School Board Workshop: July 29, 2025

001Good afternoon everyone. It's Tuesday, July 29th, 2025. This is a school board workshop and the time is 100 p.m. Sergeant-at-Arms, has the lobby been attended to? There you are. Thank you. There are 10 items on the agenda. Office of Safe Schools quarterly arrest report. Construction change order reports May 25, 2025 and June 2025. Construction projects by monthly update July 2025. Job descriptions project believe student achievement end of year results 2526 uniform statewide assessment calendar. Schoolboard attorney and general council contract public comment good to the order and other business. Per board protocol, each board member should strive for four minutes for initial comment, two for follow-up with a total of 10 minutes for discussion. This afternoon, we're going to begin with our Office of State of Safe Schools quarterly arrest report. Presenting this afternoon is Dave

002Nulan. Good afternoon board members. Dave Nulan for the record. Also, good afternoon to our superintendent, Dr. N Carlin, and our school board attorney Kathy Depri Bruno. Again, this is the fourth quarter inspection report from the 24-25 school year. Move a little closer. Again, this is just for the for the public to hear this. This is required by our department of education. Every quarter they do inspections and we are required to go over those inspection with the schools that they they visit each each quarter and anything that's non-compliance that's also also addressed for this hearing of this workshop. So in the last fourth quarter we had 21 schools that were inspected the fourth quarter of the 2425 school year. I know prior that we had discussed a couple of schools that came up for non-compliance. There

003was two of them and this was Gateway Charter Upper Campus. There was a one of the cap one with the school design. It's an exterior cafeteria which normally has an exemption. They norally have a person that stands by the door on this circumstance. Unfortunately the person was not there. So this was addressed. also they were not have didn't have a safe area decal in the gymnasium which is also considered an instructional space because the way it's used. So that also was addressed immediately. The second was Mariner Middle. This was with our guest teachers. We have to make sure that all guest teachers have strategics badges. in this particular inspection, one of them did not. Again, this was also corrected right away. We've got all of our school sites to make sure that all of them

004have sufficient amount of guests and teach badges. is when guest teachers come on campus and also have a person assigned to make sure they are when they do come to the school they sign in that also is given to the guest teacher before they come to class. So for the fourth quarter that was the only two again they were addressed these were addressed right away. that was it for the 2425 school year and I'll stand by for any questions. Thank you Mr. Nulan for your report and we look forward to the board's conversation. Any comments or questions? I had a email ask me this question and I gave them the right answer of course, but I think the public may want to know. They wanted to explain what a safe area decal was. Absolutely. So

005it's safe. It was required by the state of Florida and our department of education I would say is the basically a safe area decal is required in every room of instruction classroom any other room is considered instructional of a place where the students and staff would go as a safe area in case something was to happen. So if an active asalent came into the classroom they know exactly where to go for cover and concealment. But so that's required by the states. every single classroom and instructional space and all of our schools have that decal symbol and all students must know as well where they're located at. Also, thank you. Board members, any other comments or questions, Mr. Ribble? Yeah, I just want to make a comment. I'm sure some folks will mention this in closing,

006but a lot of these things you've just discovered today or reported with today, we all heard on Friday at your safety day, and I thought that was just outstanding. And for those folks that watched last night with the horrible shooting in New York City at the at the one high tower there, it's it's amazing how we have major corporations like the NFL, billion-dollar organization, Blackstone, billion-dollar investment firm, and they have nothing like we have set up for safety and security. And I applaud your department. Sat Friday, I couldn't tell my wife when I got back for dinner. I I gave her all the details. She's a former 30-year teacher, as you know, and she was really impressed. So, just keep up the great job. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Nulan.

007Thank you. Next, we have the construction change order report for May 2025 and June 2025. Presenting this afternoon is Scott Rickenbacher and Melissa Rivera. Good afternoon board members. Superintendent Carlin as Squire Delay Bruno. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to present two change order reports for May and June of this year as well as our two-month bimonthly update. So it's down there. Something expanded. I apologize. Usually it's me, but I attribute that to being too old. So, we'll start with May of 2025. you will see we have direct material purchases in the amount of $7.7 million. $441,94146 was returned back to the district in tax savings. We had $82,75 worth of ch pure change orders, non-direct material purchase change orders, and we had contingencies adjustments in the amount of $169,459 for the reporting period.

008On the secondary sheet, you'll see a backup explaining all of those items that brought to to those figures on the front cover page. We had five pure DMP change orders. We had 10 pure change orders themselves. and of the pure change orders, they were returns of excess funds back to the district. They are extension of time for a couple of projects and reconciliation. When we don't hit our DMP mark, we have to square up the money with the contractors. So, that's returning the money to them. And in addition, we had six contingency adjustments at Cypress Lake High School for the ROTC tower, South High School roof, some added work that was added into our scope at a request of maintenance, and Riverdale High School and Cape Technical College. Are there any questions on that report?

009Miss Giovanelli, can you explain the 302 940 on the item for regarding NNN for the 500 gallon portable storage tank? Can you explain that? That is in it's not really a change order. Can you explain that part, please? It's a repurposing of contract funds on the N&M project. We originally were going to go down Joel to pick up our utilities and we are we didn't have enough water volume so we actually were going to dig a lake and use the lake for our fire suppression water. We got with FGUA and we are currently in design documents and we are creating their a tank that they will it'll be a contributo asset that's turned over to them which will be 50,000galon tank which will provide all of our fire suppression water that we need for the

010school. They will be able to expand that area with a second tank that they will utilize to feed the community at some future date and pump house. The 302,000 was funds that we didn't need as part of the Army Corps permitting process going down the road. Things that weren't determined to be wetlands, hence we didn't need to do the engineering and the biology. So these were savings within the architect's civil engineer portion of their contract that were not used and we repurposed them to provide the design to switch gears with our water delivery to the school and come up with that design. So that's the $32,000. Thank you. You're welcome, Miss Jordan. Thank on the same lines. and thank you because I you and I have had a great conversation. I think that there's there's

011a lot of angx about this money because I know when we're looking at it's 162 for the to estimated total cost for the school that money was actually part of that in the long run. That is correct. The inclusive cost. Correct. Right now the money you've already voted on what we call the phase one. You will be getting in October the phase two for the NN project which would be the total project costs. So, these $32,000 are the board approved part of the board approved phase one costs that came to the board over a year ago. Okay. And then the tanks the water storage tanks, they are for it's not just for one school because that's what's out there again. And I just want to make sure that we get the right facts out there

012when people are speaking on what was taking place that we have the right information out there. So right now currently you know it came back that this was for one school and one school of course does not need that large of a tank but in essence it is not for one school. It's it's for two schools but the actual size of the tank for fire suppression. You have to have an ab an abundance of water in a full-fledged fire. What it does is it saves on our maintenance costs year-over-year in excess of $60 to $100,000 because we're not now going into a pond. We're not doing cleaning and filtration of this system every year because when you test it, you have to test it. You're drawing in pond water and you have to go back

013and flush it out. In order to have it out there in an emergency situation, we have to provide a generator, a diesel gas diesel generator to run the pump out by the lake. So, all of these costs, we're no longer having to have the generator. We're not having to to do the maintenance on the fire suppression system, which will be in two schools on that site. So, it's a long-term cost savings. but it was a benefit for both the water supplier and the district mostly. Thank you. I just really think that we need to make sure that we are putting the proper information out and other people are not sharing the wrong information. Sure. And then also please again and I know we had a conversation about Riverdale that when will we stop seeing Riverdale?

014and I actually found some old stuff from 2019 about Riverdale the other day when I was moving stuff. So right now supposedly we had like a punch list that was continuing for another 30 days and that was on July 18th when that comment was made was sent to us about the school. So a punch list to me I thought was when and if I'm wrong please correct me. it is when we are going to everything is completed and we're looking to make sure that everything is done properly. That's our punch list. It's like a check balance. Correct. But at Riverdale it's it's a multi-phase project. So the first phase of the project was turning over the new science lab, the gymnasium, some interior portions of the building that helped the school administration manage it during

015an occupied build. So that punch list that was going on was that for that first phase that was substantially completed, turned over and punch list is basically fixing anything that isn't up to up to our par or our standards. Okay. So the punch list is for phase one. So we still So we're we're going to be seeing this for a while then even though it said that we were No, what you'll have is you'll have a substantial completion of August 31st for the entire project. The remaining portion of phase 2B will be punch list following August into September and then we go into the closeout process. Okay? because when I'm looking at that again when we see all the phase two and some of the contingencies of fees that are being used for that I

016just want to make sure that because I you know everybody talks about Riverdale how long it's been taken and we just well it's I'd love to see when it's off of our we've been creative we've had savings in phase 2 A so a lot of the change orders you see without having to go back to the board and do a contract increase for phase 2 We have shifted the money in the contingency process that was unused in the phase 2 A to support change orders and contingency adjustments in phase 2B. So this money, the 490,000 for the sewer repairs we've done with contingency, we would have long blown through the project contingency, changing things on site. So what we're we're doing is shifting in accounting process shifting funds to build the contingency program up above

017what the original contracted value is. But we have never increased the total project cost that the board has approved or otherwise. And it's going to be a tough one to audit. It'll be a clean audit, but it's going to be a tough one because there were so many phases over three and a half almost four years of construction on that site. Correct. Okay. No, thank you for that. And then my I don't think we're on that one yet. I come back when you speak about it. Thank you. Usually I'm only a minute and 15. This is going to be a long day. I'm just kidding, honey. the next one up is June 2025 change order report. Direct material purchases. We spent 2,2791. We returned to the district $113,530 and material tax savings back to the

018district. We had $32,940 in pure change orders, nonDMP related, and we had $91,000 in contingency adjustments. If you go to the back sheet, the two DMPS were for the Cape Technical College expansion project and also for the Hector Cafaretta project. Hector Cafaretta, we were able to engage with the construction team that's out there. Although their contract didn't require them to do direct material purchasing, they've agreed to do it. So on some select portions of the project, we're actually starting to reap those tax savings as well and bringing them back to the district. the pure change order is for the NN. That was the repurposing of the fees that we just talked about in the previous discussion. And the four contingency adjustments were for Cypress Lake High ROC tower and also for the Riverdale project. Are

019there any questions on those? Okay. And can you share again with because I know that was a question that I had asked regarding the towers and the steel that is what we are already using that we've had. Correct. Correct. What we're doing is we're repurposing some of the steel that came off of one of our jobs that we no longer were moving forward. We have about used 25% of the steel. We've used some of it at Riverdale Gym. We've used it on all three towers which are astero Cypress and will be Riverdale as well. We are using it at Cypress High/Middle, the central energy plant. We're repurposing it. we have a long way to go. It's a lot of steel. was only about 28% of that job that got cancelled, but we're down, we've picked

020apart about 25% of it. these change orders, these are steel towers. They're not wood, so they're going to last a lot longer than than me for certain. the there were some safety issues where we needed some more crossing and structural support. They want wanted a rock wall, so you'll see some of the contingency, some of the straight the bracing, and the steel was used to support the rock climbing walls. If you've ever seen them with the little hand holes and you go up, if you get a chance, go out to Cypress High. That one's wrapped up. I mean, it's it's pretty amazing. So, we're doing a team building event. I'm going to force them all down the zip line. Okay. And now for the fun. This is your bimonthly update. First up is Bayshore K8

021expansion. The only changes from the previous slide. I write these because a lot happens between the time these are generated for board docs and to when I come to present to you. We received bids on July 10th. And right now the CM and the GMP that has come in is 36,485,439. Now don't confuse that. That's not total project cost. that is the GMP that has actually come in for that project and I believe August 5th is we're targeting we're already in board docs for August 5th to bring the total project cost to the board for ratification approval and begin that job. Any questions? Next up BBB prek8. just a comment. I had one board member the the end date although the substantial completion is not going to change because of our redesign we gave extra

022time to the design team in our multiple phases schematic construction design and permitting. We've updated this to accommodate the VE and the VE occurred when we trimmed it down when it was an innovation school and brought the cost back within the range of the 128 million that the board had approved for this site. And so right now the substantial completion date is still April 11th of 2028. The design completion, we've extended them to September 14th of 2025 to have the entire complete design so we can start putting out the bid. Right now we have a 90% estimate from the architect of 113,597,259 and the CM number just came in at 112,497,588. So again, that's just the GMP. That's not the total project cost. So you have to add FFN and all those other items onto

023that. Any questions? Okay. Bonita Springs Elementary Rebuild. Well, we're out there. It's down. we're moving forward. The construction start actual was June 9th of 2025. Still holds substantial completion of August 2nd, 2027 for all phases. And the city of Bonita Springs Council approved the development order, the limited development order for this project. So we're underway. We're going. We're doing our power change orders. We poured temporary sidewalks. So that school is going and getting prepared for start of school. Any questions? Kate Coral Technical College. the old Hector Cafaretta building has been demolished. The site has been filled and leveled up. because we had to do some stabilization. the foundations are now underway and there's no other things to report there except that the substantial completion will be June 1st of 2026. On that, any questions? Cypress

024Lake Middle School rebuild. Currently, we encountered because of the three-story sections of the middle school, we had to do what they call viro compaction, which we use contingency for. It's about $100,000. Stabilizing the soil to allow for the footings to be placed and not to sink. Basically injecting stone and mortar into the ground to depths that will prevent any settling of the building. So, that's been completed and we're still on schedule. We haven't received any delays from the contractor yet on that work. So we're still targeting February 15th of 2027 a substantial completion. Hector Caparetta it's going all the foundations are done. I believe August 4th we might be doing the first tilt panel. So Mr. Sper and his team have been notified if of a possible media event. that's on schedule on quue. We've

025been holding really good meetings with the city of Cape Coral. Mr. Nice has reached out to his commensurate partner over there. We have a working team. Theou from legal has been drafted with planning and construction and we should be able to get all of our permitting for utilities. So, we have a draft that'll be sent around the horn. Once the draft is done, it'll have to come to this board for ratification as well as the city of Kate Coral. And then we'll continue on with the actual development of the ILA agreement for the future. Any questions? Thank you. It's probably for Dr. Mallaloy, so I guess I'll direct as well to Superintendent Carlin. Can we just get a count of how many to add additional middle school seats will be added to Hector under that?

026We'll be happy to provide that for the board. Thank you. Thank you. I apologize. I saw that email, too. I just assumed that we get you that number, but I'll get it for you after the meeting. Thank you, sir. Any more questions on Kev? Okay, next up, elementary school L. Still no permit, so really no change. Drawings are done. We're waiting for the Army Corps for both L and O. and as soon as we have any new information, we will get that to you on that school. So, it's in a holding pattern. Next up is elementary M East zone. we just received the new information on here is 90% CM estimate of 77,73,000 or 619 773619. So that's the assumed construction cost for elementary M at this point in time. Any questions? Okay. High school

027NN. just a couple of things. One board member had mentioned the substantial completion date still being shown in the two-month report of June of 2029. That is the actual capital plan. So that's what's reporting it. I know that planning and operations is getting ready to bring you a revised capital plan. When that comes forward, you will see 2027 for NN. But right now, everything for NN&N is for June 1st of 2027 substantial completion. The project is out to bid for a GMP. We had bid bid openings were conducted on July 11th, 2025 and we assume the GMP will present it to the district, myself and my team for review in August and hopefully coming to the board to the October board action meeting for a total project cost approval for NN High. Any questions? Sorry

028to keep on doing this to you. if you what was my question? So the FGUA we do not have like if you were to call them right now and ask them if we have a permit they would say no they do not have that even if even though you have been working with them for over a year. Mhm. Correct. I just want to make sure that's out there as well because that is correct. I keep getting all these emails and phone calls saying that we have not had that. I've called them myself to to see if that was correct prior to speaking to you. And so yes, if they were to call there, they would say no, there is no permit because we have not yet submitted that. That is correct. There are drawings that

029we've sat in our meetings with FGUA y designing the tank, the routing, sewer, water. There is no official permit. So if someone were to call their office and say, "Do you have any information? We'd like to see copies." Well, first off, they're a private entity, so I don't know that they fall under sunshine. But secondly, there is no permit. We expect the drawings. We just had a meeting today again with them. We expect the drawings hopefully in the next 30 days and at that point then we'll formally put in our permit with FGUA based on the negotiated drawings and u pay the fees and get that moving forward as well. Yeah. Thank you. And it's just merely about transparency so that we're not hiding anything. You're doing all the stuff that we need to do.

030So thank you for that. That's it. So that's NNN. Any other questions on NNN? Are we good to go? Okay. middle school O already spoke to that. That's linked on the same site SR82 with L waiting on Army Corps which our legislative folks are working on trying to get current information to push that forward as well. Riverdale High School. A lot going on. people want to know what stage are we at? What's going on over there? Are there parts of the building that look like a bomb went off? Of course there are. We're finishing up. It's the end of the year. It's the end of the project. It's getting cleaned up. right now we're in what they call the concretable building, an existing structure that the state would not allow us to tear down. It

031was built early 2000. So we're in there updating it and refreshing that project right now. new AC. We're putting in a new elevator. So you'll see there was a contingency adjustment where we had an allowance of 50,000. We chose to put in a new elevator, I believe, for 80 grand rather than expend money on trying to refurbish the existing one, which constantly broke down. paint, carpet, flooring throughout that concreteable building. The interior, we're currently in what was the old gym that is now a multi-purpose room. We're in the locker rooms area where we gutted the locker rooms and those are being converted into ummies. So that's the pro those are part of the areas in the existing campus that are going to carry out until August 31st substantial completion. current contingency I think I spoke

032to you 496,000 we expended on all of that sewer pipe that I've been keeping a running tally with you. traffic on site and paving and all site work is 99.9% complete and that's all I have to report for Riverdale. Any questions? Okay, VPAA renovation lame teal again on schedule. We finished up the roofing. and we will have the entire complex completed November of 2025. That is the auditorium building, the VPAA, HVAC and interior updates. And it'll also be the LAM Teal HVAC fans, roofing change out, and of course the blackbox theater. Any questions on that project? And then we have attached, if you can read it, I wrote a bigger copy if you can't. It's the monthly construction update that we provide to you every two months, but I provide it to operations just to

033give them a flavor of all of the projects we're currently engaged in. Are there any questions on that sheet? Yes. the one for North Rory Academy I it states that it's closed and I know that they did the survey for the walkable children and the possibility of having a right turn lane coming out of Garden to Laurel to keep the 680 vehicles moving throughout the you know well after pickup of course it's it's worse than in the morning but when And I saw that it's it's closed. We're just it's just closed because closed in my world means when I performed the function which was requested by the capital committee and that function was to do a traffic study in addition provide a pedestrian study report which we did. the report wasn't typical to most of

034our traffic improvements. We actually have a problem with the people getting out of the campus not necessarily getting in and stacking and clogging the roads. So my staff, we meet monthly with Lee County with DOT, a monthly meeting for all of our projects. We brought we broached the question because one of the recommendations in the traffic study to help alleviate the traffic for vehicles was up at the first big intersection where a VFW Hall is, and I can't remember the names. I'm Garden and Laurel. Okay. was to have in the easement there have the county provide a right-hand turn lane that would get people out of the left turn movement. we brought that forward several times to those meetings. it's not funded. They had no intention of doing it. It doesn't have funding. And then

035the last two meetings where we're going to bring it up again. Unfortunately, the director has been out of town, you know, for for work. we'll keep bringing it up, but as their position right now is it's not funded. It's not in their capital plan and they won't be moving forward with it. In regards to the children, the walking in the back, the cameras showed nothing, but I realize that's because many of the parents probably are driving their kids. That back road is a county road. There's no sidewalk. It's not lit. There's a huge canal brooing our property and that road, which is also owned by by the county. they have no plans to do sidewalk or lighting in that back area. Now, I do understand there was a courtesy bus correct that used to be

036there that would service those children that is no longer there. So, that might be something you could take up with this the board. Okay. And I thank Thank you for that. But I really do think that it would behoove us, but I believe we're responsible for those children. And I know that the study said that the kids don't they don't exist. I know they exist. I count them. And I will be back there when school starts again to count them every day if I have to to show that those kids are there because they are coming to the end and jumping in anybody's pickup truck and then being driven to wherever. I don't even know if the parents are aware that the kids are jumping in back in pickup trucks. But to me, it's it's

037and when you look at the area and the safety, it lights up like just the people that what they're walking through. And I personally, you know, last year went and walked that. So, I just really want to make sure that we don't just leave those kids behind and leave that school where it needs to be because I, you know, I've already called the county commissioner to see if I could set a time with him as well because I do believe that this is something that we there are children and we have to really be paying attention to that. So, understood, Dr. or anything, I'd appreciate that. Yeah, Miss Jordan. I appreciate you bringing this up for us. certainly we always talk about safety and security is our top priority, right? So, I will ask our

038staff to get a meeting with you offline so we can provide some updates around that situation. Thank you. That's all we have. Any questions other than that? Thank you. Have a great day. You too. Thank you. we are going to move on to job descriptions presented by Dr. Shannon Johnston. All right. Good afternoon. All right. Madame Chair, board members, Superintendent Carlin, and board attorney Kathy Dupri Bruno, we have three job descriptions coming to you today. You've been briefed on them previously. Is there any discussion? Board members, do you have any questions? Okay. All right. Thank you. We're going to move on to a presentation project believe also by Dr. Shannon Johnston this afternoon. Oh and we have props. We do have some props. And while Miss Inz is passing those out, I would like to

039introduce Amanda Mason. She's our assistant director of talent acquisition and this project believe would not have been possible without her and her team. So I just want to make sure that we give kudos to her and her team because they have worked extremely hard to make sure that we have teachers in every classroom on the first day. It will take a fair amount of explaining. Thank you. All right. So today's presentation will walk us through the journey and impact of project believe our district-wide initiative to make sure that every classroom has a teacher a certified teacher on day one of school which is in 13 days. We'll begin with a look at our instructional vacancy data followed by the strategies we implement implemented to address those gaps and we'll then reflect on the key lessons

040learned highlight our future focus as we continue to work and close with the next steps that we'll take together to build on this momentum before we begin I have to share some with you some excitement and the board members who were at the safety day last Friday heard this but within HR we have some excitement going on and That's what the bells are all about. So, the generalists each have a bell and the credentialist on their desk in their cubicle and we're tracking every step of hiring that is happening with the teachers. And as soon as that last step is done, they ring their bell so that everybody in HR can hear and then we all go crazy and we cheer because we know that a classroom and 25 18 to 25 students have a

041teacher. And so it's really exciting to see the psychological connection that's happening in HR that we serve students. Even though we're in this building, it's a good reminder that we serve students. And so that's what the bell is on about is about and we wanted to make that connection for you as well. So as we approach the new school year, we know that the most important factor in student success is the person in front of the classroom. Project Believe is our district-wide commitment to making sure that every student begins the year with a certified teacher. No exceptions. This initiative isn't just about filling positions. It's about rethinking how we recruit, how we certify and support our educators. We're looking closely at our systems, our tools, and even our collective mindsets because real transformation requires us

042to challenge the status quo at every level. And we're not doing this alone. Project Believe is truly a collaborative effort. from our HR operations team to talent acquisition from our school leaders who are here in the audience some of them and to our administrative assistants and with the support of our regional associate superintendent every team has a role to play in this mission including you all. So, thank you for your support in this. Together, we're really building something powerful here. We started Project Believe on April 24th and at that time we had 575 vacancies advertised. We are now as of July 24th and why we updated some slides for today at 84 instructional vacancies. These are all in vacancies. So, okay. Yay. These are all vacancies. So, we're not delineating between core vacancies or, you

043know, these are just all instructional vacancies. At this time last year, this same week, we had 265 vacancies. So, we are definitely ahead of the game. Okay. So, I want you to just get acclimated to this chart for a minute. You'll see the on on April 24th, we started at 575 and then I just updated the slide for you all to reflect last week's data. We're at 84. So, we're at 1.6% of our total teacher population at this point. Right now, the North region has 18 openings. the east region while it looks like they have the most openings they have had the largest decrease and reducing the vacancies. So you can see in April they started with 243 vacancies and now they're at 33. So there all of the regions are doing a phenomenal job

044but I just wanted to point that out that they've had the largest decrease. The south region is at 14, west is at 12 vacancies and special centers are at seven. So we have and this changes every day but we stop at one day a week on Thursday at four o'clock and we collect the data and that's what we report out. So we have a real time dashboard that tracks the data and in a variety of ways. We're we're tracking it by position, by school, by region. and one strategy that we are proud of is opening the hiring processing beginning May 1st. In years past, for as long as I can remember, this was always opened on July 1st. And so we partnered and collaborated with the budget department and we were able to open up

045May 1st. And we now have those results. So we have been able to process over 230 more teachers than we did at this time last year. So this the schools are not feeling that backlog that we've felt in years past where oh my gosh, school's starting next week. we don't have the teachers hired, where are they in the process. We don't feel that as much this year. So, we're very proud of that. we're tracking, as I said, every step of the hiring process, as I mentioned before, and, and the ringing of the bells, but it's more than the fun ringing of the bells. We are able to now finally have a baseline of time to fill so that we can track that. That is a typical metric in HR that has never been tracked before

046in Lee County. And so now that we have that data, we are finally able to track that and it'll help us to continuously improve. So we're just beginning with all of this. Okay, so this is the exciting part. We have 47 schools that have zero vacancies as of last Thursday. we invited the 47 schools and as you know the principles are super busy right now getting everything ready for school. Some of them were able to take the time out and we would like to ask you all to please stand at this time and we're going to ring our bells for you. This is your chance. All right. So, as I said, it's a seriously a big collaborative effort to make this happen. And the school principles have really been involved this year and recruitment more

047than ever. We have 47 schools with zero vacancies. We have 22 schools with only one vacancy. So, that's 69 of our schools with zero or one vacancies. The 47 are listed up here. we have 15 schools with two vacancies. So we're we're down to the nitty-gritty right now. And it sound 84 sounds like a lot, but between the 92 sites that we're tracking, it really is not a lot. So it's only 1.6% of our total teacher population. Okay. So now we're going to get into risk level three and four schools. As you all know, the risk level four schools have were determined by the level one ELA incoming students and then our direct certified students, right? And so they're they're our most atrisisk schools, level three and four. So if you look at 2000, this

048is comparing risk level three and four schools over the past three years. So if you look at the light yellow, the light orange, that's risk level three schools. In 2023, they were at 104 vacancies at this time. in in 2024 at 83, at 2025, at on July 16th, they're at 31 and right now they're at 21 vacancies. Then we have risk level four. You can see they were at 60 and 23. And right now, as of last Thursday, in our risk level four schools, we only have nine vacancies, which is tremendous. Is tremendous. So, we, you know, I want to mention the teacher incentive initiative. We do think that has something to do with it. We only have at this point anecdotal data. We have Miss Velasquez has been calling principles and getting you know

049just some anecdotal data and asking principles you know have you seen movement? So what we are hearing so far is that teachers really are not leaving or transferring from level one schools risk level one schools. But what we're hearing is that in rest risk level three and four schools there are they are staying more than ever. We're retaining them in risk level three and four schools and we are losing t we're not losing teachers because we're keeping them within the district but they're transferring more out of risk level two schools. So that right now anecdotally that's what we're hearing. and that's the data that we've collected so far. So, at this time, Miss Mason is going to go through some strategies that have worked so far, our real time mitigation strategies that we have shifted

050as we've moved along this journey. And I'll turn it over to you. Okay. Good afternoon. As we reflect on project believe, one thing is clear, collaboration has been the key driver of our progress and our success. Our regional associate superintendents and the ESSE leadership team have played a pivotal role in this journey. They have partnered with schools to collaborate with principles on creative scheduling, explored innovative staffing solutions, and advocated for hiring needs in close coordination with HR. To address the staffing gaps, human resources held one-on-one brainstorming sessions and follow-up meetings with schools experiencing double-digit vacancies. This personalized support ensured that no school felt alone in this process. In addition, our administrative assistants have undergone targeted training and they now benefit from consistent streamlined communication from our division. Everyone in HR operations and talent acquisition is

051fully aligned with one shared goal, zero instructional vacancies. This vision remains front and center as we support schools with every hiring need. Our talent acquisition team has been hard at work. At the conclusion of the spring teacher recruitment fair, we distributed a comprehensive talent search list comprised of instructional candidates. This resource includes contact information, certification eligibility, and other key candidate details. It was accessible to both administrative assistants and principles, ensuring real-time access to quality candidates. To attract top talent, the TA team leverages LinkedIn, Indeed, in-person and virtual events, virtual office hours, phone outreach, and organic website applicants. It's a multi-channel approach that's producing strong results. Another major win, we're hiring, like Dr. Johnston said earlier than ever. This year, instructional hires are being processed well ahead of the previous timelines. Early onboarding reassures candidates and

052it supports retention. No more waiting through the summer without confirmation of employment. May first, the May 1 processing date has already made a positive impact, helping us to stay competitive in this difficult market. We're also seeing incredible momentum at the school levels. Many locations are taking ownership of their recruitment efforts, building site-based teams and implementing create implementing creative strategies to promote their schools. From open houses to social media campaigns, the schools are partnering regularly with their HR team to ensure visibility and success. And to support these efforts, we launched the recruitment toolkit designed specifically for school-based administrative assistance. This practical resource was distributed during their summer trainings in June and July. And that toolkit included recruiting tips and best practices, a menu of services and supplies provided by the TA team, FAQs to streamline common

053processes, and yes, even the we are hiring yard sign went home with every admin assistant. there it is. And it's going home with you today. So, let's spread the word. We are hiring and we are doing it together. All right. As we revisit the leading factors driving change in Project Believe, one area that deserves special recognition is our enhanced communication strategies. It's been a gamecher and it's happening both internally and externally. Internally, we've implemented intentional communication touch points across the district. A huge shout out to Dr. Johnston, who has played a key role in bridging the gap between the district office and our schools. Her efforts have ensured that our messaging is not only consistent, but it's timely and it's actionable. Our weekly updates are now a critical tool, reaching staff through divisionwide emails, school-based

054emails, and even board updates. These touch points have created a clear message from the central office to schools. One fun and effective addition was the hiring thermometer that is displayed in the superintendent's cabinet room. The oversized thermometer is tracking our hiring progress and it's a visual so we all can see and be held accountable. This along with transparent reporting has introduced a bit of friend friendly competition both among the schools and the district teams and I think the results are speaking for themselves. Externally we are also communicating more effectively with our future candidates. The talent acquisition team hosts drop-in with Lee open office hours three times a week. These virtual meetings are via Teams, but they provide real-time support for anyone who is navigating the hiring process. In addition, twice a month, we hold virtual

055certification information events. And these sessions walk aspiring teachers through the steps to becoming eligible through the Florida Department of Education. This support has been especially valuable for our career changers. We're also amplifying the school-based efforts. As schools create their own events and promotional opportunities, the TA team shares them across social media platforms to expand the reach and visibility in our community. Schools have increased engagement by hosting their own events and implementing intentional summer engagement strategies. These tactics help to keep the new hires warm, engaged, and excited about their roles before day one. But what has been truly remarkable is how communication and collaboration are happening at every level of the organization. From the school sites to the executive team, leadership hasn't just been involved. They've been fully engaged. Keeping the conversation going and backing it

056up with practical support. Everyone is aligned. Everyone is moving in the same direction. And that shared purpose is exactly what's driving the progress. So, Project Believe has been a powerful learning experience for all of us. As we look back, here are some key takeaways. First, we've seen how critical frequent and consistent communication is at every level. It is the backbone of effective collaboration. We've also confirmed that when we move together with a one vision, one team mindset, we can make real measurable progress. Collective effort truly moves the needle. Another key lesson, data is fluid and it is essential because the vacancy numbers shift daily. Constant monitoring is the only way to ensure targeted strategies. We've also noticed that a little healthy competition especially around recruitment and tension and retention. It goes a long way. In

057this case, it's driving positive momentum across the district. As we evaluate the plan against the district data, current market trends and the unique needs of our schools, one thing became clear. We had to remain flexible and I feel we did throughout Project Believe. We made strategic adjustments to stay responsive and results driven. And here are some of the actions that we took. We implemented the teacher incentive initiative which is helping attract high-quality teachers to atrisisk schools. We built strong authentic partnership between central office and school leaders working side by side rather than in silos. We made a deliberate effort to include administrative assistance in HR communications recognizing the vital role they play in staffing success. We have also expanded the TPG cultural exchange program to help meet our critical staffing needs. This year we will

058be welcoming 55 new international teachers, bringing the total to 135 certified experienced educators to Lee County classrooms. In response to reertification challenges, HR implemented a one-year adjunct certificate for effective and highly effective teachers who have passed their subject area exam but have not yet met all of the reertification requirements, helping retain talent that would other otherwise have been lost. Our HR team took a hands-on approach by recommending and directly contacting candidates from the vetted talent sheet, making a per making personal touch and outreach part of our strategy. As we move forward, we'll continue to explore new approaches, including the use of virtual learning platforms to help bridge remaining gaps or vacancies persist. But Project Believe has shown us what's possible when we stay connected, informed, and flexible, and when we all rally around one shared

059goal. Okay. So, as we continue over the next 13 days, we're implementing a set of focused strategies to close any remaining instructional vacancies. First, every school principal who still has a vacancy will submit a mitigation plan by August 1st, which is this Friday. you all don't have to worry about that. Okay. This plan outlines how each school will address its remaining needs. As part of this plan, the principal will tempor temporarily reassign any certified staff that is non-classroom certified staff into these vacancies. and that will help us mitigate this gap. the these teachers will be in focus as the teacher of record. So that will be the accountability piece so that we can monitor that. Finally, we're we're partnering with Kelly Services to supplement coverage with certified teachers. So there are many many Kelly guest

060teachers that are certified teachers. So they have given us the list of certified Kelly substitute teachers and we're using those. I don't think we're going to need this strategy, but we have it as plan B just in case. We do feel like we have enough non-classroom certified staff already to cover but this is just plan B just in case. we have that list ready to go. these strategies reflect our belief again that every student deserve deserves access to a qualified teacher. So as we kick off this school year, our recruitment continues our recruitment efforts will continue. It will always continue. But what's different is the deliberate strategic focus we're placing on retention. The truth is we cannot recruit our way out of this challenge without also retaining the incredible people we've worked so hard to

061to get. So that's why we're doubling down on high impact retention strategies like rewards and recognition and ensuring we have engaged personnel who feel connected to the mission and value their work. Currently with those that were just hired, even small actions like our HR team has written an a handwritten note to every single person that was hired this summer and th those have been given to the principles or to whatever department they work for and on the first day back to work, they're going to be receiving this handwritten note. It's just those little touches, personalized touches that go a long way. The principles and school leadership teams all summer have been providing the people that they've hired swag bags. They've been sending them school shirts and different things, having coffee with their with their new

062teachers, planning with the leadership team. the teachers on leadership teams have been going out to lunch with them, planning with them, and really making sure that they keep them warm throughout the summer so we don't lose them. we know that these things can make a big difference and we need to keep them before they start to make sure they feel connected. So looking ahead to FY26, we're continue to expand our recruitment efforts as well. We're partnering with Kelly Services to help us identified to identify certified guest teachers and either transition them into full-time teaching with us or leverage them for consistent coverage. We're also planning to expand our staffing agency partnerships and strengthen our own grow your own programs such as the high school teachingmies and support staff to teachers to build a sustainable and

063local pipeline of future educators. Ultimately, our message is this. Recruitment and retention are not separate. They're equal forces in this work. And we when we retain our people, we reduce the pressure on recruitment. As we have shared with the board in a previous presentation, one of the most powerful levers we have for retention is strong school leadership. Research is clear. Effective principles create the conditions that keep great teachers in our schools. It's the number one indicator. Actually, teachers are number two. That's why our regional superintendent are working closely with school principles to strengthen leadership practices that directly impact teacher experience and retention. This work over the next year is critical to our efforts. This includes fostering a positive school culture. We're also focused on addressing the workload and work life balance. That means protecting planning

064time, setting reasonable expectations, and encouraging boundaries. Finally, we're investing in student behavior supports, equipping teachers with classroom management tools, increasing access to mental health services, and ensuring clear and consistent discipline practices. These leadership practice are not just good ideas. They're essential strategies for retaining our talent and building thriving school communities. So, as we close, I'm excited to share what's next. Our bold step forward, introducing Project Thrive. So, we're not going away. We're just flipping the switch after August 11th. A new initiative that reflects our deep commitment to not only attract top talent, but to create the kind of environment where every educator feels valued, supported, and inspired to stay and grow. Project Thrive is about inspiring belonging, empowering growth, and supporting every step to success. Project Thrive is about retention. We have to have just

065as just as much attention on retention as we did on recruitment. Now that we have them, we got to keep them because the truth is recruitment and retention feed each other. We've got we when we create a place where people thrive, they stay. So, at this time, we will take any questions that you may have. Thank you very much. first of all, just a big thank you to Dr. Johnston, Miss Velasquez, and the team for the extraordinary work. And I want to thank our principles. You know, I sat as a school-based leader for 18 years, and I remember vividly what this time of year is like. And so just the very fact that you chose to come down here and support the work and what you've done at the schoolhouse really is making a difference.

066And I just want to take a moment and brag on all of our principles because what I'm hearing from HR is not only are you fully staffed, but you're actually helping others. If there's somebody that you have interviewed and you maybe select one candidate and you're like, "Wow, that was a great candidate." You're picking up the phone and calling a friend. And that just speaks to the heart of this school district family. We're all in this together. You know, even before we had the slogan, one vision, one team. It's really about they're all our children, right? We want every single child in this district to have an amazing teacher. So, I just really want to applaud not only the principles here that took the time to come, but also recognizing those that had other commitments,

067were not able to be here today. just thank you as a principal team and thank you to your assistant principles because children matter and by showing up today and by being in your schools, those of you that were not able to join us, you're showing your commitment by your teamwork that this work matters. So, just thank you for that. I do want to point out a couple of things from the presentation, then I'll turn it quickly over to you all. I love the idea of going from Project Believe to Project Thrive because we all know we've got amazing teachers, but we got to hold on to them. And on the campaign trail, and you've you've heard me say this before, I had coffee with about 500 teachers over the 13 months of the campaign, and

068I asked them questions like, "What is driving teachers from the profession?" And of course, everybody will acknowledge pay is certainly an area of opportunity, but expectations, student behavior, all of those types of things were very pronounced in those conversations. And so, and they, and to be clear, they don't blame the children. It's not like, you know, that kindergarter is making me. That's not what it's about. It's about having the support from their administrators. It's about having the tools in their tool belt to be able to address those behaviors. And it's the things like you did earlier this spring when you adjusted the code of conduct and and supported the work. It's things like having that cell phone turned off so we don't have cyber bullying going on in the classroom as we speak and you

069know that the types of things that children can do in the classroom. So this is really a team effort. I'm thinking about what the principles are doing and our school leaders, HR, and then our our board, our governance team stepping up and providing the right environment so that teachers and staff members will choose to stay. So, I just thank you to everybody for your collective effort. It means a lot to the children in our community and I just want to thank you. So, look forward to the board's conversation today. Thank you, Dr. Carlin. Board members, any comments or questions? Mr. Ribble? Yeah, I just want to tell the superintendent, you must take it by script, but there is one point that I'm going to make that you missed. I can't believe it. I want to

070applaud you for for moving away from Kelly Services there. When I was campaigning, I heard the board hired approved the hiring of Kelly's services to to hire our teachers. And as you know, there's a large competitor not a competitor with school district, but a large employer here in the county that did exactly the same thing three years ago and just totally ruined the morale of the employees. So, I applaud you for standing on your own, going out and coming up with these initiatives which are just outstanding. They're proven and you really hit the nail on the head with the retention piece of this now. And I was really pleased on Friday's tour when we heard from the sheriff's office what they're doing to step up to support the principles and teachers when there's bad behavior

071in a classroom. I'm glad to hear they're they're getting involved and hopefully that'll correct some of this nonsense that happens in some of the classrooms. But great job. Thank you, Mr. Fischer. Thank you, Madam Chair. Dr. Johnson, Miss Mason, everyone HR principles. Thank you so much. Thank you for your hard work, for your talent. but most of all, thank you for putting the human and human resources. I think that's been missing for a while. And Miss Mason talked about a little bit, especially going into besides obviously having, you know, importance of of our students, having a teacher in every classroom throughout this entire county. But another impact you talked about is culture and having a strong culture that cares about everyone in this district is so important. A few years ago, I nicknamed it here

072the district office of Death Star. And I'm happy to say we're moving away from that. I mean, it's amazing when we have our chief of HR actually going out to schools and helping out and supporting these principles. I think it's truly amazing. So, I just want to give you all kudos. Thank you, Miss Shaviano. Yeah. well, thank you for the presentation and all the hard work that has gone on. you know, since you've come into this role, we met and we had a lot of conversation as well. So, kudos to you and your team for the work that you've done. But there was one thing that you brought up I was like, I love this, which was the measurement, right? The data and the statistics that weren't there before because I know there was a

073previous meeting where I think we'd asked like, what are the statistics? What does it take start to finish? So, the fact that there's now a baseline to work off of and then improve is great to hear, right? Because we need to be able to measure it to say it's working or it's not working. And I have to give kudos to Susette Rivera because she developed the tracking mechanism for that and we now will have a baseline. So I cannot take credit for that. No. Yes. No. Kudos like I said to the entire it is a group effort. I'd be curious to see what the baseline is because again once you can track it then you know the direction to go in. so I'm happy to hear that the metrics are coming into play because those

074are huge. So, thank you for all that hard work again and getting the teachers in the classroom and really racing to the finish line to get it done. So, thank you. Thank you, Miss Jordan and Mr. Persons. Well, everybody's already told you thank you. So, thank you. No, I actually I do love this and I think that you are so correct when you speak about leadership because it is about the leadership and they set the tone of the whole school and you can tell people are not going to leave if they have that great leader. they're going to stay with them. They're going to do whatever they have to do to get the job done. So, I again I appreciate you moving from to thrive because we really need to and retention of course is

075always a way to save money because it costs us more when we lose people in any business that you have. But when I was looking at the one and I'm not trying to be a downer here, when I was looking at the page 13 with the counseling and investing support behavior and more counseling and mental health services, how do the schools and I know we're concentrating right now on making sure we have every instructional teacher in a classroom and you even made a mention of pulling a teacher from or pulling someone from another position to make that So then that position where you've pulled them from will be empty. Yes. So those are mostly like reading coaches, math coaches, so on and so forth. Okay. So the coaches Okay. Thank you for that. So then

076going back to the mental health and again this goes back to teachers, principles, you know, and helping them do their job when we have the school psychologists. And I know that you're we're really doing a great job in hiring, but from my understanding, we are so far down on the list for the school psychologists that we are I think we have six in the whole district right now to cover all the schools. And so their ratio is now it's supposed to be 1 to 500, but right now they're like 1 to 2,700 students. I'd have to get you that information. That would be great. But I just want to make sure that we are when we're looking and we're recruiting that because they need all of those tools to to help them with what they

077do as well. So having those counselor, psychologists, all of those are as important as the teachers. Yeah. But I just really want to thank you for all of this and I just want them to have all the tools that they need to to be successful and our students to be successful as well. Thank you. But yeah, if you could get me that, that'd be great. Definitely. We'll get you the ratios. right now we do have it's reported to us three psycho psychologist vacancies. And I appreciate how happy you guys are. Like you make people happy. So, thank you for that as well. Awesome. Thank you, Mr. Parsons. I like everyone else want to say thank you. You know our primary job is to educate children and as the superintendent has said and all of us

078I'm sure on the dis here believe to do that you have to have just like three major things. Number one most important is have a certified teacher teaching every child and until this year we've fallen quite a bit short on that. The second thing is to try to get the kids there on time because if they're not there, they can't learn and we've done a really good job on that I think with the new bus times and everything. The third thing we haven't talked much about and it I don't want to bring up a discussion now, but it's absenteeism, truency, whatever you want to say there, because if the kid doesn't even show up, doesn't matter how good a teacher you have, you know, they're not there at all. So on time doesn't have anything

079to do with it either. So after we address that hopefully next and I know we've taken a few steps. I really see there's no reason our achievement which we're going to be talking about in a minute will not just take off. You know it's just there's just no way and I'm willing to bet anyone that it'll take it will take off because that's just so important. So that's all I again thank you so much. Thank you Miss Jvenelli. Okay, you stole my thunder, Mr. Persons, because I was going to say, you know, if the students aren't they don't arrive on time, and I'm excited to see what that new the new plan is in play, how that's going to hopefully I think we're going to be going to have a great year. I think we're

080we're headed for success and we're set up for that. So, we just want to give everybody the, you know, all the staff the opportunity to to do that. So I think that this year I'm very excited about it the plan for that. So, I was just curious and we have another meeting on the 5th if we could have another update on because I I think your numbers will go down and I'm excited to see what hap just that you know and also th those the schools that are still left with vacancies what their plan is and like examples and stuff like that because I am curious you know because I know the harder the some of the schools are harder to fill and I think that the resolution was to help with that Right. So,

081I'm excited to see the outcomes. Okay. So, I know y'all are too because that's the data is important, right? because it's this is all driven by that. I mean, it truly will be at the end of it, you know? So, I'm excited to see that. I love this believe and to thrive. And I would like to see this. This is for the superintendent. I would like to see that culture also in transportation. I don't think it's there yet. And yes. And so, because for that needs to happen for them to be able to to really truly be successful at the end of the day, they're the main piece, but if we don't give them the support and everybody else doesn't have the same mindset and culture, then they're just spinning their wheels and at the

082end of the day, then our achievement doesn't quite get there, you know, and we don't quite get there. So, I'm just want to put that out there that I think that's really important. and I am curious how much Kelly is going to be impacted from this. I think actually I kind of agree about the how positive it really can be, but there's those there's some of those teachers in there, they're teachers, those guest teachers really just want to work part-time. So, I don't know if that's something that we could look into. And I'd like to see Kelly's services go away. That's just my opinion and or that's a plan B and you go you go to that resource when you need to or outsource when that need is but because I think that the they

083need consist consistency and that Kelly is not that I don't believe yeah not for long for long term where we would like to eventually you know move away there's always going to be that need though but there's going to be the need because teachers need to take off they have their personal days they you know and That's that balance, the work life balance. So there is there is a place for Kelly services, you know, and so they teachers need that need that. So I don't know that it can always can go all the way, but I do I hear you. Well, I would just like to see our pool come back in even if it's a part-time pool and versus the outsourced Kelly services. just I just my thought cuz I mean just like recently

084we found out that the $500 bonus for a long after 30 days went away. I wasn't really aware of that until I inquired and that's affecting some of them. But I don't know how much how many that was the question I posed is how many schools actually have longterm subs like that. There are over 30 days. and I think with this data I think they're going to have less this year than they had it last year. but I just was curious about that. I like I said I just want I think there's been some that you have great you know in everything you have great employees and you have not so great employees and that's what I hear about Kelly and yet sometimes we need them right so I just I'd like to see some

085more I don't know guidelines there I guess than and see I'd love to go back to the old way and we have our only our pool so that's what I wanted to bring and really just the culture. I just I just thank you. I you can see the difference actually. It comes in with a you come in with a different like whole vibe with everything. So, thank you. Thank you. Dr. Carlin, did you want to address something? Yes. Just one quick thing. I want to make sure that the board understands we look at teacher vacancies. this is a weekly celebration now at cabinet. and it has been very very exciting. And what I'm thrilled about and I share this with Miss Gio Vanelli I share the passion around that as well like it has been

086such a celebratory summer and we you know obviously HR has a role to play but again I can't underscore the teamwork that has occurred here. So just thank you thank you thank you because I know what this time of year is like and the very fact that you're taking time to help colleagues means the world to us. So just thank you for that and couldn't agree more about work culture. Culture makes all the difference and you know everybody plays a role in culture. We talk about leaders we play a role in culture as well. You know what happens with our employees with our executives with our principles. So all of us in this room and everybody watching you know in terms of employees we all play a role in culture and so it's very important

087to just be reminded of that as well. So thank you. Yeah I totally agree Dr. Carlin. morale is a huge a huge part of any employment. I've even left a you know lucrative career because of that reason and so I applaud your efforts and those of you in the in the room today. The this is the health I and I've worked for this district before in another district. This is the healthiest I have ever seen the HR department and you made a great point putting the human back in human resources. Mr. Fischer. And I'll just quickly I would not be surprised if other districts start to pick up the phone and call you and ask what in the world is Lee County doing, right? Because I mean the these numbers are they're they're not a

088lie. These are facts. when I went through these slides before the meeting the I think it was slide I can't remember 15 or so but the lessons learned and adjusted strategies everything I had even had a concern about you all are targeting exactly what would have come to mind anyway. So the best form of flattery is for someone to mimic or copy you. So you guys are I wouldn't doubt if you're setting the pace and trailblazing for other districts. So, thank you. Thank you. All right, we'll move on. Thank you. Have a great afternoon. We're going to move on to student achievement end of year results. Dr. Shaker, Philip Savage, Cheryl Neely, Chuck Valardi, Angela Nater, and Shereice Trent, hopefully we have enough chairs up there this afternoon, will be presenting. Thank you. I'm going

089to ask the board members to put their bells away. Just don't play with your bells on the day this afternoon. You can't have Good afternoon board. Good afternoon Dr. Carlin. Mr. Mr. Poo Bruno. thank you for having us here today. We are here to talk about student performance outcomes for last year. I'm Dr. Nathan Shaker. Philip Savage is joining us today. He's our new director for business intelligence. I don't know if he's been up on the days before. and Angela Nater from the east region is joining us to represent the regional superintendent. our agenda for today we're going to review just a little bit of reflection of last year's presentation. It's been a it's been a long year. and so I want to bring up some of what was presented to the board last year

090and what actions have been taken. this year's performance which is going to be it's it's pretty comprehensive. I think the board's going to be impressed and pleased with just how nuanced and detailed our data tools have become and Mr. Savage is going to present that and then really the next steps what kind of action we are we are planning with our regional superintendents as well as with academic services. So a piece of reflection if it's it's been a long time but last year we talked about one of the cores that we wanted to move forward with last year was decentralizing decision-m and centralizing support and that has taken place in a significant way. I call it an expansion. It's more of a realignment. But our regional support structure has gone far beyond our regional superintendent.

091It's come down to regional directors to regional ESOL supports, regional ESSE supports, regional curricular supports that are all kind of undergurtded with experts here at the district feeding some of that support into there and it's been a very successful model in supporting our schools. we have modified our curriculum guides, our instructional guides that they support planning and autonomy far more. they've dialed back quite a bit. instead of being quite so scripted, the scripted versions are still available for our teachers who enjoy them. but really we're moving more in a unit map model where we're really trying to direct our teams, direct our teachers towards planning and autonomy. increasing interactions using technology as a tool. a big part of that redesign of the instructional guides was making sure that we're clear about where technology can be

092used in instruction and where technology should be used in instruction. but we're also expanding tools and methods that are are very very engaging, very personally engaging things like building thinking classrooms, which is something we can talk more about sometime. expanding our science log books to grades three through five, which are really kind of paperbased manuals that are our science teachers use for science instruction. Used to just be part of fifth, now it's all the way down to third. as well as the development of test item banks. instead of just going to technology for test items, our teachers are creating some of those test items. And lastly, a real focus on ES on ESOL and ESSE. hopefully last night or this morning, you received our preschool menu agenda. it really is a menu type model where

093our teachers are going to be able to choose the type of learning that they need at the level that they are at. and it includes lots of ESC offerings, lots of ESOL offerings. we're really hoping our teachers take the opportunity to pursue either their REIT certification needs or pursue the the development that they know that they need. as we move into the data portion of it, one of the biggest adjustments that has really happened from this concept of addressing progress monitor strategically is the data literacy system that the regional superintendent, academic services, and business intelligence has developed is really second to none. And I think it's it'll be you'll see our our capacity to address needs to see needs to address them. and then to do the work is has escalated significantly. So, I'm gonna

094turn it over to Mr. Savage at this point. All right, I think I'm on. Sorry, I'm new to the new to the club up here. So, thank you for having me. so, the first thing we're going to be looking at is we're actually going to be looking at the data more from a traditional lens. just seeing kind of how we did compared to the other kind of the state as a whole. So, this shows all of the school grade categories for Lee County and shows that compared to the state. you'll notice that there's a lot of boxes that I have highlighted in like a light red. So, let me kind of talk through what you're seeing. So, in that first top left box, you'll see ELA achievement. Lee County went from a 50 to a

09552. So, we went up by two points. However, if you look at the state, they went from a 53 up to a 56. So our gap from the state actually has widened. and so each of the red boxes kind of show you areas where the gap between our achievement rates or our school grade things have widened between the state. So although Lee County has gone up as a district this past year and some of and there's definitely some areas to celebrate we did not necessarily maintain pace with some of the larger districts in the in the state. so another way to kind of look at kind of our performance is looking at the percentage of schools that have A's and B's. so right now if you look our elementary 48% of them are A's and

096B's compared to the state which is 67% roughly. and you'll see for each level we are lagging the distribution in terms of A's and B's from the state. this is a really important note because when the percentages of A's and B's reach 75% or higher at the state lens, they're actually going to increase the cut scores for the given grade levels. So this year there actually was an escalator clause that kicked in for both the high schools and the combo schools. So it's going to be harder to to maintain those A's and B's than it has in the past. And this also applies to the district. now the good news is, even with the cut scores, very few of our schools would have been impacted from a grade standpoint. We would still be a B

097as a district, but we'd be barely on to a D, B. We'd be 60 is kind of the new cutoff, and that's where we landed this past year. and again, none of the high schools would have dropped a letter grade, which is good, and only two of the combo schools would have been impacted. So now looking at this we've obviously seen the whole state but the state average is heavily kind of influenced by the larger districts in in in our state. So this map to the right is showing visually all of the A, B, and C districts across the state of Florida. now in the big 10, so these are the 10 largest districts. You will see that all of them are A's and B's. and our current rank is actually ranked nine out of

098the 10. So we're sitting there at 60%. now if you look I looking a year-over-year so last year this shows the total the raw total points of all the categories combined and you can see how Lee County's point change has compared to the other big 10. This is a really important slide I would say to really evaluate you know how is our overall movement doing at scale and you can see that we although we went up we went 10 points overall that was actually the lowest point change in compared to the other big 10 so the our ranking has maintained the same at ninth we're still ahead of Pulk but Pulk is gaining a little bit and as I said you can see the the larger districts like the Miami Dade and the Broward some

099of the highest performing performing. you would think they can't get much better, but even their their gaps are even growing. So that's that's why some of the work we've been doing is been analyzing the districts and we'll talk about that more later. The other piece that I want to emphasize is I think the one of the most important of the categories is your grade three achievement. this was actually one of the only areas where we had a drop year-over-year. and so there is an increased attention and focus on this, but the third grade cohort is going to be your group that you'll have throughout that whole system. So if you onboard a weak a low literacy group, you're going to have to do tremendous things to narrow that gap. So the focus is going to

100have to be on gains to to narrow that gap. and so with that being said, so I'm going to quickly explain this piece and so I know there was kind of a lot of doom and gloom with a lot of negativity in terms of the gaps of the state. but the reality is the focus is really about outlier performance. actually even though the gap between us and the state is appearing to widen, we have areas where we're actually well performing way above the state. And then we have a few areas where and these could be individual schools or teachers that are far below. So Shaker, I'll let you kind of explain this slide to the group. And I was going to jump in. this is some of the most impactful data that we're starting to

101to analyze now where we can get into the metrics at the level of of being able to see, for example, that 73% of our Lee County School District gap in learning gains is really coming from only about 21% of our schools. now these metrics can seem we've had a commitment to transparency. We've had a commitment to to looking at the numbers for what they are. So, what this is empowering us to do is look at those areas that we know are the highest impact and actually be able to do something with them. many of these, for example, from last year could have been vacancies. these were not purely classroom teachers. with the fact that many of these could be vacancies just highlights the work of HR and the in the teacher incentive program in filling

102these high impact gaps in these classrooms. I can say for example one that I know is highlighted within this data set spent most of the year last year with about half of their third grade being substitute teachers and this year there is currently only one third grade vacancy at that school. So the impact of that being able to to happen is going to be strong. moreover, academic services and our capacity with curriculum and as well as Esau, ESSE, all of our support systems, we can target where the need is right now. We can look at at very finite data to determine, for example, in math that 66% of our gap with the state is really coming from just about 15% of our teachers. And I know that can that can feel strong at first, but

103that helps us know where we need to support. It helps us know what what kind of help and where we can we can send that help. So for us, having this type of actionable data is very very powerful. Now, as Phil had mentioned, there is a lot of kind of doom and gloom. again, it's that commitment to to just being kind of real with where we are at. but we look at we look at both sides of it. So, in this case, this is our breakdown of really where some of those, gap needs are by school. The schools have been, clouded out, but we can look at this point right now in the year and say we have 718 areas of need. We know exactly where they are. It's spread out across, I believe it's

104it's a combination in those schools of charter schools and our schools. We can know exactly where to start targeting support from the first day of school, from the first weeks of school. what I like as well is we can also start targeting pockets of excellence. So, we know 378 areas in our district, 378 classrooms in our district that are far exceeding the state's performance. We can observe those teachers, we can learn from those teachers. and we can really begin to start taking what they're doing and bringing it to scale. So, this type of information is readily available to us now. This is something that we've developed over the last year. Yeah. So, kind of continuing on what Shaker is alluding to. So, we've actually created an internal process, the Lee County gap analysis model, so

105that we can get real-time results, and analyze our performance contextualized with the population that you're working with. so the way this I'll kind of explain the way the model works, but at a whole now, we can look for a grade level team like this is sixth grade ELA, and we can see each school how they kind of performed with their population. And then we can also see what profile of students they're struggling in terms of growth. oftentimes when we think we need to work on growth, we often focus on just level ones, right? But the reality is we the needs for enrichment are as great as the needs for remediation. So with this tool, we're we're able to see a low performing school might be struggling with their highle kids in terms of enriching them

106and things of that nature. so the way we developed this model is we actually had to request additional data. You can't really do this without getting special data from the state level to contextualize what does the level movement look like for a for a given kid. we basically analyzed the composition of how many level ones, level twos, and so forth in each each building. And then we created minimum targets based on those state growth metrics. By doing this, it allows you to compare schools that onboard a really high intake population in terms of fluent readers to a school that's onboarding very at risk in terms of a lot of language learners and things of that nature. So, it's a much more equitable way to compare. So, let me show you kind of at a given

107school. This is kind of the way that the math works so that you understand a little bit of the context. so for example at this particular school in this grade level team there's 156 total students that were tested. 13 of them came in at a lowle one 22 came in at a low level or mid-level one and so forth. You can see the level they came in at. and then the next column shows what percentage of those kids passed at the state level. So, if you came in at a low level one, let's say a second percentile reader, only 3% of those kids were able to pass or earn a level three or higher at the end of the year. so now that school was actually able to get 8% of those kids to to

108get achievement, which is a pretty strong feat in terms of that gap. So, they did really well with their low-level ones. now if you look, well, where did their gap actually occur from the state? As you can see, their biggest negative gaps occurred with their high level twos and their level threes. And so they the state average level three pass rate was 74%. They only got 67 and the state average for high level twos was 47 and 26. So that underperformance of the school, that 3% gap, you see their expected 41% overall, that 3% gap really came predominantly from just two levels of students that they really they need to kind of revisit their support for. Traditionally, we would call those the bubble students when we when we spoke about them in the past. Those

109ones that are right on the edge. So, as we as as it as we talk strategy, as we talk the ability to move in and support, we can target exactly which students to use to to provide intervention and which ones tier one instruction is actually working for. So basically at the in in May when results were coming out we released this dashboard and in June we trained the administrators on it but every administrator the system level leaders they were given visibility into not only what the school grades were likely going to be coming in. and the accuracy was spoton. So we predicted the school grades almost perfectly but also which specific areas that you might need to focus your support on. So the level of conversations were much more accelerated and and that's by doing

110this gap analysis. so with that being said, I'm going to go ahead and hand it off to Angela who will kind of talk through some of the ways that they've actually used this data in their strategic decisions. Okay. So, what you're looking at right now is just going to be a capture of our ELA performance last year. So, the way this chart is organized is not only is it by grade level, it's also by district. And then we've broken it down by each region. And I know there's a lot of numbers on there. So, I'm just going to give you a minute or so to look over it and kind of process and tell me what you think. So again, I was not chosen to present the beautiful slide. Mine, excuse me, mine is a

111little doom and gloom. However, what this does tell us is that we do have opportunities. So there's a couple areas where we are outperforming our expected growth, but then while in elementary and high school, we do have some areas that we have to go to work on. The next slide you'll be looking at is set up the same way. This is for math. again, take a minute to look over it, it's a little bit different than the ELA one, but if you look at the green areas, you know, we do have some areas to highlight. not only in fourth grade in the south, but fifth grade in the east. we know that in the area of algebra in particular, those are areas that we are focusing on. and we when we decided what our focus

112was going to be, a slide or two before shared that Miami Dade was the top performing district. So, what we did was we went to Miami Dade and we said, "What are you doing in algebra?" so we're trying to just study the things that other performing high performing districts are doing. some of the things that we got from that were some scheduling changes, some course progression changes, working towards creating some support classes for for students. So while we are starting that roll up now, some of some of our principles have already implemented changes to the master schedule. So, if we saw one of those areas that were getting the some of the lower performing, you know, teachers or classrooms, we made master schedule adjustments now to be able to support that in the fall. Not

113only that, it may not be an opportunity for us to change the schedule, but at least as principles, we know where we need to put our coaching support for particular teachers or students. Absolutely. and Angela got at some of the key pieces that ability to early respond with the data that we have now is really significant. starting to plan and act in May when we have traditionally started to plan and act in July is as a as a former principal I can't tell you the significance of it. as we address staffing, as we address having difficult conversations with teachers about considering what teaching assignments they're doing, knowing and being able to do that in May has been a huge strategic advantage to us going into this year. school leaders and districts had this information early.

114They've been working on it. I can't highlight enough our school transport transformation team was we are starting to use the word wildly a little bit. I would I would dare say they are wildly successful. They were wildly successful last year. all four of our BSI schools, there was one our schools that are in state oversight. Not only exited BSI status, but they exited BSI status strongly. all of them had doubledigit gains, more than enough to get them out. I believe LAM Teal was just a couple inches away from a B. And so those types of gains and us us being able to track and know what we were doing. We formed a really strong partnership with the state last year as well as the work that Miss Steedman was doing with her teams. we can

115absolutely start taking that to scale and moving that into a scalable model at our risk level for schools is something that's already been underway. It started already just this past week with with some trainings. We can abs we can also study pockets of excellence. This was something we participated in last year. We had some VAM data that we could access last year and I think you I think the board was familiar with the high impact teacher information. We were sending letters to our teachers who were doing really who had particularly high test performances. We curriculum was following that up with what we called our poets project. it was pockets of excellent teachers. It was poets. and we would we would visit, we would study. we learned a lot about technology. We learned a lot about

116planning, how our teachers plan. We visited well over 50 classrooms in our poets project. So we are observing. We are we are learning from our highest teachers. we also were able to track individual pilots path to 30 building thinking classrooms some very significant systems that were happening. we can continue that observation going forward with the data that we have now. We also have to balance it with with our losses and just kind of noticing what's going on. our top performing districts like Miami Dade, we have a we have Miami Dade written on a whiteboard over there with this with a heart around it. We talk about Miami Dade a lot. but they they do provide additional support classes to their twos and their fragile threes. And we instituted some of these we promoted some of

117these changes last spring but are kind of writing them into to process codifying them for the FY27 year to give our schools some time to staff because a lot of these require some staffing changes and many of our atrisisk students had teachers with historically unsatisfactory or needs improvement state VAMS. we've taken many steps to to you know adjust and modify that. We did end the year with three schools that will be under state oversight next year. Two of them are charter schools. One of them is Tortuga Preserve. but we're confident that you know with the system we have with the program we have for school transformation that we can easily I won't say easily but but the teams can work to to pull them out. 35% of our schools this is one that we're going

118to highlight in a second. 35% of our schools went down in total points. So I almost equate it to HR talking about the balance between recruiting and retaining. It's as important for us to gain in our performance as it is to prevent any drop in our performance. And that's that's something that didn't happen last year. It's something that is going to be a focus this year. traditionally we've done really well with middle school and high school acceleration. we still do well with it. We're just not keeping pace. our gap is growing in those areas and so it's a it's it's something we want to address. and we have been a little bit slow to adapt alternative pathways for college and career readiness and so that is something we have a good team working on. But

119these are all the highlights maybe the report of of our analysis of last school year. year-over-year performance. I mean, our ultimate goal with this graph, if we take a look at it, our 66 schools that maintained a letter, we had one that raised by two letters, 17 that raised by one letter. Our goal is the pink for next year. We want everyone to grow, but if we can address our drop by one letter grade, if we could stabilize our drop by one letter grade, the impact would be would be strong. And I'm looking at my our resident mathematician statistician, I think he knows that if those 12 items weren't there, we would jump significantly in our school grade. Is that a fair statement? Yeah. said and said the it's a lot of our wins are

120offset by some of our losses and so mitigating those losses is really a focus of of our efforts this coming school year. So just reiterating that our solutions exist internally as well as we study when we study outside we have individual schools teachers that are far exceeding great state level performance and we know who they are now. We know them not just by asking our coordinators who are some of the best language arts teachers in the district. We have the numbers to to prove it. but we do have individual schools, teachers and grade levels that are having a disproportionately negative impact. Now we know who they are. We know how to address it now. We know how to support it. So the I just from my position I can't tell you how how ex how

121how valuable it is to know this information. So really going into our next steps, I'm going to pass it over to Miss to Miss Nater and she's going to start us out. Yep. So next steps, we have a definitely a focus on data literacy. and that started back in June when we trained our principles and assistant principles. so if you look at this visual based on it, it starts with the office of superintendent down to the regionals. when we talk about sharing data then the regionals will share with principles followed by principles sharing with their instructional staff in the fall. So I'll say one of the biggest changes is being able to share with their instructional staff in the fall because of some of the dashboards that business intelligence has put into place. we are

122able to get to that level and I can just share it's really amazing just how far we've come so far. I can share a change that I noticed this summer when we were all together writing our school improvement plans with principles. The conversations are different. Previously, a school would say, "I need to increase by four points in my school grade." Well, because of the tools that we have now, principles are able to say, "I need my fourth grade e because of my fourth grade team's ELA performance. I know now that I need to increase by five points." And not only that, but I need to pro provide additional coaching based on past performance. I think that's the key takeaway is that we're able to look at past performance and then align resources strategically based on

123that on that information. So this is our annual reporting process here. So we start with the forensics area in our dashboard. and that is between April, May and June, we start processing our progress monitoring three data. because of our new reporting system like shared earlier, we were able to give accurate predictions of school grades. Again, things that we would need to wait until July, maybe end of July for repeating last summer. and we had this information as early as the beginning of June. Oh, go back one more. Yep. And then so after the forensic piece then we move into our goals. Goals is from anywhere from July to September. And that's when we take the data from forensics and we review with our principles and create goals for the upcoming year. Principles will now have

124the tools to have the data chats with the teachers as shared before. And then moving into our lag data which will come out between October and December. This is when we get our graduation rates and our CTE results and we prepare for our mid-year data. And then lastly, the forecast tab. that begins in January through March. This is when we get the results of PM2. We hold our regional data chats with principles and this is where we can forecast our school's performance. This information is critical because this will drive the final push for our schools. Now we want just wanted to make sure there's a shift in mindset that we've encouraged amongst most of our amongst all of our principles and we just wanted to kind of encourage the same language. traditionally we have looked

125at a level three as being a proficient student and that's that's been it's been what we consider to be a passing grade. The state at this point does not even necessarily consider a three a proficient student. they consider a student, they consider a three a student that may need additional support. So, this is a mindset shift that we're working with our principles on and our schools to to really really make sure we're we're applying support and applying help in the right places. Level ones are really what we would consider our remediation group. In a lot of cases, the state compels us to support our level ones. but the question becomes how much, when, how is the support that we're providing? One of the things we really need to start looking at is the support we're

126providing our level two and three students. So many of our twos are kind of just at the brink of becoming level threes, but many of our threes are more fragile than we sometimes think that they are. Many of them can just get into the three range and fall back out. and we see that with scores as students moving in and out of being a level three. So making sure we're providing adequate support to our level threes is key. And we know that with our enrichment group up at the top, our fours and fives, if we don't push on them enough, if we don't challenge them enough, we'll start to lose those gains as well. With the gap analysis, with looking at a gains model, it keeps us from putting too much emphasis on proficiency, which

127makes sure that we're addressing growth with our enrichment group, with our on level group, as well as our remediation group. So really one of the last big moves we've made is the regional team realignment. it is a it is a pretty pretty comprehensive shift in just some of the departments that we have down here in academic services. each region now has a team that focuses specifically on on on its support on its instructional needs on its academic supports. There is a team that is still here at the central office. I want to make sure it's it's clear. that team is really providing the curriculum and the training that's needed to serve and support 70% of our teachers. I would say 70 to 80% of our teachers with the help of coaches in our schools with

128the help of resource teachers. What we produce and we can put out should really support a large number of them. we also on the other side have our tier three schools have our schools that really need really comprehensive support. So that is Miss Steedman. She now has a team of four that is supporting her. Two ELA teachers and two math to work with our to work with our schools that really are kind of in the 20 to 30% what we would consider tier 2 needing support related that the what is being provided by the district, what is being provided by the curriculum department isn't enough. We have the regional teams to move in and help support. This is kind of your action team. This is your reaction team. we do have a director for each

129one of these areas. Now they have satellite offices. They're going to be working out of satellite offices for 3 days a week. those schools were very excited to host them, very proud to have space for them there. and really each region will have an ELA specialist, a math specialist, an ES coordinator, an ES LRS, which is a learning resource specialist who's really a behavioral specialist. They each have a BCBA, which is a board certified behavior analyst, another behavior support, as well as two ESOL specialists. So each region will have that team to be able to to rapidly move out and support any area that is not being serviced by the district programs by the general district programs. Now I know that was a lot of information. We may have been slightly ambitious in our sharing

130but we were also proud and excited with the work we've done. So I welcome any questions or comments from the superintendent and the board. Thank you very much. And first of all big thank you to Dr. Shaker, our regional assistant super associate superintendents and also to Mr. Phil Savage for all of the work that you are doing in these areas. And just again, I know our principles are back in their buildings, but just a real tipping of our hat to the work that they've done with their team. So, so really proud of that. Couple of things I just want to point out. this administration is about transparency. We're about we are where we are. You know, not all of this is good news. Let's just be honest. It's not, right? So when we talk about

131the importance of researchbased strategies that make a difference and I will say this to my dying day, a certified teacher in every classroom and more time. Think of the most difficult thing you've ever learned to do in your life. If you had a decent teacher or you could YouTube it, you know, sometimes now with 21st century and if you gave the time that was required to learn it, you can do it. Just like our children, they can do it. We just have to give them the tools to do it. Right? when we have 230 teacher vacancies, when we have 575 teacher vacancies, it is no secret when I look at this data that some of our greatest challenges are attributed to a very small number of classrooms, relatively smaller, right? So, just by very by

132the virtue of filling those vacancies, we're going to see a gain when children are 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes late to school every day. And guess what period it is? First period. I was an elementary principal for gosh over 13 years. Usually most of our kids were embedded in a reading block first thing in the morning. And when kiddos walk in late, they're stressed. They're trying to run and get their breakfast. You know, the day does not start on a good in a good way. And then ready, set, go, start your reading lesson. They're stressed out. PreK all the way to five, fifth grade. And now you're a middle school student. Now you're a high school student. Back in the spring, I was visiting one of our one of our middle schools, Okamik Middle School.

133I was staying there with Dr. Howdyshell, and we're watching it's after 10:00 children stream in. And I looked at him and I apologized. I'd only been on the job for about four months, but I apologized on behalf of our district and I said, "We can do better." So again, I just want to highlight for you as a board, the things you are doing is make they're making a difference. when you step out and you do things like let's pass a resolution to help drive teachers or at least allow teachers to stay based on what we heard today from HR in our highest risk schools when we step out and we do things when we add voice to what the children need because remember the children don't have an association or a union they don't have

134that so we have to be the voices for children When we do things like that as an as a governance team and we step up for children, when we say we will not have children late to school anymore, at least on the buses, right? Can't always control what the moms and dads do, but we can control the buses. When those buses arrive on time and we take those bold steps to make sure that happens, things can change. So, I just want to point that out. Second thing I want to point out is the power of business intelligence. And just a real kudos to Mr. Savage and his team. I sat in a school for many years very frustrated not only as a teacher but as a school leader that I didn't have the data at

135my fingertips. our principles have asked for this for years. I know we the extraordinary amount of time we spent at my schools where I was principal handc calculating trying to make those best guesses on what we thought the data was going to look like. And now we're saying to principles, here are the teachers that do the very best with your level one students, your level two students, your level five students. To me, as a principal, that would have been gold. Like, hand that to me. And now I've got a master schedule I can do something with. So, I just I don't want to let some of those little snippets because this is a long presentation. But those were some of the highlights I wanted to to to surface for our board because again it comes

136down to high quality teacher more time. And it also comes down to being able to strategize around the data that we're provided. And when we lack data, we make poor decisions, poor decisions. When we have data that is actionable, it makes all the difference in the world. So just a kudos to the team. I know we have a long way to go. Last thing I want to just compliment you on is finding best-in-class and studying that there are districts, you know, that can look at graduation rate or their acceleration points and you can actually, you know, you can have you can fudge that a little bit, but what you can't fudge is proficiency. You can't say there's more kids proficient just by overinflating it. There has to be real strategy behind it. So, I just

137want to thank you for doing the real work, for making sure that when we know there aren't enough children proficient, putting real life plans into place based on data. So, just thank you for that. And I turn it over to the board and look forward to your conversation. Thank you, Dr. Carlin. Just to keep in mind, it's 255. We're just a little bit over. So, just going to keep that in mind as we continue to comment. Miss Shaviano and then Miss Jordan. Yep. So, thank you very much and welcome to the DIS. I will say when I was going through the presentation last week, I was it was a little bit of a gut punch kind of seeing all of the numbers in the red. but not like quite shocking. Again, campaigning, talking about where

138we stood as a district with our proficiency and our third grade and in our metrics. I was like, "Yeah, it makes sense." I was happy to have that transparency to say, "Okay, now it really makes sense in these specific areas." So my question kind of like twofold. So the first piece on slide 16 and 17 with the negative outliers what the schools and teachers identified and kind of that strategic aligning of support. My question is understanding that and having that data now and being able to pinpoint who and what and where. What is the plan going into this school year with those specific teachers at these schools to provide those supports to hopefully change that trajectory this scoring season? I can speak to it from the central office support, the regional support side, and I

139know our principles are out there with the same information and very eager to to work with those teachers. I know that us being aware of it our my what I've tasked the regional teams with first is in the first four weeks I want you to forge relationships with these folks. It's it's not about coming in and and changing everything off the bat. It's kind of studying, it's learning getting a better understanding of what's going on and then really starting to approach tier one instruction. I mean, we'll use some kind of educator vernacular, but tier one instruction. what is the baseline of of how we're teaching and start working on that piece of it. I a fair portion I would say if I look at the 15% of the math teacher statistic a number of them

140are vacancies and I know it just anecdotally more than I know numbers and so we do we have a our regional teams have started training earlier this week they were actually here on Friday and this is very much part of the conversation. Okay. And then my last ones based on slides 20 and 21 in regards to the gap analysis model and kind of those dashboards, right? Like that real-time data. There's a mention that a lot of this is being pulled, I guess, from federal and kind of collection of the data to update. My question is like how when like when is that update being done and how quickly is it being updated on the dashboard for schools to see it in real time? So the we can only do this based on currently the state

141testing windows. So PM1, PM2, PM3. and then we're looking at the historic data of those level movements. So basically yeartoear the individual level movement doesn't change that much, right? So the state average level one moves and this test so we're able to basically use last year's baseline the second test come in. So you're So as soon as a kid tests, they're able to compare it to last year's state average numbers, last year's district numbers, last year's school numbers. Then it takes about I would say July when we get the current year state numbers. So we just got the current year state numbers just a few days ago. but as I said, the second a kid tests, the teachers are able to and the school administrators are able to contextualize that performance. and we're looking to

142try to build, that's one of the big projects this year is to try to have more internal formative assessment plans and tracking so that we can have a more real-time pulse throughout the entire year, but as of now, it's really just at those three moments in time. Okay. No, thank you for that and thank you for this. I would love to see if possible those specific schools and teachers outlined. and this is an open invite to any of the board members. if you ever want a walkthrough of some of the tools, I'm more than happy to meet with you and we can we can talk through some of the insights by regions and things of that nature. Yeah. No, thank you so much, Miss Jordan. Thank you. I will take you up on that for

143sure. But, what I wanted to say, I've been traveling around and visiting schools. I'm calling my wellness checks just to say, "We're here. We're, you know, how are you doing? You know, how are you feeling going in?" And every one of them speak about you, what you are sending to them. And then when Dr. Carlen spoke about the master schedule and it is h it's helping them to make that. So it was really exciting to go out there and they love having this data. I mean so thank you so much for doing all of that. I didn't know how important it was until they literally sat me down and said this is what it's helping me do. And then and I think that also it was said that just being able to align the resources

144to the past performances. I think that just is great as well. So my question is the ESC coordinators that are put into the different regions. So are they there to assist to make sure that all those testings are done if in the 10day window whatever that looks like to that we're accommodating those children and I know I always bring this up accommodating those kids. and do the does the testing like the IEPs, those children, does that affect our numbers as well if they're not receiving all the services that they need? So, I can respond to the first part. So, our regional coordinators of ESC oversee our staffing specialists and that starts to become the network of making sure that there's documentation for accommodations, documentation for services. some of the questions that you're asking, Miss Jordan,

145I think are going to be addressed in in the RSM and in discussion about RSM. So, I would say as far as the ESSE data and how it affects our performance, it's it all. Yeah. So, this year, access scores, so we're were brought in both from an achievement category and a learning gain component. so that population is represented in the school grade. I will say that the analysis around the performance with those groups. we don't get the full data files until July. So we're a little behind the ball on analyzing how that subgroup does compared against the state. but now that it's a new metric because that's a the learning gains for that group is new this year. I anticipate next school year we'll be able to analyze how we're doing with that group a

146little bit better. Mr. Fischer, thank you. thank you everyone for this presentation. I appreciate it. Try not to make it too long. can we go to slides 23 and 24, please? Assuming I counted right, the ELA performance by region. Yeah. and then the math performance by region. So I thought this was interesting and I kind of saw this a little bit and I appreciate how this was broken down but when the numbers fa first came up sometimes the perceptions are a little bit different than you actually seen the data like for example I noticed you know things that kind of was a little bit unexpected me just looking for example at the south zone gap on grade six on ELA a negative seven or if we go to the next slide did it move over

147yeah or algebra west zone for high school I thought those are kind of interesting areas I know I've talked a little bit about the superintendent their staff on that. So, thank you for kind of illustrating that. I know we have, a solid base to help with that, but obviously I said it's really kind of it's interesting. I know it's areas obviously of needed improvement, but it's kind of a little bit sometimes different than you expect. So, I'm glad to see that at least it's illustrated there. but yeah, some of those were a little surprising to me. next thing I want to talk about is, Dr. Carlin mentioned this analysis of other districts. I truly appreciate that. So, I'm glad that we're looking outside of Lee County. We're looking at best practices elsewhere. I think that

148is so important. and I really appreciate you looking especially even, you know, you talked about Miami date and you look at those numbers and see all the other districts and how much and what are they doing? What was the key? Cuz we all have many of the same similar problems. So, how are they able to accomplish what they're accomplishing? So, I appreciate that. a question on the expansion and satellite offices. Is that a little bit like it used to be? I know it was way before my time. They used to have kind of some zone satellite offices for things. is kind of a little bit of a take on that concept where it was in each well I guess time it was each zone but now it's region well it being the first year I'm

149hoping it becomes a hub for support it becomes a hub for for modeling and practicing in this case it was schools that had additional space they had an extra classroom that they could spare and we've provided some furniture and the regional directors have kind of set up shop there so again I'm know that team will be there'll meet there in the morning hopefully they're greeting students every morning they're seeing, you know, they're doing lunch duty every day if they're if they're working out of office if they're not at other schools. So, I'm I'm hoping to learn a lot from it. Okay. just kudos. As I said, we have a lot of areas we need to work on that, you know, you guys have all identified at Dr. Carlin, but I want to say in my

150time on the board, I'm the most confident right now in our academic services, our principles, our regional associate superintendents. the way you have set this data and the baseline and the way you're analyzing and going forward, it's amazing. So, I just want to say I appreciate that. Thank you, Miss Giovenelli. And I'll be quick. line 26 or slide 26, could you go to that and then under the column underperforming schools? two of those are charter schools. Do we help charter schools? We have two liaison here at the central office that support our charter schools directly. we provide we provide curricular support. We provide support. We invite them to our meetings that if we have curriculum meetings here, but really it's our two support our two supporters our two charter school liaison here that do the

151primary support there. So do they do the do these schools participate? Do they come and do they I if it's okay I would have that conversation offline I think it's something that I've I've worked with our charter school liaison to to help encourage to help encourage some more engagement and I think it I think with one of them in particular we're just going to have to we're going to have to engage even a little bit more. So okay thank you for that. so the Harlem Heights, it says yours says 32D to 40D, but mine said 40D. So, is that a typo on mine? Maybe. Yeah. I'll I'll answer that one. So, I apologize. There was a mistake on the draft that we had posted. The other piece I do want to clarify in this section

152is although there were three schools, only one of them technically is under the same degree of oversight from the state. So the non-charter, so the Tortuga. so I those are two elements, but again on we corrected it on this presentation, but it was a 32D for Harlem Heights to a 40D. Okay. Thank you. I I thought so. I just wanted just to clarify. Thank you. And so just first of all, thank you for the transparency, but actually have to thank the superintendent for guiding that. So, and just thank you for stepping up to the plate, but I just want to thank you for transparency because the only way to get better is to have a start. And we've never really truly had a start. We you know, we always kind of raved always how well

153we're doing when in fact we really that doesn't help us get move forward and that doesn't help the students that aren't really aren't moving forward so are able to. So, I thank you for your leadership on that. Thank you. That's it. Oh, one more thing. I'm sorry. I When you when you were speaking initially, I wanted to say students can't teach themselves. Just I'll leave it at that. Thank you. All right. Just quickly, yes, thank you for putting this together. you know, the district has kept data and we've had data chats for years and years and years, but what's different about this is you're doing something with the data. it's not just sitting on a wall and you're analyzing it or you're allowing teachers to analyze it and you're giving them time to analyze it.

154So I think that will go that will go huge that will make huge leaps and you're right Dr. Carlin, there is no price tag for the gift of time. Whether that be we giving them extra instructional time, we're getting kids to school on time. like you mentioned earlier, looking deep, doing a deep dive in truency and getting kids to school. that is all under the umbrella of time. Dr. Carlin or I guess you all could probably answer this. we look at this data and while we're doing data checks etc etc is there some sort of is it a quarterly is it a is it a semester that you come to the back to the table as a whole here not individually but you say okay we're moving in the right direction we need to make

155gains in this department you know we're not because I'm sure there is a target date as to where you want to be and it's not at test time it's before test time. I can speak to that. we're actually building in specific moments of reflection. so even as we're this is kind of the framework on this slide. but when we're we're doing these goals activities and the forecast, each of these things are moments in time for reflection. and as the regional support teams and all those people are learning their roles a little bit better, I can give more clarity at a later date of exactly when those meetings are occurring. but the way that we've built the data infrastructure is each month has a monthly kind of reflection point embedded in it. and that's really kind

156of how it's laid out. So over the course of a 12 year or 12 month cycle will you get at least 12 points in time where you can re-evaluate and reassess. Thank you Dr. Carlin. Thank you very much. One thing I wanted to add. So when we received news that the last year's schools that were graded D had moved into a C and some of them almost to a B certainly called the principles wanted to celebrate with the staff and all that. U my next call was to Kelly Steedman. I said wow 4 D schools all came out some of them almost bees. What happened? And she said you inspect what you expect. If you expect research-based instructional strategies used in a classroom, then you better get on your feet and go walk through those

157classrooms and see if it's happening. So, the data is awesome and we definitely want to keep using that. But she said, put on your walking shoes. Like, if we talk about ex instructional strategy, then I want to walk around because that's what we all agreed was going to happen. So, it really comes down to the planning and the execution of those researchbased strategies. So that's another thing we'll be looking at as we look at the data but we also want to look at real time what's happening in the classrooms. So then my second question would be just a thought because I've started teaching before even the internet existed I think you know we went through this phase and you know the pendulum and education swings this way and that way and trends swing this way

158and that way there was a time in the district where it's almost similar to how you're doing your tier tiering of schools. It was a tiering of classrooms. So I don't know if you remember the years where we were meets medium meets exceeds mid IR and those that slide that you discussed about those two to three two and three bubble kids were in those middle classrooms which are very hard to target because the spectrum is so wide in a classroom like this. So, I don't know if that's something that's been discussed. Going back to a mindset like that, I don't know if if if research says it does or doesn't work. Is there do you have anything to add there? I would say there's there's a lot of discussion about going as far as scheduling

159is concerned. There's a lot of discussion about going in this direction. We have to balance out the state's requirements with level two readers are a little bit different than their requirements with level three readers in that in that vein. but I think the a lot of the conversations about adding the gift of time like you said we are compared to some other districts that we're studying. We don't offer as many let's say double blocked opportunities or as many support classes. it's not just an algebra class, but for our level two and three students, maybe it's a it's a backup support class as well. These are all pieces that that we are are starting to develop and build into the FY27 game plan for next year. Okay. All right. Thank you. Well, thank you for all

160the information today and I look forward to hearing about all these gains. Thank you. we are going to move now to the 2025 2026 uniform statewide assessment calendar. Clayton Simmons will be presenting this afternoon. All right. Good afternoon everyone. Good good afternoon Dr. Carlin, members of the board, Attorney Debris Bruno. I am Clayton Simmons, executive director of the office of school choice and administration. And today I'm going to present you the proposed uniform assessment calendar for the 2025 2026 school year. This is a timeline that shows the dates relative to preparing, presenting, and obtaining approval for the 2025 2026 uniform assessment calendar. We worked with the curriculum team to compile and prepare the district assessment section of this calendar. The assessment calendar was presented to the regional superintendent and the chief academic officer for review.

161You have been provided a copy of the uniform assessment calendar in draft format. On August 5th, the uniform assessment calendar will be on the board action meeting agenda. If approved, the calendar will be posted on the district website and provided to the Department of Education by October 1st per state statute. This item is intended to satisfy compliance with state statute 10008.22, 22 student assessment program for public schools. Specifically, each school district shall establish schedules for the administration of statewide standard standardized assessments and district required assessments and approve the schedules as an agenda item at a district school board meeting. Each school district shall publish the testing schedules on its website using the uniform calendar and submit the schedules to the Department of Education by October 1st of each year. The assessment calendar is provided to

162district districts by the state and sections 1 through 4 are prepopulated by the state with the information regarding state assessments. Pre-populated materials include the glossery of terms, test, test type, and the purpose use of each test. In sections three and four, tests are broken down into assessments for all students and assessments for select groups of students. Examples of assessments for all students would be the Florida assessment of student thinking, progress monitoring, and reading for grades K. Whereas an example of an assessment for a select group of in students include retake opportunities for students in grades 11 and 12 Florida assessment of student thinking and reading. Section five is completed detailing district assessments that are required for all schools in the district. Examples of district required assessments are benchmark readiness checks. There is also a section

163of district required assessments for select students. An example of this type would be I write I ready diagnostics andlex assessments for students in grades 1 through five. The last section of the uniform assessment calendar requires districts to complete the table presented on the next slide containing the estimates of total testing time by each grade level. This shot, this slide shows the estimates of the average time for administering state required assessments as well as district assessments. State assessment times are provided by the state. District assessments are provided to us by the curriculum department. We have included the change in minutes from the school year to the proposed 2526 school year. in the lower right hand corner of the slide. There has been a shift in the way schools approach testing and more options have been provided

164to schools when it comes to the district assessments. In the larger chart, you will notice there are two sets of minutes displayed. The olive green section shows the amount of time if exemplars are administered. The yellow section shows the amount of time if exemplars are not administered. If schools choose to administer administer exemplars, their total testing time has increased slightly for some of and some and decreased for others. If schools choose not to administer exemplars, their testing time decreases. Some notable changes impacting total minutes this year are the addition of the gifted screener for grade 1, addition of district science assessment in grade four, and addition of the district grade seven benchmark readiness checks in science, and the addition of the district quarterly assessments in middle and high school math. A school district may not

165schedule by grade more than 5% of a student's total hours in a year to administer state standardized or district assessments. As indicated, we are below 5% in all grade levels. On August 5th, the uniform assessment calendar will be placed on the action meeting agenda for the school board approval. The calendar includes a provision for the superintendent to make adjustments during the year if necessary. If approved, we will post the district website for public view and submission to the Florida Department of Education. Thank you for your time this afternoon. And at this point, I'll turn it over to Dr. Carlin for any questions or comments. Thank you much very much, Mr. Simmons. And I don't have any of anything additional to add. I will just turn it over to the board at this time for any

166questions or comments. Board members, do you have any comments or questions? Miss Jordan, just I know that last year there was some issue and I don't know if this is the calendar with the kids and Miss Langford Fleming, you probably remember because of the kids had the games to play, but then they had the testing. Is that are we seeing that here? No, ma'am. I think you're referring to the IB to the ACE exams or the IB exams. So that has nothing to do with this. That's a whole that's a whole separate animal. Yes, ma'am. Okay. I just wanted to make sure. Yeah, I remember that issue. I just didn't want the kids to go through that again. Got it. Thank you. This is pretty standard. This is the same document that you all see

167every year. the important piece is that we stay under the 5% and as you can see, we're we're not we're not near the 5% in any of our grades. So, we're doing a good job in that area. All right, seeing no other questions. Thanks, Mr. Simmons. Have a great afternoon. All right. Thank you all. Next on our agenda is the discussion of the schoolboard attorney and general counsel contract. At the June 3rd meeting, the board wanted to move forward with this discussion without the presence of conflict counsel. However, out of the abundance of caution, conflict counsel is on standby should the board require it. Mr. Samuel Fiser, our school board chair, will be presenting. Thank you, Madam Chair. just briefly just to give a little bit of context, Attorney Attorney Depri Bruno's contract lasts through

168April of 2026. It's currently auto renewal. we originally began negotiations with outside counsel between us and madam board attorney to discuss future contract and go back and forth on some certain terms in it. So we were not able to come to any agreement at that point. Later on, Attorney Dino, Attorney Dri Bruno asked us to look into amending her current contract, which is the board asked during the last meeting to put on this agenda. So, we've put it in this agenda. she's asked for two terms. In this, she's asked to amend her current contract to adjust the salary effective upon completion or upon sorry, I just completely vote of this contract that goes through for 2000 $212,000. item number one that would adjust her salary and annual base salary and a severance provision. asking for

16920 weeks of base salary and the termination. It's within the item agenda was put on just for notice. Anything that is put into this contract, unless the board gives notice, this would automatically renew into another contract. So, we've been asked to discuss these terms. So, I'll now turn it back over to Madame Chair to facilitate the discussion. All right. I'm opening up the floor for any discussion comments. Mr. persons. Well, I look at both of the provisions and I really don't have a problem. I mean, I just want to make a clarity that the 20 weeks severance termination is for without cause. Okay. and my daughter being an attorney, I reached out and said, "Is that uncommon or common or whatever?" And that's really quite common in the legal world is to get a basically

170a six-month clause if they if you're contracted or if you're let go without any cause for any reason. So I am for this what I see right now. Mr. Fiser. Thank you, Madam Chair. And as I began this last time with madam board attorney, this is nothing personal. in order to discuss this, we have to put it in a publicly noticed meeting. So, as I say, this is how the sausage is made. So, I had an objection to this last time, as I felt we were circumventing the process. I think the our board attorney is doing a fantastic job. I appreciate everything she does and her staff, but we have a process in this district. So, and we got to a point where madam board attorney broke off negotiations because there was things that we

171as a board based on the attorney that we had hired were a part on you know whether it was going forward on how termination works let me bring it up in regards to supermajority having an auto renewal in their legal structure and some administrative salary increases and I'm happy to reconsider a full reanalysis of what's going on in negotiation. But we're essentially at this point, you know, the attorney came back and said, "Hey, let's have, you know, instead of dealing with your issues, let's just get to the salary and let's get to the severance." And under the statute 252, it's up to 20 weeks. We're not required to give her 20 weeks. Just so we're clear on that. Under Florida statute in this way, my concern is who is representing us the board. So, for

172example, when we had Dr. Savage interim superintendent. We had attorney Brie Bruno negotiate between him and he made an offer. We didn't accept all the terms. We went back and forth. For me, it's following the process and making sure we have somebody in between and getting it cuz part of a contract we have our offer our acceptance consider consideration. So, Miss Juvenile, I'm offering you I'm offering a bicycle for $100 and you say, "Okay, I will give you $100." So, that's the offer and acceptance. Consideration is me giving you the bike and you giving me the money. The issue I have with this is it feels a lot like or I'll bring up another example, Mr. Persons. Let's say I have two cookies you want and you have apple and you have apple juice to

173offer and you say I want your you know I want your two cookies and I'll give you the apple juice and I say I don't want that. 10 minutes later you just say just give me the cookies anyway. That's what this feels like. We have a process that we need to follow. As I said it's nothing against madam board attorney. any other contract we do we do this process. That is what my objection to this is. So I would not be at this point moving forward with it. So thank you Mr. Ribble. Well, I just want to let you know I'm not in the bicycle business and I'm not selling cookies here today, but I do want to speak in favor of our attorney who I think does just an outstanding job. And in the

174industry where I come from the severance package that's suggested here without cause is very very common. In fact, it's kind of it's kind of conservative. If if you look at folks in this salary range and major corporations, and I totally support this amendment, I think it's time to move on. Let's get this behind us. We got bigger things to do than be fighting with our attorney each and every month. This has been dragging on long enough. So, I totally support the document. Mr. Fischer, just a quick Bob, this is not an analysis on our attorney's performance. You can look up my explanation of her performance. I've been very happy with her. But again, it's about a process. What are it's it's a negotiation. What are we getting out of this? There's an original contract that's

175already in place that she's performing. So, if we offer this, how do we get our protections? That's my concern with this. There was board members, more than just me, according to the board attorney or the attorney we hired that had issues. So, why don't we just reopen up the entire thing and go back through it? Thank you. Miss Giovanelli, this is a question for attorney Dri Bruno Bruno. Would you prefer to have to have the complete contract versus an addendum to the contract? Would you prefer to do what Mr. Fischer is asking, which is secure your contract in instead of adding like the addendum. So, this is something that's been pending since 2023. we've had multiple discussions about it. This is relating to studies were done, issues that were raised to the board and it's

176been out there for a couple of years. we addressed the concerns of the assistant board attorneys last summer. I did not bring forward mine because I wanted to wait till all the bargaining was done and then December, January, February, March, April, May, June and we are here now in July. So, it's it's it's a little concerning that it's taken so long to address this. my you know, April 2026, the contract is over. At that point, the board can make a determination as to whether or not it wants to renew the contract or if and I can also make a determination. Both parties will have that opportunity. The language that's in the contract just to make sure that it's clear on the record with regards to the renewal is that the board or Dupri Bruno may

177review this contract on or before April 15th of each ensuing year. So April 15th of 2026 prior to that we should have a discussion. The board may take official action determining whether or not the contract is extended for an additional 2 years and notify DER Bruno in writing. If no action is taken by the board by April 15th of each of each bianual year, the contract will be deemed renewed for an additional two years. So March 15th, the board will be notified. normally this is also during the time starting in January where we have discussions, the in-depth review of legal evaluations and all of those good things happen at that time. And then March 15th, the board can notify whether or not they want to renew or not renew the contract. vice versa I can

178as well. So I would like to proceed with the addendum with the understanding that April 2026 there will be further discussions. So for me we're going to be doing this all over again. I would I actually am probably now leaning towards Mr. Fischer's idea of let's get this resolved and get her a solid contract. because her performance has been excellent. She's works very hard. My why I've hesitated is only because we have we have teachers that have not secured their contract. And I personally feel and that it's hard to pay someone six figures when we haven't paid our teachers. And that is where I get a little antsy over because I think and I know that there's bargaining going on so I'm not going to get into that. But I think you know that our

179timing is not good. And so and then also to begin with there's another issue for me is the superintendent's hiring a a staff attorney, right? Staff attorney. So I hate to see a staff attorney come in here making more than our present board attorney. But I mean so these are some issues that I raised that cause me to pause. and so I'd be curious to hear what others have to say. Thank you, Miss Jordan. I just think this is like insane. We have been, as Mr. Depri Bruno has mentioned since 2020 this has been going on and every time her contract has come up there has been some delay where it just did not happen because this one or that one whatever whatever the reason may have been and then we prolonged it. So then

180it went into automatic renewal again. We never responded to that. So that's on the boards, whether it's this board, the last board, the one before, or whatever that looks like. But we can't just continue to keep using that or saying we're not going to do something because and actually this has come this has come to us what three months now I guess three months ago. And with that saying that was long before and I understand what Miss Ganelli just spoke about about the teachers and everything, but this came before us. we prolong this to to bring it here where we're at today again. And so how long do we continue to do this? In April, it'll come back and the conversation will need to be had again on what that looks like. But this board

181already approved another attorney coming in paying making more money. So I I don't see how we cannot do this. I'm in favor of this. And again, the severance, the severance is you don't automatically get 20, you know, 20 weeks. So, and I did read that, you know, somebody had mentioned that's not what that means. so, and I'm sure she's not taking a vacation for 20 weeks if something were to happen, but it is protection. And with the climate in today's world, I Yeah, I'm I'm for this. Thank you, Mr. Fischer. Couple clarification points. I mean there's currently a signed contract. We're under no duty to change the contract. She both sides didn't do anything about it. So they both agreed to it on the termination. The board shall provide severance equivalent. The word shell is

182in there. That means you must based on that. So on the 20 weeks in regards again it's not about the salary, it's not about this. It's our process and procedure. How many audits have we gone through where we've not followed the process and followed the procedures? We have seen amazing things out of academic services and HR now following process and procedures. So why as a board are we going to do something different? So I'll I'll chime chime in. I am all about policy and procedure. We preach it and we ask our employees to follow it and then we're up here not following their policies and procedures. So if we're going to if we are going to have this discussion again in April, I just don't understand why we're h continuing to have this discussion every

183time we're coming to the day. It's when we know that it's April according to policy and the procedures that we have this discussion. So for me, I say there's really nothing more to talk about at this point in time until we get to the time that the annual time when we are supposed to be discussing it in the first place, which is April. Mr. Persons. Yeah, I have a hard time with that line of thought. I mean, we have had other administrators where we have changed their job titles. We bumped them up in pay during the time not waiting for the normal time. I think the pay is long overdue and I have a employee. To me, I think we're we've gotten a great bargain at what we have been paying. I think this is

184a very fair compensation. and again, the termination clause is easy. It's we're just amending a contract. Mr. Fischer is right about that, but that's why it's called an amendment and not a new contract. So, again, I have no problem with proceeding with this. I think it's the right thing to do now and to really get a head start on April. I mean, I agree we need to renegotiate, but it's just it's been going on for so long to not do anything now and wait till April and then have it go on even longer possibly. It just makes no sense. And you know, I just think it's a small thing to do to get back on track. Mr. Fischer, thank you, Mr. Person. So, if we're amending it and offering, what are what are we getting

185out of it? She's already employed. She's already has that contract. So what does it change? I said we've we've we've discussed before that there are issues in the current contract that some of us don't agree with. So what are we getting out of it? And she is our employee as in in you know as well as the board attorney in the future or board auditor. The rest are the administrators. That's separate of us. I'd like to respond to that. I mean, I've been an employer and I've had employees that I have given them extra and they haven't given me any extra. They're just doing a great job and they deserve it. I mean, it's you don't always when you have a contract, well, I'm not I'm going to give you this, but you got to

186give me that. It's not always that way. I mean, even with our teacher contracts that Miss Ganelli brought up, we're not always demanding that they give us something back and it doesn't and if they do, it's not even quite fair. A lot of times, you know, we're giving them a raise and we're giving them, you know, different benefits and things. I mean, contracts are can go just one way. There's not a problem with that. now if I didn't agree with either one of these, I would have a problem with it, you know, if it or it hurt the district, but I agree with both of them. So, I think we it just needs to be done. Miss Shaviano, I guess, well, two things. So, this was something that was brought or was going to be

187brought in November when we came in and that was kind of where this rec conversation happened, right? So with the newer board members, this was one of the bigger items. And again, correct me if I'm wrong. The compensation piece, the well, the two pieces, but the compensation piece based on the original agreement from 2020, there has not been merit or raise increases to my understanding since 23. Is that correct? To be puno, is that Yeah. So when they received the bonus question the bonus last year that was received. Okay. Whatever the administrator because that's part of the contract to be able to keep with the cola and whatever else that is determined. So the base pay is what has maintained. I mean you could call it base pay but whatever the increases have been through

188the administrative salary schedule has been applied. Understood. Any other comments, Miss Jordan? And thank you for bringing that up, Miss Chevanian. I just thought about that, too, because this would have been handled last year except for the fact that the members who were here who were leaving did not want to speak on your behalf. The two new U board members coming in. So that's why it was prolonged and they waited because they did not want to they didn't felt they didn't feel that it was right for them to make that decision for the two new board members that were coming in. So I totally forgot about that. So thank you for reminding. Appreciate that. Miss Jelly and for clarity she has received raises when the district staff gets raises. She got the same. She's not

189making the same pay that she made when she started in 2020. She just hasn't. She's asked for an increase and this has been going on. Her contract's just been autorenewed since 23 from the original 2020 contract. So, she's asking for an increase. Now, she also has recently got her certification in education law. That is new. And some places have has given someone, you know, you get bonuses or increases or whatnot. You get something for accomplishing that. that you know I mean my thought is it's a sixf figure income and we're a conservative board and we're and we're in a our budget is we're about to talk about that tonight and I so I am just and we haven't given our teachers raises. I would be I would be more inclined to follow the processes because

190we're supposed to be practicing what we preach and renew her contract where it starts. Let's say if we can get it done, you know, in, you know, 30 days from now, whatever the date of it is, and that would be an autorenew at that point in time instead of just a making an amendment to add a couple more things that she wants to change up there. We didn't even like the original contract. We really wanted to change that and we're not touching that. We're adding this. I think that's to Mr. Fischer's point. Thank you. Can Can I just clarify something in terms of process? the process was followed. The contract says by April 15th that you come forward if you want to renegotiate and that's what occurred. So there's there's not a difference in process.

191The contractual language were adhered to. What has happened is that it's been delayed and delayed and delayed and delayed. So now we are here, you know, to me like two years later still talking about the same situation. It's clearly up to the board as to what you want to proceed, but I wanted to clear that up that we have followed the contractual language in the in the contract. Mr. Fischer, just real quick, I'm sorry to keep going back over this. We're we're also as we hear this discussion we're conflating performance and effectiveness with process and procedure. And part of it is the process I say who is representing the board. Normally every other time we have an attorney our board attorney represents us. Every time before Dr. Carlin there's an attorney that represented between the

192superintendent and the board who is representing us right now. That is my concern. Miss Jordan, clearly it was stated that we did not want that we did not need that to take place today. So that's why we have no one here representing us. We are representing ourselves because we said we could do this upon ourselves. Miss Shaviano again kind of mirroring yes process procedure a conservative board again our budget the increase because then also with this it's back pay right it's going back and dipping into because my understanding is this it's going back to April correct to do the effective pay it's back to April is that how it reads okay so instead of this amendment process and getting to a resolution since there's a little bit of I want to say discourse, but can

193we just move to have this other conversation and get this resolved by September cuz I say the next meeting in a week isn't possible. So, can we just get this done fully and have the conversations we need to have and stop kicking the can and just get a full resolution on the contract by September? That's my ask. Follow. I don't know who that goes to. Mr. Rible. Oh, I'm trying to keep my mouth closed here, but you know, we just keep kicking the can down the road. You need to take a look at the job description that this lady has. I mean, she's an attorney. You know, I sit every month with her and sometimes even during the week, we have discussions on case load and what it's going to take to win different cases.

194We have a ton of cases out there. God forbid if she ever got fed up with us and said, "Hey, I'm going somewhere else. I want to see you folks win these cases without her level of knowledge. She's been working on these cases. She knows where all the bodies are buried. She has a lot of talent. She has a lot of skills. she's very well respected by the by the Florida School Board Association. They ask her to speak. I have a ton of respect. I did this my whole life working with litigation with lawsuits all the time from customers, serious accidents, workman's comp. Kathy has the real she's the real deal. She knows all these elements and if you think you're going to hire somebody to replace her without losing cases, that's not going to

195happen. So on my part, I'm not saying it's an argument of effectiveness. This is a band-aid where we need to resolve the entire issue instead of bandating it for the time being. So again, the ask is not just the one part, but getting to all of it. That's kind of my piece, Mr. Fiser. So again, it's not about effectiveness or performance. I've talked up here. I've been a big supporter of our attorney throughout these years since I've been on this board, but again, it's process and procedure. And in this case, we went to full renegotiation with it and she said, "I don't want to go forward with these terms." So now she gets to come forward with terms that are more favorable to us without going over stuff that we address. That's what I don't

196understand. It doesn't how that doesn't work like that in business. So that's how I'm looking at it. So thank you, Mr. Persons. I'm sorry. I saw some drafts of the contract negotiations, but I don't remember us taking a proposed contract here on the dis and going step by step and discussing what we liked or what we didn't like. I mean, this has been the most discussion we've had on the contract, these two amendments. so I mean, I think we've sort of failed to do that. I mean, whatever we're proposing, I know we had extra counsel and you were working on it, but you know, without a vigorous discussion of a contract, how do we come up with a contract? Or are we just supposed to wait until it's sort of agreed upon between the two

197councils and then comes to us or and we don't have any input? I mean, that's what it sort of seems like because even this we didn't really have any input. It just sort of shows up there. Mr. Fiser just to to go back over the process. The process was we hired that council. The council reached out to every single ind individual person in this board. They gave their expectations what they wanted the contract. He took what he believed to be what the board wanted and then presented at that point. I would love if we want to have an open discussion in the DAS and do it that way. I'm fine with that too. So it's up to whatever the will the board is. So I think Miss Chaviano makes a great point. This probably cannot

198be resolved in seven days with our next meeting. So, I think that we need to have these conversations and it needs to be on the agenda for the September 5th meeting. And that's the closed case. That would be my recommendation. If anybody has a followup, Miss Giovanelli. Well, at that point, I would like to see a contract come before us then and we go through line by line and I mean and say yes or no. I mean, we kind of did that. That was what we did with the other the other attorney. everybody kind of gave their input. She wrote the contract. This is kind of she wrote this addendum. So, I mean, she is the attorney, but I mean, we're not changing. To Mr. Fischer's point, she's getting everything and we're still not resolving

199what we didn't like about the original contract or the new one that was written up that she was we're trying to do in April. And so we're going to be having this conversation in I would say January, which is around the corner. So I say have it now and get this done and put this baby to bed. but and I think that is what Mr. Fischer was trying to do is just get this done and we have a it would start the new date would start when we agree all agree on it but we don't want to keep having conversations and not nothing get done because that's kind of what's happened here and which resulted in her bringing the amendment forward which I don't disagree with it. She's just trying to get some of her

200changes that she wanted changed in the contract now versus later or when she didn't h it didn't happen in April. So, we're bad by not getting getting this done. So, we've got to figure this out. Miss Shaviano, as a followup, so again, kind of going back, can we workshop a contract next week? I mean, we already have the red line. We never discussed it as a group. It was just done through communications through the attorney. So, can we workshop this and get to a final agreement for September? So the contract that was presented, if I remember correctly, there was like four things that we needed to have discussed. It wasn't a lot of things. So if it helps the board, I have no objection with bringing that in a workshop on August 5th. If the

201board is inclined to do that, discuss those four things that were presented and then move forward with a contract, whatever term that the board may want to do. I am concerned. I will tell you, and I've shared this with the board as well, I am concerned that since 2020, my responsibilities have increased significantly. And when you're looking at the comparables for PE for an individual in my position, it is very very stark in contrast. And we do have another attorney that's going to be started that technically speaking if the salary range that I have seen is going to be making sign significantly more than what I am making now. So I do have concerns about that. I just want to echo what so many of you have said up here. I for me this is

202nothing to do with the talent that you bring to the board. This is more about for me these are our I'm a rule follower and these are our rules and I want to follow the rules. I'm a policy follower. This is policy and this is the way I would this is how I feel about the way this needs to go. That way we are not setting a precedence for something else that we wiggle around and don't follow policy on. Mr. Fischer, two things. not for this current moment. I'm going to ask Superintendent Carlin, could we perhaps get information on what that salary range for the superintendent's attorney would be? Yes, we'll do. And just for a point of clarification, we are still advertising that position. So, we have not moved to a point. We will

203be moving to screening, but that hire, you know, will only occur once we close the advertisement. Okay. But we'll be happy to provide that for you. Thank you. And second question. Okay. Go ahead. Real quick, I would also ask assuming we have enough time the next workshop. I don't know what the plan is for that we would have some kind of conflict council on standby please. So board can we all agree that if we can workshop this next week at the board meeting then come to a consensus and then we can come to a consensus at the sep the contract can then if we workshot it then the contract can be brought to us in the September meeting. Yes. I madam chair I would request that it if you want to move forward and we

204workshop it on the 5th. Again the items were not significant and of those four are these two that are before you today so we can have a conversation and I would ask that it be added to the August agenda. I think waiting another 30 days is pretty significant. board. Do I have a con can we agree on on that? Miss Jordan, I just want to make sure that and I know Mr. Pri Bruno said and Mr. Fischer just said if we have the space, we need to make sure that we do have that space for this conversation and not, you know, keep prolonging it again because I just really feel that we are just we just keep on pushing it down the road and unfortunately a lot of that had had to do with us

205as we you know already mentioned. So, I would Yeah, I just want to make sure that takes place. Even if we have to add a meeting, I don't care. I just think that we need to to make it happen. Dr. Carlin, do you do do you or your staff have any idea what is on the workshop agenda for next? We'll take direction from the board. I mean, if there's something on there and you're saying that this is taking pri priority, we'll we'll make the necessary adjustments. No problem. Okay. Miss Shabiano, did you have a comment? No. I'm sorry. Motion, Mr. Fischer. Hopefully, this will be my last. My apologies, board. So, the only thing I have a concern about is having a time certain for that contract is that August, what if we do have

206to confer with conflict council or do we pause the meeting? I don't know. I just want to make sure if we need to talk to another attorney about this, you know, comes up to a certain section because there were some that we went back and forth with quite a lot on this last contract. So, so as we have today, conflict counsel is available to be able to have a discussion. If we want conflict counsel to actually attend the workshop, we can do that as well. It's to the board's discretion. I know for myself, I'd rather them be present. So, do you have your direction, superintendent, for next week? So, what I'm hearing is we're going to put this on the workshop agenda and we will have conflict counsel present. Thank you, Mr. Viser, we have

207an item on the agenda this tonight regards this amendment. Would we as a board be willing to withdraw that from the agenda tonight? Well, okay. Well, then my piece says yes, we'll have the workshop, but then move it to the action meeting for next week should we resolve it. Right. That's where we're going tonight. We have an action item to vote on this to approve it. I'm asking the board if if we would be willing to withdraw that from tonight. I had made a poll on it and I will obviously remove the poll. Board members, are you okay to withdraw this item tonight and to put it on the August 5th meeting? Thumbs up would work for that. That's fine. Okay. All right. Thank you. Next, we're going to move on to public comment. Attorney

208to pay Bruno, will you please address public comment? There was nobody that was signed up for public comment, Madam Chair. Thank you. we're going to move on to good of the order, other business, and I will start with Mr. Fiser. Oh boy, you've already heard a lot from in the last few minutes. So, briefly, I just wanted to talk about, board auditor. I'm going to, work with our assistants to get, some time soon. So, please make yourself available, so we can at least do some initial interviews. I've asked, HR to, reach back out to those candidates. I'm just confirming those ones are still available and maybe at least do just an initial interview to see where we're at with it. if that if the board is all right with that. I know we've talked about

209kicking the can down the roads and I want to keep that obviously with summer in these meetings, but I just want to make sure as long as we have the people if we'd be willing to allow me to figure out a time with you all to put that at least as an initial explanation on that is that we're good. Okay. last thing I also wanted to ask is perhaps we had brought this up previously, but in regards to audit, I'd like us if the board would approve at least a discussion with us and administration and board attorney with the Lee County Clerks to consider taking our cases of fraud, waste, and abuse. I know they had offered a while back, we talked about a year, year and a half about at least researching that. I

210know there was a potential chance, you know, you have that outside agency and that it would not cost at least from my understanding initially any additional tax dollars to the taxpayers, but at least if we can have that have them have that discussion to see where we'd be at. I'm fine with that. Mhm. Okay. Everyone have their direction? I'm not. Okay. Thank you. That's all my comments. Thank you, Miss Ganelli. I'll be brief as well. and just a real quick update. believe RSM is on our agenda for August 5th to present. they've had some really some heated discussions recently. if you have the time to watch the last two meetings there was one on the oh help me out 8th I think and the 23rd I believe something like that or 9th and the 23rd.

211that the that will be on YouTube I believe. they've had some heated conversation regarding surrounding NN and I personally I believe that the information there there's some miscommunications out there and so I've asked for the superintendent as well as staff to help answer some of those questions and concerns that the community has regarding NNN as well as the schools that are being impacted and the in the areas that's being impacted when we're going to build three schools actually out there because the Alba Inc. group wants us to jump off of one and jump into another area and this not and this has been ongoing conversation for a while but those two areas both are going to have to have schools those process and that's what that's what I need for the information to get out

212there and I know that the superintendent is working on that but that's really a big issue for that community but I believe there's going to be three high schools out there and it's just and we needed them yesterday. So, you know, at what point do we can't we just got to build the schools in the east zone and it's the east zone is where the schools are needed. it's not in any specific area. that just happens to be where the land is and that's the purchase. But I just think that you should watch it. because I think there is a miscommunication going on out there and I don't know how we clear it up and I've asked staff to do that because we've been talking about that school actually since a long time before everybody

213here because it was down to two schools to go in the east zone and the there was a group assigned and they picked Gateway not the other school go Joel But at the time, Alva, Inc. wanted that school. They were begging and pitching for that school. But the at the time, the district chose Gateway. So the school, it was always going to be a school. It just was matter of when. And you know, we're here to serve students and to educate students, not communities. And it's key that we get the schools out there. And shame on us. And I'll take I'll take most of that because shame on us for not having the schools in the E zone. And so I'm just going to I'm going to leave it there. But I just wanted to

214talk about that a little bit more because I think it's really important that the I mean you can there's t we've talked about this school. We've talked it goes back to 2000 before even Miss Jordan 20 I believe 17 if I'm not mistaken. So, it's been a long many many conversations about schools in the Ezone and, I'll just, like I said, I'll leave it at that. I just want to welcome back all the teachers. I know that's starting now and, it's going to be exciting school year and I'm excited for everyone and I'm excited to see we'll we'll be coming around a year with the superintendent come the fall. So, this will be great. I think it's going to be a great school year. Thank you, Mr. Ribble. Yeah. Real quickly, I'm going to yield

215a lot of my comments for tonight. but I just as far as committee assignments, our insurance task for force meets this Thursday. So, I'm looking for some good things from our insurance carrier to step up the plate on accountability of some of the bills that we get. So, we'll have more information next time for on that topic. That's all I have. Miss Jordan, I'll just I'll yield most of mine for this evening as well, but I did want to say I've been really going out these last month had because last meeting was two months ago. So, we so many things have happened since then, but I have visited so many schools and the principles are so excited to I felt like they were excited about being there and they're feeling good about this their team

216that are is coming in for our kids. Also, I attended I want to thank Dave Nulan as again for the bus driver active asalent training I felt was excellent. I had the opportunity to go come in here, watch the videos, get on the bus with them and go through the whole process. And just doing that, you really don't even think about what bus drivers are going through or children could possibly go through. But when you're there and someone's, you know, hitting the falling on the ground or being taught how to do things properly, it was it was very it was really amazing. And I feel really good about being here in this district because we are I feel like at the forefront of that. And then a lot of us attended the reunification training as

217well which I thank thank them again for that because I learned a lot and I again it just makes me feel good about being here in this district and what we are that we really really concentrating on the safety of our students and staff and I will speak the rest later. Thank you Mr. Persons. Yeah, I'm going to save most of mine for tonight, but M. Janelli, I'd like to follow up your couple comments on NNN. we bought that property in 2007, you know, that was what, 18 years ago. surprise surprise, we're going to build schools there. Why else would we buy it? It makes no sense whatsoever. So, it's not a surprise that we're going to build schools there. And we've had that up there. And yes, Alpha, Inc. in had a very great

218leader, Ruby Daniels. And she was able to have the vision that building a school does not equal bringing in development. Development may follow, may not follow, but she put the students needs ahead. you know, there's going to be a lot of students on the north side of the river and Riverdale is just maxed out. So, they're going to have to go further and further into Lehi for those. So, whether it's Lehi kids coming a little bit this way or them going a whole lot that way, it all equals equals out. I'm just going to make a suggestion now. I know we get a committee to name schools, but I think she'd be the Ruby Daniels High School. She had the vision to push for it way back then, and I think she deserves that, and

219she led Alpha, Inc. for years. That's all for this point. Thank you, Miss Shabiano. I'm going to reserve my time for the action meeting. So, thank you. Thank you. I am as well. Nothing. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Carl. Yeah. Just a quick thank you to our board members. we talk about our priorities and today we hit just about all of them. we will tonight as well. So just thank you for focus on the work. Thank you for remaining focused with us as a governance team because our schools are counting on us and just appreciate all of your work today. Having no business to come before this body and seeing no objection the time is 50 this meeting is adjourned and the time is 4:05 p.m. We will have a tenative budget. I'm sorry. We

220will have a tenative budget at 5:05 p.m. followed by our action meeting at 6 p.m. Now this meeting is adjourned. Thank you.