School Board Workshop: March 22, 2021

001hey good afternoon it is monday march 22 2021 the order of business today is the workshop we will be reviewing the legal department organization clarification of board attorney role job description and evaluation and agenda review will be the second on that for march 23rd we will be postponing this meeting for 30 minutes so we will return at 1 30. thank you thank you okay okay good afternoon again we are back for our workshop our one o'clock workshop and the first item on our list today is the review of the legal department organization clarification of board attorney role job description and evaluation and we will start with our chief staff attorney mr brian williams thank you for being here good good afternoon you're not on your way oh sorry about that good afternoon i guess we

002have a couple of things i know part of this was to talk about the responsibilities evaluation as well as the organizational structure of both offices i don't know if we want to and i guess i'll defer to the board whether you want to start with the responsibilities evaluations i know there was some conversation about evaluations in the last meeting but i just don't i want to put one before the other if there's a particular preference in what you'd like to start with but if you will regarding this if you will go over and i apologize i'm trying to get this up it was acting up i apologize if you will go over what like your portion of it first okay and we understand and i have to say that i'm sorry that you are leaving

003us but if you will share that what you have done in your department and how you have this structure and we do understand you know the possibility of it may not you know continue to be this way but at this time this is how it is and we would love to see this yeah so what i'm going to do is i'm going to start off with just the structure first and sorry and this is actually almost exactly what i presented to you in about november over a year ago relative to the organizational structure of the office there are some open positions on there where i was dreaming of staff being placed in there and i know one of the topics of discussion has also been bringing public records over under the office of legal counsel

004but essentially there is the structure in terms of how we operate we have the two staff attorneys mrs rhode and mr holloway who have their own respective areas and i'll go into a little bit more detail on that and then we have ryan mr hudak who is on under the office of civil rights and equity but also assists us in a lot of different areas again the focus there was trying to identify as many areas and needs that we could cover district-wide there's a lot of legal issues that come from various departments and we were really just trying to focus and identify those issues while also providing a little bit of cross-training it's essential given you know the way in which we succession plan to allow for you know our attorneys to get as broad

005spectrum of experience in a lot of these different areas and so that's that was one of the focuses in the last year and of course i'll say that with the big star next to it because there's a caveat we obviously had kovan 19 hit and that was a major legal conundrum it's something that i don't think we really anyone could anticipate and i can tell you that the legal issues that stemmed out of covet 19 whether it be from the mask issue to labor and employment issues were substantial and you know and i say for the most part we handled all of those with the with respect to the various departments internally a lot there was very little that was sent out as it relates to covet 19 maybe some you know specific issues on

006maybe labor employment but i think that's significant because the having the resources of having those additional attorneys was pertinent to us continuing to function when faced with a pandemic because of the volume of work all those coveted issues were handled but we the rest of the work did not go away and we obviously had to phase into some different issues with both virtual school and just how we closed and then reopened normal you know operation both in the new year so i think that you know staff i hope has found that you know the attorneys being in their respective areas has allowed for a much quicker feedback in terms of legal representation on specific issues and one thing that is unique we're each of our attorneys actually placed in a different part of the building

007so we have mr rhodes sits with the academic team mr holloway sits with the operations team and so you know the attorneys are accessible to them on on on you know it's nice to be able to walk into someone's office as opposed to have to go search or schedule a meeting so you know that's where we're at i realize me leaving kind of you know puts a potential change in this structure what what i again would advocate is that the the need there is a need at the paralegal and i know we're not talking about hiring any additional people but with me leaving i'm not exactly sure how what the plan is in terms of you know moving forward but i think this structure works i know there's been discussion about you know merging the

008offices and things along those lines and i'm quite familiar with the structures of of the different offices across the state obviously i came from the miami-dade format i think you know the issue we have here is a little bit different i think we have clear issues that come up where the superintendent's office is adverse to the board and i think that inherently just presents a ton of conflict conflict issues that really makes it challenging to mur i couldn't imagine if one person was sitting in in that seat and having to make all these these decisions i mean essentially you'd be bringing in conflict counsel every week and i think that becomes problematic and i think that's something that the board needs to consider moving forward in terms of how they structure that because essentially there's

009just a lot of issues there and i don't know what the right solution is i know that other districts don't necessarily have the same conflict issues although i've talked to several general counsels who have experienced issues and again at that appropriate moment they have to bring in someone from the outside because it's just there's too many issues and we have our own bar rules to follow as it relates to conflicts in addition to the florida commission on ethics but that being said i'm going to jump right into kind of the responsibilities of everybody thank you and i tried to sorry if this isn't clear let me shrink this what i tried to do on this spreadsheet and this was very similar to what i provided you right there thank you i tried to do was

010kind of put every role and up on the on the spreadsheet and kind of just go through what the different responsibilities were again this gets changed based on cross-training succession planning as well as just trying to give the attorneys an overall experience in a variety of different areas it's important to have that backup because there are times where people are out and there are times where there are conflicts with meetings and you can't be in two places at once and there needs to be staff that fills in so that's part of the way we've been doing it in addition to the school board education law certification exam typically there's multiple ways you can get it but one of the things is experience if not you have to wait like a customary like three years of

011having done it back to back significant experience in that area and so you know i was able to become eligible for it because of my experience which you have to have experience in a variety of different areas i've done an expulsion hearing i've done a doa hearing for employment i've done a charter school application i've done so the more experience our attorneys have in these areas the quicker they will be able to sit for that exam but more importantly the easier the exam will be for them because they'll understand a variety of different areas which often is difficult in some of these larger offices where the attorneys literally only specialize in one particular area that being said if you look at this i'll just go from one and down brian is this is this on

012the president where i have the same question yeah i see this was not part of i don't believe we did not receive this as part of our board docs so i don't have a second computer like you guys do to put up what's on the screen so oh i apologize i'm i'm just pulling what's i had a file loaded so i'm just pulling what was in there you can get any of the organizational chart or any of that we have the chart you do not have the breakdown that is here and maybe you can send that out to us so that we will have that as well yeah i'll get that to you i apologize well and then i'll just go through it and again it just kind of breaks down the different roles that

013each of the attorneys play in terms of who reports to the board which would be the board attorney who reports to the superintendent which would be myself and the staff attorneys as well as the two staff attorneys and then mr hudak would report to me as the chief staff attorney over the office of civil rights and then you have of course those supervised by the superintendent and then we have you know delegates and monitors legal work to outside counsel that falls under the auspice of the board attorney and at times i have been involved in that process which again this process has changed since miss bruno dupuis bruno came aboard from my office as well as a combination of her office right now she oversees the general liability cases whereas i oversee the employment cases

014and so i will work typically with outside counsel on those employment cases and then she will work on the gl cases and i think everything else that kind of comes under the school board renders opinions again that's a combination opinions come in different formats we could get a request from the superintendent for an opinion that will be sent to the board obviously direct opinions from the board to the school board attorney would come directly from her office and i'll add occasionally you know there could be an opinion that would come from outside counsel the board attorney we have her underneath the request opinions from legal experts for the board and again that could be a specific issue that is you know outside the purview of the attorneys within our office and then you have board

015representative legal matters issues i'm sorry ms williams can you speak closer to the microphone they cannot hear sorry so then you have the board representative legal matters issues and litigation that again falls under the auspice of the school board attorney superintendent district legal matters i think we all know the the kind of model that we have right now which is the office of legal counsel provides support to the superintendent and the district staff at the executive level and on down whereas the distinction being with the miss bruno is that the board attorney provides legal advice to the school board as well as the superintendent on occasion so you know that's the model that we currently have and that's where a lot of this derives from drafting review board policies and resolutions that currently sits under

016the school board attorney although i will say that at times the staff attorneys do provide a review of board policies it just depends on on on where the policy derives from or whether it's a new policy oftentimes if it's a new policy i think that will of course generate from the school board attorney's office and then kind of you know maybe in collaboration with district staff get reviewed by the various offices and as you see well as you see on the screen reviews board policies and resolutions we put all of the staff attorneys including mr hudek and the office of civil rights underneath that because if it's a relevant to the area that they work in they're going to review the board policy so if it's an operational issue mr holloway will review that if

017it's an academic issue mr rhode will review that and so on i'm sorry mr williams miss morgan miss shaffer just sent that to email that so if you want to open that up so instead of breaking your back screen thank you okay sorry as far as advising the board on the impact of new legislation that would be the school board attorney we of course in our office when we receive well both of our offices receive a legislative update and i think when we receive that i think our goal is to make sure staff is aware of any sort of legislative impact that it impacts their particular office and so the staff attorneys will in their respective areas share that information i certainly share it with the cabinet level staff to again make sure that we're

018we're aware what's out there legislatively and the impact that we'll have on both board policy and process whether it be a contract contractual change or just information that requires a modification to board policy as far as communicating with and or provides education to employees in service training i think we all all of us do training at some level i know that this year we've had a significant amount of training come out of the office of civil rights whether that be title ix transgender issues we've had several trainings come out of academic service search and seizure i know mr holloway and mr hudak have also done a discrimination in employment practices so there's a variety of in-service training that we've done as it relates to just various areas and one of our goals is about try

019to be proactive in providing information to staff to avoid litigation sort of a risk management perspective in that you know the more we can train folks the you know hopefully the more we can resolve issues on the front end as opposed to the back end and we're constantly taking issues that we see that may come up in litigation and trying to provide training in those particular areas while also working with staff to document that i think we're we're trying to take advantage of you know some video services so that we can have that a permanent record so that staff who's unable to attend can actually go back and view those things and have those sitting on on available to staff after the fact as far as bargaining goes it went a little bit differently this

020year when i when i started i actually did both targeting sessions this year i broke it up amongst the two attorneys and i believe ms road sat in on talc and mr holloway center and on spout and i tried to do that to kind of put it in the area where it best suited their their experience in the areas that they cover and i think it was a good opportunity to give them both exposure to the bargaining process student matters child custody i will miss schroed typically heads those up as the staff attorney for academics and student services i will say i am back up but i will also add and i should have put it on here miss bruno mitsudi bruno also provides assistance to us that to us in that area and we

021recently had a meeting as it relates to child custody issues because we have some thoughts there on how to improve that while working with the current judicial circuit to streamline that we recognize that the school sites are often put in a very difficult situation when it comes to those issues but overall child custody if it's a fhsaa issue student enrollment that will typically fall under miss schrode ese and i idea 504 that's miss road as well obviously being academics and then expulsion hearings also falls under ms schrode consultant contracts and agreements i've broken we break these up basically and i know you've received the contract process from ms dupuy bruno but ultimately the goal is to have contracts go through the attorneys in the areas that they specialize in i tend to look at some

022of our real estate i also look at our interlocal agreements and then i also review some of the more challenging agreements that come out of either of those areas and then of course those are sent to the board attorney after our review grants we have that under the board attorney legislative liaison under the board attorney ocr academic i have that under it's really mr hudak receives a lot of our ocr eeoc complaints and then works in conjunction with a attorney whether that be internal or external and facilitating if there's an investigation or if there is litigation then he will play a role in assisting in the resolution of those matters perk arbitrations those all fall under labor which is also a mr holloway and then i also work on those issues as well and then

023we have garnishments which is under the chief staff attorney mr holloway has also worked on some of those cops financing energy management this typically falls under the board attorney's office i know in the past we had weiserota and they were actively involved in that with miss dessimore's office doa hearings all of us can have doa hearings all of us i think have had a doer hearing mr holloway handles the employment issues ms schrode handles due process as it relates to any sort of esc issue that's something significant we used to we used to refer those outside to outside counsel mr pinley who is now the board attorney and i believe volusia county is the used to handle those matters for us we now handle those cases internally and then the auto liability again is under

024the school board attorney employment discrimination under my office title nine is under mr hudak e eeo matters as well and i will note that we've had a significant amount of investigations i would say in the past year i would say more than a few that he's been able to either resolve or you know get to a point where it makes it we have the information that we need to either you know defend those claims should they proceed to a federal process with the new hr process there's or what's called ort level one and level two we have staff that sit on both of those i the board attorney i believe is on ort level two pre-determination hearings again we split those up between mr hudak and mr holloway ada hearings mr hudak and mr holloway

025and ms schroeder's occasionally sat in again this is part of our cross training derek hearing student expulsions that would be ms schrode but we have had mr holloway and mr hudak sit in there just to observe that process and what they're doing we are going to have some recommendations as to that process in the next few months which will ultimately potentially change that process real estate contracts are typically reviewed by myself mr holloway and or outside counsel public records right now is kind of under me given some of the issues we've had recently as it relates to that particular area and again with the hope that in the future maybe that can be dispersed amongst the attorneys charter schools is under the board attorney interlocal agreements i review them prior to miss dupuy bruneau ferpa

026questions i would say typically come to ms schroeder myself and i know that's a lot and there's probably more to it but that's kind of initially a breakdown of where we see a lot of the work going no thank you does anyone have any questions regarding it's a lot ms vaughn please yes mr williams what kind of issues are you looking at with with public records what are tips that you're reviewing typically public records i would say that communications is very familiar because we have a lot of of the same types of issues that would fall under an exemption our office typically comes into play when there's a question about whether something is exempted or not and so if we'll take a look at the sunshine law manual any existing law any ago opinions and

027give guidance with respect to whether something should be exempted or the process by which it should be disclosed oftentimes you see a lot of attorneys that are using the public record system as a means of discovery in lieu of filing a court action and so you will see pretty much an extensive request for information of which some could be needed to be redacted but legal guidance is often needed in those instances especially to designate what category it would fall in for purposes of exemption okay so would your office be then if you determined redaction let's say was needed who would be actually doing the redactions typically the redactions are done by the communications department so when information records are requested the information goes to their to the communications department they do an initial review and

028then you know we are consulted if there are particular areas that need to be reviewed in addition to that it's kind of modified moving forward we're looking at a lot more these days because we want to make sure that information is not going out that needs to be redacted and when i say that there are when you get a voluminous public records request and let's see i'll use its for example there are a lot of little safety and security issues that are pertinent to its that you know i would you know no disrespect to the communications department they might not just be aware of and so we're trying to get that balance of we don't want to have an assertion that we're manipulating the records before they arrive to communications but we're finding better ways

029to work in tandem with communications to identify those issues as she receives them so that she can know each of the issues that would be pertinent to information that needs to be redacted appropriately so and that's a difficult task to expect miss mickey to know all of the possible documents and their relevance you know given that i mean she's just not familiar in that department so okay so i'm what i'm confused about is do these requests come to you first to review and then go to ms miss mickey or did she send them to you if she has a question that's what i didn't pick up on sorry so all the information dude obviously the request goes to miss mickey once she receives the request she processes it she sends out requests for the information

030to the various departments once she receives that information back she reviews it initially to determine if there's exempt material if she has a question or concern about a specific request or document then she'll she'll ask us for additional assistance in that review okay thank you thank you miss vaughn ms kittens yeah i just and i know i came in late did you say that this you worked with miss bruno to come up with these this list or was this something just from your office this is what i produced a year ago over a year ago when we initially went through this process and then i've modified it based on changes that have been made since miss dupuy bruno came on board because there's things but my question was did she have input in this no

031i well i'm just thinking since it's showing what she has to do and responsibilities for that it should have been a at least a collaborative effort if i may this mr pre-bruno thank you so excuse me i just wanted to point out to the board a couple of things with regards to this report because i did not see it prior to right now if you go to line 10 superintendent and district representative i do that as well any cases that deal with automobile accidents i am the district's representative any cases that deal with errors and admissions i am the district's representative and i manage those cases with outside counsel number 12 i do review board policies and resolutions mr williams already talked about child custody issues if it is a charter school issue that requires

032a doa hearing i do handle those the employee discrimination lawsuit the where we were with that is that mr williams would handle those for about six months and then we would reconvene to see if that was still working for the attorneys yes and those are my corrections thank you can i finish my statement please i would just like to to recommend since all parties involved did not participate in the production of this document that we would table this until they are able to at least talk about it and collaborate on these items it seems very much a lack of communication if one person on here has not even seen the document up until this time and that's my recommendation thank you and what i had asked mr williams to do is to go over this

033because as we all know that he will be leaving us and things will be changing so as it stands right now and thank you mr preet bruno for informing us because i've just added those to that as well that list but but that's even more reason if he's leaving for her to be involved in the process because he won't be here so actually if he has is resigning and will not be here it should be up to those that will be remaining to discuss how this looks and i wanted to make the comment i know when you're working in corporate when a position at a certain level is vacated or someone resigns or whatever it's good business practice then to step back and say rather than just plugging that hole do we need to look

034at this differently and that was the business model that we used in a fortune 500 company all the time it was not just okay we'll just put somebody in here but this is an opportunity to step back and see should we or could we do something different yes and thank you miss kittens mr williams will be with us until june so he still has a job to do and i would hope that he continues to do the job of the district as well as you know we asked him to present that's why he is here today to present they were going to pull everything for us to to wait but i felt that it was appropriate for us to go ahead and have this conversation because even coming up there will be things that we

035cannot really address at this particular day but because it has been out there to the public i felt that it was necessary for us to to hear what everybody has to say you have a comment miss fisher yes so thank you and thank you mr williams for that i noticed as you went through your list of responsibilities there i had some questions like okay who does the real estate stuff and that so i think that there are areas that are continuously a work in progress depending on what's happening in the community and if i'm if i'm remembering correctly i think you presented a lot of this to us before we had miss dupree bruno on board and so since then you've updated some of it as in going along so i looked at the chart

036and was listening to you and i see that there are several areas where there's a lot of collaboration and the board and the superintendent are a governance team so it seems to me that there's a call you know there's a lot of cooperation required and there's a lot of overlapping and i think that we do need someone you know who works primarily with staff and those different responsibilities that you mentioned in 2018 we had a workshop in january and some when we were anticipating the departure of other board attorneys other board and staff attorneys in this district so dr pruitt had provided some job descriptions and some information regarding other districts around the state and so i have here a chart that had eight comparable districts and all of them except for one had one

037legal department so as i was listening to you saying who does what i it seems to me like you guys really are working together for the benefit of the district and giving specific recommendations to either the board and or the superintendent or the superintendent and his staff so i just wanted to mention that but i really appreciate that and i think this can be updated ongoing as we prepare for your departure and the next page in your life and i see that you had on your chart a paralegal or a legal assistant and i it seems to me like there's a lot of work being done and so that would not be something that would be out of the question for us but thank you for this mrs fisher could you what was the date

038on that please just so for reference january 20 january 18th i mean january hold on a second i just put it down i'd like to go back to yeah january 2018 january 30th thank you miss morgan yeah so i just want to remind the board that at that time it was adamant that we have a separate board attorney that did not have any responsibility to the superintendent but exclusively to members of the board so that was the decision made and if we are going to talk about the organization of the department and i'm hearing other people say things now with the benefit of two years experience working with you know the new organization we may want to revisit that but i think that's a conversation to have at another time okay yeah i was just

039no no i'm commenting on what i got out of his presentation and given some it wasn't what you said it was given what some some other people have said that i felt it was important to say that it was the board that made it very clear that they wanted a chinese wall between one and the other so in fact may i respond to mr morgan so then i really think that in in retrospect and hearing you say that and reminding us of that yes that was the case however it's really hard to work as a governance team having a board attorney that would have nothing to do with the superintendent so thank you mr fisher miss patricka i'm wondering whether there's a cost-benefit analysis of bringing this these two amazing staff attorneys on board i

040think you guys know how much i appreciate you and the work that you've done for the district i'm just wondering if i can see in dollars and cents what we're saving by having them in-house as opposed to sending this stuff out yeah and i can i can get you that information i did look into that obviously with i believe james is officially was officially here a year as of march 15th you know within the first year typically when you're looking at that cost savings you're going to expand that out more than 365 days that being said i think there are already some cost savings that i can't illustrate for you but i also added in the fact that again covet 19 hit and the only reason i bring that up is because there was a

041substantial amount of work that was generated that would not have been generated in a typical year so that using this first year as an evaluation year is probably is going to throw your numbers off that being said one of the major changes to my budget between 2020 and 2021 was the we had a particular segment of my budget that was allotted for outside counsel and that was reduced by i believe and i want to be accurate here at 50 to 60 000 so that wiped out and we haven't even used that full value of the budget and we're ahead almost end to the end of this fiscal year so we reduced that particular segment by fifty to sixty thousand dollars and what remained we haven't even we've used about fifty to sixty percent of it

042which means we'll probably be under budget in that particular category and that money was historically going to outside counsel for work so it's just an example of how you know funds are bringing bringing back in now does that offset their salary obviously seventy thousand is going to offset necessarily a salary of an attorney but another way to look at it is what are our attorneys bringing in based on their effort and work one of the things mr holloway did and was very successful in doing is when kovitz struck we had a lot of vendors cancel contracts on our schools and not want to give their money back and so mr holloway was very instrumental in contacting various vendors from orlando to wherever in securing through demand letters the return of various school sites funds in

043excess of fifty thousand dollars so that's another example when you start adding 60 to 50 it's 111 you know so it starts going up and we've had other examples of where that's happened but what i will say there's a number you're never going to be able to really quantify which is what their efforts have done in preventing litigation or preventing issues and i think that's where they're most beneficial because they again have that day-to-day interaction by being in those departments they have those conversations that weren't necessarily always being had in the past because of just sheer time and volume and so those are the type of conversations that i think our staff are appreciating i think we're getting better results we still have issues and that's just going to be part of just being a

044billion dollar organization nevertheless i think that our attorneys have really dived into their departments and are providing a support that you know again without surveying our chiefs the support that i believe they welcome and appreciate and will probably tell you is saving us money somewhere so they welcome and appreciate the legal advice and just there's a smile under my mouth thank you miss chavanelli no i just i'm good with the conversation i don't know that we have the do i had that chart though you did it was emailed to you okay i didn't miss schaefer i didn't have that thank you miss schaefer thank you yeah she sent it okay i'll look at that are you good shivanella you're good you're good with comments okay yeah miss kittens well i had earlier made a suggestion

045that mr williams and miss bruno collaborate regarding this chart since miss bruno has not seen it and it encompasses job descriptions that involve both of them i put that out there there was absolutely no response so is this to say that will be ignored or will we at least look into that possibility i'm gonna say that it was not ignored because miss dupree bruno informed us of what those are the changes that needed to be made so we do have those that input from her but that's that's not what i was talking about i'm talking about collaborating because the two of them together may be looking at it maybe she has some thoughts about some other changes or possibilities that would work either better or or whatever or some suggestions i just think that if

046you know she's being told what to do on a document she should have some input and they should discuss it okay thank you miss miss vaughn actually i'm going to agree 100 percent with mrs gittins on that you know i'm always honest and it you know it was a little bit concerning that we didn't have this particular chart so that we could really look over it and have more questions prepared on this but what really made me extremely concerned was when i discovered that our board attorney had not even seen this and as i'm reiterating what mrs gitton says and it is a discussion for another day on how we might consider changing the organizational chart for the legal department but as for right now i'm very happy that we have our own board attorney

047because there seems to be perhaps i could call it a slightly different culture of what is shared with the board and i have been extremely pleased with mrs bruno because she has a really good handle on what the board is entitled to knowing and frankly some of the things that we are entitled to knowing in the past have been somewhat of a struggle to get and what i want to ask now is and i'm my memory may be faulty on this have we gotten the don't we get let's see miss dupree bruno have you been giving us in the past was it quarterly or was it every other month the list of the litigations it's quarterly ma'am and you are due for the next one that will advise you of all of the litigation yes

048at at the end of march and i particularly like that which is something i believe that mr bree bruno initiated because we sit here as a board and you know sometimes we have at least there are things going on there's litigation and things that have financial consequences and we have our fiduciary duty and i feel like one of the things we need to be working toward is less litigation and more mediation and i don't know if you want to to speak to that if any of them if any of you are certified mediators as well or how we do that to avoid litigation and try to mediate things well i'll speak to that i mean yeah actually that last part the other part was my editorial so interesting enough when we did the split of

049gl and employment discrimination cases i don't i don't really know because i don't get an update on the auto liability gl or eeo but the employment discrimination cases have gone substantially down we're actually resolving most of our ocr eeoc and we're aggressively resolving our employment discrimination cases so i think we may be hovering around three or four when in the past there would have been significantly more as far as the auto liability gen and the gl you know again i can i would ask miss bruno to speak on that but one of the reasons it made sense for me to have her over that work was so that she could provide that update to you and we provide our update on our employment cases to miss bruno we want to respect the forward staff communication

050lines and so we provide our updates to ms bruneau and we trust that ms bruno provides those updates to you so if you're getting the gl reports then the mission accomplished because that was part of the decision and having her oversee that information whereas in the past she would be asking us for it okay so it might be helpful to us to know and i've spent a few months so i don't remember the exact format but just to note cases or instances that could have gone to a more lengthy process and usually those kinds of processes become adversarial versus kind of having a different attitude and you know showing us that you know well we saved a lot of money here because we not only save money by being able to mediate but we saved

051morale because i truly feel that if more of our employees that have issues and or parents that have issues were in a quick mediation and it might not work might have to go a step further but that it would it would really help with our appearance in the district and morale for our employees so just some something that i feel strongly about thank you so mr williams can may i ask you or i'm sorry miss dr pruitt i ask you if mr williams can get with mr pre-bruno and revitalize this or add whatever needs to be added in on from her perspective and then resend that out to us so it's updated yes i also dr atkins wanted me to share that and i honestly don't remember which of you said it but to the

052point of definitely it will be a sit back and reflect on how we've been doing things and how we might want to do things moving forward and to not just jump in and replace the position i think it was miss kittens that said that so he did want me to share that we definitely would be a reflection and discussion you know with mr williams and mr pe bruno relative to how we're going to move forward madam chair if i may i have the chart i don't really necessarily need to collaborate with mr williams on this because i already see what his position is i just need to add my things on there which i will add and then i will distribute to the board that would be wonderful thank you so much and then would

053that mean suffice for everybody miss kittens would you be fine with me stunned with her thank you miss giovanelli but i would ask that if she has any recommendations and you know that she has the liberty to give us those thoughts and ideas and so forth because i think that we probably really need to look at this strongly again so i will go ahead and in terms of the responsibilities that are listed in the chart go ahead and add my responsibilities and i will just add to what ms vaughn was saying i think this may clarify some things for the board every attorney has their different philosophies on how they handle things and i come from a different background where i am a litigator so when you push me i'm gonna litigate i'm gonna do

054what i need to do but i'm also a problem solver and i'm a collaborative attorney and i'm a mediator so i have a different style and how i approach things and how i view things i like to prevent things from happening and do a lot more risk management because that's my style but when push comes to shove and we do need to defend the district i will do what i need to do to defend the district so that's my philosophy and that's how i approach things and again every attorney has a different style and a different philosophy as to how they do it so to what ms vaughn was talking about we mediate as much as possible and if we're not able to mediate we will do what we need to do to defend the

055district and i will share when there are cases that are on fire or things that i think that you need to be aware of i will advise you of those during our one-on-one informational briefings perfect thank you madam chair can i add you know one of the things you know because i was listening to some of the conversation one of the things i think is going to present a little bit of a challenge for you moving forward and something that you need to consider as you review the different departments is exactly what mr p bruno pointed out style because everybody has a different style and everybody has a different management structure and i think that it's important that you take out style and all that and you focus on the management structure of it because

056not everybody can manage people and not everybody can manage certain people so you know i think that one of the issues that we've experienced from our end is a lack of communication with the school board attorney's office and i think it's important to note that because that's why you get a presentation where there's been no involvement because i haven't heard from miss dupuis bruno in about a week so and i think the lack of communication between the two offices is one of the things that is causing a little bit of issues within this you know this district we can work in silos but that doesn't work very well and i know that because i've worked in a large organization doing exactly this thing so i think as we move forward and again i'll point out

057that you know she doesn't want to collaborate on this chart she'll just edit it and give you the changes that's the type of response i typically get and so if that's the type of response i typically get it makes it very difficult to do that collaboration thank you so much can i and i if i please please this one mr williams i'm really disappointed in you for making those kind of comments about our board attorney i think you're above that and i regret that i heard those words come out of your mouth thank you can and let's clarify some things because i'm i'm right here and i want to make sure it's very clear when i started this position i got a lot of pushback when i was trying to do my job and it

058wasn't until september that i was even able to get most of the information to be able to do my job and apparently there was a lot of things going on behind the scenes that i was not even aware of now since january i will give credit to dr atkins who has ensured that the legal department meets bi-weekly to discuss all legal issues in the district and we have been doing that and that has been very helpful but with the problems that we have had in the past with communication between the offices for whatever reason that it may have happened whatever direction that was given it is a problem for the district it is a problem for the board this will have to be addressed forthcoming so that all of the attorneys can work together to

059be able to provide the best legal representation to the school board and to the district but we cannot do that as mr williams said in silos and if mr williams had sent me an email giving me a phone call and said hey i have this chart could you please give me your feedback i certainly would have done that all right well thank you both and i think that we have a lot of work to do everywhere so going forward i this is going to be a conversation that we will have to have regarding you know the legal organization and how you know how the district will manage that and what that looks like to us whether it's two attorneys three attorneys four attorneys one attorney that's something that's going to have to be addressed and

060it's going to come back before us and that we will definitely have to have a conversation on that mystery of the nelly actually going header numbers well that's a i just wanted to say going back to the comment i made earlier about stepping back and looking at what we have now and what we may need to do in the future and i really would like to go on record as saying mr williams will not be with us and this dupree bruno will in her position and i would hope that the superintendent and the hr director would include her in the process of you know selecting the other person normally i mean you would include someone that's going to have that close of a working relationship in the selection process and i would hope that would

061be the case and that does not happen in a silo thank you thank you miss kittens miss chivadelli yes so first of all i'd just like to say that i don't have i am mrs david bruno i believe you and i don't have any doubt that you would have addressed any email that would have come your way so i clearly see that the collaboration stopped on the other side of the wall so and i think that we as a board need to give the superintendent's office direction that his staff work with our attorney when necessary and collaborate when there is an especially when there's a legal presentation that's coming forward that should have happened so i'm i'm surprised but maybe i'm not so surprised you know that this has taken place but this is just

062another example of leadership at this district thank you or lack of madam chair can i respond to that please and i'm just going to be brief i think i don't think that's accurate i think there are some concerns i think you know i evaluated a lot of things when i chose to resign my position and this is one of the issues and i think that to dismiss it is wrong and i'm bringing it up because i think it's important because i actually care about this district i do not want to i hate leaving this district because i put a lot of hard work into this district and to making this district as good as good of a district as i could possibly make it so to not like to to see this is difficult for

063me to watch and it's not about a leadership issue with dr atkins there are some issues and we've and there's some board members up there that know because they've been in meetings where conversations have been had but i think it's important let me not overlook some of those things because we need to fix this however you fix it i don't know but i'm removing myself so that i'm not blamed for the issues anymore it's not fair but we just need to fix it and whatever that means please focus on fixing it because again i care about this district and i like to see this district move in a positive direction and i hope that's what what happens but it is not it i you can ask anyone in this room whether i collaborate there is

064not an issue of collaboration if you look at my past evaluations for the last 15 years it will say i am one of the best people at collaborating i did it in my previous district you're not going to see any issues there it's there's there are issues that need to be addressed your i agree with you ms vaughn this is not the appropriate place to do that but i think it's pertinent to point it out when there's this conversation that is just overlooking it yeah and miss miss morgan so i'm going to suggest that we stop work and we have nothing to discuss we don't know what the board attorney job description is going to be because we've not had agreement on it we know that it doesn't align with the contract and it doesn't

065align with the evaluation we're not going to discuss her performance or anybody's performance with respect to superintendent and board attorney because we've already agreed we're going to wait until the end of an investigation and so the other things on here are evaluation and job description and alignment with contract we have nothing to discuss because we don't agree right now at this point on what it is that it people are responsible for etc i think we need to have exactly the conversation mr williams is talking about we need we've had experience with a split staff attorney board attorney because that's what we wanted we've learned what the difficulty is we need to have a conversation about how we're going to move forward and at that point we should be talking about what is the job description

066how will we evaluate and what what the con and the contract may need to be revised at that point who knows so i just vote that we find we spend our time better this afternoon on other work that we have to do on behalf of children thank you and in saying that just speaking regarding the organize or mr pre bruno's evaluation and the other things that we'll be coming up on here we were going to say that we could not speak about that because we are kind of like in a situation that we're in between all of this other stuff that's going on so it's hard for us to make a recommendation on any of that pertaining to the changes and i know that because it was on here they were gonna pull everything and

067i just felt that we need it for it to be here because it was sent out to the public so at least we could have that conversation here mr williams tell us explain to us what is going on with his team and what they do and that's what i thought this was to be so i apologize for all the other stuff that has come before here and but i am happy of what you all are doing and jane mr holloway miss kristen i really appreciate you all as well ms patricka so i would just ask going forward when we talk about potential changes to job description and evaluation that suggestions be made you know i looked at the backup materials and there was nothing there were no suggested changes i'm not clear on where where

068the differences are between the contract and the job description so bringing those to my attention will help focus my work and my thought process and hopefully the conversation going forward thank you mrs i mean yeah miss fisher and i was just going to suggest that we do take a look at the board attorney evaluation because at this point we're due to evaluate her for her performance over the past year so to change that instrument at this point without having those other changes made would be neglectful really and so if we could go ahead using the current instrument for this go around and then work on changing if necessary and if agreed upon the job description and the evaluation instrument that might be a little bit more efficient right and we have to thank you miss

069fisher because what we were going to do with ms mcclung was just go over that i'm sorry mr williams is there any other questions regarding this thank you so much for your presentation and i'm just going to continue on with what you just said ms fisher we were just going to because of the fact that there is a time that the evaluation must be done per the contract and dr pruitt if if i'm saying something wrong please help me and correct me but there is a time that she that has to be done for her and that i would say if we are using this instrument there are things on this instrument as it stands right this minute before we make any changes or whatever and i know one of them is 2.02 and if

070if i may ask miss dupree bruno to please the constant would you please say which ones of those sure thank you madam chair thank you one of the concerns that i had it appears that this evaluation tool was created when you had your board attorney and staff attorney and they had that specific type of working relationship upon my hire it was clearly a different type of scenario that was set up in a different type of relationship that was set up so 2.02 is one of the things that i was concerned about which is coordinates with staff attorney and if you look at the descriptions one of it is consistently confers with staff attorney to manage assignments and workflow usually confers with staff attorney to manage assignments and workflow etc i am not in that supervisory

071position and i do not want to be evaluated on that because i definitely do not do that section 4.05 and this is regarding standard 4 4.05 manages workload for efficiency and effectiveness again assumes appropriate workload and works seamlessly with collaborate and collaboratively with staff attorney and outside counsel assumes appropriate workload and delegates work to staff and outside counsel when needed etc again that is not within my purview i have not been doing that we have two separate and distinct offices and i do not want to be evaluated with that as well and given the issues that i have mentioned to all board attorneys board members since i started i do not want to be evaluated based on any type of collaboration etc with the staff attorney's office because there has been lots of roadblocks that

072have been put to try to thwart that ability to do so i will say though as i said earlier since january and i will give credit to dr atkins who has kind of put us together every two weeks to have our legal briefings and that has been helpful thank you and this is not the first time that this was brought up we brought this up a couple months ago regarding those changes so if that's acceptable as far as doing when we do the evaluation that those are there with the notion of what are not in her purview i think we could still use this same form as miss fisher just stated i just is there a consensus for us ms vaughn yeah you told us a couple that you don't do you have quite a

073list that appeared on on that chart attorney verno this is for the evaluation i know okay i know i'm talking about that thank you what might you have on your list of responsibilities that isn't reflected in this that we might consider adding to the evaluation so if i may a madam chair if i may provide a list to the board that has all of my contractual responsibilities the job description responsibilities as well as things that have kind of fallen in my lap that i've been doing on a regular basis that's not in any of the contract or job description if i may send that to the board and then you will have a better understanding in terms of exactly what i do on a day-to-day basis that would be that's that yeah because i think

074it's only fair to there are obviously things that she does that aren't recorded in a in a list they're they're in the contract which we don't look at every day right they might want to and some extra things yeah that we might want to have an additional for instance if we subtract a couple of them here if we discuss it and subtract something there might be something that we'd want to add that is truly reflective of duties that you've taken on but for this particular evaluation we would not have the opportunity to change all of this or add it in time for the evaluation is that correct dr pruitt well my understanding was is that this evaluation was going to be used for the past year with the exceptions that she noted and that then

075we would go to work with miss mcclung to revise it based on whatever the configuration is going to be whatever changes are done to the job description and that we would do them in that order right that's what i was told i don't know if that's yeah thank you miss go ahead mrs vaughn finish that i'm sorry yeah now let's finish it then there'll be an adjustment in the scoring if there's two fewer i'm going to defer to miss mcclung but i would that would be my understanding yeah if we take a couple out how does the scoring change good afternoon i think i'm on there sorry thank you yes my understanding was that because the evaluation date in the contract is april 15th rather than try and do a wholesale change that we would

076just look at the items that miss dupree bruno believes she is not currently doing it should not be evaluated on we'll take those out of the equation when the scoring is completed and then i'll just when i send it out to to miss thomas then i will take those two items completely or i'll just mark through them so it's very clear that those are not to be evaluated right and then so they would not count toward the average of the of the that section now won't everything kind of be shifted in terms of the highly effective effective if you remove the overall scoring no it'll just be a matter of changing the divisor okay i'm not a math person so you're english not man i'll send it out ahead of time so you'll so you'll

077be very clear on that please thank you and i would like to make sure that it is noted that there not be any prejudicial regard for recent unproven allegations and going forward with this evaluation do i need to explain thank you miss patricka i'm really uncomfortable with changing an evaluation instrument that i have been using throughout the year to evaluate and make notes in anticipation of an evaluation the evaluation is an instrument that was approved by the board it has been approved by the board without without a comprehensive change to the evaluation instrument i don't feel comfortable moving forward like i don't know how we do that i don't know how you change an evaluation instrument how many months into the period of time where the employment has taken place without it doesn't it doesn't

078make any sense to me likewise going forward if we're going to change the evaluation instrument the board attorney or any employee would would have to be made aware of what those changes are so that the employee will know what the expectations are so i'm i'm really uncomfortable with making any changes to the evaluation whatsoever and of course any evaluation that's made on any of the criteria in the evaluation instrument would i mean any employee can rebut if if there's a lack of understanding about the criteria that's being evaluated and how it's being evaluated i mean those are discussions that i would hope are taking place throughout the year like everybody's talking constantly about evaluation in areas of strength and areas of needed improvement and all of that i just i don't i don't see how

079we change it when it's upcoming in a couple weeks it doesn't make sense to me not a couple weeks you know what i mean this is the pre-brutal it's my understanding that this is the evaluation that was used prior to my hire and that this evaluation has not been changed since you've had two legal departments is my understanding incorrect there it was always two separate offices the only difference is that we added attorneys so it's always been two separate and this evaluation document was created with the idea that it was two separate offices and this is the current board approved evaluation so i do think if you're going to change it you probably need to do that formally i mean again i'm not an attorney but i would rec i would suggest because this is

080the board approved evaluation based on the board attorney being on their own and the staff attorneys being on their own to completely offices i continue my objection to number 2.02 and 4.05 thank you miss fisher no i'm and dr pruitt said it so okay i have no comment and i think this was brought up so that for consideration so when we are when we are using the evaluation that we are taking into those consideration those items the two point two zero point two and the four point i'm sorry 4.05 thank you 4.05 that we are taking that into consideration that is not as individuals that is not part of what she is doing that's what this was about miss fisher you hey were you finished i'm so sorry i think miss getting tired oh okay

081i'll finish your statement so when this was created it was prior to attorney bruno's hiring yes and we did have a staff attorney and a board attorney but they did collaborate and communicate and work together and many of their responsibilities like legislative stuff etc overlapped so there was a collaboration there which i think is critical for any organization and we historically update job descriptions and we have a change now we have a larger legal staff and we have you know other needs that have developed so i think if we can go with this take out those two pieces that attorney bruno says she does not perform and do the evaluation and then move forward in the future like mrs morgan said and have that conversation and give the attorney bruno an opportunity to weigh in

082on her job description in relation to her contract and evaluation mr pre bruno and i just want clarification as well as to when were the actual two separate legal offices actually created was this something that you always had two separate and distinct legal offices or was there a creation of two separate and distinct legal offices i just want some clarification on that part and historically it's always been too separate and at a time when we had i'm sorry and at a time when we had a third attorney that attorney was the assistant school board attorney thank you miss kittens okay well first of all yes there were two separate departments however i believe that even in the verbiage and in the expectation it was that there was a collaborative connection to go two ways we

083can go with this one way is to just forget about 202 and 405 because both of them are co use the word collaborate which is very subjective and based on what we have heard everybody up here is human and someone's going to take one view of whether that happened and another one's going to say no it didn't based on their own personal beliefs so we either take it out or we can go ahead and leave it in as miss patricka was saying but in the end ask for a computation from miss mcclung with and without it because i would like to see that if it makes a major difference in the scoring of her evaluation because of these two items that she clearly has said she does not do then we can make a decision

084by the board i just i think if there's this much controversy about it now when all the other stuff with these investigations and all that comes up and i'm not mentioning it so you don't have to warn me it's just going to make it harder so i'm just saying to be fair and to our attorney that i think we should looking at separating it out or doing it and then showing us what the difference is okay so we asked mr clinton did you want to say something yes madam chair my only concern with that would be that i the way i feel is that the board needs to make a decision about those two items right now that is the board approved evaluation so the decision to me is are those expectations of the job

085whether or not miss dupree bruno believes she performs them are they bored expectations if they are expectations of the job then they should stay in in the evaluation if they are not expectations of the job then i would say that you do not score those and then we do not count them in the total but doing it both ways gives a mixed message as to whether or not that is an expectation of the position well and i was okay two things that come to mind first of all and i know several of us weren't on the board at in january 2018 and i know that was prior decision etc etc however and i'm trying to remember the history here was wasn't that the time or around the time that mr martin retired and it was

086a unique situation when you talk about collaboration because it wasn't mr doted the former staff attorney that moved into the board attorney position and so i think therein there's a little bit of an of a difference on when this was done the other thing is all right 2.02 consistently confers with staff attorney to manage assignments and workflow now does the staff attorney evaluation say coordinates with board attorney consistently cons because if it doesn't or have language similar to that i think that's very unfair because what is collaboration collaboration is a two-way street and that's why i was so upset earlier when i heard the staff attorney say well i hadn't heard from her and if it's collaboration it's a partnership it's a meshing and it's a two-way street and we've heard that before here on

087the dais and we seem to use it when it suits us or our purposes but this has been an issue i don't think it's fair to judge somebody on an issue that's not just her issue it's a two-way street and that's how i feel about that so i'd be very interested and of course we don't evaluate the staff attorney if there's the same the same judgment okay and it has nothing and it has nothing to do with the persons or the people who are sitting in those seats right now so we have to make sure that we're taking that out of the equation because it has nothing to do with that at all it is whoever was sitting there or there this is what that evaluation i think we have to make sure that we

088are but it's definitely not not that is out of our head but at the end of the day we need to to determine what where what we're going to do regarding this because we obviously are going to have some changes will be made in lieu of the fact that mr williams will be leaving so based on that and looking that we are gonna possibly be changing some of the organizational charts how things are set that in turn will then change this form so for us to change try to change something now and then try to change it again i think that's like an overreach and even though and i know that mr priebruno has shared her thoughts on this several times because we've had this conversation as i said before i think that we should

089just leave this document as as is with the notion what mr bruno has stated regarding those two two point zero two and four zero one zero five thank you 4.05 and move on with with that because we must do her evaluation that has to be done based on contract otherwise if the evaluation is not done by a certain time then it's renewed the contract is renewed for two years automatically so i mean there's things that we have to do by set dates and i think that we need to make sure that we are adhering to that and mr givenelli i apologize because i think you had something to say can i object to something that you just said i finished my statement about what collaboration is and i made a point that i think has

090historical merit and i said that it does have something to do with the people and then you turned around and says well it said well it doesn't as and i just want to clarify are you saying that i was wrong no what i'm saying is or would you like to clarify oh ma'am i said was your opinion no okay it's not my opinion but and i will clarify what i was speaking on when this sheet was done this instrument that we use we did not know who's sitting in that seat i'm speaking on whoever is sitting in the seat of the attorneys whoever that is or maybe or was has nothing to do with what is on this information right here this was done just strictly on okay actually on this right here this is

091a job description so this job description should match this one and this should match the attorney there's three documents that everything's supposed to be matching that's what i'm stating not about the introduction but i just wanted to clarify no no that you're expressing your opinion i expressed mine no thank you no there's not a date i looked for that miss giovanelli i just need clarification something that miss depriving just said regarding recently the superintendent gave a directive to mr williams to collaborate with you so and when did so if that's the case when did that happen like what month day i need to know exactly a specific time so we there has been ongoing issues between the two departments however i think the superintendent was trying to find a way to be able to assist

092with the communication and break down some of those walls so right around sometime in january we started having legal briefings together he was already having legal briefings every two weeks with the chief staff attorney and the staff attorneys but then i was invited to attend those okay so the superintendent invited you and not until january of 2021 so that's just two months ago that's when we started having the meetings at least i was invited to join those meetings okay so i think that's that's really important to to know and understand because how are we supposed to govern if she's not able to get the information to help us so and to guide us so i think that's important to note that she wasn't able to participate and or invited or aware so how can you

093how can we give evaluate something on someone on something that didn't exist even though it may exist here it's our fault that we're not making sure that this is happening so we have to share we have to be accountable ourselves and making sure that our employees getting the information to do her job correctly so it falls back on us ladies thank you through the chair i have to respond and i apologize i really don't want to do this but this goes back to my point about caring about this district i will note that the prior two board attorneys had no issues collaborating with me and both of them actually text me today one for the lgbtq presentation and one as it relates to them just simply being here it's not it's unfair to characterize this

094as only coming from the staff side it's just it's not fair it's a pertinent part of this evaluation and there are times where departments don't get along that's one of those questions they ask you in an interview what happens when you don't get along with another department well you have to work through the issue and this whole concept that we had to be ordered to work with the board attorney is just it's ridiculous i'm sorry for lack of a better word thank you mr williams we're not here to judge anybody the i am just seriously trying to get an answer on this one question but for some reason i wish somebody would just call it because i cannot because we've had a ton of conversation over the same thing miss patricka so let's just one

095final round please thank you i mean i'm looking at the contract and i know i performed an interim evaluation and if this had been an issue in the interim evaluation and the attorney wanted it removed from the evaluation i would think that would have been a more timely conversation in october as opposed to three four weeks before we're engaging in the evaluation i'm just i'm looking at the contract and i'm wondering if we remove this or are we violating the contract because it the instrument as it is was what the board agreed to and it's again it's what i've been looking at in terms of my functioning with the board attorney and my evaluation thought process and all of that so i'm just the timing of it is very concerning to me the timing of

096it is based on the fact that we could just get it on the on here this has been something that the timing of the interaction being brought to our attention to remove two categories yeah this as i said this has been brought before the board before but we could not we everybody kept saying we were waiting for it all to come together under legal that's why it came today but mr bruno has definitely made i know myself aware of it and i did bring it up at a workshop and i wish i had the date i do not have the date on that but i know that i did bring it up actually more than one time it's been brought up for us to do to look this over it just so happened that it

097fell into today because it was all the legal everybody certain members wanted to hear about this part of the legal someone at this so they consolidate it all together and that's why we're hearing about it today it was not because of mr preet bruno deciding today this has been something that has been definitely in the air mr bruno did you want to comment or did i answer that i was just going to say that this was originally brought up when the board was reviewing its protocol manual i believe that was october november that's when this was originally brought up that led to some of the discussions in terms of having this workshop and then you guys prioritized it and this is where it's stemming from so it's been out there for a significant amount of

098time yes thank you mr fisher and then just finally i have not seen the staff attorney's evaluation instrument but i would like to to see if those collaboration questions are asked also of the staff attorney and then just for information previously and in my experience in my tenure the board attorney was hired by and responsible to the school board and assisted the superintendent on a daily basis and then the staff attorney reported to the executive director of human resources and in my tenure i have had the opportunity to work equally with the board attorney and the staff attorney depending on what the issue was when i was the legislative liaison for a couple years mr dodig was the one who really worked more closely with me and helped me keep abreast of the legislative developments

099so i think that collaboration is critical and i think that in order for our we us to move forward and for our governance team to become more effective and efficient we have to have our legal department cohesive and collaborative thank you miss jordan if if i may i think what miss fisher said is very very important because part of the problems that i think that the governance team has is that there is a getcha gotcha gonna getcha type of attitude and when you have attorneys that are part of that getcha gotcha that's what creates some issues so we really do need to resolve this so all of the attorneys are on the same page not specifically loyal to one particular person but loyal to the district as a whole to make sure that we represent

100the district as a whole as well as the school board that is the responsibility of attorneys and there are bar rules that actually address that when you are representing an organization how you are supposed to represent an organization thank you miss kittens this will be the final please just an example of the situation you hire someone to do customer service and during the time that you are evaluating them there are no customers what do you evaluate them on it's a similar thing if you tell someone to do a particular job and it's not there you can go back and say well you know i saw them talk to one customer so i'll give them a high score it all becomes so subjective the bottom line to this is that whenever however we do it i

101think it needs to be removed for whomever is sitting in that seat if we are going to evaluate someone on collaboration that is too subjective it depends on who's sitting in the other seat and it depends on how you look at it okay so i'm going to ask again if we could in keeping this the way it is and if we would just move forward with disregarding the two of those items when you are 2.02 and 4.05 when you are doing the evaluation so that way we can move forward with what we are what we need to get done and then as we move forward with working on all this other we will then re-look at that evaluation work with the people who we need to and get it done miss morgan so i'm going

102to complete the entire evaluation because that was the one approved by the board i'm not going to drop off any sections i want everybody to see the comments i believe absolutely that collaboration is an expectation that this board has of everybody in this district and i don't think collaboration should be deleted for a particular circumstance so the other board members can do with the evaluation as they see fit but i believe it's my responsibility to evaluate based on what the board approved and i do believe that considerable thought was given to every single item in that review in terms of expectations about the board attorney okay thank you so much given ellie well i thought i'd just remind refreshed a couple everybody's memory you know mr dodig left the district without a job and because

103he had a difficulty difficult time so our expectations needs to be fair to a new board attorney that comes into a position honestly blind and so you know i don't think that it's being fair and honest so you know mr dodic had difficulty and he did cross over and he had he had quite the difficulty i have spoken to him so i don't agree exactly with some of the things that were mentioned here today so and i also want to remind everybody also that we don't always go by the guideline and evaluations and contracts because we renewed dr atkins's contract three months early and than the actual date of the contract so we don't always go by the timeline thank you now mr vanello when i was saying we have to do it by a

104certain time at the latest not early but at the latest per what's in there and i'm just that's for information you know i'm one person i just thought i'd give that information to you don't always go by timelines thank you thank you so okay are you asking each of us i am asking you yes miss vaughn your opinion on just you know i can i just take a consensus on who wants who will do the evaluation based on the evaluation i think you should hear from us before okay i've heard from everybody but i'm gonna ask you one more time please miss vaughn i'm going to reserve my judgment pending we're supposed to get the evaluation for the staff attorney as well i think miss fisher brought that up i want to see if the

105two-way street doctor is there i have the evaluation up and it does have 1.1 works collaboratively with school and district personnel has it been completed short answer is yes there is a it doesn't specifically say with board attorney as this one says coordinates with staff attorney to manage assignments see to me the connotation there is that somehow the staff attorney is the boss of well i see one person shaking her head but that is the connotation that i get from this that the staff attorney somehow is the boss of the no i what i will say though just to remind the board members that were here the board attorney evaluation instrument was designed and approved under the direction of rob dodig who had the privilege of doing both jobs and so it came out of

106because he knew both sides of the coin if you will and there does have to be some like they talked about who's responsible for which cases right so there are some that it is the staff attorney is in charge of that versus there are things that the board attorney is in charge of that so but it really it really is a two-way street well that's that's my whole point the two-way street and if it's on if it's on one it should be the mirror image of it on the other because that's exactly what corrupt collaboration is and you just made my point that i said earlier yes it does matter because you just said dr pruitt that this was originally done during the time of rob dodec when he was okay so that makes my

107point because you've got a figure he was making the transfer from staff to board and then in between we couldn't even get we didn't even we went with watched sarota and we had several different attorneys filling in and then attorney dupree bruno came in as somebody said there there wasn't really a clear direction because one per the long-term guy left and we had kind of guest attorneys i guess you could say until she was hired so that's that's my opinion on it and i would actually like to see the document to see if there are those two places and how closely they mirror each other because i am yeah the statement i read to you is the is the statement and the evaluation about collaboration with others just one yeah it's you can't really it'd

108be like comparing apples and oranges because it's set up differently but i mean yeah we can we can i'm just curious to see the verbiage because you know i'm a word person yes i just it's helpful to me to actually see the wording so that can be sent to us please dr pruitt yes ms kittens yes i will complete as mr patrick has said we need to complete endless morgan i will complete the whole evaluation oh sorry everybody did that i apologize i will complete the evaluation the total thing because it is there for us to complete but because of the culture that of this district i will probably just put n a in those two sections thank you i'll complete the instrument thank you mr patricka mr will not respond to that well i

109do have one question dr fruit is there anything on the other evaluation regarding managing work work load or effect say that again i'm sorry i can't hear you is there anything like 405 manages workload efficiency and effectiveness is there that on the on your side of the they have that yeah there there is i mean it's a pretty lengthy evaluation so but it's broken down the components are a little different but yes there's lots about you know coordinating and planning and you know monitoring work and all of that so but there's no collaboratory side of it though just that statement that i read to you but that wasn't real defined i don't think it's under communications is the is what it's labeled on this evaluation and like i said it states works collaboratively with school

110and district personnel is that circa 2018 as well no this is actually was a new instrument that was developed i'm sorry well i think dr atkins i'm i'm sorry miss it's okay juvenile all right she was asking a good question i'm not opposed because i just wanna because it's been an hour to happen so i'm trying to yeah and i'm sorry i just i'm gonna i'm gonna judgment and i think we still need to see some progression here so i'm gonna reserve your judgment on that right now and i and i will be doing it taking into consideration what miss debris bruno has said yeah so we will move at this time mr clunk nothing will be changed on this thank you so much and mr williams thank you for your presentation and i have

111to say this and i'm going to say this when i first got here you did help me and guide me through things that i did not know so i do appreciate that so saying that and i believe that we need to put the other on i would ask for consensus put the other on hold beings we will have a lot to to think about on those and that way we can continue on if that's if everybody's in agreement of that the rest for mr pre-bruno if that would be okay because based on what we know that we will have to do in the future so if that's okay with everybody we'll move on to the agenda review and i know mr preet bruno is not prepared for to have conversation on on this at this

112time so if that's do i have an agreement with that everybody's good thank you thank you okay dr pruitt if you could move to the agenda review please yes ma'am first item under business services was a question about item h2 and dr desimoires i believe is going to respond to that from miss giovannelli what is the itemized amended changes this is a decrease due to grants question mark and this is relative to the budget amendment dated february 28th thank you good afternoon members of the board if i understand that question correctly that yes the largest change here is for the closing of a grant the shelter retrofit grant this is a collaboration with the county and the department of emergency management and operations is currently working with those two agencies to identify new projects suited

113for retrofit dollars to be able to rewrite the grant thank you i just wanted to it's like a kudos so thank you yes you good okay she's there can i yes let's get this is it pertaining to this particular containing to h actually h5 i just wanted to know on the lehigh senior edition how long does it take for that last balance to drop off i don't quite understand that every time we get an update they're still showing a balance are we still is that still outstanding or well it certainly could be i'm looking are you looking at the one that's entitled capital report i believe it and you're seeing a balance of 32 000 11 is that what are we looking at the same thing yes so yes it is still outstanding it does

114take some time after the completion of a project for all invoices to come through but also it could be a matter of us once we know for sure that all have come through revising that budget and taking away the remaining budget as well so it's a combination of both of those things okay and then right there on page two where it has portables purchased leased and constructed is it you know constructed can you explain that one well yes that is the budget that we have out in the in you know out in the system right now for portables either purchased or released at six hundred twenty four thousand three twenty seven and then so far we have expended a hundred and seventy thousand seven eighty eight out of those funds with another hundred and forty

115one thousand three hundred thirty six encumbered so have we purchased additional portables i believe all of this would be lease but i would have to go double check with operations to make sure but i think all of them are least if you would give that to you he says there are leases here they are all leased okay they're they're all leased so this amount is the least amount yes okay thank you okay thank you dr pruitt okay next item information systems mr davis is going to talk to us about the two-way radio equipment the question was is this compatible with the new security alissa law requirements mr davis yes could yes good afternoon board so this is not related to the alyssa's law mandate which mandates panic alarm system this two-way radio system amplification is

116for bolstering the coverage in school for our first responders think fire police and medical and that's what that is for now obviously the two are used by district and first responder staff but they are disparate systems and again this particular agenda item is not related to alyssa's law thank you're welcome any other questions was there any other questions for that thank you okay thank you all right next item is under operations but i believe business services is going to respond it's in a reference to the ranking rfq for general contractor services so i don't know if it's dr d or oh here she comes and is this an open pose if so how does this allow for us to have oversight if not will the board approve each time this money is spent hello again

117so no these are not open pos how these work is that this particular agenda item is an approval to use these particular contractors for these types of services for projects that fall within the dollar amounts that are specified up to the approved amount of the funding so if these agenda items are approved as projects are identified specific purchase orders are open for each of those projects and the board is kept apprised of those projects through the capital updates that you're receiving thank you same would be true for the next item the same would be the exact thank you very much okay all right thank you next item is a k-11 approval to pursue the sale of 10.43 on ben c pratt the question is what was the initial sales price what what was the year

118we purchased it's indicated that the information was there but i think dr savage is on hand if he's there good afternoon good afternoon yes so the question was what the original sales price was that the original property was purchased in august of 1997 on the amount of 1.9 million but if you break that down per acre that was roughly 54 000 per acre this of course is not selling the entire property it's selling just a portion of the frontage as it this over our south six mile bus compound is so we technically are netting about four times what we purchased it for so the for this portion of the sale so it's a pretty favorable sale for us great thank you so much my pleasure are there any respond yeah dr savage dr savage i'll

119try to run that quick if you could come back i live very close to that is a very very desirable area do we have figures and it's probably might even be here and i didn't i didn't look or i don't remember for appraisals and do we have figures for other land that's currently being developed what it sold for we'd be happy to provide more in-depth information than what's provided we do have some of that information in the board item as well i'm sorry is it is the appraisal on on this page it's a cost of the appraisal but we could absolutely get with anything else that you'd appreciate appreciate with this there's some backup material in the board item but i'd be very surprised if this hadn't multiplied actually even more than than what you

120said because i didn't what year did you say 1997. that was when it was first seven that's correct who lived while melissa you missed givenelli you lived here then did that road even exist back then i don't know yeah yeah oh you did you i don't know but yes all i know is right now it is extremely desirable commercial and there's all kinds of new development on that road so yeah i'd expect us to make profit but i want to squeeze out the biggest profit possible and i would like to see if you could find what it appraised for i'll be happy to have our director plan and get with our real estate consultant just provide a little bit more just excitement of of that's an appropriate level for the sale okay thank you and

121that's all the questions that i have okay are there any other questions regarding the sale or any other before he left again any other questions regarding the agenda okay thank you dr pruitt so we will move on to good of the order miss giovanelli do you have anything for good of the order i have none mr trica thank you miss fisher thank you miss morgan miss kittens i have one thing to bring up i brought it up at the last meeting and it was not answered but i had requested the expense reports for all of the board members from november of 18 to current and the reports i received were not complete there was a i know that miss jordan went to a conference or whatever in february and that was not included in the

122list so i am it doesn't help to to think maybe there's something else missing i'm not sure so i would like to either speak with someone or sit down with someone to see exactly because i thought i see on here that we will be approving travel to a conference and it was my understanding if it was 500 or more that we it had to come before the board and i don't recall that coming before the board so i don't know how we go move forward on that or i just say it and it just goes away or but i'm not sure what is it that you're wanting you had a public request for all of the policing all the board members i was not policing the board members i did a public records request for

123all of the expense reports it has been done to me several times so i asked for it and i was told that i could receive it and i did but it was not complete and that's all i'm asking the only other thing i would so i was going to ask dr pruitt if you could follow up on that to see where the public because i know normally we get the public records requests when there's anything pertaining to us which i did not receive i don't know i don't think it went through the formal process of a public record it did and it was a request as a board member so it was out and in the office for everyone to see they didn't make copies for everyone but they were told that it was there

124okay so i guess miss stilwell thought that you were going to follow up with her and reach out to her to have that conversation so we apologize for that confusion but maybe we could have you sit down with mr gatewood or okay something to i will and i believe it was on february the this is another item on february 9th i have to go back to be sure but i had pulled an item at an action meeting about the architect and the gc for veterans park academy and when i look back at the minutes it states that it was unanimous i did not vote positive for that i voted no and it shows in the minutes that i voted along with everyone else so i would like to have that corrected please that's all i

125have for now i wouldn't make sure that did ms thomas did you get what miss kittens just said she said she said february the 9th i think it was february then i'll look and give it to you specifically i'm sorry does that have an action on the superintendent's part i just want to make sure because or is that what does it have an action that the superintendent needs to take or is this about minutes no it was about minutes it just shows in there that okay i voted one way that i did not vote got it thank you so the ninth we had a briefing and now this was an action meeting i don't know if it was the ninth or ten i'll look up the exact date i'll work with her for her thank

126you but i just didn't want to do it without informing everybody nope thank you miss vaughn oh well i called you i'm so sorry i have a question regarding what mrs kittens just talked about because if she made a public records request than it is her own individual but if it came through board channels it's here comes miss stillwell it usually goes to all of us right and then i heard something there's a piece of paper or something no she'll explain yeah where i because i didn't get that information it was not a public records request mrs gins made it in her scope as a board member and so what we did when we got them was we included everybody's and i sent an email to the whole board saying that all the documents were

127in a folder with the board secretaries if you all wanted to go and review them so the board secretaries have all of those documents in a folder in the board office okay somehow i just missed that so i wasn't sure what she was talking about but it kind of triggered something in my mind and maybe somebody here can either miss dupree bruno or one of the board members didn't we and i can't remember if it's in a policy it's probably in a protocol that as board members we were suppo we're supposed to get quarterly budget reports on our department and i know last year i brought it up and nothing was ever nothing was ever done because we all the departments at the time were pulling back because we knew it was going to be

128a year when we had to pull pull back financially and i said well you know we as board members we need to do the same thing and cut back and of course it's moot point now but we remember we did talk about all of the things we used to get invited to that were costly and of course none of those things happened but that whole discussion centered around our board budget and what we were going to do to model that we too are working on cutting back so i guess my two questions or really it's one question i don't think where are our quarterly reports where where's the budget report for our office that's what i'm curious about here comes miss dismart did you have an answer for that well sort of just historically i

129think those documents have always been with the board secretaries or the board office manager or our executive assistants and you just asked to look at it but i believe that since we've had a change in staffing in the office there's been a lot we did a lot of transitional issues yeah but it's always been my experience that has been available yep but could somebody remind me is isn't it in a protocol somewhere or a pop or a policy mr preberto it is actually board members in your protocol manual number 13 that talks about budget in and out of county it does say that the manager the board office manager will review the budgets and quarterly in annual budget expenses will be provided to all board members okay i knew i'd read it somewhere and i

130didn't have the protocol manual handy at the time and i thought it's got to be there so could we as a board now since we have had a changing of the guard in the office although i don't remember it coming in the past two years either to ask that be done for us since it is in our protocol so madam chair that's what i would like to i will make sure that we reinstate it since it's in our protocol so it would be like at the end of march please what was the you said it was protocol i mean i'll go back and look but what it's under 13. thank you budget in and out of county travel and conference registration budgets perfect thank you okay great thank you dr desamore that's all did you

131have a comment well i was just i was just going to say anyone in your area that has access to peoplesoft the financial area of peoplesoft can run those reports at whatever interval you're desiring and we're happy to work with whoever's responsibility that is to make sure that they know you know exactly how to do that it definitely is due to the transition of we didn't get it before yeah okay well the reason you're not getting it now but that's why i'm asking could we please get it now since it is in our protocol yes ma'am thanks got it thank you okay and i have nothing for the good i have a question i'm sorry yes i made through the chair to mrs miss gittins i'm looking at the february 9th minutes which are to

132be approved tomorrow night which specific area is your area of concern maybe it was in february it was when we were it may have been the previous meeting because i had a poll about the architect and the i think it was the meeting before that but i'll look it up and get to her my only concern is procedurally if the like these are the minutes that we will be approving tomorrow night so if they're wrong okay but if they're minutes that have already been approved i don't know how we go about amending them well can we not put a note into them or something because this is free bruno could you please madam chair if i may i'm going to have to review the broadway's rules of order to find out exactly what is the

133appropriate process to amend the minutes i do have some thoughts but i want to make sure that i'm accurate that would be great thank you thank you and you can let us know thank you i don't believe it was the ninth though and i do not have anything for the good of the order so seeing no other work to come before this board i am adjourning this meeting thank you