone has an opportunity to speak i would really appreciate that miss kittens please you ask that like is that who you are

025i just want to make sure that's okay it's been a long day okay first of all thank you all for all that you've done in this report and you know how important it is to our parents and everyone in the community right now the thing i want to bring up is the reporting of the incidents and i know you were saying i missed part of what you said lauren but i know you said that you're going to be linking the school sites to our main to the webpage for the district my question is can we possibly when we look at i think it's slide number three shows yeah like two and three and three shows the situation report for the county i know there's a lag in time and information however if we could have

026something on our website that shows the real-time information and the reason is if i have two children and one's in an elementary school one's in a high school one's in the middle and i'm trying to decide that morning because this is up to parents to decide is what we're saying what we're going what they're going to do so if they look and see the when you go on the website you click on it and it's it must be the whole state so you have to look for your school in this whole list so what i'm asking is if we could have it just for our schools and have more of an up-to-date there is a quarantine at you know this school that way if if if i'm deciding whether i'm going to send my children

027to school that morning i would have some place very quick and easy to say you know okay this is all right i'm going to do this i know there's a lag because i know we went through this last time but as much as possible rather than me as a parent clicking on to the website then clicking on to my school then looking for i mean it's click click click click click and i'm a i would venture to say a majority of our parents and community do this on their phone and every click on a phone is a delay and you know i can't do this so to keep us from having so many phone calls and so many questions at the school if we can do something like this that would show kind of real

028time sure we can certainly look into that the only thing that i would caution is information is good but people need to have it in context so even if there is a positive case in a school unless that family has been contacted that they are affected yes it's their decision obviously to send their child but we wouldn't want them to look at that and say oh my gosh there's a case in my school i'm not sending my child because they it might be in a completely different grade level in a completely different part of the building so i would say that yes we absolutely would want to look into it to post it but then i would also want to have some caveats on there that you know just because there's a positive case in

029your school doesn't necessarily mean that it's unsafe to send your child and i understand that and i agree with you i'm more of the there's a quarantined class at this school oh i see okay great okay so then i as a parent would be able to say okay i need to either need to find out more information or whatever no i agree with you don't want to start you know everybody all crazy because there was a case here but a quarantine is kind of the next step to that in my opinion you're asking for any classes that have been quarantined and just to even say there are you know two third grade classes at you know kickapoo elementary right and we'd have to be careful i don't know that we would identify the grade level

030we haven't done that before and that narrows it down and so i think that there would be some hipaa issues beth can probably talk more about that so we certainly could say for school i would think that would be fine but i'm not sure we would want to narrow it down but let me look into that and i can certainly get back to you we can figure out what to develop and put it right on also i think like with the summer programs we should have been able to and i know a lot of them we didn't personally as a district do right but parents were not aware too of you know cases and quarantines and closed downs and all that so just looking at and i know keeping with hipaa but giving people enough

031information to make those decisions sure thank you yeah thank you miss kittens anyone else miss patrick are you online i am thank you for your with patience difficulties today do you have any questions for the team regarding health care okay go ahead please so first i want to start by congratulating on being named employee of the year her ability to navigate the constantly changing protocols surrounding clothing with great compassion most importantly tremendous reserves of patients was really really outstanding i want beth to know that i as a parent and as a school board member had tremendous confidence in the protections we put in place for our community last year and that's because of her expertise leadership and guidance so i want to say thank you to beth oh you're welcome next i want to share

032miss vaughn's concern about not requiring proof of vaccination to avoid quarantine the honor system i just don't have a lot of confidence in the effectiveness of that i realize our hands are tied but it is still a concern for me and then the next is i have two questions we had alternative payrolls for staff last year for quarantine and sickness related to cobit if memory serves me correctly i don't think they had to use their own sick time how does that look for this year does anyone know sorry i was waiting on your second question i don't see oh amy does dr desimar says that she's raising her hand so i think she knows do you know while she's coming up let me i do want to clarify something about quarantine so we are keeping

033accurate seating charts obviously in the classrooms and when students are and when students are with different groups if there is a positive case and that information along with the seating charts goes to the doh the doh has access to the florida shots database where they can look up whether or not students or staff members have been vaccinated and then they will automatically come off the quarantine list if that's the case so while we don't have the ability to ask those questions the doh already implemented that at the end of last year that anyone that was fully vaccinated would not then appear on a quarantine list because they had had those two doses of the vaccine so we're not saying that there's a positive case in a classroom and then going to that person and saying

034have you been vaccinated because then you can come off of the quarantine list the doh is handling all of that with the clearance that they have with that information so hopefully that clarifies a little bit really fantastic thank you okay and then here's dr d on the alternative days in in relation to the payroll question we did have instituted this year what we bargained with our groups was the ability to have the 10 days if you were subject to you know a quarantine that the you would not have to use your sick leave for those 10 days and that would be one 10 days inside of the entire year we have not changed that at this point in time so at this point that still that same process is still in play and unless or

035until we bargain to do something different but that is the mou that is in place at this time fantastic thank you my final question is i'm a bit concerned about the continuation of contact racing and quarantine for our students i understand that this is required because we're still in a pandemic so i'm not questioning that piece my concern is surrender is i'm sorry centered in the lost learning time for students who have to quarantine my own daughter had the quarantine five times last year she was in the incredibly fortunate position of having lee homeconnect or hybrid learning available to her so lost learning time was really minimized i know that a lot of students were not in that position last year and obviously will not be in this that position this year have that not

036been available to her i would have had significant concerns about her ability to manage her classes so my question and this is not a question that has to be answered right now you can provide it in the board update is what consideration have we given to make an up to making up for the lost learning time that students who are forced to quarantine will experience that's my question and those are my comments thank you so much mrs stillwell do we have an answer for that one and that's another one that beth kind of addressed at the beginning that at this point per the mou it's up to the classroom teacher as to how to handle that i do know that there have been multiple conversations between academic services and hr and i believe that they

037are going to bring that to the bargaining table again but at this point we're operating under what we did last year which is it's up to the classroom teachers to be able to determine the way to deliver those lessons okay so the each each individual classroom teacher can decide how they are if they're going to send a google classroom or paperwork or if they're not going to send anything at all or if they'll zoom yeah that's kind of scary i mean i think that really needs to be addressed because we need to make sure that these kids that are quarantined that have lost that time are making sure that they are keeping up with what the work is because it's not no fault of their own so i don't know how we really address that

038dr savage or dr spyro thank you all classes we'll have everybody will have google classrooms still like we did this past year and similar to this past year the classroom teacher will determine whether or not they'll allow zoom or not zoom for those students who may be quarantined and yes we've been speaking dr pruitt and i've been talking and she's going to talk to the union again about having a district by process on what that could look like but that's a that's a bargained piece with our with our friends with talc and so that has yet to be decided so we are under the same premise as we have been this past year okay so as soon as this takes place then the chromebook goes with the child because i know that was situations last

039year where they didn't even take the book so it was like okay now what am i doing so i think we really need to to pay attention to that miss kittens yes i agree with that concern because i did hear several times last year of incidents where the students were quarantined and it was at the time we had the okay i can't even think of the name of it home connect and they the students were told that they could not partake in home connect even though they were told that they couldn't come because of quarantine and it was kind of mixed up so i hope that this year we get that organized because it's not if a child sitting in the classroom is quarantined and they're not the ones that are positive then you are

040actually penalizing them and their education and i understand which is why we're bringing it to the table because we heard the same message last year as well yeah so i do appreciate that if you will you know see what we can do about that because i know you don't want the parents to be surprised when the kids come home with their report cards and they're like what the heck is this that my student is an a student now they have a c i mean why you know then there's no explanation for that so it's not it's just not right for those kids and i understand the teachers are doing a phenomenal job and it's life is rough but we need to make sure that we are keeping up with them and i understand their concerns

041it is i mean obviously it is a challenge to balance as a classroom teacher and so i that's why i say over and over again my hats off to our classroom teachers because that is quite an art form to be able to balance face to face and students in front of you as well sure mr vanelli yeah i'm sorry and just it needs to be consistent i think i found out through different avenues and parents and that it was different throughout the district and i think there needs to be some kind of consistency or at least some guidelines that the principal rolls out at each school that everybody kind of adheres to and allows time for makeup work there was not enough time for kids that missed you know 10 days of school and then

042they come back and then they leave again so that consistency is really really important my other question really actually has to do with to question that i found it i watched last year i think it was hillsborough county they had and we did too actually did it later but had the expert health officials here and i and all due respect your you know information is great and everything you've done is great and i'm not lessening that in fact at all thank you i'm glad we have you actually but i think just for the community's sake hearing from the professionals what is going on up to date up to speed is speaks volumes and is important and i don't know if we could have something like that i doubt we could have it before school starts

043but maybe shortly thereafter just to give us a temperature what's going on you know we're being told florida's the hot spot you know are we the hot spot that's coming from the health officials and the experts in that covid you know community is really i think would just be really a good great information for the community so if that's something that's something i would like to have a little more absolutely we can talk with the doh and have them have them come yeah last year they did it i think over zoom so this year we can have them in person right yeah because because i think it was i thought it was actually really great last year too so and then a couple questions that i know just for parents sake like if if parents

044are in doubt that morning their child they go to school and their their kid doesn't want to really go to school and they make up excuses i found out that was a lot of that going on this year as well and so you know kids and parents kind of take its opportunity right so you know maybe a vacation early at a before school ends some you know because we had a short summer i know that happened but anyways testing so if a kid like temp their temperature if a parent they've tested it and it really isn't high but the kid says i still don't feel good blah blah the testing you know temperatures are taken by the nurse at the school parents can say that can happen how does that how would that go about

045like exactly for a parent so are you asking the comparison of the temperature between the temperature you know not a cova test i'm not asking about that i'm asking like you know they their their temperature is borderline let's say it's 99 but by the time they get to school it could be what like 101 you know but they don't say anything sure you know what i mean sure so that would be up to either the teacher or the student to come forth and you know say i'm not feeling well or i'm feeling hot i need to go the clinic when they come to the clinic then we would definitely check the temperature we would assess for any other symptoms that they might have we asked them questions you know what's going on how are you

046feeling that way we can determine does it fit into our covet protocol for low risk or high risk symptoms or maybe is it something else going on with the student okay so and that leads me to another question like so last year do we have enough resources in these and you know for the nurses and so forth because i can see you know that could be a very crowded room you know and you know especially when every people start saying or students start saying i don't feel good you know and i mean do we have enough beds in there do we have enough privacy you know like and they have enough help you know i just can see that it can be very busy yes absolutely and some of our schools were very busy we

047will continue with our isolation rooms as we did this past year so that alleviates some of the crowdedness within the clinic because we have a separate room that we can send our symptomatic students to it is staffed separately as well so that alleviates some of the pressure off of our clinic assistant and our nurses and then we do train backups in the schools because of covid to be able to step in to help if it becomes a really busy day great thank you because i could really see that it would be very busy perfect are there any other questions miss fisher no i have anything miss morgan's i have none okay thank you i miss fun very quick do we still have a district covent task force yes we do okay who are they exactly

048so the three of us all of the chiefs cindy mcclung irma lancaster gwen right here dave larosa joins us occasionally when it comes to athletics so those are the core the core folks oh okay okay just curious yep and then schools will send us information of what things like that they're looking to do and then we'll add we'll we'll review them and beth will offer suggestions if there's ways we think we can make it more safe if we need to so right now we're meeting as needed during the year though especially at the height last year we were meeting well at the beginning we were meeting every day and then we got down to three days a week and then towards the end of the year when things were kind of wrapping up it was

049intermittent it's been intermittent this summer but the discussion is to kind of pick it back up in the next week or two so that we would have regular meetings especially for the beginning of the year so we can field questions and provide a source of information for the schools okay because then when this all started the group that we had had members of the community talks back as as well anticipating as many news sources report that there's going to be an additional spike in september august and september when school is back in session i'm just wondering if we might not have kind of a lineup of people ready for an emergency or i mean yes and we do have at our disposal i mean the doh has been amazing local pediatric groups as well as

050golisano children's hospital and lee health so we have a meeting with them every other week beth and i do and dave has joined those so we do those over the phone and we go through things like what do the covet numbers look like what do the flu numbers look like is there anything else anybody needs to know about you know how can you know to your point about vaccines you know one of the discussions was how can we you know work together how can the pediatrician's offices make sure that their you know clients know about the vaccine and what are they doing and what's the hospital doing so those are the kinds of things that we meet about every other week as well great thank you yeah okay okay oh one more question for actually

051it made me think about this are we limiting sport events attendance you know how is that going to be so is it not at this point great thank you yes mr fisher did you have yes so thank you mrs vaughn for asking about the covent task force so they call the task force the responsibility of the covert task force is to be ready to act in case there are disruptions and issues caused by they call the pandemic so our covert task force primarily is you guys and you meet with local health officials and people who have more specific information to that okay so then the covered task force as it exists in this district there's no special criteria for being a member or well we were looking at division you know division and district leads

052and then obviously beth for her background and then safety and security because there was health and then irma because of what we need to communicate out so you know but really it was a core group of people who were helping to make decisions when there were questions that were asked by the schools or by the departments or or that so it was really internal workings where the task force itself that ms vaughn is talking about was more outward facing you know what is it that we're doing with students how are we handling families those kinds of things this is a little bit more internal where a school will come and say we want to do a field trip well okay what are your protocols right now for the field trip are you going to have

053a seating chart on a bus are you going to so those are the kinds of things then that we would help the schools set up or ask the questions of to make sure that whatever it was they were implementing in the schools was following the protocols that we had set as a district and then if there were any additional suggestions we were able to give them those okay thank you yeah okay one more question and then we are moving on go ahead j just quickly do the schools have a task force or something within the schools a group that looks at things that are happening in the school with covet and making the decisions and then contacting you guys or is everything handled at the district well a lot of times the schools will handle

054their own their own things but if there's ever a question then they'll roll it up to the district level and a lot of them did roll it up to the district level last year because they wanted to know how other schools were handling things i don't know if there's any you know they just want to make sure that there was some consistency there and so a lot of times it would roll up through their chief and then the chief would bring it to the team and then we would discuss it and then the chief would send it back down the chain to the schools and i agree with my fellow co-workers that we have to have more consistency among the schools this year thank you thank you thank you so very much for being here

055and for putting this together i really appreciate all your hard work and so next we have miss cindy mcclung who will be coming up to assist us on prioritizing workshop topics sure go ahead ms patricka i don't want you all to know that i have a four o'clock card stop so if the meeting goes past four o'clock i will not still be here at that time thank you thank you good afternoon nice to see everybody this afternoon so we have several items to cover on our agenda in terms of making decisions as to whether or not you would like these items to come forward as a workshop a briefing or addressed in another way excuse me i'm going to scroll down here for just a second okay so the first item on the list is

056how the district handles non-renewal of effective and highly effective teachers and that was a quest a request from miss morgan if you would like to add some detail to that well i i had a response to the effect that there's the contract specifies non-renewal but i think that we need to do something to beef up the communications within the schools and amongst the schools because i just got the impression this year a lot of teachers were left sort of high and dry not knowing exactly how to proceed nobody advocated for them or some you know it just it was just sort of the i don't know i just felt like the obligation is in the is in the contract but the execution is not consistent i guess the best way is execution is not consistent

057across the district it creates confusion consternation etc thank you other comments yes i would say i've heard similar things and i would put thumbs up for keeping this as one of our upcoming topics sooner the better okay any other comments i concur i think it just needs to be discussed i've heard several stories okay if we could have a quick thumbs up if you would like this to stay on the list there we go okay thank you very much i'll put a y next to that one the next topic is enshrining interest-based bargaining in board policy again ms morgan morgan yeah i wasn't here when interest-based bargaining was introduced but i know it was a very difficult period before we did it i know it's been very successful for a long time i know it

058has gotten us through some extraordinarily difficult challenges with leadership or at the leadership level i think that our and i understand our process is unique i just i feel like we need to respect the relationship between management and labor by shrining a process that works really well in policy and that can only be abrogated if a majority a super majority of the board wishes to change it comments mr trigger do you have any comments thank you sorry miss phone well i'm a thumbs up on the last i thank you i meant to ask you something as well thank you thank you and i apologize miss patrick i forgot you were there thank you miss fun i'm sorry i was particularly interested in that word enshrining that sounds like that we want and i know what

059a policy is and obviously it's something we need to discuss but yeah i i just it struck me as very strangely worded and i almost got the feeling that it was out of a sense of concern or worry that somehow things were changing and let's be sure that things don't change to be discussed yeah i'd like to ask attorney dupree bruno to address that do we have a policy that addresses that or is that just part of our not just but is it part of our agreement with talc and spell it's the process that we've used in negotiating the talk and spock bargaining agreements so it's not in our policy it's just an interest based process that is a very specific process and how you go about to try to reach some type of consensus

060or agreement with the union so what would be the benefit of putting it in school board policy or or does it i think that and it's miss morgan's thought process but i'm assuming that the reason that you're requesting you would request something like that was to for lack of a better word to codify exactly how we move forward with those types of negotiations that we use this particular type of process and use you know in negotiating thank you yes is that correct and miss fisher were you no that's fine thank you okay miss vaughn yeah i just wanted to clarify what our attorney just said if we're putting it in our policy doesn't that mean that okay how can i put this it's two-way street when we do our bargaining it's the union it's management

061the district if it's in policy wouldn't that in effect put the union over a barrel if they you know leadership changes ideas change so in other words if we put it in policy would we not be dictating to the union how it will be whether they like it or not yeah that that would be a policy that would be dictating how this process would move forward so technically if you do have a leadership change that decides not to do that then you could have a problem either side could have a leadership change that decides not to implement that particular process so i guess the bottom line is this something that we would be interested in getting more information on to even come up with any ideas i mean is what we're looking at so is

062there so it would be a discussion which if you wanted to invite talc members of talc leadership you could certainly invite them to have discussion with that if you if you had it in a workshop okay so john yes ms patricka this is a conversation that i've had with south whose fault in my one-on-one it is something that they definitely support it was raised as dr x was retiring and we were looking to bring a new superintendent into the district and codifying this practice of the district to make sure that it is carried forward regardless of leadership now next year five years from now is important from my perspective it was important from child's perspective and we are an incredibly unique blessed position here in lee county i'm sure that as you speak with your

063colleagues across the state you hear them use the word impasse quite frequently and oftentimes the union of that odds was the district and because of interest-based partners were able to avoid those very issues hearing so it's something that has worked tremendously well and again given the change in leadership both now and as we engage in a permanent superintendent search i think this is really important for us to really talk about and learn more about thank you thank you miss vine i'm happy to hear more about it but listening to what miss patricka just said it goes back to what i surmised in my statement just a few moments ago i'm going to be very honest in my one-on-ones with the union as actually retired union member and a former union representative i'm just going to

064say that there have been times when i've said what's wrong with this picture as i defend teachers and other staff and i say i am sounding more like the worker and you are sounding more like management and so perhaps the enshrining codifying again i would be happy to hear more about it but i don't like the idea of the premise of this because we have a new superintendent now and we're looking for another one let's put this in policy now i'm open to listening but i'm i'm not for this enshrining of a policy that would have to do with both the union and us as a district thank you so i guess can we just see who would care to to hear about this and then move from move because i know there's a lot

065on this so if we could do it miss kittens did you have a comment first just a quick one in looking at the list i'm not adverse to you know anything that's on here my concern is priority and adding another thing is going to put something else in a lower priority and if that's the case then i'm not interested at this time okay yes sorry miss juvenelli actually i would agree with what miss kittens just said i don't think it's a priority obviously i don't know that we need policy on this because i think it becomes too binding when you're negotiating and i think that if we if we wanted to have a workshop on it or a briefing on it maybe that might you know and just understanding the interest-based bargaining and leave it

066at that versus policy i think we start asking staff to do policy on something like that right now is not when there's other priorities i think that we have to really look at the list thank you so that's what i was saying so if we can if we're interested in just learning about this right that's one thing because i truthfully i don't know a whole bunch about this subject so that would be something that i would be interested in learning about but as far as prioritizing and even with all of these that we're putting on here we're gonna fit them in when we're working on those such topics because we this list is just continuing and continuing and that's why we keep on adding more things on to our you know onto our plates and

067it's like it's never ending so we and i know and i understand that is the job that we have but we have to put a dent in these somehow and miss fisher did you have were you going to say something about this particular one yeah there's a there's a statute that addresses employee contracts for school districts in florida so it didn't really mention the union but i would be interested in at least gathering some information to find out you know from the from the fea point of view what what is the main focus for them in supporting our contracts with with our teachers okay so it is governed by two so if we could do a quick consensus on at this point just learning more about the process and then at that workshop then if

068you chose to go forward with talking about policy you'd be able to but for right now it is just to learn more about the process miss morgan i know you brought that to the forefront so with that okay so thumbs up does everybody agree on learning okay okay okay thank you so i could you keep those please because you're trying to do something so and i would just add to the interest based process is not just limited to bargaining with the union interest-based process could be used for decision making it could be used for the board in its decision making so there's a lot of things it's kind of like the collaborative process so you just want to throw it out there and i think that's why miss morgan had brought that up when we

069were doing other things so thank you for that thank you i didn't have a chance to count and i did see a thumbs down i saw at least a thought sideways so if we could put your thumbs again please i see one two three four two three four thumbs up two sideways and one down correct thank you okay so that is a majority said yes thank you the next one is the guardian program miss giovanelli would you like to expand on that well right now with the with the budgeting going you know we're in the middle of our budgeting we're almost about to vote on that in the next month so i mean my con my interest was how what money are we are we leaving on the table and that was the information that

070i wanted to you know bring forward and find out more about and what the appetite is on this board regarding the guardian program i believe that all safety as much as it can be it can be heightened you know for our students and so i don't want to leave any money on the table that protects our students really is the bottom line for me and i think if we you know mr chivanelle we're not here at the last meeting that we had and that was spoken about just a little bit regarding the guardian and that i think most of us were wanting more information or how the sheriff and the other how the other departments feel about the guardian program and the money and everything else yeah and so and i'm actually working on that

071with meeting with senator rodriguez and also sheriff carmine so i'm with the superintendent so we're we've got something scheduled are working on scheduling that and getting that information back to the bring it back to the to the board mike and you know like i said i believe in enhancement i don't believe in doing away with our sro program so my husband's police officer so i would never want that taken out of our schools ever so but i think it's opportunity for some of the charter schools to be able to capitalize on that they've all asked about having a guardian versus the actually sro so i think that it's something as a board we should look at for it's a community thing it's not just right and that was that was spoken about as well regarding

072the charter schools and having that conversation but i dr savage didn't share with us that you all were doing something because we didn't we just heard that here and it just and it just happened literally last week so okay i mean this just happened conversation so oh we're gonna hear about that no i didn't i'm sorry it's okay thank you so quick thumbs up if you would like to get more information around the guardian program sure yeah please thank you miss patricka okay so that's it ms fisher's information thank you thank you and thank you for doing that mr evannelli thank you can't type miss patricka the next item was critical race theory if you would like to expand on that please yeah i'm just concerned about the political impact of that topic on our

073schools i believe that to a certain extent the term is being used inaccurately with reference to the school district and what occurs in our schools and in our classrooms every day so i you know i mentioned this before the lgbt issue kind of blew up in the boardroom and i don't think we were prepared for it at least i can say i individually was not prepared for it i think we've got a pretty good sort of heads up that this is coming our way and i'd like us to have fact-based real information so that we can answer the public's questions with regards to this i had brought this up before as well let me just take this offset my thought on this is i agree we need to kind of get more information about it

074i don't agree that we should have staff saying to us this is what's what i believe it should be a whether it's a panel or something and have some of the maybe parents or community or whatever on that panel as well because otherwise we will see it from one perspective and to me it's finding out what what do you think about this and what do you know and what do you know and taking steps to get closer together because otherwise we've got point a and point b and never the twain shall meet and if the only time that we hear from the community or parents that are on one side or the other is in public comment then we're not really learning what we need to know about why people feel like they do so

075my that's my thing yes we should talk about i said that before but we need to hear it from a more 50 000 view and all sides in all aspects of thank you miss vaughn miss mrs dupree bruno do we not have a state statute now that outlaws crt in in our schools and that's my understanding in which case it's really a moot point and a waste of time for our us to discuss something that the governor has signed into law in in florida so the district follows the sunshine standards and it's my understanding that the governor has made it very clear in terms of his position on critical race theory this was brought to the florida department of education and the board reviewed it and voted on it that it would not be included

076in the curriculum right okay and it's for that reason that i would say no we don't need to discuss this i think there's a lot there's definitely a lot of misunderstanding when i say in the community i don't mean just here i mean in the global community on exactly what it is and quite frankly although i think it's important for upper level students especially and college students to understand especially if they're majoring in political science government economics those kinds of courses the idea of critical race theory is really a very high level philosophy kind of thing and it is and if if there are discussions on how we as a district teach curriculum i have curriculum on on race i you know i see in our curriculum guide we're going to be offering african-american history

077and i saw a lot of i'm not sure what all in the curriculum guide maybe dr spyro can help us we'll be dealing with multiculturalism but i'm going to guess is it not right dr spyro that none of it teaches anything about critical race theory can can you address that and what courses we actually have that will address race and ethnicity diversity good afternoon as attorney dave bruno says stated earlier we are bound by the standards we do teach the standards in our classrooms and then it is not critical race theory but rather the standards and then i could get you a list because i really need to look back and see the diversity that you're talking about those type of diverse courses i can certainly get a list of that and send it to

078the board in our weekly update yeah because there was a long long list in the curriculum guide but surely we're not offering all of them right so there are courses that are certainly approved but not being offered correct so i will give you courses that are approved and being offered for the upcoming school year that i'll share with the board yeah so that's why i don't think it's a priority ms i think miss mrs fisher fisher so that being said you know critical race theory is not a new a new concept it was introduced in the 70s and i think that recently i've had a lot of people approach me about that so i've done a little bit of research and i had a long text exchange with a citizen not one of our you

079know school board visitors but a citizen who is was kind of accusatory about what we are doing in making some students feel guilty for who they are and i think that although we probably don't need more information because dr spyro has all of that information i did talk to a couple of teachers one recently retired who's well experienced in american history and political science etc and he said no that's not what we're teaching and you know he said we can and you know who it is dr spyro so i think that we need to try to work with our staff and put something together just to explain to people exactly what is happening in our schools and in order to do that i think we do need to include our teachers who are actually delivering

080that curriculum because i think they can provide a lot of valuable information in their lesson plans and the conversations that they have and the materials that they use and i think maybe that would help clarify some of the concern and distress that we're hearing about from from the public thank you that's a great idea this morning and i would agree i spoke to a rotary earlier this year who wanted to know what we were teaching in history and i think if we can put on our website links to some of its links to the state standards but also showing how the district embeds those standards in its curriculum so that people can actually see what the content is that's being taught because when i when i talk to people and i showed them the that

081basically we're working from source documents that kind of thing they were really sort of set back they had no clue what's really happening and i think if we give them a resource a reference to what is actually happening that might help i don't know just a suggestion steven ellie i agree with that actually i think providing information and making a statement and having the access from the district you know access for everyone to see to actually go to the curriculum and would be helpful because the just because we say it's not happening they don't take our word for that so i mean and we do say that but i think they have to they have to see it for themselves and i think that giving them that opportunity is what we should be doing it's

082educating them on what we're doing thank you attorney dupree bruno did you have your hand up thank you from a legal standpoint i would always advise the board to be proactive rather than reactive so if we can address things prior to it becoming an issue where at that point it lands on my desk i think it's best that you know the board do some be do some loss mitigation if we will miss patrick did you have additional comments yes go ahead miss patricka thank you what ms kievanelli just said is really where my concern originates there is a narrative out there that crt exists k-12 education and when you ask your school board they're going to tell you there is no crt in our schools don't believe them that is the narrative that's being pushed

083right now by political operatives and i think it's really important to get ahead of this and i love the idea of putting something together that is source-based so that it's all in one place we can learn about it so we can answer questions in great depth and then push constituents to the source documents so that they can read for themselves and see for themselves exactly what's occurring in our classroom thank you as a reminder our curriculum maps are currently available to the public so part of this may just be a little communication to raise awareness of how to be able to find those but if if there is additional information that i'm hearing you may want some additional information and i just want to clarify so i'm sure what you're asking for what i think

084i'm hearing is that you don't really need a workshop that you would like staff to put together maybe a one-pager with some additional information about how we are addressing topics in the district is that correct and i see yes but miss i know miss kittens and then miss morgan yes okay i'm agreeing to a point with everything that you all are saying and what ms patricka just said the question that comes to my mind is we put together a q a do we know what their questions are do we know specifically what we are saying no we don't do this or we do that so that's why there's got to be some way of connecting and finding out what are the major questions that the community has because if we go answering what we think

085is the question and they have something different we're just stirring the pot and not listening so somewhere along the line there's got to be a listening piece where we know what are your questions and maybe we request them on a you know on a site or something or send in an email or do something and let them know give us your specific questions about this so we're answering what their questions are not up here at this level and they're down here so thank you mrs morgan what was i going to say i have forgotten so i'll take a pass okay thank you any additional comments okay so is there agreement that you would like to gather some information from the community before information before a packet or one sheet is prepared can i see a

086quick thumbs up on that is there do you wish to gather some information okay and miss patricka i think a survey is a great idea but i'm not comfortable with just receiving a one-pager i think that being able to point the public in the direction of a video where this is discussed by staff and a source document will be more exhaustive than simply a one pager thank you can i ask oh i'm sorry go ahead okay okay and dr spyro tell me if no to this but can we talk about the meeting that was had with the citizens prior and that may made that may help because i did attend a meeting and you can tell them about it did you want to respond do you want me to yes by all means dr spyro

087okay so thank you so we did have a group of over 40 citizens that came recently and reviewed our ela curriculum we had a meeting and they reviewed all of them our team was here and the public was here as well and they are putting together feedback based around that meeting and i believe this was probably two weeks ago around that time so they're putting together feedback and they're going to be submitting that to the board and to myself as well just around the feedback they received from that ela board adopted materials dr savage anything you wanted to add nope i think you handled it there dr spy but just be available to answer any questions regarding to what you just said well i i let me just finish by saying i did attend and

088i walked around and spoke to members of the community that were there it was very organized and the materials were set out in the front of the room and they had rubrics and they looked through materials and curriculum and you know went over their rubrics and then we're we'll get the information back from them i found it personally helpful to be in the room to talk to people to say what is it that you're looking for and here's where i am and what i think and believe and the staff and dr spyro and his team spoke to them and told them where we're at that you know curriculum is not set right here curriculum is set up above and sent down and we you know follow it that's what the statutes are for i found

089it very interesting though to be in the room to talk to people to find out why they were so you know adamant about certain things and to be able to get those steps where i take one step and you take one and find out how we can get through this thank you miss fisher what i think is the was the issue and i know looking at mary's miss fisher's face too had it would have been nice for all of us to have known that the date and the time so that we would also have had an opportunity to be in that room to hear what people are saying versus just one i mean we had heard that you know there may be you know you may be having some people come in which they come

090in all the time when you have a large group coming in and it's kind of like a sounds almost like a forum that some were part of and some were not i think that to me is we should have all known about it so i would just like to address that part from the academic services point so i had community members that reached out to my team and asked to review the materials we have a process for that's the way we actually met ahead of time that find out how many people were coming we made sure we had a room reserved for them and we told them this is all the materials that we have available to make sure that we had everything they were looking for as well we developed the process together to

091make sure that we met their needs also and it was with the community so i did not invite any board members to the meeting i literally was a reach out from our community members which is a normal practice if a community member reaches out to our team we certainly want to meet with them we want to be responsive to them so from academic services that's how that meeting went and may i please say this was not something where everyone else was not invited a community member reached out to me and said we're doing this you should stop by that was all i did not it was not a district sanctioned thing that everyone was left out thank you i'm miss fisher and ms juvenelli okay so then am i to understand then that groups of

092community citizens as many as 40 reach out to our departments and can gather information be educated is this like a textbook review committee or curriculum review committee so we had community members that reached out to us to specifically ask to review our english language arts materials and so we did share with them all the board adopted english language arts materials our next adoption is mathematics and that'll be another opportunity for any community member to be part of that it's posted on the district web page as well how community members can get involved the timeline as well as the same with their english language arts we try to post as much of that material as we can online also okay so i just on you know on behalf of some of my other colleagues and myself

093it would be nice for us to be informed that something that big is taking place so that we can also be privy to the information since we are out there and have to respond to the entire community thank you thank you mr nelly miss vaughan and real quick so actually i wanted to thank the district for allowing that opportunity for them so and that and that and i think that's it's great and that the community has that collaboration right so and i hope to see more of that so i just appreciate the accommodations and i look forward to the outcome or your opinions of what you are going to bring forward to us and then i think as a board we can embrace it how's that i think that would be great thank you miss

094fun yeah and i've never having having taught ela for 38 years and gone through countless book adoptions one in this state and many in texas which has a very similar process i really feel the same way as a couple of my board colleagues that i don't think it's appropriate to have one board member there giving her opinion i think if point of order wait wait a minute madam chair please reporter has been called madam chair thank you okay my point of order is it was nothing that was excluding anyone a private citizen said we are meeting you know stop by if you want to there was not an official this is going to happen it wasn't on a you know list somewhere and left out everyone else and let me add to that i have

095met with several different groups at my own discretion in my district and around the county because i personally wanted to understand where people are coming from with this topic there was no exclusion of anyone i think miss miss kittens because i'm going to let ms von finish what she was saying but i think because the fact that you stated that yourself and dr savage attended no no i didn't say that no no no no no no then i was understood when i went i had no idea who was going to be there i'm going to let miss vaughn go ahead and finish your comments okay well no matter how this shook out even by an invitation by a member of of the community it just it just doesn't seem right because the person who was

096there is representing the book i please let me finish this is my perception miss kittens you're very big into how people perceive my perception is that others of us and i'm not just talking about me were excluded and if it came to be that there was going to be a board member there i think there should have been a way that others could have been involved or it's just the perception of the whole thing that i'm objecting to and the fact that obviously it's it's very obvious that each of the seven of us have very very different opinions very different backgrounds very different ways that we approach things and i think that if we have groups that are coming in to do reviews that it should be they are reviewing and if we want to

097sit in the peanut gallery so to speak fine but that the interactions in that official and it is official it took place it wasn't like somebody had a bunch of books at their house and they had tea and crumpets in here let's look at the books it was here in the district and i think moving forward because of the perceptions that we should have more of a handle on that thank you thank you i miss fisher and then miss morgan and then i would really like to move us on thank you mrs fisher yes thank you so i just want to clarify first i want to say thanks to dr spyro and his team because i did hear that they were amazing this is part of what we do as the education system we educate

098our community and it's also part of what we always say we need to do a better job of and that is telling our story so i just want to say that i yeah am i you know disappointed that i wasn't informed about it yes but i appreciate the effort and i think it's very important and i know that miss brooks with her the mental health arena does much of the same thing and meets a lot with other people and educates them about what we're doing and has formed tremendous partnerships which are part of telling our story and part of doing our job so i just want to say thank you for that thank you this is morgan i'm just trying to figure out what this conversation has to do with the things that we're supposed

099to be discussing and we're not even halfway through the list it's half an hour till four o'clock two of us have a time certain meeting at four o'clock we need to get back on topic please thank you thank you miss morgan so first i'd like to say that i think it's been made very clear the staff understands that if a group has an interest in a large group is going to be in the building the board will be informed so i think that part was made very clear the second part going back to the critical race theory miss patricka i'm wondering if it would be acceptable if staff would come and meet with you to develop a plan for collecting information and then the type of information that you feel the type of packet or

100whatever type of information you feel needs to be made available and then we could bring a proposal back to the full board and see if they would like to move forward that sounds wonderful if my colleagues are in agreement thank you hey can i get a thumbs up from everyone else if you're in agreement thank you miss fisher okay see one two three four thumbs up one down one sideways and miss kittens i'm sorry i couldn't see what was your i'm really not quite sure what the question was the question was that staff would would meet with ms patricka to clarify how we would conduct collect information from the community in order to put together some sort of informative package we would come forward with a plan and bring that back to the board to

101see if that meets the needs yeah i think that we all should have input in that thank you miss mr evanelli and i agree actually i would like to see i would like to wait on their i think they're sending their opinion i'd rather wait can we just table this a little bit longer and like bring this back to the next time yes so let's table so that way we can go out and get more community input as well yes maybe the survey that we need to not just have one specific group that we need to have the other area groups as well participate in all of this so now you have a bigger broader perspective okay so there's been a request to table is anyone is everyone in agreement that we will table this

102and bring it back miss patricka can i see thumbs and miss patrick is that how would you vote or what would your consensus be no okay everyone else like to table this yes yes so it is can we just say tabling it until we get information from the community yeah sure yes okay yes any of us can bring this back up at any time so we don't have to wait for the next meeting with mr clark and it will actually it'll stay on here so if it doesn't if it's not brought back up before it would be brought back up two meetings from now thank you okay so the next item was the fy 22 school calendar miss fisher yes so a student came forward and talked about the 2122 calendar and the fact that

103the semester break takes place after the holiday break so we have come almost completing the semester taking the holiday break and then coming right back that next week and taking finals and so i think the student requested that we review that and i think that makes perfect sense based on my long experience in schools on those years that we have had the holiday break and then come back to finals that has not been conducive to good success and good learning with our students so if we could take another look at that calendar and arrange the days so that we would be able to have the holiday break after the semester break that might really be well received not only by the students but by the teachers also thank you mrs kittens yeah i totally agree

104having been a teacher and you know winter break is shortened and not focused because you're worried about coming back taking testing and i thought that we had gotten it to the point where that would not happen if we started soon enough and i think that's a question for the superintendent is it something is it too late can we adjust that with our days and maybe it's something he needs to look at with staff and get back to us yes i would have to look into this meet with dr pruitt and the calendar work that's been done i know it's been board approved but i just need to do a little bit more research and get back to you on this i yeah that was miss kittens was the calendar person were you not but not

105for this last one i was last time it was me it was her i don't think that's very funny sorry mr hondu well it was you so my understanding is that dr savage will check with the committee and we'll that will be continued okay thank you and then maybe if if we could i know miss morgan has a lot of the ones down below is there any of these miss morgan that we could possibly get an update in our one of our in our weekly reports are there any of those here that you see that one of them is moving non-action meetings to training rooms i mean that doesn't have an easy one that's that's simple yes or no the others i think are of interest to everybody so and we did have one more

106before that we had one other one that was the school district obligations regarding the transgender students in title ix that was miss vaughn right that's why i was trying to get the other one so that could be like a yes or no answer quickly okay so we can move them okay okay so we'll come back to that one then okay so status of lee virtual school i know that we did have an update on only virtual in terms of data when in one of our previous was this an additional information that you that you were requesting miss morgan when did we have an update on lvs i when we did the data at the end of the year and i'd have to go back and show you the dates etc no no that was different

107yes so you're talking about how many students for the upcoming year and the plan for the upcoming year is that the information you would like yes yeah okay that's different okay all right so mr evanelli yeah so and i we've had highlights from other schools and but that kind of stopped and so i anticipated that we would have something similar to that as well as what the plan is for next year and how the plan what happened last year because it was that was a whole new world for lee virtual school right so i think it's good for us to know and it's also good for the community to be aware of that the that option and what actually happens in lee virtual schools so i think it's really important in priority and as we're

108coming into this new year i'm very curious on what the numbers are what what the plan is the resources and i mean i mean they have part-time students as well and how that you know evolves with their system you know i want to make sure that lee virtue i think lee virtual school is going to be the next way of educating students and so i think it's really important that we're on our game really thank you thank you all right so is there a consensus that the board would like an update on lee virtual school to include some information from last year and the results there and then the information going for the plan for this year ms patricka yes please also there was an item that i placed in the parking lot but it's

109not there okay i'll be happy to add that what item is that and i'll be happy to add it sorry i come on that but i can't see what that happened utilizing who presented at the fsba conference regarding improvement of board relations i think it was called the ten laws of forward leadership or something along those lines okay i put this at the bottom and we will come back to it thank you mr clark i believe i can find that okay thank you all right so we'll come back to mrs morgan's next one was the ops update yeah we can drop that because that's going to be part of the superintendent's report to us i assume what is that correct operations dr savage is that correct that will be included in your briefing tomorrow yes

110i will have a proposal for in during our phase one concept or i will address that piece and i could also address during that time period the default setting if that were not to be the case so i can i can make sure to add that into tomorrow at the briefing thank you and the next one is the grade 3 fsa data aggregated by demographic and school and how we're using federal funds to address the challenges and i believe that's already been scheduled they're correct i'm pretty sure no no i'm happy i thought i thought this was i thought it was as well okay i don't know so can we have consensus you would like that information thank you the next item is i'm moving the non-action meetings to training rooms i think this can

111be solved by a symbol of staff gives us what would be involved in terms of providing real-time feed if we were to use one of the training rooms for our meetings i think that's the bottom line problem so if staff could just give us some information about what would be involved in making the move i think it would be easier for us to make a decision and you're just specifically workshops is that correct yes exactly thank you miss kittens and i believe if i'm not you know incorrect that the next couple of weeks we're going to be out of here anyway so that they can update technology in this room so and that i do agree with miss morgan we have to have the same technology ability if we are to do that and then

112make sure that we have space for if it's a briefing or whatever for the public to be there thank you miss giovanelli and then miss fun no i'm in agreement with that i mean we have to have the technology that's acceptable and has to be live so ms vaughn yeah first of all the technology i remember attending before i was ever on the school board attending meetings in the training room and it was very very difficult the way it was set up and with the audience some of the audience was facing the backs of people's heads and also just take a look here count the number of of people and definitely we've had a lot more for workshops and if we do we did briefings which i think would be very difficult to to get

113the briefings in there i think it's a space consideration unless there's something going on in this room or problem with technology or an update i think we need to stay in this room for our workshops and definitely for our briefings okay mrs kittens will we if we did make that move would we not have to limit the number of people well it would depend upon the room i would assume the clusahatchee room has has more space than this room i believe so it would depend upon where we were looking to to move so it sounds like we need information from staff particularly around the technology i know at one time we did not have the capability of live streaming from any other room i don't know that has changed so we would have to get

114that information so what i'm hearing is we need to get information and then bring this back correct and i do know even the kalooza the sound system is not very good and conducive to everyone hearing what everyone is saying so thank you miss jordan would you then please just get us some information and i know the reason that it was asked so that way it was more informal and we were all together speaking to one another face to face versus trying to my backs to this one am i back to that one i think that was the purpose of that yes so we'll bring the information back on that miss givenelli and we have to consider social discipline so i think that still is key right now so yes thank you okay so we'll bring

115more information on that one the next one is an update on land and expansion expansion of the tech schools miss morgan i believe that was you just a thumbs up i'm seeing already thumbs going up on that so i know that we will be bringing information as that becomes available i know we have plans to regularly update the board so i don't think that's a surprise to anyone there so we'll go ahead and put a yes there the fsa i'm sorry the psa which would maybe go right along with that looking at the public service academy future plans and is that budgeted so that would be included in that same update would that be acceptable yes thank you thank you ms patrick miss morgan the innovation school oh i don't see it on here i

116don't see anything no it's on the it was at 100 at the bottom oh i know how that happened when we when jen asked me which ones need to be posted i had not looked at the video and i was looking back to see exactly who it asked for what and i realized that we hadn't added that and it was on the video from the last meeting and now that i think about it yes it was in the context of what the innovation school calls for from a budgetary point of view it far exceeds what we provide for in a typical school footprint so we needed to discuss the overage and you know and we started to have that conversation this morning about the partnership so i think we need to know more about how

117we want to proceed with respect to that plan and the funding okay do i see agreement on that can i share with you something it would it be appropriate to have a representative from fgcu or several representatives kind of an update on what they expect because we have had the passing of doctor what was your name they have been here we've had her passing i know she was a huge passionate advocate and i don't know have we had yes we haven't had a detailed update we've met since she's since she's passed we have had they actually sat right here do you remember the mystery yeah but were we discussing the innovation team yes the innovation school yes that was about a month ago last week there was a meeting with with the interim dean of

118the college of education and the assistant dean or associate dean and also the person that works with government and community relations for the for the university dr savage would you like to give a quick update on that sure absolutely so essentially we had a meeting just to have the initial conversations precisely of what you were just discussing here about the difference in the estimated budget amount versus any potential overages it was really a coordination of any legislative asks and just an overarching legislative strategy if if such a strategy were to be considered what would be kind of an appropriate timeline of consideration just so that we're all on the same page i think it's going to be an evolving body of work and i think it's a fair ask for us to have a routine

119regular engagement with the board so you can feel very confident that your wishes are being considered in those meetings and i think they would very much appreciate the opportunity to engage with us in that capacity as well just so that everyone is heard and all priorities are being considered yes and they were very clear that they were would be happy to attend any of the board meetings and to please invite them so do we have consensus that we'd like an update on the innovation school sure yeah all right and then ms patricka that brings us to your request about utilizing the presentations from fsba yes i would like consensus to gather more information from the consultant regarding costs and specifics of services provided what differentiates this consultant from other board building activities is that this

120consultant watches board meetings and then has individual sessions with board members to help them understand how they can improve their leadership skills at the table bringing the board together and i don't know if he would direct or ask the chair to gather more information i would be happy to reach out and gather more information it seemed very hopeful when i sat in on that particular session that's it for now thank you do we have any comments miss morgan now i already gave the information to the superintendent about that group so i don't know if i copied attorney dupuis bruno or not but superintendent has the information about that group so all we have to do really is make you know make a determination about who's gonna well if they can reach out to i think

121all of us had the opportunity to speak to them or watch the class or attend the class except for miss kittens she did not attend and miss fisher you were not there no it was at yes at the fsba it was the class where the gentleman said he walked they go in and they watch mississippi oh that guy they go in and they say yes i'm you know i'm they helped build they helped yeah yeah i remember so yes so if obviously the superintendent if you have that information if that was already sent to you perhaps miss matthews miss holly can get that information as far as cost because that's what they're looking we need to know what in fact that would cost and what they do if we may ask i may just ask

122a point of clarification so i just want to ensure this isn't this is a board's interest in pursuing further as a as an entirety of a board this would be something that you would like us to take steps forward as an entire board it's good information well we'd have to take is the shared information is the board well i know ms kittens has a question well my thing is that since miss fisher and i we're not privy to what you're talking about i know personally i can't make a decision on this so i would like to have be copied on you know the information to look it over before we move to the next step so i believe the request is simply to gather more information in terms of cost going forward and miss morgan

123if if you would or actually the superintendent has it so maybe the superintendent could send that information to the rest of the board so everyone has the same information and then the request was if ms matthews could could move forward in gathering some information about possible costs so if we have consensus on that to direct the superintendent to ask for that additional information can i see thumbs up miss patricka thank you thank you thank you one more thing i'd like to add on that is there have been several of my colleagues today who raised the issue of their so much on our plate this can be scheduled because it's one-on-one sessions with this individual it can be scheduled according to each board member's convenience which i think removes the concern about having so much on

124our plate thank you so much thank you okay and that leaves we need to go back up to to ms von's request around the school district obligations regarding transgender students and title ix as fun would you like to expand upon that it seems like almost ancient history perhaps on this just a presentation i believe that when i when i brought it up i was asking for a presentation maybe for some outside people that deal deal with this because we do have to we do have federal laws some fairly new laws from the biden administration and i just think maybe a clarification on what we by law need need to do and then maybe again revisiting what we are doing or what maybe needs to be improved thank you can i get clarification around did you

125want the information from an external source or from our internal legal department i would like to see it from external okay and then internally what we're currently doing yeah okay any comment or questions around that miss morgan why external you know i just think sometimes you need to have different well not different points of view but different ways of approaching things and i think if we have somebody who you know even when i say external i'm not sure who that would be honestly but that's that's mainly it that it would be somebody who is completely objective and not dealing with any of you know this is a high emotion topic and i would like to see what our obligations are dealt with in just a very straightforward way and just kind of a review of

126what we are doing if we are meeting the new federal guidelines thank you i have missed morgan and i'm sorry miss fisher and miss giovanelli but before that i would like to ask attorney dupree bruno do you have any suggestions as to who the board might turn to for that external viewpoint so i'm just i just want some clarification for ms vaughn are you asking what is the status of the law and you would like someone to come in and explain what the status of the law is because the law hasn't changed it's the same law nothing has changed even with the executive order from president biden the law itself has not changed the supreme court declined to review the grim case so actually at this point there is in the 11th circuit has also

127the district court of appeals with regards to the adams case the saint john's adams case has not changed so at this point the law is still the exact same law where we were six months ago okay so then maybe that's not something that we need but i certainly wouldn't mind having a at least a paper on the various the various laws that we are governed by and i will add that i know that staff is working on the new flyering guidelines that is going to be very inclusive so perhaps when that comes before the board an update as to where we are in terms of the law itself and as in terms of this new guidelines guidebook i should say as well as the flyer may be appropriate at that time and you know what

128this actually could be expanded not just transgender students but employees and employees rights and it's not something that is a priority that has to happen soon but i certainly would like to see because i know again this is a very emotional issue with the various communities that we have here in in lee county and i actually maybe for the benefit of not just us but for the general community so that they realize well what are the laws that govern this and include not just the students but include our hiring practices thank you miss fisher yes so i was actually going to mention what attorney de prove to pre-bruno mentioned that staff is working on that revision of the statement of nondiscrimination policy which is inclusive which does address employees as well as students and which

129lists the laws that do apply and then we have that presentation i think by mr williams and some of the legal department i think we have that somewhere in our board doc's history it was actually a powerpoint so i think we have a lot of that information but i do agree with you that we it's probably good for us to make a statement even though it's an issue that comes up every day in the newspaper on tv i mean it's it's part of our lives in our society and so yes i think that our responsibilities are being taken seriously and that we have fail-safes in place to help with people who have issues and i understand that not everybody is on board and i think that's the problem it's like when we talk about telling

130the story and giving information to certain groups of people and having it get all the way down the pike so that everyone is aware that's that's the part i think that we need some help with matt but thank you but thank you for yeah that presentation by mr williams and i think was mr holloway it was very dull and dry i'm going to be honest they did excellent job in pulling out every statute and legal case it was way over the top for what we needed and for what the community needed so but i don't i don't think it was a particularly engaging presentation right and not what we as a board nor the community needs because we don't need to go back to cases from 1886 or whenever thank you miss givenelli so i

131i'm going to add a little to that so it's the same thing for me i think is a critic critical race theory but on a different aspect because the law requires us as as a district to do certain things and obligations and we're not clear in exactly there's really there's no question in it there's the law is not and so people don't understand that it's that we have to abide by the law and that's all we can do as a district we are limited to that actually so i think the statement needs to be made just like the critical race theory statement so if someone goes on our website and keys in critical race theory they get our statement keys in you know the laws governing title ix and what is required of a school

132district and they get that information so and because we're going to abide by the law because that's what we've sworn to do right so i think just the understanding of that needs to be expressed and educated out to the out to the community and that has not happened and it's and it's the same kind of topic you know and you know we have to protect all students right so i think it's just getting the information out there and in the understanding of it and so i ever how we're an education system every how we can educate our community better i'm all for that so let's do it so what that looks like is i'm going to go back to the experts so might i suggest that we put this aside until we have the materials

133that have been developed by staff and when those are brought forward then you can take a look at those and decide if you need additional information and then we can also hear the plan for how those will be communicated out if we could get consensus around that please i know we lost miss morgan i believe we lost ms patricka as well they both had four o'clock stops but with the rest of them we have a yes okay thank you the last item actually isn't on there but it did go out in your board update that we had a request from edac they would like to have a student edac group formed and wanted to bring that forward to the board for discussion so i'll open that up for discussion ms jordan i believe that we

134can put both those together with the student advisory or student whatever we're calling our kids leadership as one because i think for us to start having two sets it's like where did they will feel like they're losing a part of what they are supposed to be doing advocating for their schools and i just think that you know we've designed that for them we need to keep them doing it thank you miss fisher and then ms juvenelli so our student advisory group which is now going to be i think the student leadership group they have had members attend some of our board advisory groups to represent the student voice and i think that would be a much more efficient and simpler way to involve the students and get their voices and at any point in time

135they can come to one of the student meetings because they're very happy to share their information their their opinions and their suggestions for improvements so thank you miss givenelli and then mrs okay so i agree with both of you however i'm gonna take a different stand because i believe that we need all voices heard and i do not think that the student advisory is as is that exactly and the reason why i'm going to say this is how many lgbt students are on that student advisory how many quite a few okay i haven't been to the only one meeting so i mean that's really important i just want to make sure so then how many transgenders are on that boy yeah one and and they make they make known immediately when they get they let

136you know what their pronouns are okay and i mean and we have a very diverse representation okay that's not been the norm in the past so it is it is in this one okay and that's good to know because it's not been that way in the past completely past and i think it's all about awareness right and them having a voice and so i just want to make sure that opportunity is there so that's the reason why i would have slightly disagreed but i'm going to come back and agree with you because i mean i just want to make sure that the voices are heard and that is that's that's so important that's all and what mrs fisher did say the students have it i know that miss vaughn and against have been there as

137well to the meetings they do invite their fellow classmates there if they have any kind of concerns or any kind of issues the kids will come there and they will share with and then they try as collectively to try to solve their their problems there as students okay it's pretty it's pretty neat so then how does edac not know how do we educate edac because they're that's where this came from so and i'm going to bring it back around to the question and we can i couldn't share that okay thank you miss kittens and then ms vaughn yeah respond okay my thing is what i'm not sold on another committee a different committee what i would think is from the existing student committee that we have different groups in other words you're working on this

138within and that within because you do tend to have a large group and the leaders are doing and the movers and shakers but the others are just attendees having these subcommittees would allow more people to participate and to do something within the committee i'm not for starting something all over again okay because to me it divides rather than keeping everyone let's all talk together about it thank you miss vaughn yeah i was going to say as the liaison to to edek we always run really long and when i say long we've had two hour meetings and there's a lot of great things that come out of edac and i'm putting my memory back to a month or so ago and i think i know it was it was brought up and we were coming up

139with recommendations that they want it to be brought and honestly i don't believe that it was very and you know a long discussion that said i think it's an important idea that we have the subgroups is and that's actually something that i at one point a few months ago emailed after a after i attended one of the student groups that it seemed like there would be an interest to have have subgroups maybe have some that are racial and you know diversity and others that might be the lgbtq community and others on safety or or whatever that but you know it is the student advisory or student leadership group they are self-driven and so you know that's that's that's another issue that we have to understand and quite frankly i didn't have a chance at that

140particular edac meeting to really run some of the issues by by edek but you know i think it's you know it's a great idea but it's one that really has to be hammered out and it might be something that the student group wants to wants to explore and maybe we'll go back and re-explore in in edac and come up with some other ways i think just one quick thing we might want to suggest to them that they each that we have a liaison to each of the adult advisory committees so they can bring that back to their that's a great idea yeah so we could maybe do that mrs fisher all right so i have some information from miss mcclung regarding the student leadership group however since ms patrick anders morgan are not here i

141will bring it up tomorrow at tomorrow's meeting for good of the order perfectly okay thank you so as far as the edac request my understanding but we'll take a consensus that you will not form a student edac group but rather will work to develop some subcommittees within the student group that is already established as he consensus on that bring it back for discussion yes okay thank you all right mrs kittens i know it's not on there because it came up this morning but i just wanted to mention this with the individuals that were here miss owen and the esc group this morning i really would like to see us do not a workshop but a briefing which would allow other community members to be able to speak as well but i would like to see

142us do a briefing on esc not just with staff but to have like miss owen and some of the individuals from her group that were here today just to talk about it's very interesting hearing the things that they do and how just small things would make a difference with those students so i would like to put that out there if anyone would be interested and doing a briefing on the esc situation and then miss mcclung if you can please i may be mistaken but i think i've seen this bow inspector too that they don't they have a monthly meeting or a sub bi-monthly meeting with of ese like the parents and california that's still taking place correct i know it used to take place i just want to make sure that it is still going

143on yes we do hold a meeting once a quarter okay thank you that's what i thought thank you thank you and i'm confused were you saying that to not do i'm saying they that they that they already do this where the parents come in and i just noticed from my own but that's that's not what i was asking i mean because i'm sure we can all attend those i'm asking for us to have an update in the briefing to hear more on what they were bringing up today yeah but you're asking for staff or you're asking for the public to come in and do a briefing what i said was to have staff and some of the parents that were here today to be on that panel so that we can so i'm hearing a

144request to have a briefing that would include both staff and community members and is do you have a specific way of choosing those community members that you that you would like to invite well no i'm just thinking using the group that was here today asked ms owen and asked you know the staff to provide some people and we you know have the conversation so thank you any questions or comments miss vaughn now the thing that i was particularly interested in was i think i wrote these letters down bcba the specialized behavioral is that are those the right letters and she said that collier county uses that has trained individuals but we don't that was not totally correct however we do have people on staff with those credentials they do work in other capacities like one

145of our coordinators is a board certified behavior analyst as well as you guys are familiar with our executive director jessica duncan is a board certified behavior analyst among other people that work in different capacities in collier county they do have a specific job title which we have been working on with both the union and we think we're at that point right now we're waiting for the budget process to go through but we will begin working on a specific job description and job title that will be that specific person we also have an mou with family initiative where we have been working they have been working with our schools and in bringing in a board certified behavior analyst to work with our students with autism okay okay and act so i would like to have more

146information on that and since you said we're working on it and it's even in discussions with the union it's it's going to be something that we need more information on maybe even prior to a discussion so it's board-certified behavioral analyst is there yes ma'am okay okay and we don't we have certified but not a designated person that just does that's their whole job so when we need a board certified behavior analyst like in our department we generally utilize mr kozlowski so he performs those duties and was involved with the person who spoke okay okay so i for one would be very interested in hearing something from esc department and that particular function and how that would really help with she was talking about autistic developmentally delayed right there there it's utilized it for many students

147but one of the particular disabilities that it comes up with often is autism spectrum disorder okay thank you other comments okay so could we have consensus around an a briefing around ese to include some parents particularly ms owen who spoke this morning i'm not yeah because of the fact that what parents would that be what does that look like i'm picking and choosing i would not maybe something where esc department could come and share with everybody what a 504 is what iep is what is the process of going through this and what do they do for the kids so people have an understanding of what that all is which i believe most of us already know what that is but for those who do not understand the process maybe that would be something but to

148have a panel of one parent one person coming in i don't know i don't know where we're gonna go find the other ones how do we find them if there's no appetite i'll take it off the table and i would just so then let me re-reword it and instead say is there consensus that you would like a briefing from the esc department on some of these specific programs and how those are being addressed ms fisher did you have a question first or a comment yeah i would like to hear from miss bone about that because there's so many different exceptionalities and they do have that ese parent support group so maybe someone representing that as well as staff and then maybe they could help us identify a couple different parents because i don't know that

149you know this group that was here today is focused on one thing and that is the behavior intervention programs so and there's so much more to ese than that i mean it's really more global so i would defer to miss bowen and see what her recommendations might be would you be comfortable in providing some recommendations around parents to participate in a panel can i make this man okay so my point was not to just take a tunnel view and talk to one group of parents which is why i said staff and parents that could be involved because you do get a different perspective from someone who has gone through it that's but i'm not going to belabor it because of the hour so it's up to them so the latest version is that we would

150get an a briefing from esc and miss bowen would recommend a couple of she would bring some parents that were representative of some different groups in order to be to have a panel discussion we have consensus around that's fine thank you thank you and with that i believe that we have this fun question when is our discussion for auditor scheduled it was taken off the agenda isn't it i believe we need i mean this we are required by law and we have things right now in this district that we could use the help of our auditors and yet we have none so with regards to the auditor i would suggest that the board set up a workshop probably to start the preliminary discussions with regards to the audit committee policy and the audit selection policy

151those will be coming before you at the first meeting in august i'm sir edwin august august the first opportunity in august it will be coming before the board but we're going to be moving forward on that i hope the audit committee and the you went in all of that the policy and the audit committee prior to getting an auditor that was the direction of the board that's what we're waiting on so because we were off this whole month everything has kind of been again pushed back and i know that they have worked on the policy and for the audit committee as well so that's going to be coming to us at the next meeting and then once we have that then we will proceed with an auditor as per the board's recommendation okay yeah and

152regardless of what is pushing this off kicking the can we need to move post haste and the other thing that i would like to you know i'm i'm very unhappy about what happened with rsm because i thought they were a really good firm and i thought and i believe that it was the bullying and harassment of one or two i'm saying one particular board member that drove them away and maybe some of you are cringing at what i'm saying but it doesn't matter because it's the truth you know we have a new administration or we're having a reorganization and i would like also for us to revisit with rsm revisit what happened and put something in place that would guarantee that what the horribly disrespectful display will never be repeated because i thought they were

153a really good firm and i was shocked and saddened when they quit on us because of the behavior of minority not the whole board okay so if if i may because it is now 4 22 we were supposed to be over at 4 o'clock and i apologize to all of you that are sitting out there i really do i know that you've been here since well some of you probably been here since six o'clock this morning all day getting ready so i do apologize for that and we still have the agenda review to go through if we could get through the audit committee and the audit get that on our next meeting schedule that which it's on we vote on that and we move forward to rsm or whomever else to get this straightened out

154so the board knows that this policy is going to go directly into a first briefing so it's starting the rule making process when you see it so if there's any other corrections or comments or concerns please let me know now because when it comes before you it's set on the rule-making process that 28-day process so i can get that done and there's three other policies that will be joining it thank you miss kittens i just want to reiterate that i did bring this to the board previously saying that we needed to look again at rsm and i don't know if anyone did anything else about it but i have brought it up on the board before and i think there was some question about the chair or somebody contacting or whatever but i just wanted

155on record that i have brought this up previously shortly after we lost them yes yes you have miss kittens and i appreciate the fact that you're reminded and i have it written down right here and that also when we spoke about it everyone said to wait to revisit until we get all this other stuff done and again it is it is the pleasure of the board the entire board who make these decisions so if once we get that finished we need to get that one we have to get that done the committee because that's what you all want so that they can help us and they can actually once we have them they can be the people who reach out to rsm and speak to them because they're the audit committee and i'm that way

156because all of you want that well but i honestly if i can just say this i have to please it's still kicking it down the road kicking the can down the road because we needed to already have reached out to rsm to find out was there anything we possibly could do because they would have helped us along with this process that's all i have to say but i think that waiting until we get the committee and everyone selecting who's going to be on this and the committee meeting and way too long we need to reach out to them that if they are willing to help us do all of this but that's my opinion thank you miss mcclung thank you so much i really appreciate it thank you we are going to move forward with

157the agenda review and dr savage and again thank you all that are sitting out there i really appreciate you yes ma'am chair we have a few good cause items that have also been added and what we've asked is for all those good cause items for the those late editions for the folks to be here to speak to those as well so there's an understanding of the significance of why those items were added at this late hour so if if with your permission i'm just going to go in order of the items that you have presented as they appear on the agenda thank you we'll start with f f section consent board office approval board member travel to the fsba fed's annual summer conference questions why are we just now approving after the fact we usually

158approve prior and wasn't this approved before travel i guess that's that's you jordan that is correct and the what had happened there is that we had unfortunately we had one person down in the office so we had only one person in there and at that particular time in in the trying to get all the paperwork together and trying to get everything together for the search committee and trying to get a superintendent in this was thought to have been taken care of which we found out it was not after the fact i know that after the meeting we did have conversations about what transpired at that meeting so that is why normally you're correct miss givenelli definitely and miss gittins comes before us prior but that is exactly what took place we had one person down

159in the office and a new person who had really never was not really familiar with all this and she thought that it was human error it's simple as it can be thank you but we will definitely be paying more attention making sure that it doesn't happen again madam chair i think that board member patricka is on the phone again oh mr patrick are you here yes ma'am i have rejoined the meeting thank you so we're currently on the agenda review okay go ahead dr savage section h consent items academic services item h6 approval of the grant proposal for title 1 part d subpart 2 neglected delinquent at risk the question was will this include payment for tutoring and we have a response from ms kennedy here and if actually i can hold off on this

160and i can speak with miss kennedy about it for the sake of time thank you very much if you would give permission for her to contact me later thank you the next item is h7 approval of the jobs for florida's graduates memorandum of understanding fiscal year 2122 the question was please explain this program again we have a response from ms kennedy see i tried to help you out yeah i don't think it's on can you hear me now there we go jobs for florida graduates is a school to career program that helps students graduate build confidence and successfully move on to gainful employment and or post-secondary education it's actually a grant that we had last year and we had one person in that position this year we were ad we were able to add two

161more so what you have on your agenda is the mou that outlines the the requirements for both the school district and the organization and that was miss stephen yep i just wanted people to hear about what we're doing good things that is definitely a great this is really great and my only concern is i know it's a minimum of 50 students so for each class so that's definitely there are definitely some requirements and laid out by different grade levels but mr matthews has he has embraced it and he's very excited and getting the students in there so it's been a great he as i said he had one last year this year he has three and he does have to contribute some funds towards that but it's been a great program it's a great program

162thank you i just wanted people to know about it that's all thank you dr savage yes madam chair h10 approval to renew agreement with the center for progress and excellence incorporated for their use of the circuit 20 mobile crisis response team the question was please explain this program we have a response from his lori brooks good afternoon thank you for this question the center for progress and excellence is the lead agency for the circuit 20 mobile crisis response team and this team serves all of circuit 20. they have multiple teams out and about to serve the needs in the community and part of that contract is also that they serve the needs of school-age youth that have suicidal ideation so schools are statutorily required to call the mobile crisis response team if a student presents

163with suicidal ideation and the school mental health professional after delivering the columbia suicide risk assessment has a level of risk that is indicative of the mobile crisis team needing to be called the mobile crisis team engages in further de-escalation and they do a further clinical assessment called the safe t so the columbia and the safety are on the florida department of education preferred list of suicide risk assessments which is why our schools conduct the first one and we allow mobile crisis to do the more clinical deeper end assessment from their clinical team and then they engage in that de-escalation and that assessment and steps are taken to determine next steps they do run an almost 90 percent de-escalation rate and they connect the student to services and the family at that point if they're unsuccessful

164in de-escalation then they do have to go down that path of an involuntary hospitalization at the same time the school calls the mobile crisis team they also call the parent and guardian because they are a critical part of this process and we want them on site at the school to be with their child and with the mobile crisis response team throughout that assessment thank you brooks if you don't mind hanging out for the next question as well h11 approval to renew the agreement with the center for progress and excellence i'm sorry that's right the use of the circuit 20 mobile crisis response the question was where is the parent notification mentioned what are the qualifications for team members how are school contacts assigned and trained and what is the role of the sro and school

165counselor again excellent questions and the parent notification is not mentioned in the contract for the mobile crisis response team because in statute that responsibility responsibility lies with the school which is why after the school mental health professional conducts the columbia risk assessment they also loop in their administration and then call the parent to come to the school parent or guardian to come to the school while they also engage the mobile crisis team in deploying to the school the qualifications for team members for the mobile crisis team the team members must consist of a licensed mental health practitioner a master's level mental health practitioner and also a peer specialist and those are the team members that report to the school so as far as the school contacts those are the school mental health professionals and so

166our school mental health professionals are trained annually by our department and also school leaders are trained on the suicidal ideation process because we want to make sure that they are aware of what is going on on their campus and can help as part of the interdisciplinary team that rolls through the protocols we have in place and then the role of the sro and the school counselor well the role of the school counselor is to conduct the columbia and then inform administration and also call the team as needed and really per state statute our school resource officers are what we would call the kind of the last line of defense they are to deploy in a situation if the student is placing themselves in imminent danger or placing others in imminent danger in other words they

167need to secure the child immediately and then also in senate bill 590 the school resource officer will only be called in after the district has made an attempt to engage a licensed mental health professional in this case the mobile crisis team and we're currently working on other layers of the licensed mental health professional interceding before we ask an sro to step in just to clarify i want to just for the record make sure i believe that was h11 was actually the approval to renew the agreement with sales care for the expedited coordination of mental health referrals related to safety concerns in the attached memorandum is that correct that would be yes that would be correct and i apologize i had the wrong title on there it's not your fault we just want to make sure

168for the record that there's an understanding linking the correct item and so forth yes but that was the correct item okay i mean it was july and may i just want to qualify that i was at a behavioral health meeting a community behavioral health meeting and those questions came up because there were some reports that it was not felt that the respondents with cpe were actually masters levels and that at one point they were just interns so i think there was some concern about that so i just yes and we meet every other friday with the ceo and clinical director of the mobile crisis team to discuss opportunities and also on our end too when they report to our schools just any kind of sticky wickets we've both encountered on either end there was a

169time for a period of a few short weeks where there was a mental health program intern reporting to our schools and we quickly rectified that we will not have a mental health intern reporting to our schools when our master's level school mental health professionals have to already have earned their masters and they did correct that thank you dr savage i can i had a question regarding age six and i totally missed that and it's regards to the transitional specialists and the special specialist coach are those new and i know it was miss kenny it's a it's renewed we had that last year but we had people in that position last year are these new people that are in this position this year i'm sorry which grant was that the djj that was a they have

170a different position this year so they have one position it's we continue to have a coaching position so what exactly so the transitional specialist has always been there they were part at the at the jail and then part down here correct and they were making sure that the kids were doing what they needed to do and following up with them as far as placement and then the specialist coach who what is that position now so is it two different positions and i thought i emailed it to you but i seen that it wasn't even transition first transition specialist which djj had in the past due to the fact of a residential program as of now lee county does not have a residential program which was pace at the time this year also we did not

171have enough units for transition the state has eliminated transition requirements for djg so in nigel we only had a .5 as a transition and actually we could handle transition in house we have a coaching special we have a coach this year and we also had the same position last year which miss schillinger was had last year and now this year mr williams is in that position so that position was there the transition position has gone from djd due to state requirements so mr williams is now a coach a specialist coach yes and he works he works with the teachers as far as getting them prepared for any academics just as the same as miss andreas schillinger did last year so that position was there but then the other one was it not a part-time position

172the transitional specialist it was at 0.5 that's what it is a 0.5 transition specialist what what had happened was last year there there was money placed over to carry on that transition person because there was nowhere to actually put that particular employee so we kept that person on last year but this year like i said we did we do not have a residential program we do not have enough staff to generate another 0.5 to bring the keeper transition specials and we don't have the work for that transition specialist person due to what we have coming from the state but then but we have them on here as as a person on this grant we're still asking for this just in case we find 0.5 it's a 0.5 it's not a full position it can be

173a part-time position miss jordan thank you madam chair if there are any other questions without when i can resume back to age 13. thank you thank you very much for that age 13 approval of the agreement for professional service with impact for developmental education the question was ten thousand dollars website is suspended what services are provided for how many children miss bowen yes i have called them and put in an inquiry as to what's going on with their website i still don't have an answer back this contract is for our pre-k students who qualify for like therapies but not really need to come into a full-time classroom that we would have in the school district we are required to serve students in what is called the least restrictive environment so sometimes a student might just

174have like a slight speech disorder at age three or four and we would send a therapist to their daycare or wherever they might be so that we're still being able to serve students in a more general education environment if you want to kind of put it that way whereas we don't have that available in our school district so last year we served four students in this capacity we only used approximately four thousand dollars of the ten thousand it does depend on what students are kind of walking through that child find fiddler's door that need to be evaluated because at age three we're required to serve thank you item h16 approval of the memorandum of understanding with give back careers questions give back national public charity partnership college and career pathways mentoring financial details no partners

175in florida how do we connect with this program we couldn't find it online name of the principal where do they get their mentors ms brooks okay thank you very much the give back program was actually a program that kelly thawley and career and technical education had been exposed to in all of her partnerships in the community related to post-secondary planning and connection for students it's a non-profit organization that was started by a gentleman named robert carr that received a scholarship from a local organization and it really helped him it was only 250 dollars but he promised himself that he would give back to other students and so as he became successful and in his businesses he started this nonprofit organization it focuses exclusively on students with an estimated financial contribution of zero dollars and prioritizes

176students who have experienced foster care homelessness or the incarceration of a parent so it really meets first generation typically first gen college students in their place of need provides them with a mentor and helps them to do career exploration and then connect all the way through whatever post-secondary training whether it's going to be a college or technical school or an apprenticeship program it connects them to the required training they need to reach their career pathway let's see we start these students as early as 8th and 9th grade for mentoring but we can identify them up through 11th grade and then also the give back program is expanding into florida at this time we are not their first district and i tried to reach out to our representative just to ask for the other districts that

177have already engaged but they are newer in florida for mentors they signed on local organizations that already have mentoring programs they're very open to doing that but they also have their own mentors that they can connect us with locally and they follow our background check requirements and then also they do pretty intensive mentorship training for the mentors in their program i think i answered everything mr fisher said that was both me and miss morgan i think the questions have been answered but i don't know upon me if any of those facts have been checked out and if the mentors are identified so in working with the agency they've got mentors through their agencies standing ready but they're also actively recruiting and i did not see and that's why i reached out to them as well

178do they have any local organizations nearby like big brothers big sisters or any other mentoring organizations already with formalized partnerships so i know they're working on it but i wanted to touch back with them to ask if they had engaged yet and i do not have that information right now but i can get that to you okay thank you thank you dr savage yes manager h19 approval of the sig school improvement grant 1003g cohort 4 fiscal year 2122 final year grant the question is don't understand staffing summary we have the response for ms kennedy so the sig four grand is a grant that was for five years this is the fifth year and with that it re there's a reduction in funding each year so when you look at it is kind of confusing when

179you look at the actual staffing but the staffing that is listed those that were removed were positions that were no longer funded from the grant and the positions that show us continuing those are the positions those are the only positions that will continue age 22 approval of the computer science teacher bonuses grant is this for certifications i.e microsoft ms kennedy so there are two computer science grants this particular grant actually pays a stipend for teachers that have the computer science certification and are teaching one of the qualified coding computer science type classes that is provided they provide the course codes to us on which ones will will receive a stipend the other grant we have for computer science actually does provide certification teacher certification so there's two different grants okay now i remember going through

180those microsoft it's not actually microsoft it's the teacher certification though so the teacher can teach one of the classes that provide that stipend so the that grant actually provides the professional development so that we can provide the training and get more teachers that will teach the coding classes and then it provides actual funding where we can pay for the class or for the teacher to take the test and add it to their certificate so and as well as give them a stipend for doing the work to get there and do we still have the are we still working with microsoft certifications and are they still doing that in the high schools that i don't know that i would refer to someone else well that will be in my conversation with you later did that answer

181you're good yeah i'm fine okay thank you miss kennedy h27 approval of grant proposal for title three part a supplementary instruction for english language learners 2122 dr evelyn rivera i think the question is if we're adding five positions to the grant and the answer is yes we're adding two eso specialists due to the long no growing number of ells this year we are the numbers show that we have new ells in our district so we will have english language learners so that will require more support for the teachers so these the two eso specialists that we're adding to the grant will support the teachers through modeling lessons coaching mentoring and also pd on wheel standards and also psyop and other sound strategies for eso the three eso professionals will be assigned to schools with greater

182needs and they will work with the teachers side by side in implementing the lessons that the teachers have put together and make the lessons comprehensible they will work in small groups and also with individual students as needed to provide a stronger support to our young english language learners thank you thank you thank you dr rivera we also have two good cause items in that section so with your permission i'd like to have those now h48 good cause approval of e-dynamic learning miss iveen and miss barry are here oh thank you mr simmons good afternoon everybody e-dynamics is a program that lvs used before and it was actually so sold through flvs and flvs and e dynamics had a falling out a number of our students are already enrolled in e-dynamics they were using it for

183their elective courses in middle school and high school so they offered it to sell it directly to the school districts so that's what that purchase is for and the reason why the price is a hundred thousand is to prepare in case we have a huge influx of students like we did last year the course the price is actually forty three dollars per student for the lower level courses and sixty three dollars per student for the upper level elective courses and it also covers college and career as well and it there's ten offerings in middle school so they purchased that to give more options for our lvs students questions thank you mr simmons thank you age 49 as good cause approval to renew the annual contract with the pace center for girls incorporated mr buchanan is

184here to speak to that good afternoon again we're bringing this agreement with pace up because for a good cause item because we want to have guidelines in in place with pace and also the district responsibility going into the start of the year also i might want to add that we did come in a little late with this agreement due to the fact that pace did have a transition with leadership so that caused some that caused some of the transition with this with this agreement being put in on time also i'd like to state one of the highlights on the house bill 723 as follows requires dis district school boards to satisfy invoices for for providers within 15 days of a receipt district school boards that fail in a timely fail too timely to satisfy invoice

185must pay interest of a one percent per month and calculated daily fee which would what without getting this in this would cause the district extra finances so we want to make sure that we get this in to avoid any extra fees for this agreement thank you mr buchanan the next section is section l of consent items for operations item l3 approval of phase one pre-construction budget estimate for the j elementary school new construction and m middle school expansion the question is only j and m expansion on the responses from mr rickenbacker good afternoon board members scott reganbacker director of construction fire away it was just it was my question and i just wanted to be clear that what we're voting on tomorrow night is in l3 basically just j and mm expansion j the elementary

186and mm the expansion am i correct in item l3 it specifically only speaks to j and m m and l three okay and then well i'm sorry go ahead well it's l4 is the next one so item l4 approval of the department of education spot survey 5.6 remodel of doe approved schools k and nnn and the unification of lehigh acres middle school with veterans park academy for the arts i think mr rickmacher will be joined by ms ebaugh and the question was need further information on veterans park super school okay and can i clarify my question good afternoon good afternoon basically my understanding is that this has to do with just the spot survey for veterans park super school or the upgrade and what will happen to the old lambs building my concern was that

187let me start this part again so that this spot survey is to allow the existing veterans park to be able to use some of that facility in the old lambs building am i correct there somewhat the this spot survey combines the two campuses so this spot survey all the spot survey does is allows the old lambs campus and the current veterans campus to become one campus which then paves the way for the work that we're going to be doing on the campus in terms of developing a campus master plan and in the campus master plan we will be evaluating the campus programs the academic programs we'll be evaluating the number of student stations that we want in the on the campus we will be identifying any facility improvements including the new performing arts facility all

188of that all of that can't happen until we unify the two campuses into a single campus which is what this spot survey does it doesn't speak to any issues long term that's all to be addressed through the campus master plan which we are we've selected our architect our cm and our building official we're in contract negotiations that effort will take us to about spring or summer of next year when we'll start construction okay and this is where i have difficulty with it with this i have been told even by the previous superintendent and others in planning that it is not in stone yet what we're going to do and to me this is the first step in moving towards the super school and that's what you know my concerns and that's why i can't support

189that so this was we held off submitting this spot survey until we were until we had our presentation that we did in april upon receiving the support of the board at that presentation we continue to do the work of the spot survey and have and are now presenting it again this is only this is a foundation piece this is not this doesn't give any specifics as to what will happen on the campus but we can't do anything with a unified campus until we take this step and that's my concern is that it would be a unified campus suggestion for example i when i spoke to the superintendent about current superintendent and i said why can't we do similar to harness marsh elementary and harness marsh middle cypress and a few other schools where we have

190one campus but we have separate schools they are all one is a feeder into the other one but they have their own administration their own principle and i know that the black box theater performing arts could still be a joining factor for the two but i really just can't support a mega school in that community when everything shows that having over a thousand twelve hundred kids with elementary and middle is just i just don't think that it's optimal academically for one and for our demographic in that area so i have mentioned it before and that's what i mean combining the campus is fine as long as you have separate schools and then you have the performing arts that kind of is shared by the two i'm i'm happy to contribute and please mz will correct

191me if i'm wrong because i'm i'm not an expert in siri but my to my understanding there is nothing that precludes us from through this master site design this campus looking at all the considerations in these facilities there's nothing that precludes us from absolutely adjusting course converting into different types of configurations is that this first step is simply to memorialize the old lam's campus transitioning to the new building and then the remaining site being absorbed onto that full campus so that we can go through that design process and ultimately realize whatever will be the new vision for that site is that correct right this is this is this is just a foundational piece i think that at the presentation that we did in april what we had heard was the consensus of the board is

192that we would do something around academies which there would be three distinct academies on the campus all of that and how that plays out how the how the configuration of the campus works how the administration of the campus works all of that is part of the phase one master planning that we are looking to engage in over the next year and will definitely include the community and the board in those discussions as we move forward but none of that can happen until we until we submit this site until we submit this spot survey and unify the two campuses into a single campus and i will say finally and finish it that point of unifying the campus is where i'm concerned i remember your presentation of having the academies and all my concern is having one

193administration for that big of a group it's way too big and i mean i could have my kids in one part of the campus and never see that principal or aps afford whatever and yes there would be associate principles and all that but i just don't think it's conducive i think that we need to have it separate there wasn't another option to that when you guys presented it was like this is what we're going to do and i know it will more than likely pass but i will not be supporting it and we will take your consideration your concerns into consideration as we move forward thank you and just to close that item out i want to reiterate this in no way binds our hands to any type of administrative configurations or anything along those

194lines so this is almost if the analogy a blank canvas that allows us to paint and if we want to sever that canvas into multiple pieces we could do so this in no way ties our hands in that way is that correct ms ebal in fact we will need to do another spot sir we will need to do another spot survey or include it as part of our plant survey depending on the timing of this before we go to before we complete this project so this spot survey is just a very early preliminary step that allows us to the allows us foundation work to do anything else we want to do and i just want to cue on the record publicly you know that we as a district certainly have an interest in doing making

195educationally sound choices ensuring that we have an appropriate level of supervision appropriate level of student enrollment maximize the best configuration so that will be our priority moving forward as we look through this project this really is again just that first foundational piece but we're very much going to be looking forward to future work on that area okay so it once if you just okay so the spot survey you have to do this spot survey just for the configurations but then you could un-unify the unified if you chose to do that later down the road absolutely and as i said we will have to do some sort of spot survey or include it in our plant survey because this is we know that what we are doing here is foundational the state understands that this is

196foundational and we know that once we're done with the master plan we'll have a better sense of exactly how the configuration of these this area will be done but it gives it allows us to continue our work perfect thank you i just want to make sure of that mr givenelli question real quick what is included in a spot survey a spot survey is it's a it in this case i think you know and gener generically what a spot survey does is it looks at the campus facilities and it puts it on record for the ephis which is the state's building record in this specific case what it's doing is it's taking two campuses that are looked at by the state as two distinct and separate campuses and unifies them into one under one code but

197again that doesn't mean that down the road we can't change things that we this just allows us to continue our work on a unified campus which is what which is gives us the ability to then have a blank slate it's like taking two pieces of paper that are that are halves and making it a whole paper and then you can do whatever you want with it and altering it in the future so it's just foundational work can i jump in with one question that may help miss gittins so understanding your spot survey correctly miss kittens theoretically it may be one site with a state code it could be veterans park academy arts and one building could be the middle one building could be an elementary even though it's unified separate principles separate staff separate age

198groups in each building so it's just unifying unifi unilaterally combining the property into one state code not necessarily saying it's going to be a super k-8 right does that make sense well and again down the road because i miss kins i understand your concern about the idea of a unified campus under one code but down the road through this master planning process we could end up with three campuses that's right we could end up with two campuses we could end up one with one campus this is just foundational this is not this is not this is not saying how many student stations we are going to have on the long term and this is not saying that what grade levels we're going to have at long term it does not say what configuration that administration

199is going to work and all and those are the reasons this is foundational because when we make our final determination all of that will have to be recorded in in a final spot survey or again in in our in our plant survey that depending on timing because we're getting close to the time we'll we'll be opening up our new plant survey for for the five years and i have to ask this though when the new lambs was constructed and the paperwork that went to doe it did say since it's not large enough to hold all of the students coming from old lambs now how are we going to handle those other students because on one document it said that the sixth graders would be in temporary and portables is that something we're still doing or

200where will they be so all that is not part of the survey the spot survey again only gives us one unifying code it doesn't tell us a spot survey does not say we're going to use this building for these students it just gives us the permission to unify the campus and then we establish through our working and currently the thinking is we will be using the old lambs campus because we aren't going to be doing any work in there we will be using the old lamp and lambs campus currently for their classrooms for for some student stations but that isn't directed at the state level that's that's our own working that's how we determine is best to function in that campus as we are working on it okay thank you very much i appreciate your

201time so i didn't get really finished so my concern would be making a mega school what's the safety aspect what's the data behind that so that would that isn't a question that can happen right at this moment i know it's pretty pretty straightforward there really is no research to support a mega school concept there's nothing that really says this is a ideal configuration anywhere in our educational literature in fact quite the contrary often you find that there's magic numbers balances that's something that folks do look for is what is an ideal configuration and typically smaller is considered better there is an economy of scale that makes it more manageable to make sure it's not too small where it's a so realistically there is really nothing to support a mega school concept at all so i

202can pretty much definitively say that piece and that's what i would say this is just the beginning of that conversation it's really more of a procedural step miss ebal is that correct procedural in nature what we're looking forward to through that design work is to really dig into that in greater depth so that when there is a complete and finished vision for what can be accomplished on that blank canvas that we really are excited to to to work through that process so that would my concern is safety of course and so you know i think back is parkland and parkland was considered a mega school so that would be my concern is the safety aspect so what is the benefit of doing this spot survey it's the benefit then again this is a foundational piece

203it we really can't move forward in doing any of the evaluations that we're talking about and i go back again to our april meeting when we did bring forward i it wasn't it says that it's a the least deposition is a spot survey is showing the location sizes and shapes of buildings on a lot this is procedural in no way forces us to build a mega school on that site all it is simply doing is essentially is communicating to the state all the under air all the spaces that we have from a walls and classrooms and so forth it's just an obligation we have to communicate with the state and let them know what our facility is that's there and how it's currently being utilized and as we change we'll have to change that utilization

204as well and that's after we engage in the design process we very well anticipate changing uses of rooms and so forth and that would all come back before the board again which will have a much clearer output this is really just again resetting that's that canvas it's just resetting because the one campus moved that's all it is i get it so it's a clean slate that's right clean slate clean slate that just it's a poet you can see it in the sister item on that agenda which is the k now thank you very much l5 approval of phase one pre-construction budget estimate for the fort myers technical college renovation may i speak madam chair please okay we can i can talk about l5 and l12 offline for time's sake okay thank you we'll proceed to

205l25 approval to increase expenditure and extend the bid number r167271ln gutters fascia soffit roof repair and replacement the question is the increased cost due to the contract extension and or due to change in costs we have ms cedeno and mr thompson here good evening board members and colleagues so the question in response to the question this is a contract extension so this original bin was a five year bid three years of an original base contract and two years for renewal upon the approvals of the district and the vendors themselves so this is a contract extension like i mentioned and the dollars that we're requesting is just to to do to do the fy 22 projects that were submitted on the fy 22 budgets that's what the increase would be for okay and miss patrick i

206for i'm so sorry i forgot you're up there somewhere are you still with us i apologize thank you is there any questions no thank you thank you we have one last a good cause and then just a couple other items just as reminders here l28 a good cause approval for the final payment for gt 20-06 james stevens international academy pre-k remodel mr rickenbacker yeah this one basically the paperwork from the auditing department didn't make it to the construction department so it came out of the woodwork it had been about two months ago the audit was complete and we're just trying to get a small construct general construction manager that finished the james stevens back in december we're trying to get him his final pay so originally it was on the agenda it fell off and

207we're trying to bring it back on to get them final down wonderful we also have just two more good cause reminders ms stilwell let me know that just as a reminder and she did send some information to the board regarding the department of health testing vaccine memorandum so she has sent some information to the board members or will be sending shortly i'll i'll confirm with her that's just something to be aware of that will be in addition she's not here to speak to that in this moment because she's assisting with another meeting but she is watching the city of fort myers meeting or watch that meeting and i do have a unique update there that the city council has indicated that they would meet the expectation to fulfill the sro contribution from the city fort

208myers i will be calling the city manager shortly after this call but i thought that was great news that we would retain our city fort myers partner and they will have the level desired level of staffing in the high schools as well the city council passed that so i will confirm all of that tonight but i thought that was a great development that we were able to receive in real time and i wanted to share that will be a good cause item and again the reason why i'm sharing it now is we will anticipate that contract coming as a good cause addition in tomorrow's meeting as well and i think that it's good to note also that they called it a special meeting just to take care of that today yeah yeah to make sure

209that we were covered please yes yes ms patricka thank you so if i may direct the question to the superintendent through the chair do we have any kind of assurance that when an sro calls out they will in fact place a replacement sro on our campuses thank you bond through the chair that certainly that is an expectation in our contract mr newland also came to the city of fort myers meeting to ensure that we not only address the appropriate level of service but also the quality of service in that partnership that we want all of our municipal partners while we value all of them we do also expect the appropriate level of observance of the law which does require that our safe school officer must always be present on the school during the hours of

210operation and so anytime an officer is expected to leave that campus there should be coverage that's an expectation within all of our agreements so ms patricka but also to the board i hope that addresses your question thank you thank you and miss kittens okay were you finished with your good cause thank you so much okay i do have an additional good cause i'm due to the lateness of the hour i have sent each of you the superintendent and staff a copy of the request to add for good cause and it has is basically that james stevens international academy be changed to james stevens elementary school and the information that and someone will be herbie tomorrow to talk about it as well during public comment but the whole thing and as you read through it is

211something that is based on policy board policy 9.10 and it does state which i added to the email that it can be presented by the superintendent or the board can just vote on it is basically the idea that when they were a middle school a k-8 it was the international academy and it is if you read through their letter it explains why they would like to change it and it is not a policy change it is just something that needs our vote and they someone will be tomorrow to also discuss this and they feel that it will help them as far as with their community presence and all that just to be james stevens elementary and not international academy which means people are always saying what does that mean and they are basically james stevens

212elementary so what i would like to do because of the time i sent everyone the information if you can review it i will bring it up go to the order tomorrow at the end of the briefing meeting or whatever so that if you have any questions please let us know and mr priverno if you will thank you miss kittens let us know if if in fact that's all that needs to be done is the board to approve that because of course you have cost in signage you have costs in literature you have there is added cost and so can i just say they are in the midst of ordering one of the critical pieces in timing is that they do have approval to get a new digital sign and they wanted to get this approved

213before so the budget wise that's already been approved but they wanted to show and reflect the new title if that was at all possible so that's the urgency and as to why it was come before so i do understand you're saying the cost but yes and the principal the principal is not even on here who is yes miss kelly stedman she's not on i mean she's not writing this so i was just curious on it's not for me okay i will send you the original you know i just sent you the information and i'm happy to elaborate just on the information i have here there there were a number of pieces of to explain that ration i know the principal is aware of this situation the international academy side of it i guess there was

214some concern that just the words of a school should only include the word academy if there are secondary schools in which the curriculum is deliberately narrowed focused or limited such as being directed towards specific vocational occupational or professional paths since they moved away they when it was done they were a k-8 school now they're in elementary school i'm still honoring the namesake of the school and the history in our area and so forth so they have brought forward kind of the pertinent policies and we'll definitely take a look at all of that as well but the principal the teachers this came at the school level as well they were aware of of all of this piece as well great thank you thank you can i ask the question yes mr patricka through the chair is

215ms ginton do you expect the board to take action on this tomorrow peterson the principal and all were asking because the urgency is that they have money and they're ordering a new digital sign and they wanted to make this change prior to putting that order in for a digital sign then having to go back and make changes that was kind of the i may make a urgency i thought that we got as much community involvement as possible whenever we were making a name change to a school i mean i haven't me i haven't been on the board for the naming of a whole lot of schools but it's my understanding that we really want community involvement when a name when a school is named or when a name change occurs well and i believe they're

216their thought was it's not it's deleting something it is not adding it is not changing the name it is still james stevens and when you read their rationale and please feel free you know this evening or whatever if you would like to to email ms stedman who is the principal and if you have any further questions and i do know that mr mccullers had helped them with this process as well to make sure it was he was kind of mentoring them through it as well so it is something that i believe they have brought before probably their parent group or whatever and they will discuss all that tomorrow and then i guess dr savage did they bring this to you or are you just fine are you just finding this out they did bring it

217just a concern over and kind of we wanted to educate them of the board policy that was pertinent to this piece but in terms of the specific ask they were working at the school level to try to put a proposal forward so i'm just reviewing all of that piece as well and as ms gittin stated they were working with a former member here a former school district employee mr mccullers who a long time was a policy person here and helped them craft i guess the verbiage that was involved in this particular piece okay yeah because he's been gone a year at least right mr evanelli and i just was thinking it was about maybe a year ago not even when the charter school changed the name of their school and they didn't go through that

218process and we i forget which one they changed the name and we just voted that i mean we agree with what with the emails we received and it was a simple process and one of the key yeah it was something in the case it was one of the cape charter schools and so i mean it was just that was kind of a community thing that you know so i mean i don't see a big deal the main part of that yeah so it's not exactly our policy but i mean that wasn't but we made the change well this is following policy so okay we just need to make sure because charter schools are not owned by the district so i don't know if they're it's a different process pursuant to the policy okay they have

219their opportunities by the policy and i'm just saying it was that simple the you know i'm not opposed to it i mean i'm not either so we're gonna probably get a consensus just to get an idea well i just said i'm not opposed to it he's they're gonna dr savage is gonna bring it up mr bruno is going to do the research and inform us of what yes we can do this or no we cannot do that so we will have all that i know that we can it's policy and it's been looked into anyway thank you i appreciate that but we'll have her do that as our legal and thank you for doing that both of you and then we'll take it you know tomorrow so right now we're at the point of good

220of the order i'm sorry so there was one more agenda review item which was with regards to the approval of the request for the reimbursement under attorney recommendation that ms patricka brought up this morning and requested that we have a response to that so i'm prepared to address it if the chair would like please so this is with regards to the attorney recommendation for the approval of the reimbursement of legal fees for board member giovannelli and there were several questions and i think if i just break it down a little bit i can answer all the questions so the first thing is that pursuant to florida law and this is going to be in case law not necessarily statute we call that common law so these are things that the appellate courts the florida supreme

221court has ruled upon and they have created what they call a particular right for public officials public officials have the right to legal representation at taxpayer expense and defending themselves against litigation arising out of their public duties and serving a public purpose in order to demonstrate this you need two things arise out of or in connection with their with them performing their official duties as well as serve a public purpose which in this particular case that did occur now the question is with regards to the word litigation because that is part of the legal test there is case law that addresses litigation as it relates to issues with regards to the commission on ethics specifically ellison versus reed says very specifically that granted that we think of we think of litigation as civil and criminal

222but because of lsn it specifically does include cases before the commission on ethics the right for this reimbursement pursuant to case law arises independent of any policies charters or ordinances that a county or municipality or school board may have pursuant to case law the subject is not to the discretion of the board so the board really does not have any discretion as to vote yes or no in terms of this the reason it's actually coming before you is because there is a statute florida statute 10 12.26 which also says that employees have the right to have their legal defense costs covered that statute requires that any expenditure from the board for reimbursement of legal services shall be made in a properly noticed public meetings so the board has to notice it has to it has

223to be on the agenda so that's why it's coming before you but in terms of your ability to say yes or no it's very limited pursuant to the case law so long as it meets that legal test i just want to clarify because i think there was another question with regards to board policy 1.15 which doesn't look like it's been revised since 2015 so i will be working on revisions to that because there are a few little tweakings that do need to take place in that policy it also says that board members can be reimbursed if they are sued but again go back to what the case law says what is the definition of litigation and suit in this particular common law right it does include commission on ethics issues so that's why we're you

224know that board policy is also applicable so what may i ask yes please so basically you're saying yes that we can approve the payment you have not just yes that you can yes you must there's been a request for it and you must but i'm not still within our purview to do that to say yes but we can agree to make the payment you have to agree or you know that opens us up to additional liability okay miss patricka are you still here yeah thank you i appreciate that clarification because you know the policy is confusing when taken or when read in conjunction with the cases that you put in that recommendation so i am looking forward to those policy changes if you could also address the shall language in there to indicate that now

225the board still has to approve it despite the fact that we have to say it if that makes sense does that make sense it still has to be it has to be approved you don't have an option it has to be approved the question is why is it coming before me because it has to come before you as well so i will i will revise that excellent thank you and then there was one other question with regards to how does this impact employees it's the same thing the board does have an obligation to indemnify its employees if it is within their course and scope but our policy goes a little bit further there's more requirements in that the superintendent has to review it ensure that this was during the course and scope and there's some

226other additional caveats there are also ag opinions on this particular topic in terms of employees and there's also a case for example if an employee is successful in a case with regards to a reinstatement and has incurred attorneys fees for that defense we are not obligated to pay those attorneys fees pursuant to case law that is completely a different scenario so i wanted to make sure that this is clear there are some caveats that we need to pay attention to but in terms of mr venelli the board must approve it thank you i think she has a question oh ms vaughn yeah just a question so i absolutely support paying this but what i'm wondering is why is it that this needed to come before us when in a much larger actual litigation we have

227one board member who broke away well as part of the board but also who has her own attorney at taxpayer expense i don't believe that was ever brought in front of the board so why the difference two different things one of them is covered under our claims our insurance so it's not it's already part of our budget it's already been approved by the board this one is a very specific separate legal expense that was incurred that is not part of our budget that needed to come before the board the other one the insurance company has approved it had the insurance company not approved it then you would have found yourself in the same scenario but the insurance company approved it but what if there was more than one board member that wanted that and this

228particular issue that i'm talking about or one in the future if you know is it first come first serve if the carrier approves it then you're covered if the carrier does not approve it which the carrier may it's up to the carrier because they're the ones that decide then you would find yourself in this same type of scenario okay but i understand that in that scenario the carrier would only approve one so i'm just confused i hear which i hear what you say but it just doesn't seem right that there are other instances even though it's somewhat different that it wasn't at least brought in front of the board to say okay we will approve this particular person to have her own attorney but our insurance won't pay for anybody else that that's just the

229point i wanted to make thank you can i make this statement that i recall when all of this began and miss patricka did present to us the fact of following through on this legality and it was stated that there you know we shouldn't do this as far as governing ourselves and she asked on several occasions for us to go along with it and we said no it was it was voted down by majority so my question has to do with then why does it come back on the district to pay it if an individual board member decided to follow through on on this and maybe i'm looking at it different you can tell me later but that was my confusion because we had discussions and i recall miss patrick at one point saying well you

230know let's make history and let's be the first to do this and that's why i'm concerned about you know just wondering about it so the question for the board at this point is that i can't answer the questions in terms of the past and what ha you know happened with that all i can answer the question is what is your legal obligation when you have a board member that comes to you and says i would like to be reimbursed for legally defending myself and being successful your legal obligation so long as it's within the course and scope of employment and for employment purposes is to pay that fee and i understand that i still personally feel that if an individual decides to that the individual should be responsible for reimbursement okay mr vanelli so i

231don't think you're understanding this glenn because it's the individual is me and i had to defend myself no no no no no i'm not talking about you having to pay i believe you should be reimbursed if miss patricka was the one that decided to do this and we did not agree to the process then why should the board yeah you're talking about two totally different i get it now i understand right now i didn't understand bruno maybe just to clear this because that's okay well because it's it's been stated out here and just please for clarification for whoever is listening can you please say because like you said it is our obligations to to do this and it is also based on the carrier saying that they would do that we have no say in

232that but we should have a say based on the policy by by law different types of cases we do not have one case you are covered by your carrier that's i just want that's also in the board policy towards the end in terms of your risk management and your carrier your carrier is providing legal services to the board now if there's an issue with certain services then the carrier can decide whether or not i'm going to continue to provide those services if the carrier chooses to do it then the carrier chooses to do it yeah so through the chair i would like to ask miss patricka did you have a problem with the recommendation thank you so with that being said we will move on mr bruno do you have anything else no thank you

233okay thank you again thank you all so much for we're an hour and a half over so i so appreciate all of you sticking it out with us thank you thank you thank you we are at good of the order miss vaughn do you have anything for good of the order oh tomorrow thank you miss fisher no i'm gonna reserve it for tomorrow thank you thank you mr evanelli i only want only one question this is back to the board attorney so if i wanted to break away from that particular lawsuit i could do that as well you're saying that the carrier has still has to approve it or we have to go through the board that's where i got confused there the carrier would have to approve it first yeah the carrier carrier is

234going to be looking to if you have a budget for your legal services for your claims and it's already budgeted you have a nexus carrier that's looking at you know your different claims so the carrier provides your defense for legal services period now if there's a problem then the carry can make a decision as to whether or not he wants to provide additional legal services that's just the way that it goes if you choose to not participate in the defense through the carrier then you're responsible for your attorney's fees you would have to come through this process that will be a little bit harder because you are already being provided with legal services right but so is all board members work so board members are provided with legal services yes right so i think it's

235a it's a little bit conflicting on certain things on certain things i mean because if we cho i mean if we choose to separate ourselves for whatever reason we should have that you're already being provided obviously the statute law provides that you're already being provided with legal services your attorney's fees are being paid right they're being paid so if you want to make it in special circumstances or special arrangements should that should have that should have fell underneath that as well no because it's the same carrier who's paying the legal services okay it's that's that's like a sidebar it's really gets deep so i would recommend that you i ask the same questions so miss i'm sorry mr steven ellie do you have any other tomorrow thank you miss patricka do you have anything for

236the good of the order no thank you thank you very much i have nothing dr savage thank you i do madam chair if i if i could have dr desmore she actually has an answer to a question from one of the earlier presentations that she was going to get back to us on yes thank you dr savage so clarification on the question i was asked earlier about pay for quarantine and we talked about having to renegotiate with unions for something different well after i did some checking in actuality we do have the mou that we had actually expired as of july and so at this point we have already had conversations with the union that because of the availability of vaccinations at this time that will just you know maintain you know no policy at

237this point in time you know if you quarantine that would just be a you know sick leave event for an employee or a leave time event for an employee at this point and that if there is anything different that the union was concerned about then they would bring it to the bargaining table so that would be how we would proceed moving forward for the beginning of the school year all right thank you thank you for doing that and i'm sorry mr president yeah that was my question thank you dr jeff moore that's more in line with what where i thought we were on this issue and as long as i know that you all are working with with the union excuse me to negotiate that item i appreciate it thank you mr preet bruno did

238you have anything if we go to the order no i don't thank you okay say you know other things to come before the board this meeting is adjourned thank you see you tomorrow you