School Board Workshop: March 4, 2025

001good afternoon everyone it's Tuesday March 4th this is a Schoolboard workshop and the time is 1 p.m. Sergeant in-arms has the front lobby been cleared yes thank you board member Gia vanelli will possibly be joining us on Zoom this afternoon there are 13 items on the agenda today annual Financial audit review Glimpse budget overreview safety update annual instructional materials for science job descriptions construction change order report for January 2025 construction projects by monthly update outcomes for communications board advisory committees board auditor public com comment and good of the order per board protocol each board member should strive for four minutes for initial comment to for followup with a total of 10 minutes for discussion this afternoon we are going to begin with our annual Financial audit review please welcome Eddie castanada senior manager MSL CPA

002and advisers Danielle Jensen and Sarah Cox will be presenting this afternoon good afternoon board members superintendent Dr Carlin and attorney Dei Bruno my name is Sarah Cox I'm the executive director for business services hello I'm Danielle Jensen director of financial services today we have a presentation by MSL CPAs and advisers who did our fy2 24 audit MSL has been our auditor since 2016 they rotate with the auditor general from the state who does our audit every three years today we have Eddie Cena who is our senior who is a senior manager with MS presenting Eddie is a member of the firm's public sector practice with more than 17 years of public accounting experience he has performed Audits and consulting services on more than 30 governmental entities he also provides consulting services in the areas of

003internal controls and operational structure for government entities so he brings a wealth of knowledge to our audits we are very pleased to have him present our fy2 24 audit thank you Danielle well I sound pretty impressive huh thank you for having me today as purpose of today's meeting is just to go over high level results of the financial statement audit your external audit that's done by an external third party our firm MSL and we could go on with the so we are required to communicate to those charged with governance which is this governing board certain Communications which I'll do on this slide our responsibilities as Auditors we audited the school district's financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting princip generally accepting governmental auditing standards that's our responsibility to conduct the audit in in accordance

004to those standards Management's responsibility is to provide us access to information not prevent us from any information that they respond to our inquiries timely and responsiveness I want to say that we've had no disagreements with management we're all on the same page on any accounting standards that were implemented in the current year as part of our audit we also do an internal control evaluation over the school district's internal controls just over the financial statement reporting so we don't take a look at districtwide controls just those controls as it relates to the financial statements there were no significant matters to address to the board we did receive management representations that they did give us all ACC they did give us access to all Personnel all information all files and they responded timely to our request and

005the audit was completed and in accordance with the audit schedule that was provided at the beginning of the audit so our deliverables to the school district are our audit reports there's a number of audit reports that's included in your annual comprehensive financial report the first one's the audit report which is the most important one the district did receive an unmodified opinion which is the quote unquote clean opinion there was no findings no significant deficiencies no material weaknesses identified as I mentioned that we are required to evaluate the school district's internal controls and issue a report on it which is that second title it's it's mouy so but we're happy to report that we found no deficiencies in the school district's internal controls as it relates to the financial reporting another we do a single audit

006every every year we audit the district this is a test to make sure that the school districts in material compliance with any Grant expenditures and Grant revenues that it receives federally we're happy to say that there was no findings related to any of the school district's major programs and no internal control deficiencies were found over those Grant expenditures also the Florida auditor general requires us to issue these two last reports the auditor management letter and the independent accountants report the auditor's management letter just goes over certain requirements that the Florida auditor general office requires all school districts to be in compliance with we're happy to report that of those the ones that they specified us to look at there was no findings and the school districts in compliance with those Florida Statutes the independent accountants

007report is a specific compliance report that the AG requires on the school district's compliance with the Florida statute over Investments and we're happy to report that the school district is in compliance with the Florida statute over Investments next slide and just I'm going to keep this High you could go to the next side just High very high level these are rounded numbers just to give you a year-to-year kind of picture total assets and deferred outflows were up over last year I do want to focus on that un that negative unrestricted number of $350 million that is just the school district's portion of its F FRS reliab liability so it's not really a actual liability you're not really negative under you're not under that much you're never going to cut a check to F FRS in

008that amount it's just something that has to be reported on your financial statements per gby and per Florida po per Florida Statutes next Slide the general fund is a better indicator as it's your operating fund as opposed to like an entity wide com an entity wide which was on the previous slide as you so this is just year over year as you can see the net change in fund balance was 50 million so that just means your revenues were over your expenditures by 50 million through for fiscal year 24 compared to 23 assets were up and liabilities were down in the general fund so that's always something positive that we like to see next slide and then the general funds budget as you could see it did come under but actual revenues did come under

009budgeted amounts however that was offset by the school districts coming under its budgeted expenditures by approxim of That Swing approximately was $100 million in instructional services that were the expenses came in under budget for that for that line item and which is this the most significant portion of how you how the district was under and then I'll leave it for any questions or comments and before I do I just want to give a special thanks to Danielle Jensen and her team particularly Janette andersa over there they do a lot of the heavy lifting to produce this document and also they respond to auditor inquiries trust me no one likes responding to Auditors but so thank you Danielle and to your team at this time I'm going to open up for superintendent comments or board comments

010and questions thank you very much Madam chair first of all I'd like to thank MSL for conducting our audit we always are looking to get better and we really appreciate your work in this regard also very proud of our team and business Serv Services as many of you on the board know that have served for a number of years our Business Services team continues to have a stellar audit and I'm very very proud of the work that they do as well as our entire team so we'll turn it over to you for your comments board members any comments or questions no this is an easy review it's always nice to get a clean audit J I just want to make sure miss giovanelli is she on okay I just want to double check all right

011thank you so much thank you next is the Glimpse Dr Amy desmore Matthew Chesser and Lita de Smith will be presenting okay all right good afternoon Dr Carlin and members of the board we are here today myself along with as you said Miss Lita de Smith and Mr Matthew Chesser to present some information related to a glimpse or educational return on investment and also with us today virtually we have members of the Glimpse team that have been working with us to put information together so at this time I'll turn it over to miss L de Smith who will share some really good information with us so thank you good afternoon as Dr desor said I am Lita DEET Smith our goal today is to explain our partnership with Glimpse to all of you detail our

012timelines of work provide some clarity regarding return on instruction data examine programs specific ific data and discuss next steps with our return on instruction so to begin we'd like to talk about why we started this relationship with our partners and Glimpse as someone who previously oversaw Esser for the school district we know that brought us millions of dollars to fund various projects with an awareness that we were going to be evaluated on those projects to spend those funds and no formal internal program evaluator we quickly realized that as a district we needed to do a more formal process to study the dollars that we were spending and how it was tied to student achievement our work with Glimpse aligns to Dr Carlin's priorities of ensuring financial responsibility as well as directly aligned with our strategic

013goals of improving internal operating systems by increasing the number of defined impact measures to improve cost effectiveness of services and value for expended funds this slide details a timeline of work with Glimpse we formally began our partnership with them in January 2024 and across the screen you see how the evaluation of return on instruction came to fruition after a year of partnership several workg group meetings evaluations and a focused review of our internal Data Systems we now have data to start making informed decisions regarding the impact of our purchases and its impact on student achievement this screen details the workflow with Glimpse over the course of year's time so at the beginning of each school year we examine all of our subscription programs that are being utilized that year which subscriptions May no long may

014no longer require evaluation and what the user expectation is put forth by each vendor our information systems team members work diligently to share progress monitoring data with Glimpse which is then vetted and critiqued to calculate the return on instruction as you can see the cycle continues following progress monitoring 2 and progress monitoring 3 with additional steps to import data directly from our vendors to evaluate those subscriptions what is not captured on this slide is the continuous meetings between glimps myself and cross-divisional workg groups to validate and review the Imports for accuracy and validity so before we dive into some program specific information it's important that I make clear some key definitions Fidelity and utilization using a program to Fidelity is described as a student using that program for as many minutes per week as recommended

015by that particular vendor we will also talk about the difference between a core and supplemental program a core program would be required for students as a part of our district scope and sequence while a supplemental program would Target a specific grade level or intervention for a subset of students so why is this information important each vendor that we work with recommends the program's usage and impact on student achievement the evaluation of this data and return on instruction will change based on the criteria put forth by each vendor and whether or not it's a core program we would not expect to see the same return on instruction for a core program as we would a supplemental program simply because the usage parameters and the number of students who are using the program would be different so

016you will hear us use the term return on instruction rather than return on investment you will also see us put an e in front that stands for educational educational return on instruction helps you see how effectively your dollars are being used to boost student achievement for instance if you spend $110,000 on a program the ERI shows you what percentage of that amount directly contributes to a Student Success key factors include program usage how many students are using the program as recommended by each vendor and its achieved impact so of those students how many are showing desired growth why the E it's important to note that the E and E oi because it's not the same as return on investment return on investment is a purely Financial calculation which does not have a practical application in

017a classroom impact assessment so this detailed analysis that we are getting ready to show you will evaluate the users compared to the total number of students and how much they grew academically or how many students are proficient on a particular assessment such as progress monitoring one two or three student users are defined as full partial or non-users based on each vendor's usage criteria as a part of this calculation Glimpse has the ability to set different metrics for different programs based on the intended outcomes so for example some of our programs we may want to evaluate lessons past rather than just how much a student is using the program now we're going to dive into some program specific data our first example of return on instruction is for a core Ela program for kindergarten through 8th

018grade students in the 2324 school year We compare this data to last year's fast Ela progress monitoring 3 scale score the first dial you see on the screen represents the total amount that we allocated to that particular program which was about $1.3 million the second dial represents the percentage of students utilizing the program to Fidelity which is 45 minutes per week based on the vendor recommendations and in this case 51% the third dial then inversely quantifies the percentage of dollars being underutilized by students who are not using the program to Fidelity 49% lastly ERI is calculated at almost 36% taking into account program users total students intended to use the program and its achieved impact on student growth after seeing an initial ERI calc ated at 36% one may immediately think that this is not

019a good utilization of funds however it's important to dig into this data a little deeper on this screen you see two more pieces of data net gain and user segment analysis the net gain is the amount of our users partial users and non-users grew on the compared assessment over the course of the Year progress monitoring 1 to progress monitoring three our students who use the program to Fidelity 45 minutes a week grew on average over 7 percentage points on Fast Ela our partial users grew over 6% and non-users by 3% this data tells us that our users grew over double than our nonusers for this particular program the user segment analysis shows how many students grew academically in the user user partial user and non-user categories you can see that 79% of students who used

020this program to Fidelity made learning gains 72% of students who use the program partially made learning gains and while non-users still made learning gains it was not to the extent of our full users I should note that when I use the term learning gains I'm referring to the growth of a scale score which could be one point or more so if we know that growth drives proficiency our leadership team then use this data to answer questions such as what is our desired impact of this learning tool and how do we increase utilization for our students if we know that it's a required core program now we're going to dive into a second example of return on instruction this example is for a core math program for students K through 8 in the 2324 school year

021and we've compared this data to Fast Math progress monitoring 3 three scale score again the first dial represents the total amount allocated to the program the second dial represents the percentage of students utilizing the program to Fidelity based on the vendor recommendations and the third dial inversely quantifies the percentage of dollars being underutilized for students that are not using the program to Fidelity lastly the return on instruction is calculated at almost 35% taking in into account our users partial users and non-users compared to the intended use of the program and its achieved impact on student growth so again when we see 35% Roi one may think that's not a good utilization of funds however we dig a Little Deeper on this screen you see two more pieces of data again the net gain and the

022user segment analysis so again the net gain shows us how much users partial users and non-users grew on a compared assessment our students that use this program to Fidelity 45 minutes a week grew on average over 15 percentage points on Fast Math partial users grew by over 14% and nine users by 10% so again we see a positive correlation between student users and academic growth the user segment analysis then shows us how many students grew academically in each of those those categories this analysis is extremely eye openening regarding the number of students who grew when they utilized the program to its intended use on average 90% of students who used or partially used the program made math learning gains our last example to share with you of return on instruction is for a supplemental math

023program for students in grades 6 through 8 in the 23 24 school year this data has been compared to Fast Math progress monitoring 3 so again the first dial represents the total amount allocated to the program the second dial represents the percentage of students utilizing the program to Fidelity the third dial inversely quantifies the percentage of dollars being underutilized for students not using the program to Fidelity lastly the ER is calculated at almost 30 6% so again we'll take a deeper dive the net gain is how much are users partial users and non-users grew on the compared assessment fast math this program does not detail the same growth as the example prior keeping in mind it is a supplemental program geared toward a particular group of students with that said our users still made almost

0243% more learning gains than those who did not use the program the user segment analysis is how many students grew academically in the user partial user and non-user categories it's easy to see that almost the same number of users partial users and non-users made gains however our users were less likely to decline academically this would be an example of a program that requires additional evaluation and collaboration regarding its outcomes and if its impact on student achievement is what we want want to see it opens up the conversation for the number of licenses being purchased for a particular product its targeted audience of students and whether it's working more effectively with a particular group of students Maybe by region or by school or grade level so Glimpse provides us data that we've never had before and

025allows our leadership team to make more evidence-based financial decisions about the tools we're using to purchase and its impact on student achievement these results do not mean that we immediately abandon a prog a product but we continue to dive deeper into what the data is showing us and what adjustments need to be changed so that we can continue to influence academic growth to conclude our presentation our work with Glimpse is just beginning we will continue this school year by importing data evaluating each program in its system and developing a tool to assist in budget planning for the upcoming fiscal cycle currently our members of cabinet including our Chiefs are working with the vendor Glimpse and establishing a plan related to intended users who will be utilizing this platform into what capacity we will start to

026compare programs that are similar their outcomes and which products achieve the most impact for our students we will begin to evaluate cohorts of students over years time to see if the continued use of program s make a larger impact on a particular group than others we will also begin to monitor professional learning outcomes and evaluate if our professional learning opportunities for teachers is making a direct impact on student achievement lastly we will continue to analyze data by subgroups and ensure that specific subsets of students are receiving high impact targeted support at this time we open it up for comments and questions super yes thank you ma'am so as we talked about with 13 first of all thank you for your presentation today I know that this is something that the board has been looking forward

027to and so we're really excited to bring this to you today and we look forward to your conversation I do want to share with you that educational return on an instruction is a relatively newer term we always think about Roi return on investment but this actually gives us a real peak into as we shared in in our presentation into our programs and the things that we're doing that seem to be adding value and we get to look at it by our users non-users and so I thought that data was really very powerful as we go forward making decisions about programs we're going to hang on to and programs that we might eventually say you know this isn't adding as much punch behind the types of things we need to be doing so I look forward

028to your conversation knowing that student achievement is one of our top priorities Mr fiser thank you madam chair great presentation I really appreciate this one especially I mean all of us here about that we have so many programs in the district how do you know how do you manage it how do you know they're effective so my question looking at it on the ERI and I get we're kind of in a firste benchmark how do we know you know for example you have 35% there how do we know what that means is there a benchmark or we just benchmarking against ourselves for the future I can't like so that right now we there really isn't Ed Mark we're looking to see right now what our this data is showing us how we can best analyze

029it and how we use that information to make the appropriate decisions moving forward so we can't give you a number at this point to say well it's this percentage or this or but this data that we're Gathering right now is going to help us determine how do we analyze it in the future and that's what I meant so we're looking at our ourselves and going to bench Benchmark out to the Future and see how we make those yes absolutely any other questions board members Miss Jordan thank you I know I've been asking for this for a long time so thank you for this I guess my we were talking about the 45 minutes per week so is that 45 minutes per week and I thought I heard you and I can't go back because my

030computer's not running right is it mandatory because it says it I thought I heard you say it was but then we speak about the nonusers so if it's mandatory for the 45 minutes per week how are we not making it mandatory and how are we so how do you understand what I'm saying so I'm trying to wrap my head around it's mandatory but it's not happening I do so I think it's important to note that each vendor puts forth that recommendation of minutes per week and then we determine if it's core or supplemental so yes it is a core program the one that you're asking about 45 minutes a week and that's part of the leadership discussion of those students that are not using the program to Fidelity how do we increase because we know

031that it's giving us a good return on instruction we know that the program is working how do we communicate that to our schools to say what plan do we put forth in place so that those children move out of that partial user category into that full user category so I guess my question then would be who's responsible for that taken place who's responsible for that 45 minutes if that's what we're requiring 45 minutes and we see that it does move the needle how do we need to make sure that is happening and who is responsible for that yeah I can jump in on that if that's okay so yes so we absolutely in schools and having been a principal for a number of years we want everything to be perfect as principles we do we

032want everything to come off exactly as we intend being in a class classroom and having taught for a number of years I know Miss Fleming will agree with this every best plan that you create does not always work perfectly because we work with children right and so one of the things we want to always do just like Miss Le said is look at what the programs are recommending and try very hard to get there there are a wide variety of variables that we can certainly will provide more about that offline with you but like I said our goal every day is per Perfection sometimes we don't hit the mark and there are a lot of reasons why children might miss sometimes children are absent sometimes children are needing to go to the nurse sometimes teach

033children need to go to other places so it does happen and we don't always hit you know everything that we plan for every single child we aim for it our teachers work really hard to do that and our principles work hard to monitor but there are situations where children may not be in class or children may have missed a particular item children may have an Intervention Program maybe that they need to do so what like again we always create lesson plans for the best case scenario but that doesn't always happen because we're working with children okay thank you and then my next question too is there a way to determine by I think you said by region how who is best using it is it the West zone or or zones even you know what

034areas are really doing well at this and what areas are not because that again could help us maybe so I can't answer that specifically right now because they don't have the platform pulled up in front of me we do have the ability to monitor the data by those particular subgroups so yes we can absolutely take a deeper Dive by region we can look at particular schools we can look all the way down to the teacher and student level in the classroom so we do have a lot of ability to do that within the platform it not necessarily even subgroups just what areas and remove the subgroups out of that and then I'm sorry I have one more okay and then the U the allocated cost so once that cost all the funds that we just

035seen once it's gone that's still we're still looking at it retaining that cost for other programs or because I know you were s or so I mean where's that where's that money coming for yes so of course that would be a big financial decision to make but we're hoping that the data that the platform provides helps us make continued financial decisions about the best programs that we're spending funds on so was your question how do we continue programs we had before under Esser is that what your question was well I'm just because we seen those large numbers so is that money already budgeted for the next coming year because I know we have the Benchmark that we're just creating you know to move forward so in doing that the funds will have to be there

036for those benchmarks to exceed so is that money already allocated for the next coming years is that already in the budget for these programs that we're trying to see if they work or they don't work yeah so well we're still in the process of building the budget for next year and so as we are doing or as we're finishing that building process then anything that we determine as a district we want to continue will have to be built into the budget so the decisions that we make we'll have to build them in there if that's the decision we make I mean there there there could be some decisions that are made that well if if usage is low or for whatever reason may be that there may be some reason not to continue them right

037that may have something to do with this information or not but anything that's deemed that we want to continue for next year we'll have to build a budget around those decisions and there's also a lot of programs that have overlap so when you're looking at competing programs if one gets you a better bang for the buck and you know you're looking at limited you know dollars as we are every given year you can look at that and say well the one that gets us a 6% gain you know should be the one that moves forward over the one that gets a 3% gain whatever it might be so anytime we have an overlap this is you know a great tool for looking at those kind of competing resources thank you and if I may through

038the chair if I can just piggy back on that is exactly one of the things I was going to mention as you concluded your comments was Rel relative to every single year we take a look at our budget we take a look at what is working and what is not and I will just share with you that our chief academic officer that has been a big part of his job this year has been to look at the wide variety of programs we have and to be very Discerning about which is getting which programs are getting the best bang for their buck and which ones do we need to maybe say goodbye to so that's been a big part of his work thank you Mr persons and then miss chaviano I think has something well while

039I find this information useful to me what would be more useful is how are the students using it stacking up against the state kits you know I mean I'd like to actually see the score the progress monitoring score I mean are we two points behind two points ahead wherever I mean I know we get that information but not through a program is there a way to do that on this program because what you're saying right now is a student could be way below and he's doing better but how are is that program bringing us up to where we're supposed to be you know I mean that to me is just as important as are they personally improving we need to look at the district you what kind of bang for the buck are we getting

040districtwide score-wise understand the question I think it's a little bit of a different analysis than what this program gives us but certainly understand the question I didn't know if there was a way to use Glimpse to get that information by inputting I mean because obviously you had to put in their score you're using the progress monitoring anyway just to see where we are that's that's all I didn't know if we could program that in or something I'll be happy to take that back to the team thank you thank you for for putting the information together I just had a question on slides 9 and 11 obviously with math and language being our biggest kind of low-scoring areas since this is for 23 and 24 are these same core programs being reviewed in 2425 or are

041different programs being being reviewed yes ma'am same programs so we'll have a new Benchmark once this year is done compared to this group of students yes ma'am so similar to to miss Jordan's question on the utilization component when we talk about supplemental which isn't what these numbers are these are core and required when I think of supplemental I think of like I ready I Exel those are supplemental courses that we give our kids I know my kids have to do them with the core component and planning and the hours in the day is this something that's incorporated or broken up to hit that in the week do we know of how that's broken up like what the requirement is to hit the 45 is a 10 minutes a day like do we know how the

042suggested roll out is so I think each school probably has a little bit of autonomy with how they get those minutes met each week so I can't answer that specifically but I'd be happy to work with Dr Shaker and his team through academic services to provide you a more detailed response as to how those students meet that criteria that required criteria on a weekly basis yeah so it's kind of piggybacking on those on those same things since it's kind of falling within the district scope and sequence right those are the required pieces and specifically even for math it's an even lower utilization than our language and that's where we just don't perform the best I'd be curious to see if what that plan of action is yes ma'am thank you my questions are similar to

043what has been asked but I'm going to just stretch it a bit further Miss Jordan hit a good point about I think one I think it's if I were listening out in the public I mean as an educator it's one thing but if I was you know a parent they're probably a little confused what is Glimpse what even is Glimpse I so would you mind giving like sort of a lay in terms Dr Carlin about that and the team will probably back me up here I'm going to give a very cursory understanding having been the new employee here but basically what we're trying to do is trying to take a look at programs that we have have in our schools like when we talk about the educational return on instruction and it's really trying to

044figure out for money that we're spending are we getting the return that we expect so for example on slide eight it basically talks about how effectively are the dollars being used to help us improve student achievement so it's really the like we said the educational return on instruction that's what we're looking at okay thank you and yes and so I think what Miss Jordan May and correct me if I got this wrong but when I was looking at these slides like for example slides 10 12 14 when you're in the public and you hear partial user I would say well why why isn't everyone using this no matter what school you are at so I think that is maybe what you were asking earlier is it an option is it an option school to school

045or is this required throughout the district if we have purched just a material for a core subject is every school required to instruct from that material I'm going to ask our chief academic officer to join us please he's going to be able to answer some of these questions thank you I know what my answer is but I want to make sure he's speaking on behalf of our schools it seems there's an extra chair for me right there so that'll bef welome yeah hi I will do my best to answer some of the questions about a core and a supplemental so a core program maybe important to consider core and required so an example of a core program would be I ready in our district it wouldn't be supplemental we have an implementation criteria which is

04645 minutes a week the partial user portion of that may indicate that a student week over week missed one week or miss two weeks of hitting that 45 minute Mark so they might fall into the partial user criteria I think one of the one of the things I've enjoyed about working with glimps is they're a very interactive team and as we talk with them about what criteria we want to see in Fidelity and in partial and non-user they've been very responsive in being able to respond to that so if I can keep going for example I ready is a program we want to look at not just our students accomplishing 45 minutes a week but are they passing the activities that they're doing so 45 minutes a week is only valuable if you're working productively

047on it and moving forward so glimps has been able to add that criteria into their definition of what is a partial user versus a full user a program like ISL M shvan which I know mentioned that would be a supplemental program for us it's not something that really from a district level we say needs to be used or should be used I is something we set a district criteria for what what should be used does that help yes so all of these materials that are purchased with lots and lots of taxpayer money they're they're expensive programs are expensive our math books our reading curriculum so here's what's frustrating I think for teachers we get these programs s like Dr Carlin said we have High Hopes they came with fireworks and all these special things that

048a teacher can do in a classroom and then they just sort of fall short as to what we were hoping that program would bring so then we have to divert pivot but that curriculum that curriculum is covering standards they're covering benchmarks that need to be taught so from a teacher pers perspective when we change course and we course correct and we have to go research and get new curriculum now teachers have to they get frustrated and I I feel like a lot of I see a lot of head nodding they get frustrated because they started one thing now we've pivoted and now they're having to go to another workshop and another training and you know for something that didn't work in the first place so can we maybe address how how do we course correct

049there without frust our Educators yeah absolutely I'll take a an initial stab and then I'd like Dr Shaker to jump in so as I mentioned a few minutes ago one of the blessings of having Dr Shaker in the role one of many is that he number one just came from a school so he totally understands what the teachers are dealing with and what the students are encountering and two his charge has been to look at the wide array of programs that we have had on the menu over the for the last several years and to work with his team to be very Discerning this works we're seeing evidence of it I wonder about this which is a great reason to use Glimpse I'm not sure if this is working let's look at that and then

050also having those conversations with principles and with teachers to say what are you finding at the schoolhouse because I totally agree with you m Fleming we have vendors that can make it sound like it is absolutely the next best thing since slic bread but when it comes down to what is in the classroom what is getting the best bank for a buck and some of those things we've traditionally done I've challenged our team to say step back for a moment pause what evidence do we have to indicate that is moving the needle for children or not and that's some of the work and I again I give tremendous kudos to Dr Shaker and his team for being very intentional with that work for stepping back and looking what's happened over the last several years why

051have we continued to decrease overall in our proficiency and to his credit he and his team have been very thoughtful about this is what I'm seeing in the classrooms this is what's working these are the things I'm not sure about and these are the things we definitely have to stop doing and how do we make that more palatable for teachers I think when they start to see the success that comes from doing less better I think we'll start to see more Buy in with that but when you're right every year we keep throwing six new things at teachers that is very stressful to them and I want Dr Shaker to jump in if there's anything that I missed Dr con I just I appreciate it you know our Focus has been on people over programs

052and that's that's been something we're we're definitely looking for what I appreciate about Glimpse here showing us that reading program and that math program at a pivotal time like now when we're reconsidering contracts that decision would often be made based on anecdotal evidence pieces that we've heard looking at that reading program we see that it has an effect so our decision going forward to continue that contract but not also to go to our principles and say guys the evidence is indisputable that this is high functioning I need you know as we get we get almost bi-weekly usage reports from that particular company you know as we pass down these usage reports this is something you should talk with your teachers about and and reinforce it so we're really getting two benefits out of it helping

053us make the decision to continue but also having a very clear indicator and tool to to promote its usage thank you so I feel like this is a great time for me to just put a little little tag on this because many of us are on the campaign Trail and are out in the community and some of you just came off of the campaign trailer yourself and when I was campaigning I heard a lot just get back to classical education I was a teacher when I first started teaching I was on a chalkboard by the end of my educational career I was able to use a finger on a white thing and sign off on it with with L like laser lights so sometimes I feel like you know just because it has Sparkle and

054all of the fun things it's okay to go back to paper pencil every once in a while so I just feel like I had to put that little snippet out there but any other questions or comments all right thank you guys so much for the for this today I'm going to move on to next for our budget overview oh miss desmore Dr desmore don't move because you're staying there okay stay right here and Kelly Lecter will also be joining her all right all right well good afternoon again so this is I believe our second or third stop in talking about the budget formulation for next year for fiscal year 2026 we have a couple new pieces of information to show and share with you today and then just going to give kind of a general

055information about what the timeline looks like in terms of how we build a budget and then what happens next so I'll turn it over to Mrs lecher who will take you through our presentation today good afternoon everyone I'm going to start with the governor's budget we received the governor's budget a couple of weeks ago I do want to point out that it's really hard to to figure out where we're were going from the governor's budget years ago and that's what happens when you've been here for years the governor's budget was a high point right he it would come in really high and you knew you were going to get something under that the last couple of years it's kind of flip-flopped where the governor's budget has been lower than what we've actually received later on

056so I'm going to throw give you information based on the governor's budget but I'm not sure where we're going to end when the legislative session is done so the governor's budget is showing us with an increase in FTE of 1,971 that breaks out the family empowerment scholarships increase was 9919 of that and the district and Charter Schools was 1,52 we're still waiting to get the finalized numbers through the FTE projections with doe and so hopefully we'll be able to bring that back to you next next time that we're talking with the projections and what we've agreed to with OE the base student allocation the governor increased it by $94.95 it's now he is recommending $ 5,426 his total funding increase was 34.9 Million the breakout of that is the family empowerment scholarship portion was getting

057a $10.7 million increase and the district schools and Charter Schools was 24.1 Million there were some of those categoricals those those set of sides that have requirements attached to them in the budget the educational enrichment and some of you might remember that as the supplemental academic or Si is showing a reduction of about 2.2 for Lee County our ESC guaranteed allocation that is the additional dollars given for our students with exceptionalities that are like speech and things like that and gifted has decreased 4.6 in his plan there were increases in other areas such as safe schools increased about 363,000 and mental health increased about 398,000 overall the increases to district and Charter funds per FTE was about 1.5% however the overall increase for the scholarship FTE was about 3 and a half% per FTE so

058just to be clear in the governor's budget recommendation then this is just the first blush from the state of course legislative action has to take place for us to get our final budget and the final F ffp run but this is just our first indication of what may happen at the state level so this is that information for you and there was also an attachment with the actual pieces broken out if you wanted to you know take a look at it deeper so we're going to flip over to school allocations how we're allocating dollars to our schools we're in the process of doing that right now our schools have three major funding sources which is their District resource allocations or you may hear them referred to as dras the title one in idea we will

059be releasing these allocations to our schools at the end of March and it is the largest single budgeted item in the general fund right now for this year we have over $600 million going to our schools just through the Dr process and there's other funding that goes outside of that but that's just through that process I want to kind of go over I know it's kind of hard to see what a school sees when they're they get their funding so when you're looking at this you can see the FTE that is the students and the program areas that the students are reported in and then the weighted FTE that takes the FTE and weights it out so that it creates an additional dollars based on the students and where they fall we come to a

060total amount for that which is based basically doing the same thing the state does for us which is taking the base student allocation and the comparable wage factor and coming to that number we have found that our Esau population of course is very high and we have a lot of needs in that area so for our schools with a high Esau population we have added an additional allocation above to help them with the students in that area when a student is reported in the area with the ESC guarantee we give the schools a little bit of extra money to cover that ESC guarantee needs that they have and then we also give them money for class size in order to help meet class size we give them based on an allocation to help meet the

061class size and on top of that as well for some of our schools that are smaller we have to provide an additional allocation in order for them to have the just the basic requirements because they are so small their student population may not generate enough to have the the needs of what the students have if they have a self-contained classroom one of those higher level ESC needs we provide a teacher and a par for every self-contained classroom in the district and then what we do is we back out the weighted funding for those students so that it covers it covers some of it not all of it and then they come to a number and that number provides them the F ability than to do what they need to do in their school based on

062their student population there are requirements for them they need to meet class size they need to meet the students IEP needs and esol needs and things like that and we work with the regional superintendent to make sure that all of those needs are being met and with the allocations that they have so as Kelly mentioned the school allocations will will be released sometime at the end of March of course the legislative process isn't over with yet and so there's a lot of information that we don't know when we're releasing the school allocation but it's necessary to do so at that time because it's for next school year so therefore schools have to plan now related to what personnel what resources they will have in the next school year and then they use that information so

063that we meet all of the Personnel timelines that we have in terms of reappointments non- reappointments that trans you know transfers from one school to another as employees U make decisions about what they're going to do over the summer and for next year so that's the reason why the timeline is what it is so when we are formulating the school allocations then we have to take the very best information we have which is basically what you're seeing now make some assumptions and then upon those assumptions create those allocations for schools for next year then as we get additional information as our legislative process ends as our budget finalizes there may be some updates to that we make but we have to make the decisions now based on what we know so moving forward what we're

064working on right now is our school by school projections we look at what planning is doing with the capacities we look at when the batches run where you know where the student population is landing and we come up with a school by school projection that we provide to the schools to use for their initial allocations and what their what their needs are they'll also be we're preparing the title one and the Ida allocations right now while we're going through this process so that they all get they get all of their allocations by March 31st so that they can make good decisions with all of their funding sources we then watch throughout the summer because through the summer we have kids that are coming and going and so we watch throughout the summer to make sure

065that the schools have what they need to meet the students that are showing up as they're coming through we may have a school that just grows immensely over the summer that we had not anticipated and we want to make sure that we give the resources to the schools to have people in place when the kids show up we then look again at day 10 and see what kids actually showed up sometimes we'll have kids that are enrolled and then don't show up and the schools will remove them and we'll do another allocation at day 10 and look at did the kids come or did more kids come and we'll readjust their allocations at that time to make sure they have the resources they need and then we'll do it again after the October FTE survey

066and we do an October and then project for February depending on how a school's history is moving forward I'm going to skip on over now to family empowerment scholarships just so you all have some understanding of that and where we are there are two types of family empowerment scholarships there's the educational options which is open to any K to2 student and they can participate in a private school they can be homeschooled and things like that then there's the unique abilities or the UA program which is really the students with disabilities and allowing them some additional educational options in private schools and things like that those are the two types of the family empowerment scholarships the educational options of course is the largest of the two we put in a breakdown from the past years into

067the projection from the governor's budget of what those look like how they break out in the district and the percentages as you can see on this was the second calculation for 2025 the district had 81% of the student population of the total amount Charter Schools were at 12% and the FES was at 6.56% when we look at what the governor's budget is was projecting out they were projecting the district to be it just under 81% the charter schools to stay right around 12% and for the family empowerment scholarships to jump up to about 7.28% so that's the breakout as we look over year toe the growth in the different areas so you can see the district is still growing even though family empowerment scholarships have been in place and are growing as well and this

068was in response or in followup to the question that I believe Mr fiser asked at the last briefing so hopefully this is providing some of the information that you are wanting to see yeah at this time I'll turn it over to Dr Carlin and you wel discussion thank you very much Dr dmores Miss sletcher thank you for always coming well prepared and providing us with wonderful information about our budget I do want to recognize that today is the first day of session in Tallahassee and so obviously we're wishing all of our legislators a great session and very importantly watching what's going to be happening in terms of the budget and the policy work up there so with that I'll turn it over to the board for your discussion and questions board members any comments or

069questions question Miss Shavano thank you for putting all the numbers together I do have a question for slide seven just in terms of numbers for scholarship do we have an idea of how many students the district is losing to private schools with those scholarships the well we do have a withdrawal code that details like the number of students that we have that withdrew that went to private I do believe so we could provide that information the information that was provided on the other Slide the last slide of the presentation really just shows the total breakout that doesn't necessarily mean that those the students that are now in FBS actually were ever here they might not have ever been here and according to the numbers it kind of seems like that's what it was but we

070do have some students that have left us for private school we can provide those breakouts of what those withdrawal numbers show yeah that'd be great mhm thank you Mr fiser thank you thank you for this presentation thank you for including that I'll probably have some follow-up later but thank you one thing I want to highlight and it's kind of a little bit related to what Dr Carlin just said so we're looking at the governor's budget recommendation can we go to page two the BSA sorry completely backwards so okay sorry there you go there we go thank you and this is a little bit tangental to it but one of the important things that really Dr Carlin has helped put place is our government relations team and this is between government relations our lobbyist and our

071school board and probably this is both for our new Schoolboard members and the public this is where some of those utilization is so important so like for example where it says 1.7% base student allocation increase I believe is a little bit similar last year but through lobbing efforts and through that we're able to get it to was it like 24 25 something like that where the rest of the school districts gotten 2% so you look at that so let's give a real world number let's say talks about 5426 on a 1.7% increase let's say were able to jump that up to 2.5% doesn't sound like much that's about $38 per student on Ft doesn't sound like much so change that to you know let's say 100,000 students that's a difference of $4 million right there

072so to the as I said to our newer board members and to the public this is why we do that this is why we go up there this is why we need to have a strong government relations team these are some of the areas and there's many others with that so I just wanted to make sure to highlight that to the public that's one of our big bonuses we're able to do with this is to really affect that change across the state thank you anyone else yeah I just want to make a comment I had an excellent oneon-one on boarding session yeah I just wanted to comment I had an excellent one-on-one onboarding session yesterday with Dr deore and I thought you did a great job and I was really pleased with the time you

073spent going through some of these numbers with me so thanks again thank you thank you all right seeing no other comments thank you so much okay all right thank you so much next is safety update by Dave Nolan good afternoon board members superintendent Denise Carlin and our board attorney de Bruno again this one of our safety updates for the month I thought I'd bring forward to you today the information on fortify Florida we talk about a lot but I want to bring provide some history not only for you but for the public as well and giveing everybody an idea of how many tips we get per year per month and what does that look like a little bit of background fortify Florida is a suspicious activity reporting app that was created by the Florida legislature

074in 2018 the app was developed in response to the mass shooting at margerie stowman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida in 2018 this was part of the margorie stowman Douglas High School public safety act the app was developed by the Office of the Attorney General Flor Department of Education and Florida Department of Law Enforcement the students from marger stman Douglas High School named the app and again the purpose was to allow students and individuals to Anonymous anonymously report suspicious activity including threats violence and criminal activity and the app then sends direct reports directly to the school officials and law enforcement agencies again the features this app is available is available for Android and Apple devices it does notify the reporting party if they choose to disclose their identity it maintains the confidentiality of the reporting

075party's identity if they choose to and the app May provide the IP address of the device used to submit a false tip to law enforcement there is training new students transferring to school Florida schools are required to receive training on the how to use the app and I'll go into that in the next slides as well that's part of the house bill that came out in 1473 that we had some new changes this year I talked about that so give you an idea of the year-to-year midyear comparison because obviously right now we're only into midye of this current year so going back to to 2022 of August to December there was a total of 108 106 total of fortify Florida tips in 23 same same midyear comparison 179 and then right now to to date

076we have 433 and I'm going to give you some more information about that I'm going to go back to this and kind of give some reason possibly why and also the substance that is included with fortifi Florida and what's reported so if you a year comparison to fortifi Florida again we haven't got to a full year yet but just to give you an idea in 2022 we had a total of 285 tips in 2023 to 24 that year was again that was for 94 and now we're already at 497 half the year so part of the question comes up is looking at things you know what's changed what could maybe have increased the volume we're getting a 4 five4 tip so then you look at the number of schools we have going back to 22

077to currently you know increase in students po possibly even charter school students as well that take that in consideration I'm sure it has some effect a little bit because that's obviously every year a little bit but that's part of when you look at that as well and also as I mentioned before one of the big things in legisl legislation was the house bill 1473 as you all remember going back to the fall within the first 5 days of the school year each district school must ensure that instruction of the use of fori floor is provided to students so last year we developed a video based on the age of children in elementary school and middle school and high school to review fortify Florida remind them what the purpose of it's for and how how to

078use it and so forth and again just recently there was an additional requirement that are now applied to parents the training for parents and Guardians on how to use fortify Florida before the start of the school year and at the time of student enrollment as well that also be will be required so I want to go back to the midyear comparison so when I require when I got the information from the state they give you a lot of raw data just of of the total amount if you look at when I looked at 2022 out of the6 total 454 tips when we look at those tips that would be more of those that are going to hurt a threat that hurt somebody else or others that was about 31% of those 106 total tips if

079you look at 2023 there was a total of 15% that was a threat towards themselves or others and then so far for this year going mid year at a total of 4 33 we're at 18% so a lot of those again to answer the question a lot of those are not serious threats these are just could be any information that's put on a tip by anything but I think part of this to is that there's a combination of the current change in in 1473 of the reminder of how to use fortifi flid that it's out there we want people to use it we want to encourage them to use that's what it's for I think also that as well as looking at you know just the information that's been provided so is interesting to look

080at the information just to give you some everybody an idea what how much we receive as 45 fla tips and this is just one mechanism how you can report things just one we get things other ways too this is the main one that through safe schools is as a tool providing everybody's Chromebook easy accessible and you can remain remain anonymous so I thought it was important information to provide and to get some history and background about for5 Florida and this kind of how it came about and I'll stand by for any questions thank you very much Chief Nan as the board knows fortify Florida is a very important tool in our communication and safety toolbox we absolutely are proud of our students and our staff and our families when they report things that they are

081concerned about in our schools in our community and just want to thank them and continue to encourage them to come forward when they see things that don't look quite right we want to make sure that we look at everything that comes forward Mr nulan is again we're very proud of of the work that he does in this District but very proud of our schools for promoting this communication tool and for making sure that children and families know that this is the place to report it we need you to report it we will look at it if it's not credible F fine no problem we'd rather know about it and look it look at it and say gosh this didn't happen but we do not want to become complacent and sit back and say we should

082have said something and we didn't so we look forward to your comments and your discussion today Miss Jordan I just have one quick question thank you very much for all that you do so if a new child comes into the district that when they go to the school the school then within the X amount of days we'll have them do this watch the video and then Mark put it in their file that they have done that yes with in the first five days of the school year everybody has to review the video but also a student that's just come in to to new to the school let's say moves from out of state comes to Lee County once they enroll the student and the parents will go through that same as well 45 Florida how

083that works and how to use it and is that done at the school and then it's put in their file that they have F those require so the whole school has to they play at the school itself that indicate they have to record that's been played within the first 5 days okay but also it's also a video resupply against the student enrollment to make sure once they enroll the parents are also give the information as well okay perfect thank you thank you Mr persons what about multiple tips on the same person how is that reported for just Jad and I each make a call about Sam and report him I mean is that counted as as two on fortify I mean if we do it separately or do they lump those together if it was

084the same person and I imagine some are the same yeah I mean there are there are some that the same where there are some that may be a followup of additional information so they are counted separately but again to me if you're having different people report it that's important we want them to report it so they do count those separately no I agree I think it's just more awareness is getting more people so thank you're welcome any other questions Miss Shavano thank you for that so for the annual training for the parents has that started yet cuz I know it's it came out in 24 so that's already been released to the parents yes we have yeah we so we got that notification we developed the video it is completed it's available yes so how

085are the parents notified of the training so I give Communications to verify how they I want to say not I don't want to get the information I want to say it's is available on the our website but I want to make sure that before I say that okay I'll come back to you that one Jordan I would be curious then because we have three parents who have students in their in the actual schools and if they've already had the training I'll definitely get back to the information any other questions thank you very much all right thank you yeah you sh next is our annual instructional materials this is going to be regarding science presenting this afternoon is Dr Nathan Shaker Karen Babor and Sydney d good afternoon board good afternoon superintendent we're here today to

086to share some information about our science adoption that's going to take place this is really the first of three steps Miss babber is going to lead you off but I was just going to share a little bit of of basic information about the process so when an adoption occurs the state is the first to really review the materials take invitations for materials that occurred last spring so the state made a call for science materials in the spring of 2023 really between the fall in the spring the fora Department of Education reviews the ex reviews with experts parents community members members that process all took place last year in July this last July the Florida Department of Education posted the state adopted materials for Science and Lee County then at the start of this year invited

087only state adopted Publishers to participate in our Lee County adoption process so this is a really the PO the system that we follow for all of our texbook adoptions to make sure that we have strong cohesion strong alignment with the fora Department of Education okay so we started our adoption process in September where I met with all of those state adopted Publishers and kind of briefed them on the process for Lee County and how we run our adoption process then we had a our annual publisher showcase which we open it up for the public to come in the Publishers are here in District and it's open for the public public to come and meet with the Publishers and ask any questions at that time in October we then had our committees created our committees with

088our schools we trained our committees in teaching them how Lee County runs our adoption process as well as we brief them on the state's re process for reviewing instruction materials at the end of September and the beginning of October we had our publisher presentations where our Publishers came in they presented to our committees our committees were able to take notes and ask questions and we waited a week before our deliberation process and we do that so that our those teachers and students that are participating in the adoption can go back to the school and discuss with their their team members their grade levels content areas and again GA information to bring back for deliberation day and on deliberation day our teachers and community members were able to then meet they do activities they have rubrics

089where they'll go through and really take deep dives into those materials and to see which of the materials they wanted they were going to recommend for adoption so our committees consisted of Elementary science middle school science for comprehensive courses 1 2 and three high school biology chemistry physics anatomy and physiology Marine Science environmental science forensic science Earth space science and physical science so they had a big job to do those committees were made up of teachers administrators and we did have students and parents on it as well the science committee recommendations for elementary we they recommend reced Florida savis Science exploration for middle school they recommended mcgr Hill Florida Science High School biology was Florida savis Florida Miller and LaVine experience biology for high school chemistry was mcgar Hill Florida chemistry for physics was Pasco

090essential physics for high school's anatomy and physiology mcra Hills Florida HS Essentials of anatomy and physiology High School Marine Science was mgra Hills Marine Science High School forensic science was Sage forensic science fundamentals and investigations High School environmental science recommended Sage environmental science sustaining your world the Florida Edition and high schools Earth space and physical science recommended the Florida Hill the mcra Hill Florida books for Earth space and physical science and our committee has put together a rationale explaining everything they loved about the different programs I'm not going to read them all to you today I know we are low on time but because the state already went through that rigorous approval process our committees were very confident that the materials were aligned to the state standards and they were aligned to the mission of

091or the vision of the state for instructional materials so when they selected they really looked at these materials their whole thing was which of these materials were going to best meet the needs of our teachers and our students so that's really what they were looking through and looking for and they really felt that these programs really met the needs for all our teachers our beginning teachers and brand new have never taught so they had enough resources and supports for them and our existing teachers our veteran teachers who've been teaching for 30 years it provided them with enough resources that they were still going to be able to teach successfully they also felt that these programs really offered the supports needed for all our Learners our accommodations for our elll students our ESC students as well

092as our low Learners as well as extension and providing those extra things in there to help with our high Learners and really meeting their needs as well so ultimately they felt rightly these were the best programs that fit the needs of the students and teachers of Lee County so if you want to actually look through and enjoy all those reasons why you may but really they really felt that those were the best programs for us our estimated cost for the science adoption is going to be 9,331 12110 now this is all an estimate because it really depends on the enrollment in those different courses so if we have a lot of students going into physics next year of course that price is going to that those material are going to be more money and it

093will kind of balance out and then we do have our review site it's open now on our district website every I actually posted this on September 30th all of the ways for stud or anybody parents community members everybody to log in and review those materials so that is open the timeline is also posted as well and then our next steps so after today actually tomorrow I will be posting the public hearing notification which will take place on April 8th at the school board Action meeting the school board adoption of science instruction materials will be on May 6th and then the objection form will be posted on May 7th for anybody and it'll be open for 30 days and these are all aligned to State statutes which is the proc process that we go through all

094right thank you very much any questions discussions Dr Carlin well thank you to Dr Shaker and his fabulous team for your presentation today I also want to thank everybody that served on an adoption committee I've done it before it is an arduous task it is time away from your children and away from your students and so just thank you to all of our committee members as well for bringing for forward your recommendations I do want to highlight something that Mrs babber was speaking about our instructional materials review site we will make sure that link gets out to our board members and we'll make sure it's highlighted on our website as Miss Fleming referenced earlier just coming off of the campaign Trail I noted that there are parents that definitely want to be very involved in

095curriculum they want to understand what it is we're teaching children and so this is a golden parent engagement opportunity to pop onto the site to take a look at the materials and please please give us your feedback we look forward to that so with that I will turn it over to you for your discussion Mr persons now these materials will be good for how many years the normal adoption is 5 years sometimes because the state has changed their timeline we've had to Gap year and extend out those adoptions but as of now it's 5 years okay thank you okay two questions how many teachers serve on these committees and is there a level that you have more action or more willingness to serve we asked one teacher per school to participate high school was a

096little difficult because of the actual programs not every school offers physics and not every school offers or space science so we did have smaller committees for those but for our elementary we had I think almost every single Elementary School participated same thing with the middle school as well we don't cap how many teachers can serve on a committee do we typically we ask one teacher because we don't want lots of teachers being pulled out of classrooms so we ask for one representative from each school we also ask for we're we happy to accept administrators to come and sit as an administrator on the committees as well I just want to make sure this is happening during instructional time for just for the public to understand my other question is how do we go about ordering

097just enough materials without extra so for example I'm sorry to ask this question but you know you'll walk into a classroom and there'll be sometimes 20 workbooks that were never touched so how do we save money in that how do we allocate and kind of have it sort of an estimate without wasting too many dollars and that's the struggle that we keep trying to work through but basically we order by co we'll do initial orders on capacity so if the school is saying that they're going to need 150 elementary middle or Elementary third grade books that's the number that we're going to order for sometimes that comes a little over sometimes it comes a little under and we're trying to do a better job of Shifting materials to different schools so that we can have

098that cost savings we're not constantly ordering more books and that we can and you typically that's what ends up happening we end up Shifting the materials at the end of the school year or at the beginning of the school year knowing that all right well we sent 150 J colon English only needed you know 125 so we need you to move those 25 books over and so that's what we work on and then in the pre in the substantial years we get do reorders so we'll look at inventory at the schools and if you have say 25 books sitting there and you're not going to need we won't order you those 25 bucks so we work with the schools to get a good accurate inventory to help us with those costs so I know that

099in these kits these curriculum kits let's say per student each student gets a textbook a workbook an intervention book and maybe some other supplement that the company will add on how do you decide or or who do you talk to do we do you take a survey do we do we ask principles let's say they realize these intervention books just they weren't really doing the job we wanted them to do so we're going to backpedal and only order textbook and workbook can is there some flexibility there or there is absolutely we don't always order and that's great about working with Florida school Book Depository in ordering those books is we do have that ability to do it all a cart or order the package and get everything together and so a lot of times with

100middle school or high school we'll do class sets to set that cost with Elementary we'll look and talk to usually we actually have that conversation with Dr Shaker and Lori howchin and the specific content area coordinator and we really look at what is it do we actually need what is it that the Stu the teachers need and we try to balance that with cost savings as opposed to what is actually going to be utilized in the classroom excellent I thank you any other questions all right thank you so much for putting this together we're going to welcome Angela Mont marado to the to the stage I guess we'll call it that this afternoon next she's going to have job descriptions good afternoon board members superintendent Carlin attorney dpri Bruno before you received I believe it

101is four job descriptions I'm sorry five we have the school behavioral contact was a supplement for your review coordinator government compliance and investigations a revision to engineer broadcast Communications a revision to the chief operations officer and a revision to the manager of Safety and Security for the zone at this time I will open it if you have any questions Dr Carlin do you have anything I do not just thank you for presenting and we look forward to your conversation today board members any comments or questions about job descriptions none today thank you thank you next is our construction change order report and our bimonthly update of March 2025 with Scott rickenbacher and Kiara Sak good afternoon board members superintendent Carlin Esquire de P Bruno you got a double shot Tuesday you get a minor change

102order report and then you get your two-month update Mr Parsons if I may superintendent I'd like to take this opportunity you are very big on the direct material purchasing tax savings we get this is the brains that performs that she's filling in Melissa's on vacation so this young lady carries all the weight she does all the heavy lifting with the paperwork so it's her magic not mine so let's start out on the change order report for January 2025 you'll see it's a it's a quiet month we only had non-direct material purchases in the amount of $ 36,7 of40 the secondary backup sheet you will see that the Johnson engineering we engaged in a $ 17,45 change order that's where we're revising the Lehi senior area where we're going to put a staging campus for the

103next M and N elementary schools we've we're shifting we're paying to move the facilities that were taken from them years ago further in in coordination with the principal and her staff so that's underway they're doing the design work you'll see that we have four time extensions that we granted to our vendors Pine Island Elementary sanitary sewer that was due to some rain delays that we had during the project and the toilets are all functioning we're almost complete but we're still going through punch list and getting them done Tortuga preserve we had to add a boundary survey we did not have a boundary survey so that added some time we had to give to the civil engineer to create the boundary survey to finish his work Villa Elementary School parent drop off the drawings aren complete

104they needed a little extra time to get it done in our contractual settings we only gave them 3 months and it was a pretty involved project so we allowed them at no dollar cost to have a little more time to get the drawings accurate and K Coral Technical College expansion we added a little additional time to that design as you're aware we had been out of budget and we Rew went through the project and de value engineering and changed many things to get back into the board to proov capital budget and they needed a little more time to put those changes onto the blueprint so that they and go out to bid and that's the change order report any questions board members any questions on this part of the presentation okay proceed okay and I'll

105just give you a heads up next February when you get your change order report we're returning on Franklin Park $7.5 million in overall project savings so that'll be coming out next month so the first slide we have this is Bayshore the K8 expansion you I'm not going to go through every slide you guys have it but I'll give you the highlights that have changed from when it was issued to you because we have a lot here on February 17th we did receive the 60% estimates from the architect of $39 million and the construction manager was due March 4th and we got it yesterday of $43.6 million so we're within the board approved budget we're within that range at the 60% estimate and again these numbers will get Tighter and Tighter as we get closer to

106the 100% And we put it out for public bid so we're right on track any questions with bore okay next slide please bbbb quadruple B otherwise known as another school 60% design estimates we due May 13th we actually have them earlier we have Architects estimate in the amount of 1110 m352 and we have a CM 60% estimate of 0,29 6925 they're they're pretty close but that's telling me maybe people are picking up the phone and talking but that's okay it gives us a good indication of where the number is we're well within what our construction budget is and when you add all of our things FF and E on that we're still within your $128 million budget in the capital plan we do have some minor changes that at the request of of the superintendent's

107office looking how to maximize and reduce student station costs so we've been working with Dr Shaker we've been working with the design team we've been working with planning and we have found some of those numbers and I believe if Adam hasn't already presented to you Dr con you'll be pleasantly surprised we're able to do that so there will be some minor adjustments made to that but we think we can accommodate that look next slide please Bonita Springs Elementary rebuild right now we have tonight actually you folks will be approving a an addition to the phase one cost because we're not at this moment in time ready to go out for Phase 2 bidding so we're asking for an increase of $1.5 million which which will cover the demolition of the historic buildings but also provide

108for in the historic building you have your MDF and you have your electrical switch gear rooms so we have to create a trailer out there literally a container where we'll store the electrical power in the MDF so that we keep the lifeblood of the school running and then we are free and clear and it keeps us on schedule to start the rebuild for the rest of the school so that's the ask and that'll be coming to you tonight and the drawings hopefully once completed we'll be able to put that out for bidding and bring back to you what an estimated total project cost will be as we're moving through that design phase any questions on Bonita Springs okay next K Coral Technical College we spoke a little bit about that the GMP was received on

10922825 and it will be coming to you on the April board meeting so we'll be bringing the total project cost to you for the cape project and we're under budget we're maintaining the board approved Capital plan so you'll see that next month any questions why we're on it if you haven't driven down Santa Barbara Boulevard we are demolishing the old building it's coming down don't drive in there with your personal cars you're going to get n next slide please Cypress Lake Middle School rebuild we are out there now we did receive the GMP the GMP from the contractor was 7 a little over $78 million the total project cost which on that project will be coming to you tonight as well is $1,599 777 that represents roughly a $19.5 million savings from the capital plan

110budget a lot of that is we're realizing some really good pricing we've been very good in the ve and we're getting some good numbers now so the market is somewhat stabilizing so you'll be seeing that tonight so there's some money that in the capital Plank and can help with our situation any questions Hector ceretta Jr K8 rebuild is underway they're working with the city of K Coral the Southwest Florida Water Management has been in communication with our civil engineer and we're we're on track and on schedule to get that going for a substantial completion of August 1st of 2026 we have filed with the Army Corps as we have to we're doing a no permit required we don't anticipate disturbing the small pocket of little Wetlands on that site and it looks like we might

111be able to get a release and get a start in time and we do what possibly proceeding at risk where we take every effort to ensure we don't go into that small it's not a quality Wetland we don't go in there and disturb it and we do our work and move forward so we're well on the way with with that school any questions rer thank you as I ask every two months when are we looking to have the shovel in the ground there okay if you go to the last page that you can't read with the 50 projects we did yes sir I bring it all with me cuz I know it's going all right we are looking to put a shovel in the ground April 3rd thank you and that date is still holding

112M we expect some really good news from South Florida Water Management that'll help us the Cape Coral staff has been working really well with our design team that's doing the PPP project out there so if that changes I'll certainly alert the front office immediately but that's our Target date thank you and I know they're hard to read but we update this every month so you're getting real time information when you see these all right where was it next school elementary L East Zone we received a request from this designer to move the 90% design estimates for both the architect to March 17th this particular designer and it didn't impact the substantial completion or the contractual obligations because obviously that school isn't due until many many years from now 28 that particular designer has been overloaded

113we fed that Designer a lot of work they're involved in a lot of our projects so to give the person an extra month to produce the drawings I felt was fair and reasonable so any questions okay and remember too L is on that combo site l in oo we're sitting in that spin with the Army Corps of Engineers so it's not delaying anything and it allows them to to complete the drawing if that explained it next slide Elementary m we just received our architect 60% estimates architect is estimating 67 million $2,710 the construction manager is estimating $ 75,7 74,7 so we've got a little bit of this of a break there which is normal the CM is obviously going to put allowances in and padding for unknown conditions and design as we get closer to

11490% again as I always tell you that number will tighten up and as you can see the budgeted amount in the capital plan is $100 million at that moment in time so even if the CM number stays at the 75 when you add our FF which typically is about another 15 to 20% we're right we're right in that sweet spot not just FFN there's a whole bunch of things involved in there but that portion any questions I'm sure you've as answered this before the other day we had one the senator out of Franklin Park and he said I love the design of the school it looks great why don't why can't we not just take this design and put it somewhere else because we own the designs you absolutely can so are we looking and

115that saves US money too correct there's a savings in the design cost assuming that the contract that was written for that I'd have to go back and look at it has a provision for a reuse fee within the contract Franklin Parks was kind of a one-off special school simply because of all the community programs and things that were going to occur within that campus we certainly can look at the contract but we've already engaged and it doesn't mean we can't go a different direction but we've already done an RFQ at this moment in time with a different Administration it was chosen to come up with a designer that could bring a fresh look to the district yet while incorporating our prototype into it if that makes sense so the trains already left the station it

116doesn't mean that we can't call it back and do things but I think that's outside of this conversation at the days well thank you and not necessarily Franklin Park but just in general you know using the same design over instead of returning and trying to get them to give us new designs and paying for new designs and we already have them that is correct and S ref actually recommends that you reuse your prototype if it was built within 3 years of your next build okay next slide we're almost there hang with me high school nnn we did receive the drawings on 33 we're in that holding pattern with the Army Corps but I do have some good news and the superintendent I'm sure we'll brief you in a separate one-on ones but we received notice

117that the Army Corps is going to be out to do a sight walk this Friday and that's critical in my world they've already approved all the off-site permitting design comments for the utilities that have to be brought to the site and they feel very comfortable with the on-site again we're doing a no permit required on this we're not disturbing the wetlands on site they want to come out to validate that what information we presented in terms of boundaries of wetlands is true and in fact what they visually see out there and if it is and holds true they feel confident that they can release the letter recommending a no permit required and possibly give us a permit by November of 2025 now that's a full year in advance and we can have those conversations with

118the superintendent and her staff as to whether we kick it in high gear and we try to bring on those seats and that's desperately needed eone any questions next slide middle school oh oh I told you about that we are impacting the wetlands we have a permit we've applied both that school and LL we're doing some roadways between the property working with Lee County do on that whole interchange process that's happening out there have a really good collaboration all of that heavy liftings already been done so we're sitting in the holding pattern waiting on this with the engagement of of our legislative staff that you all have have brought on board communicating with people in the legislature and in the in the upper ranks of Florida we're hoping that they can help push that project

119along to again for those needed seats for elementary and middle any questions okay Riverdale High School not sure if any of you all I know the superintendent has been out there job is progressing we're still on target they've got a beautiful gym going on a beautiful science building and the interior is being transformed and updated and we continue to work forward I mentioned to you that we had to do some underground sewer unforeseen we're still at about $400,000 any more coming shouldn't be okay so we're holding that and that's being done through the project contingency so again the reason why I haven't had to come back and ask for an increase on there any questions vpaa and luminal teal we're underway we're about halfway complete I know some of you have been out to see

120the black box it's a beautiful facility we're still finishing up and doing the roof and all the exterior work to seal up Lal teal from the moisture infiltration has had over the years and we're doing the work upgrading the VP Veterans Park Academy the Arts campus as well so that project is continuing any questions and you have the voluminous sheet of all the projects that we do every month updated were there any questions on the two sheets of the projects that my department puts through okay thank you very much you guys have a great day good job Y Man next is the outcomes for communications Arma Lancaster Rob spicker and Jen Robinson will be presenting good afternoon School Board superintendent Dr Denise Carlin and Attorney D Bruno it's a pleasure to be here once again

121to present on the communications outcomes I'm a Lancaster director of communications joining me is Rob sper assistant director and Jen Robinson coordinator for Community engagement I believe we may have some team members out on the back our public records manager Gigi Richard walking in the door Laura Howard our digital media coordinator an Anette Pucket our department secretary part of our team also is made up as you know by our behind the scenes team a coordinator of multimedia Communications Adam Wright and the multimedia special IST and our interns and then we also have our switchboard operators in the back busy answering phones our agenda for this presentation is as follows we'll provide a brief overview of the communications department and the services we provide we will share our latest kpi outcomes and proceed to share the

122latest analytics from our digital platforms and media relations this will be followed by a brief overview of some of the Department's internal and extern external engagement efforts and we'll wrap up with next steps and open it up for questions here's an overview of some of the services provided by the school district Communications office we use the school messenger platform to communicate directly with families via email text and phone calls we use our digital platforms and our Media Partners for communication with all stakeholders we create an execuse marketing campaigns and advertise as funds allow we support departments and schools with messaging graphic design social media and many other services we out in the community collaborating with many organizations and events we manage all public records made to the district and our office also manages the switchboard

123for the main line to the district I mentioned that we do markeet and advertising when there are funds available we are currently running ads for the teacher recruitment Campaign which includes broadcast TV radio and digital placements Community newsletter search engine optimization in a unique campaign specific website you may have heard it in some advertising is teach le.net we're also currently running a campaign for Early Childhood through Grant funds this includes broadcast TV radio and social media placements we recently also did a fullpage website takeover with Gulf Coast News that resulted in 220,000 Impressions with a 25% click rate we re recently also heard from Dr quizenberry Who stated that slot were filling up very quickly and we're going to show you examples of two of those spots running right now I want to become a

124teacher to have a positive influence on students lives I want to become a teacher because I want to lead our future I want to be a teacher because helping students grow into adults that are happy with their lives and happy with their careers is so important I found that passion is the most important thing in teaching and I think I'm filled with passion and I'm ready to be in a classroom if you're ready to start your journey as a classroom teacher apply today at teach le.net because their future starts with you every great future starts with a strong Foundation at the school district of Lee County's Early Childhood Learning Centers we nurture young minds with engaging Hands-On learning in a safe and supportive environment our certified teachers Inspire creativity curiosity and confidence preparing your little

125one for kindergarten and Beyond give your child the best best start enroll today and watch them Thrive visit ec. leeschools.net to learn more thank you Adam and again we are able to do this when there are funds available mostly through grant funding the specific objective our office supports as part of the Strategic plan is objective nine to increase family engagement and partnership our measurable outcome is done via survey by measuring if families report positive responses towards the district approach to Communications it's important to note that this presentation and this survey data is strictly for communication that comes from the district office examples of that information include emergency notifications closures districtwide surveys and initiatives and school board and superintendent events and messaging examples of messages sent by schools include attendance school events and lockouts and secures

126we see that when we ask about the district Communications are responsive of have held steady at around the 80% Mark however we continue to work towards improving that goal here's more of a breakdown of the respondents we take the total from the strongly agree and agree for our annual percentage outcome for the survey we sent three different me messages to families via text and email asking for their feedback here are some of the comments in the survey as they relate to District Communications we pulled those that have to do with the district and are pleased with positive outcomes that we have received one thing of note in the comment section in our survey is that respondents are not always as satisfied with school-based communication we are working through those comments and plan for additional support

127for schools now I will turn it over to Rob to review some of our online and media relations analytics so if you take a look at a little more of the analytics we have for you a lot of information on this slide so I'll just hit some of the highlights of it school messenger emails are our most common communication tool so that boost their number higher texts are usually reserved for items of high importance so they're not as high and phone calls primarily from us for emergencies well the platform does provide us with an automatic delivery rate it what it does not give us is an open rate so we don't have anywhere delivered in addition we've provided you with a unique number of views there for our website and we highlight the three sites

128or three pages that get the most traffic this slide shows our social media analytics our Facebook reach continues to Hold Steady at averaging about a million people over the past 3 years X has decreased some we're no longer able to track our reach without a subscription so we are looking into that we're seeing most of our growth currently on Instagram we do believe that's due to an increase in our reels and our videos as we know that's a more consumable piece of content for a younger age group our top YouTube video is the open gate informational video our top post on Instagram and Facebook were related to storm closures which leads us to our most popular video of the Year and that was the Sorting ceremony at Bay Shore Elementary take a look but not

129only do we teach in our school but what we do is we invite Educators to come every week we have a National Conference where teachers from all over the world from China Finland Russia India all states they come to our school on Thursday and Friday so I know some of you were there and had fun at that cereon that's an example of a reel with the music and the text on the screen a little different than maybe your traditional video a story that you might see that is what our younger audience likes and they also get better traction on Facebook and Instagram so that's why we've been using those of late so I just want to give you a quick look at a little more context of our social media metrics and what we're seeing

130here is how our social media presence compares to our neighboring districts and as well two of the largest ones in the country we produce significantly more content and have significantly more subscribers on YouTube than any of those on Facebook we double the followers of one of our local counties and have almost seven times more than the other and we also outpace Los Angeles and we're just behind Miami Dade in the number of followers on Facebook now involving our local media in highlighting our schools students and staff that's an ongoing effort out of our office that kind of trust and engagement we can build are critical when the news is not so good what I want to call your attention to on this slide though is that Trend in negative stories that are posted online and

131I went ahead and added the first semester of this school year data we were able to collect and what you see there down to eight negative stories which equals less than 1% of our entire first semester coverage thank you rob as we move into engagement I wanted to provide an update on the use of thought exchange and this was something that was approved by the school board last year the schol has some great analysis features that were used when we initially gained access to the software specifically with communication from the schools and principles what we have noticed and you can see from some of the information on the slide is that the platform is not yet mainstream enough for our external stakeholders and we have actually seen a decline in external respondent numbers when compared

132to when we have used Survey Monkey additionally we have noted that the use of thought exchange is very low internally we are currently evaluating this platform in addition to our Survey Monkey account as we move forward with supporting the district priorities and being fiscally responsible now I will turn it over to Miss Robinson to talk a little bit more about our engagement efforts good afternoon community resource sharing and collaboration takes many forms and may include participation in reoccurring councils committees Community meetings and events such as the Haitian Creo Fair youth Commission of Southwest Florida the Manita Springs Community resour event Community proximity plan Outreach the Multicultural Center of Southwest Florida big backpack event and the DIA L Rees Festival Community engagement partners with Community organizations and groups District departments and schools to engage with the

133community sharing essential District information and resources tailored to each Outreach effort some examples of our engagement efforts include parent University which hosted five sessions across the county each session provided an opport un to connect families with District specific information and resources various Community organizations also participated including organizations such as the American Heart Association and Cape Coral Parks and Recreation sharing valuable information with Families Our Town Halls held throughout the zones in our community allowed community members to engage directly with the superintendent learn about District priorities and ask questions through Partnerships with schools and community events our engagement efforts ensure that resources information and initiatives are accessible to families additionally by collaborating with organizations and businesses on resource development we work to support our schools and district with tools and opportunities ultimately our engagement effort spans

134many areas all to equip families and stakeholders with information raise awareness and Foster support for district initiatives Our Community Partners play an important role in supporting our students and Families some examples include organizations such as the YMCA Boys and Girls Club New Horizons of Southwest Florida and Lee County Parks and Recreation which offer programming through before and after school programs and summer programming at some of our schools as we work together to support the needs of our community strong relationships are the foundation of meaningful Community engagement by fostering trust collaboration and shared responsibility we create lasting Partnerships that directly impact our students families and schools Community engagement plays a vital role in coordinating and supporting districtwide campaigns alongside our partnering agencies with our United Way campaign last year our Collective contributions raised 880,000 directly supporting

135programs that benefit our students staff and families as the largest participating organization in the area for the Salvation Army last year we adopted over 260 Angels ensuring local youth received gifts and Essentials during the holidays another example is our partnership with the city of Fort Meers which enables local movie Nights in the park often with a nonprofit organization Spotlight sharing programming resources and support available to the families in our community additionally internal Employee Engagement through events fundraisers and activities are designed to boost morale Foster teamwork and strengthen our workplace culture collaboration with local organizations to enhance and provote Student Success ESS included some highlights like the first Horizons financial literacy program for fifth graders at some of our elementary schools the champions for health event brought together Olympians from across the country through the city

136of Fort Meyers aimed at reaching out to area high school students on the importance of self-determination goal setting working hard and maintaining a school sport balance and the greater fort Meers Chamber of Commerce leaders education leadership education day connected Community Leaders with education the Pine Manor Community back to school event Drew together over 200 Pine Manor residents each child received a free backpack and an opportunity to get a haircut courtesy of the cosmetology and barbering students from Cape Coral Technical College educational and Social Service organizations were on site to provide information on programming as well as share resources with families the back to school Rush Event was a collaborative effort between Lee Health the Florida Department of Health and VAR ious District departments to support new families in our community hosted at The District's central

137office this event provided services such as physicals Health screenings and student enrollment assistance families also had the opportunity to pick up school supplies explore job openings within the district and connect with local organizations for valuable resources several hundred families attended with many expressing appreciation for the convenience of completing two student registration requirements in one place the future makers Coalition second grade volunteer reading program took place at Spring Creek Elementary and was a successful collaboration between the school district future makers Coalition Spring Creek Elementary and several committed Volunteers in just four months 520 volunteer hours were logged for students participating in the program experienced an average increase of 55 words correct per minute and the average student quarterly Exemplar saw an increas inre from first quarter at 27% to third quarter at 68% students and volunteers

138reported enjoyment with the relationships and connections formed with many students tackling previously avoided long reading passages with the courage to attend to the task thank you Jen our area is of focus moving forward we will continue to provide communication support for the school district priorities while our work supports all priorities are department is focused on strengthening student family and Community Partnerships part of which includes our involvement in the parent engagement and empowerment taskforce led by Dr cupin McCoy our chief strategy officer this group includes families and community members in partnership with key District staff you'll hear more about all that in a future Workshop as Communications professionals accuracy is a must when we distribute information our current checks and balances include reviewing each other's work however recently we recognize that during very busy times we

139have inadvertently put out information with errors and we understand that reflects on the district the school board and the superintendent while our current review process has worked for years as our workload demands change we want to implement additional strategies to avoid errors in the future we have implemented the use of a copying soft copy editing software and increased the use of our partners at priority marketing and are also working on improving our internal Communications processes next up we will be collaborating on a more regular basis with our government relations team the work they are doing is of utmost importance to the district and our collaboration is essential when it comes to communication with our stakeholders we also will continue to strive to produce award-winning work such as our two International marketing Awards and two Emmy

140Awards that we received this past year and as always we will make adjustments to our work as needed based on internal and external feedback thank you for your time in allowing us to share information on the work we do and we'll now open it up to comments and questions from the superintendent and school board thank you very much Miss lanester and your team and to all of your team for the work that you do each and every day we really appreciate the very comprehensive presentation so my personal favorite as I look through it all the engagement activities obviously are super important in our district love the videos obviously regarding students who want to be teachers I have been very vocal in our community about the need to get our teacher vacancies down to zero because

141of the connection and the correlation to student achievement so thank you for highlighting that always early childhood is a winner especially at G Weaver hips lots of great things going on there as well as our other early learning sites throughout the district and of course that sorting ceremony I know a number of us have been through that at bashore elementary but that is always a highlight and really exciting just to see the culture that builds at that school and go Imperium I have to say it the kids told me I had to had to had to I know Mr persons I'm looking at your I know I'm looking at it but the kids told me I had to be part of the team so I have to take every opportunity I can okay Miss Jordan

142are you Imperium too okay we're going to learn the chant we're going to sing we're going to say that at one of these meetings coming up but all kidding aside just great things going on and really appreciate all your work in terms of Engagement up so we'll turn it over to the board for your conversation look forward to your discussion and questions Mr Ribble yes I just wanted to compliment you folks I guess it was too new an activity because we just had a Friday with the esol the 75 students that we had there that was absolutely fantastic and I know some of the folks some of the council people that were invited that didn't show up when they heard from their peers Friday and Saturday they'll be there next year it was fantastic you

143talk about potential School teachers I think we had a big group of those folks they gave I don't know how many stations they had 12 or 15 yeah I think it was about 15 I know our East Department the one on school there was some I didn't go to every one of them some was were closer to home than others but the one on school buses and school bus dispatch was outstanding and then the other one on reacting to storms storm prevention and disaster relief that was out standing and to see those folks verbalize somebody said to me wow they were really impressive I said yeah I didn't talk like that till I was a junior in college and the and these folks are 11th and 12th graders so just an outstanding job and I

144thought it was perfect I don't I couldn't even critique it oh well we were there to cover it yeah this was an effort by our esol and government relations thank you Mr fiser thank you madam chair have a couple questions and some comments so looking back on page eight kind of looking at the reach we have a fairly sizable reach on X I was just wondering why we don't have a subscription to that's what we're currently looking into the cost and if we can budget in for next year okay awesome the other one is and I know you might not have the answer for this now is how are we engaging with priority marketing like when at what points are we utilizing what services are us utilizing so I know it's something we've kind of

145talked about before so I just kind of want to see if we can get kind of a breakdown of how that happen happens so there there's quite a bit so one one of the things they do on a regular basis which is daily is give us our media reporting but we bring them in on strategic campaigns so most recently I would identify Vita Springs Elementary was something that they helped us put together put a campaign on together we the first 100 days of the superintendent they helped us on putting that together so anytime it's something that is going to reach a lot of families a lot of the P public we will reach out to them and coordinate our engagement efforts with their engagement efforts when they do things just them on their own a

146lot of it has to do with we're not able to manage it on our own such as the current teacher recruitment campaign that is really taking up a lot of time on coordinating all the media engagement so they've T taken that on on directly on their own our marketing dollars that we are allotted are paying for that service so we partner with them by creating some of the content that you saw but they are the ones that are actually managing the behind the-scenes work the placements of the videos and the online advertisement so those are some examples of when we'll bring them in going through this just like I have other department outcomes first of all I appreciate all the know as I said you all appreciate what you do a couple As I said

147there's many positives I mean community outreach and events that's been fantastic parent Outreach even the success we've seen throughout the schools a thought exchange I know that was Dr Savage I know really was able to utilize that I know that's been a real positive feedback on it those School reels things like those those are awesome so but also there's things that we need to look at and you know kind of this is also a board in a superintendent discussion so I see obviously there's you know you talked about positive and negative stories and that's great but one of the things I think we need to do better as a district is being proactive so one example I've kind of talked about before is Bonita Springs at elementary school I think we need to do a

148better job of telling that Community how amazing of what school they're going to get in the programs or even the textbook review came up I think that'd be fantastic if you could work with academic Services because I know a lot of my constituents and I'm sure other constituents of my fellow board members talk about that let's let them get that information so I think you know things like that are even you know just really showing the community day in and day out what's going in the schools I know we have some of that but for example we're going to have a presentation soon and many of us went out to the Alva School recently about seeing lot FFA I think it would be great to highlight things like those so really show what's happening in

149our schools and happening in our district so that's something I think would be really important on that so and the other thing just a comment and apparent communication you guys are great I know we have two other parents up here got a lot but the other thing I'd just like to to notice with Communications and it's not applies everyone generally is maybe simplify some of the stuff or at least you know have a link to other stuff because there's a lot that comes in and that is great and I hear that from parents but the other feedback I get is hey it's it's very lengthy there's a lot of volume and sometimes that's great but when you're getting hit with a lot of stuff so that's just a comment so but thank you so this

150is my wheelous so I greatly appreciate all of the numbers and analytics but to piggy back for slide seven when we're looking at our school messenger and specifically for 24 having a higher volume of students and parents and the percentage of emails being lower I know you mentioned in your system you can't see what's been opened you can see what's been delivered so I'm curious with focus and messenger in those pieces if we're seeing do we get like a bounce back to see like maybe inaccurate emails maybe that aren't working do we do we get a report on that the report does will tell you if it's been blocked and a lot of time it's it's blocked on the user end not on our end so their email address isn't accepting it and that's that's

151not something we can fix U because it's something in their inbox so we do know if they're blocked and I should point out the 2022 number is so high because that's hurricane Ian right and then you can see we sent everything always that year just because we weren't sure how people were going to receive it so we're a little more stable in the in the following years because we had the other hurricanes come through as well but so we can tell when they're blocked but not necessarily much more beyond that is it a white label issue where maybe they have to White Label your email or approve that receiving email it's it's their spam it's their yeah okay is there maybe something that we can put out to make sure that our parents are getting

152the communication maybe it's a process of saying hey if you're if you think you're missing communication and you know you signed up through focus and you're getting maybe you have to White Label or approve our email or whatever the case may be just so they're getting that communication because to Mr Fischer's point I have messenger I use Focus I get the text messages and it is a lot during all the pieces is and I live in email I prefer email cuz that's what I'm in all day some prefer text so I would say if there's a way to maybe walk them through that I think that would be great the other piece on slide eight when we mention our partnership with priority marketing and not having a subscription agencies like that have platforms that they

153use all the time so is it possible because we have a marketing agreement with them already that we just asked them to leverage their tools for them to give us insights and Reporting so it's not something that an additional cost that we have to do which just may be something as part of their package where hey can you provide us reporting and the software that I will 99.9% guarantee that they already have something that can track all of this for us yeah and that's how we do the daily media reports is they have to have as you know a certain amount of clients that are willing to pay for the service in order for them to use it so they use TV app for our daily media and so we're trying to see if we

154can slip this in as well because it is easier that's also how we manage our Constant Contact that isn't something that's directly out of our office we provide them the content through our services and they do all they pull the trigger because they're the ones that hold it so absolutely it is something that we're hopefully can add to the package as well okay and then one more thing on the marketing component too as we look into the other channels and x and Instagram you know Facebook has stories and reals so there's other ways to make sure that we're leveraging the content just to make sure it's it's out in front with with what we have out there and repurposing our content so if there's something that they can assist with to kind of remap reduplicate

155kind of whatever it is for that size to kind of work smarter not harder I think it'd be great to leverage them to take some stuff off of your load since they're already there y yeah we absolutely will use them as much as possible yeah they're a little costly but yes we will use them that's it anyone else Miss Jordan I just want to say thank you very much all of you I see you everywhere I'm out there everywhere you're everywhere and I really appreciate what you do and I know we always come back and we talk about how we tell our story and as the years progress we are getting much better at telling Who We Are and telling our story so thank you thank you yes thank you for the presentation and putting

156all the time into this I will I will agree with with Mr fiser about the proactivity you know kind of it doesn't necessarily have to be negative but just to be transparent and informative to families it might not even be necessarily I mean how great is the Bayshore event we have so many of those in the school but what I've noticed is there are some schools that aren't as highlighted as often as others so do do you all reach out to let's say principal at ex school and say we really want to highlight your school it might be you know especially some of the schools that you know are in some zones that I think you understand what I'm getting at but just to highlight the great things that are happening at those schools that

157aren't necessarily Headliners does that make sense how do you go about that so actually I think it was last year maybe the year before we started a tracking spreadsheet because a lot of what the schools do also is based on how much they can promote it so we have schools that are constantly sending us information and those schools are typically the same schools that you see are very active on social media the others and it's not because they don't want to it's just you know Staffing as different at the different locations so as we get through closer to the end of the year well like halfway through the year we'll start looking what schools have we missed because of course as you know we do the big state of our schools at the end of

158the school year and we want to make sure that we're not always highlighting the same schools especially in that setting and we've also provided a presentation during the principal's meeting how to tell their story how to tell us what you know what they're doing and how we can support and going back to some of those engaging more internally I know Mr fiser and you're also mentioning that's what we're really working on we continue to work on here at the district office as well as with schools how do we find out what you're doing because we you know this you go you're out the superintendent's out schools are excited when you get there to tell you everything that they're doing you come back you tell us something you saw why didn't we do anything about it

159but we don't always know and again it has nothing to do with they don't they don't want to tell us it's just we they don't have the time so we're we're working through trying to improve that communication so that we're aware of things same thing with being proactive sometimes you know we may not see it until it comes to the board or it's already out and that's when we find out about it so we're trying to improve internally here at the district too what is happening so that we can be prepared for that as well so we appreciate your comments on that thank you do you have a followup yeah I'm sorry I just thought of something when I know the high schools when they have theirm and all those pieces there's marketing right there's

160a marketing Academy and some of them is it a possibility or a way because I mean they need volunteer hours they need things to do is it a way that maybe they can get with a school that's near them or kind of adopt an elementary or middle school and kind of almost like take on a project or do something that helps support those activities where they're capturing that content for them it's helping them get their hours learn the platforms and get familiar but then also help showcase the schools and what they have going on so maybe a two for one that's a great idea I think we can get with our CTE folks and ask about that we do also have currently three inhouse student interns of course you know their principal thing is to

161go to school right so their hours here are limited so the product you what they produce is very limited but it also helps us with content and it also helps us with ideas for example I know you started to be involved with Zell we're currently working on developing all those collaterals and we use them especially when it comes to targeting students we might think something we show it to them and they're like no I'm not going to pay attention to that so we are actively using or can we do a call to like an fsw or an FGCU that has those programs to say yeah sure here's an internship opportunity yeah we partner with those with universities as well but we're Limited as how many we can so I like your other idea CU I

162think it might be easier to facilitate so hopefully if CT folks aren't listening they will be after this and we'll be reaching out thank you so much thanks all right thank you thank you very much have a great afternoon we're going to move on Dr Savage is going to be presenting information about our board advisory committees for good afternoon board members and superintendent Carin and Attorney D Bruno happy to be up here with you today so this is actually part of a planned board discussion to come back to the board member liaison committee assignment list this is the second opportunity for you all to have some more discussion today about some of the recommendations that we have made obviously some of them are reflected in policy so we want to give ample opportunity for you

163all to discuss that gives clear guidance to your attorney as well for revisions to policies as needed based on that guidance as well as just specific considerations of specific members serving in certain capacities before we open up that conversation just want to kind of reiterate again the structure sometimes it helps to just remember what what we're talking about we talk about these committees so as you can see here on the sheet that you all have that we've used over the years to try to guide this the top group we've tried to group these committees in this area and so the very top group is really set aside for committees that were to act in a board advisory function where their whole purpose was pursuant to the different policies to provide advisement at the board's Direction

164and so the ones that were prior included in that were construction strategic plan accountability curriculum District advisory equity and diversity advisory Finance advisory as well as the audit committee which has its own specific policy function as well but all of them essentially function in a similar capacity which is they are there for you as you remember back in the January meeting our recommendation was to take some of these committees that had very specific interest and a lot of struggle to retain membership and had a lot of duplication of membership so the a lot of the same folks are applying for those different committees to try to broaden your reach and to be more representative of the entire District to there was a recommendation to move these under the daak structure and again one of the

165clarifications we had from the last meeting was that they would not meet at the same moment but that would be comprised of that membership because as you may recall the DC is comprised of Sac membership which are School advisory councils which statutorily have different components they have to be filled by different types of positional diversity as well as through through ethnic and racial diversity that is captured in statute so that you ensure you have some level of membership that is commensurate with your student population served and that's in statute for all of Florida so that ensures some level of that difference of perspective furthermore because all schools have it you have a balance of secondary schools elementary schools within that sack advisory you also have business folks you have parents you have support staff you

166have teachers you have administrators so you really get a lot of Divergent viewpoints in that in that group meanwhile the board is contemplated how do you get broader Community input how do you ensure that the type of Engagement you're having is representative of the entire community and not just maybe the loudest voices within that community and so a good example of that is in this Communications presentation we just had you know a lot of what they're attempting to do is leverage technology and other means so by no means is this the only way that you can listen to constituents for an example folks are able to come to our board meetings they are published they are noticed in sunshine folks are able to provide their comments on the record There's an opportunity for folks to

167respond things of that nature folks are also allowed to call you and email you as many of them do you're also out and about in the community and you have a chance to hear different perspectives because ultimately it was the seven elected board members that really are the representation of our voters speaking to our district and the leadership of our district and you all have are obligated to do that and that's a big part of the enjoyment of your job is getting to hear those different voices additionally there's many engagements that we have as a district well beyond this now those don't go directly to the board necessarily things such as ad hoc task forces you know we can pull in various groups depending on what we need a good example that for over the

168years was student advisory student advisory was not a board advisory committee but it was a group of students to try to make sure we were listening to students and hearing what their different Vantage points are get that there are many other examples such as that so I just wanted to kind of classify that first the second area you have up there has to do with the independent sales cerx oversight committee and that again is not a board advisory per se it really is a specific designed as part of the ctax when we adopt that 10-year ctax this was a requirement of transparency of a independent group that was monitoring that and then reporting their findings to this board but it's different in the sense that they are governed really by the filing that allowed them

169to be created along with our sh tax the third group that you have here is related to specific groups that are quasi governmental in the sense that they have a function in our case Head Start Early Head Start policy Council that requires an Institutional seat from this board as a function of being a recipient of the Head Start funds so these are the kind of things that we have to have that type of Engagement by participating that Federal program that then subsidizes a huge ption of our early learning programs in addition to that you have elements like the value adjustment board or the school health advisory which shows up in and you see the statutory reference there The Authority that deres that committee is derived from as well as the Horizon Council which again for

170those you all most of you are aware that is similar to an advisory for the count County Commissioners and so we have an Institutional seat on that as well for our chair as well as our superintendent and that executive group so again this is a different group of committees different functional purposes and so forth so they're grouped they're still part of your group but they're grouped separately below that level we have two that are specific to our bargaining effort and that includes the instructional calendar as well as the insurance task force these are two specific committees that have very specific operational functions and as a result the board members really are there to listen to those things they don't really actively participate in that element because of ultimately bargain contracts come to you for a

171vote but it allows you that ability as a board to have a presence of hearing it and then communicating things back and forth from your awareness point of what you have there so again it's a very unique but different as you can see from these other areas that last group that we have there before we get to the highlighted areas these are things that have been requested through other entities that may have some whether they're nonprofits some type of relationship with our district in some capacity whether it's that they service our students by performing scholarships whether it's that they're a nonprofit that has a educational purpose and has to have some formalized relation ship with the district or just someone that wants to have a deeper relationship with with this entity and so those you'll

172see a number of things fall into that category some of them are nonprofits that in order to receive it are contingent upon having some type of relationship as well that's defined and so you can see over the years we've had lots of different those folks and you can see they're they're diverse as well last but not least we have the new this is a fairly newer idea for us here is to actually have an Institutional liaison because with a two so far of the educational entities now here's the bottom line just like in all these different things that are here you're all able to engage in some capacity with these things but for the matter of trying to organize a board in their way of work there is a value in having a point of

173context so it isn't seven different folks it's an opportunity to build and enhance some of those relationships on individual basis and then periodically the review if you want to revise who's serving those capacities maybe for a different perspective maybe it's just to try to spread out the work it that's really at the board's discretion so at the first meeting we had in January we discussed and Mr Ribble had been requested to potentially sit as this liaison representative for Florida Gulf Coast University and hence since the time between that and now this we've actually had a second request come in for Florida Southwestern which is part of the discussion today for one of our state colleges here locally that Mr Persson was requested for that particular piece just similar to Mr Ribble there had been some

174engagement to ask if he'd be willing to be a Lea UNC connector and here it is at the end of the day it's the board's discretion that's why we introduce these things in the sunshine so that you all can have the discussion that you'd like to have about how what do you feel about that how does that dovetail with some of the other committees is there clarity about that it's just an opportunity for you all to have the type of discussion because truly it is the board's will of what you'd like to do both engaging with the community as well as engaging with other institutions this is a huge part of the board function so I stand ready to do my level best to answer questions you may have the only other piece I just

175want to surface for you is all of the seats we had filled one there are a couple big changes from the last time one was we had recommended initially to keep the equity and diversity advisory as it's own separate standing ad hoc committee but at this time we would recommend that the DAC structure essentially replace all of those board advisories so that any specific need that would have fallen under the purview of any of those specific prior committees would be a we you would be able to charge the deck to be responsive to that need so if it were a sake of a new school site selection and you wanted a group to come at that you would charge the deck as you were able to do that you would want them to engage in

176that for example they've been digging into the cell phones they've been digging into the start times they are there to advise you and so you are able to tell them this is what we want you to dig into this is an area we really want a lot more feedback we want your input and so that's an opportunity for you to to launch them into any of those particular areas and if you felt that the level of expertise you needed was very specific such as maybe like an audit committee you know then we have the ability to task the superintendent to form a task force for one of those cases for example strategic planning you don't revise your strategic plan every year necessarily you may advise it every 3 to five years and so then when

177that time comes you would charge a superintendent to convene that and so forth and develop a Cadence along those lines so that's one piece so just that big edit within the EAC piece I wanted to make sure I mention that because it was a change from the January recommendation of course that was pre or some of the executive orders you're well aware that some of those things that were're trying to be responsive to those things as a federal fund recipient we're trying to be very proactive in that space to try to keep a breast of those things but it's an evolving landscape we continue to to dig into that and then the second piece that I wanted to draw your attention to was the question was there were two particular committees that we did not

178fill seats for we had staff engage with those two groups which were Learning for Life as well as the uncommon friends governing board and the request the information has been related to me was that neither of them are needing to fill seats at this time one is they're different for different reasons they're in kind of different statuses so there is no need to fill that at this time of course if that changes we' bring that back to the board so that said as a matter of business I just wanted to kind of highlight first off any opportunity to talk about anything that I've covered today as a collective group secondarily just reactions to any of the DAC structure elements that we talked about as well as the consideration of Mr persons serving in that fsw

179institutional seat as well as any other elements you may have with that said Madam Vice I'm happy to to pass it back to you for for the 10 okay thank you Miss Jordan so Dr Savage thank you for all of this again so are we going to then just remove all the other committees that are currently on here and just have the one deck period so they're they don't it's like they don't exist yeah the recommendation is that we you'll have two formal board advisories where you used to have seven you would now have two that the work of those other advisories would be folded into the deck there's the ability to generate an ad hoc subcommittee as needed and so the Same Spirit could be done in a much more includ a much larger

180membership as well as the audit committee would retain its function as you have in in policy presently okay so then they will just all go away not be in the format they were in the past it'll just be red and then when so then in speaking of Dak we as a board and the superintendent we need to decide or come up with what is it that we would like DC to take on every every meeting or one or two meetings because we have to give them directions on what we're looking for what are the needs of the district so that's something we have to make sure that we are doing that's correct as before where everybody had their own agenda and they were creating whatever they felt was the need for the U committees yeah

181I think it's it's a fair comment to make and this is one of the issues that has been raised about the advisories in the past was that there wasn't always an understanding of true lines of responsibility what are the roles of responsibility I know attorney twe berno had sent out a reminder of what the board leaon function actually is and so again that does just to reiterate briefly what you said you know that means the board really speaks as to what the priorities for that group should be and that committee has the opportunity then to be responsive to that but it isn't individual board members that say that individual board members are essentially the vehicle of communication back and forth between the will of the board and the advisement of that committee and then that's

182I hope that's clarifying what you were just saying yeah so perhaps maybe on our one ones with the superintendent we can speak about what items we might want to bring up and then bring it to the full board have an agreement on that and then we take that back to deck as far as Mr B Bruno if I made go ahead sorry 9140 is the policy that controls and if you're talking about Dak it's normally quarterly where the superintendent W do an analysis speaking with staff speaking with board members during one-on-one and come up with a recommendation to bring to the board for the board to say this item I like or this one I like and then assigns it to this to the staff Lees on forac to be able to discuss it so

183that's the process that will be in your policy okay so I just want to make sure that we are doing that we're following suit on that whereas before even though we had 9140 as the policy which we will now have to go back and fix those as well because we have a lot in that policy but even though we had that in there the committee still had their own agendas so we still need to make sure that we are doing what we need to do absolutely correct going forward absolutely correct M Jordan that's why that's one of the things that we worked on this year I know that the superintendent has already brought forward a couple of thoughts and terms of Dak it did go through the right process it went to the board the

184board made the direction and she went back until the till the leis on so for Dak we're back on the right track the way it's supposed to be so I foresee that's how we're going to be proceeding from now on okay I just want to make sure that we do and then especially because now I'm the liaison on that and I just want to make sure that everyone does believe that they still have a voice and they can get involved with in their schools to stay engaged with us and then my other question would be we now have the second University partner it seems like and these requests where are these requests coming from nothing to do with anybody that's sitting up here but I would just like to know where the requests are being

185made from want that question I actually made the request i' I've met with the president I attended what was Edison back at that time and I even coached their tennis team for a while and I just thought with our high school being located there and things it might be nice to have someone from the board become like a leaon with them and maybe we can work even better so sort of volunteered and I had not thought of it until we did the FGCU one I thought well gee then we have another University and I would like to do it if the board would permit that Miss Jordan followup yes thank you for sharing that because I know when I asked about the request it seemed like it was coming from the other side and I

186had asked who who was requesting this out there I have no issue with that with you being that I just wanted to know where are these requests coming from thank you Mr person Mr was a little bit cuz I actually had a dinner with President all Britain of the not the Senate President but the college President two presidents with the same name and I thought mentioned it way back then that you know i' really like to visit the college and he wanted me to come out and show me everything and then it sort of evolved from there so we have sort of a mutual understanding it wasn't an official request from them thank you it's definitely from me thank you Mr Riel yeah I guess it's time to come forward and say who my recruiter

187was if you will and I know there's been some buzzing about it so Wayne Smith is a benefactor of FGCU and serves on a lot of their committees over there and I had been the laston when I was a mayor in the village in fact I was Lon for six years I also had 10 years experience when I retired from UPS as a president of advancement for Kutztown University so I know a lot about running Capital campaigns and I was a person that recruited all our board members the university along with the president so I have a I have a lot of experience in my bag besides being a retired UPS person so that's why I was asked if I wanted to do it since then I've been meeting pretty consistently as the superintendent knows

188with the dean of Education over there and you heard about what happened with the fundraiser that we had raising a 95,000 through a gug of stero and then the book giveaway where we gave over over 1,400 all our students in Lee County books so if someone would like to do that I mean but we they should make it known but I had a strong desire to do it and I was asked to do it and that's how my name was put up and if we're here for consensus I would certainly give consensus to my peer armor persons with his interest in fsw so I think he has he has the right position and the right posture for that thank you Mr fiser thank you I'm in agreement with what Dr Savage has put up on

189the board I think that's a really smart way of doing it I'm also in agreement with Mr persons the only thing I would note is just obviously as we're having things go through Dak right now I know Miss Jordan is on that committee so I just want to make sure we have communication and also as well as from staff on that to see what's going on as well as making sure that there's opportunity for observation too thank you yes thank you thank you U Madam chair so I would like to just comment very quickly as Mr PRI Bruno said it is incumbent upon the superintendent according to board policy to bring forward a a topic to be discussed at by quarter and so we will absolutely continue that process and We Gather input like I

190said from staff to find out what it is we need direction relative to or we need some input now that we have collapsed our committees into the dck I agree with Miss Jordan that it'll be incumbent upon us to look at all aspects of our of our district and to see what it is we need you know in terms of of feedback and so I'll be happy to continue to bring those quarterly topics to the board for your discussion and if there are other items we can absolutely talk about those and are oneone so thank you Miss Jordan followup I just based on what Mr Fischer just said everybody's anybody's welcome to come to that meeting and I immediately on any committee I've ever served on what the next meeting I will always give a

191report always so I just want to and I will never stop doing that I just want to clarify that I just wanted to remind the board you had a conversation about strategic plan and how you could support support this strategic plan by going out into the community with your different areas of interest and working with different community members different organizations so I just want to remind you that you are all able to do that to go onto the community and find you know an organization or something else that you would like to support and bring it back to the board CU you did have that conversation before all right thank you I just want to thank Mr persons and Mr Ribble for taking upon that extra that extra lift I think that's wonderful to be

192the laysons between the district and many of our students attend these these schools post high school so thank you both for doing that all right I think we have consensus that we can move forward with this okay and then I will adjust the board policy to reflect the board's will terrific thank you thank you Dr Savage thank you mam Vice chair next we have a discussion that will be led by Mr fiser on the board auditor position thank you madam Vice chair if possible Chief Mont Morano could you join us up on the dice just if we have a couple questions please if that's right thank you so we're obviously I had sent out a memo in regards to the board auditor we had made the decision we want want to hire a board auditor

193and kind of just want to go through the process really quickly we're currently we have received applications I sent that out I also sent out kind of an update in the applications the period ends I believe it's March 12th I think for that so that it runs out so what I wanted to figure out is I believe we're at about five applications right now once they've done the checking and that I know there's still a couple people that haven't yet responded that had applied more in the beginning so going through it and thank you HR and chief mon Morano I appreciate your help on this so what I kind of want to figure out with the rest of the board is what are we going to do next so I'm just going to throw it

194out there I'd suggest maybe if we keep the application time period open a little bit longer maybe a few more weeks on that and then going to the next part of the process would be we either have to set a t set aside a Time existing Workshop or a special meeting or something like that and what that process would be at that point would HR has already helped develop a rubric appreciate that so we could get that rubric out You' re review the me the resumés and then or applications excuse me and then at either the workshop or a special meeting then we could essentially go through and pick you know however we want to you know if it's top three top five whatever we want to determine that time then at that point we'd

195have another meeting where we would interview them essentially you public we'd also have one-on-one interviews I believe that's been done in the past for the board attorneys and the superintendent so and then you know at a further meeting if we had made a decision that point and if there was an applicant we felt comfortable moving forward we' then do that at a meeting so my question to the board is and please if anyone wants to to jump on on this we have a lot in our workshops we were're you know one a month so they're packed so I don't know if it be beneficial instead to essentially have two either special meetings or workshops in the next little bit and carve out that time and then you know focus on that process so one Workshop

196essentially to go through the rubric and where we're at to pick our top applicants and then another one for interviewing the people I just wanted to get some feedback on that so Mr Ribble okay yeah this is the first we had a chance to talk about this I got this packet and I spent some time with it then I spent some time yesterday with one of the HR folks and we had I don't know about a dozen people apply but now we're down to you said five and what concerns me is we went to the Through the Motions back as far as July 10th 24 and here we're into 2025 and we still haven't got the interview process going so if we're going to interview people and we're asking people to apply for a position

197we need to be set up that we can react to their I mean they get to a lot trouble that will apply and then a lot of people get frustrated and they're looking for advancement in employment it doesn't happen it leaves a bad taste in her mouth so I think to keep our reputation of Excellence intact we need to be do a more professional job when we ad advertise positions and responding to the applicants I just that's just my comment follow up Mr yeah and thank you Mr Ribble unfortunately we had two hurricanes come through that delayed we were actually set for an interview process on top of the prior board was trying to respect the new board by allowing you and Mrs chavano to be able to take part of this since it would

198end up being your guys's employee so that was kind of that so and obviously we had a new board new Administration come in so we had to work through some other stuff before we got to that point but that point is well taken so that's why I'm trying to advance this and get going on it now so if we're trying to go ahead and come with a conclusion that we walk away with today I'm in complete agreement that perhaps maybe a two a two-e window extension because of those applicants pulling their application and then I'm for a workshop and followed up by a special meeting can I get a thumbs up or or something on the dayas for at least those two okay Mr fiser and that's why I want to ask Chief mon Morano

199obviously this has been up a while is there any way to I don't know how to say this highlight it maybe a little bit more so it gets out there over these next couple weeks just because it's maybe been stagnant that it's been sitting out just because of the how long it's been active sure there are different ways that we could do that but my concern there would be in order to bring something to the top we'd have to close what we had and bring out a new a new one that's a little tricky to do that but on our on our indeed where we post it out and things like that there might be a different opportunity that we might be able to bring that to the Forefront but I'd be a little concerned

200to go the other route so in that to answer that unless you really want to start a new search I don't recommend doing that thank you question okay so we reached consensus on is there consensus on doing separate meetings is that as well if need be I said and I can I will work with everyone to make sure it's schedule the last question I had in regards that and if anyone else has any because this is the time we get to to talk I'm going to interrupt just for a minute because Miss de just out of an abundance of caution based on prior experiences I would request that all of these meetings be special meetings not workshops and that will protect you give you the maximum protection for Sunshine issues thank you madam attorney you

201know again the other thing that we've kind of talked about I've heard some feedback is if we want anyone else in other areas of professional Fields locally that are maybe utterers to contribute you know whether it's the clerk of courts I know some of the municipalities have their own city council or board Auditors I don't know if anyone has an appetite for that if you want to if they want any feedback or anything like that so and if if I can add to what Mr fiser said there is some a request from the audit committee itself and Miss janelli asks that I share this with you cuz she's a lay on to the audit committee the first request was that they wanted their recommendations that they had drafted for the board auditor job description to

202be included so I wanted to bring that up to you and then the second request is that the audit committee will like the opportunity to actually participate in the interview process so those are the two things they requested for the board's consideration Mr Fisher so following up on that we already have and Mr person's probi members this we already did kind of set and again it's up to everyone we did set that job description we already had received that feedback before and the second thing is not necessarily in the interview process mean anyone can give us feedback in regards to the interview process so or any applicants that would just be my take on it I'll leave it up to other people's thoughts up here yeah I agree I'm in agreement with that and I

203see not heads okay would we like to as well as you know we talked about the audit committee looking through stuff just like anyone else would we want to have any discussions have staff reach out to anyone anyone that's to give some highlights or feedback it's Miss Jordan I'm sorry I I thought we had talked about the audit committee possibly looking at this because they are the experts I mean we have an audit committee that we put into place because of the fact that who they were I am not an auditor and I could not tell you which person would be the best I mean we can interview and speak to people and you can read a resume but a resume is to me is a paper it's what's on the paper as far as

204the their ability I would not know if it was good bad indifference because that's not my forte maybe Mr rieles because he's you know he's done a lot of different things but for myself I would not know a good auditor so I think that we should include the audit Committee in some respect Mr fiser yeah and that's why I mentioned perhaps reaching out to some of the government local Auditors maybe to see get some feedback from I always happen to get feedback from the Auditors I don't think you know as I said they can review the interview process the same as us they can look up the same documents as anyone in public so I know we had kind of previously addressed that but my thing was seeing if we could get I mean it's

205no different than a board attorney not all of us are attorneys up here when we're hiring somebody else so but that's why I said maybe get some some orders in place in our government maybe just to see if they give any feedback as well I'm asking everyone for feedback but we have any other thoughts suggestions Mr persons I mean this is going to be our employee so we have to make the decision I mean I would not want the audit committee to have any decision making Powers at all feedback I think is good again I'm not real sure how we share I don't know if the applications are even public many times they're not so that becomes an issue you know we can all agree not to put that out but you start start putting

206it out to a committee and all of a sudden someone's calling their employer and say hey do you know your CPA is looking for another job and that becomes very sticky so as far as what we're looking for I would like feedback you know we they made a recommendation and we made changes but not all the changes they wanted to the job description but we went through line by line with them M and I think we settled on that so just not decision making and not letting the audit committee know who we're interviewing if we are until it's time I think it's you know now would the interviews be done in special meeting in public because attorney to pay Bruno you want to answer that yeah just like the superintendent was when they okay exactly

207so normally what would happen is the board would be provided with the various resumés you would go ahead and select your rubric I would again ask that it be done in a special meeting so there's no confusion as to whether or not you're voting or not voting and then you would take your top three your top five whatever the board decides and then set up the first interview the first interview generally is in public with all seven board members to ask the various questions and then you will have an opportunity to have a oneon-one and then you come back together as a group to make your decision Mr Ribble yeah I just want to make a comment I think we're getting Downstream too far at first we have to have a meeting amongst ourselves to

208decide who we want to interview out of this group cuz some of these people they said they're interested they're not qualified I'll tell you that right up front from having experience in doing this so we need to agree that we're going to talk to you know these two or three or four people whoever we think are qualified because talking to all of them some of them aren't even close to being qualified so why waste their time and give them an expectation that they're going to be interviewed when it's not going to happen Mr Fisher it's our duty to look through all the applicants so even that meet the minimum qualifications that's what that next meeting is for I want to make sure we plan out the additional meetings that's why I'm having this talk I'm

209not talking about just the next meeting after that's part of the plan out there Mr Riel oh but but you agree that we're going to have a conversation about the applicants between us as a special meeting without having the people here correct Attorney D I was just going to add so normally even before the applicants come to the board You' have that rubric filled out by HR that says here are the individuals that actually qualified and then you only get the qualified individuals and from there you narrow it down further and then you schedule your interview that's correct Mr fiser yeah that's what we're doing I put that in the memo so that's what we're going to we have to have that going forward look at the rubric at that point in regards of the

210special meeting we'd have to put out the resumés at that point yeah correct yeah so I mean they'd already be out whatever our notice is before that so any other Miss Lang for fluming so I just want to make sure that we are all on the same page here so we're going to we are all in agreement that we need to extend it maybe another two weeks okay we understand that you cannot reart the entire process but we can somehow get the word out that we are in search of without having to go through those steps correct okay thank you and then we need to have at least we need to have one special meeting to go over the applicants and then from there I think that's when we decide what our next step is

211everybody in agreement with that correct okay real quick anything else that maybe we're missing Chief Mont Moran I know we've been talking through this process and as well as attorney to pre Bruno so but I think we've got it pretty much down right I think we're we're good to keep moving we will extend it for another two weeks and then we can take it from that point on okay thank you thank you madam chair thank you thank you all right moving on to public comment attorney depay Bruno would you please address public comment yes ma'am School Board policy provides the opportunity at this point in the meeting to address the board concerning any matter on this meeting's agenda if you completed a public comment card please provide it to staff public comment will be held

212at the Podium and the center aisle in the front please be advised that the board will not respond during public comment to remarks made by speakers abusive language defined as swearing use of profanity or name calling is prohibited speakers who fail to follow proper deor in the chambers will be ruled out of order any speaker continuing with such remarks will be required to relinquish the microphone per board policy 01691 and may be removed from the chambers there will be one warning for board policy 01691 the time speakers 3 minutes if there are 20 speakers or less you will find a countdown on the big screens in the front of the room once your time is elapsed the microphone will automatically shut off please state your name when you approach the microphone please follow staff's Direction

213Madame chair there are two individuals that will like to address the board during this Workshop thank you may proceed with the following individuals please line up Sergio Cruz and Denise Everly and just reminder that the topic is limited to only the topics that were discussed during the workshop hello thank you yeah my name is Sergio Cruz and I've been in front of you guys before I had a slew of things I would love to talk about but for having only three minutes that we're all on the agenda I wanted to focus on the ADV advisory meetings I genuinely think any anybody who thinks and I maybe I am or maybe I'm not speaking to anybody individually on up here but anybody who thinks that format is going to work for the betterment especially these subset

214classes they're they're they just haven't attended a deck they are completely unaware of how it operates how it works coming back to the deck with with the agenda items that they have with the little resources that they have there was a little bit of false truths and narratives that were thrown throughout a lot of the presentations and maybe it's a perspective thing I attest which I have been and I'm glad that there was somebody listening that there hasn't been equal voices on any of these daak sack and how it all goes down from the policies the statutes and everything you know if you're a title one school and I'll use this anecdote real quick if you're a title one school and nobody in the sack can identify with any of those you know subsets that

215that school is serving whether they be economically challenged whether it be Esau if you don't have that culture background if you don't have that you're going to be way off now that might be great if let's say that subset data is working at a high level a b an A C but when you got a subset that is a d or failing it's clear as day you're not getting the stakeholder input you need to make effective change which is why I advocated from the very beginning that these sacks were not lawful by by by sorts I believe there's not enough recruitment for it to kind of go back to communication and everything and I know I'm kind of coming down but there is literally never any actual recruitment for these there it's a very simplified

216maybe text or email or voicemail that most parents kind of come in one ear and out the other if we was to put any kind of effort towards the recruitment of the Sachs the same way that there is to kind of boast and you know about our alkalides or how great we're doing I think you would see that impact that they highlighted of Facebook and Instagram if we were really putting out this is what the sack is the sack is responsible for the Sip which is the school Improvement plan one of the if not the most impr most important pieces of document that each School kind of goes off of right now they're not getting genuine Stak put you know stakeholder input from it to think that it's going to somehow work its way through

217the deck that is already over you know I was preaching to have a an ESC advisory committee added and to see it kind of going this Direction with only 3 minutes you're not going to hear it all if you genuinely want to help any of these kids in the subset have a conversation with me and the individually so I can elaborate on this without it having to be contained to 3 minutes because I'm telling you I can parlay it all the way from the school level to the district level I am a huge reason probably why this is kind of maybe going in the wrong direction but at least being looked at please talk thank you good afternoon Denise uberly vice president of Alva Inc just so I'd come in say hi I haven't been

218here for a while Mr rener was very excited about your Army Corps of engineer thing being done in like November that's only your first step you still have the 404 EPA environmental thing going on so originally the nnn High School is approved at $140 million September and 5th it increased $169 million the board approved another $225 million for the estimated cost of $162 225 million plus Phase One cost of 6,785 million bringing the total cost up to 169,000 mil million one thing thing we're not seeing is the annual year-over-year inflation cost related to this which was estimated to be 10% per year which would add about another $50 million onto that so now we're coming up to an amount of at Le about $200 to $220 million for that school so the other thing the

219it will increase due to delays related to environmental issues isues which right now that school is listed on the Shelf they didn't show you that slide up there for some reason related to infrastructure inflation materials labor da da da so you have a perfectly good school property in Lehigh Acres for Lehigh Acres students which are the ones that require this within the three M zone of that Lehigh Acres radius of that Lehigh Acres property is 43,000 population within the three miles of the Alva school property your population is roughly 1,000 so when it comes to feasibility and and overspending I think that the property in Lehi is much more fiscally responsible plus it serves a greater portion of the population of where it's needed and that's where all the development is occurring right now and

220you're also having a big problem with bus drivers to build that school out in Alva will increase bus drivers it will increase Transportation times there would be maybe 10 kids who would even possibly be able to walk to that school the Lee High School within the two mile radius you have tons of families you have three fire departments with the EMS you have three middle schools right there thank you your time is up that concludes public comments thank you for those that took the time to come speak to the board today we are going to move on to the good of the order and I'm going to start with Mr fiser thank you madam chair through the chair may ask the board of attorney we have some other items of business discussion if we could

221get into maybe talk about the questions you had in regard to attorney contract in regards to how that process thank you thank you Mr chairman April 15th is the deadline for any contract review normally there is a board leaon that is selected by the board for negotiations if the board also chooses to have councel they're able to do so at the time as well since I cannot be your counsel it will be my contract that will be up for discussion so at this time I'm requesting that the board select an individual to help with those negotiations Mr Fisher my suggestion to the board would be too just like we have other ones to utilize outside Council as well to review the contract it's kind of the same thing as we talked about with the board

222auditor make sure not all us their attorneys to to help with that so and as we've done with other positions so we'll leave that up to the Madame ter to ask do I have any discussion regarding Mr Fischer's question or request Miss Jordan I think that's a great idea I agree with him terrific I as well Mr fiser I would be happy if so requested by the board I'd be happy to continue as I have previous discussions with the board attorney it's involving that as the lays on so but that's up to the board Mr Ribble I'm fine with that M Jordan Mr persons shano and I am and I am as well thank you thank you all right thank you next thing I also want to bring up is I will be emailing shortly

223about this is the board attorney evaluation which will be due this month so I'm going to send out for those new board members I would suggest talking to Madame board attorney a little bit offline just about kind of how the process works but essentially we individually score the board attorney and then it's compiled and then it is put up at a future board meeting so it needs to be completed this month and then put on next action meeting's agenda excuse me so and if anyone had any questions comments and concerns with that seeing none okay thank you Mr chair thank you real quick on committees I serve as a member of horizon Council our last meeting was actually we had a pretty amazing guest I can't remember her name oh superintendent Carlin so she presented

224to again the rising council is a really a private public partnership between the county and that entity and a lot of obviously Business Leaders Dr Carlin had a fabulous presentation so highlighting the biggest thing highlighting the amazing things we're doing and also highlighting what we need to work on I think that's been consistent under Dr Carlin's leadership and I know the community really enjoys that you know where we're at where we need to be at well as well as highlighting current technical education especially in that room that was a that was a big hit and I heard a lot of positive comments afterwards on that so Kudos next up couple of us went to fsba but I'll talk about my role then as a board of director again I'd remind everyone there's some surveys going

225around about the current Leadership Model for the Board of Directors for Florida School Board Association so I would suggest check your FSB fsba emails and if you have any questions follow up on that I also attended the drug-free Coalition as I said that you know we had some good discussions about that and some different programs in the community and the last thing is the foundation the Board of Lee County we had a very productive meeting we actually just are in the final steps of our strategic plan and part of that is really making sure to partner we do can do a better job together with them partnering with the school district and making sure to as I said you know make sure we utilize the programs all over the place that's all I'll reserve the

226rest till tonight thank you madam chair thank you Mr Ribble yes as you know I lay us out for the ITF which is the insurance task force I had trouble getting on the teams meeting last week I finally got on at 26 minutes 3 and they adjourned the meeting at 28 minutes p 3 so they were kind enough to send me the minutes though so we have the meeting this Thursday and I will be here in person I'm not going to do I'm not going to do teams but just real quickly just give you an update everyone talks about benefits and salaries but I got to tell you we aren't too shabby when it comes to providing benefits for all of our employees and just to give you a number of what that's cost this

227year's versus last year our monthly cost this year is $9.6 million up from 8 .9 million or a $700,000 increase each and every month for benefits as far as claims go we had 25 large claims over $250,000 this year versus 16 last year so as I get more involved in a committee I can drill down and take a look at you know how we're paying some of these claims and are we getting the best bang for our buck with hospitals and through litigation that's all I have all right thank you Miss Jordan thank you and I I did have a question regarding the attorneys because are we not looking at the other attorneys as well the other attorneys you had sent us an email regarding the other attorneys their contracts no the other attorneys they

228their contracts would end on June 30th if the board chooses to pull their contract or if there's an issue with the contract and the board chooses not to renew the contracts on the flip side the attorneys all of us all four of us have an obligation to advise the board within 60 days if we choose to terminate our services okay thank you I just want a clarification on that one okay well today began read Across America I was at Edison Park this morning and lo and behold my grandson showed up and I had to go read to his class he was not thrilled about having his grandmother in his classroom because he had to say that's my grandmother but it was fun also there's a lot that we do in between each meeting now that

229we only meet once a month so there's just so much that goes on we had the golden apple it was like Golden Apple month where you know we had several events the golden apple finalist you know it's just amazing group of people and congratulations to all of them we had I had a town hall meeting in North Fort Meyers of and actually it was the first one that they've ever had over there and Dr Carlin thank you so much for being there and your team because I heard such and Mr persons's I heard so much positiveness about thank you for coming on this side of the river even though we do go on the other side of the river but they really appreciate the fact that if they had a question if we could not

230answer that at that particular time that your team was there and they were able to you know connect with them and get their answers at that particular time so thank you for that I meant a lot I attended the annual community prayer dumbar and that was it's a prayer event that they do every year and it's for the all the violence that has taken place within it's it coincides with the Fort Meers PD the sheriff's department cape carl police and it's the violence that has occurred for that this year and even though violence is down there still was some violence of course we see the violence that's out there see Town Hall we met with I had mentioned this earlier about the meet and greet with Senator Martin we invited him to Franklin Park because

231he had never been out there we really wanted him to to understand what we do out there in the Community Partnership schools and it was a great event for Community Partnership school it was a great event for Dr German I really appreciate her hospitality and that she took him around and toured him and he really stands now the capacity of what we can do and what the benefit is for the community and thank you Mr Fisher for being there as well but it was it was I thought was a really good meeting and a great understanding of what we do at Franklin Park and what we can do across the district and then with that the very next day we had Franklin Park Dr German she created this was called impact Franklin Park and it's

232it's the meeting of the Church base and community and there was about 150 people who showed up for the school and it was how do we support your school how do we support your teachers how do we support your children and she had these sign up sheets for everybody to sign so before they walked out that door they had something that they were going to do whether it's coming opening doors doing lunch duty but they were definitely engaged and they put their name on it so they've signed and they are definitely going to be a part of the support of that school and I just I have to tell you going around to the different schools and how they're really embracing community and their School families and bringing them in it's really been amazing same

233with Colonial and all these other ones where you're actually seeing 100 plus people there which is great when you see that then I also had a shout out to North from Myers Academy they're kindergarten in first grade I don't care what they did it was going to be fabulous they did Circus Circus and the kids did a fabulous fabulous job and Beetlejuice is coming also will be coming here next month to North for Myers Academy and then two more things and I'm done World Language day at dumbar high school I had the opportunity to go there this past weekend and they had middle schools and high schools throughout the county and they presented their artwork artwork songs dance competition they even competed in Sign Language which was pretty amazing when you see them singing and

234competing in sign language and they had all types of competition on how well do you know France how well do you know whatever the language was that you were taking that's what you were your quiz the quiz Bowl was regarding and the kids were just amazing and all the information that they knew but the artwork depicted their their country and who they were it was it was just really a beautiful event and then my last one was the closeup youth Council Expo that Mr Ribble spoke about that was absolutely amazing those young people came there they came up with a topic that was really near and dear to their heart and what they care about they actually had the opportunity to go to Tallahassee and present so out of all I think there was 12

235to 15 out of all of them four they chose collectively to go up to Tallahassee and to present to the legislators so it that was really an amazing feat for them and this is all new they some of them were just there and they put this all together within like a two-day span so they had to do the research find the data and present and they had never done that before so I really appreciate our Esau Department who put this together and I just want to thank them very much and that's it for my report and congratulations Mr persons just a real quick I want to give a little shout out to the president of the Florida Senate President all Britain we take a group from the Lee chamber and the school district from L

236till middle school and the district provides the bus but it leaves quite a bit of money for all the hotel rooms and food for the students and of course they're not going to pay anything last year the Senate gave us $5,000 the president Pasad and then we raised the chamber raised $7,000 to cover the rest of the expenses that wasn't real easy this year we asked the president of the Senate Ben Al for another $5,000 and he says that doesn't seem like enough he said well we try to raise the rest he says how much is the rest and he said 7 says I'll just write a check for it all W so he's covering all the expenses except for the bus trip and which we cover and it's a about 30 students it's going

237to be April 7th 8th and 9th it's will be up in Tallahassee and it's all organized and it's really good it's a great civics lesson they watch the senate in action the house in action and they tour the Supreme Court Florida Supreme Court and then they fortunately make a trip over to FSU but I keep telling them you know gainesville's not that far from there but we looking forward to it I will miss the next meeting in person but I will zoom in and because it's a school activity so that's all for now thank you Miss Shavano so I was able to visit Bayshore Elementary and I got sorted and I'm now part of the House of Invicta so there so I'm also going to learn my chant and we'll sing it on this side

238of the table apparently and he has to kick off fre Across America week I've got a couple schools but yesterday I went out to Manatee Elementary and I read it was the Day the Crayons Quit I hadn't heard of it the kids were super excited and it was a fourth grade class and I went home to my daughter who's also in fourth grade and I told her about this book and she's like yeah I love it I was like never heard of it but it sounded good so that was cool and I'll say the rest for for my Action meeting cuz there's a lot but thank you it's great thank you I'll just be brief I want to say thank you first of all to miss Holland and Tanglewood ele Elementary School for coming this

239afternoon that's always such a great event and thank you Mr Fisher for always setting that up for all of us to be able to be a part of that yeah the golden apple events are super exciting I look forward to April 25th Golden Apple banquet so that will be exciting all of these teachers work so hard to go through this process it is so grueling they have to submit so many pieces and I just want to thank those that go through the trouble of do of doing that I did get to attend Alva I did a walk through and it was really sweet because it reminded me so much of the way I grew up and I did pet the cow she is they miss Winfrey promised she would let me know because she's expecting

240in the next like week so the garden out there is unbelievable they gave me a couple Peppers to take home goats two pigs I mean a and a chickens and like a pet squirrel running around such such a great environment for the kids to have so many handson things and it's so nice to see you know kids eating outside engaging having conversation little vitamin D and I know that they're going to be sharing some information I think soon here at the maybe the April meeting okay that's awesome that's terrific but to piggy back off of that I was able to talk to Leisa Roy about our Gardens and we have so many Gardens in the school but something that we did discuss that I think that we could possibly discuss in our one-on ones is

241somehow developing a policy because it doesn't exist for schools that do start a garden for the garden to continue even when Administration changes even when a teacher changes because what is happening is you know teachers may be so excited that just might be something that they really love to do but then they transfer schools now they've got to find someone else to take over that responsibility and you know we've gotten this amazing Grant from sprouts and in order to continue to show that we are so grateful I think we need to come up with a way that if your school has a garden you're committed to continuing to keep the garden up no no matter the change at the school so I just thought that was something we made need to discuss in our one-on

242ones and then thank you Mr Ribble he was able to attend the health advisory committee meeting at a family emergency so I really appreciate it and I know you're going to talk about that maybe later do you want to talk about that topic right now or I don't mean to put you on the spot I'll cover it tonight okay and then lastly the other thing that I would really you know I as the athletic lays on that you all have asked me to do I have been at so many games like flag football girls so glad that's happening in the district beach volleyball I won't say well I will say it Fort Myers hbe Baron Collier the other night which is really incredible it's a big that's a big deal in beach volleyball but we've

243got sport I was at Bonita high school last week and all at the same time there was a softball game a beach game a flag football game and a baseball game all being held on the camp so that was super exciting but something to put on your radar there is going to be I don't know if it's going to be policy or if it's something that we adopt as different districts but they're coming down the pipeline is checking cardiac testing for our ninth grader on up athletes that is a huge lift because every student has to has to have that evaluation so we are going to need to have some conversations with Physicians that would be willing to volunteer so just something I wanted to put on your radar but other than that's all I

244have attorney to pay Bruno thank you madam chair attorney Huffman and I we went to the Florida school board attorneys Association conference this past weekend and it was an excellent conference as always there was a lot of discussion some heated debate actually amongst the attorneys on several things so we always appre appreciate the ability to meet with our State counterparts in addition just to clarify U Miss Jordan the attorneys need to know by May 1st if the board is choosing to renew or not renew their their contracts and then I wanted to congratulate both Miss Jordan and Mr Ribble they both got Awards one from Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority as well as the Latin time so congratulations on that's always wonderful to get that recognition from the community so thank you very much Dr Carlin

245thank you madam chair I am going to defer most of my comments to this evening but just wanted to recognize the large body of work that you all completed this afternoon taking a look at 12 items including public comment the work continues the work is urgent and we just appreciate your good thinking your great question questions and for pushing us to continue to do better just want to publicly recognize our board for for the strength around that so thank you all right thank you today we have a student performance at 5:45 p.m. followed by an action meeting at 6: pm. at this point seeing no other business before this body and seeing no objection this meeting is adjourned and the time is 4:29 p.m. thank you and have a wonderful day