School Board Workshop: June 3, 2025

001Good afternoon everyone. It's Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025. This is a schoolboard walk workshop and the time is 10:01 p.m. Sergeant-at-arms, has the front lobby been attended to? Yes. Thank you. There are 13 items on the agenda. Independent sales tax sir tax sales sir tax oversight committee report RSM update legislative update safety hurricane preparedness expectations construction change order report for April 2025 budget education family engagement empowerment Fort Myers Beach Elementary mental health job descriptions FSBA advocacy committee positions public comment and good of the order of their business per board protocol each board member should strive for four minutes for initial comment, two minutes for followup with a total of 10 minutes during the discussion. Today we're going to begin with the independent sesax oversight committee or the ISOC report. Sarah Cox and Christopher Samu committee chair

002will be presenting. Good afternoon board members, superintendent and attorney Dupri Bruno. I am joined here with Christopher Simino. is the current chair of the independent sales or tax oversight committee most commonly known as ISOC. He is here today to present to you the annual update. So I will turn it over to Mr. Simino. Good afternoon. Thank you for having me. And I just want to acknowledge my fellow ISO member Miss Dlesandro is with us as well. just to check up on me. I do believe that I've been on the ISOCH since the beginning of the ISOCH and by default they made me the chair this year. So that's why you got me. So we'll just get started and thank you for having us. The ISOCH obviously as you know is made up of 15 members

003with two alternates. We meet quarterly and really the charge of the ISOCH is to make sure that the school system is using the independent sales tax money according to the referendum that was passed earlier on. we do make some recommendations on how we communicate the use of the funds and then we provide updates to you as the school board. These are the members. currently, we have a great community representation out there as you know because you appointed them. Miss Langford Fleming serves as our representative from the board and I have to say we have great support from the school district staff to do our work. As a reminder of what has transpired since the beginning in 2018, the Lee County voters approved a half cent sales tax for the school system. We are now seven

004years into that system in into that sales tax. It runs through December of 2028. And so we are seven years in. To date, we've received about $643 million off of that half penny sales tax. And the funds expended by the school system are about $525 million. Here's how we have how you have expended the sales tax funds. really goes into four buckets. I'll go into detail of each of them in the future, but construction $25 million. Maintenance around $154 million or 29% safety over $60 million invested in safety in our schools and technology over $105 million. The beautiful thing that we focus on as the ISOC is that we are investing each of these dollars in every school throughout the district. So every municipality, every school, every u everything in the district has been touched

005by these sales dollars. I mentioned that there are four areas. The first would be safety. I will admit that the school district does not go into extreme detail with the ISO about where the investments are made in school safety. That's a good thing. we don't want to have public where cameras are, what other intrusion detection systems and weapons detection systems are out there. So we do meet in the chair meets independently with the school district to asssure that those are being invested the way the referendum is intended. The second is on construction both on new construction as well as renovations. these three schools were made entirely possible but largely possible through the sales tax. So you see there's a middle school, a high school, and an elementary school that were all constructed thanks to the

006half penny sales tax. On the renovation, we've also touched many of the facilities, the Lehi senior high renovation in 2020, Lemu Teal in 23, and Franklin Park Elementary, which opened in 2024. In addition to the 4,800 constructed seats that were built, we've renovated or added 6800 renovated student stations to date. So this is having a real impact on our schools and the availability of seats for our children. The third area of the sales tax is the use for maintenance. again, every school has been touched by improving the maintenance of the schools. We've completed over 530 deferred maintenance projects with sales tax dollars. And that goes from everything from air conditioning to windows, rugs, u flooring, generators, intercom systems. etc. a lot of improvements across all of our schools thanks to these sales tax dollars. And

007the fourth area of investment that the searchcharge has gone to have been the investment in technology. This was particularly important after COVID hit in 2020 where a lot of education moved remotely. So investments in Chromebooks but also in room investments in the interactive panels, control panels, server upgrades etc. So significant amount of investment in technology. We also advise related to communication and community engagement related to the sales tax. The district has done an exceptional job of of building the ISO website which provides a full dashboard of the funds that have been received and utilized exactly where they're going and what schools they're being invested into across those four areas and across every school. It's really remarkable. I encourage you all to go to the website and review the utilization of the funds and also on

008media coverage and getting this story out into the community. We've also put together presentations that have been made across our community to things like rotaries, chambers of commerce, and we'll go anywhere anytime to talk about the sales tax, the implications and the work that it has done into in our school system. And future presentations are still being scheduled, but if any of you know any group that would like to hear more about the sales tax, we'd be happy to to go out and talk to them. I just will talk a little bit about this. on behalf of the ISOC, we're pleased to report to you that the utilization of sales tax has been compliant with the referendum as originally created. So that is our charge is to verify compliance and I'm reporting to you that

009everything that we know the school board is compliant with those funds being used according according to the referendum. I'll raise a couple of concerns that we have at the committee level. the first is the s sustainability of the sales tax program. This is generating in excess of $100 million annually for the school district. and you have about three years left on the on the sales tax. So what is the future plan for if the sales tax expires in 2028? And more importantly, what happens to the programs and the technology, the security and the building that un is supported by the sales tax. we do believe that we need to make the community more aware of the impact. So increasing our marketing and our community presentations is important to us. we are concerned a little bit

010about slowing revenues. We've seen a little bit of a decline in the revenue generation in the first quarter of this year and economic uncertainty may lead to a reduction in consumer spending which would therefore reduce sales taxes. we have some concerns about the investment of the sales tax in short-term investments versus longerterm investments. For instance, buying a Chromebook that may have a three-year time frame. If you invest in a Chromebook in 2026, it will be outdated by the time you need to build buy a new one and you will not or may not have the sales tax to fund that after 2028. And then as we approach the end of the sales tax period, which again is 2028, how are we going to continue to market and advocate for either a continuation or a sessation

011of the sales tax? So those are concerns that have been raised around the committee table and that's it. Happy to take any questions. Thank you superintendent and board members. Any comments or discussion? Superintendent. Yes. First of all, just very much thank you to Mr. Simino and to our team for preparing this presentation and bringing this forward. We really appreciate all of your hard work as a as a candidate. I s had the privilege of seeing Mr. Simino out in the community and talking about the sales tax and so just appreciate all of the committee's work on this and appreciate your personal involvement in getting out to the community. So we look forward to the conversation that the board will have today. Thank you Mr. Fischer. thank you Madam Chair. thank you as well to Mr.

012Simau. Appreciate well as u Miss Delisander and all the other members of ISOCH. We appreciate the hard work. One of the concerns you mentioned and you know we've talked about up here for a while is obviously communication aspect. I really appreciate I mean I know you guys were getting out to a whole bunch of different places like you said rotaries and stuff like that but I think if there's another way to again I know there's a lot of information out there but maybe a more directed method especially for parents to understand where these projects are for each school. maybe perhaps I know as communications some of their as things evolve in communications plan perhaps that's something could look into to continue to help focus on that just to see obviously what's given back with that.

013So that's all my comments. Thank you Mr. Ribble. Yeah, Mr. Sim, we've talked at great length about this over over at some of these events that you show up to and speak at and I think you made some great comments. I'm going to put you on the spot here a little bit because I'm concerned about the numbers that we'd be missing without this tax. Would it be fair to say the committee's recommendation is to not let this sunset in 2028 or are you too is that too early to make that recommendation? The committee is charged solely with making sure the school district expends the funds according to the referendum. So, it's not up to the committee to determine whether the tax should continue, whether the school district that's that's a political question that the committee

014is not charged with. If you'd like me to answer that from a personal perspective, I'd be happy to, but I sit here as a representative of the ISO and I don't want to speak for a committee in that way. Okay, understood. I'm just really concerned when I take a look at the numbers. I don't think the forecast on hurricanes is there's not going to be any more hurricanes moving forward and I'd just really be scared to death to see what would happen to our schools with damage recovery without without these funds. So if if we are let to sunset there's got to be some way to generate revenue. So we ought to start thinking about that because we are going to have problems down the line as these storms continue. Just air conditioning alone. We

015spent a ton of money just repairing air conditioners in various schools that were affected. Just my comments. Thank you. I'd like to hop in just quickly just because it my question is curtailing off this. Dr. Carlin, could you please clarify for maybe public that doesn't hop in our meetings often, but the damage done in hurricanes, is that mostly covered by FEMA funds? Were we tapping into that half cent sales tax to do so? to to repair damages through ju what I'm talking about is only hurricane damage versus building our schools, upgrading technology and safety. Yes, off the top of my head, I would I would struggle to answer that question, so I don't want to give you improper information. I can tell you that we would be using our capital dollars. My suspicion is perhaps

016sales tax dollars, but before I misspe publicly, I'd like to be able to research that and get that to you in a in a future board communication. Ma'am, I can clarify that for you. We do not use sales tax dollars for hurricane repairs. There is the capital capital dollars like through property tax that we use, but we have not been using sales tax for that purpose. That's why I asked. Thank you, Mr. Persons. Do you have something? I do. obviously if we have to keep building schools and doing things, we have to get the money somewhere and those that would come from property taxes versus the half cent sales tax. What percentage of the halfsent sales tax is borne by the tourists approximately? we don't have that information off the top of our heads, but

017we will be happy to get that to you if you would like. I do. Oh, you do? Okay, great. Sorry about that. it's so approximately 20%. So, that means they're the tourists are paying 20% of all our capital outlay that of all these projects that we're doing. So, I just want to put that out for the public to consider in the future wherever this goes. Thank you, Miss Jordan. Yes. Mr. Mr. Simino, thank you so much for this. Really appreciate that. And I am very concerned with the same concerns you have, I have. and as far as the sun setting, I definitely do not believe that we need to be doing that. And I know it took us what, a year and a half, and I know Dr. Carlin was part of that the tax

018referendum when it came out a couple years ago, years ago. And it took a minute like it took what a year and a half I think to get it out there and to get people to vote on it. So I think that we need to make a decision sooner than later on what that looks like so we can you know because you're out there speaking to the public and doing future presentations of what's to be. So I think you need to have that kind of direction as well. It's like how do you do those future presentations when you don't know what what we're going to have? So I think it's behooves us as a board to to figure out what our plans are. So thank you so much. Thank you Dr. Carlin. So thank you

019very much to our board for having this conversation. as Mr. Simino mentioned, if there is a decision made to proceed, the sunset date is 2028. And just as a reminder, we're three years out. so I do think there's still plenty of time for this board to have that conversation. I was sworn in at the end of November, so we are rapidly getting up to speed on all things that happen in this very large school district. This is certainly helpful information to have today. And I do believe that we will have a decision in advance of 2028, but those conversations need to continue and I look forward to our continued conversation. before we conclude, I just want to check in. I believe Miss Shaviano is online zooming in. Miss Shaviano, do you have anything? I kind

020of wanted to piggyback on the construction question. I know in slide five it mentions 204 million I believe in construction. Were those the projects obviously just additional or was it the schools highlighted with like teal I'm not going to say in those or there others as part of the new construction those are primarily the schools that were referenced in the presentation. So the 204 million for those three at least, right? It would include the three new schools as well as the remodels and renovations that occurred. Understood. Thank you. And for full transparency, the website has all the investments and so you could drill down on each of those on each amount for the construction arm for that 204. I'm sorry. Could you repeat that, Miss Shaviano? You're saying for the website, I can drill down

021on that 204 million for the construction arm specifically on where that was. Yes, ma'am. Perfect. Thank you. Okay, if that's all, thank you for being here this afternoon and taking the time to present to us. Next, we have RSM Matthew Blondell. RSM director Weiss Campbell, RSM manager will be presenting to us today. Mhm. Good afternoon. Thank you for having us here today. I'm Matt Londell. I'm the internal audit director and we are here to give you an update as your board internal auditor on our current 2025 plan. we also have a brief update on what's going on, what's been what's been happening in our internal audit plan is also a brief report out on two of the reports that we've already issued to the audit committee. So we'll jump right in. So we will be

022presenting today a brief report out on the capital planning report as well as the facilities maintenance report. These were previously reported to the audit committee in midappril. I believe it was April 14th and we had some good discussion with the committee there and have finalized those reports and attached them to the items today for you all to read. But we'll go through a brief report out on those with you today. And then we also right now are currently in the final phases of the ESE services internal audit. We're working through reporting on that now and we'll be presenting a draft report to management here shortly. And then on incident response, that was an exercise that our cyber IT folks had with your internal IT folks here. And so we are working through the reporting process

023on that as well. We've already shared the draft report with them and we're going we're reviewing that with that team. we are also in the midst of performing follow-up testing which I know we've discussed before, but as a brief update, that's where we go back and look at any open audit items from prior internal audit reports and then provide an update to the committee and to the board that you know either the action plans identified by management in relation to those specific audit observations whether or not they've been implemented. And then we you know do some some testing there to validate if if management is saying that they have been completed. We testing to validate that it has been completed and then report back to you all to say hey this observation has been you

024addressed by management and we believe it can be closed so we don't have to consider it currently but then obviously if there are open items we discuss the impacts of those as well. a brief update on on the follow-up testing since I know it came up in our one of our last presentations to this board was this concept of the district identifying some some point folks to lead the charge on continuing in real time to follow up on prior audit observations rather than kind of waiting for us to ask the question of where we are. so we've had a couple of great conversations with some of the district leadership and understand that there have been individuals assigned to monitor that on a more real-time basis and we're going to be working closely with that team

025to follow up on the prior audit reports and feel good, you know, based on those initial conversations that there's been a lot more proactive nature and in addressing the prior audit report findings. so that hopefully things get closed out sooner rather than later. and we can we can report that back to the board. So, I just wanted to pres pro provide that as a brief update. You know, I think we that's some positive movement that we've seen this year. and wanted to provide that brief update for you all. So, we'll go ahead and turn it over to Weiss, the manager that worked on capital planning reports and the facilities maintenance reports to provide a brief report on the observations in those. Okay. Thank you, Matt. Appreciate your time today. I'm like Matt said going to

026walk you through our two operational audits that we're discussing today. I know you've had an opportunity to look at the broader report. So I'll I'll keep it relatively high level and of course we'll leave some time to answer any questions you might have. So we'll start with capital planning. So you'll see here we have three observations as a result of this audit. We have one high risk, one moderate risk and one low risk. The scope of this review was really an evaluation of the design of the internal controls and procedures within the capital planning process. So that's from the need identification to the concept of the project and through the proposal and scoping phase of capital planning. So that encompasses the scope of what we were evaluating. The actual observations I'll walk through briefly. The

027first observation was around the actual documentation to support the capital projects and that includes the approval documentation. So during our review, we did se select a sample of two capital projects completed within our audit period and we identified that there was several documents related to internal and external stakeholder feedback that were expected to be retained that were not. as well as some appropriate approvals that we would have expected that were unavailable for review. management has pro provided a response within the report. they intend they agree with our recommendation and intend to establish clear guidelines for their SOPs or standard operating procedures to define what the responsibilities are for preparing and submitting documentation to make sure that documentation is retained. and they have an estimated completion date of January of 2026 for that observation. The second

028observation is a broader observation around standard operating procedures. so of course the district has significant experience as it relates to in institutional knowledge as it relates to capital planning and construction and we acknowledge that but there is a lack of documented standard operating procedures that we would expect that outline critical aspects of the capital planning process. So should there be change in leadership or in personnel these documents these SOPs really capture the key parts of the process that need to be maintained to ensure smooth transition. Management has agreed with our recommendation and has committed again to enhancing the existing SOPs to make sure that their guidance is strengthened and the capital planning process is fully documented as it relates to guidance and standard operating procedures. Again, this one is also expected to be completed by

029January of 2026. The third and final observation as it relates to this project is around documentation of the CIP project priority. So through through our review, we did note that no formal documentation does exist to substantiate the rationale that's used to to to prioritize capital projects. So through our review we did identify the primary influence is pri for prioritization of capital projects is the projected student capacity needs of course so with the greatest shortfall in student capacity being addressed first through the capital planning process. However, other capital projects could be and we did see u may be prioritized ahead of these capacity needs but there's not necessarily any formal documentation that's maybe capturing that rationale through that process. management has agreed with our recommendation again and intends to develop a more within their standard operating

030procedures how they plan on documenting the forecasting data that's used the stakeholder input as well as the strategic considerations that influence the capital plan. All of which are taking place just in many cases are not formally documented. So that's going to be a part of their SOPs that they capture to make sure that there's clear transparency as to how projects are prioritized should there be any adjustments. that's has an estimated completion date of August of 2025. So that should be completed here shortly. I will highlight I think for both of these projects what you'll find so we're the outsourced internal auditor for nine other school districts. We perform these two types of audits at at many of our school districts. these observations are not uncommon, right? So we say that just to give you some

031level of perspective. I think that for both of these projects, but specifically for capital planning, there's been a lot of change recently, a lot of great change in process, which we try to capture in the in the background of our reports. so just wanted to add that context as as we go through these reports. I'll pause. Any questions before I move to facilities? Miss Jordan, then Mr. Fischer. Okay. thank you. I was looking at the one the back room and it states that we part of the process and I thought in 2020 we went through a process on how do we prioritize I think it was about 2020 how we prioritize the work for the capital plan but you're saying that we don't have that and then in the background it states that we that

032part of this is going to the construction committee advisory committee which no longer exists. So, so if I can address your first question, they do have a rationale. It's just not documented the rationale, right? So, there's a lot of influences that go into how the capital plan is ultimately determined and which projects are prioritized. We our recommendation and the reason why it's a low risk is because those actions are taking place that gives us a level of comfort, but we would like to see that documented so that there's a level of transparency should there be any reason why a specific project is selected over another. Okay. Yeah. So I and again I thought that we had already had spoke about that multiple times in the years past. So thank you for bringing that to light

033and then just probably just the correction that there is no construction advisory committee any longer that was dissolved I think at the beginning of the year maybe November. Pulling up the report now I just want to make sure mistaken. Yeah I can I can revisit the report and make sure that that's not the case for sure. I can revisit that. Mr. Fischer, I'm going to hold my comments to the end of the presentation. Thank you. Okay. Anyone else at this time? Okay, perfect. Thank you. So, we'll move to facilities maintenance. And this scope of work was an evaluation of the internal control structure and the workflow of work orders within the district from submission by the end user, whether that's a department or a school, through the completion of that work order. So overall we

034did have three observations all of which were moderate risk and I'll walk us through each of these here briefly. The first observation is around the prioritization of work orders. So currently the district does have a system for prioritizing work orders. So that's captured in the background of of our report. However, we noticed a few things. One, there is limited guidance that exists related to the definition and the proper utilization of these various priority codes that are available. And as a result, the district is not necessarily using the full the system as it's fully intended. So instead of majority instead what we're finding is majority of work orders are only being assigned to two priority codes rather than leveraging the full range of priority levels that there are out there. So for example during our audit

035period 99% of the completed work orders were only assigned to two categories and there is many more than two and the categories define the urgency that should be assigned to getting that work order completed. What we got management did agree with our recommendations as part of the report and they do intend to develop and in implement documented guidance for their technicians and their teams for assigning priority levels. and then develop more robust training for their maintenance supervisors on the revital the revised prioritization framework just to make sure that we're consistent in how we're assigning prioritizations to work orders and make to make sure that the that the resources are best allocated. The estimated completion date for that is January of 2026. Any questions related to this observation? Any questions? Mr. Fiser, do we have any

036baseline on that for Sorry, I just lost my train of thought. comparing the average day average time the completion compared to other school districts. I know you have the internal data, but is there any kind of measurement or benchmark against other districts that would be available? So, it's it's a great question. It's very insightful question and I was going to bring this up, but I'll go ahead and address it now. So, one of the things I'd like to point out with these, all three of these, but in particular number two and three in this report, is that I believe this really represents an optimization of the current process. As Weiss mentioned, we do these we we serve in this capacity for nine school districts in Florida and as well as many other government entities in

037Florida and throughout the country. And I've had the pleasure of kind of focusing in facilities and construction related internal audits through my career. And so I've seen many dozens of facilities management internal audits and I would say that just the fact that the district here is capturing data and putting it into a system and even has a defined prioritization is more than half the battle. I would say many many entities don't even have that. You know they may have a system but they're not actually putting the data in. We don't have any findings in here which is very rare for us to issue a report without findings related to not capturing data that matters. And so that would include, you know, cost data on individual work orders, timing on individual work orders, the different types

038of prioritizations, how quickly they're being met, and whether or not they're what we would call like a service level author, you know, goal to say like, okay, if we assign a 10-day period, has it been done within 10 days, those sorts of things. So the fact that's even being captured, I think put you puts the district here beyond where we see many of our clients. But to answer your question specifically, Mr. Fiser, it would be difficult for us to to compare it because because of what Weiss mentioned, over 90% were all bundled into a single category. And so, I mean, it's indicative that they're probably not being appropriately categorized. And that's part of what the recommendation is to appropriately categorize it. we could probably find some data through our prior reports to look at maybe

039just average completion times overall, but it would be very difficult to compare that to the Lee's specific categorization because they're all in kind of that one bucket if that makes sense. Okay. So then I mean you normally do this anyway, but probably even a follow up in a year from now to see how that's changed would probably give us a better Absolutely. Yes sir. As we f as we would follow up on this, we would we would probably provide an update on okay now there either the prioritizations have been rearranged or redefined and here's where we are and would likely give some data in the in the background or in the follow-up report to show to to evidence that it's the prioritizations are being used and adhere to in a different way. Okay. Thank you,

040sir. Mr. Ribble. Yeah. I have a question. Why would it take so long to get this corrected? It sounds like you put a date out there of January of of of 26. Why would it why would it not be sooner than that? If we point this thing out, they should be able to do this coding ASAP as of Monday, I would think. So many factors go into I mean this management's deadline that they have have agreed to u many factors go into that. I would have to defer to management on the specifics as to you know why they picked that date. But you know coding certainly part of it making sure that the system has the capabilities and then I would don't want to speak for management but reviewing the prior current prioritization definitions and

041determining whether or not they want to keep those or whether or not they want to use a different hierarchy. there's many decisions I'm sure that go into that. Dr. Carlin. Yes, if I may. just to piggyback on something that Mr. Rebel said. So, one of the things that this administration is working on is the word urgency, getting things done in an appropriate amount of time. That's why I appreciate your question, Mr. Fischer. When I first saw 104 days, to be quite honest, that does not meet my expectation. I would love to see other comparative data, but having been a school-based leader for 18 years, I can tell you that our work orders have been have been problematic for a number of years. And so, Rome wasn't built in a day. what I am very excited

042about is our operations team is looking at that data using their very best thinking. we have Mr. Cook in there now, who I've borrowed from Riverdale High School to to put a school lens on the things that are coming forward. again, my expectation is things happen more timely and that is the work of not only Mr. Cook and Mr. Stevens and his current role, but also with our new COO coming in starting July 1. So, you've hit the nail on the head, Mr. Ribble, and my expectation is things happen quickly but thoughtfully. And I'll just interject that when you know when I go on my school visits and tour different facilities, this is such a frustration for administrators who are not in the maintenance and construction wheelhouse, but have learned to be. So I just

043went and had a great tour at s the future Cypress Middle and like Mr. Cook, Mr. Miller is doing a fabulous job at, you know, keeping his eyes on everything and but but when it comes to these just these daytoday work orders, I remember even as a teacher, if I had something broken, I feel like it took nine months to get it fixed as something simple, you know. So I appreciate the the word urgency and making that a priority. Thank you, Dr. Carlin. Anyone else? You want to continue? Yes. Okay, thank you. moving to our second observation. This observation is around warranty management and monitoring. So, currently the district does not track active active warranties at the asset level within a centralized or formalized platform. instead warranty management is the decentralized process that's really relies

044on these individual shop supervisors to manually identify and initiate warranty claims were appropriate. So, they have to track those individually. and while we didn't identify any samples without within our audit period with any evidence of misuse or or inappropriate management of warranty there is of course still risk right so without a centralized listing of assets and their active warranties there isn't a consistent way to monitor warranty coverage to make sure you're not overspending on things that are under coverage but more importantly that we're maintaining warranty requirements to make sure that when you do need them that we're doing the proper due diligence and maintenance upfront to make sure those warranties are active when you need them. so management has agreed with our recommendation. Peopleoft does currently have the the capacity to identify the warranty at

045the asset level when the asset is created within the system. so that is the action that management plans to to take on. They're going to collaborate with the business data system to activate that warranty tracking capability within peopleoft so they can take advantage of that. So management will identify the relevant assets within the system, gather and verify warranty information and then define each asset within that asset management module within peopleoft. this will this will help make sure that each asset is identified and tied to a proper warranty which should assist in tracking and maintaining warranties moving forward hopefully reducing cost. This estimated completion date is May of 2026. And I think that that longer lead time obviously is reflective of the work that will need to take place to make sure all warranties are captured.

046The third observation is around performance indicators and monitoring procedures. So Matt briefly alluded to this. we did note that the district lacks defined and consistently monitored KPIs within maintenance to evaluate their performance. there is certainly some significant efforts that have been made by the team and they're currently creating and presenting some of their reports internally but most of the reports they are they're running are high level analysis such as year-to- date total work orders that are requested versus close for example so very high level u management has agreed with our recommendation and does plan to to capture key points within the work order process within peopleoft and create KPIs to evaluate the performance against maintenance administ administrative staff will monitor compliance and evaluate for potential KPI goals so that they can hold themselves accountable hopefully

047to effectively reduce those lead times and any bottlenecks that may be taking place during the maintenance process. The estimated completion date on this item is July 2026. And that is our third and last observation. Any other questions? Before I ask the board, I just want to check in if Miss Shavaniano has any questions at this time. Not at this time. Thank you, Dr. Carlin. Yes. So, just to begin, thank you very much, gentlemen for this presentation. we've had an opportunity to speak offline about, the, opportunities for improvement. the way that I see these, as I know our board does, is an opportunity to get better. We don't view them negatively. We view them as a real positive opportunity to improve our processes and to get better at the work that we do. There was a

048reference u made at the beginning that I wanted to let you know about when I came into the district after after I was sworn in and we had some conversations as a team about all of our audits and my concern was something that they alluded to and that is to have a way to track all of our audits. What are the findings? what are the remedies and very importantly how are we ensuring that those remedies are sustainable. So we don't fix things just to respond to an audit. We fix things forever and so involved in our standard operating processes and procedures. so Dr. Cupid McCoy has taken on this work for us where she is actually tracking has developed a tracking system for all of our audits whether it's from the state federal government from

049RSM whoever comes in to provide us with an audit and then her responsibility is to get with the appropriate team member in in charge of that area and to ensure that those remedies become the way we do business. And so that to me was a missing piece just listening and coming in in this neck of the woods. And again, if we're going to value our audits, we value them not by just saying we fixed it for July, but we have fixed it now for a lifetime. And so, just thank you very much for helping us get better. Any other comments, Mr. Fischer? Thank you. thank you to Superintendent for that. appreciate that. One of the things it it feels like threearters of these audits once we get down the battle seems to be SOPs and

050processes. Once we get that down for the future, I think we'll be in even better shape and I appreciate your focus on that Adam superintendent. Thank you, sir. Second thing that was brought up in this I appreciate was also under the warranties preventive maintenance. So, and I also want to thank our operations as well as Superintendent Carlin. I remember when I first got in the board and Mr. person Langford Fleming. There was a slide that went up that said we proudly say that we spend less than the state average on maintenance. So, and at least me and I don't believe the rest of district is on board with that because preventive maintenance is so important and will save us down the line our capital dollars. So, I this presentation has been very helpful and I

051just wanted to say thank you to Superintendent her team for keeping that focus. Thank you, sir. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Have a wonderful day. we're going to move on to our next agenda item. We are going to have a legislative update this afternoon by Chrissy Hulahan and Riley Kempton as well as Dr. Kim McDougall Dooall and Gay Rob the Gray Robinson senior government affairs advisor. She will be joining us Zoom. In addition, with a simple Google search, you can see that Michigan's thinking on some ideological issues had evolved under Dr. Ho's leadership. Kim, was that you by any chance? Yeah, it was. Okay. Miss McDougall, are you on the phone? I'll go ahead and get started. I do know, and I'll get into that later, budget conferencing is

052going on, so she is working hard monitoring multiple screens right now. but good afternoon, Superintendent, Dr. Carlin, and board members. Today we are excited to share with you our 2025 legislative updates. First I am going to give a brief little update on our federal work. So a couple weeks ago myself, Chair Fischer and Chief of Safety and Security David Nulan traveled to Washington DC alongside our federal lobbyist Tracy Pew to advance our ongoing advocacy efforts at the national level. During the visit, we held productive meetings with key federal stakeholders, including representatives from the US Department of Education, the White House liaison office, the Department of Homeland Security, and the offices of Senator Rick Scott, Senator Ashley Moody, Congressman Byron Donald's, Congressman Greg Stwie, and Congressman Jimmy Patronis. Our discussions focused on topics such as strengthening

053the safety and sec security of our schools and briefly some of the work that our district is doing to expand access to our career and technical education programs for our students. Shifting from federal to state, we would like to share with you some bill statistics. This session, Florida legislators filed 1,952 bills. 255 bills have passed and are awaiting the governor's signature. While we've seen a few veto for the president on one of those while we've seen a few vetos, the governor is still actively reviewing and signing legislation. There are also 16 bills still pending final passage currently tied up in the ongoing budget process which we will speak about briefly here. As shown in the table on the screen, there has been notable decrease in the number of bills filed over the last several years.

054For example, from the year 2020 to present, the total number of bills filed in the Florida legislature has decreased substantially, dropping from 3,517 bills to 1,952 bills, which is a reduction of approximately 44%. Some could argue that these statistics reflect a more focused and strategic approach being taken by legislators. And then as briefly mentioned earlier as we were getting started, board members, you are well aware that this legislative session has been particularly interesting especially in regards to the state budget. When the legislature adjourned on May 2nd, 2025, the House and Senate had still not yet reached an agreement on the budget. As a result, both chambers extended the session to work through the outstanding differences. At that point, the budget gap between the two chambers was approximately 4.4 billion, the largest funding disagreement in Florida's

055recent history and nearly one-third greater than the previous record of 3.3 billion in 2022. Now, for some good news, the legislature has reached an agreement on allocations and formal budget conferencing has officially started today and will continue through Thursday. The goal is to have a final budget approved by June 16th, allowing for the constitutionally required 72-hour cooling off period before the final vote. The legislature, as mentioned, has a agreed on allocations with the preK through 12 budget allocation being just over 16 billion. at this moment we have not seen them conference yet for preK through 12 on the House or the Senate, but we'll keep you guys up to date as that process continues. And then with budget conferencing taking place, we are closely monitoring several critical funding streams directly impacting our district's operational planning

056and student services. This includes items such as per people funding, which currently remains at $8,959, although Governor Dantis has recommended an increase to $9,25, which is a potential gain of $246 per student that would assist with classroom resources and educational programming. Investments in school safety represents one of our highest priorities. As you know, with our district specific $2.9 million appropriation request for safety and hardening of our facilities, it is currently funded at 50% which is $1.5 million in the House budget. However, while partial funding is typical at this stage, we remain optimistic that the budget conferencing will get us to the full request. Statewide education enhancements include promising increases in Governor DeSantis' recommended budget, $10 million additional for the safe schools and mental health allocation, which would expand counseling services and behavioral health support, and

057an additional $1 million for workforce education programs that prepare our students for high demand career opportunities. And despite the budget negotiations taking place as a school district and for school districts across the state, we achieved significant success with three priority bills that we want to highlight here directly benefiting our students and operations. First one is Senate Bill 296, middle school and high school start times. This preserves our local control over scheduling decisions while adding minimal state reporting requirements. This victory ensures we can continue implementing our safe start initiative, allowing us to maintain the flexible scheduling that best serves our students academic and developmental needs without state interference. The next bill, Senate Bill 1470, school safety, expands the school guardian program and strengthens security requirements across Florida schools. Most importantly for our district, this legislation provided

058crucial clarity on previous mandates that would have required expensive guard shacks at every exterior gate with full-time staffing. We're grateful for Chief Nulan who joined us in Tallahassee this session to advocate directly for practical safety solutions that enhance security without creating unnecessary operational burdens. And lastly, one that we're really proud of is House Bill 809, School Social Workers. This eliminates the requirement for school social workers to pass educator certification exams despite not being classroom teachers. This long- sought reform will significantly improve our ability to recruit and retain qualified mental health professionals who provide essential student support services after years of advocacy. This change removes a major barrier to staffing these critical positions. These legislative wins demonstrate the value of active engagement in the legislative process and our commitment to advocating for policies that directly improve

059educational outcomes and operational efficiency for our school district. Some additional bills include House Bill 85, hazardous walking conditions, which expands the definition of hazardous walking conditions to include limited access facilities. Maintains existing criteria for hazardous walkways such as minimum width, surface conditions, and speed limits while providing clarifying language for their application. Senate Bill 112, Children with Developmental Disabilities, strengthens and streamlines state initiatives to support children with autism spectrum distorer and other developmental disabilities by enhancing early intervention services, promoting school readiness, expanding specialized educational options, and increasing professional training opportunities. Senate Bill 248, student participation in interstic sports, broadens access for home education and private school students to participate in intersticolastic and intrastic scholastics athletics at schools affiliated with the Florida high school athletic association. It permits home education students to join intercolastic athletic teams at

060any public school within their resident school district as long as they have met the eligibility requirements. House Bill 549, Gulf of America. The bill aligns state usage with federal designation of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. It requires all state agencies to update geographic references to reflect the new name. Additionally, beginning July 1 of 2025, public and charter schools may only purchase instructional and library materials that use the term Gulf of America instead of Gulf of Mexico. House Bill 597, diabetes management in schools, authorizes schools to store undesated gluc glucagon in a secure and accessible location for use in treating diabetic students during hypoglycemic emergencies. It allows schools to obtain glucagon by purchase, donation, or grant funding and to secure prescription through the county health department. requires that school nurses or trained

061personnel administer glucagon in accordance with a student's diabetes medical management plan or health care providers orders while also adhering to established emergency notification protocols and grant civil and criminal immunity to health care providers, pharmacists, school staff, school districts who administer glucagon in good faith. All right, now stick with me on this one. This was one of the big education bills that were passed this year. House Bill 875 for educator preparation. It covers a multitude of things. it modernizes teacher preparation, certification, and counseling pathways to strengthen teacher readiness in advanced professional learning. It creates a more flexible pathway for post-secary school counseling students by allowing a reduced internship requirement for full-time teachers who meet specified experience and evaluation criteria. It authorizes the employment of certain non-deree fine and performing arts teachers while establishing minimum qualifications for

062those positions. It requires teacher preparation programs to adopt a uniform core curriculum aligned with the updated Florida educator accomplished practices including mandatory coursework and education foundations and classroom management. It creates the coaching for educator readiness and teaching cert program as an alternative certification pathway that emphasizes on the job mentorship and performance-based assessments. Expands acceptable methods for demonstrating mastery of general knowledge and professional preparation for educator certification, including alternatives to the professional education competency exam in certain cases. and it mandates the integration integration of training on evidence-based instructional materials and research-based reading strategies into professional learning programs. that whole bill is really going to be waiting on the Department of Education to give us clarity and guidance in many of those different areas that were mentioned. House Bill 969, reporting of student mental health outcomes. This

063requires OPA in collaboration with key stakeholders to evaluate and report on school district compliance and outcomes related to mental health services. requires a final report by December 1st of 2026 assessing continued compliance performance and outcomes of school-based mental health services and providing recommendations to enhance system capacity and program integration. Senate Bill 1070, electroc cardiograms for student athletes, also known as the second chance act, requires high school student athletes to undergo at least one electroc cardiogram screening prior to participating in intercolastic athletic competitions while allowing exemptions for religious objections or qualifying medical exceptions. It directs the Florida High School Athletic Association to adopt rules prohibiting participation by students with abnormal ECG results until they receive medical clearance. Provides liability protection for schools that rely on ECG results and accompanying medical clearances and require school districts to

064pursue public private partnerships to offer lowcost ECG screenings to students. And then, yep. Okay. Senate Bill 1102, school readiness program. this expands eligibility priorities for children with special needs and introduces new requirements for school readiness program providers to qualify for additional funding, updates the criteria for prior prioritizing children who need special accommodations by requiring validated documentation of special needs and broadening the acceptable forms of verification. allow school readiness providers serving children with special needs to receive a special needs differential allocation if they meet minimum program assessment standards, complete designated staff training, and uphold ongoing professional development requirements. And beginning July 1 of 2027, providers must have staff trained in the early identification of social and communication delays and in inclusive child care practices to remain eligible for the special needs differential rate. And then lastly,

065the Senate bill for or 1546, background screening of athletic coaches. This extends the deadline for conducting level two background screenings for athletic coaches to July 1 of 2026. So with that, we will take superintendent and board member comments and questions. I will say this is a time where Kim McDougall can also potentially address any more intricate questions and if we don't have your answer here, we can come back to you and get it to you. Kim, are you still there? I want to make sure she didn't run off to budget conferencing. Sounds like she might have had to hop off and run to the capital, but any questions, comments? Dr. Carlin. Well, first of all, thank you very much to Miss Swillhan and Miss Kemp for all of your work in these two spaces regarding

066the federal legislative work and then of course in Tallahassee as well. just also a very special thank you to Mr. Nulan for traveling to Washington DC and to Chair Fiser. I was unable to attend with our team and I appreciate you stepping in and helping with that with that trip. So, thank you very much. I also want to extend a very special thank you to our board because as I've watched over the last couple of years you have really really been strong advocates not only locally but also in Tallahassee for the things that matter most to children. And so just thank you very much. I did want to just reemphasize middle school start times as well as high school start times allowing us to be able to have some local control over that. So, just

067thank you because I know many of your voices were very strong in Tallahassee about that and it looks like that's paying off. Mr. persons and I had a lot of conversations about the social workers and I know that became a real passion of yours and it looks like that's going to move forward. So, just thank you again to all the board members, but couple of areas where some of you were able to step in and really put some extra work into that. And then always school safety being something that we all hold near and dear to our hearts. So, we have a couple of wins right off the bat. There will be more. I feel very positive and very optimistic about that. and just a very special thank you to all of us as a

068team working hand inand to make good things happen for children. So, I look forward to your comments and your questions. Any board comments or questions? Mr. Fiser. Thank you. first to the board, thank you for the opportunity for me to go up to the DC to work with our director of government relations as well as the chief as well as the superintendent. really looking at the meetings as a whole, I think we really had a good foundation. We laid the foundation. There were a lot of great inroads. So those of the people up in DC that were not familiar with Lee County, I believe that they are now in in a positive way. So, hats off, to Tracy from Ballard. Obviously, she did a fantastic job up there. Really helped guide us on many things.

069hats off as well to Chief Nulan and Director Hulahan. They were both amazing in discussions. They were always on point. As I said, the takes and the give and go in that was fantastic. So, I really appreciate those both. So, that's all. Mr. persons. again, thanks for going up there. I got a little feedback from Representative Stuby that he enjoyed meeting with y'all and learned a lot more about our district. We all know Byron Donald's representative for the majority of Lee County. Doesn't need to be. He knows everything about us. But, great report. I try to follow it and there's a lot I didn't even know. I mean because everything sort of came at the very end this year rather than in bits and pieces where you can stay right on top of it. So

070I know it's really tough for y'all right now and there'll be a lot more new stuff tomorrow and the next day and the next day. So we appreciate you keeping us informed. That's all. Thank you. Miss Shaviano, do you have anything? I don't have anything. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. And I'll and I'll just piggy back off of what Mr. Person said. You're you know, you two have been invaluable to the district. I haven't felt this updated since I became on the board. And I this isn't the only time we talk to these two lovely ladies. they keep us updated constantly through emails or updates or phone calls. So, I really appreciate the extra effort you've put into this. Thank you. I would like to just say thank you and I'm sure Riley feels

071the same. we love this job and it means a lot when you go to Tallahassee and DC and you're really fighting for these teachers and students and that's what really makes it worth it. So, thank you. You're welcome. All right, we're going to move along. Next, we have safety and hurricane preparedness expectations. Dave Nulan will be presenting that to us this afternoon. Good afternoon board. Dr. Denise Carlin, superintendent and our board attorney. Again, this is the hurricane update. As we know, this is we're getting into hurricane season as of June 1st. so just want to go over a couple things. One of the things is obviously with the Lee County Emergency Operations Center. They just recently had the ribbon cutting on May 29th. some of the things they've added, they've added more technology. They had

072something called, you'll see on here, the multi-creen or high visibility seamless technology. So basically what that really means is it goes from a multiple screen to a single screen or one larger screen with a better v visibility. So they've enhanced the visibility or technology if you've been I think most of you have been into the EOC. So you'll see better technology in there as well for that. just newer upgrades as far as telephone upgrades, carpeting, furniture, and I'll go into further in the U presentation with the added building attachment to that for more space. when it comes down to having actually have a hurricane where we have staff there, places to sleep and other breakout rooms. Again, this will be reopened on June 1st as well. the EOCC is also moving to something called Nexus,

073which is really a new version of web EOC. For those you don't know web EOCC is, it's really a version of how we the software program they use within the emergency operations center. It's a way of recording any any logistical needs, requirements, documenting things that happen of a basically have a timeline during a hurricane event. we can go back. So that's how you put do put put requests in and so forth. So everybody that works in the emergency operations center does use this system including the school district as well. additional information also they included something from the National Weather Service briefing slides that also includes geo division cops. they call it B basically what really that is it's a basically it's a GIS or spatial data that divides the geographical area into more smaller or

074manage manageable units or purpose for emergency preparedness response and recovery efforts. They can break down the area that maybe has been affected by a storm to concentrate more and break it down at more specific smaller areas more detail. Also they are also adding a level two activation which they've already have but when they have a level two in the future you'll see operations section will be staffed with the branchy directors at a minimum and this really assures the response center from different partner agencies that will respond to the EOC with an upcoming storm in the future. Lee County Emergency Operation Center is also incorporated something called ready. then this is a mass communication system for EOCC responders. It also will be made available for those that are respond to emergency operations center. Again, this is

075a mass communication device. So it helps us to just during an event, those that are actually either in the operation center or outside in the field, just better communication, which we all know when a storm hits it really depend on really what's availability of of communication, what's available, what's still working. We know certain things go down. So it provides another mass communication and a faster response. Our shelter managers that also are assigned to our schools or other shelters during an event will also be issued cell phones as well for better communication efforts. We have found from past events that obviously communication is always a challenge. So the more we can establish better communication technology and supplies, it increases our efforts to get them what they need at that time. You can see a little bit

076from the pictures here. This is the part to your left, the twotory is the is the new addition to the emergency operations center. that's your breakout area basically for more sleeping areas, offices, shower locker rooms, and so forth. Obviously, when you know when you have an event like this, you're not leaving the emergency operations center, you have a lot of people that are currently use the old the older version of the facility, which is to to your right, the one story. So, this allows for more room and normally have 12-hour shifts. So, this allows for those to take a break during the situation. get enough rest to come back and continue the emergency efforts. Oops, sorry. get another another view of that. I think some of you may have been to the groundbreaking. I'm not

077sure, but it really is a big difference and change and we definitely be very helpful. hopefully no time soon we have to use it, but it's there if we need it. So, some of the things we're working on here in the school district level I want to mention real quick. We obviously, you know, after after any storm, we always have an afteraction. We look at we look at our shelter managers, our principles, our staff that are in the shelters and we have meet we've had several meetings with emergency operations center, the county to really go over after action what was what went well, what didn't go well and how can we improve moving forward. So I can tell you we had probably at least three meetings with all all the staff including again shelter principles,

078those administration and staff here talk about how can we improve moving forward. So it's very good conversations that we have implemented certain things going into this season. So one of the things for example we wanted to really be specific as far as district responsibilities and that was spelled out in our new hurricane hazard emergency plan. So really every area knows exactly what their responsibilities are before during and after an event. So everybody knows you know again it's easier to take that with you wherever you're at and you know exactly what you need to be doing after as well for recovery efforts. communication protocol another conversation we do that pretty much in stages as we all know during an event it may not be as hard for communication for connecting but we all know after an

079event sometimes certain communication is broken down so by putting this together we all know the timing of when how often we want to communicate with one another and how do we go about doing that so if we always have we have we have always have backup communication we obviously have our radios and other things we use as well but it's important to have that in a policy and communic communication to discuss that so we all know what to do when that event takes place. we've we've looked at assessments for school site damage. So I know our IT department's been working with operations developing a an assessment tool basically. So when we do have to go in recovery efforts, we want to be able to expedite that assessment of what's needed to get schools back up

080and running sooner than later. So by putting this together we able to compile data faster so it can be readily it can be seen faster as well and then we can reopen our schools again faster than we have before. So we look at these things in the past we want to improve the response staffing volunteers. we've also looked at asking or looking for volunteers that we maybe who could be available or maybe might remain in the area during a storm. you're not you don't have to be there, but if we know you're going to be here, we'll know when maybe what part of Lee County you live in where you maybe would want to respond to and if you are available, we can actually have that person respond even even afterwards as a helpful help

081for recovery efforts possibly maybe not even before a storm, but we have that not knowing that going into it, we'll have that the volunteer list that we can use based on if you have any shelters open so we can send that person closer to that shelter if needed. we also have linked up information to up-to-date contact information for our employees. So, we all know that sometimes things change with our employee information. So, we have a link with our plan that you can go into the link to pull up information. It's a contact information for employees as well if you need to get a hold of somebody. And then shelter training obviously is a big thing that they're doing actually right now going into it right now. they actually go out to the shelter sites directly,

082work with the shelter teams with the county to walk the shelter sites. that way they can ask questions about the sites itself, what part will be open. We've gone over the generators, what part of the shelters generators actually power on and power off, you know, what works as well. So that's a good discussion to have as part of the training and as well as the support staff that will come out to the shelters if we do open one as well and what those assignments are looking like. We've had a lot of detailed information and questions conversation moving forward as far as this year to improve going into this year year's hurricane season. but just want to share some kind of a high level what we've been working on. the conversation we've had. We had a

083meeting yesterday with the National Weather Service. we just going over just certain trends updates recommendations for this year. It's really nothing I would say new just the verification or just to say that when they give out information as far as evacuation to please take it seriously. And it's a lot about a lot of it's about the flooding and surge. So it doesn't always mean the I would say level of the hurricane but it could mean more the size or how the how fast it's moving can cause we all know more flooding damage than we as we've seen before. We look at comparison hurricanes. But I'll stand by for any questions you may have about anything with hurricane plan. Superintendent, board members, do you have anything? Dr. Carlin? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. just a big thank

084you to Mr. Nulan. all things safety rest solidly on his shoulders and he has very broad shoulders. we know that and he takes school safety, including hurricane preparation very seriously. So, we just really appreciate all of your efforts, Dave. in that in that regard, we're hoping this is going to be a very quiet hurricane season. I'm knocking on wood real fast. but if we should have an event, if we should have a storm, Mr. Nulan and I have partnered to make sure that our leadership team is ready and well prepared and so we look forward to your discussion. Thank you. Any comments at this time, board members? Miss Jordan? Yeah, I just want to say thank you. I've had the luxury, I don't know if it's luxury of spending many days at these shelters and

085the teams that you have in place are superb. I mean, what they do for the families and the people who come there. Are all of them going to be animal friendly as well? I was just curious on that one because I know that just does a lot to the schools when they bring the animals. Yeah, currently, yes. So right now they are the ones that they would open again u would be pet friendly. We've had those discussions too to make sure that you know they bring enough crates and supply. Obviously sometimes that always isn't always enough but we try to encourage those that are bringing their animals to pray please bring a kennel with them as well but right now that's how it is currently. Yes. Okay. Because I know that the schools that had

086them it took them a little bit longer to open because they had a disinfect and all of that. So, thank thank you so much though for this. I really appreciate it. You're welcome. I'm going to check now. I it's been brought to my attention. Miss Giovan Ellias online. Do you have anything? I'm good. Thank you. And Miss Chaviano, I'm good. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on. we are going to have our construction change order report represented or presenting today is Scott Rickenbacher. This is for April 2025. Good everybody. Good afternoon board members. Superintendent Carlin Esquire Dee Bruno. Scott Rickenbacker, director of construction. This is your April 2025 change order report. As you can see, this month we expedite 424,965.84 in in DMP change orders, resulting in a tax credit back

087to the district of 24,101.84. Nonirect change orders, we had $12,69949. We received a credit from a project of 12,699.94 for a cumulative total of 36,80133 returned to the district. The secondary sheet breakout sheet breaks out all of the change orders in the three components and contingency adjustments for the projects. We had one DMP, three pure CH contract change orders and four contingency adjustments. Are there any questions? Board members, any questions at this time? No, I just want to add this. You're on a roll here with these change orders. Saving us a ton of money, so keep up the good work. Yeah, this was a light month. I appreciate that. Thank you. Have a great day. Thank you. Next, we'll have our budget education presented by Dr. Amy Desimmore and Kelly Learder. Okay. All right. Good

088afternoon, Dr. Carlin and members of the board. we have two separate reports for you today. First, with Mrs. Kelly Lecher. We will go into a budget overview, a budget update for what we have right now. Of course, you just heard some of the latest information from the previous briefing about the legislative update. We don't have any of the details related to the budget that's ongoing right now. Of course, when we posted this information, that hadn't even happened yet. So, we're going to be catching up with that. And then later on with Mrs. Sarah Cox, we have some information for you related to the fiscal responsibility and transparency campaign and effort for the school district. So, I'll turn it over to Mrs. Lecher. Thank you. so, this is going to be kind of short and sweet

089for me because it without having an actual budget, it's not a whole lot of information to share, but I wanted to talk about our capital plan again. last month we talked about the revenues that were in the capital plan. This year I wanted to this month I wanted to share with you some of the other things that are in the capital plan so that everyone has some idea of what's in there. of course we discussed the schools by zone that's going to be in there. we went over those in depth last month which schools they were. but as well as new schools, we also have things like the purchase of buses, technology upgrades, transfers to charter schools, and these transfers include both PICO dollars that they get as well as their proportionate share of the

090Capital Outlay Village. We have school improvement projects, both maintenance and construction projects, safety to life to make sure that all of our schools are safe. If we have an issue, we want to make sure that we can correct it. and security upgrades. We also have things like school equi equipment and things like that within the capital plan. Some things that I want to point out is as we're moving forward, we're still working with the capital committee trying to finalize the capital plan, making sure that we've covered all of the needs. we are making sure that within the plan we retain a 10% reserve as recommended by the board in both the in the end of the five and 10 years. and we are ensuring that we're staying within the statutory compliances of our debt limits

091for capital outlay millillage. The other thing I wanted to speak about was our internal service funds. this is our self- insurance fund for property insurance. it is increasing this next year by 3.75% which is about 632,000 which from my standpoint very happy to hear. it's not another, you know, couple million dollars like it has been. So, this was good. so we're at about 17.5 million at this time. I just want to make sure everyone's aware that this is not just an effect on the self- insurance fund because those funds are transferred from the general fund. So, any increases we see in this also hit the general fund. Things that are included in there, we made a list of them. I'm just going to go over a few of course is our property. We have terrorism

092insurance, excess liability, cyber liability, catastrophic student accident insurance, flood insurance. It includes all of those insuranceances. again, going forward with what's next, we're hoping to have our first FFP calculation this month. when I do, we'll be providing a preliminary budget to you all. we will be re reviewing enrollments at schools and that as you know is a repeated thing that we're going to be do we do all the time. in July we're hoping to receive our second calculation with the final mill amounts. Then we will be advertising the budget per our truth and millillage requirements. We'll be providing the tenative budget to you all and having a public hearing in July on that. Then in August, we August we will welcome our students back to school. After we welcome them welcome them back. We will

093have a count at day 10 to adjust allocations at the schools based on where the kids really show up. We'll be finalizing the budget in August and then in September we will have our final public hearing on the budget and then of course give all of the documents required by the Department of Revenue and Department of Education to them. And really that's all I have right now. So if anyone has any questions, board or superintendent, you have any questions, followup? First of all, thank you very much to our finance and business services team. We really appreciate all the information that you provided for us and we look forward to the board's conversation today. Did you open it? Yeah. Oops. Wrong question. Any other questions, comments? Mr. Ribble. Yeah, I just want to compliment I appreciate

094the department spending some time with me the other day, an hour to dive into some of these numbers and I really appreciate your time and Thank you. make me understand where some of these numbers are coming from. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Miss Gioanelli, do you have anything right there? Miss Shaviano, I do not. Thank you. And I do not. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Kelly Lecher. And we will now kind of transition into fiscal responsibility and transparency. Think thank you Mr. Ribba for recognizing that time. We really are trying to put in everything that we need to make sure that we're getting the feedback from you all as to the information that you need to see. So appreciate that. so next in in that same vein, we know

095that this year the district has taken on a large a major priority in terms of fiscal responsibility and transparency. so we've been working with the superintendent with groups from the community with groups within the district in order to compile and create information that hopefully will further that priority and further that effort within within the district and outside of it as well. So we wanted to present to you some information related to fiscal trans responsibility and transparency which in turn will be a major information or communication campaign within the month of June and this is the type of information that we're asking for and the type from the community and the type of information that we're giving to the to the community and are looking forward to your feedback on that today. So first in terms

096of fiscal responsibility we need to be asking some questions of our from people our stakeholders and there are many about what they know about the district's budget how they feel that we've been successful in demonstrating fiscal responsibility and how people feel that we can improve in demonstrating fiscal responsibility. So some of the major pointed questions that in this responsibility and transparency campaign we feel like we need to ask so that we can answer those questions and in turn we wanted to present or make sure that there was understood some common information related to the budget. So, these are some of the pieces of information that we're compiling to present to the public in digestible and bite-sized pieces for people just to gain a little bit more of an understanding related to our budget. Something like

097this where as you all know, we have this year a $2.9 billion budget and the types of different sections or parts that budget is divided into. So, people get a better understanding of what really our budget encompasses. and then in turn where those dollars come from. So looking at our total budget and understanding that most of those dollars come from local sources and then how much really comes from the state level versus how much comes from the federal level. So just some basic information related to our budget and revenue sources that we feel that would be important and interesting for people to know. and then in turn what the impact of those dollars are. When we talk about fiscal responsibility and transparency, you know, a lot of times we focus on the numbers and it's

098important to understand the impact of those numbers or dollars. You know, we serve over 89,000 students and that's a growing number. We also have close to 12,000 employees, so we have a direct impact on them and their well-being as well. But not only that, we have an impact on this community in this county as the second largest employer. Again, you know, serving those employees in a positive way and providing them competitive wages and benefits, but also local businesses. A good portion of our dollars are spent in the community. So, we also have an important role in economic development here in the county. And with our over 89,000 students, we want the community to know who we're serving. You know, we in the district through our daily work, we know who we're serving. We understand the

099breakdown of our students, but understanding the breakdown also helps us understand their needs and then developing the best educational outcomes for them. So, when we communicate this information with the community about fiscal responsibility and transparency, we don't want them to just understand the numbers and the budget. We also want them to understand who we're serving. With the general fund being our largest bucket of money, you know, it's important that we communicate how those dollars are spent. Salaries and benefits is no surprise we are a human capital organization and we are people first. So, should be no surprise that of the general fund, those dollars make up 67% of our budget. And then we also have a couple other buckets of funds that we spend such as purchase services, supplies, energy, which would include things like

100utilities, the diesel that runs our buses, and some other smaller buckets. But trying to give the community that big understanding of where we spend our dollars specifically within the general fund. We hear a lot about reserves and fund balance in our conversations related to the general fund. And it's important to distinguish that they are two separate things. A lot of times we use them interchangeably because they kind of are similar in the fact that they both represent the financial health of the district. But with the reserves, those are amounts amount of funds that we set aside for unexpected financial needs such as the FTE shortfall, emergencies, natural disasters, and of course needs that come up through the year from our schools and departments. The fund balance on the other hand is a measure of our

101available financial resources typically taken at the end of the year. It is something that we measure throughout the year but it's typically measured at the end of the year and represented in our financial reports. So we want to highlight to the community that you know while we talk about these two things interchangeably they are a little different. Recruitment and retention are major initiatives and major challenges for our district and our funding is a major contributor to how and h you know how we can do that in terms of recruit and retain. And so we do have some general information related to teacher salaries here. both how our teacher salaries beginning and average salaries compared to the largest 10 districts of which we are one of and then also in comparison to our districts that are

102in close proximity to us. We believe that this information is important for people to have and then also for us of course for the district to have and to strategize around in terms of how can we increase our competitive advantage when we look at our major competitors of which these are some. And so on the next slide again we are giving some more information as well in terms of how both the beginning teacher and the average teacher salary have increased over a period of time and the average compensation increases for that group over several years. Again, we believe very important information for us and the public to have to be able to to discuss to be transparent and then to also determine what are the implications of this information and how will it guide us

103in our future decisions as to what will happen in the future with salaries. not just for our teachers but for all employees of which funding sources are a major contributor to and a very important piece of the conversation as we determine how can we react and be proactive in the future. The second largest pot of money in our budget is our capital appropriations. So it's hard not to talk about the budget and not talk about capital. So this slide represents the appropriations of funding related to capital. the revenues coming into capital would include sales tax, property tax, impact fees, and in some state funding. So capital is primarily like the general fund funded from local dollars. And in our current year, fiscical year 25, five-year capital plan, here's just some highlighted things that we have

104within the plan, such as the building of eight new schools, rebuilding two, remodeling three, adding space to Beayshore and Cape Coral Technical, and then all of the maintenance projects that get encompassed into capital. And it would be hard not to discuss the halfsent sales tax and the impact that it that it has had on our capital plan. We've received over 643 million since the tax began in January of 2019. And of course hitting those four major areas such as technology, safety, maintenance, and construction. And so just to wrap we need to hear both from our stakeholders and from you all how we can better connect with all of our stakeholders to share this fiscal information and is this and other things the right information to share. you know what do we believe that people are

105interested in in hearing and how do we believe we're they're interested in hearing it. we have a major communication campaign for June that is all about fiscal responsibility and transparency. will include fiscal Fridays in which information goes out to community every Friday about in the month of June about all things financial things that have to do with fiscal responsibility with the community and try in order to try to enhance the transparency that we have, the communication link, the connection that we have with the community and all of our mutual understanding of all things financial within the school district of Lee So, I'll leave it there to take any questions or comments that any of you may have. Superintendent or board members, do you have any comments or questions? Dr. Carlin? Yes. So, we have kicked

106this off as Dr. Damoris Cox talked about with our community. one of the things that I know we're all elected officials, but one of the things we all hear I believe or at least I heard as a candidate was how can we learn more about your budget? There are entities that put a significant amount of information out on the web. I believe we work very hard to get as much information as we can and I've challenged our team to put even more out there so that the community is aware of how their taxpayer dollars are being expended. So know that's work. I'm really proud of our team about fiscal Fridays. I love that. And like I said, we continue to find ways to increase the amount of communication we're having with our community relative to

107to our budget. After all, they are their taxpayer dollars and so we believe our community deserves to know how those dollars are being spent. So we look forward to your conversation today. Thank you. Any conversation questions, Mr. Persons? When y'all figure the average salary of our teachers, do you like add all the salaries together and divide it by the number of people or is it more of a median? Yeah, pretty much. It's it's it's the it's the I'm sorry. Go ahead. that information comes from the Department of Education. So, we send up staff surveys to them frequently and so those average salaries come directly from the Department of Education website. Okay. It just seems like a I know we have a large amount of new teachers every year who would sort of want to move

108our average salary down toward the lower end, it would seem, but I don't know. That may be common in every district, you know, retention problems, but some districts may not have much of a turnover and theirs would be higher. So, I just don't find that very useful. Okay. I still would like to see where we're at. Fiveyear teacher, 10 year teacher. You mean how how many five-year teachers we have, but I would love to know where our salaries compare for, let's say, a teacher's been here 10 years. Mhm. compared to somebody else's 10ear teacher other districts. Yeah. Got it. Okay. Understand. To me that's more useful to see if we're being competitive. We now the beginning teacher salary I can definitely tell because that's this you know. Yes. Where it is but the others I

109would love to have that information for me. That's all. Okay. Understood. Understood. So the different year lengths and how those actual or maybe the average salary of those people at a year five or year 10 compares to someone else out there. Yes. Thank you. Okay, understood. Not sure how easy or difficult it would be to kind of gather that information, but we can do some factf finding to try to find out. Okay, Miss Giovenelli, do you have any questions at this time? I don't have any questions. I just want to thank Armor because I think that's a great point and great information that we could have just to get a perspective because we do I mean I have had teachers in the past say I retired after 20 years or 30 years and I was

110only making you know $50,000 and I'm just using you know a number but you know how does that compare and that is the question I think. So, thank you Mr. Persons for that. Miss Shaviano, do you have anything at this time? I don't have anything at this time. Thank you, Mr. Ribble. Yeah, I just have one comment. I notice we have 67% for salaries and benefits. but I would like to know exactly what the benefit package is worth to each and every employee because sometimes when we talk about compensation, we forget that we give benefits and there's a cost to our taxpayer for that. So it' be nice if we know knew that number. Okay. So you mean the percentage breakout like of the budget? How much of the budget is actual salaries just a

111base pay and then how much of that what percentage of that is benefit? I'm not talking about the percentage. I'm talking about if you talk about Bill Ribble as a fifth year teacher, what's the cost to the district to pay for my insurance? Okay. What's what's that what's that worth? Okay. It's got to be a number. So, we're paying for it. It be good to know that number for the whole package. Understood. Okay. For the for the entire benefit package. Dr. Carlin. Mr. I love where you're heading on this. So, as a newer teacher in our district, and boy oh boy, this was many years ago, I received from the district a check and it said, "Here's your salary and here are your benefits and here's your total compensation." And it really kind of took

112me back because as a newer teacher, I was not aware of how much the insurance contribution was. And so I think anytime we can surface those things for our team members so that they totally understand the total compensation package because you're exactly right salaries plus benefits and we are really fortunate. So that might be something we can talk about as a cabinet how we could provide that for an employees so they understand the total compensation package. So thank you for that idea. Yeah thank you. I agree both both of these questions Mr. P and Mr. Ribble are great questions to bring to light. We talk about compression a lot and that's what you hear with like, you know, our veteran teachers and our brand new teachers. And I think I'm totally following if we have

113300 brand new teachers every year that are making that base starting out salary. That's bringing the average down of some teachers that are at the top. And it would be great to know what that you know 10 to 15 year old 10 to 15 year teacher is making would be really helpful. I don't know how you can manage to find that information but any other questions. Okay. Thank you. Okay. All right. Thank you. Always great to have them up here telling being as transparent as possible. I love the fiscal Fridays. Awesome idea. Next we have family engagement empowerment. Dr. Dr. Jennifer Kein McCoy will be presenting this Afternoon. Right. Good afternoon, Chair Langford Flerman, board superintendent Carlin. I almost said attorney Dupri Bruno, but that's not who's sitting there. Attorney Macintosh. What a surprise. Before

114I get started with the presentation this afternoon, I'd like to take a moment to recognize some of the task force members who are sitting in the audience this afternoon. So, at this time, I believe I see Miss Amber Wear. If you can please stand for me. I see Ms. Darling, please stand for me. And one of our internal members, I think Mr. Edy is also here. If you can stand for me. These are three of the individuals who make up an 18 member task force. And while all 18 members weren't in attendance at every meeting, we had more than enough individuals represented at every session to work through each of our objectives. I am grateful for their presence here today because they are involved with their own lives, but they're committed to this collaborative effort

115with with us as a district. And so, thank you so much for being here and for your contributions. Today's presentation is going to focus on aligning family engagement and empowerment. We'll take a look at some of the objectives and outputs that we had for the past couple of months. There are some emerging recommendations that have been discussed and I'll share those with you and then we'll talk a little bit about our next steps. Envision 2030 definitely provides a roadmap for us in terms of how we capture parent engagement and empowerment. KPI 8.1 specifically says the focus is to increase the percent of families that report positive responses to being welcome as a partner in their child's school. If you take a look at what's on the right side of the screen, you will see six

116district priorities. One of those priorities also focuses on empowering parents as partners in their child's education. So collectively envision 2030 and our district's strategic priorities clearly emphasizes the critical role of families as partners in education. While she was the candidate, not yet our superintendent, Dr. Paul and had the opportunity to capture quite a bit of anecdotal information and that was important because as a result of that multiple trends emerged and those trends were later quantified into our district priorities. She charged her cabinet with addressing these district priorities because there is an emphasis on urgency as she stated earlier in terms of us getting better with the work that we do. So to advance the work of parents as partners in being empowered, I enlisted internal staff and we formed a steering committee. That steering committee

117of five internal members ultimately recommended the need to develop a task force and that's how the task force was born. The family engagement and empowerment task force was established to gather community input from a cross-section of stakeholders inclusive of the groups reflected on this slide. I mentioned a while ago that family engagement and empowerment information is captured from annual surveys. That's what KPI 8.1 that's how the information is captured. So the steering committee made a conscious decision to maintain that metric but we wanted to increase the number of responses. So if you're wondering why are we focused on surveys that's the reason we're focused on surveys because in vision 2030 the mechanism by which we measure 8.1 is through the use of surveys. Last fall, we captured 4,127 responses when we asked our families if

118they felt welcome at our schools. When you think about the 89,000 plus traditional students that we serve, that is a very small percentage. So the goal of our task force is how do we incrementally and systematically increase that number. As a result of that, we formulated a smart goal to increase that 4127 to approximately 9,000 responses by the fall of 2025. Now, you may say, and you would be correct, that 9,000 responses is still insufficient if we're serving 89,000 students. And I absolutely agree with you. However, it would double the number from where we started. And our goal is to increase that over time. When you have a task force that's comprised of community members and educators, it is important that we have a disciplined approach to the work that we are attempting to accomplish.

119So as a result of that, we worked through what we referred to as a theory of action. It guided the work of the task force. This allowed us to be purposeful with what was discussed. And it is important to keep in mind that through the use of this theory of action, we didn't come together to automatically identify recommendations. Being purposeful allowed us to first identify the barriers before we can get to recommendations. I'd like to highlight just the first bullet here for you in the theory of action where it states if we create a task force and conduct a root analysis then we will identify the key barriers to family engagement and empowerment. This process allowed us to work collectively instead of going into the task force with predetermined recommendations to causes we were unaware

120of. Dr. Carlin was sworn in in November and she charged her cabinet in December with addressing the priorities. So this task force was formed in January. On this slide, it gives you an idea of the work that was conducted by the task force in each of the preceding months. And we do have one additional meeting which is on June 9th at which time we will work through the emerging recommendations to generate final recommendations. The upcoming slides will highlight the objectives and meeting output by month and I'll begin with the month of February. Again, I mentioned earlier that the members of our task force, they have lives outside of when we meet monthly. So making use of their time in a very productive, constructive way was vitally important so that the hour and a half they

121committed had real value. In February, one of the first things we did with the committee was creating common language. And that was important because we each have a different perspective of what is meant by engagement and what is meant by empowerment. Now, in order for us to work collectively as a group, it was critical that there was a common understanding. But district staff did not go into that environment with a definition. Instead, we used a protocol that allowed all of the voices to be heard and generated the common language that we used for the duration of our time together. And I'd like to share that with you. The task force defined engagement as follows. It is intentional interactions that leads to greater connection, communication and participation. That is how the task force defined engagement and

122that's been our way of work since. The task force also defined empowerment for parents in this manner. One, the parent knows that if he or she needs information from their school about their child that they will receive that information. The parent has a relevant voice in collaboration with the district and school. The parent feels a sense of ownership and trust in both their students and the school and district. And a parent knows how to access resources to support their children on their educational journey. In March, once we've had a common understanding, we transitioned to the very first bullet in the theory of action, which was conducting a root cause analysis. Here too, we use an interactive protocol to make sure that the adult learners we had with us for the time frame stayed engaged and

123gave us their very best thinking. It allowed us to remain objective. And as a result of that, we were able to have several iterations of what could potentially be the causes or the barriers to families completing surveys. still continuing in the month of March. It was a long day, long meeting. We were able to identify three main areas that appeared to be potential barriers to completion of surveys. And those barriers were time, language and communication and technology or related access. What you'll notice on this slide, the proceeding bullets or potential solutions were also identified from the task force as we went through the root cause analysis. But again, remember this is early in March and so these weren't solutions. These were ideas that evolved from the conversations that occurred. So, as any good educator would

124do, there was a homework assignment for the task force and they created the homework assignment and that homework assignment was to generate four questions that were later pushed out through DAC and SAC and the task force members were charged with sharing those same four questions. students with three additional members in the community. Those members didn't necessarily have to have children in the district because we wanted a real cross-section of the community to hear their voices. And so it was important that we expanded our reach and this was our attempt to do so. Through those efforts, we were able to collect responses and that data was then analyzed and we'll cons you'll see the results of that in a moment. So here's question one that was shared with DAC SAC and community members at large. When

125the school district sends out a parent survey, how often do you complete it? We had about 62% that was favorable. When you when you combined very frequent with always, that's about 62% favorable. But what was also important to us with this question was those individuals who responded occasionally, rarely, or very rarely, we wanted to know why. So there was a part B to this question. And what's presented before you are excerpts and they're here verbatim. There is no editing. These are some of the excerpts that were shared for each barrier as to why they occasionally or rarely respond. Our second question focused on how much time people were willing to spend on surveys. And this was quite interesting because while we were engaged in this activity, we learned from some members of the task force

126that a survey sent by the district was taking too long. I was trying to think of how to say that best. And some people indicated that there were some nuances with the survey that made them uncomfortable. They didn't want to provide any personal information. they thought 10 minutes was too long. What we learned from their feedback is that when the survey is longer than one to six minutes as indicated here, people begin the process but they don't complete it. And so we're left with the information as if they hadn't started the survey. Question three focused on the types of questions. The overwhelming majority here indicated that their preference is for multiple choice questions. And then we had two other areas where there was an interest and that is if there is a rating scale. Think

127of this in terms of a liyker scale. Maybe rating a question one through five. And the other preference here was the yes or no questions. The fourth question on the homework assignment that we shared with the community focused on motivation. It was interesting to read these responses and here too this information was captured verbatim. So there's been no edits, but it was clear that families wanted to know what are you doing with the information when you get it? What are you doing with it? And if I know that it's going to benefit my child or my child's school in any way, then I'm more inclined to participate in the survey when I have no idea of what happens. there was information that people shared I don't know if my voice is valued therefore I don't

128want to take time to do the survey so understanding what we do with the information clearly elevated through the voices of the respondents so we've gone through February through March and In April, what we did as a group here was we took the qualitative data that we captured from the surveys sent out and drafted initial solutions to the three barriers. Again, those are time, communication, and technology. It's important to note here that the task force did the initial work work through objectives and then the information was shared with DAC and DAC had an opportunity to react and to add additional feedback. When we transitioned to the month of May, we reversed that in the sense that we allowed DAC to work through May's objective, which in this case focused on defining forms and methods of

129engagement and forms and methods of empowerment. DAC reacted to this objective first and then that information was captured and taken back to the task force who then reacted, responded and refined the information that was received from the DAC. The time we've spent together so far has allowed the task force to identify what we term emerging recommendations and they are emerging because the task force work is not yet complete. We are reconvening in June. Well, this is June. So, I believe it's next Monday afternoon. So we are reconvening to allow us to finalize these recommendations for time. The potential solutions are use shorter primarily multiplechoice surveys with clear subject lines that state the estimated time, topic, and purpose. Second, send surveys at strategic times of day and through preferred channels. We learned that people in the

130political arena who have outside resources that surveys are sent at particular times of day because people are more likely to respond to the surveys. And so that became part of the discussion as we work through solutions. It is clear that there's a need to reduce and control the number of surveys that are sent annually because that creates survey fatigue. We have multiple departments sending multiple surveys throughout the year and often you find the same group of families completing the surveys and in some of the raw data that was crystal clear that there is survey fatigue. And the fourth recommendation for time is to plan survey distribution to avoid the busy times. Do not do it at the start of the school year because there's so much going on. do not do them at the end

131of the school year because there's so much going on. So being cognizant of what's happening not just at the central office but what's happening across the district will impact our results as it relates to the recommendations. The emerging recommendations for language the asks are here for clear communication for the surveys purpose. Again, this goes back to some of the raw data. I don't know what you're doing with the information. Therefore, I'm skeptical about completing it. So, being as clear as possible to allow our families to understand why we need this information and what our intent is. Partnering with community organizations to increase awareness about surveys. We want to encourage family participation through partnering with our schools by having incentives or contests or other things that will motivate students to encourage their parents to complete the

132surveys. And the fourth one for language was use time timely reminders to families to boost the participation rates. The third barrier of technology or access here. so far the task force has identified two potential recommendations. The first of which is to increase accessibility for families. and this simply means let's use all available means that we have right. So if you're in the car loop, we can distribute our surveys there. If there's a schoolwide event, we can distribute our surveys there. So being cognizant of what's available to us and taking advantage of those opportunities. And the second is still increasing accessibility through multiple languages in formats. So there are some of us for whom technology isn't always our friend and it's okay for me to complete my survey in a paper format. there are some for

133whom I want it on a QR code, right? Don't email it to me. there are some for whom I want it in a text message. So being able to use all of those options so that we can reach a really wide cross-section of our families was the second recommendation. As we get to our next steps, when we meet next week, we will finalize our recommendations and once those have been finalized, they will be submitted to the superintendent and her cabinet in the month of July and August. Now, this timeline gives you some idea of what are our next steps as we wrap up the monthly work of the task force. But it doesn't mean that the work is done. It is important to note that this initiative isn't one that here's a solution, you applied

134the solution, it's a fix and it's done. It is going to be ongoing work that has to occur from all of us to ensure that any progress we make continues to be made and we continue to expand the number of our families who engage with us and who are empowered and are active participants in their children's educational journey. Before I turn this over to the superintendent for comments and board discussion if if any, I'd like to take a moment to again publicly thank a couple of individuals who have been integral in this work with us. You know, working through this initiative means that as district staff, we also have to think about what are we going to put in place to monitor the work that we're doing. how are we going to check for effectiveness

135of implementation of any recommendations and how am I going to hold myself accountable for this work so that there's value to what the task force has put in and that we continue to move forward in a productive manner. So that goes without saying that it's not a oneandone. But now let me thank a couple of people and then I'll turn it over to the superintendent. You know, one of the recommendations in the next steps is for us to create a resource hub and one of our healthc care partners who's a member of the task force has agreed to share some human capital expertise with us as we work through the creation of that resource hub for our parents. it's one thing to have a site where parents can go, but if it's not user friendly

136and if it doesn't have the information that our parents need, then it's not serving its purpose. So, we'll be able to collaborate with that individual and use their expertise. two of our task force members who are here today, Miss Wear and Miss Darlene, different different walks of life, but they're both committed to supporting us by informing whether it's the parents who use her afterare facilities or parents who are congregants to increase awareness ess of our district surveys when they're out and that is another mechanism by which we can potentially increase our response rates. And finally, more recently, there's been, an additional collaboration with FGCU and the school district as we work through a parent empowerment initiative that is focused around the science of reading. To me, it's important to highlight those nuggets because it's a

137clear reflection of when we work together, when we work collaboratively with external partners, we are able to do so much more than when we attempt to do this on our own. And I'd like to close by saying thank you to member Jordan because she has been in attendance at some of the task force meetings. And I would like to say thank you to Mr. Ribble because he is a part of the FGCU collaboration that we're working through. We had a meeting earlier this week that was rather productive. So at this time I thank you for your engagement and I'd like to turn it over to the superintendent. Well, first of all, thank you Dr. Cuban McCoy for leading this charge as you stated very aptly after the November swearing in. we had an extensive conversation

138at the cabinet level about the district priorities and you very happily and willingly grabbed this priority and continue to make it even better in terms of putting a sub substantive action plan in place. And so I really appreciate the work. I know that my colleagues on the board share the feeling that or the sentiment that family engagement is extremely important. We know the research says behind every successful student is a parent who's standing proudly aside aside or behind them and encouraging them to do their very best at school each and every day. So just thank you for your work. Thank you to our members of our task force that are here today. We really appreciate the time that you're dedicating to this process and I look forward to our board members discussion. Thank you. Any

139comments board members? Yeah, I'd like to make a comment since I've been working with Dr. Cuba McCoy and Mr. Eddie who's in the back of the room over there. they've just done an outstanding job forming our partnership with FGCU and we had a we had a conference call yesterday as our followup on our activity of the science of reading and dean Diana Dr. Diana Shazar was on that call and she was really impressed with your work as I was. you've done a great job putting a timeline together, an action plan in place that's realistic. And I think we're gonna get this whole session kicked off so it'll be ready to go to the parents in September so they can bring their their students that are challenged in kindergarten, first or second grade that are having

140a problem reading and get them their reading level up to so they're ready for third grade. And I thank you. Good job. Any other comments, Mr. Fischer? Thank you. thank your thank you Dr. Cup McCoy for the presentation. as well as the rest of the group for your help on that. I'm encouraged to see especially that you guys are specifically looking at the best way to communicate with parents and as we know everything going on in you know parents lives right now with everything. I'm glad to see that there's a very there's a big focus on the best way and the most accommodating way. So thank you. Miss Gioanelli, do you have anything at this time? thank you. Actually I just want to just piggyback off at what everyone has said. We know that parent

141engagement is huge in the success of our students. So I just thank you Dr. Cuba McCoy for taking this ball and running with it because you know it's important. We I kind of I think some of your information we kind of all know but I guess we need to be reminded. so I think that is really important for the community as well as this board to remember that at the end of the day it's about our students and how we get them to the finish line and and parent engagement is a huge part of that process. So just thank you for continuing with this work. It's really important work of the district. Thank you. Miss Shaviano, do you have anything? yeah, real quick. thank you, Dr. Dr. Kep McCoy, for the presentation today. you know,

142as a parent to to two students in the district at, you know, an elementary and a middle school, I can probably second the amount of surveys and information that comes out through the year. So, I appreciate the research and kind of further dive in to get the best results and the best engagement from our patients throughout the year. So, I look forward to seeing this change and it would be nice to see what this looks like moving forward where it's, you know, maybe we consolidated all these departments and now instead of six surveys going out in a quarter, it's this and then here's the engagement and here's what it's returned, you know, with these adjustments. So, just looking forward to seeing this outcome and obviously getting our parents more involved and their their voices heard

143for our students. So, thank you. Miss Jordan, I just want to say thank you. And yes, I've had the opportunity to watch the committee. Thank you to the committee because when you watch everybody and everybody has come come from different places, but collectively everybody works together. So nobody nobody has the right ideal, but together they make it happen. So I really think that's great. And then the QR code, even when I took that to the car line as I was waiting to pick up my grandkids, it was still difficult for people to scan that and just do it that quick. So, it we have a lot of work to do and I appreciate the homework that it's always given. So, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for all of this. Okay. Thank

144you so much. next on our agenda is a presentation of the school facility assessment report of Fort Myers Beach Elementary School conducted by an independent consultant. But before Dr. or excuse me, before Mr. Griffith and Anna Teresa Lorenzo speak, we are going to get a message from Dr. Carlin to say a few words. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I want to inform the board that this morning we had a very productive conversation with the town manager of Fort Myers Beach, the town attorney as well as the former principal of Fort Myers Beach Elementary, Dr. Tracy Kohler, who many of you are familiar with. And it was our opportunity to have a discussion on how we can collaborate with the town moving forward. in light of that, I'd like to speak to the fact that

145why we have this on our agenda for today. We are going to be discussing a feasibility report. The report was requested because Fort Myers Beach Elementary had not previously undergone a comprehensive study of the school after the damage caused by Hurricane Ian. Since that time, we have experienced Hurricane Helen and Hurricane Milton, which have caused additional damage to the school. So, this presentation today is our teams, our governance team's first opportunity to learn as much as possible in order to work towards making the most informed decision as we can as it pertains to Fort Myers Beach Elementary School. For those in the audience or watching, there will not be a vote today or a decision made today. The board does not vote at workshops. The information presented will be part of an analysis relied on

146to formulate a recommendation for the school board's consideration at a future meeting. Based on the discussion we have today, I will have further conversations with my staff and formulate a recommendation for the board's consideration. So, thank you, Madam Chair, and we look forward to our discussion today. I'm going to turn it over to I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Griffin and Anna Teresa Lorenzo. Good afternoon, everyone. Can everyone in the room hear me clearly? Can you can we hear him clearly? Try that again. I'm sorry. Good evening. this is David Griffith from Assentra PC. Just confirming you guys can all hear me. Yes, that's better. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you. appreciate the introduction from the superintendent as well as the opportunity to present today to the board. we've had an opportunity to work

147pretty closely with the school district as we look at the specifics surrounding Fort Myers Beach Elementary School. And before I turn it over to some of the other team members that have been a part of the third party independent assessment, I wanted to kind of take a moment to look at the overall effort that's been put into the report that was submitted to the district. We did not want to look at this in a single-minded fashion and instead wanted to make sure we incorporated all of the appropriate team members to give you guys a holistic understanding of the condition and the assessment of the facility. That included a secondary structural assessment to confirm what was previously identified in the report issued in January 2025. that included a hardening and envelope expert who went on site

148and performed additional studies of the facility as well as looked at the upcoming expectations for weather events in the area as well as included MEP architectural and cost estimating experts in their field. all who have a long history of of working with school districts throughout Florida and an understanding of what's required to keep some of our spaces open and accessible to the students and to the community. So with that in mind, I am going to introduce Anna Paula who is the principal architect for Via Design Studios who has spearheaded this effort as we attempt again to make sure we give you guys a third party independent assessment of what is the best case use. moving forward in options for this facility. Honor, are you on the phone? Can you hear me clearly? Yes, ma'am. We

149can. And I will share the presentation now. Give me a moment. Okay. So, thank you for sharing the screen. as David mentioned we're an architecture team comprised of u many other consultants and we went on site a few times to do a lot of assessment of the different aspects of the building but we also analyzed the area. So if we go to the first slide. So we did an assessment of the demographics and also the area and the impact of the hurricane that had an assessment of the different schools in the area, the capacity and what the school had been prior to COVID through CO through all the different hurricanes from being open and closed. And what we saw is that although the school has a capacity, a stated capacity by Lee County Schools of

150138 students and there and the ILA that's in play does states that the goal is 150 students. The utilation continues to be below 60 students. So it's about 43% and continues to be very low. We analyze the area to try to see what what the residents in the area are. The medium age which is close to is past 68 years old. and there doesn't seem to be much growth happening in the area as far as school children. There are also choices close by in the area with Heights Elementary and Santael. this is only a K5 whereas Santael is a K8 and we analyzed all those factors as well as enrollment and what the offerings were. The reopening of the school requires substantial amount of investment by the school board and as it is the school

151board itself already spends nearly three times as much in formers beach elementary than they do in other schools. So if we go to the next slide, we studied the climate and the vulnerability of the area and the school itself. And mind you, although you're seeing a few slides here, this is part of a study that's over a 100 pages long with all different consultants taking their areas of expertise and going in depth to see their impact of the school and its surroundings. So here you see the amount of flood and the surges that have impacted the building. The school building is at a very low elevation and it's a historic structure. so it's not only the wind that affects it but mostly the water. The amount of times the building has been underwater for long

152periods of time have done significant damage to the base of the building itself. and being underwater and every time it goes underwater it loses its floor. It loses part of the wall if not entire walls plumbing and all of it has to be replaced. So if you see here the amount of risk that this building has of another catastrophic event having severe damage to the building is pretty much a guarantee. from erosion to wind to flooding. it's a guarantee that it will happen within the next 5 to 10 years. If we go to the next slide here, we see we analyze the financial impact that storms have had and that the school district has put into the school. Since Ian and then Pulse Milton, the school board has already spent 9 7 million into the

153school to put it back to be operational and it's still not operational because under after Milton you'd lost the floors again and you lost the walls again and there are no restrooms that are operational. So we had a professional cost estimating team to thoroughly analyze what is necessary to put the school back to function. So on top of this $9.7 million that have already been spent on the school, there is still pending another over $3 million more to to get it to open. Plus, since a lot of the buildings on site have been demolished due to previous storms, the new cafeteria building that have been designed at $6 million also need to be built for the school to be truly operational. That means $22.9 million in a two-year period after this both the storms to

154get this school back up with an enrollment of 59 students. Not only that, but given the history of storms and the amount of damage the storms have caused and what it does damage to come back to being fully operational, the school board would have to plan to budget between 5 to10 million within 5 to 10 years to put back into the school for further storms that will damage the historic building. So if you go to the next slide here, you see the options that were considered in order for the school to come back to being operational as a building. If you were to consider just putting the money to putting the school the building itself to operate, one option, option one is to just repair the building as and that's about $7.2 million. This is

155the project cost. That's all inclusive of everything that's necessary. Now, if you consider not putting the floor back as it is, an elevator crawl space floor, but filling that space with a compacted fill and concrete so that water wouldn't flood the base. That would be an approximate cost of 7.3 million. And I'm saying approximate because to make figures small here, we just summarize it. But there's a lot of backup with very detailed information that backs up all these numbers. Option three would be to take the floor out and put a metal metal floor, but raise the floor on the inside since you can't really touch the outside. Raise the floor on the inside two feet so that water will run through the bottom of the building. And now if it floods, the flooding could go

156another two feet before it starts to damage everything. That has a t that has a price tag of 9.9 million. Option four is to raise the entire building. That I don't think is financially feasible. The building is a single structure and being historic, if you start lifting one side, it's very likely the building would start breaking and historically probably would not be allowed to happen anyways. Another option is to build a brand new building that's elevated in the back and use the front building, the historic building for something else or restore it at a later point. That is $30 million and that is not accounting for the $6 million you would soon need for a cafeteria or the $4 million that you need to recuperate the building that's already there. We also analyze thoroughly other

157temporary systems, protective systems such as muscle wall, aqua wall, creating a perimeter wall that's concrete and more permanent to stop the flooding from coming into the building. The aqua itself came out to be the most cost effective way and that has a price tag of nearly a million dollars. If we go to the next slide, before we advance to the next slide, I did want to take an opportunity to highlight some changes in the estimates on this presentation from some of our preliminary reviews. pre preliminary reviews that were submitted to the board were for construction cost only. we have since as Anapala referenced engaged a third-party cost estimator who again works with Miami date college and a number of other school districts throughout Florida who has identified a some items that we needed to make

158sure we were incorporating that were missing from the prelim preliminary estimates as well as included total project costs to the district not just construction costs. And those total project costs include things like design fees, contingency for unforeseen conditions, and things of that nature. So, just wanted to highlight some of the deltas you might be seeing now between the total project costs we've listed now versus the preliminary estimated construction only cost that was submitted previously. Project costs include AV cost, media cost, furniture cost, permitting, so on and so forth. And if you look at the graphics on the right, you'll notice that the one on the top is the expenditure by the school board on average for schools. That's the far right one in pink. The next two to the left are barrier islands which are

159more comparable to Fort Myers Elementary. And then for Myers Elementary, which is almost three times as much. The graphic on the bottom shows how much money has been spent already since Ian. So the first column being Ian, the second one being Milton. The orange is what is spending to be spent just to open the school without a cafeteria. And then the cost the last cost would be what the bud what the school board would need to budget in the future that inevitably a new a storm would come in and would damage the building again and what it would take to get the building operational. So now if we go to the next slide. So here we're seeing what are some temporary solutions and some things that can be considered. One of the one of the

160solutions is to continue busing the students to St. Carlos or to Heights Elementary School. Another solution is to rent or purchase modular buildings and the modular buildings could be placed on site and the school could be open as early as fall of 2025 with as you see on the right a portable cafeteria unit. So the entire school could be put on portables for now. So at least it could be operational on site if wanted if desired. and FEMA funding could be possible for some of the solutions. Now, as far as storm protection, we mentioned the Aqua Wall, which you see on the bottom right that was has been used in Tampa and other locations. It does not solve the problem, but it does stop some of the surge from coming in since surge has been

161what has done the most damage to the building. Other permanent solutions that have been considered are raising the floor as I mentioned in the option before with the cost raising the floor and the interior by two feet raising the building we cannot do or creating a perimeter wall. Then if we go to the next slide other alternate options for strategic use of the property would be to create a hybrid model. So not open the building as a traditional K through five school but have it as a charter school but in a hybrid model meaning that you get other entities to join use the facility which means that they could share cost and share impact given the aging the age of the community of 68.4 if you provide other uses such as adult education continuing education.

162So this code could open as a as a charter school in the morning and in the afternoon provide all the other services to the community. there also history if you if you like to build a new building in the back and uses that you could do in the front there successful uses of the space here on the right. These are all schools that became something else or as we mentioned the number one highlighted that will become a hybrid use. That means that we could do something in the morning educational and in the afternoon educational but but to an older population or cultural. Then can we go to the next slide? The next slide. we're talking about the survey that was developed. So there was a survey done to try to see what the sentiment for

163the community was. That survey was distributed to nearly 100 residents of Lee County. The survey took less than a minute to complete. It was only five questions. The questions were extremely simple asking from are do you are you aware of for Myers Beach Elementary? how what do you feel that do you feel has an impact in the community? There were yes or no questions or if you don't have an opinion. Unfortunately, although 100,000 nearly 100,000 people were contacted, only 700 responded, there were some that re that chose not to respond. They declined and others just didn't do anything at all. That is 6%. So that is such a small sampling that is statistically insignificant and we couldn't really gather enough data. It didn't seem like they were interested. the survey qu the title of the

164survey was from Miami speech elementary so it was very clear it was about a school and its impact in the community some of the summary of what we found from the small sampling we got is that only a quarter of those that answered even knew about the school 40% did not know or have an opinion on it but once asked do you think it should be open or stay closed or the historic significance then it became colored 50/50 but in reality we only got 6% so that's stat that's statistically insignificant so we couldn't really take this much into account then if we go to the next slide these are our recommendations and our for our next steps once we once we analyze the current condition of the building structurally on a hardening p perspective architecture

165Naturally we checked for mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire protection, fire alarm. We did a that in-depth analysis. We did the in-depth analysis of the cost estimating how much it will cost to put it back to be operational. Once we analyze the impacts of storms and the pretty much guarantee that it will suffer more and they will be stronger and they'll be worse in the future because the erosion has gotten worse. the storms have gotten stronger and more violent to this area. So given all that, we are suggesting that the school not reopen as a traditional K5, but instead take more of the charter hybrid approach so that this cost can be shared with other institutions so that the school can have multi-use to justify such low enrollment for such high cost. operational cost. It operates in

166a deficit of 500 300 to $500,000 a year on top of the fact that three times as much is spend on the school as others. So we couldn't justify the cost to reopen it traditionally as opposed to opening as charter and hybrid. We also suggest possibly because of the ALA or any other concerns that if there's such a concern to open it locally quickly would be to do a temporary model and use the portables and use the cafeteria portables and get it operational as soon as possible. if chosen to open the traditional model or to at least bring it up to be a bu a fully operational building, then we suggest you go with option two, which is to fill the building and pour the pending $7 million that it would take to get the

167school back to to get the building back into function. And the reason for that is to stop the flooding of seawater that's doing so much damage to the structure. and also implement the aqua wall which would be to sto to stop so much storm water from coming into the site. So we would suggest both of those to get the building up to function whichever user may choose to continue with and I believe that was the last slide if you want to add anything to that. Yes, thank you Anapala. before we turn it back over to the superintendent and the rest of the board, we just want to reiterate we understand the specific nature of this site and the desire to make sure that we are having a all-encompassing survey that understands all the different aspects

168of why the school was operational and what the school board needs to do moving forward. as Anapala referenced, given all the different aspects that we were able to review, we cannot make a recommendation that it moves forward in a traditional manner. however, we are available for any questions to support further discussions on how the school board might want to move forward with an action plan. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. I'm going to ask the superintendent if she has anything before we move on. Yes. First of all, thank you very much to both of you for your presentation today and as I said in my opening statement. It is very important that we make decisions based on some type of information that is provided and a feasibility study is a great place to

169start. full disclosure, I am not a contractor. I am a superintendent of schools. I've been a principal. I've been a school leader, a district leader and a teacher. and I know that several of of the board members obviously are not contractors as well. So just thank you very much for providing us with information. I will say publicly that there are certainly options here. but there may be other options as well. And so I look forward to our board's conversation today. And of course to my colleagues on the board this is our time to ask those very important questions. I know this was a very voluminous report. Took me a couple nights to go through it and I have a lot of questions myself, but want to be out of respect for you, give you an

170opportunity to ask those questions or any clarifications that might be necessary. So, thank you. Thank you, Miss Shaviano. I know you had your hand raised on the Zoom. I'll let you go ahead. Thank you for that. yes, and thank you so much for the report. It was very lengthy and very detailed. I think I learned quite a bit but there was a few pieces I was reading through and just wanted to call out. So I know in the final recommendation there was a discussion of option two as a suggestion with the aqua wall and with that suggestion of filling that space with concrete. my understanding from reading the report is that even though that is done that still leaves the school below sea level and even with the aqua wall with the additional cost of

171a million that aqua wall my understanding only protects us as I think it said 3 to four feet. So, I'm not quite sure. Yeah, I can take that. I didn't want to interrupt you. I'm sorry. so making some clarifications on what you just stated, the school's not below sea level. However, the Fort Myers Beach has a required elevation level that all new structures have to be built to and it is below that requirement. My apologies. Yeah, understood. Now obviously this is a historic facility so you are not is this is not a code compliance issue. This is a reasonability of continued use issue. so to what you said u Mrs. Chevaniano yes the recommendation for option two would be to infill the subflooring which would help with reducing future mitigation costs but to your point

172it would not stop flooding from occurring. Essentially, instead of having to rip out and replace the flooring and any substrate materials that are damaged every time you have an extensive flood flood event, you would instead be repairing the damages to the occupied area, which are usually if we are having a Milton level event, there was only 18 to 24 in in the occupied area. that would be a significantly cheaper restoration activity than what the school district is forced to do now with the flooring being what it is. I will note that if a hurricane Ian level event happens post us moving forward with an option two then it would still be a catastrophic damage to the facility and it would be significant cost to reopening the facility after that time. to answer your sec I'm

173sorry to to answer your second question about the aqua wall correct the aqua wall is not a holistic solution that prevents all flooding however it prevents surge flood it deters I should say surge flooding so some of the largest flooding damages occur during the surge that happens in a storm event and if you have a 6ft wall that deters some of that surge flooding from entering your facility. It could reduce the amount of water that impacts your facility and creates damages moving forward. But it would not be I don't want to present this as if you install the aqua wall, no water's getting in because that's unlikely to be the situation, right? And then my understanding as well was option three with metal flooring raising it the additional 2 feet. So above your level two

174option of filling in the this point even raising it the additional 2 ft would still put it. Correct. Correct. this is all a risk management study in this facility assessment. So again, if we had another Milton level event after moving forward with option three, we suspect the damages to the facility would have been significant would be much more insignificant, much much more minimized. Whereas again level event, you would have still had seven plus feet of water inside your building. So it's all about cost and capital cost to mitigate risk moving forward for different storm level events. And Anna Paula, I don't recall the flood elevation on Fort Myers Beach. Do you recall what it's supposed to be at that area? Believe it's 13 ft. 13 ft. Yes. So, we're significantly below that. And raising it

1752 ft. Yeah. Raising it 2 ft to 9. Raising it from 7 to 9 wouldn't get us to the 13, but the closer you are means the more minor storms would be less impactful for mitigation and repair. And then the one other item that was mentioned in the report in regards to FEMA was the preference for any mitigation measures that were taken like elevation in order to be eligible for funding through them. Is that correct? Can you repeat the question? It says there was a note I had to pull the page. I believe it was like 44 or 45 of the report. said FEMA prefers mitigation me measures like elevation for funding eligibility. Yes, FEMA does prefer some things in the case of of a historic building. It's you have to you have to play

176with both factors. They understand it's a historic building, but they would rather fund projects and fund strategies that will prevent for as much further damage as possible as opposed to just repairing things the way they are. So that's just a preference of course because it's you know require less funding in the future. the two feet that we're discussing is because because of the windows and the windows are part of the facade which is part of the historic nature of the building. So we could see that within about 2 feet we it would be okay that could we could still do it without causing much we would still have to go through historic and review that but it wouldn't be so much of a problem after that it starts to be a problem because then you

177have your floorable windows and you have other code concerns. Okay. Yeah. I can add to what Anopa just said. just in terms of historic experience here at at school district Lee County, we've been engaging with FEMA on a weekly basis post Hurricane Ian still looking at making sure number one the school district receives funding back as much as possible from FEMA to account for mitigation and recovery cost from Ian, but also we have independent meetings with FEMA again very regularly looking at mitigation and hardening activities. So if we propose an option that includes a hardening such as raising a structure to a better elevation, it is a very strong likelihood that we'd be able to get some of that reimbursed from a FEMA claim. All right, I'm going to go ahead and move on to

178some other board members. They have some comments and then I can circle back to you, Miss Shaviano. Mr. persons. Yeah, it's a good report as far as the engineering part and everything. I don't like to criticize, but I see a missing part and I don't know if you were even tasked to find that out. We have a similar schools on Santael that has a lot of students and their demographics would only have about 40% of their students living on the island. 60% of their students come from off the island. Most of those are children of employees. And I know the Fort Myers Beach is having all these new resorts and building going in. And I know the council and everything is working very diligently to get them to promote the school to their employees by

179doing flexible schedules and possibly playing for before and after school care. So with the track record I see on Santael of 60% being outside, I would not be shocked to see that much or maybe even more so on the Fort Myers Beach cuz you because it's a win-win. You have employers, it's a great benefit to them to be able to get people because there's no housing on the island. They can bring their kids with them. If I had not seen movement from the council and from these developments working together, I would go strictly financial and say close to school. But I see a pathway for them to be very viable and to keep a school on the island. So to me, again, this is just my opinion. It just comes down to which option? To

180be honest with you, there's two histories here. You have a history of a school being on the island and you have a history of a building on the island. You know, they don't necessarily go together. I think the best path forward if we decide to keep it to me would be to go ahead and put a brand new school there, a new building that will be able to take any surge like all the new buildings on the beach. I mean that's where I'm leaning toward and that would be the most expensive one. So that's a gamble from the board. I don't know if the rest of the board members feel that way, but I just want to let the board know where I'm coming from because I really feel that one looking at the Santael

181school that you know that being our model it should go very well. on a personal note, I had a granddaughter that went to that school to the Fort Myers Speech School and she did so because her father and mother lived off the island but worked on the island and that they brought her and they got special permission which at that time was not even easy to do. so now we've made it very easy for that to happen to get permission to come. I think they can come from anywhere in in the district. My final thought is most of the employees coming to that island and if they bring their children, they'll be coming from our most populated areas where we don't have enough schools. So, that actually helps us out in the east zone particularly.

182So, that's just where I'm at. again, not faulting all because that's just something that you almost have to be right here to to have experienced and seen. That's all. Thank you, Mr. Rebel. Yeah. Yeah. I have a question. I went through this booklet extensively and I looked at the electrical in the existing building. If we if we repair the floor or even raise the floor by concrete, it appears to me that the electrical is still going to be a problem every time we have a storm. Is that the case? with the electrical or are we are we changing the electrical around in the building where we're going to raise it six or seven or 10 ft or No one's talking about that electrical, but that was a that was a lot of damage to that

183to that building, the electrical piece itself. that is accurate. That building receives significant damages every time there's a storm event. And that building is actually at a lower elevation than the historic building. So the storm surge can be less impactful and still impact the electrical facility. I know the school district has reviewed options to raise the electrical facility in a potential future structure that would be built to house the cafeteria. And then similarly, if we went with option five and built a new building, we would we would definitely make sure to incorporate new electrical facilities at that higher elevation. But to your point, if we leave it where it is now, it will continue to see damages every time there's a storm level event. Okay. I just want to make one more comment on on

184my opinion on this thing. It I've looked at this thing long and hard. I know a lot of folks are very committed to the historic value of that building. But being a being a corporate guy and a working for a global company, we've run into situations around the world, if not in the United States, where we get into situations and we got to go with best practices. So guess what? We're not the only long rangers here that have a school that's get impacted by flood water, by surge. go and take a look when you get home tonight. Google search the Outer Banks in North Carolina and see what they did with their school. And I can tell you they did a pretty darn good job of of rebuilding the school, changing the location and the

185design that was compatible with the with the local area. And if you look at the demographics of that particular school is pretty close to Fort Myers Beach. But the school itself that Fort Myers Beach, unfortunately, I hate to be a bad bad news, but in my opinion, I just don't think we can get back in there. I just don't think it's I think we're just going to put good money after bad money after bad money because these storms are going to continue to come. And at that level, even with some of the repairs we're going to make, we're going to keep pouring money into that school. So, at this point in time, I'd encourage everyone to take a look at best practices and some of these other locations, not only in Florida, but along the,

186the east coast of the Carolas up in the Virginia. And you're going to find there's a lot of communities that had the exact same thing. Only guess what? They made the decision to walk away from the existing old structure and they admitted that it's a problem. So that's my opinion, Mr. Fiser. Thank you. thank you everyone for your responses. Mr. Griffith, looking at further report, I know Mr. Javiano brought it up and Mr. Ribble. So a lot of these solutions like looking through it like the concrete for example the electrical work these things we're many of these solutions essentially involve if it gets flooded again it will be easy to repair am I correct on that take yes okay like Mr. Ribble said the electrical is obvious issue. so let's say we do the floor

187vents or flood vents, concrete as well as change electricals. For example, in this current situation, would that have made a significant difference in getting back to that school? I know that's a loaded question. I'm not sure on which one you want. Yeah, I'm not sure which you mean when you say changes in electrical. So let's say if we had let's say if we had concrete slab right now some of the electrical work was raised again there's only so much I know we can do with that basin report and I believe there are flood vents or yeah so I think I get the gist of your question. Mhm. If we the answer is dependent on the level of storm event that comes. Again, if we look at a hurricane Milton level event, if we had moved

188forward with option two, which infills the subfloor level with substrate and concrete, then the damages to the facility, not talking electrical, just the existing facility would be significantly less costly than they were this year, early last year, I should say. Now for the electrical upgrades, the only solutions that we have really looked at were to either include it in a new facility, which is option five on the list that Anipala reviewed, or to move forward with the installation of the cafeteria, which also would incorporate a new electrical room and facility in that structure. But the cafeteria building that has been designed and is in progress, I don't want to speak to where what stage it's in cuz I'm not a part of that review. that does not incorporate addressing reopening a facility for which students

189can continue to have school. So it would not just be that cost, it would be that. Plus, if we did raise the electrical and we did include the construction the concrete fill infill for the sub base, then yes, Hurricane Milton would have been significantly less costly to respond to, but there would still be construction response. There was still 18 to 24 in of flooding inside the facility in the occupied space. And again, that's just a Hurricane Milton level event. I'm sure all of you are aware Milton was not the most devastating hurricane that you guys have experienced in the next 5 year in the last 5 years. If we have something more robust, then those two solutions would not limit a significant capital investment being required post a hurricane. Okay. Thank you. So, a lot

190of these I look at as mitigation strategies for post repair. So, we're obviously I hate to say it, we're anticipating a lot of that. So, thank you on that. I'm going to ask the superintendent a question. when you brought on forth this consulting group, did you direct or encourage them for any result in outcome? So, no. What we really wanted Chair Fischer was an honest look, an objective look at the situation. We were in a posture where we did not have all of the information. And as I disclosed right up front, I am not a contractor. for me to go out there would be a great field trip, but it would not be the opportunity to really understand the various components of this issue. And so truly, we wanted more information. And quite frankly, open

191disclosure, if we had had this information after Ian, I think there could have been some other opportunities. We may not even be in this situation. So what's done is done. I was not the superintendent at that time. Not going to take pot shots there. just saying in retrospect, this would have been great information to have right off the bat. So, thank you. Thank you, Superintendent Carlin. obviously many of us on this board have gone through this decision once before, so it's it's not easy, especially when we're talking about kids in the community. So, one of the things that sticks in my mind still, and it did back the last time, was unfortunately for Hurricane Ian was not the necessarily the cause for the all the issues in Fort Myers Beach. I mean, we were clearly

192in decline before that. So, I mean, and that's, you know, it's not something that I'm happy to hear, happy to say, but I mean, it kind of just accelerated one of the issues. So, and by that, I don't mean that I'm pushing one way or the other right now. It's something that, I really pondered. I know most the board at that point did when we're looking at it. So, and I was just, you know, right before Milton and Helena, I was actually down visiting with Principal Voxa in Fort Myers Beach, looking through the school and seeing all the progresses made. So, hats off to everyone there, hats off to the community. I, you know, we've known each other for many years, many of you, and I, I appreciate your encouragement of that. We also, when

193I'm looking at it as a whole, we just went up to Washington DC to lobby on behalf of the school district, and we talked about our capital needs, and I explained that we have approximately six schools, that we're building the east zone over the next 5 years, 7,500 kids, we'll say, approximately. I had to look at them and tell them that's not even close to what we need. So when I'm looking at decision or any other decision, you know, throughout this district, I have to make sure what we're doing is in the best needs of this entire district. So I'm not leading one way the other right now, but I that's part of the lens I'm looking at. one of the things too, Mr. Persons, I appreciate you did bring up Santael. that is another

194you know, it's not exactly comparable. It does bring it up. the difference though is right now is you know there's so much I agree there's potential in Fort Myers Beach. I've see how much how hard you've worked but you know Santa Bell's been a stable situation for decades with that and that's one of the differences I'm looking at. So I have nothing further to add at this moment. Thank you. Miss Giovanelli, do you have anything at this time? I do. Thank you. so for me and thank you Mr. persons for for bringing up your point of view because I do think that what you said is probably very valuable because I believe that this decision shouldn't just be a board decision. first of all the feasibility report was probably is imperative that we had needed

195this information to have to make better decisions and we didn't have that in the prior administration when the decision was decision was made to actually repair the school. So I think at this point in time I don't think we have enough by the survey that was given which was very minuscule as far as I'm concerned. I don't think we have enough community input. We know what the town of Fort Myers Beach, you know, wants and I respect that. So I think we have to reach out to what Lee County wants. I believe that's whom we serve and I believe that we need to get this information out there like to our partners like the Horizon Council who is nothing but businessmen and business people as well as just even who I people that I work

196with and you know our realtors that's 9,000 we have 9,000 realtors in Lee County and they might have a different perspective on the value of a school in in on the island. And I think that we need to and even our local delegation and local elected officials. We need to get everyone's opinion and what they see Lee County having a school on the beach, if it should continue or what that looks like, even if it is a hybrid charter school. I don't believe that this board should be the one solely making that decision. And I would like to see a survey that goes out more broadly and really get the input of the community because at the end of the day, that's whom we serve. That's who pays the taxes on getting this school either

197thumbs up or thumbs down. So, I want to see more information out to the community and what the community thinks and then we go from there to really make a decision. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Jordan. Thank you. I think that everyone up here has brought a lot of good items forward, but I think that the survey that went out was to Lee County and not the beach just based on the meeting that I did listen to from March I mean from May 28th. I was not invited to that meeting, but I did listen to it yesterday and this morning again. And I heard you loud and clear. I heard the chamber speaking about businesses, how they would come up with some kind of policies or procedures to encourage them to bring their children to

198work working on the beach for many years at Pink Shell. That was not something that any of my staff would have ever done though because of the fact of the hours in the hospitality industry. So, I when it when I hear you speak on that, I commend you because I think that's a great opportunity, but will that happen? And as far as the kids on the and I did also hear how they spoke of when the kids walk down the street, how other people see the children and can tell they're going to call you and let you know what's happening, what's happening to those children that are coming from across the bridge because somebody's coming one way or another. And I think that it's open to everyone in the district. However, they have to provide

199their own transportation if I'm not mistaken to go to the beach. Is that right? So, I think that's something that is kind of another addition to add on to how do we make those numbers grow? And I definitely voted for that school to be to be built because I to be rebuilt because I did believe in that. But I do thank you Mr. able for sharing that information and I am going to look at those schools and as I look a couple years ago when this first took place I went to Boca Grun and I looked at their charter because they have a charter school and the community embraces them and I think they had like 59 approximately the same amount of kids in their school too and they're still thriving today because they have

200embraced it. they work together to do that. But I'm interesting to see where we go with some other maybe opportunities and like Miss Jimelli said, you know, reaching out to Horizon Council real the realators, you know, those people to see what their intake would be as well because it is about the whole community. But yeah, there's a there's still a lot to to go over. So, I'll just I will I'm going to actually pivot into a different concern. just because we are really over time on our agenda. everybody's brought up great points. I'm I'm actually truly concerned about what the kids are going through right now because every moment outside of a classroom is a moment that the kids are losing academically speaking and student achievement is at the top of our priority list. so

201it's my understanding that they are po possibly going to be attending Heights Elementary. That is correct. Yes, ma'am. So my suggestion just my opinion, but as a school as a mom with school age children and actually a former teacher at Heights Elementary, I think Doug Po's outstanding administrator in our district. He has an outstanding staff. They have an amazing PTA that is really involved and I'm not sure the structure and how those children are going to be going to Heights Elementary. It's my understanding there's one kindergartener. I'm hoping that moving forward with with within the fall because that's going to be here before we know it. that those kids are somehow maybe in included in the Heights Elementary school population rather than being the kids from Fort Myers Beach that go to Heights Elementary. I

202think they would have a better a better experience all around next academic year just being a part of the school. there's a lot more that comes with it just for I mean things you don't even think about for example that come right out of a budget. You know how how are you going to manage the soap that's being used in the bathrooms that's coming out of the Heights budget. However, Fort Myers Beach does have their own budget. Is that correct? Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. I just I don't want to speak or or not give truths here, but there's just so much more to it. So moving forward, I'm, you know, we've we've talked about this. I know you're not asking for an opinion, but I'm concerned about what's going to happen in August with those

203Fort Myers Beach school kids because I don't want them to lose any more normaly of what a normal school year looks like and I want them to be you know, embraced at for at heights and I would love to see them embrace Heights as their possible temporary home. So, that's that's the topic I wanted to bring up today regarding this. I want to ask one more time, Miss Shaviano, do you have any other questions? I told you I would circle back. I'm not sure if Mr. Okay. All right. Any other comments, Mr. Ribble? Yeah, just real quickly, I'm just going to disclose the research I did. The name of the school is Laura Coke School. O C R A C O K E. And guess what? Those skids up there are also dolphins. So it's

204it's almost a similar situation as we have dolphins on our beach. the other thing is our last colleague that made the comment about kids in next year. This process took them four years cuz they were back and forth kind of like what we are. So I think the sooner we can come up with an agreement on a plan, the better off we're going to be with getting kids placed where they need to be. So those are my comments. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Carlin, you want to wrap up? Yes, thank you very much. So, first of all, thank you to our board members that are present as well as the folks that are appearing remotely. This is a very very important conversation. This is our first conversation about this feasibility report. I have been furiously

205writing over here picking up all the information that you've been sharing. And so my next step is to take this back to our team to have a robust conversation around all of the issues that you've surfaced. some of you have disclosed how you feel about moving forward. Some of you still are requesting additional information. So we want to make sure we honor that as well. Something that's very important for the community to understand is we do not take this decision lightly. This is extremely important to us. And some things that I've shared privately I want to share publicly. I am a 56-year resident of this community. I grew up in Cape Coral. However, our family went out to the beach, both Santael and Fort Myers Beach. When Ian came through, it was devastating to the

206community of Fort Myers Beach Elementary and to the larger Beach community. It was devastating to Santael. It was devastating to Pine Island and many other areas throughout Lake County. So there is no question I had never seen a storm come through with the magnitude of that horrific. Unfortunately, we have had additional damage due to the storm and this has impacted Fort Myers Beach Elementary certainly, but other schools as well. So what I will share with you is we do not take these decisions lightly. Our heart is with you as well as many communities that have suffered as a result of not just Ian but all of the various storms that have come come to our community since then. Education is our lifeblood. That's what we do for a living. As Miss Fleming said, we want

207all of our children to have a great experience in school, including the children at Fort Mars Beach Elementary. So all of your children are very near and dear to us. We are happy that there's a report here that helps us to make a solid decision. It helps us. It's not the only form of recommendations. We have five construction options here. Those are not the only construction options at our disposal. We are limited only by our creativity. That's the only limit we have. And so I invite the Fort Myers community, Fort Myers Beach community as well as Lee County to join us and to think about what are those options that are available because we have five in our hands right now. There may be others. So we invite you to join us in this conversation.

208We're proud to have this conversation with you. And very importantly to me as your superintendent is to make a wise decision. Not to jump at something that's a shiny object over there and say that's the one or I like 7.5 million. That's just my favorite number. I'm going to go with that option. That's not what we're after in this district. That's not what you're after as a community. What we're after is to make databased decisions, fact-based decisions, deal with the reality. what are we dealing with here and now and in the spirit of the interlocal agreement to move forward in a positive direction. So, we're excited about our work with the town council because again the town council is with this is a partner in this ILA. So, we're excited about the work. I've had

209opportunities to at least one opportunity to talk with the mayor since I've been sworn in as the superintendent. He and I had a very productive conversation a week ago Friday and we look forward to continuing the conversation. But always know that we want to do what's be in the best interest of your children and all of our children in the school district of Lee County. So thank you very much for the opportunity to have this public conversation for us to engage in our dialogue for us to bring some new ideas to the table. and we welcome your ideas, not just those of you that are in the audience, but to our viewing audience as well. So, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Griffith. Thank you, Miss Lorenzo, for your time this afternoon. we are going to

210do this portion of today's workshop agenda. Thank you for taking the time. Next, we're going to have the me we are going to have a mental health presentation by Lori Brooks and Rob Spicker. Just a reminder, it's 4:15. we still have significant amount of public comment left. Good afternoon, Dr. Carlin. Board members, it's our pleasure to be here with Lori Brooks and give you this presentation to sort of wrap up our May mental health awareness campaign. So May being mental health awareness month made it very easy for us to have a built-in advantage of using that month to benefit and promote the school district's efforts. We set on in this campaign to have three main objectives. Increasing awareness of our available resources, encouraging our students and their families to seek help if needed, and to

211foster a culture of support. The campaign promoted three key messages. Using those same hashtags across social media platforms help to reinforce the campaign, and it keeps the messaging consistent. It also helps with engagement as these are going to be common and searchable terms that anybody online or on our Facebook page is going to be able to find. One of the main focuses of the campaign really was online. this was using the school district's website and social media so that we were sharing our message. We used graphics and videos and we also held a Facebook live question and answer session as part of the strategy during the month of May. What you see here is some of the updates that we made to create a new look on the website which helped match the graphics and

212the messaging that we were putting out on our social media site. Those tiles down below on the page there, they give it easy links so that our students, our parents, and anybody in the community can come to this page, find it easy to navigate and make it as easy as possible for them to find or whatever they need or may want in terms of mental health support. We incorporated a board member, as we're going to do, into many of these campaigns, and M. Langford Fleming was the one who helped re reinforce the key messages with a video that she recorded for us. Her video has had 3,700 views and it did very well with those who are outside of our network. About 30% of the viewers were not current followers or people who liked the

213school district of Lee County's Facebook page. So, it reached a wider audience than we would automatically. Another strategy of the campaign was to make sure we're highlighting our partners in all of this. The school districts simply cannot provide the services that all of our students and families would need on our own. So, we have to bring in these partners to help offer them a network of care. this link on the post can help drive those interested right back to our website so they can get more information and directly a link to our partners. Our Facebook live event hopefully you got a chance to watch, but it turned out to be a really good event with great information made available to those that were wa with us. We generated 4,500 views so far since the May

21413th event. And we got another 95 on YouTube, which is not a place we advertised for it necessarily to be. So about 100 people found us on our YouTube channel. we received and answered about 20 viewer questions during the presentation. We provided two follow-ups afterwards and it turned out to be a great sharing of information. Here's just another example of one of the social media posts that we put out. It was simple, straightforward, factual. You really want to make this easily consumable so that it can be digested quickly and succinctly. And I think that these were good examples of that so that the messages were easy for our families and viewers and and community to take in. Not all of our posts were organic, which means posted by us and then interacted with those who

215like or follow our page or comment on it. The campaign did include some paid posts and paid means that we get to reach beyond our sphere of influence to outside followers. Two of these videos were what was posted. They're good examples. You want to put your best foot forward if you're paying for it. and they worked well to help bring people in to view our materials and use our resources. We made our students aware of the campaign as well all month long with this campaign graph campaign graphic that was visible right as they logged onto their Chromebooks every day in the month of May. We also alerted our parents to the campaign through two school messenger emails with links to our mental health awareness portal and an invitation to view the Facebook live event or

216submit a question in advance. both of those emails had a 45% open rate for those that were delivered. It was about 85,000 emails that were delivered in total and 45% each time were opened up by our audience. And then you've heard us talk about data through here, but here's some more numbers to help evaluate the performance of this campaign. It was really successful reaching about 19,000 people through the 13 posts on our Facebook page and our Instagram page. the paid material then helped them more than double that audience reach and it gave us pretty good value for our money based on some of the clicks and the click-through rate. So we did well with this campaign and just to mention earlier today you had Dr. Desimore and Sarah Cox up here mentioned the fiscal responsibility

217campaign. Not that's going to be a copycat but what you have seen through this mental health awareness very similar to what you'll see now through the month of June going forward have the same look the same feel. I'm going to turn it over now to Lori Brooks. Thank you so much. So, as Mr. Speaker has said, we are about education and then the most important part, what do we do with that education and raising awareness and that is really driving resources so that our students, our parents and our families and our staff are aware of the resources available to them so that they can reach out and connect. So, our resources for students really begin with access to their school mental health team members as needed. School counselors, social workers, psychologists, licensed mental health professionals.

218Our students encounter these amazing professionals every day for different reasons and different needs. And then in addition, they all serve on the school mental health team and can serve their mental and emotional wellness. And so with parental consent, we tier our services so that they are provided based on need and based on parental consent. And then of course the mental health and wellness portal is available 247. Good. As we are leaning into parents and families and understanding their resources and helping them connect, they range from educational information on the mental health and wellness portal to parent education events and also specific access to services for their student. Services are based on screening for need with parental consent and then an appropriate level of service based on those screening results. Resources for staff include training in

219youth mental health first aid, traumainformed practices, suicide prevention, and many other areas. And then staff have access to school mental health team members when they have concern for students because we rely in many regards on our staff to be our eyes and ears and connect students to us. And they can also consult with the school mental health team members related to how to best support their students in the classroom. for their own personal wellness. Staff have access to the EAP and related services and also frequently they may consult with a school mental health team member about accessing those services. And of course again we have our mental health and wellness portal for everybody. And so now we would like to open it up for superintendent comments and board discussion. Thank you very much and special

220thank you to Mr. Spicker and Mrs. Brooks for highlighting this very important concept. You know, one of the things we talk about as educators is how important it is to focus on the academics with our children, right? We look at all those targets, but we all understand as educators that if children don't feel safe, the learning does not occur. And we have seen that in classrooms across our district and across the nation. So, just thank you for the focus on this awareness for this past month and we look forward to our board members comments and discussion. Mr. Ribble. Yeah, I Yes, it was a great report. You folks are doing a great job with this. I want to give Mrs. Langford Fleming a compliment. I watched your video a couple times. I thought it was

221a great message. As you know, several of us went to the regional schoolboard meeting here several months ago. Miss Jordan and Sam Fischer, myself and I was really shocked to hear that 27% of our students are anxious each and every day in the classroom or at home and these processes you're putting in place is really going to help address those needs of those students. So, thank you very much. Miss Shaviano, do you have anything? I do not. Thank you, Miss Gioanelli. Real quick, I just wanted to say the kudo. I saw the video as well and I thought it was excellent and watched it a couple times. So, great job. that's member Fleming. Thank you. Now I know why it had so many views. Your fellow board members. You can watch it 10 times. probably

222my dad did. Mr. Fischer, did you have your hand raised? I'm sorry. No. Okay. Thank you so much for this campaign. I know that and May is such a great time to really drive it home with our students going home for a couple of weeks and our teachers going home for a few weeks as well. So, thank you for all the hard work behind this. Thank you. Thank you. we're going to move on. Next, we have job descriptions presented by Dr. Shaina Johnson. Fantastic. Good. Thank you. All right. Good afternoon, Madame Chair, board members, Superintendent Carlin, and Attorney Mintosh. We have to pay attention over there. Today we have three job descriptions that we're bringing to you today. two from academic services and one from operations. And at this time I'll take any questions or

223comments that you have. So I don't have a I don't really have a question or comment about the actual job title, but I was curious and I'm not sure who can answer this question. How many agriculture teachers are in our district? I do not have that answer. We will get that information for you. Thank you for Okay, seeing no concerns or questions. Thank you. Thank you. Next is the FSBA advocac advocacy committee positions. the lays on an alternate discussion. Our chair Samuel Fischer is going to be presenting and leading this discussion today. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll just make it brief. Yeah. every year we are required as part of our participation in the Florida School Board Association to hire to make sure that we appoint a board member to the advocacy committee. currently we

224have board member Jordan who's been fantastic. I really appreciate her engagement with that. your advocacy committee and you know if anyone has any questions I would encourage Miss Jordan but essentially you're representing the district statewide for advocacy. you're engaging policy m makers and education stakeholders attending monthly meetings and leading local advocacy and reporting efforts. So obviously Miss Jordan wants to go forward. I am the advocate for Jada. Miss Fleming is the advocacy person. I am the alternate. So I just want my apologies. I got that confused. But yes, I would take on that responsibility because I have been the alternate. Okay. So, we have our designated primary and alterate. My apologies on that. So, but needless to say it's important position and especially the things that we're able to accomplish FSBA as a whole in

225order to support our school district and support changes throughout our state. So, we're looking for obviously, you know, it's up to us as a board then to select somebody for that position. So, Miss Giovenelli or Miss Shaviano, do either of you want to weigh in on this at this time or have an interest in Mr. Fischer. Go ahead. Once they're done. Okay. I don't know if they're still online. I am still online. Who is that? What? Who is that? Miss Giovenelli. Go ahead. Okay. So, I would be interested as well. I mean, but I'm open to allowing others for opportunity that has not served on that. So, I you know, but I was an alternate before for for Kathleen, I believe. I think that's who it was. I was trying to think. So, I'm open.

226Thank you, Mr. Fisher. Did was Miss Shaviano? Did she say she's interested? I couldn't hear. I'm not sure. Miss Shaviano, I did. I did say I was interested. Thank you. She is. Was that a yes or is that Are you confirming yes, you are interested in being the advocate? Yes, that's what I'm saying. Sorry, Mr. Fischer. Yeah, I was just going to suggest that two of our newer members, you know, then have one of our experienced members as the backup alternate, excuse me, that just, you know, it's a great organization to get involved with. I'll I'll weigh in then just because it's confusing over here. So, I think it would be a great opportunity for Miss Shavaniano to take that and if Miss Giovanelli wanted to become the alternate as just a veteran board member.

227I think that's a great idea. I think you both be would do a great job. I would support that. Yeah. Miss Shaviano, would you be willing to accept the advocate position? Yes, I would. Thank you. Miss Giovanelli, would you be willing to accept the alternate position? Absolutely. Mr. Fisher, last thing. I believe we will be taking a formal vote on this tonight. Okay. I'm not sure if you all heard that, but we will be voting on this tonight. All right. All right. Thank you. We're going to move on. Next, we have public comment. I'm going to ask our attorney to address public comment. Hopefully, he has it. Awesome. Thank you, Madam Chair. Schoolboard policy provides the opportunity at this time in the meeting to address the board concerning any matter on the meeting's agenda. If

228a completed public comment card, if you completed a public comment card, please provide it to the staff. Public comment will be held at the podium in the center aisle in front. Please be advised that the board will not respond during public comment to remarks made by speakers. Abusive language defined as swearing, use of profanity, or name calling is prohibited. Speakers who fail to follow proper decorum in this chamber will be ruled out of order. Any speaker continuing with such remarks will be required to relinquish the microphone per board policy 169.1 and may be removed from the chambers. There will be one warning. Per board policy 169.1. The time per speaker is 3 minutes if there are 20 speakers or less. You will find a countdown on the big screen in front of the room. Once

229your time has elapsed, the microphone will automatically shut off. Please state your name when you approach the microphone. I will call your names five speakers at a time. Please follow staff's direction when lining up. Madam chair, there are nine speakers that wish to address the board at this moment, thereby allowing three minutes each speaker. You may proceed. Thank you. First five speakers, please come up. We'll start with Miss Marge Cox, Monica Smucker, Jenny Tardiff Parzo, John Cox, and Carrie Woodson. Good afternoon. I'm Marge Cox. I live in Bonita Springs. I'm a retired educator. And I started in April with telling you that there were data points that would show over time the importance of having media specialists in your schools. You I've heard you say consistently you want to have improved student achievement. You want

230to base decisions based on data. And so that's what I'm trying to provide you each time. So April gave you the data for the importance of having media specialists. In May, I told you about the facilities that provided media training and the process through the Florida Department of Education. Today, I'm going to explain how school librarians help that keep the heart of the school beating with joy. And you have papers that you'll receive afterwards. I also send an email so you can directly hit the links. School librarians help to acquire the right materials for their school. They teach collaboratively with their classroom teachers. They're assisting students to develop research skills. They're interacting with parents and caregivers. They're promoting reading. They're supporting administrative programs and developing meaningful relationships with students and staff. I have a sample

231instructional option based on the Florida standards at the bottom of the paper that you'll receive. It's built around standard for fourth grade math which is build a foundation of addition, subtraction, and multiplication operations with fractions. And it refers to the book Fraction Action. I'm not going to read all of this to you, though I think you'd like it if I did, but I want to show you what could be done with it. As they read through it, one of the pages says, "We are a set of four squares. I am a fourth of the set." As I would read that to kids, they'd say, "Okay, so how would you write that as a fraction so that the kids are interactively involved? They're not just hearing, they're doing." And research tells us that when kids can

232do as well as listen, they're going to remember more. There's a second choice for that. We're a set of five circles. I'm a fifth of the set. What would one fifth look like if you were writing it as a fraction? So, the kids are involved all the way through. the activity then, and I've done this with students, so I know it works. I separated an orange and counted out the segments that were in that orange and how would that work. And then the kids had oranges and they separated theirs as well so that they could see and as an assessment, the classroom teacher would count out the loud number out loud the number of students in the class. the students would notice how what percentage they were of the boys and the girls in the

233entire class. So, your library media specialists are not just checking out books, they're impacting. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Scott. Go back to the hot tub. It's not ending. Miss, I'm going to ask you to mute your computer possibly. Good afternoon, Monica Schmucker. After Ian, all the options for dealing with beach school included fixing the historic building because that was required. Next was what to do with the kids. While that happened, you were presented with the cost to rent portables at $5.8 million. Our committee said, "Don't waste money renting portables. Spend that building us a permanent building." And that gave birth to the ILA and the phased rebuild plan, giving us the cafe building with the money that you would have spent on our portables. ILA section 3.1 phase 1B says by fiscal year 2425,

234the board shall build additional facilities to accommodate a permanent cafeteria. Phase 2 section A, the school board shall design and construct additional facilities to accommodate enrollment growth to 150 kids. The full cost of running the school shall be borne by the school board through fiscical year 27. Thereafter, if our school meets the threshold where it can sustain itself in line with the other barrier island schools based on the cost per student report, beach school shall continue to operate. You didn't build us that cafeteria by the end of this year and that in itself is a violation of the agreement. The ILA indeed contemplates another hurricane. Section 7.3 does not excuse your performance. If there were an unavoidable delay, it would extend the agreement. Nothing that Milton brought interferes with your ability to build that cafeteria

235building. That land is still there. Beach school had multiple buildings before Ian. Milton's damage to the building was it took on a few inches of water. No Helen damage and no Irma damage. The mere hiring of a consultant who's on a multi-million dollar retainer to determine what to do here violates our agreement. You already directed your staff to have a functioning school and build the cafeteria. What this consultant says notwithstanding until 2027 were to have a running school. If the recommendation is to close the school, then the vote before you is whether or not to violate the agreement with our town that you put into place. If you want out of the ILA, the way to do it is to let it play out. You give us what you promised us. You give us the

236full amount of time to do what we promised. And then if we can't if we aren't sustainable by 2027, then you consider the options of what to do. But recall that the options are receiving funding, subsidizing options, and other options before closing the school is even on the table. Section 7.12 states that time is of the essence. The delays by the district are only causing our town additional damages, and this provision of the agreement acknowledges that. All we want is for you to adhere to the agreement that's in place. Not only is the consultant report faulty with faulty data, which we'll show you more, but it's irrelevant to our current situation. Our agreement was to continue with the phased rebuild and it wasn't contingent on any additional viability studies. We had a demographer and we

237considered the factors and the ILA gives us three and a half years to be sustainable. Any vote for anything else to violate Thank you. the agreement that you Thank you. Your time is up. Hi, my name is Jenny Paradiso. First, I'm going to finish what she was saying. We had a demographer and considered many factors after Ian. With that, our plan was put into place with the ILA, giving us three and a half years to become sustainable. Five of you voted to put that plan in place. any vote to do anything else clean to violate the agreement you implemented. Now for me, today is the last day of school for my daughter at Beach Elementary. She was in tears this morning because she doesn't want to move on to middle school. Beach school is her

238safe space. Now, I realize beach school is small, and because of that, our cost per student was very high, but I also know without that small school, my daughter would have struggled much more than she did. In kindergarten, she left for spring break and didn't return thanks to CO. In first grade, she struggled because she has hearing difficulties. She's had seven surgeries in seven years. She struggled with mass because she reads lips. She got far behind, but her teachers didn't give up on her. They gave her the care and the attention that she needed because they could. Third grade brought us Hurricane Ian, which we lost everything as most of our friends and neighbors did. Not just photos and clothing, but whole homes, whole blocks, churches, parks, the pier, everything just gone. The school was

239still there. Our entire community rallied behind our families because they knew instinctively that we were going to need our beloved school to care for our most vulnerable. And I'll be honest, it wasn't just for the kids. Us parents needed the school, too. Somewhere we trusted wholeheartedly to leave our most precious items, the only things we had left, our kids. These are the same kids who watched their houses collapse thanks to the internet. Kids who watched their families get swept away in flood waters. Kids who returned home to find an empty lot. Kids who watched their parents try to keep it together. I like to think that the kids were immersed in the resilience everyone is always referencing. The love and general goodness of all of our neighbors in Lee County and beyond have helped them

240heal on some level. Then came the hard work of rebuilding our enrollment. We knew I couldn't go back to the way it was. We made a deal that we would do everything in our power to reduce costs and make the school a place people will drive their kids to. We know that our way of life is changing, right? In all things, change is inevitable. But there is no reason for us to stop doing good work. Good work that was working. We were up to 72 kids posting. That increase along with the reduction of staff should be celebrated. But instead, we're here again defending something that was working, something that we agreed to on both sides. I understand fiscal responsibility and that's why we entered into this agreement. We saved $5.8 million on those portables. We

241said, "Save them. Build us a cafeteria because we needed a full school with a cafeteria, not just a mobile food truck. I'm asking that you uphold your word. Give us the time promised. Give us your effort promised. And we need you. Please do the right thing. Give us the shot that you promised you would. Thank you. Hi John Cass. I had prepared some remarks but Mr. Persons had brought up with the study. I agree that the study was a more of a construction analysis than it was an actual viability assessment on the island. a lot of the information, the data that they were given them that they used to do their study was wrong. you know, I don't have time to get into it here, but if you're looking at that, I think you should

242take that into consideration. Our cost per student is not what it says in that study. Part of the reason why it's still reported is so high is because there's a lag to get numbers from the state, but I will tell you that we have saved money on the island. our cost per student has gone down. that being said, it's a it's a difficult difficult conversation to come up here and have Miss Jordan, you had mentioned, you know, previously working at Pink Shell that you don't believe people will come. I will tell you that right now 30% of the families that are sending kids to our school are from off the island already and we only have one resort open. I will tell you that our tenacity in dealing with developers on the island is real.

243we do expect them to work with their HR. you know, back in the old days, I don't want to I don't want to aid you, but you know, back previously, part of that may have been that there wasn't communication with the HR person that we didn't ask them to drive their schedules in a way to where somebody could get to the island at 6:30 in the morning, 6:00 in the morning, they could drop their kids off at a phenomenal, you know, preschool program. Their kids could go to school, they could pick them up at 6:00 at night. We're trying to work that flexibility in there. And as the gentleman who's going to speak after me, he's one of the consultants that's dealing with a lot of our developers. our developers are taking this and running

244with it. And I think that, as Mr. Person said, I don't see an issue with getting, you know, 150, 200 kids on that island, even if they're not organic, from the people that live there. and that people will be welcomed to our community and I think they'll love going to school on the beach. Thank you for your time. As Miss Karen Woodson comes up, can I have the next five speakers starting with John King, Patrick Vanessie, and the mayor of Fort Myers Beach, Dan Ellers, Rosanna Riley, and Paul Cohen. Thank you. You can proceed, sir. Sir sir, I'm John R. King, Fort Myers Beach Council member. I believe this is the third time I've addressed this body regarding the Fort Myers Beach Elementary School. Last time was April 2023. At that meeting, I asked the

245board to work with the parents and the town in an open, transparent, honest, and inclusive process. That next month, we both signed an interlocal agreement for the rebuild and continuing operation for Myers Beach Elementary. Superintendent Carlin, we have joined you. You've excluded us. Now, I stand here two years later, and I'm asking this board for the rebuild and continuing operation of Fort Myers Beach Elementary. The process has gotten us here has been less than open, transparent, honest, and inclusive. Because of this agreement, we are partners and we deserve to be included in the decisions affecting our school. It feels like the lesson this district wants to teach our children is not to honor agreements. It's my life experience that when schools seek more money from taxpayers, we're told about it's about the kids. This is

246less likely about the kids and more about the money. Board members, five of you approved this interlocal agreement. I implore you to help this community. Let's get back to working together. As we've shown before, there's nothing we can't accomplish for our kids and their teachers. And I'll guarantee that. Good afternoon. My name is Patrick Vaness. I'm happy that I'm here today. finally get to talk to the decision makers. if you're going to put any weight into this report that was brought before you, I would say look at it closely. Please listen to us. I question the legitimacy of that report and I question the credibility of that report. right after Ian, we made a point to your demographer to look at the island holistically, not just to look at population trends of residents only. The

247island has always been more about the residents, the employers, the employees, and everybody that lives in the 33931 zip code. Previously, we have been handcuffed. We were not, while school choice existed, we were not on those forms. People were not given the ability to check off Fort Myers Beach and send those kids to our school. So, we've worked with you. We've expressed that things are changing. I can also tell you that I work with many development entities that are proposing projects and have gotten projects approved on Fort Myers Beach. A lot of those projects have provided commitments and conditions of approval in their zoning approval that they will promote the beach school. Their HR department will explain to them that they have school choice that there are opportunities for preare and after care. we have

248all so going back to the credibility of of what your demographer has done. They've omitted to look at this model that we already have with Santael that you can bring kids from off to school to our island. But also they have failed to look at the results since Ian. We have proven them wrong already. In seven months we exceeded their projections. They said that we would not exceed 50 students. We were at 72 before the storm and this is going to keep increasing. So if you are going to put any credence to this report, please look at it in detail. Let us educate your consultant and let us provide you the facts. And I think what you'll see is what's in the report is not accurate and I don't think the report is legitimate in

249itself. Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, Miss Carlin, board members. Thank you for having me. I never thought I'd be at another meeting after our marathon last night, but yet here I am. you know, numbers are amazing thing. And following your slides up there, there was some things that really stuck out to me. The 89,164 students that you have in a $2.9 million budget, you know, numbers and statistics, you can make them tell whatever narrative you really want to, right? For instance, I could take those numbers and say that's my math probably a little off because it's been a long day. $32,524ish dollar per student. Even if you were to take the $27,000 per student, my question to my staff would be, where's the other 5,000 going? If that encompasses everything from the building to

250the 67% salary cost that you showed to those plaques in front of you, where's the other 5,000 going? And I only say that simply because numbers again can be statistics. They could be whatever you want them to be. To me, there's two numbers that really matter in this entire thing. Zero and one. Mr. Mr. Fischer, you said that there was an issue of declining school kid members before the school. I agree. But you know how many times we were contacted as a council to let us know that was an issue? Zero. We would have taken action had we known. The storm was unfortunate for all of us. But it reset it reset the decline that you were talking about. It gave us opportunity. You want to talk about the council members, Mr. Persons? We are

251not just suggesting that development take into action. We are making a condition of their approval. If you look at the arches last night, one of their conditions of approval was to drive that enrollment up because of what Mr. Vanes just said before school after school programs. And Miss Jordan, I will respectfully disagree with you. I've spoken to every one of the resort GMs on the island and the owners. Not only are they excited about the program and not only are there people using it, it also benefits them because that allows them to bring better talent into the school because now they know we as parents all know the closer we could bid be to our children, the better work we do, right? If I know I'm five minutes away from my child, should something happen,

252god forbid, at the school where they got hurt, I'm five minutes away. That means a lot to people. That will bring in a bigger plan and a bigger clientele trying to hurry up. I'm a I'm a look forward type of guy. I'm a problem solver. My the you know the number one that I was talking about, it comes down to each one of you. You each have one vote. It's going to be your vote. I understand that there was discussions about bringing other people in and having all that, but at the end of the day, it's your one vote. We're asking you to take a good hard look at what we're doing to work with you, instruct your staff. Because though you can't take any action today, if there's one thing I can say before

253my time runs out, you can give guidance. You can give guidance even though you can't vote. My suggestion would be give the superintendent guidance to take closing the school off the table. That will ease a lot of tension and let us work together to finish what we what we Good afternoon. My name is Paul Cohen. I have nearly 40 years of audit experience and I'm past president of two different chapters of the Institute of Internal Auditors, which is an international professional association founded in 1941 with over 260,000 members. They offer professional certification and provide standards for the internal audit profession. I'm also a former officer of two different chapters of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, a professional organization founded in 1988 with over 95,000 members. I'm also a certified fraud examiner, certified to perform

254quality assessment reviews of the internal audit function, a certified risk manager, and was previously a certified internal controls auditor. I'm also past chair of the district's finance advisory committee and with the aid of that committee's hard-working unpaid volunteer members found significant cost savings income sources and helped to address some procedural weaknesses in the district. I also helped to create the current Lee County School District's audit committee and a signific significant role in the creation of its policy. I'm opening my discussion with you in this manner so you fully comprehend that I'm not someone who does not understand both the internal audit process but also has a good understanding of the district. I'm speaking with you today as a citizen who also happens to chair the Lee County School District's audit committee. The committee was created

255over two years ago. I am proud to have been its first chair and to have been collaborating with volunteer professionals who I respect and who put the district first. I also appreciate the support received from Dave Nulan and his staff and especially appreciate the professional respect received from RSM, the board's internal auditor. The committee was formed at the request of RSM and thus far a strong partnership has been established for the betterment of the district between both parties with mutual respect established. To date, the committee has ensured that a risk-based audit plan is in existence and to for the sake of time I have numerous concerns about the internal audit function. The committee has only been invited to speak with this board on one occasion and that was to educate the board on the role

256of the committee and to ensure that the board understands the difference between audit and an efficiency study. To my knowledge, no other advisory committee has been not given the right to present to this board and to the superintendent. We receive administrative support from Mr. Nulan and his team. But in most organizations, that support comes from the CFO. And lastly, the most important part, and I have a copy of this presentation. I would like it read into the minutes of the meeting. I hope that my chair replacement will receive a better treat. Sir, your time is up. Thank you. Like to make last call for Rosanna Riley and Karen Woodson. And if there neither are here, Madam Chair, that will conclude all the people signed up for public comment. Thank you. We're going to move on

257to good of the order or other business. I'm going to start with Miss Shaviano. Do you have anything for good of the order? I do not. Thank you. Miss Giovenelli. Mr. Fischer. Hey, Madam Chair. briefly, going through, we're all going to be or many of us going to be going to FSBA conference, next week where we'll be looking at a new slate of, executive, leadership there. Horizon Council, Dr. Carlin and I attended and we had a very interesting discussion they had on arts in the community I believe was the alliance of the arts and talked about the impact both within you know education community. I thought that was very interesting. I want to give a shout out to my fellow acting buddy and her amazing job at state of the schools by superintendent Carlin. you

258hit it out of the park and I really appreciate the how you presented to our community and the things you told them about what's the great things going on in this district. So, I appreciate that. real quick, board auditor, I have kept the job posting open a little bit more. I know sometimes during this fiscal part of the year that some people in government this time of year, I know they try to, you know, there's some movement in jobs throughout the places. I would like to figure out obviously next steps of what our next meeting will be. I know obviously we're approaching many of us have summer vacations, other things. So I will probably discuss with our staff and see when some appropriate times are maybe I guess I don't know if we want to

259do more towards our next meeting in July or not to to go to some next steps. So that's all I have. I'll hold the rest for the meeting tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ribble. Yeah, I already reported on the FGCU involvement versus the league county schools. I do want to comment on the ITF and that's our claims review committee. Dr. Iusi was very gracious to set up a re our first review with Etna to talk about the specific claims. again, it's not good news. Our claims are now up over last year for the month of $2.1 million being 8.9 million last year. This year 11 million. we got into a good conversation about workman's comp and injuries in the school district by by staff. And believe it or not, the number one injury is

260slips and falls, which is a teacher or a staff person standing on a chair to reach something high and falling. and particularly those that are over age 60 are not doing well with a fall like that when it comes to healing. So guys like myself need to refrain from standing on a chair. But we're going to take a look at that and as you know we have the mandatory learning each and every year. We have eight or nine of those that we got to complete. the HR group is telling me they're going to add a piece on accident prevention which has to be I believe it's less than 8 minutes. Is that correct? less than 8 minutes, but that'll be 8 minutes well spent so you don't get yourself hurt or in a situation where

261you got to break a hip, a leg, or an arm, or whatever. one other thing, I was glad to hear about what we're doing with the auditor, but I would like to move the contract with our attorney along if we possibly can. That's all I have. Miss Jordan, thank you. I really want to thank the folks from and you can correct me anytime. I'm I'm good like that, but just thank you all for being here and speaking your truth. I also want to say I really appreciate when I when I say things that I'm not acknowledged and I'm just dismissed just like I was when I spoke about being the possibly being on the advocacy. It just went death ears and moved right along like I didn't even speak. So, I just wanted to bring

262that up and let you know how that just made me feel. So, I understand how people think that we don't hear them. also with Mr. Rebel, thank you for bringing that up because I was bringing that up as well. I know that the board attorney had spoke to us regarding the amendment to her employee agreement and I thought we were going to see it on this agenda, which it is not on there, but I do believe that we need to do that sooner than later. the last time that this was brought it's the same agreement since April of 2020 and I think it's time that we put that to bed and move on with that. All the other things I will speak about later today. So, thank you so much, Mr. Persons. I'll save mine

263for this evening. Thank you. I'm going to save most of my comments for this evening, but I do want to just bring to the public's attention since we talked about safety and we talked about mental health. We were many of us were able to go tour the sheriff's headquarters a few days ago and you know, I've always known that the sheriff and his and the department has done, you know, an outstanding job at partnering with the school district, but until you see that facility, I mean, talk about state-of-the-art. So, I just really appreciated that tour and that highlevel discussion we had. So, I know I got to see the robot dog and that was that was really cool. But the last thing I had attended the health advisory committee a couple weeks ago. They're doing

264such an amazing, you know, Miss Roy and her and that whole team does such a great job. we talked a lot about the amount of water that you should be drinking and everybody went home with a nice big Yeti cup. So, I think they're down in the district office somewhere. If there might be a few extras, you should get your hands on one. But, it reminded me that we've talked about this in the past and I think some summertime homework for some of our staff is to really hone in on our school lunches. And what a great time of year other than the first part of the year is to, you know, send home send our home kids to school knowing that they're going to get a an awesome meal, all the colors on the

265plate. And I know we've talked about in the past, we just it's been several months since we brought it back and I got another email about it last week. So, it's something I continue to hear about, but I know that they're working hard and I look forward to hearing more about it. Dr. Carlin, I believe Mr. Fischer may have a comment for this. Oh, Mr. Fischer, I just wanted to follow up on the board attorney contract. So, the majority of this board a few months ago tasked me with working with outside counsel to renegotiate the contract for the board attorney. So, we proceeded with that. Each of you gave your input on that. approximately April 5th, board the our board attorney said she wished to cease negotiations at that point. at that point having no

266other direction from this board when it came to discuss just parts of the contract not the contract as a whole at that point I left it up in this point if the majority of board wants to discuss pieces of the contract but I did not bring it forth because it was outside of our process I was not given any other authority so we talk about processes and procedures in this district so I followed the guidance of the majority of this board and when I did that obviously the majority of the board if they wish to decide differently. We're welcome to bring that forward. We're able to do that, but in my capacity and that I was tasked with, we were not following the process at that point. Again, that's nothing against the board attorney. I've

267already explained that to her, but that was what the direction I was given. The contract negotiations are ceased and only partial terms of that contract were then be asked to look at. We have four corners of document. So, on what was represented to me, I feel that if we want to restart negotiations, we're welcome to do that. We will then engage outside council at that point. If the rest of board wishes to proceed without that, then that is our decision. Thank you, Dr. Carlin. Thank you, Madam Chair. so, I wanted to take a moment just to compliment our board. You know, there are a wide variety of things that are happening in our community and in the nation. And when I think about your relentless focus on the most important work, I want to appreciate

268you. We talked about items pertaining to school safety today. We talked about our budget. We talked about things that are critical to move this district forward to number one in the in the Big 10 of the state of Florida. You are focusing on the work and I just needed to publicly recognize you that these are very critical issues that we're talking about. mental health, our budget, being more transparent, engaging our parents, making sure that they are empowered as their part as partners in the their child's education, talking about the future of our schools, including Fort Myers Beach Elementary. These are important conversations and I just thank you for your time and attention to those. I also want to thank the elected officials, the parents, the community members that came out to speak today, including those

269from Fort Myers Beach. It is it is so important that you know that we care about the comments that you make. Obviously, we don't respond after each one of your comments. However, we've heard your commentary today and we appreciate that. again, just to reiterate, these are conversations that we will continue to have offline one-on-one with our board members as well as with my staff. so, I appreciate your comments and I'll reserve the balance of my comments for this evening's action meeting. Thank you. Attorney Depay Bruno. Attorney Macintosh, since you're sitting in my seat, I don't have anything. I have no comments. Thank you. Today, we have a student performance at 5:45 p.m. followed by a board action meeting at 6 p.m. At this point, having no other business come before this body and seeing no

270objection, this meeting is adjourned and the time is 5:07 p.m.