OCPS | 2025-12-16 School Board Work Session

001Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the Orange County School Board's work session which has been scheduled for today, Tuesday, December 16th for the purpose of discussing program evaluation update, school improvement plan review and progress for Lucius and Emma Nixon Academy, school improvement plan review and progress for UC CP downtown charter school and the impacts of declining enrollment and space optimization strategy. The public will not have an opportunity to speak at today's work session to provide public comment because it's not a regularly scheduled schoolboard meeting. No action will be taken and there'll be no open public comment period. Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. All board members are present. As a reminder, the board members will not be engaging in outside electronics digital communication during the meeting so we can focus our attention

002on the matters before us. To my fellow board members and district staff when speaking, please speak directly into your microphone. Of course, make sure it's turned on so that our YouTube and Orange TV viewers can hear you clearly. Again, thank you so much for participating. Before we will begin, we'll start with a moment of silence. But before that, I'd like to recognize the tragic shooting that occurred yesterday, December 15th, at Brown University. Our thoughts are with the Brown community during this difficult time. This is becoming an all too frequent occurrence. We pray for the family members. We pray for everyone involved in that school. We pray for the safety of our own students. And I just I want to acknowledge and thank everyone who works here in Orange County Public Schools in safety. It's so

003important. And the fact that we can show up, do our work, our kids can show up and learn is a result of the comfort that we have knowing that we have a top-notch team doing everything they can to keep our schools safe. Having said that, we still always need to be vigilant. And as we always say, if you see something, say something. If you hear something, rumor, whatever, report it. It's extremely important. And I will tell you, our team follows up on every single report. With that, if you will join me in a moment of silence, followed by the pledge of allegiance. And now for the pledge. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for

004all. All right. At this point, I will turn the meeting over to Dr. Vasquez. Thank you, Madam Chair. this afternoon, we will begin with a presentation related to our program evaluation. each year our district performs evaluations of various programs throughout the district to measure impact and help inform decisions related to future purchases. This afternoon we will be presenting information on EXL math read to succeed and success maker. And with that I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Border. Good afternoon Chair Jacobs, members of the board. Good afternoon. Make sure your microphone is turned on. You speak directly into it. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Jacobs, members of the board, Superintendent Vasquez. Thanks for the opportunity to share information about the district's process for managing program evaluations and highlights. joined by several incredible

005members of our research measurement and strategy office today including senior executive director Dr. Sasser, senior director Ben Allen, and our director of research Dr. Shiao Jang's son. So at this time I will turn the presentation over to Mr. Allen. Thank you Dr. Border and good afternoon. Today I'll provide an overview of the presentation as well as the purpose and process behind the district's program evaluation efforts. Our last schoolboard program evaluation presentation was in May 2025. We will talk through the three main points today before opening conversation for discussion. first we will review the purpose and process of program evaluation. Then we will highlight outcomes from recent evaluations and discuss the ongoing queue of work. Finally, we will have some space for conversation and discussion. To briefly recap from previous presentations, program evaluation is a formal

006process of reviewing programs within the district with several purposes in mind. Making data informed decisions, fostering improvement, and allocating resources. OCPS uses two general processes for conducting program evaluations. Internal evaluations are conducted by members of the OCPS research department. External evaluations are conducted by contracted vendors. A member of our research department serves as the primary point of contact for framing the external evaluation, reviewing documents, and communicating with the vendor. Our program evaluations generally look at process and implementation andor outcomes. Both types of evaluations are often used for the same program. Many recent evaluations in our department have followed a phased approach beginning with an implementation evaluation which is later followed by an outcome evaluation. Today, as Dr. Vasquez mentioned, we will present information about program evaluation findings for the following programs. I excel math, read

007to succeed, and success maker. I'll now turn the presentation to Dr. Shagong Sun, our director of research to discuss findings from these programs evaluations and these were conducted both by our research department or in collaboration with external evaluators. Dr. Sun. Thank you. Thank you, Ben. good afternoon board members and Dr. Vasquez. First, we're going to discuss the evaluation for the exclass. The EXL math program is an online learning platform offering over 3,500 adaptive standardsbased mathematics skills. OCPS began districtwide implementation in 2021 to support algebra one instruction expanded to geometry in 22 23. In the 2425 school year, its use expanded to include core mathematics instruction for grades 6 to 12 as well as targeted reading interventions for high school students. This evaluation focused on the mathematics component of the program. The evalation address the program's

008impact on student mathematics achievement on state assessments. It also examines how student outcomes are associated with teachers self-reported experience frequency of use on specific implementation practices of the program. Major findings of this evaluation findings. Number one, ISL mass has a small but consistent and statistically significant impact on student mathematics outcome after controlling for prior score and demographic factors. Students in the LL math intervention group demonstrated modest but statistically significant gains in grade six math, grade seven math, grade 8 pre-algebra, algebra 1 honors and geometry courses compared to the control group. However, no significant difference were found for students in the following courses. Algebra one on geometry honors findings. Number two, teachers reported experience with math is associated with differences in student outcomes. Students whose teachers reported using math for one to five years or more

009consistently achieved higher scores on the fast PM3 algebra 1 and the geometry assessments compared to students whose teachers had used math for less than one year. Findings number three, teachers reported frequency of use of mass is associated with student outcomes. The relationship between frequency of use on student outcomes varied by course for fast PM3 students using math two or three times a week was associated with the highest score. However, for algebra 1 and geometry EOCC students, using the program once a week was associated with better outcomes than two or three times a week. Findings number four, teachers reported frequency of use of features is associated with differences in student outcomes. The most widely used feature skill practices was positively associated with higher scores for fast PM3 and geometry students. Conversely, frequent use of features like

010the real-time diagnostic group jam and lightening jam was associated with lower student scores across multiple assessments after controlling for prior scores. The recommendations for this evaluation, the findings suggested that mass can be an effective supplemental tool, but its impact is highly dependent on how it's implemented. The positive outcomes associated with teacher experience on specific strategies. For example, using math for homework and for intervention purposes may highlight the need for targeted professional training. Based on these findings, it is recommended that district recommendation number one, work with the vendor to further refine the ISL mass skills to align as much as possible with the state standards. Recommendation number two, promote best practices for implementation emphasizing strategies that yielded positive results such as using mass for intervention and for homework. Recommendation number three, provide targeted professional training, focus

011on effective use of Kixl features and examine links between internal metrics and the state scores to improve alignment. Next, we are going to discuss the evaluation finding for the rate to succeed program. Rate to succeed is a supplemental program that pairs students with trained tutors. Students at OCPS district schools enrolled in kindergarten through third grade are eligible to participate and they are nominated by their teachers. This evaluation involved a mixed method design for the qualitative design the research department 25 school year. The quantitative design compared participating students being instructed by tutors using three different curriculara with non-participating students. Major findings of this evaluation. Findings number one, tutors rated the training materials and support from the rate to succeed team as extremely positive with agreement rates greater than 90%. Findings number two, teachers, coaches, and other

012school personnel perceptions of the program were also overwhelmingly positive. 95% felt the tilda had a positive impact on students reading success. 96% felt the tilder had a positive impact on students self-confidence and 96% would recommend the program to other teachers. Findings. Number two, there were positive and significant differences on two subs skills of the depot assessment. Natal naming fluency and the phmic segmentation fluency for students in the read to succeed program in kindergarten being instructed with the SIPS curriculum. Findings. Number three, positive and significant results were found on the statewide fast star reading assessment for the second grade to succeed participants using the fluency program. Students receiving tutoring with the fluency curriculum scored 13 points higher than students in the comparison group. Findings. Number four, there were no significant differences between rate to succeed participants

013receiving SIPS instruction and the comparison students on the fast PM3 in all grade levels K to three. The major recommendations for this program recommendation number one a suggestion by all groups was to increase the time allocated for the program such as starting earlier in the school year. The rates to succeed program leaders may consider ways to allow volunteers to begin in September of each school year and allow paid tutors to begin in August. Recommendation number two, the most common suggestion by teachers who responded to the survey expressed a desire to expand the program by serving more students. Intentional outreach efforts could also afford the opportunity to increase representation to more closely reflect the population of students served. Recommendation number three, the overarching theme for how to improve the rate to succeed program included communications. Further

014guidance on expectations could focus on the two-way communication methods between school staff and tutors. Recommendation number four, the senior administrators for the rate to succeed program keeps track of all registered students whom their coaches are and the number of minutes served. A common suggestion is to further refine the tracking system. Next, we're going to discuss the evaluation for the success maker program. The success maker program is a continuously adaptive learning system designed for students focusing on reading and mathematics. It personalizes learning paths in real time adjusting to each students specific learning needs. The program provides differentiation for students performing on grade level intervenes at the just right time for students who are not yet at the grade level and challenges high achievers and gifted students. This evaluation focus on the success maker math program. Success

015maker math is used in kindergarten through fifth grade mathematics classes for intervention purposes and to provide a personalized learning experience. the impact of the program on STA math grades K to2 and the fast PM3 mathematics grades three to five for students who completed success maker mass was fidelity was examined the major findings for this evaluation findings number one approximately 30 30% of the K25 students were using the program with fidelity meeting the goal of 45 minutes usage per week. Findings number two, students who use the program showed significant and positive effects on the program at all grade levels on the state assessments in grades K to five compared to those who use it less. These results was significant even after controlling for demographic factors. Findings number three, the score difference between the meeting usage and

016non-meating usage group is greater in grades K to2 than in grades 3 to five. Findings number four, for all race ethnicities, students who met usage criteria performed better than students not meeting usage criteria in grades K to five. The major recommendations for this program. Recommendation number one, further streamlining the communication among the district vendor and school is essential to increase implementation fidelity and align program perceptions with its positive impact on student learning. Recommendation number two, consult with the multilingual services department regarding consistent use of the translation function within the program is recommended since the score difference between the participating and non-participating group for Hispanic and ELELL students was not as pronounced as the score difference in other groups. I'm going to turn the mic back to Ben. Thank you, Dr. Sun. Our research department is

017actively working on many more program evaluations. Programs that we are currently evaluating include our comprehensive assessment system experts or CASS experts, the collaborative classroom or SIPS, EXL math, which we've heard about, pick, read and roll, read to succeed, reflex math, Rosen postsecary and Rosen preschool, Saga tutoring, success maker, threedimensional education, and travel and leisure preschool and postsecary. Our queue has projects at various phases, and some of these are annual evaluations. Some are evaluations that are included as part of various agreements like memoranda of understandings. and some are based on district leader requests. At this time, I'll turn the conversation back to Dr. Vasquez for any comments and discussion. Thank you so much to you and the team for all the work that goes into the program evaluation. As I mentioned, we take a look at

018the results of the program evaluation as well as usage input that we receive from staff, teachers regarding programs or change in programs to be able to ensure that we are getting the best return on our investment. we know that usage is a key indicator and we continue to find ways where we can maximize usage. We do know that a program is not a substitute for a teacher. And so we recognize that in some cases the instruction the instruction that they are receiving via the program is no match for that direct instruction from a teacher. With that, I'll turn it back over to you chair for any comments or questions from the board. All right. Thank you, Superintendent, and thank you as well for the presentation but all the work behind the scenes. Let me go

019to member gallow then member fant. Thank you madam chair and thank you for this presentation. I have a couple of questions. I'm looking at my page numbers so hopefully they'll align with your page numbers. On page six for the LL math, it says, "However," in the first paragraph, the end of the first paragraph, it says, "However, no significant difference was found for students in the following courses, algebra 1 and geometry honors." So, we're not seeing a huge increase in honors, but when you go down, it says, however, for algebra 1 and geometry, EOCC students using the program once a week was associated with better outcomes than two or three times a week. So, do we know why it's not working in honor classes, but is having a better result in regular ed classes? this morning.

020So as far as a reason for the distinction between the two, the evaluation doesn't provide that information. but it does a significant difference versus a statistically non-sign significant difference is a matter of probabilities. So we're talking about to be statistically significant, it has to be beyond 95% likelihood that the differences we're seeing are caused by the program versus other things that may be happening. so that is where we see the differences between algebra 1 honors and algebra and geometry honors and geometry. It's just different kids in there that they may have may not have met that threshold for statistical significance which is why the statement is there on that script. If we have a student and thank you for that if we have me can I can you pull the mic a little closer? Sure

021can. Yeah. Thank you. We can hear you up here because you're talking this direction. I'm not sure. Back to you. so if it's really showing no significant movement in honors classes, are we going to discontinue for our honor students? So the it was split between the algebra and the geometry honors where we saw u in the two different classes where it was for algebra 1 honors but not for algebra 1 but yes for geometry regular but not for geometry honors. So a blanket statement of honors versus not honors I don't think is what we would see in in that evaluation. and it's also from one year of results. So that's also to keep that in mind. This is one group of students coming through. so that would be something to consider in the in the

022program implementation as the teams are looking at whether to continue. but it's not looking at multiple years. So that may be also something to consider. Okay. And then it you do have results that show that two to three times a week works better than once a week except for algebra 1. How long are they usually on during the during the week if they're on it two to three times? Do we know how how many minutes during the day they're using math? Do we have the minutes on there? in the evaluation we did not look at the minutes per week but we did look at the minutes over the school year. So any students who log into the system less than 57 minutes over the school year was considered not using the program with fidelity. So

023that's considered the comparison group. But anything above 50 minutes or more that's considered the intervention group. We are looking at the impact between the intervention group and the comparison group. So but we can in the future evalation we can look at the minutes per week but this is not something we look at for this evalation. Thank you. And we're also looking at in in this conclusion it's the number of times per week as reported by teachers. So we were able to connect a teacher response to the student outcomes. It's not necessarily looking at minutes as accumulated in the systems. as teachers have reported using the platform two to three times a week or one to two times per week. Okay. And then I know that we did a similar outcome for last year in the

024evaluation. Did and there was recommendations based on the findings from last year. Did we meet those recommendations? And do any of the recommendations from last year match up with the recommendations that we have this year? And if so, why do we have the same recommendations this year that we had last year? So, we would have to pull that and we can certainly pull those reports and look at the recommendations to compare side by side for you. Thank you. I'd appreciate that because I'm just curious to see if if there's any overlap between last year and this year and if we were recommending changes based on the outcomes. I'd love to see if that metric helped like what we implemented last year. Did that help our metric? our metrics with what we're seeing last year and

025if there was any over because I think that would give us some good data. my next question is about success maker. on page eight 30%. Wow. Like 30%. That and I'm not surprised really by this number because my children my one daughter took Success Maker when she was in elementary school. and they had to do it for like 10, 15, 20 minutes every day. There was a lot of Christmas training going on. just because they were bored. so I know with the and I know that we used to use the one that everybody I I reading has I ready? Yes. Is there any has there been any any discussion about maybe going back because I believe in last year when you were talking about success maker the validity and I know this is I'm opening

026up a can of worms the validity from the data coming out of I Ready was a little bit more on point than the validity of the data coming out of success maker mostly because pro if I'm a guessing woman it's because of the 30% usage with fidelity may I madam chair of U so at at this point we are not having conversations about bringing back I ready. I will tell you that we are starting to have conversations about programs versus people. Okay. as our dollars are shrinking. we are looking at the results maybe of teachers who are not using the program or programs and seeing the outcomes our students have as a result of the direct teaching. but no, we have not crossed that bridge of beginning conversations about I Ready. Thank you. And I

027love I'm I'm going to be people over programs every day of the week because I believe that having direct contact with a student is just more valuable and will probably provide better results than a programming. And I'm hoping that when we use success maker it's only for our struggling students that it was shared in the notes that it's just like the level ones and level twos for that kind of intense intervention. and we're not using it on every student. and the same with math, like if if if it's not needed, then why are we using it? And I and I love that Dr. Vasquez said people over programs because I do think that the impact there will be be better than these programs. So, that is all I have. Thank you so much for all

028this work. Thank you, Member Galla. Member Ferrant. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you team for doing this evaluation. This is really so necessary for us to make sure that what we're providing and bringing into the classroom is really working and actually seeing the results that we're wanting. I when I'm you know the thel it is it feels strange because part of it was as member Gallo alluded to it's like part of it's working for algebra but then not for algebra honors or geometry not for whichever one it goes but I think just really seeing I like the what we're seeing with that but I agree I'd love to see what last year's data looked like and see if we were finding the same last year and we're finding the same thing this year. Is

029there another program that we could use or as we're seeing with read to succeed, which that's the one I really want to touch on. that's a people over program in a sense. we're using a type of program, I guess, but the people are the ones that are implementing it and really sitting with the student and we're seeing huge results. 95% of the teachers were for it. we're seeing huge it's helping these students when they get to the testing. So maybe there's a math type of tutoring that would do that in in that sense where we can be pulling kids. I don't know how that looks or what that looks like. but just thought I'd throw that out there. My one question was with Read to Succeed. I know that they are currently using the SIPs

030program. and I would love to see if there was a way to have like two con two different groups where we could either train volunteers or maybe it's our paid the paid ones that go in train them in the Orton Gillingham through the Reed charitable. We've seen great results with that training. gives them the tools that they need and helping these students who are really struggling with reading. So, I'd love to see if we could do some sort of control group where there's a group that is trained through the read charitable, one is trained through the SIPS program and just see if there's a difference. That would be maybe even is it one more helpful? Is are the kids getting it more? I'd love to kind of narrow down on that. I know do you

031know when the you mentioned that there's going to be evaluation happening right now with SIPs. Do you know when that will be available for us? So that program is happening based on the 2526 school year. So we have to wait until the end of the school year to be able to get results to then analyze. so it's happening currently and we're we're doing different things throughout the year. but we likely wouldn't have results back until fall of next year. just to have time to analyze and present the results. Okay. is there a way to get kind of like preliminary results to see what that's looking like? Because I know that there's certain trainings, it'd be awesome. I know this last year I did trainings for teachers through read recharitable over the summer, but if we

032don't get those evaluations back till the fall, it's like we're prolonging things. Yeah. I mean, we try to turn the reports as quickly as we can for this type of work. we generally have to wait for all of the results to come in and analyze them before we can turn them back over. it's not like a regular spreadsheet or anything like that where the information comes in and you can kind of see it as it's coming in. You have to have the complete data set to be able to apply all of the cleaning techniques and do all of the statistical testing that goes into the results that we see. so it's kind of we have to wait for that process to play out, unfortunately. Okay. Okay. I'll have to have patience. I appreciate it. You

033guys are awesome. and then the success maker. I don't think I had any questions on that. but I appreciate it. I'm definitely excited about the read to succeed and just seeing the results that's having. And I think that's it. It really does go to the whole you know, people over programs and having a an actual person sitting there and a child listening to them read and then somebody talking to them instead of just on the screen. So, appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you, Member Verant. Member Banos. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. I agree with so much of what member Gallo member Ferrant said and you know, I really appreciate this evaluation on read to succeed. it's funny that under success maker, we describe it as personalized learning, but really personalized learning is having a

034it's having a person. I mean, that's read to succeed. so just really am glad that we are glad to hear that we're focusing, you know, still really thinking about the direct instruction versus versus screens. And I guess we know one of my questions in the review of the two math programs is, you know, how are how are we aligning that with sort of some expressed desire about reducing screen time in our school and in our classroom? Dr. Vasquez. I guess my concern is I know we've spoken a couple of times on the board about reducing screen time in classroom. So I'm just wondering with these programs is it we're I see the recommendations are we focusing more on just using it for intervention and homework? I you know how often is it used like in

035the classroom? So the program most of the programs are interventions and the state requires intervention for students that are struggling and they define what that is. we have chosen for the most part programs although we strongly encourage and have teachers do small group direct instruction. we have not done an analysis as I've mentioned previously related to the amount of time but what we can see from the program evaluation is that very few of the programs that have been evaluated are meeting the fidel the implementation fidelity of the program which then limits our interpretation of the results because if you're not let's say they're supposed to be using the program 30 minutes three times a week and they're only doing it, you know, one time or twice a week that impacts the actual results. I believe

036there's our science program is one of the one that I can recall one of the few where the implementation of the program has been done with fidelity and we have seen over and over again that schools that use that are getting better outcomes. Having said that, I do believe that there needs to be a lot of considerations around us moving away from the programs and working with just the teachers. not that I don't believe in people over programs but sometimes with time management sometimes the how the programs use AI and are able to quickly adapt and analyze where the students gaps are and be able to prescribe those interventions directly on that is something our teachers like because it's it's timesaving. There are teachers that are using the programs and we'll tell you please don't

037take it away. So this is going to require a lot further conversation. We're going to engage teachers that are using the program. we are going to engage teachers who are not using the program like is it because of time? Is it because it's too complicated? I think training was another element that has popped up in some of the program evaluations. But at the end of the day, whether we choose to continue with programs or move to people, there's going to be an impact on the teachers. Some are going to be happy because they don't like the program and then some are going to have some concerns because they're it's going it may require them to spend more time planning. but I do know that the board would like to see us reduce the amount of

038screen time that our children are currently having as part of our instructional program. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. you know and I one of the comments I see for your recommendations talks about the need for targeted professional training but at some point you have these programs but you're having to put more time and more resources into more training and more understanding and it's still not being used with fidelity and so I just I wonder at what point it's you know maybe not cost effective to do and then I think Just one other question I had and this may go with more of success maker because it seems like it's more of an intervention piece for level one and level two. but I know, you know, speaking of I Ready, what a trigger word for

039me. back in the day that even though those programs at least at that time were targeted or were supposed to be used by level one, level two, you know, or or students who were performing below proficiency level that somehow that communication to teachers and schools was not clear. And you know, we had students who were spending time on a screen and it was really not intended for them. maybe because there was just confusion among teachers, maybe they thought it was really for everyone. and just to point out that, you know, a time on a screen, it's not it's not benign because a time on a screen means time not spent doing something else. And so I just wanted to be clear that if we do decide that this is something that is needed for certain

040students that communication is very clear that it's not for all students so that we don't have unnecessary time on it. So thank you. All right. Thank you, Vice Chair Salamanca. Thank you, Chair. I know we talked about this when we got briefed initially about it with EXL because I've heard from a lot of parents and students who really appreciate and value it and I know a lot of the conversation came up when we were considering taking away from middle school as one of our cost-saving measures back in last year, two years ago. but what I also noticed from when I was talking to folks that were arguing for us to keep that for middle school was that it was not uniformly used. And so some teachers would have it 20 minutes in the classroom. Some

041teachers would say it's more of a homework assignment for you to supplement with what we learned in the classroom. and so the hours being used across was different. Did we have a chance to look further into that? the homework versus inclassroom implementation and what works or doesn't. Yep. So that was part of this design was looking at how teachers reported how they were using that and correlating it to in terms of the amount of usage and how that was correlated to outcomes. So that's where we see in in the recommendations the two to three times a week for the students taking the fast and the one to two times for the students taking algebra 1 and geometry. and then the is that but is that anywhere like in the classroom or outside the classroom or

042do we have a recommendation on if it's best as supplementary after the fact or during? So the time is accumulated regardless of where the student is using the platform and that's just a metric that accumulates within the system and there's not a way to isolate that you know this student took it in the class versus that student took it at home. They're they're still accumulating. We can't tell the time of a session. It's in class time or outside. It accumulate. It's a counter. It's not doing a time stamp in the transaction that we get from the data. Got it. Okay. Helpful. Yeah, because I think that was one of my questions where I had a lot of teachers that were excited about Excel, but they said they were using it more as homework and supplementary

043after the fact rather than in-class time. And I as long as we captured all of that both, I guess that's the helpful thing. yeah, thank you for doing this. I think obviously as we have the budget conversation always we're always looking at from all the things that we procure and buy what is working and what is outcome related or not. I do think it is difficult like Dr. Rasco said to know what programs and software works or doesn't work if everybody uses it differently if some folks use it and some folks don't. and so to the extent like I don't I think that's a much broader conversation because I don't know I I think I'm I'm struggling with appreciating what is the point of us buying software that we're not going to implement at high

044fidelity. And that's question number one. Question number two is if we do know a software does work and that's the point of doing this. So there are some software or programs that we know are overwhelmingly successful. Why don't we have it everywhere? Like why are we leaving it up to if you like it, you can use it. If you don't, you don't. And these are really hard questions because I know that ends up going into territory over what we what is mandatory training. economic like I'm just I know that this goes into a whole larger scope of things but it almost feels like we're somewhere in between both of those where we're buying things that we know maybe work maybe don't we're trying to hold ourselves accountable on outcomes and measuring these outcomes we're maybe

045implementing maybe not implementing and so I think I'm just struggling with maybe the takeaways of this or like what do we as a board are supposed to generally think about some of this and I know we started doing this because we wanted accountability with every dollar. and some stuff is working, some stuff isn't, but if it's 20% used, 30% used, then does it I think I'm just struggling generally with that, which is a much larger conversation about the process of program evaluation and program implementation. So, let me call on the superintendent. Yep. Dr. Vasquez. So, just a little bit of background for some of you that may be newer to the board. we have not as a district at the request of the board required specific program use. we have recommended there have been some

046rare occasions if a school is under DOE watch because of their performance and we have to submit specific plans and then specific data. But for the most part we recommend and it is up to the teacher whether they use it or not. and the board has consistently for the last several years upheld that. Should the board change their stance on that then we could go back and look at these are the programs that we know research supports works and they will be used x amount of time. That is one of the reasons why we have started to have conversations about people versus programs because we are spending quite a lot of money on instructional materials much more than what is allocated by the state. We do have some schools that are required to have interventions.

047For example, in ELA reading, the state does mandate that there are prescribed programs, but we currently are letting the schools enforce that. We at the district level have not, for example, we could pull reports from the programs that we are recommending they use for that intervention and then be able to say, well, these teachers at these schools have not met the recommended time. Therefore, they're not implementing the recommended intervention. So it's done under the intervention block which could be direct instruction which could be personalized program or one of the programs that we have but we have been we leave that to the discretion of the teacher. So that's the answer to board member Salamanca's question. Thank you Dr. Ras. Yeah, I think that's that's what I'm struggling with because we are buying a lot of

048programs, some that work well, some that don't, but implementation is still a question mark. And I know that's not an easy conversation to have, but and I think from some of the data, I know that as Dr. Vasco said when we have certain schools where we do have to mandate certain interventions like is there a way to compare how those schools are in terms of gains or improvements because they have to use some of these programs are comparing to those schools that are not across the board using this? Like statistically speaking, how how like can we get some outcomes of what works and doesn't work with the people aspect being an and control available. Yeah. So, for that type of design, first we would have to have the schools clearly defined as far as who's

049required and who's not. And fortunately, in the situation that was just on the table, there's not a lot of schools that are currently in that situation of being required or, you know, having that heightened level of of scrutiny right now. right. It would have to be something that would be part of the early design in selecting the sites in in that research to be able to do that comparison, but we'd have to have enough in that group to be able to compare. So, it really kind of depends yeartoear in terms of which schools would be included. it's something that we can certainly take back as a look for those opportunities when they may present themselves, whether it's specifically this case or if it's other programs that we're looking at to try to identify schools that

050might have either a required or a voluntary higher implementation. Got it. Okay. And so I know that as we do this process, there's multiple steps to it, right? We select a program, there's a program evaluation, like remind me again what the steps of this whole process is per program. Yep. So we start by identifying the programs. and then we identify who the sponsoring department is. We work with them to identify the scope of work, which essentially is the research questions of interest. So what is it that you'd like to know about this program? Then we review the available data or what we might be able to generate. so if you're asking a question that we just don't have information to answer or we wouldn't be able to create that information then that is a question

051that we remove from the scope. typically we do depending on on the program and the design we can do two phases. So we'll look at an implementation first of how is it being implemented. That's where we do more of the qualitative work to ask questions of the school of teachers kind of looking at more of those qualitative types of data. And then if it's something that we'd like to look at the outcomes, then when we have the outcomes back at the end, we can then do the quantitative analysis and then we'll conclude with the report. Sometimes we only do an implementation, sometimes we only do an outcome. It just depends on what the scope of the project is. So in this case, we got all the way through most of that for these programs. So

052what comes next? Next is we have recommendations. What are we doing with those recommendations? Thanks vice chair Salamonga for the questions. Appreciate this conversation. So we work with the program contacts to share the results. So we're working closely with Dr. Brown Cannon's team. I think a lot comes back to what you know Dr. Vasquez was talking about which there's a lot in that conversation. And so you know I getting out of my realm a little bit here. I know Ben and them tell me in this role I'm supposed to just call balls and strikes like an umpire, but going back to some of my prior roles, you know, there's a lot that goes into that. So, you know, I know our school supervisors work with their schools. they're there on a regular basis and if

053they're seeing PM1 data to PM2 data looking like there's opportunities there. They'll have conversations about the utilization of say Success Maker in in elementary school for math if from PM1 to PM2 they're seeing results that look like Success Maker could help. at the end of the day, you know, there's still choices to be made. So we try to utilize the resources that we're purchasing to have the impact. I'm also a big believer in people over programs. however as Dr. Vasquez said, there's a it's very challenging to individualize and personalize instruction and differentiate instruction and some of these programs with their AI features are able to help do that in a very timely manner. my layman takeaways from these three program evaluations are showed that if you're using the skills practice there's impact there. So whether

054that needs to be done on a program or just standards aligned practice. It's showing us what research has shown practice helps when it comes to mathematics. with success maker what was intriguing there the 30% was not intriguing. however that is national average unfortunately or fortunately however you look at that but the 30% who were using with fidelity we saw achievement gaps closing there which is something certainly to pay attention to because sometimes our opportunity gaps can be stubborn. And then with read to succeed we saw a lot of qualitative data of liking that interaction with students and the relationships and the mentoring there and there'll be a lot more to be determined from that once we get the SIPs evaluation back. Got it. But really appreciate this line of that's really helpful. I think I

055struggle with like you said the success maker it is in some areas we see that there are some achievement gaps closing but we're just making a recommendation to use that so all right thank you so much Harold all right good good conversation thank you vice chair member bird thank you and I'll be quick because much of the program discussions were already covered I you know I was very pleased to get this information on the read to succeed because I'm a big believer in that obviously it's it's what I did my first two years as a educator was working one-on-one with students so with reading so I believe firmly and that success of course the issue there is what we've already discussed how do you scale that to be able to you know impact the children

056that the number of children that we have that need interventions so I know when we met I discussed with you and I said I was going to say it from the das that I still want to encourage us to explore more possibilities for tutors through our high schools and offering community service hours for high school students. They could easily be trained. I did that same thing. I did that with fifth grade elementary students working with first graders and they were excellent at working with those kids even in fifth grade. So, I would love to see us really push this, early in the beginning of the year or even over the summer, ask for volunteers to come and train over the summer to learn how to tutor elementary kids. and if we can find I love

057the idea of exploring to find a math tutoring program too to go along with the reading program. and then get these kids right at the beginning of the year because that's something else we heard from the teachers. They'd like to see it earlier in the year. Get these high school kids out there really in in the beginning of the year helping kids. Think how many juniors and seniors we have that have transportation that get out of school at 2:30 that maybe don't have an afterchool job or extracurriculars after school that might be looking for something to get those 100 volunteer hours they need. or they may just be looking for something anyway to do. I think this would be a great opportunity. They could go to a neighborhood school 10 minutes from their high school

058right after school and get that last hour or 30 minutes with the kids. I'd love to see us figure out a way to push that through. and I think we I think it might be worth exploring. I'd also like to find out why. superintendent, you mentioned that there's a science program that's being done with Fidelity that we're seeing great success with. I'd like to find out why that program in particular is being done with Fidelity. Is it because it's high interest because it's science or is it is there a reason for that? I'll let the team respond in more detail by missing some pieces to it. the schools that are currently using it with Fidelity have been using it, have seen results, and have found a way to incorporate it into their schedule. What we're

059still having difficulty with is getting schools that aren't using it, whose science scores would benefit from the use of it to implement it in their routines during the school day. So, I please add anything that I may have missed. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks Dr. Vesquez and Miss Bird for the question. It's Study Island is the program and we have greater usage of study island for science in fifth grade than our other programs. and we've done two program evaluations that have both shown the impact the positive impact. And so it's it's the greatest usage we have of a program, but as Dr. Vasquez said, there's still opportunity. Okay. Good. And then I think that's it. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Member Bird. Member Douglas. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for your research. I appreciate I've

060I've tried all three of the programs while I was in school. I in teaching and yes, we not really use it to fidelity, but I just want to bring that teacher's voice to the discussion. Is there a way we can survey the teacher to ask why? What prevented them to use this these program to fidelity? Is it time? Is it do they need training? Do they need support staff? But because we have to help the teachers make it happen and I'm sure they would like to make it happen but so many things are happening in a classroom that probably is also bringing you know the fact that they're not using those you know those programs to fidelity. my other point will be is there a way we can do a pilot program at one school

061where they really use it to fidelity and how they teach it so that they can be the one that will be teaching the other you know schools why they had such great you know outcomes with those programs just to make sure because these programs have been here for a long time a very long time I've been teaching 25 years and I'm no success maker. I excel all this. Okay. So I just want to know why it's not working as well as it should be working and maybe we should involve the teachers in that discussion. Ask them what do you need to make these things happen. And the other things that I would like to know I would like to find out about study island the and Ken Academy how you know what is the the

062result of those two programs are they because I know teachers are using them to fidelity and they like it you know so what are the results of these two programs that's my other point that I would like to know thank you so much. Thanks, Ml. Dr. Border, any followup? no, thanks, Miss Douglas. I appreciate that. definitely taking back kind of feeding off what Dr. Vazquez asked earlier, too. And we'll talk, with the program contact about future design on program evaluation, the teachers who, are not using it, why, you know, why not, and trying to get some of that information. There was the these studies did include surveys of teachers, but honing in specifically on maybe not using and trying to get a cross-section there to find out the why and see if we can have

063any correlation with that is something that we can look at for sure. Y All right. Thank you, Member Douglas. All right. Dr. Vasquez, I think we're ready to move on to 4.02. Before we do, let me just, I'm going to need to excuse myself for a few minutes, board. So, I'm gonna leave, you in the very capable hands of our vice chair. Yes. All right. As we transition, I'm going to ask Greg Moody, executive leader for school choice, to come up to the podium. our next topic is a review of the school improvement plan for two of our charter schools. Lucius and Emma Nixon Academy will go first. And then after that, we will have the school improvement plan review for UCP downtown charter school. With that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Moody. Do

064you want to talk today? Okay. Thank you, Superintendent, Madame Chair, Vice Chair, board members. I'll introduce Dr. Kia Scott, our senior director for school choice. she'll she will tee this off for us with Lucius and Emma Nixon Academy. Kia, thank you. Good afternoon, Madame Chair, vice chair, members of the board, and superintendent Vasquez. This afternoon, representatives from Lucius and Emma Nixon Academy will present their school improvement plan. Florida statutes 10002.33 section 911 requires charter schools that have earned a grade of a D or an F to appear before the sponsor to review noted deficiencies to be addressed in the school improvement plan which I'll refer to as a SIP. The school choice services department ensures all charter schools required to submit a school improvement plan respond to all pertinent components and adhere to required submission

065deadlines. As an additional measure of monitoring, schools with school improvement plans have two additional site visits to review progress and implementation of the SIP. So they have a total of four site visits during the year. The school choice department with support of the strategic improvement department worked closely with Lucius and Emma Nixon to finalize revisions and the approval and submission of the school improvement plan to the state. In November 2025, all school sips were published by FDOE. All OCPS SIPs are scheduled to be considered for board approval at the January 13, 2026 meeting. Today we have Principal Lumpin and Mr. Bruce Johnson, board member, who will present the specific information for Lucius and Emma Nixon Academy. And I'll turn that over to to you, sir. Good afternoon. For those of you who I haven't had

066the pleasure to meet, my name is Adonis Lumpkin, like a pumpkin but with an L, and I am the interim principal of Lucia Cinema Nixon Academy. And as statutoily required, I am accompanied by my governing board member, Mr. Bruce Johnson. moving forward, we would now speak to you regarding the highlights and the heartburn of our school improvement plan. we broke our school improvement presentation into four succinct headings. One, where we are, two, why, three, what are we doing? And four, our goals. where we are. We took the liberty of borrowing the state's actual spreadsheet so that we could give you a demonstrative pictorial of our last year school improvement grades. full disclosure, the graph is usually a little longer than this. We extrapolated the areas of the components that didn't pertain to elementary schools. we

067took out things like social study achievement, middle school and college career acceleration as well as graduation rates. If you look at the slides, Lucious and Eminix and Academy received scores in four out of the total eight categories in which all elementary schools throughout the state of Florida can receive scores. The areas that we did not receive scores in are third grade ELA achievement, ELA learning gains of the lowest 25%, math learning gains of the lowest 25% and student achievement. Those categories are indicated by the black NAS in those respective components. The four categories that we did receive scores in are ELLL achievement, ELA achievement, ELA learning gains, math achievement, math learning gains, and as you can see with the numbers reflected in those particular categories, our scores last year left a lot to be desired,

068right? allow me to call them out as an exercise of personal and professional accountability to you so that we can make an effort to do better. Right? In the area of ELA proficiency, our students receive 20%. In the area of ELA learning gains, our students received 31%. In the area of math proficiency, our students received 20%. And in the area of math learning gains, our students received 8%. Well, now that you know where we are relative to our last year's scores, let's talk about why the issues that were that were our undoing last year have a lot to do with the four fatal factors I'm about to present to you. One, student achievement. Two, lack of certified/holyqualified teachers. Three, transient pupil population. And four, ineffective instructional quality and rigor. In the area of student attendance,

069you can see, oh, I'm sorry, forgive me. I didn't advance the slide. You can see by the graph that 39% of our students missed 10% of instructional days last year and that matters right because if they're not there we can't teach them obviously in the area of lack of certified and quality and highly qualified teachers. Our data reviews analyzing academic records, interviews with school personnel determined that the decrease in students performance can be attributed to the employment of a considerable number of novice teachers. Proportionately, teachers with less than two years experience many times lack the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively engage students and deliver high quality instruction. Now, just because a teacher is a novice teacher doesn't mean they're a young teacher. We have many teachers that come to us as a secondary career

070choice and some of them are novice teachers at that time. Our particular incident involve or situation involved novice teachers and novice young teachers. Let me say that with clarity. And the good thing about young teachers are they're young teachers, right? They're full of energy. They come with vitality, a more they're more u able to identify with the student population. You would expect them to have a greater grasp on technology. and they cost less than veteran teachers, right? but the bad thing about young teachers is they're young teachers, right? they struggle with classroom management in many cases. lesson planning and adapting their students adapting to their students individual learning needs and styles leading to a decline of academic performance across our grade levels is what we've experienced and as an administrator I obviously didn't do an

071effective job myself in properly preparing and motivating them towards success right that's my personal and professional accountability statement under that category under the category of transient pupil population there's the cocktail of components that contribute to this specific epidemic. after the pandemic, an awareness of emerging online platforms that took kids away. families relocating out of the state due to the high cost of, living and affordability issues. parents in record numbers choosing to homeschool their children. and the choice legislation option that recently came up that bore rise to the emerging mom and pop private school market. not to mention the ice rays that affect our Latino and Haitian communities. this year alone, 29% of our students are new students and that's at a school that has a population of 60, no more than 60 kids as of

072last year. This year we're at 50. All right. so 29 of those 29% of those students excluding kindergartens are brand new. In the area of ineffective instruction, quality and rigor, the lack of standards alignment, engaging in appropriate pace lessons, the difficulty in dealing with negative student behaviors that often come within the environment in which we do business. Madame Fer, we are in your community. I've had the opportunity to meet you one time before at a community event. We sit in on Mercy Drive, right? That is not a good business models for people in the business of charter schools, right? you understand it. I won't belabor the board due to the time, but that's where we are. That's where we choose to be. And we have an affinity for that student demographic. what are we doing?

073we've added daily attendance calls to help with student attendance. weekly and parent check-ins, incentives for kids such as pizza and pastry parties for the home rooms that have the most weekly and monthly student attendance. We're doing home visits, offering parent workshops and connecting families and community to community resources for transportation and health needs. In the area of lack of certified and quality teachers, efforts continue to be made to increase teacher quality to recruit, retain, and reward high performing certified teachers in all content areas. And those rewards don't always have to be financial. They can be just creating the type of climate where a teacher feels she's welcomed and wanted. It could be responding in a quick manner to a discipline issue or writing a little note and sliding it on the teacher's desk letting her

074know him or her know that you appreciate her. And we're also providing job embedded coaching, peer mentoring, and ongoing professional development. okay. a continuation a continuation of that what are we doing category in the area of transient pupil population. The slide reads we are doing more work aimed at planting parents and pupils deeper into the soil of the community by helping them establish roots that have more rigidity. But what does that mean? it means that we're tying families to reliable resources that can help make their local life better. Right? so that there's a likelihood that they'll stay. We're talking and bringing individuals in. They're talking to our parents about the affordable housing opportunities that come available in our community, the credit repair and first-time homeowners programs. if you want to do business with us from

075a financial standpoint banks and so forth, you have to bring that desire to our parent programs to talk about financial literacy so that we are creating a more well-rounded parent population and with those type of relationships hoping that they'll choose to stay where they are. We are establishing new programs ourselves. we have the first Girl Scout program that our school has ever had. and that many in that environment has ever had the opportunity to be a part of. And so, we're excited about that. and in addition, we've changed our schedule to have a staff member that usually came in early and left at the time school was out to come in later and leave at 6:00 so we can provide free aftercare to students so that parents that are looking forward to making a little

076extra money to help ends meet and don't have to worry about their kid becoming a latch key kid or proper supervision to their their child. and we're also supporting okay in the area of infective of in of ineffective teacher quality and rigor. We're ensuring that lesson plans are lessons are engaging that they are appropriately paced and that there is a standards alignment. while teachers make every effort to go through the standards and cover them all before the end of the school year, we want to make sure that they understand the text specs so they understand what exactly is a higher probability of being tested so that we can prepare our students for those. We're conducting frequent classroom walkthroughs and accountable observations focused on instructional improvement. We're supporting teachers with planning tools and model based lessons

077and feedback cycles and this is our goals. We brought that illustration back and added two layers to it. Now, given the numbers that we have this year, we hope to receive five out of the eight categories that all elementary schools throughout the state can can get grades in. The new one coming aboard would be the third grade reading proficiency. And the two layers that you see underneath that original pink graph that I showed you earlier are our realistic average growth goals as well as our aspirational growth goals, right? we feel that if we could get ELA proficiency to move up 20 points to a 40, if we can get ELA learning gains to move up 29 points to a 60, if we can get math proficiency to move up 20 points to a 40, and

078we can get math learning gains to move up 52 points to a 60, we'd have the required 250 points to get a C-grade, right? my notes are not are you looking for the if you're looking for the notes mine I have notes numbers that you don't have reflected there. and the second line, the aggressive growth model, if we can get our ELA proficiency numbers to move up 40%, our ELA learning gain numbers to move up 39%. Our math proficiency numbers to move up 40% and our math learning gain numbers to move up 62%, then that would give us a 310 score in that rubric, which would take us to an A grade, right? with that said, we are Lucious Emixen Academy. thank you for your time and this concludes our presentation. Thank you very much.

079we'll now have a queue of board members that have a couple of questions for you. We really appreciate you walking us through that and we were following along on our end with some of the numbers we also have and so I think the board was just trying to bring it all together. first up we have board member Vanos. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Thank you for being here today. I appreciate it. I might have to come back for a second round, but I'll I'll just start off. just curious your building. what's the capacity in your school building? How many students can you serve? We according to the floor plan that is approved by the fire marshall, we can get approximately 450 students in our building. So you can fit 450. So your building accommodates 450

080students and you have 50 students now. Correct. Okay. to your point, the also the thought of renting the other side of our building has come about so that we could possibly merge with a incoming charter school that maybe is having facility location issues, a childc care facility that would act as a feeder pattern to our school and give us a inroads towards recruiting more students. just thought I'd throw that out there to you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean it sounds like maybe some of these these schools of hope that are looking for a place to go, maybe there is, you know, maybe there's space there. ma'am, also with that said, as a point of contention, the school building isn't owned by the school. It's owned by a private landlord. Interesting. All right. Okay. Thank

081you. You're welcome. Okay. you mentioned in the presentation that you have 39% of students that are missing 10 10% or more of days. Do you have information on why students aren't coming to school or have you done any of that research? it's a it's a difficult demographic, ma'am. some of our kids prior to the pandemic were at McDonald's trying to get Wi-Fi capability before the ESSER grants allowed us to be able to have the hotspots. some of our students are really and our parents are really in an impoverished situation. Many times the standards bearers that exist in other location don't have our don't have our barriers and so there are a lot of barriers to education in that area. your schools Molly Ray Pine Hills I'm sure they experienced some of the same similar situations

082and we're not immune to those situations as well. No and there's there's definitely a lot going on. Do you think just I know you have a deep knowledge of the other OCPS traditional schools around you. Do you think that students are better off in your school than in one of the other neighborhood schools? Well, I don't want to use this platform to create a us against them situation with the district. We are committed to working collaboratively with the district through your school choice office. Kia, Margaret, and Gina have been wonderful. And so when it comes to making statements that are derogatory towards any OCPS school, I would refrain from doing that. I just think that different there are different choices that people make for different reasons as to where they want their children. Holistically, if

083you were to survey the entire OCPS school board, you would find that there are a lot of schoolboard employees who have charter students that attend charter schools as well. And it's not because they have a negative reflection of your school board because you're like a battleship. You're historic. You're tested. You're you've been around a while and you do wonderful things. But sometimes charter schools have the ability to be nimble like a spoo speedboat to be able to meet the particular needs of that particular parent for that particular child. And so it doesn't mean necessarily that a child is better off in our school. It's just that a parent feels that particular school and that particular region whether it's our school or any of the other schools that exist within your oposes have something favorable for

084their childh. Well, I think the reason that I was asking is because just looking at the grades of the school 2023D 2025F and I know that there are not any traditional schools that have a have a D or an F. So that's really why I was asking, but I appreciate your point on charter schools you're saying have the ability to be more nimble. I think that is a great great benefit that charter schools do have that I wish was applied across the board. but given that, you know, I'm looking at your plan and I'm wondering, you know, as you have had struggles over the past couple of years, what parts of these this plan have you implemented previously and has there been success? Well, that's kind of like asking us what instruction have have have

085we implemented previously. We do all these things regularly, right? but sometimes some things stick in some years and sometimes they don't for whatever reasons. It could be the configuration of the grading model that particular year. There are some high schools that reap the benefits of a favorable grading model where typically they have had low performing results, but here comes a new situation in a new year. and that climate and playing that particular nuance allows them to be able to receive a favorable grade that might not have been achieved in previous years. And so we continue to do everything that we've always done. and with the es and flows that exists in our in our climate, we sometimes do a better job than not. And so and again, I want to make it perfectly clear to

086you that I am not in a confrontational position with the school district and I do not want to be drawn into one. if I can all help it. I appreciate everything that everybody on the DAS does for the kids because they're all kids, right? They're they're all this the children that have choice and needs and so I just leave it at that. No, and I appreciate that and I know that you seem like a very nice person and I'm sure that everyone in your school is and people want to we all want to make sure our students are getting what they need. and I think that's the concern up here. The concern is, you know, that students only get one one chance, right, to to be in elementary school, middle school, high school. And I

087think all of us just want to make sure that that they have the best chance. going back to some plans for the future. I know you mentioned you are having some issues with your teachers. Do you have only certified teachers or Yes. Okay. Yes. We've been working with Fronnie and the district certification office to make sure that we embed our school with the necessary highly qualified teachers to get the job done. We've had the due to the school grade, we've had the influx of some UNICEK dollars that have allowed us to have hire an interventionist. that interventionist is certified and they're working in small groups with students to provide MTS and pull out and push in activities that help students ameliate their deficiencies. That's great. let me see what else I have here. Oh, I

088know what I wanted to ask. for I think it was the year 2024, it looked like there wasn't an I an incomplete grade for for the school and I was just want to follow up on on why that happened. What happens is if I can refer you back to the slide, I'll take it here. What happens is when when our grade levels I'm sorry when our grade when our enrollment numbers are so low they affect us in various ways right as you see there are eight possible components that we could receive scores for being that we don't have enough students in particular sales meaning that our fourth and fifth grade students we only had nine or eight and because we don't meet the threshold that the state requires for us to have 10 in a

089Well, it put us in a situation where we didn't get the benefit of all the eight categories, right? And so when we didn't get the benefit of the eight categories, it put us in a situation where we received an I. We actually thought this year we would have an eye because we were under the same situation as we were the previous year, but lo and behold like some of our charter school colleagues, the things that you don't expect sometimes in the new grading systems sometimes appear and here you got a grade that you didn't expect to get and that and that you've earned rightfully so, right? full accountability. And so that's what happened that year. Our numbers are so low they hurt us. They hurt us in terms of achievement categories. we could very well

090given our demographic have students in the lowest 25%. But we can't realize that those numbers because we don't have enough students to qualify at that sale level. We could you know it affects us in terms of being able to pay for for teachers, right? And so we've had to do some some some collaborative things with the outside agencies and institutions to be among you there the people that and I welcome you all to come out and visit our school. I look forward to the opportunity to walk you around, to show you who we are, to show you how we are. And I'm I'm sure that you'll see everything going on from a more granular perspective and understand that there is a need for us to be in that community in which we serve. and there

091is the utmost of expectation on our part and the efforts that we're doing day in and day out to ensure that remains that way. Mhm. So the students when you don't have enough students to take the different tests or to show do you still have data? I mean how are you evaluating them? they they take the tests but the state doesn't give us a score and so we have to look at the granular data that exists going in rigidly and looking at the students who are actually there the year before where they are this year and trying to do our own analysis to understand it. Superintendent Vasquez, I just need to clarify. my understanding is that there was an issue with the percent tested. Is that No, ma'am. No, ma'am. Okay, we'll we'll verify because

092that's the information I had that they didn't meet the threshold for the percent tested. We're typically at 95 and 100% of students tested. if we dropped below a certain threshold, we would not be qualified for to get an A grade because you have to meet they have certain thresholds that you exist in order to get an A grade. We could meet all of the performance numbers to qualify for an A. But if we drop below a 95 percentile as I understand it and I said you are the battleship. You have research base. That's why we tie our tugboats to you and we want no problems with you and then we want to make clear that's our posture. But from my understanding is that once you reach a 95% threshold whether you have enough points to

093be an A or not, you won't get an A because you haven't reached that margin and then there's a further threshold that means you can't get a grade. But we've met that threshold. No, no. And we don't have issues. We're glad that you are here. I just want to make sure that it's clear because my understanding is that the 95% threshold was not met, but we'll clarify. Yes, ma'am. we'll we'll I'll have the team verify and then let you know. Thank you. I appreciate it. member Vonos, thank you. this is the second round. No, this isn't the second round. Yeah, this is still the first round. Okay. but I'm almost done with this one. I'll let let my board member speak. do you offer any sports, extracurricular activities, after school, before school programs? At the

094elementary level, we do not have any sports at our school. We do offer afterare and for parents that take us up on it, we have before care program but as far as the extracurricular sports activities, no ma'am, we do not offer that at the elementary level. Okay. All right. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you, Member Vanos. next up we have member Gallo. Thank you, Madam Chair. so are you an elementary school? Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. So, you're not you're just strictly elementary? Yes, ma'am. That's what I thought, but it confused me when you said at the elementary level. Okay. how many teachers do you have? Actually, right now we have three. Actually, four. Cuz I'm showing the interim principal teaching fifth grade along with a teacher. And then Mr. Lumpin,

095is that you? Like a pumpkin, but we didn't. Thank you. you're also teaching first grade and fourth grade and kindergarten. I'm not sure what data you I'm looking on your website. Oh, no. That's with all the you look under staff under your website, it just it shows pretty much that you're teaching all of the grades, right? I would I would refer you to our monthly personnel report that we submit to the district every month that gives you the exact teacher configuration and program components of our school. That the website is outdated and thank you for bringing that to my attention. I'll make sure that we get right on that. but we submit our monthly personnel report to the district via the charter link system and it shows our accurate school employee personnel roster. Okay. Yes,

096ma'am. Thank you. and do are most of the students that go to your school are they neighborhood kids? Are they far away? Do they how do they get to school? Do you bust them? no ma'am. the majority of our students walk or get picked up. Have you looked into see if that's a barrier to attendance, the walking or the driving? It most definitely is. there's there are buses that I'm glad you mentioned that every year there the charter school office asked us, is there any way that they can help us? And consistently for the last two years, what we've put on our report is that access to transportation. The district currently has buses that it surpluses that we can't get access to and we would love to get access to those buses. just like the

097public schools that are not that are underutilized are now being challenged by the schools of hope. we would like to rather than have those taxpayer dollars that the parents of our of our children have paid for, rather than going out to auctions and being bought, we'd like we'd very much like to be able to have a couple of those so that we could increase our enrollment and so that we could stop barriers to education that exist. Many of our u parents live don't have cars. they live close enough where they fall underneath the two mile radius where they can't get transportation. and but they don't have cars and so they walk through dangerous situations to the children they walk through dangerous situations to be able to get home which causes us to have to walk

098them halfway down the street currently. And so if you could be so gracious to be able to make it a way for us to be able to receive those surplus buses that go out to the auction, that would help us a lot in increasing student enrollment in stopping barriers to like transportation to education and putting ourselves in a more favorable position. what is what is our contract with you? Like how what did we approve last time that we approved your charter contract in terms of what ma'am? The number of years? Five years. And when when did we approve that? about three four years ago. I don't forgive me. So you're up for renewal next year. next year possibly. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Dr. Scott, can I ask you a few questions? so I know that you

099obviously have looked in depth at the SIP that they provided and you've been working with the school. I'm curious as to your thoughts on their ability to turn around this school to to improve their grade. In my opinion, just visiting the school, you can see a difference. the sense of urgency of making sure that more is being done for the students. because there we make what we do one thing we do make clear is once we do our site visits which we do twice a year in this case it would be four times a year. We do provide comments back and you know we don't do it to intimidate but we have to cover ourselves and we do let them know you know you have a school grade of an F a second F for

100charter schools will close a charter school. So with that sense of urgency I do believe that they're doing everything they can right now to improve. Okay. Thank you Dr. Scott. I appreciate it. do you do you all offer food and nutrition services? We offer food. Our children eat free breakfast, lunch, and snack. You do? Yes, ma'am. Okay. All right. Thank you so much. You're welcome so much, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you, member Galla. next up, member Front. Okay. Thank you. And thank you both for coming. I know this is probably not your favorite meeting that you will be attending this week, but I appreciate you for being here, for your honesty, for you know, looking forward. you have some really high goals. I looking at those goals, those are kind of things that I when

101I was first coming in, that's what I was wanting to see. big huge jumps like that, but as the more I'm in this, the more I see that it is in slow increments. so, as much as I would love for you to get that 60, I don't know. I'm not convinced by maybe what you're sharing today that would happen. so just some questions just to kind of pick your brain as far as ELA. What are you doing? Like what what are you implementing? What strategies are you implementing to make sure that these students are really having great success in their ELA class? Yeah. Well, first and foremost, we're we're protecting instructional time, right? We're making sure that our schedules are aligned in ways that give maximum exposure to instruction and that we're protecting that instruction.

102We're we have a like I mentioned earlier, we have an interventionist that's doing pullouts and pull-in with those students every day in in addition to what the classroom teacher is providing, the small group instruction that the classroom teachers are providing. We've got tutoring coming up. and again, our we're small, our money is slow, so we have to be strategic in how we use our dollars, just like you were talking about earlier when it pertains to XL. right. And so, timing our in our tutoring instruction to the point of the year where we can get the most bang for our buck. And so we're just getting back to the to the basics and the rigorous components of quality instructors and quality instruction with quality by quality instructors and researchbased materials. Okay. Do you have examples of

103maybe what you're using? Yes, ma'am. for kindergarten in the area of phonics we're using Wonders which is a research place a researchbased program approved by the state of Florida. In math, we're pro we're using Savvis Envision best mathematics. Social studies, we're using Florida social studies weekly. Florida studies weekly, I'm sorry. And we're using Savis Science Exploration. our teachers make use of CPOMs. Addition in addition, we have EXL in all grade levels. We have I Ready for reading and math. We have generation genius in the area of science. and we have top score writing that we're utilizing. Those last three are one, two, three, four are online resources. Okay. For ELA, are you using anything like SIPS like the SIPS program or the read the Orton Gillingham through No, ma'am, but I took a note to

104see that's what you guys were using. So that I would highly recommend it. Those really do help students. highly recommend those. and then as far as math, what what kind of programs are you using or strategies? Because we like we said earlier, people over programs, but strategies are you using to really help, students understand the math, right? the engagement is key in our demographic, right? students will if if they're motivated, that's that's just like with the our in-class novels. If we're just giving them novels that have no relevance to their world, they don't they're not motivated. They're not engaged. And so with our areas, we're trying to increase engagement. as it pertains to math, tying them into not just individuals, but instructional materials that engage them. That could be the I already math component where

105we get you know you have thresholds of of achievement rewards that go towards individuals that you know don't flash through and get the little flag that said you've been going too fast. and so we're doing everything we can in both the areas of reading and math to motivate them and increase their engagement. Okay. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. It's I can definitely say I mean I know you guys are up against a lot. It's not just we talk about this a lot at in in our position. It's not just about having a kid in your class and teaching them how to read. There's a lot more that goes into it especially in the area that you're at which kudos to you as well for you know seeing that there's a huge need in the area. Yes

106ma'am. So I think you know thank you for that. how are you planning to recruit more families if the grades and the student like you have just like a few amount of teachers? I'm just trying to understand like as a as a prospective family, how are we coming? And relationships matter, ma'am, in all things. and you you have to have the right understanding of where we are. the neighborhood, we're around the corner from a neighborhood park and recreation center. the Northwest Center places where some of the kids from your schools go and you know there there there are shootings that take place there. Our kids are resilient. You know they we get parents that bring their kids to to school with their sibling in pampers, no shoes and no shirts. but the relationships that we

107establish with those parents are what help us and quite frankly it wouldn't we would be closed right now if we didn't have them. establishing partnerships with community nonprofits like Determine Now who passed out a lot of food and perishable and non-perishable items to our family members who were experiencing troubles during hard times. tomorrow. Oh, I'm sorry. That's tomorrow, Wednesday, Thursday. I welcome you to come out. That same organization will be giving toys to all of our kids. And so, it's the relationships, the dang, they care about our kids for real, for real. mentality. the I can make sure I talk to them to make sure that the things that things that I need in my life to help sit down and fill out that I don't understand as a parent, I can go in there

108and they'll help us fill out those documents to get access to resources. the hey my child isn't in the afterare program, but they do go to the school and I'm running late. Is it possible to be able to keep them there? Yeah, just take a picture of your driver's license and send it to me so I can make sure the legality is covered and we'll keep the kid. And then they're calling and saying, "Hey, I got an extra hour. I'm not going to be able to pick them up. Is that possible?" So those relationships really That's awesome. I am definitely very concerned because you know as a parent myself Yes, ma'am. when I'm sending a kid, you know, for myself, when I'm sending my kid to school, I want to make sure it's the highest

109quality education. And that's really what the school choice expansion has is for is really to just make sure that there's, like you said before, some some parents are wanting kind of that smaller speedboat school that's able to turn on a dime and help with small, you know, their needs. but I you're really going to have to double down and and we're in a bad place right now. I would I would agree. We need to buckle in and you know, for the sake of the kids because you really do they grow up and I feel the same way in our schools. We've got to really focus on that education piece. But thank you. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Member Font. I'm K up next and I don't know, Superintendent, I see you out there as well, so

110I'd like to go ahead first. Thank you. And I'm going to clarify that I was referring to the year you received the eye. Okay. For that year, you only had 93% tested and that's been confirmed. And so I just want to make sure I wasn't referring to this past year. I was referring to the year where you received the eye. It was because of the 93% tested. Thank you, ma'am. I appreciate it. thank you, Superintendent. I was looking at your 2425 on the number of students retained. So that means students that had to repeat the year. Is that right? What are you referring to? what do is that is that the definition of retained students is? Yes ma'am. Students had to repeat a year. Yes ma'am. Okay. So in 24 to 25 22 out of

111your 50 or so students were retained a year. Is that right? No ma'am. No. page seven of the and then I have nine I have 19 from 25 to 26 I'm not looking at page six and page seven of the I'm just making sure is that right I noticed a I also noticed a mistake this is from the improvement plan yeah I also noticed a stake in mistake in the numbers We had 29% on one area, but it was actually 20%. So, I'm not I'm not sure that's incorrect, ma'am. My apologies for that. So, the numbers in the improvement plan are wrong. No, what I'm saying is that particular item might not be correct. Yes, ma'am. So, you don't have 22 students that were retained out of the 56. Correct. Yes, ma'am. Do you know

112what the actual number is? because I mean that's 40% of your students have to rep. So you're saying that's not the number but I don't have the I don't have the ability to fact check that number at the moment but I can get that. Let me my apologies. this format wasn't the format that we intended to to be a part of. it was our understanding that we would present the school improvement plan. We didn't know that there would be a question and answer session back and forth from the board. So, I was not prepared to engage in engage in one, but to the best of my ability, I'm trying to do that, but I do not have the finite information. Got it. Yeah. And I just a question. I think I'm This is the information

113we got. So, we're going off of the information we have. That's the only thing I have to go off of. And so, it is helpful to know if that number is right or wrong because I was I was pretty shocked by 22 out of 56 twins being retained. And so I don't know where at the point like I don't know where do I find truth then like I don't know what the number is. Do we have that online? Is it reported somewhere? Dr. Scott, do we know if that number is correct or not? Yeah, we can we can come back. I would love an answer to that though because I think that would be really helpful. and then I mean because I think a lot of the numbers were going off, right? So the other

114one was 29 of your 56 students were level one. Does that sound about right? Yep. That's Yep. How how transparent are you being with your families about these scores? Like are you checking in with them on obviously like it's we know as a school district how hard it is to bring up a grade up and a grade, right? So much happens in a student's life outside of just a test. We know that. are you working with these families to help on some of this scores? Like how like what's going on there? One one thing I don't come in here trying to present is that we have it together. I think the communities that we serve don't respect you when you when you when you come in fronting u when you come in flying, when you

115come in playing games. and I use it as a battlecry. Come on, mama. I need a kid here early. we have school. We can't be playing. We ain't got time to be work. You know, we ain't got time for you to be taking your time. Why my baby's late? So, I'm constantly using it as a battlecry for us to be able to do better. I'm not saying we're proud of that scarlet letter, but we are not in any way hiding it from anybody. how can we? you know, our parents aren't, you know, they on the phone all the time. They know what we are as far as the school grade is, but they know who we are and what we are granularly as well. So, no, we're not we're not deceiving parents and we're not

116hiding that grade from them. we have no we have no credibility if if we do so. Got it. Yeah. I similar to member Ferrant your projections here of where you are today to where you want to be even in your aggressive or average growth. well those are historical numbers. Have you heard? No. No ma'am. If if you look back historically schools that have gotten Fs that next year they've gotten B's or A's even because the grow the learning gain component when you're in our communities right if if you're in Windmir if you're in College Park if you're in the affluent areas then you're getting kids that come to you reading at or above grade level typically. Yeah, we understand. We have a lot of those schools as well. To to your point, the it's with

117the learning gains. If we can get enough students to be able to grab all of our learning gains, then that's where we eat. That's where we if you look at the numbers when we got to be, that's where we meet because we're getting kids that are one and two level grade levels below. And we're moving them. We're giving them a year's worth of instruction for a year's worth of of of school. And we're moving them in those ways. But our numbers have dropped so that percentage- wise it hurts us bad and it looks bad, right? And we admit to that. So how how do we do that? We try our best to recruit even in this you know environment where it's it's a difficult proposition. And so I just schools do it all the time.

118Go from an F to a B F to an A. They do. But when we talk about an improvement plan, there's a lot of outcomebased recommendations that we hear, right? So when I look through one of our improvement plans for a lot of our schools, even though we don't have at this grade these types of schools, we have really outcome based recommendations. A lot of your recommendations that you brought up here, I mean, it's a one-s sentence improvement of what you're doing. You're improving communication, you're aligning curriculum. I don't see that kind of improvement plan like that level of deep detail when you actually are trying to improve. we're we're talking like really specific intervention MTSS and so I think one of the things I was as I was trying to read this was really

119trying to get to the question of what are you doing at the very detailed level to improve the student outcomes and there are things that are proven to help these students get from one point to another. We've had schools that were this low and we have schools in these areas in my district, a lot of title one schools as well that have a similar population that we're talking about. They don't have these grades, but when I look at the improvement plan, the level of detail and how robust that is a little bit different than what we have here today. And so I think I was I hear a lot of things where you're saying on we're going to improve communication, we're aligning curriculum, which is sounds nice. but I I worry that with the goals

120you're giving yourself, you're going to need a lot more detail to improve that. and so that's my biggest concern. I think this is we don't see ourselves, we know every choice serves a purpose for families and I think this district's always really good partners with with our charter schools and folks that provide choice. We know we are not the right answer for all families. but we're also in a tough place. I mean, you know, later on today, if you stick around, there are schools out there that are title one schools that have a grade B by the similar standards that I'm looking at potentially consolidating and closing. and that's a hard place to be when I'm looking at something like this and we are telling families we're going to try our best. and so to

121the degree of why the format today, we're we're we have questions because this is our job. Our job is to have families have transparency into the performance and outcomes of all of the schools. And so we just we just have questions. We don't know your school as well as you do. So the questions that we have are gen they're not aha tricky questions. I really do want to know if 22 of your 56 students were retained. I don't know if we have the answer to that or the accuracy of that number yet. I'm so sorry. Dr. Scott, do we get clarity on that? I'm sorry. I was working with the team to see where the differences were and it appears that our OCPS team does drop information into each school's transfer file, but this information

122didn't come directly from the file. It's a possibility that the school configured their own information. And one thing I do want to point out is that one thing with our department with the school choice department, we can guide them through the creation of the SIP, but because we're not we do not because they're independent, we cannot provide information as to what they need to do to succeed, if that makes sense. Yeah. No, I was just wondering just the number like is the 22 retained? Is that our number? Is that their number? Is that a real number? So according to the are you on page six by any chance or early warning system page seven correct? current year 2526 the indicators would indicate that retained students would be 14 as opposed to the 19 that are

123listed. Okay. 14 instead of 19. And then for your 24 to 25 the students retained two or more times would be 20 retained two or more times. Yes. where so that means if they were somewhere else not necessarily at this particular school but this is what the indicator would show based on the information. Got it. Okay. So 20ish students were retained two or more times out of 50ish. I'm not sure if that's just like she spoke with the two or more times that could have been in the history of the students academic career whether they were at our school or not. And so the first number that you asked about if you allow me to do my own research to yeah it would be helpful. I mean if if we can that would be great.

124I think it's hard where we just get some of these numbers and I think I'm just trying to contextualize and so thank you very much. next up we have member Vanos. Hey madam vice chair. I just had one follow-up question. and it kind of goes to that transparency piece that we were talking about. in the school improvement plan, it talks about the stakeholder involvement and it says it asks to describe the process for involving stakeholders in the development of the school improvement plan that we're reading right now. And in your answer, it says that the school I guess hosted parent meetings where they invited teachers and community members to review the schoolwide data with specific emphasis on subgroups who are not making adequate progress. And I was just wondering when did those meetings occur? We

125typically I can't give you the exact dates but as a title one school we have to have deliverables to the title one office that encourage us to have meetings and so I can get that information back to you. But and we those meetings we take advantage of those meetings to be able to elicit parent input so that we can you know make change. So, I don't have the actual dates before me, but I can get that back to you if you need it. That's great. And I'm I'm just wondering when you have the meetings and you're sharing the data, you know, the scores, for example, you know, ELA achievement for your school is, you know, significantly underperforms both the district and the state. What are parent how are parents responding to that? I mean it's

126diff different depending on depending on the type of child that you have. we have board meetings where parents come as well and we have these conversations and so the parents are on the ground. They understand what we're dealing with. it's not something that we look and and l in. they're different conversations depending on the difficult achievement type of the student that the parent has. Okay. So, I guess I just I'll just end by saying I just want to confirm that you are having multiple meetings per year for community members and parents where you're sharing all of the this data information and performance with them. Definitely. Our school grade is on our website. Well, I know it's on Well, there's a lot on your website, but I just want to make sure that you're having inerson

127meetings with community and they're seeing all of this information. Great. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Member Vanos. Member Gallo. Thank you, Madam Chair. who serves on your SAC committee? Like, who who's on your sack committee that helped create the SIP plan? We don't we don't have a SAC committee as a charter school. We have a governing board. so we don't have a SAC committee. Oh, you're not required. A charter schools aren't required to have sacks. Okay. well, that answers that question because I was just curious. yes ma'am. So in looking at your proficiency, I guess I was really I was really hoping to to see a more indepth information in this plan. That would make us a little bit more comfortable that this year you're going to actually be able to grow the bottom

12825% because right now you've declined in ELA and math this year. you your proficiency is 20% and it reflects a 9% decline from the previous year of 29%. Your learning gains in ELA is 31%. This reflects a 24% decline from the previous year's learning gain in percentage of 55%. And it's it's the same direction in math. So, I'm guess I'm I'm really looking for some confidence that we're midway through the year. Like we're the Friday's it. We're halfway through the year. What are your numbers showing currently in your PM2 that would lead you to believe that you'll be able to correct this by the end of the year? What what what is your PM2 showing you? We're we're seeing gains. We're seeing positive gains. we just took that last week, so we didn't have the

129ability to be able to disagregate that data for you by this meeting. But we're we're again, nobody's more motivated to see our school grade go up than us, right? as Miss Scott, as Dr. Scott says, if we get an F this year, we're closed. We go away. So yeah, there is an available building for those schools of hope if if we don't do good this year. So, we're internally motivated to make sure that we're doing what we do well. And additionally, I I would have you know that the state approved our school improvement plan. This school improvement plan has to go through a process that takes it up to the state level for corrections and they've seen it. They've made corrections to it and they've approved it. And so, they approved it with flawed information

130though because you just said that some information in the SIP plan isn't correct. So, did they approve a SIP plan that did not have or portray accurate information? What I what I said was I didn't say that what I said was that there's a mistake possibly in one item for that school for that item. that's there's a mistake in one item of the school improvement plan. That document is approximately 43 pages long. It's very labor intensive and we are human beings. and so forgive us if there's a mistake in the school improvement plan. No, I understand. We all make mistakes. so the building, who owns the building? Did taxpayers pay for that building? The school? No, ma'am. So you don't receive PICO funds or any funds for capital dollars at your school? Oh, we receive

131we've received capital outlay funds, but when you get a SC a grade of F, you no longer qualify for capital outlay funds. But did you get them before you received an F? Certainly. Capital outlay funds. Yes, ma'am. Okay. and according to the capital outlay plan, those dollars can be used for a number of things, not just the building. They can be used for transportation. They can be used for online resources. They can be used for a number of things. who is your sponsor? Who's who's the overarching company that owns the land? We don't have anyone. It's independently run by our governing board. Who bought the building? Who who paid to build the building? The building The building is a former We're We're grassroots, ma'am. This isn't a big This isn't a big That building might

132look good on the on the on the slide, but it does look good. That building used to be the Center for Drug-Free Living. And you just retrofitted it. Yes, it was. It was retrofitted. Okay. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Well, thank you. I'm I'm I'm really hoping for the sake of the 50 students that attend your school that you're able to turn this around because at the end of the day, they're all our students. and every student deserves a high quality education and I need more than what I saw today to ensure that you guys are providing a high quality education for those students. but I do have tremendous faith in our school choice office and Dr. Scott in particular. so I know that she will she will be on top of it to help you to

133ensure that those students get the education they deserve. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Member Gallo. Okay. Dr. Basquez. and thank you so much for for coming before the board. We do recognize that you are facing many challenges and you've put together a plan to help address those. But I do think if the chair will allow me to call on our general counsel, I'm not quite certain that our public is aware how much control our board correct our board has. I mean, there were some things that were mentioned as part of the plan and the state did approve that. So, if you don't mind have our general counsel really lay out the role the board has. Thank you, Dr. Vasquez. I was I was about to ask for that for the benefit of the public.

134All right. What is what's that about? Apparently, I grabbed the mic. Oh, my bad. Sorry. No. Okay. No. Yeah. yeah, for the benefit of the board and the public. so by all means, go ahead. thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. So there is a very prescribed statutory provisions that deal with this situation that we are in. under the statute, director or representative of the governing board of the charter school that has earned a grade D or F, they shall appear before the sponsor to prevent in to present information concerning each contract component having noted deficiencies. the director and the representative of the governing board shall submit to the sponsor for approval a school improvement plan to raise student performance. Upon approval by the sponsor, sponsors us, the charter school shall begin implementation of

135the school improvement plan. the department the department is the department of education that I'm referring to shall offer technical assistance and training to the charter school and its governing board and establish guidelines for developing submitting and approving such plans. So the state has an a responsibility statutoily to review their school improvement plan to offer technical assistance to them in how they complete the plan and ultimately say yes or no that this plan passes muster. So the state has and in my conversation with Dr. Scott, state has in fact done that with respect to this plan. So the sponsor, you all technically still are going to have to approve the plan. It's not going to be here. We don't take action here, but you all are going to have to approve the plan. And then remember

136there are specific statutory provisions dealing with the grades that charter schools get, right? So if a charter school earns first of all if they earn two consecutive FS as everybody said here that is automatic closure under the statute unless there is some exception and the exception is not going to be applicable here. And then it talks about if the charter school earns three consecutive grades below a C. So let's take for example if you had a D an F and a D that provision would kick in. The charter school governing board shall choose one of the following corrective actions. Contract with an educ for education services to be provided directly to students, instructional personnel, and school administrators as prescribed in state board rule. Contract with an outside entity that has demonstrated a record of effectiveness

137to operate the school, reorganize the school under a new director or principal who's authorized to hire new staff or voluntarily close. So even if this school gets three consecutive grades less than AC, it is their choice on whether they contract with a like an education services provider, think academic at Charter Schools USA, they could get a new principal or new director, but we still would not have the authority to close them for those three consecutive grades being below a C. That is statutoily prescribed. in the old days before the pro passing of this provision we could do that we cannot do that anymore so with so with and okay I'm almost done and then obviously I'll answer questions un you know it's just the way that the statute has laid out and also remember if

138we were to say if you all were to direct the board hey or to direct staff hey we want to close the school we think that we have basis within the contract to do it's a 90-day notice notice period. So we would this school would still be in operation for another 90 days. most certainly given these statutory provisions that say they get to stay open unless they have two consecutive FS. If we were to close it, the state would immediately come in and overturn us on that through an administrative hearing in my view. So we have the responsibility to approve the plan but basically since the state has approved it and given the statutory provisions that prevent us from closing in the situation it really does tie our hands with respect to what we want

139to do so or what could be done excuse me not that what we want to do I apologize for that but what can be done in this in this situation. if I can ask, you made a statement that we are going to have to approve the plan. that could be interpreted two ways. We're going to have to make a decision on the plan or regardless of what we think, we're going we have to approve the plan. So with the way I'm reading it, it there there wasn't the technical assistance back in the in in when this provision was initially adopted that the state would provide to essentially say yes, you know, this is how you write a statutoily compliant school improvement plan. Back in the olden days, the board, this would just come to the

140board. The board would say yes or no. And if the board said no, that could potentially lead to an action where you close them. Now, it's a little bit different statutoily, but they left the language in that says the sponsor has to approve the plan. Okay. So, I'm still back to generally somebody would take that language to mean that if we don't then something happens. There's other times when you come to us and you want to put language in the policy and it's basically thou shalt put that language in the policy. Okay? You don't have to approve it, you will do it. So that's what I'm trying to figure out is the language now mean that regardless of what the board believes about the plan whether it's compliant or not compliant that we shall take

141action to approve it or is or is that I completely understand the question you're asking which is could you all as a measure of saying we don't think the plan is sufficient, deny the plan. Yes, you could. Okay. Would that lead to the consequence of the plan's not approved, we therefore now move to close this school? The answer is no. No, I got that part. I was just trying to understand if the board has no discretion other than to approve it, that we need to know that. But I hear what you're saying. Here's then one other question that I have and I'm not sure if this is for Dr. Kia Scott or or who but and I apologize for stepping out. I did try to follow as as much as I could in the next

142room but the I the grade I for 23 24 is I is incomplete. Is that correct? Yes ma'am. Can can you or the can you explain why there's an I? We have a D, an I, and an F. So, so based upon information shared with our RMS team, the school tested 93% of the students and you need to have 95% in order to qualify. So, because they did not have the correct percentage, they have an incomplete grade. I'm okay. I'm sorry. Oh, okay. So, not re This is not about you. I mean this and by the way the questions that we ask we ask you everybody we really you know we're not singling you out. We do ask questions. I understand the difficult situation you're in because you didn't realize there would be questions or

143you would have and if you would have been more prepared or if you knew what the questions were, you'd be able to answer them better. So I recognize that. Yes, ma'am. the rubric given was that there would be a 10 to 15 minute presentation and to for us to present our plan. I'm just wondering how we got to the point of closure. a school improvement plan is to improve a school. and we're here at the DS talking about the possibility or the opportunity to to close us. I would I would rather you we're not Okay. We're we're not No, we're not feel that. Huh? No. we are trying the decision we are making is whether we are going to say that we believe the school improvement plan is sufficient and complies with the requirements of

144the school improvement plan. Yes, ma'am. If if we don't feel that right right now, that doesn't close your school. But what I have heard is if you get two Fs in a row Yes, ma'am. That's not that's not us either. That's you and the state. But and this is outside of you. I am trying to understand if I were operating a school and I was on the verge of getting an F or maybe I got an F last year. Again, I'm not talking about you. I got an F last year and this year I'm looking and I'm thinking I'm going to get another F and then I'm going to have to close. So I don't test all the kids and so I get an I and I don't close. That could happen. the way it

145could happen. That could happen. I'm just This is again this is just like the state doesn't have right. So if I' I'd like to have either Ben or Michelle come to the podium and just explain the I which was the 93% tested and the components that contributed to that. Okay. Okay. And again, I'm I'm not talking about in your situation. Trying to figure out does this does the state not have that well figured out. So the percent tested calculation is based off of the number of students who are enrolled in the school during the survey three count and the first day of the assessment window and we look at all of the subjects that those students are required to take. Oh, still going up. I'm just trying to get it closer so we can hear

146you better. Great. The percent tested calculation is based off of the students who are enrolled in the school during the survey three window and the beginning of the assessment window. So that kind of defines the student population that you're looking at. And then those students will have a set of required assessments based off of their grade level. So for example, third graders are required to take the state's ELA assessment, mathematics assessment. Fifth graders would take ELA, mathematics, and science. So when you add up all of the required tests and all of the tests taken, that's how you get to the percent tested calculation. and you have to have 95% or more to receive a school grade. If it's below if the percent tested is below 95% typically schools will submit an appeal to have their

147grade released so that they can receive a school grade. but that release is at the discretion of the commissioner of education. There's an there's an appeals process that goes back and forth after the initial grades are released early summer. Okay. I think you know I think that my questions we should take up at a separate time because again it's not germanine to your operation. I'm just trying to understand kind of the rules separate. so I have one other question. I again I listened to the majority of it. I did have to step out for a minute but the board can either take an action today. Is it also possible because they were not prepared and understanding the level of questions for them to come back to the board? So, first of all, I just want

148to make sure we're in a work session today. So, the board's not taking action. I'm sorry. Thank you, Miss Pomerini. Perfect. I I do think you can have our staff communicate with the school and say, "Hey, there were some things identified, for example, in in you know, the numbers weren't correct within the plan regarding how many students were retained." Think you can have them bring back, you know, correct numbers to you all to make sure that everything is properly reported. I do think you can say, you know, have staff work with them to beef up the areas that you've talked about here with regard to how you're going to improve the level of performance, what specific t steps you're going to take and bring that back to this board if they're not if you all

149aren't satisfied with the explanations you have gotten today. Okay. Yeah. because you know one of the things that I heard in this was member Salamanca is the generality of some of the items and anyway I just wanted to I'm going to go to other board members. I just wanted to get some clarity in terms of what options are available moving forward. So let me go back to member Gallow. Thank you, Madam Chair. so John, I do have just a couple of follow-up questions. when this comes before us to be approved since there are inaccuracies in the SIP, can we ask them to go through the SIP one more time to ensure that there's no inaccuracies before we approve it? because I'm not going to approve a SIP that I we know for a fact does

150not contain accurate information. You may absolutely ask them to correct inaccuracies. Okay. And then contract renewal. What is what authority do we have under contract renewal if they receive an I? I know if they receive an F that they're shut down, but if they receive an I, first question is there a penalty for receiving an I from the state? And the second question is if they receive an I, what authority do we have on the contract renewal? Can we just renew it for a year? Can we not renew it? What what would be under our authority? All right. So, this is going to take a little history lesson just so we can see exactly where we are. This school was initially approved in 2016. They received a 5-year contract to 2021. Now, when we were

151doing the renewal period in 2021, that was right in the middle of COVID. So, we would couldn't have the site visits that we needed to do and the review that we needed to do. So, we did a one-year extension to 20 through 2022. We then gave them a 5-year contract in 2022. So, we are going through 2027. Okay. So, they are a year and a half. Yes, it's a year and a half before their contract is up. what authority do we have on u contract renewal? It's the same as contract termination under the statute. They are the same exact standards. one failure to participate in the state's educational accountability system created in 10831 as required meaning they don't test enough and they purposely don't like if there was a finding and I'm not saying that

152the school did this but I'm using this as an example if we found that they purposely told kids to stay home to not test that would be a failure to participate in the state system of accountability that would be a basis for non-renewal of a contract when it came up or termination or it says failure to meet the requirements for student performance stated in the charter. So let's say we took a look at them at the end of five years and they've had two D's, two Fs, and an I or two D's, an F and two I's, but you look at the underlying student data and you look at it and it doesn't look like they were going to get an A, B, or a C even if they had tested enough. that would be

153not meeting the requirements of student performance stated in the charter. So that's the kinds of things we would look at when we're going to do a renewal of their contract or not. Thank you, John. And then do schools do we get a penalty if we get an I? Like do schools get like a penalty from the Department of Education? That I'm going to have to turn over to to Ben and his team because I don't deal with that on an everyday basis and they would know better than I would. Yeah. So, as far as a penalty for the I, it depends on there are a couple of things that are at play. So, usually, as I mentioned, you go through an appeals process and receive a school grade through that appeals process. Part of that

154is identifying the reason why you didn't receive 95% tested and then identifying areas where the school would make changes to ensure that you reach that percent tested in the future. that kind of opens up future conversations with the state potentially if there's additional concerns in multiple years. but typically we only have it's it's a rare occasion that we see those incompletes coming through. It's it's a very small number of schools that impacts. Okay. Thank you. and thank you again for being here and I certainly do hope that the gains that you saw in PM2 show huge improvements by the end of the year. Thank you. Thank you, Member Gallo. Member Vanos. Thank you, Madam Chair. Principal Lumpin, just a question. Have you ever been involved with another charter school in this same area? Definitely. Definitely.

155And what is that charter school still operating or what was the outcome of that charter school? I think I think we're going into matters that are outside the scope of the school improvement plan. I would like to keep these matters relegated to the statutory requirement for us being here if that's possible. Well, just cuz you're the principal. I'm just wondering is the school still operating or not operating anymore? Which school? No, it's not. So, the previous one that you were on, and I was not the principal of that school, right? But were you involved with it at all? On a consulting basis. Got it. Thank you so much. Non-paid consulting basis. Thank you, member Boss. vice chair. I'm still getting used to that. Apologies. so on the process that was just explained up here around

156when you get an eye, there is an opportunity to do an appeals process because there might be some benefit to getting a grade. Did you guys do an appeals process or plan to do an appeals process? I put the screen back up to the history of our academic performance so you could see the dates of our grades. Right. At the time we received an I, we had a D, the grade before that. And before then we had a B. There would be no advantage there would be no advantage for us to be able to seek to not test students. there would be nothing that in terms of a negative impact that could have harmed us in way of what's being hypothetical situation, right? And so, we take great pride in if we if we wear

157it, we earn it, right? If we if we make if we do it, we claim it. So, we're not up here trying to create any slick strategy that would get us to be able to stay around. If if we get a F and under the rules of of charter school law, we go away, then we go away. And it's as simple as that. So, yeah, and I'm not insinuating that you did anything to get that eye. I was just curious if you ever appealed that eye to actually clarify a real grade. Like you said, there's nothing to lose to get a grade and you're happy to stand by whatever grade you get, but there was you did not appeal the I. Is there a reason you didn't appeal the I? We just chose not to.

158Okay. Yes, ma. Thank you. All right. I don't see any other comments from board members. So, at this point, we will move on to our next item. I would encourage you with the questions that came up in the data to take a you know a deep dive into that and if you'd work with the team here I think that would be helpful so there's some concurrence on what the actual data is before we see you again please go ahead sir of of course in all measures possible we take the district suggestions as directives right but I want to add before I leave the podium we went from from a school improvement plan being approved with the idea of what we can do to better a school to talking about the avenues to close a school

159to talking about my involvement in other schools. it is disheartening because there are not people running over in that area looking to be able to work with that people population from an outside perspective. Right. And I'll just say that I look forward to the opportunity of being back before you here next year when our school grade comes out so that we can have the same type of discussion regarding our outcomes then. All right. I thank you guys very much for your time. Thank you. And let me also clarify though I think I think that's important but I also want to make sure I think vice chair spoke to it. We've been good partners with our charters. There's a lot of school districts that you can't say that about and I agree with that. Your office

160is wonderful. Thank you. Absolutely wonderful. And we have one goal and I think you have that same goal and that's to improve our students performance to improve their lives. Right. And so we are not sitting here today because we want to figure out how to criticize or or undermine your work. That's that's not what we want. We want to make sure that our students, whether they're in our classrooms or your classrooms, have the best opportunities. And that's that's the motivation of each of these questions. Madam Madam Chair, I appreciate that, but I doubt when the schools in Orange County receive three grades lower than a C that they're talking about creative ways of closing those schools. I doubt that when schools in Orange County get a F, there are hypotheticals that come up to being

161able to close the schools that sit in the neighborhoods that your constituents love, value, and have went to. And so, forgive me if I don't feel the same level of confidence in your statements that I'm receiving on this side of the of the panel. again, I appreciate everything you guys do for kids in this county, but it just makes my mouth go dry that we're at this point in this discussion at this moment. We're willing to submit to K&M to better our school improvement plan. We're willing to invite you out. We're not hiding. We're not we're not in any way in a situation of confrontation with you guys. we want to be here and we want you to tell us if we're not doing it right and we want to get it right, but it's

162just disheartening that it's come to this and this form. yeah, I'm going to leave it at that. Okay. All right. Thank you. member Felder, you recognize? Yes. Thank you. I just wanted to say I didn't have an opportunity because I wanted to just listen. First of all, I'd like to thank you for coming and presenting the information regarding your charter school, but I just wanted to kind of say something in commentary to what you said about the area and the trouble and the u the hardship. this is my sixth year on this board and the second year of my second term on this board. And as a teacher of 40 plus years in Orange County Public Schools, I recall very vividly the Molly Ray Mercy Drive area. I taught drama there to children who were

163member of the PAL Center some 20ome years ago. And those students I taught were from the Mercy Drive area and they were exceptional students from that area in the arts. Even though the environment may have not been conducive for artistically inclined students, but they danced, ballet, and did drama for me for a whole summer. And I also just want to say that area is a diamond in the rough. And I know that with for lack of a better word or potential I know there's talent in that area because I know of a fact we have a cabinet member who was a principal that turned Molly Ray round from an F to A in a year. So I know the potential is there. I know the teachers that are coming to the area to work there,

164they work very hard and I know that things change, trends come and it may not be the same. So, I do want to encourage you to continue your fight to work. But I also want to just remind you that this is really not a hard hill to climb. It's strategic, but it's not hard. It's not It's not hard. And also I want to let you know that as a board we know that we have traditional schools but we also children who are in charter schools also belong to us and we want the best and since that area is my area district five where the talent still does reside. I want to encourage you that this is not a wash your hand, but I also want to just sort of remind you and I think you've

165been reminded that this is a board of educated and loving women who want the best and we will do our best to work with you. cuz very few people are going to public education whether it's traditional charter pro they just not doing it. You got to have a love to come into public education and we applaud you. But understand that in the applauding that we're very serious about the desire for success and we're going to encourage you and I believe you're going to do your best, but understand that we want the best and we will always work toward the best. And I just want to just put that disclaimer about the area because again we're celebrating a season to ask the question, is there anything good can come out of Nazareth? His name is Jesus.

166Is there anything good that can come out of the area where your charter school resides? Yes, it is. And yes, it can. Thank you, chair. Understood and appreciated, madam. Thank you. member Douglas and I just wanted also to to say a word about this. I have I have been I have was a teacher at Marley Ray. As a matter of fact, my principal is sitting out there right now. She turned the school from I think it was from a D to a B or an A school. So it the kids all our kids have talents. We just have to find which where the talent reside, right? Okay. So I just want to say we all care for each child. Doesn't matter where they come from and we all know that each child has something they

167are gifted. We have to find what the gift is about and where it is. In order to really work on it and make it emerge and become who they want to become later on in life. So I just want to say you know thank you for your presentation. Thank you for coming here and we're looking forward to seeing you in a year this see and just amaze us. That's all we want to see. Right. That part. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. And just a closing comment. I believe you were talking about declining enrollment at some point and I do understand we do understand what that can do to outcomes depending on who's leaving and who's staying. So the numbers don't always reflect the realities when you have changing population in your school and especially declining.

168So anyway, I just wanted to acknowledge that I recognize that challenge as well that you Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. All right. We look forward to seeing you again and I do look forward to the continued working relationship. We are all in this together. We really are, sir. Thank you, county. And happy holidays to you all. Thank you. All right. we ready to move on and maybe we take a break after this next. Okay. I believe we are on Yeah. 4.03. School improvement plan review in progress for UCPS Downtown Charter School. Dr. Basquez, you're recognized. so I'm going to turn it back over to our staff. I think that members of UCP are ready to present. So cold. It's freezing. And then I'm going to let you go. Here's a mouse if you need

169it. There you go. Okay. Again, good afternoon, Madam Chair, vice chair, members of the board, and superintendent Vasquez. This afternoon, representing representatives from UCP Downtown Charter will present their school's school improvement plan. Florida statute 10002.33 section 9 and1 requires charter schools that have earned a grade of D or an F to appear before the sponsor to review noted deficiencies to be addressed in the school improvement plan. School choice services department ensures all charter schools required to submit a school improvement plan respond to all pertinent components and adhere to required submission deadlines. As an additional measure of monitoring schools with schools improvement plans, they have two additional site visits to review progress and implementation of the SIP totaling total of four of site visits. The school choice department with support of the strategic improvement department worked

170closely with UCP to finalize revisions and the approval and submission of the school improvement plan to the state. In November 2025, all school SIPs were published by FDOE. All OCPS SIPs are scheduled to be considered for board approval at the January 13, 2026 school board meeting. Today, Principal Nves and Dr. Eileen Wilkins will present the specific information for UCP downtown. good afternoon school board members and I'm Dr. Eileen Wilkins. I'm the CEO and superintendent of UCP Charter Schools and we're going to do hopefully a short Sorry that so just give you a little bit of a background for those who are not as familiar with UCP. We are a network of charter schools. We have eight schools in central Florida, six in Orange County. UCP downtown charter school was one of our first charter schools

171back in 2001. So we're going to be celebrating 25 years next year. which at that point we were only an ESSE prek program and we have grown since then. Now we serve about 2100 students in Orange Ocio and Seinal and in Orange County we're our own LEA as of 2016. UCP Downtown Charter School, we serve about 250 students from infants through fifth grade. we also have an early childhood program as part of that which also includes VPK and PreKES. And UCP downtown is probably one of our highest support need students. in that in that in our network 72% of our students are ESSE students with 85% of those students 85 of those students sorry not 85 actually 85% sorry are with the highest support needs and that's basically using kind of the ESSE matrix of

172support needs 80 of our students have behavior improvement plans 92% are free and reduced lunch and 88% are minority we come to you a little differently than you're probably used to. so since 2020 2018 sorry as a high need school we were in a dropout prevention concept we have been receiving what's called a school improvement rating. School improvement ratings are based on learning gains of students. since those ratings began we were a have been what's called maintaining which basically means we're maintaining making effective learning gains. obviously during COVID we didn't receive a rating. as some of you may know we were OCPS beta program was colllocated with that school. the definition of a colllocation means that if you're in the same I guess address so we had as some of you may know there was

173two buildings there. We had rented half of one of the buildings to OCPS Beta. unfortunately last year OCBS beta did not have and I think you heard about the cell count concept. So there were no wasn't 10 students in that cell count to have complete learning gains. So they were ineligible to get a sir. They've also been receiving a school improvement rating bec Florida statute says that if a school is colllocated and one of them is not eligible for that sir both of them then go into becoming a school grade which is based on proficiency as well as learning gains. So even though UCP it was OCPS's beta's sale count both of us then became subject to that and became got a school grade and as I think you all know OCPS beta students or

174high need students also so between us we weren't able to kind of pull it off to have the proficiency and the learning gains. so thus we both received an F. we did appeal together with OCPS and because the schools were colllocated they even though as you know you know we you all were separate totally separate entities they did not accept our appeal we did look at our data ourselves was confirmed data if we had gotten a sir like we should have had we would have had a maintaining score and to be honest our data says that we were only three points away from being commendable so yes we have an F. and you know, but there's nothing and you guys are nodding, so I think you understand it was not really our F, not and

175it wasn't Beta's F, but it is a state statue. And so we are here to present to you, what, our school improvement plan. you know, we all schools, UCP charter schools, we do school improvement plans for all of our schools. And so we are presenting this, which also was presented to our parents as well as our staff. So, I'm going to let Principal Naivas take it from here. If I could I'm sorry. if I can interrupt you. She is. I didn't know if you had a question in terms of understand. Okay. Go ahead. I apologize. I one of our board members button and I thought they were maybe wanting clarification on what you Yeah. And if anybody has any questions on the collocation or the piece, I can do my best and I think somebody

176behind me probably can do better than I can. All right. Well, if we do, we'll come back to it. So, go ahead. I apologize for interrupting your presentation. No problem. Okay. Good afternoon, Madame Chair and board members and superintendent Vasquez. My name is Teresa Danz. I'm the principal at UCP downtown. And she's nervous. Yes. so our SIP is very detailed, but today I just pulled our areas of focus and went through what our goals are for each area. I do have some data backing up why I chose those goals. I tried to make reasonable attainable goals as well for and I'm very proud of the growth that our students made this past year. So I might like touch on that as well. Our first area of focus in our SIP was for subgroup ELLs. we

177had student that's our biggest subgroup that was not performing. when I came in as the principal last year, I looked at the data for ELLs and I saw that this would be a really good area for growth because I also looked at cross-sections of how these kids lined up. So a lot of our ELLLs also our students with disability are also in the subgroup for Hispanic are also in the subgroup for economically disadvantaged. So I thought this was a great area to start to make a difference. and we made learning gains huge learning gains with our ELLL students. So I was really proud of that. I want to continue that. So our goal is to make 63% of our ELELLL students in grades three to five show learning gains in ELA as they continue to

178work for towards proficiency. We have an ELELLL schedule for tutoring where they get pulled and then we also have a pushin schedule where they also get tutoring and we use performance matters. We're also I didn't put it on here. We're also using Spire. our tutors have been OG trained and trained on Spire and we also use SIPs. So, and they've been trained and I've attended the trainings as well so that we can all be not just on having it implemented but then monitored as well. We're using performance matters and easy CBM to monitor them monthly and we have MTSS meetings where we talk about how they're doing. Do we need to switch some kids out or add students to the group or perhaps change their schedule to meet their needs? Our second area of focus

179is instructional practice and ELA. 55% of our students made learning gains. So I was very very proud of that. Our goal is to have 59% of our students show learning gains in ELA. Also working towards proficiency and our interventions. We have certified teacher tutors that are doing push in and pull out intervention for our students. we looked at the data for PM1, well PM3 from last year and then PM1 this year to revisit the groups. We will be doing the same thing for PM2 to see if we have to add any students or move students around in those groups. We use guided reading and leveled literacy intervention using CIS, OG, Rigby readers, freckle, spire. We have phonics based instruction within the classroom. We have the structured literacy piece through HMH. and the push and intervention

180tutors as I said are certified teachers and we progress monitor. We are using performance matters now for this is new for us this year to have them test on the performance matters platform in order to be able to monitor their data and make database decisions schoolwide. we also look at STAR data. So our students not just take the FAST but they also do STAR all the way through fifth grade. And then we're using EasyCBM for that short cycle data on standards to make sure that they're getting what they need from those interventions. And again we talk about it at MTSS meetings. Our third area of focus was in professional learning. Last year I started part one of the training for of Hadtie's high yield strategies to improve learn to improve proficiency. I am nervous to

181improve proficiency through learning gains. in our first in our part one of Hadtie's high yield strategies trainings we focused on four clear focus offer through a classroom setup checklist offering over instruction through direct instruction explicit and gradual release. student engagement through the use of graphic organizers and then providing fe giving feedback through data chats. That was part one. We did that all year. We monitored for that. when we go in and do observations, they also get meaningful and non-evaluative feedback on the use of those strategies aside from their regular evaluation. and then so part two this year will focus on multiple exposures through student choice activities, getting students to work together through Kagan strategies and cooperative learning groups, building student self-efficacy, through building on student strengths, and having students apply their knowledge through project-based learning.

182We will monitor that through weekly walkthroughs and we document it using our observation platform which is bullseye. Our fourth area of focus is instructional practices in mathematics 40% of our students made learning gains. Also very very proud of that. I just sidebar here when I presented this data to the teacher to the teachers at the beginning of the year they were even surprised that they of the progress that they made but more importantly when I presented it to the parents they actually like clapped cuz they were so happy about this growth. Our goal is to have 43% of students show learning gains in math as they work towards proficiency. We'd like to see this 3 percentage point increase across the board for all of our goals. We also have teacher tutors that are doing small

183group pull out and pushin interventions. And we are we have small group instruction for problem solving in order to help the students understand not just the foundational skills but the actual application. we also use HMH to we have streamlined for our curriculum. So they're all HMH products and we're using performance matters star freckle EXL and again monthly monitoring meetings to review effectiveness of intervention. Okay. Our last area of focus is a positive student learning environment specifically for student attendance. All of our stu well not all the majority of our students receive have outside care providers. Some of them go out for therapy. Although we do have medical therapy and charter therapy available at school. Many parents do take their children out for ABA therapy and other types of therapy. So there is a large amount

184of students that leave either early or don't come on certain days. So that's that big number of why we have so many ab absences. my goal for this year is that 50% of the students will have less than the 90% attendance. I know that sounds like astronomical, but given our population, there's a reason why they go out. And I'd like to point out that we have several students that even though they leave, they made learning gains. and I'm very proud that they are making those learning gains even though they're having to leave to do interventions. One of the things that we're doing in order to increase attendance is to have more student school events both during the day and after school to encourage the parents to come out and be at our school. And we're

185implementing a house system where they can earn points for attending different things. So we're really excited about that. And I think that's it. If you have any questions, I'll take them now. All right, Member Fant, you're recognized. Thank you. And thank you both for being here. Thank you. This is really what I was looking for and as far as depth of what are you doing? What are your goals? definitely super helpful to understand the why behind the Fgrading and because that was one of my questions, but I'm glad that was answered. what is it called? maintaining cuz I was curious what the maintaining meant but if anything I think what I'm seeing out of this is that you have taken this and said okay let's laser focus we can't maintain in a sense I know

186you weren't maintaining if you will always trying to improve but I feel like this has really helped you to see okay what could we do even more what could how could we push even more because even though your students do tend to be more the ESSE population those every child and this isn't just your typical child like ESSE student oh I've visited it's amazing the work that you're doing and these students aren't just your average kid with maybe just a dyslexia or maybe a typical learning difference these kids have a lot of needs that are medical needs and whatnot So, I appreciate the information you gave. Couple questions that I have. how many students do you have that are ESSE versus like general ed students? And do you take gen ed? We do take general

187ed students. right now, it's 75% of our school is students with disabilities. That's right. And then, I know it says 80 for the BIPS, but we're about it. We're almost at 90 with meetings that are coming up. So, students that have behavioral concerns that have behavior improvement plans. Yes. Okay. Okay. And then what was last year's enrollment or is there I was just looking at let's see what page this last year I believe I was at 232 at one point. Okay. So just member F just to clarify that we serve children in our early childhood program. So that number also includes our early childhood not just our what we call charter FT number. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. But both of those increased from last year. Okay, wonderful. So you still have the child care

188program? Yeah. So we start at babies and go up through u prek and then we obviously have kindergarten. So we have some students that are VPK some school readiness and then of course we also have the prek students. Okay, that was one thing I really loved that part of the having the two schools the colllocating. Yeah, it's a wonderful thing for our staff that have babies and Yes, absolutely. okay, that's interesting. So my question then would be okay so page eight and nine I know it's showing that one is the prior year current year and prior year what it seems like there's a big difference in enrollment like so one okay so we have the enrollment for this for the 2526 is 143 but then the 2425 doesn't show an enrollment and absent 10 10%

189more days which I completely understand the why behind it, but it's saying 78 for this for the 2526 and then 38 for the 2425. Is there a reason there was like more or just it depends on each kid each situation? Sorry. Yes, I noticed that there was an increase in the absences from one year to the next, but it really does depend on what therapies they have. And sometimes parents make decisions like they'll say, I know that they're getting this here, for example, they'll get charter and medical, but, my ABA agency wants me to go two or three days a week and we're going to start taking him there. So, it really depends on what they're choosing to do and what therapies they take. Okay. Okay, that makes sense. So, and as you unfortunately know

190that state statute now says that's considered an Dr. Vasquez is nodding too. Yes, it's unfortunately it's an excused absence. So, we really can't the other factor at their schools, you know, the high percentage of kids with medical needs. So, there is definitely more medical, you know, surgeries, things like that as well. Well, thank you. Really, thank you for what you're doing for this community and for these students. It's really phenomenal to see and I really hope from what I'm seeing and what I'm hearing from you all I feel like you've taken this opportunity instead of feeling I'm sure it was frustrating in the beginning but I think it's you've taken it and said okay what can we do to just show that we are improving and help our parents to see that we are giving

191the best that we can to your students. So I thank you for your time here today. Thank you member Vermont. Member Gallow. Thank you, Madam Chair. so the results that you showed that those were fabulous, by the way. The increase in in the testing were those from PM2. Where where do those results come from? The results that I was showing were from our actual PM3 from last year. So how we would have been graded on the sir at the beginning of the year I present that data to our teachers to you know start the year and to our parents. So that data was from our PM3. Okay. And is it is that following this year like your PM1 your PM2 are you seeing the same data the same results? PM1 it's always hard. There's a

192lot of red. Yeah. but we have seen more like blues and greens in the like on the Florida reporting system in PM2 actually more than we saw last year. So that's you know the systems are in place now. So we're starting to see the results faster. So that makes me happy. Okay, good. Well, I like your SIP plan. I think it hits all the marks. I like the details of it. and with the programs that you're using, they're known. They're evidence-based. They're great programs. I have faith in UCP. You guys have multiple locations and you've always done a fabulous job and I've toured a few of them. So, I I'm confident that you're going to have the results that you seek. So, thank you for being here today. All right. Thank you, Vice Chair. thank

193you, chair, and yeah, echo a lot of what was said. Thank you so much for walking us through the plan and how in depth it is. you serve a population that I think it's one of the reasons why we as a district do love to collaborate with our charter schools because choice is important and every student has very different needs and you understand that deeply for the population that you serve and there are things that ways you can show up that maybe we have more restrictions on or supportive and that's why we like to work together and sorry I I wasn't quite clear on the collocation thing so I understand that it ended up being because the collocation we're here today but is it so is it because one grade brings everybody into the same

194thing just explain that a little bit more so I will do my best but like I said I don't know if the OCPS account have a good understanding I guess one thing I should be clear is that as you may know OCPS has relocated so that collocation issue in the future won't be an issue got it okay but essentially from our understanding is if one of those schools did not meet the requirements to get a school improvement rating and in this case because OCBS beta did not have the 10 students to meet the cell count so they weren't eligible so then we both become now only eligible to get a school school it was the criteria for making it okay that makesense thank you for clarifying that I John I don't know if you know

195that is that is that it but thank you for bringing this saw the numbers. I love all the evidence-based improvement. It sounds like you're you're on the right track and I'm a big fan of the work you do. I hear great things from families all around and so really excited to to keep supporting how we can and working together. so, and we do want to you know, obviously Dr. Scott and Mistl and all the rest and but the ESC department and you know, frankly, we've got great partners all around and Dr. because height and I, you know, collaborate all the time and we talk and so, you know, we're we're all here for the right reason and I and I think U member Farren said, you know, we're all our kids, you know, and we

196and not every, you know, everything fits one the same child. We have some ability to do some things that you all can't do and you all have some ability that we can't and so it's, you know, it's it's it's great that we are we have that partnership 25 years. Well, thank you so much. We really appreciate it. All right. Thank you, Vice Chair. Member Gallo, I think you've already spoken, correct? Yeah. Member Banos. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. And I just want to say, you know, I think a great application of charter schools is when a charter school meets an unmet need in our community. And I feel like that is what you're doing at UCP. so I just want to thank you first of all for the work that you're you are doing

197and serving our students with special needs in such a great way. I'll be quick. I'll just say I really appreciate your transparency. I appreciate you ensuring that your parents know exactly what's going on at the school and I think that's so important. I don't think that happens all the time with all charter schools. So, I appreciate that you're doing that. I appreciate your detailed plans. and this was all said in in just recognizing that this was also sort of that first year of the of the testing. And so, I really look forward to watching these improvements in the future. So, thank you. Thank you, Member Vanos. Member Douglas, thank you for being here and I thank you so much for serving our students with disability. I mean, your numbers are great for what you do.

198Thank you so much for taking that treasure out of these wonderful kids and bring them into a different level academically. Thank you so much. I have never visited you. We invite you to visit definitely come and do that. Yes. a question. So just to understand very carefully, you got a grade of F because you did not meet the requirement of the collocation. Is that what? no, we got the grade of an F and OCPS Beta also got the grade. We got to share that lovely gift. because OCPS Beta did not have 10 students that they tested last year. Oh, good. So then we both had to go together. They put our data together essentially and then they measured it on a different standard than they would have if we were just a school improvement. That's

199a little bit what I meant. So that impacted the grade that you got. Right. Exactly. So yes, that was my question really. Even though again we're not I mean we're physically together but not anyway. we tried the appeal and it and it and it you know they didn't understand it. So Okay. So I'm just can I just want to imagine what would be your grade if this did not happen? What do you think? It would have been maintaining and we were three points away from commendable which is the highest rating. Wow. Yeah. So it's that's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. So and and beta I'm pretty sure they would have been maintaining at least as well. Okay. So thank you. That's that was the question that I was asked. So I mean again it's it's unfortunate

200but and again we do appreciate that your philosophy is what ours is that is every child can learn and you know children learn differently and you know we have to start maybe here but we keep on moving forward. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. Thank you member Douglas. All right. No further questions from board members. We appreciate you being here. Look forward to having you back. Thanks. All right. we going to take a break. Okay. All right. What time is it? Good. I'm fine with that. 15 minutes. Okay. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Like little baby waiting. A You want to go to my right? All right. Thank you. Yeah. Hey, hey, hey. Oh. Yeah. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

201Heat. Heat up here. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Down. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Easy, easy, easy. Hey. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Wow. Heat. Heat. Hey, hey, hey. I'm heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey, Heat up here. Heat. Hey, Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat up here. Heat up here. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey, Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Hey, Heat. Boney.

202Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat. Happy heat. Heat. Hey, Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. All right, everybody. Welcome back. We are back in session and we are going to pick up with 4.04, the impacts of declining enrollment and space optimization strategy. Superintendent, you're recognized. thank you, Madam Chair. this afternoon you will hear from various members of our team regarding the impacts of declining enrollment. factors contributing to declining enrollment. the specifically the impact it's having on our financial outlook, our ability to offer programs and services to our students and some recommendations are our staff has based on those factors. You will also hear responses to some of the questions that were asked from our various community meetings. You will see that there were train trends across all seven meetings. And then we will

203share with you our attempt to optim optimize the use of space within our buildings. And so with that, I am going to turn it over to Dr. Harold Border. Good afternoon, Chair Jacobs, members of the board, and Superintendent Vasquez. we're here today to share with you about the impacts of declining enrollment and our phase 1 space optimization strategies. I'm joined today by senior director of student enrollment Stacy Neil, senior manager of stakeholder feedback Michelle Negron, and senior director in the strategy office Ben Allen. Our agenda today includes Our agenda includes information about declining enrollment, how sites with declining enrollment were selected for other considerations, the trends from our seven community meetings, phase one space optimization strategies, and our next steps. Declining enrollment is an issue facing not just Orange County Public Schools. It's also happening

204around the state and the nation. Declining enrollment is resulting from several factors. The national vital statistics from the CDC indicate the lowest birth rate in US history in 2024 and one that has been declining since the Great Recession, except for a one-year increase post pandemic. However, the current fertility rate of 1.6 expected children per woman in their lifetime is lower than it was even during the pandemic. According to the education data collective, birth rate peaked in 2007 before the recession, meaning that those students either just graduated or will graduate this year. This comparison is 4.5 million students nationally graduating from schools versus 3.7 million three-year-olds. This equates to 25 students exiting for every 21 students entering across the United States. Keep in mind when there is a decline in birth rate that creates a ripple

205effect for years as smaller class cohorts progress through grade levels. During our growth years as we build new schools, we also invested in modernizing older schools and longestablished neighborhoods. But student enrollment in those established areas depends heavily on housing turnover. Whether our older families sell their homes and younger families with school-aged children move in. Unfortunately, some of our communities have struggled to maintain enrollment due to shifting demographics, economic pressures, and housing market trends. In fact, some neighborhoods have been experiencing enrollment declines since 2018. School choice is another factor. The expansion of Florida's family empowerment scholarship, the st the state's taxpayer funded vouchers for private schools or homeschool. FES has significantly impacted our incoming kindergarten numbers. Additional choices include homeschool, which encompasses micro schools, which are now estimated to enroll 3.1 million students and growing. private

206schools, which enroll over 4.7 million students nationally, and charter schools with nearly four million students enrolled nationally. Open enrollment and possibilities in other school districts, and the incredible choice options we have within our county for families, the traditional neighborhood school is now at the highest level of competition for students. The sunsetting of temporary protective status for immigrant groups by the federal government has also had an impact. For example, this year about 1,200 Venezuelan students have left our schools. The combination of these factors leading to our declining enrollment is concerning because with fewer students comes less funding. This affects not just our numbers on a spreadsheet, but the resources, staffing, and support that we can offer our students and our schools. On this chart, you'll see historically OCPS has experienced exponential growth. Back in 2010, as

207we recovered from the housing market recession, our district was among the first in Florida to experience a residential boom. For nearly a decade, we welcomed an average of 3,000 new students each year. To support this growth, we built new schools in rapidly developing areas. That was right up until the pandemic in 2020. We brown rebounded slightly just after the pandemic, but are now seeing a more alarming trend. This school year, we saw a decrease of 5,900 in students, which equates to 3.2% of our population. But in the last three years, that decline is more than 8,600 students or 4.6% of our total population. In comparison, across the state, Miami Dade has lost 13,000 students this year. Broward County nearly 10,000, which is far more than the 3,400 they had anticipated. And Palm Beach County, which

208historically hasn't experienced enrollment declines, has lost the same number of students as us. We estimate a $41 million loss this year, and that is a conservative figure. Once the final FTE full-time equivalent numbers are confirmed, this deficit may be even greater. Because funding is tied to students, declining enrollment impacts our ability to staff and operate schools, offer a variety of courses and programs, and the ability to maintain existing facilities. OCPS is committed to ensuring that all of our students, regardless of which school they attend, have access to robust programs, enriching experience, and a high quality instruction. However, when schools serve significantly fewer students than they were designed for, it becomes financially challenging to offer the full range of academic programs, extracurricular opportunities, and specialized support that our students, staff, and families deserve. From a budgetary

209standpoint, there are fixed costs associated with operating a school, including the salaries of our administrators, support staff, custodians, and security. You also factor in utilities, and maintenance costs. The average cost to run an elementary school in Orange County is $1.3 million. For a middle school, it's $2.1 million. The district has a responsibility to use its building, staff, and financial resources efficiently so that every dollar can support strong teaching and learning at every school. As we've been working to address this issue, the district has explored a range of possibilities for schools experiencing low enrollment. They fall into two categories: program redesign and consolidation. Program redesign includes possibilities such as microschools, internal choice expansion, and grade configurations, which will be discussed later in the presentation regarding phase one of our school space optimization strategies. Consolidation involves reassigning

210portions of a school's attendance zone to nearby schools and repurposing the original school building for different use. If we move forward with consolidation, we will use thoughtful criteria to guide our decisions, including the following. History of declining enrollment and pro projections that show a continued decline. The proximity of our students to nearby schools to minimize additional travel time. The age and condition of the facility to avoid repurposing recently built schools. will carefully evaluate any special programs at the school to prevent undue hardship when relocating services. Our goal is to ensure that any change put students and families first and are made with the utmost care and transparency possible. I'll now turn the presentation over to senior director Neil who will share about the site selection process. Good afternoon, Chair Jacobs, Dr. Vasquez, OCPS staff. The

211site selection process took into account many factors including current enrollment and 10-year trends. Sites to discuss with you today are Bonavville Elementary, Chickasaw Elementary, McCoy Elementary School, Alleston Elementary, Or Vista, Metalwoods Elementary, and Union Park Middle School. Bonavville Elementary is the first slide. This slide shows historical and projected enrollment data for the school. The line at the top, 938, represents the school's permanent capacity or the number of students the building is designed to serve according to state guidelines. The orange bar in the middle, 368, is the current enrollment, which is more than 60% under capacity. Looking to the left, you'll see that in the 202122 school year, the school had 601 students. Looking to the right, projections indicate that enrollment will remain under 400 for at least the next decade. The red line you see

212is the necessary enrollment to essentially break even, which is 680 students, meaning their FTE revenue balances with expenses, including district allocated programs and positions as well as operating costs. You can see that Bonavville Elementary has been and is projected to remain well under this level for the foreseeable future. When schools serve significantly fewer students they than they were designed, it becomes financially challenging to offer the full range of academic programs, extracurricular opportunities, and specialized sport support that students deserve. It also requires shifting resources away from other sources to help sustain those schools. Bonavville Elementary School has long-term historical decline in enrollment and is projected to continue to have low enrollment despite being on the open capacity transfer list. The facility needs a comprehensive renovation and the neighboring schools are newer with East Lake being built

213in 2005 and Colombia built in 2007. The school also has the greatest gap between enrollment and capacity of their of the nearby schools. We also had to consider how potential consolidations would impact the geographic distribution of students which includes considering potential bus routes and walking routes. The next slide shows for Chickasaw Elementary shows historical and projected enrollment data for this school. The line at the top 888 represents the school's permanent capacity or the number of students the building is designed to serve according to state guidelines. The orange bar in the middle, 503, is the current school's enrollment, which is more than 43% under capacity. Looking to the left, you'll see that in the 201819 school year, the school had 656 students. Looking to the right, projections indicate that enrollment will remain in the 400s and

214500s for at least the next decade. The red line you see is the necessary enrollment to essentially break even, meaning their FTE revenue balances with expenses, including district allocated programs and positions as well as operating cost. You can see that Chickasaw Elementary has been and is projected to remain well under this level for the foreseeable future. Sorry. The next slide, sorry. that's not finally. No, that's what I'm seeing. Chickasaw Elementary has a long-term historical decline in enrollment and is projected to continue to have low enrollment despite being on the open enrollment controlled open enrollment capacity transfer list. The neighboring schools are newer with Englewood being replaced in 2017 and Deerwood in 2019. The school also has the greatest gap between enrollment and capacity of nearby schools. We also had to consider how potential consolidations would

215impact the geographic distribution of students which include considering potential bus routes and walking routes. Eckleston Elementary Schools enrollment and on this slide shows the historical and projected enrollment data for the school. The line at the top 684 represents the school's permanent capacity or the number of students the building is designed to serve according to state guidelines. The orange bar in the middle, 334, is the current enrollment, which is more than 51% under capacity. Looking to the left, you'll see that in the 2018-19 school year, the school had 542 students. Looking to the left, projections indicate that enrollment will decline into the 200s and 300s for at least the next decade. The red line you see is the necessary enrollment once again 680 to essentially break even meaning their FTE revenue balances with expenses including district

216allocated programs and positions as well as operating costs. You can see that Eccleston Elementary in has been and is projected to remain well under this level for the foreseeable future. Eckleston Elementary School has had long-term historical decline in enrollment and is projected to continue to have low enrollment despite being on the open controlled open enrollment capacity transfer list. Eccleston was rebuilt as a smaller school designed for 684 in 2013 as part is as part of an effort to consolidate Richmond Heights Elementary School. Neighboring schools also have new facilities with Ivy Lane being replaced in 2017 and Washington Shores in 2014. We also had to consider how potential consolidations would impact the geographic distribution of students, which includes considering potential bus routes and walking routes, McCoy Elementary. This slide also shows the historical and projected enrollment

217data for the school. The line at the top 834 represents the school's permanent capacity or the number of students the building is designed to serve according to state guidelines. The orange bar in the middle 462 is the current student enrollment which is 45% under capacity. Looking to the left you'll see the 201819 school year the school had 580 students. And looking to the right, projections indicate that enrollment will decline into the 300s for the next at least the next decade. The red line you see is the necessary enrollment to essentially break even 680, meaning their FTE also revenue balances with expenses including district allocated programs and positions as well as operating costs. You can see that McCoy's ele McCoy Elementary has been and is projected to remain well under this level for the foreseeable future.

218Metalwoods. Nope. McCoy McCoy Elementary School has a long-term historical decline in enrollment and is projected to continue to have low enrollment despite being on the open capacity transfer list. The neighboring schools are newer with Shenandoa having a comprehensive renovation in 2008 and Ventura being replaced in 2017. The school also has the greatest gap between enrollment and capacity of nearby schools. We also had to consider how potential consolidations would impact the geographic distribution of students, which includes considering potential bus routes and walking routes. Now, Metalwoods Elementary School. This slide shows historical and projected enrollment data for the school. The line at the top, 837, represents the school's permanent capacity or the number of students this building is designed to serve according to state guidelines. The orange bar in the middle, 516, is the current enrollment, which

219is 45% under capacity. Looking to the left, you'll see that in 2018 2019 school year, the school had 775 students. Looking to the right projections indicate that enrollment will decline into the 300s for at least the next decade. The red line you see is the necessary enrollment to essentially break even 680. Meaning their FTE revenue balances with expenses including district allocated programs and positions as well as operating costs. You can see that Metalwoods Elementary has been and is projected to remain well under this level for the foreseeable future. Melewoods Elementary School has long-term historical decline in enrollment and is projected to continue to have low enrollment despite being on the open controlled open enrollment capacity transfer list. The school has also the greatest gap between enrollment and capacity of the nearby schools. We also had

220to consider how potential consolidations would impact the geographic distribution of students which includes considering potential bus routes and walking routes. Or Vista Elementary School is next and this slide shows historical and projected enrollment data for the school. The line at the top, 735, represents the school's permanent capacity or the number of students the building is designed to serve according to state guidelines. The orange bar in the middle, 435, is the current enrollment, which is more than 60% under capacity. Looking to the left, you'll see that in the 2018-19 school year, the school had students. Since then, enrollment has steadily declined. And looking to the right, projections indicate that enrollment will remain at 600 or less for at least the next decade. The reality, nope, sorry. The red lines you see is the necessary enrollment 650

221essentially 680 to essentially break even meaning their FTE revenue balances with expenses including district allocated programs and positions as well as operating costs. You can see that Ora Vista Elementary has been and is projected to remain under this level for the foreseeable future. Or Vista Elementary School has long-term historical decline in enrollment and is projected to continue to have low enrollment despite being on the controlled open enrollment capacity list. The neighboring schools are no newer with Ivy Lane and Oakill both being replaced in 2017. Orla Vista also requires a comprehensive renovation in 2026. The school also has the greatest gap between enrollment and capacity of compared to the nearby schools. We also had to consider here how potential consolidations would impact the geographic distribution of students which includes con considering potential bus and walking routes.

222Finally, Union Park Middle School. This slide shows its historical and projected enrollment data for the school. The line at the top 1478 represents the school's permanent capacity or the number of students the building is designed to serve according to state guidelines. The orange bar in the middle 565 is the current student enrollment which is more than 60% under capacity. Looking to the left, you'll see that in 2018-19 school year, the school had 782 students. Since then, enrollment has steadily declined. And looking to the right, projections indicate that enrollment will remain at 600 or less for the next decade. The red line you see is the necessary enrollment 850 to essentially break even, meaning their FTE revenue balances with expenses including district allocated programs and positions as well as operating costs. You can see that Union

223Park Middle has been and is projected to remain under this level for the foreseeable future. Union Park Middle School has long-term historical decline in enrollment and is projected to continue to have low enrollment despite also being on the controlled open enrollment capacity list. The school has the greatest gap between enrollment and capacity of nearby schools. We also had to consider how potential cons consolidations would impact the geographic distribution of students which include considering potential bus and walk-in routes. I will now turn the presentation back to Dr. Border. Thanks Stacy. We also conducted seven community meetings between November 12th and November 20th during which we utilized thought exchange to capture the questions. Our senior manager for stakeholder feedback, Michelle Negron, is here to share the results of those meetings. Good afternoon, Chair Jacobs, members of the

224board, and Superintendent Vasquez. As Dr. Border stated a thought exchange was utilized to capture questions from stakeholders at each meeting. Seven trends emerged. Stakeholders wanted to know why their site over others nearby. Stacy has shared with the board all the factors involved in this process, including historical declining enrollment being on the open capacity transfer list and large gaps between enrollment and capacity. There is a desire to know the timeline for a final decision. We informed stakeholders that they would know by the end of January regarding any decision for the 2627 school year and that we would answer their questions when we returned to meet with them. Staff wanted to know about their employment status if consolidation were to occur. We shared that we would work with both CTA and OESPA on this process. We are

225already working with on this and will share this once that is finalized. Families wanted to know about student assignment and transportation for next year. If the board approved continuing forward, we will have a reszoning process and share information at upcoming meetings. There was an interest in knowing about special programs and supports and how those would transition. We have been working with our ESC team to ensure programs are relocated with all supports and even more in some cases. Finally, there was a desire to know how updates would be provided upon board direction. Today we will schedule additional meetings and I'll I'll turn it over back to Dr. Border. Thanks Michelle. Our next area to share with the board this afternoon is phase one of our space optimization strategies. The district currently faces challenges with space optimization.

226These issues are compounded by regional, state, and national demographic trends, policy changes at the state and federal levels, and an increasingly competitive ecosystem with multiple parallel educational systems. I'll now turn the presentation over to senior director Allen to share more of our phase one space optimization strategies. Great. Thank you, Dr. border and good afternoon chair Jacobs, members of the board, and superintendent Vasquez. In the face of these challenges, the district is pursuing a multi-pronged strategy to optimize space. We have several objectives in mind for this work. First and foremost, we want to ensure that students have access to the highest quality program offerings. We also want to maximize the number of available seats that are used by students and for the school board and district to maintain control of long-term capital assets to the extent

227that we can also accomplish secondary objectives while meeting these goals. We also seek to lower our overall operating cost ratios, build neighborhood networks of support, maximize facility efficiency, and account for growing areas of the county. Our strategy for optimizing space includes two main areas of focus. Managing space and fostering student enrollment. Our space-based activities fall into one of three categories, which are removing unused space, converting open classrooms and to other instructional and operational functions, and adding space where needed. We're also focusing on student enrollment through new efforts to enroll students in the district and retain those who are currently who currently attend an OCPS school. All of these actions align with our OCPS 2030 strategic plan. And specific connection points include working together with our community to empower students, which is part of our mission,

228engaging and investing in communities and ensuring efficient and fis fiscally sound operations, both of which are commitments. and ensuring that OCPS remains the top educational choice for Orange County families, which is our key performance indicator number three. Our first phase of the work focuses on how we are using space. We are working on details around this plan and we'll also share those details as we get deeper into those specifics. To remove unused space, we are first looking to reduce the number of portable classrooms. We have over 1,000 portables in use across the district. Some of those are more permanent than others. Some portables are used as instructional space during construction. In other cases, portables are used to keep grade levels together. to the extent possible, we will look to move instruction into empty classrooms within

229school buildings and remove portable classrooms. We are also planning to convert unused classroom space to support a variety of functions. Given the district's focus on professional learning communities, we believe it's important for teachers to have dedicated spaces for collaboration and planning. This may mean converting unused classrooms to planning spaces and equipping the room to support professional collaboration. We are also looking at rooms as potential office spaces for itinerant instructional staff. Many of those employees currently have offices in other spaces such as former learning community buildings or other ancillary buildings, but they travel to schools nearly 100% of the time. We would like to move their work location to places that make the most sense for the employee and their work. Additionally, we are looking at organizational units and schools that might move to different buildings

230to better accommodate their needs. Rather than engage in new building or comprehensive renovations at existing sites, we can le leverage our building inventory to more efficiently and repurpose and use the different spaces we have available in our ancillary buildings. Finally, we are considering opportunities to further partner with nonprofits for added benefit to support our communities. Our space optimization strategy is happening alongside other work designed to support OCPS 2030 and to continue to make OCPS the top choice for Orange County families. We're engaging in place-based learning which helps build neighborhood networks of support and create cradleto career pathways. We are supported in this work with the William Julius Wilson Institute which developed from the Harlem Harlem Children's Zone. We also want to continue expanding highquality OCPS-led choice offerings. This includes adding micro schools into our schools

231and creating national models of school choice excellence. We are working out imple we are working to implement a third-party privately run set of micro schools in three to seven of our school buildings for next year. And as we have discussed in previous meetings to convert the old Cherokee Elementary to a school of arts and entertainment across the district. We are also looking at options related to grade configurations. We currently follow a K5 68 912 model in most of our schools with K8s at some of our schools and a few other grade configurations. We're reviewing options to determine if that is the best approach to continue in the future and we are also looking into the possibility of regional attendance and transportation zones for school choice. These conversations are long-term discussions and are just at the

232beginning phases. Thank you for the opportunity to share our phase one plans and I'll turn the presentation back to Dr. Border. Thanks, Ben. If the board decides to continue forward with the recommendation for consolidation, we will conduct community meetings at all seven sites between January 14th and January 22nd. We will conduct two meetings at each site, one with staff and one with the community. We will reiterate the rationale, respond to questions that came from the community meetings, share specificity regarding the staffing process, resoning, transportation, exceptional student education services, and how schools will welcome new families and staff. I'll now turn the presentation back to Dr. Vasquez. We look forward to questions and discussion with the school board. Thank you. Thank you so much to the team. I appreciate all of the work that was put

233into the presentation. first and foremost, I want to make it perfectly clear that this has not been an e an easy decision. our team has been looking at enrollment trends for over three and a half years, noting the sharp decline we shared as a result of various factors, including the taxpayer funded voucher system. We have had most of these schools on the open enrollment capacity transfer list for several years, which allows any family that chooses to send their child to one of the schools on that list will be able to do so without transportation. We have worked with our principles on campaigns to share about the great things that are happening in our schools. And I want to be clear, most families do choose public schools. Over 80% of the families in the state of

234Florida are attending a traditional public school. However, we have now come to the point where we can no longer continue to subsidize the dollars needed at these schools that are significantly under enrolled based on the capacity of their building. So, we were presented with a choice to either look at consolidating schools in order to be able to continue to provide supports, programs, and services to all of our children or look at reducing the number of programs and supports at these underenrolled schools. One at first glance might say,"Well, you know, we really love our school and we can run the school maybe without an assistant principal, without a guidance counselor, without a media specialist, just to name a few of the positions that we would need to look at eliminating. However, that would put those schools

235in further decline or or offering more opportunities for families to leave because those services would be available at neighboring schools. And so today we present to the board the recommendation to consolidate these seven schools based on the various factors that were presented and allowing us to move forward with the resoning process. If the board gives us direction to begin the resoning process, we will go out into the communities. We will share the results of this meeting. We will answer their questions about why their school was selected, the impact, all the factors that were considered in the decision, and then we would be able to share with them what the proposed schools would be for as part of that reasonzoning. Additionally, we as as was mentioned, we have already begun to have conversations with both classroom

236teachers association and OESPA. We would continue to meet with them to finalize the process of how we would look to reassign staff and then we would also meet with the affected employees as to what that process would look like. Again, this was an incredibly difficult decision. we no longer have the dollars to continue to subsidize those gaps and so we are faced with a very difficult decision and board members we are ready to take your comments and additional questions you may have thank you superintendent let me start with vice chair Salamanca thank you chair and thank you superintendent for those remarks and clarifying I think we've been having some conversations and it has not been easy conversations for any of us because all of the board members up here have schools that are impacted as

237well and we've been spending time with our communities. We've been hearing I have a lot of emails about Chickasaw and McCoy in my inbox that a lot of folks have received as well. So I have a couple of questions today here. some of these that staff has answered for me already in in meetings, but important questions that I also have received from community and parents and families that love Michael McCoy. that is the elementary school I went to. So, it is really unfortunate that my time on this board results in me closing the elementary school I attended. I do not do that lightly. it is a really difficult decision as someone who benefited deeply from all the history that school holds. But a couple of questions that I've received. One is on the why. Now

238as we saw in the charts up there, there has been declining enrollment in these schools. That gap there has existed for a couple years now. obviously some of these had some relief during COVID. why are we doing this now? and if we did know that this capacity was below why didn't we communicate as much to the families for that many of them felt that they could have done more to save their schools if they knew that this was where we were heading. That is a very legitimate question. and so the reason that we are looking at it currently is because we no longer have the dollars to subsidize all of those schools. And so if we choose not to consolidate then when we begin our budget process which begins in January we will need to

239look at the reductions in programs and services at each of those schools so that we are we are able to continue to run them. The second part of your question was why why we had not informed the community. So, we've been working with the principles of our schools for several years on declining enrollment. Each of the principles every year looks at their projected enrollment, works with pupil assignment or student enrollment on what those projections are. They also see their budgets, they see the history of their enrollment, they see declines or they see increases. We have also been working with our communications department as for marketing so that they are able to do more to share the great things that are happening in the schools. That's one of the things that it makes this so much

240harder in each of these community meetings. You hear how the schools are just an integral part of the community and it is so hard because that's what we want for all of our schools. We want our schools to work with the families and being able to educate our children. So it has been shared and we've been talking about the impact of declining enrollment for at least the last two years formally through work sessions through some of the bargaining sessions that we have had because it also impacts our ability to provide increase in wages. Thank you. yeah and I think we know that this is a trend which likely means that in the future other schools could be impacted. One of my things that I did observe from these conversations with families is to the degree

241there are any other schools that are directionally heading in this way. Families want the opportunity to be recruiting other families in and being outspoken. I don't know that us here at the board having this conversation or our communications department working with principles is enough because the best recruitment tactic for a family is to hear from another parent saying this school is incredible and you should bring your kids here. understandable that there's transportation and all that, but what better leverage do we have as a district than our own parents and families who love their schools and right now feel like they did not have a chance to defend them long enough because I I know that we are communicating with our principles. I know that we're communicating with our staff about declining enrollment, but our families

242feel blindsided. that this just happened and that they would have done everything and anything to stop this from happening and I feel for them deeply. I know that there's other timelines on budgeting and we didn't have a heads up on a lot of the budget changes that occur. but I deeply do feel for their concerns and and how they feel blindsided. the second question is a bit on the cost of a comprehensive or replacement of a school. Right? So one of the reasons why we are choosing some of these schools versus others is because these schools have an upcoming comprehensive or replacement project which means we renovate the school or we completely replace the school. What are the costs of that? if we do it for each school because I know that was a big

243point of why we wouldn't bring that in. Let me know coverage is fine. So I'm I'm going to ask our chief facilities officer if he does not mind coming up to the podium. so not each of these schools has a comprehensive project. Some of them do. They did identify the surrounding schools which ones did have recent renovations as part of that process. And so I'll I'll let Mr. Salamini speak maybe in averages of what if a school an elementary school is being renovated. I'm sorry, what was that? The average cost of a comprehensive or replacement. It does vary pretty varies fairly significantly. we our current probably the project that's the most relevant currently it's approximately 17 or $18 million for an elementary school comprehensive renovation. We have a foresight project that the total is in

244the 65 $70 million range and that's construction cost. so that doesn't and so you add about 25% of that. So, sorry. 17 to 18 million for a comprehensive or for comprehensive renovation for an elementary school. thank you. That's really helpful. I think some of the obviously we sit up here and walk through the budget every year and try to find as much as we can for teacher salaries for programs and it if some of these schools are below in terms of revenue of how much we're getting per student and on top of that we know in the coming year or two it's going to be an additional 17 to 18 million. It's it's really hard on on the budget. So, I do understand why this was a priority and we're trying to move students in

245a direction of going to schools that we've already made that investment in rather than the other way around. So, I do appreciate our team being thoughtful about this and not just seeing which ones are easier or not long term. I know that we're trying to be responsible of taxpayer money. We just went to the taxpayer and asked for a half cent extension for renovations and comprehensive schools. I want them to trust us that we're using their money appropriately and this is a really hard decision to make, but we are staying accountable to that. the other one and I'll bring this up as a concern that I have in particular with with McCoy is grades. so in the case of Chickasaw, we have a school grade of a C. that would be going to Dearwood which

246is a B school, Englewood which is a C school. So there's we're about better or the same in terms of academic performance and programs. McCoy is a little different. We are thinking of Shannondoa which is a B and VO which is a C where McCoy is a B. I don't know what the other schools are, but I think there are concerns from parents when they look at a school grade and currently being a McCoy that's a B-grade and they're excited and love their school potentially than going to a school that is graded below. I'm getting a lot of questions about what we're doing. Like, is the additional consolidation mean better funds for better programs, better services, academic? Like, what can they look forward to or hold the school accountable to that they're not being transferred

247into a less performing school academically? Thanks, Vice Chair Salamanca. great question that the community has on that. Certainly when our schools are closer to their capacity, that will enhance the student experience because we're going to be able to provide more for the student. more courses, more programs. that may mean more specials for the students in elementary school, additional resource staff that Dr. Vasquez spoke about earlier that we're currently providing and have been providing for some of the schools that we can no longer do that tie into the student experience well-rounded experience. regarding the school grade it you know understand what they're saying. I would also say that we have incredible teachers across this district support staff and administrators who are all working very hard every day to do the best for our students. we have

248it utmost confidence that if this were to go forward all the students impacted at their new schools that student achievement will remain a priority and that those schools will achieve at very high levels. this is the first time in the history of Orange County Public Schools that we have no traditional school that is a D or an F. And we have those same expectations for all of our schools. We also want think it's important to note that a school grade does not encapsulate everything that happens within a school. there's much more to a school than a school grade. And we in the in all of these cases where the students will be going we have extreme confidence that the students will continue to be in great learning environments and have even more opportunity because of

249the capacity of the schools that will be reached as a result of this if it were to go forward. Thank you. And very last question, and I'll call back around and let some of my peers some of this magnet schools. I've gotten a ton of emails of parents saying, "Can we turn our school into a magnet school to attract new families to have a say?" Can we talk a little bit just briefly on that process and why that's not an immediate answer to this or not? I think families really do I've gotten this question many times. good afternoon. so magnet schools, schools of choice, right? We have many different choice programs, magnets and andmies that we've recently developed for this reason to bring kids into into schools and create a an atmosphere of quality choice.

250So it a magnet doesn't happen overnight. It takes a while to establish. If a school were wanted to do a magnet, they would become a scholastic academy first. they build it from within. And now thanks to this board, we have a policy that now an academy can recruit from even outside the district and from within the district where before they had to do it within the school to develop and sustain to they had to demonstrate that the program that what they were wanting to create was sustainable because magnet schools don't we don't provide additional funding for magnet programs. So it's usually a two to threeyear process in order to create a magnet program within a school. Got it. Okay. Thank you. So we would it was a little difficult on the timeline on that. Yes.

251and actually very last question. Is there a chance we could lose these facilities in the coming years if we're using them for non-instructional time? Thanks for that question, Mh Vice Chair Salamanca. So we have to soon declare to the state the utilization of our space and that tied into the space phase one of our space optimization strategies. So we do have temporary plans for these sites should this go forward. one of those next steps for us would be to communicate with the board our plans for these existing sites. and we plan to utilize all of these sites for the benefit of our stu our families and students across Orange County Public Schools. so we do have plans for all seven sites to maintain management of our facilities. Thank you vice chair member. thank you madam

252chair. So I did not think in my time up on this dis that this is a conversation that we would be having and we would be we'd be discussing because three or four years ago it was all about teacher retention, teacher retainment, building new schools. And while in my area there's there has been no new schools in the 10-year CIP plan, it was kind of exploding elsewhere. And I think one of the reasons to member Vice Chair Salamanca's point about magnet schools is that we've tried magnet schools. We've tried everything we can with some of these lower enrolled schools like Union Park Middle. and it just didn't bring new people in. Whether it's the reputation that the school has, even though it's a wonderful school, it's a beautiful school with a great principal and great

253staff, it just didn't lure back in the students that we need to see and that's what makes it so sad and makes me sick to my stomach. I have I have a couple of questions and then a couple comments, but I would have in this presentation and I didn't mention it earlier because I'm sure you would have included it, but I would have loved to seen the resides in the presentation because usually when we do our one-on-one as schoolboard member, we get to see the enrollment and then we get to see the resides. And why the resides are so important is it gives you a clear picture of the students that are residing and can go to that school that are choosing not to. Whether they're choosing to go in the case of Union Park

254Middle to Arbor Ridge, which is a magnet school for 6 through 8, whether they're choosing to go to a fabulous charter school right down on University Boulevard, they're choosing to go to Renaissance either on Gold Broad, Renaissance on Chickasaw. There's a lot of choices. And now with the taxpayer funded vouchers, a lot of them are choosing homeschool because they can get $9,000 to homeschool their children. So we're not it's no longer the question of can we can we do this and bring them back? Can we do that and bring them that? Because I think we're all having those conversations and we're all trying to be as innovative as we can to see what we could do to keep these schools open because all of these schools are worth saving. all of them are worth saving.

255it's just we're at a point where families aren't choosing brickandmortar schools anymore. They're just you're seeing Florida virtual school enrollment go extremely high. You're seeing our own virtual school going really high. You saw the plans with a new art school where we're going to do a combination of Orange County virtual schools with the arts. It's just education looks and feels differently than it did 5 years ago than it did 10 years ago. and moving forward it's going to continue to evolve and to change. and I think that's why we're here having this conversation but I just in the future can we share the resides just because I think it is important for people to see it's not yes enrollment is declining yes population is shrinking but in some cases the families that live there just

256don't want to go to those schools and they're never going to choose our schools or that school. I do have a question in regards to Union Park Elementary or excuse me, Union Park Middle because there are two large charter schools in that area, both Renaissance, one on Golden Rod and one on Chickasaw. And I think the Golden Rod has over a thousand students and the Chickasaw has like 800 students. I'm not saying this is going to happen. This is a hypothetical question, but if those schools were to close, what would we do? Would we have the ability to open back up Union Park Middle? Like what what would we do for in that instance? Because what I don't want to do is have to build another school because we've we've reimagined or consolidated a school.

257So what would we do in that instance? So thanks Miss Gallow. if you don't mind, I'll your first feedback that you had for us. Absolutely. And if if we go forward and we go back to the community, we will reiterate that information. We decided it was probably too much for the slide today. but maybe not. But we had checkered blue boxes when we went out to the community the first time. And for all of these sites, we showed in that blue box, these are the students residing that are not attending. Okay? And we still were not getting to the break even financial point in some cases. is still far away from the financial break even point unfortunately. so in in this case even all the students that reside in the area if what you said

258were to happen we still would not be in a f fiscally solvent situation here at Union Park Middle. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yes, please. I have Do you have the numbers? Go ahead because mine's on multiple pages. Got yours. So, for example, Union Park students residing, you have 1,226 students residing. school students attending 533. Yeah. so less than half. Yes. And then the top three schools for transfers, Renaissance 100, Chickasaw 176, Aborig, and Legacy for Union Park. so even if all of those something were happen to all those schools, it still really wouldn't be enough to meet the financial solveny of Union Park Middle. We would still be short students. Okay. I just think I think it's I want the community to understand why we're having these conversations and the importance of them that

259none of us want to have them, but every student deserves a high quality education. And no student deserves to go to a school that doesn't have the same programs as the school down the street. That is not an equitable or an equal education. And they and every child deserves the same highquality education with the same highquality programs. And that's why at the heart of some of these very difficult decisions that we're making, that's the heart of it. What is best for students, what is best for the students that continue to thrive and go to OCPS. And at this point, what is best for students is the best possible highquality education. And the only way that we can maintain that is through consolidation, unfortunately. and some of this is through no fault of our own. We

260are doing everything that we can to be innovative to bring back students. I We're doing everything. We're spitball we're throwing spitballs at the wall to see what sticks to get students to come back to our schools literally. in with Bonnyville. So Bonnieville and I just want to point out that Union Park and Bonnieville when you looked at the seven of the schools that were closing that the capacity gap was the highest at my two schools. Like in Bonnyville and Union Park it the capacity the gap between what they need versus what they have enrolled was the largest. But at Bonnieville that is truly a neighborhood school that has been there for forever. I it's right behind my neighborhood. I pass by it every day going to work. and I know how much that community loves

261that school and more than it just being a community school, it's a school that serves the community. It serves this community with the church across the street. It provides clothes. It provides foods. I was handing out food recently across the street from Union Park Elementary and one of the pastors I met and he was just really concerned about what are we going to do? What are we going to do to continue to serve that community because so important and I know that I've talked to Dr. asked was about it. But I want to know I want to make sure that as we move forward and we're looking at reimagining or consolidating those schools that some of those important aspects of the school that we figure out a way to maintain them that we figure out

262a way to keep the closet because Bunnyville is very you they walk to it, right? So moving the closet to another neighborhood school, they won't be able to access it. They won't be able it's too far of a walk. so I just want to make sure that we're preserving those type of community programs that are vital to that community. May I please, Dr. Vasquez? Absolut absolutely. part of our plan as we were looking at the use of these facilities included, reaching out to some of our partners, some of our local municipalities to see, if if we have the space, would they then have the programs and bring those closer to our families that especially in some of these areas, they are not close to a lot of resources. and support. So, that is definitely part

263of our plan that if we move forward, we'll be able to share some more specifics with the board for each of the schools. Thank you, Dr. Vasquez. And I know that there's there's been questions in my community because I do have a new community going up on 419 in Lake Picket. It's going to have about 49 homes, only nine elementary students. So, it's not going to make a big difference one way or the other. and I've said from the very beginning that I wanted when we go out into the community and we look at zoning, I want to have those conversations sooner than rather than later because if a family buys a home in a community, they want to know where their child is attending and they don't like it when it's reszoned. it makes

264them unhappy. I also have the grow that is right there on Lake Picket and it's going to be about 278 homes according to our predictions and that's going to generate about 385 elementary students. However, that's over like a 10-year span that they're they're rolling out slowly in that community. So, that's not going to bring bring us large numbers of students. And in the community meetings that I have attended regarding the grow, I've been telling the community because they keep saying, "Well, you'll build a new school. You'll build a new school." I'm like, "No, we no we won't. No, we won't. I have enough room in all of between my high school, my middle school, and my elementary schools. There is enough room to house all those kids. I could put those 385 kids at either

265East Lake or Colombia tomorrow and there would still be room. That's just the position that we're in right now." so as we go forward, my only ask is this, that we are really transparent in these community meetings, not just with the parents, parents that attend and the staff that attend because I know they're anxious and I know that they're nervous and we want to do everything to alleviate their nervousness. but I want to make sure that we're also informing the surrounding community because I've been out with some of my fellow board members at some community meetings and the community at large didn't know that this was happening. community. People that lived in that community that homes are in that community want to know if their if that if their home school is going to be

266consolidated and they're not aware of it and they'd like to have the opportunity to input. My other request is with the principles when we look at moving or consolidating that we really pull in the principles of the schools that we're looking to consolidate with them and make sure that they're part of the conversation. especially when I'm looking at Bonnieville which has ASD units and those ASD units are going to have to to go to different schools to ensure that the school has the ability to house those units and that they're equipped to do so and if not to make sure it's very important that we make sure that they get the resources and I know that's the goal of all this is so that we're not depleting resources across the line as we're doing right

267now and to truly hone in on providing more resources but just to kind of have those conversations out in in our community. And I have other things and I know that will come to me, but I've talked for a long time and I'd like to hear from my fellow board members. So, thank you. Thank you, Member Galla. Member Feler, you're recognized. Thank you, Chair. again, most of us, you all have talked to us as individual board members and you know, I expressed my immediate outrage. You know, as board member Solomon has said about McCoy Elementary, Eccleston was my first grade school. There is even a picture of me the first day of school at Eckleston in first grade. Yes. But most of some of the things I was going to say prior board members the

268same kinds of questions I've had like can you turn it to a magnet I'm so glad that Mr. Moody came and explained that because that is not something can happen overnight and you all have thoroughly explained but I'm I'm going to come back again in case people are listening. we have surrounding schools Ora Vista and Ekson and then we have that are this cons consideration of consolidation because of the lower enrollment then you have Ivy Lane and Washington Shores and even when we looked at the numbers even if we were to where we going to have a transfer it's still they will still be under capacity. and which lets me know and board me brought it up that I guess I'd like to know the resign because I don't think the public really understands that

269the reason we having so much of a low enrollment because people are not sending their children to the schools and some years ago maybe a decade decade ago, we had the finances to let schools still have the complete work and help that they needed, the services with 200 or 300. It's been years. I don't know how long that Washington Shores has been under 500. It's just been it didn't just happen. It's been a while, but we had money. There was not a cut in budget we had to share. so I think if you could let us know that and understand the fact that one of the questions some of my parents and community stakeholders had about Ekerson was that what about the they have a ESC unit what is going to happen with those children

270and again I'll reiterate along with member Gallow that when we consolidate and move we have to make sure that they're going to get the same kind of help. Teachers are not overworked and it's just a lot that we're having to deal with. because those are some real concerns they have. And I'll say this, but even we talked about we had a wonderful town hall meeting that the community where Eckleston resides, we've aged out. What that means for some of you that are listening, nobody's having babies, you know, we are at the age where we're grandmothers and great-grandmothers, you know, so I guess the age of Elizabeth and so forth, that time is gone. So, we're not having babies at that age. But I'm just I'm I'm sharing because I know it's humorous, but I want

271you to understand that's a reality that we're having to to deal with. also I just want them to understand that the challenges is not just with the monetary money but the fact that people are not sending their children to the school. So could you Miss Neil what is the reside at Eckleston? 418 students and how many of them are going to Eston of those? 298. 290 out of the 400. Yes. What about Or Vista? You have 57 residing, 401 attending. So that's not that bad, but it's still an issue. and with and even when we divide, we still like if some goes to Washington Shores, some go to Ivy Lane, they're going to still be under capacity. right, that is a possibility that's going to happen. So, you've said and other board members have asked

272and you all have reiterated and said that we will we're taking in strong consideration of our program. You have the ASD program for my what? Bonavville. And then in Echerson, we have the ESD program that we're recognizing and knowing that they're going to need to have that same capacity to work those children as they move to other schools if that's possible. But again, I want to reiterate, we're going to have another town meeting right superintendent so that community could have some input. And one of my thoughts is that whatever the decisions that are going to be made that the facility will still get the greater use for the people in the community because I've said it before but I'll reiterate it. Dr. Ecklesson the school is named of he was a medical doctor and he

273believed that children who had physical disabilities still should still go to school with regular children. And that is why the school was built. And he built what we call the Eckleston Home children's home. It was a hospital so the children could get the physical help they need, walk right across the way and go to school. So that building, that school has a very rich rich legacy. and so I know that's a concern that many of my community members and stakeholders have, but I'm assured that with this conversations that we're going to have, Dr. Vasquez that we'll give the community a time to bring the input and we will again show the reside show the physical look of the students and maybe they could do with like board member Gallow said we don't have to throw

274spitballs but go out and grab the children you know talk to the parents because by far OCPS has great programs and that which we are lacking. This is why we have board meetings for you to come and share whatever concerns you have so that we can do better. But I know we have the best answer. I do. I'm a product. I did pretty good myself. I'm a product of OCPS. So I know it works. But I want to thank you for the information. It's so important for us to see the numbers to understand what we're dealing with and the fact that we're not sitting just trying to get rid of stuff and I'm glad that we do have an answer. So, I just wanted to share that. I know that I'll get phone calls and

275I have been getting them and visits people know where I live and emails to try to see what we can do. But I look forward to our next town meeting that should be sometime in January. So, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Member Felder, and thank you for that wonderful history lesson as well. No, I'm serious. I think it's wonderful for the whole public to hear, and it reminds me, too, of how far we've come that he was way ahead of his time, but thank heavens time finally caught up. All right, let me call on member Banos. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to start off by saying thank you to all of the parents who have organized and who have spoken to media who have done petitions because it's it's hard

276on us. So, we have to make a hard vote, but I appreciate you because we need you and just your engagement and the fact that you care so much that you're willing to organize and help inform other parents is really important and really valuable to to all of us. So, just want to thank the parents out there who have brought their concerns to us. I'd like to follow up on a couple of issues raised by my fellow board members. and I think the first area that I have concerns about is just the communication piece because I think we have to make hard decisions and nobody likes to make hard decisions and nobody likes to be the the subject of of the hard decisions. But I think you know, if if people feel like they understand

277what's happening, it does make it better. So the first question that I have is I know the superintendent said that the principles have been in these discussions for several years. So the principles of these schools kind of knew that this was coming. Is that right? We've had discussions around declining enrollment. We have not had discussions around school closures and part of that impact part of the decision to move quicker because the board originally had conversations about this I want to say it's been nine nine months at least. you were first we were looking at it and then we had the legislation that passed this summer for collocation which impacts some of these schools not all of them. and then we received over 50 letters and that definitely brought this to a much quicker decision to

278bring it to the board. And we would we really would have liked to have another year so that the community could have had more conversations around it. I'll be honest, as I've evaluated the data over the last 4 and a half weeks, I don't believe it would have moved the needle to the point that we needed to to move it. These schools are significantly under capacity. many of them don't have the schools the students in the area that they need to be brought up to the level. Others have the students and they are they have chosen homeschool or they have chosen another alternative. So while we may have picked up a few more students, I do not see that for these seven schools, we would have bridged the gap to the point where we would

279have come back and say no, that's the school that we would want to remain open. Additionally, our financial outlook is looking pretty bleak and the board has consistently said that salaries is a number one priority. while this is not the main reason why we have done this, we've said we don't have the dollars to supplement. This is going to bring about I believe almost $10 million recurring savings. So those factors greatly impacted our timeline and why the communication was not prolonged. Okay, thank you for that explanation. I there may be reasons for this, but I I would, you know, I guess I would think that like principals and teachers within a school would probably want to know this information first before the other families. Was everybody did they know beforehand? I had a meeting with

280all of the principles a few weeks before the community meetings. we met with all of them in the room in the back. and so they did know. Okay. We asked them not to say anything out in the community because we had not finalized the plans and told them that we would be setting the dates for those community meetings. Part of that was that we wanted to make sure that accurate information was shared. There's a lot of emotion around this and if you have misinformation that makes a process that much more difficult. But they did know and all of the principles for the last 3 years have seen as part of their enrollment calculation as far as their budget and their recount if they are gaining which there are a few that are and those that

281are declining. Okay. Okay. So they did know for the last couple of years if you know really efforts needed to be made to go out into the community and drive up in enrollment. For sure. Okay. Thank you for that. I also and I'll touch back on a point you made but there was a question about magnets and whether you know these schools be converted into magnets and I do have to say we do have some very good examples of successful magnet schools in Orange County. and I think we do have great templates for what works. But I think what this really showcases is that, you know, two things when we have I mean, wouldn't it be nice if we had an additional $211 million to invest in some new programs in these schools and see

282if we could pull back students? unfortunately $211 million is being diverted from our county to the taxpayer, you know, funded voucher system. and to the superintendent's other point, it would be great if we had the luxury of time. but we're feeling pressure from the schools of hope and the collocation. So, I know that's not the cause, but it's it's putting pressure on us to make decisions more quickly than we than we would want to. I let's see also wanted to follow up on something that member Salamanca brought up about increasing sort of programs or having additional programs at schools. Can we expect in the consolidated schools smaller class sizes? no, we I'm not I wouldn't say you're going to have smaller class sizes because they're still going to be funded with the formula. What you

283would expect if we did not consolidate is higher class sizes at the schools that we would not consolidate just in order to make up the gap that is needed between what we are supplementing and what they're generating. Got it. Okay. But there won't be higher class sizes at the schools we're consolidating because you know the staff like the teachers, right? I'm going to say follow not not literally but we have x number of teachers for x number of students so we still need those teachers right right that's okay thank you then I also had a question on page 29 you talk about retaining the work that we're doing to retain students and I know we talked at great length at our last schoolboard meeting about recruiting students but I'm just wondering what efforts we are

284the district is doing to retain students. I can speak to some of that Miss Vanna. So you know the board had a discussion at the last meeting regarding the efforts with Kaisa that are that are being done to bring students back. but in addition to that you know we market and showcase the great things that are happening in Orange County Public Schools. I mean, that's a parent at every board meeting with the celebrations and the successes of all of our students. as a parent of three kids myself, I can tell anybody out there listening, Orange County Public Schools is the best choice for your children in in Orange County. and so, you know, we continue to make those efforts every day to share with parents the great things that are out there. I visited some

285micro schools which that population is exploding as I shared earlier. It's already up to 3.1 million students nationally and that is ex exponential growth in the last 5 years. but visiting those sites they they don't offer what we have with extracurricular and co-curricular programs. So, part of our phase one optimization strategies are to bring some of those, what's referred to as boutique tier one experiences that parents get in a micro school into our schools. and then hopefully be able to get more flexibility in the future, as was discussed earlier today. if we're able to offer those choice offerings within OCPS and then combine that with the additional supports, extracurriculars and co-curriculars. you know, I think that is that's something we're trying to accomplish as we move forward with the phase the phase one of the

286space optimization strategies. Okay. Thank you, M. Madam Chair, may I add and I don't know if is Kia here? Has she left? She left. Has she left? Yes. so we actually have had conversations. I did especially today. I did today where we are looking to ask or to reach out to our home education students and offer them some of our services for a price. and whether it's band, theater, whether it's calculus or dance in some of our classes. Mr. Minnie, do you want to speak a little bit to that? Absolutely. I love talking about choice. So, quality choice. So, a couple things related to home students. We have over 9,000 home ed students in Orange County, right? So, we have reached out to them on occasion this past year. Mr. Moody, I'm sorry to interrupt

287you, but for the benefit of the public, when you say home students, do you want to dis define that because from different age groups that could be interpreted different ways? Okay, let's see if I can define this. Homeed students or or one I thought you were going to tell me to get closer to the mic, so I moved it up. You did. I didn't mean to yell. Homemed students are families who have chosen not to be a part of of Orange County Public School or any public school, right? The parents have decided that they want to educate their student. They want to be the educator and they want to educate their student, their child at home, right? home ed students may participate in brick and mortar classrooms, right? We as a district have not over

288the number of years that I've been in the district, we h some homeed students have participated in the extracurricular activities like band and such. But now districts across the state are really reaching out to home ed students and saying, "Hey, if you want take that calculus course, you could take it with us, right? We get the FTE for home for home ed students." So we're we're looking at that. Also, homeed students can take virtual courses through Orange County virtual. So we've been trying to aggressively to capture some of that. All right. they remain they keep their home status, but they can take part-time virtual courses with Orange County Virtual. Yes, ma'am. And they're not part of FES. Correct. Correct. So, that's with FES we can I'm sorry, the family empowerment scholarship. with the family empowerment

289scholarship, we if they choose to take courses with us, we do we can charge them for the courses. and that has been part of the program but with home education with dual enrollment they are not part of that program and then we would be getting the FTE for the number of courses that they are enrolled with us dually enrolled and fees is my next topic scholarship students so we've been actively recruiting homeed students and also scholarship students to take virtual courses if they like they and maintain their home status and take part-time virtual courses with Orange County Virtual, which is the best virtual school in the in the state of Florida. the largest and the best. I would also say that in in an effort to recruit students who are taking a part in the

290scholarship programs across the state, right, we have a many students that are receiving scholarships. we now have the mechanism to contract with those parents for educational services, right? So, a parent who wants to take a at East River can contract with us to take a classes at East River High School. So we have a this year we have a limited number of schools and a limited number of courses that are available for scholarship students. We encourage we advertise on step up for students which is the scholarship u manager for the state. so they can come in and they go into this step up system choose O Orange County Public Schools a course at at East River and then pay us for that course, right? and we our plan next is to expand that considerably next

291year across the district. So this year it was just put our toes in the water so to speak and get a system down. This year this coming year we will expand that across the district across grade levels to bring back the dollars and the students because we think also once a student attends East River High School in the ad class, they're going to see great things going on. the family's going to see great things going on and they're going to enroll want to enroll full-time is what we suspect and what we strongly believe will happen. So, we hope to get the dollars as well as the student and the family back. Some of these students, I say back, some of these students have never been a part of OCPS, so maybe it's a first introduction

292to the great quality things we do at Orange County Schools. and so forth. I will also add I could talk all night so somebody may have to shut me down. When we talk about recruiting students, this board has been very generous and allowing in recruiting students from outside the district in Right. So, this past year you have your magnet policy. We now allow students from outside the district to apply during the summer. I'll give you a little teaser. I'm going to try to bring that back to this board after reconsideration. I'd like to maybe open that up during the lottery process to students outside because the mindset and the philosophy of this district is changing, right? We need we need students and we need to open up and we need to share the quality things

293that we're doing. Also themies that I mentioned and some of our schools Freedom High School with the AI Lake Buuna Vista with the hospitality management academy. we have always allowed outside students from outside the district to apply to those to thosemies. I know Freedom High I mentioned Freedom High School. I know they've attracted some students from Ociella just for that academy. I know Akoi High School has attracted some students from Lake County just for their theater behind thescenes theater technical theater academy. So we see the need and we will meet that need and I know this this board is in favor of recruiting students and maintaining and keeping the students that we have. But yeah, dollars and students absolutely that's our goal. Thank you, Mr. M. Thank you for that lengthy answer. I appreciate the

294detail. But I No, I love that. I know clarification. What was the question? the question was, "What are you doing to retain students?" Okay. He did answer it very thoroughly. So, thank you. I like you've opened now a whole can of worms of some follow-up questions I want to ask. she says later about step up for students and if we have to pay them an administrative fee for this and also I have there's other concerns I have but I'll I'll save that for another time. I guess but one thing that was on this optimization plan was the micro schools and I know when we first talked about it the language that I read at least was districtrun micro schools but when I read it now it says privately run micro schools. So I just want

295to understand that a little bit better. Yeah. Thanks board member Vano. So our our first step in this is we're working with a partner who will run micro schools. we had a conversation yesterday at cabinet. we think we're landing on four sites that we'll share with the board soon. we're working on anou now and that partner would manage these sites. we will work with them on programming. They're very much wanting our input in programming. but they would run the micro schools. The goal is that over the course of next year, we will learn how to run our own micro schools so that we could then bring that format into our network. we're also hoping as we continue on our current path of academic success that those outcomes from this school year may allow us some

296additional flexibility for the following year. as we as we do that also. and then you know for example if we have a micro school at an elementary school that attracts parents we've targeted areas that not just have capacity but also have a large a large population of home education students residing. if we're able to draw them back in Miss Vanos, each of these sites would be looking at around 24 students with two learning coaches managed by this organization. We're able to attract them back and have waiting lists. Then these micro schools if we start running them could also become would become part of the school choice portfolio and something that could emerge intomies and then maybe potentially magnets as well as we as we look to continue to compete and meet the demands of our

297families and what they're looking for for their students. And could you just explain what is a micro school? sure. So, the micro school movement came out of the pandemic where parents got together and started educating their students in pods in various locations. Could be in a house, could be in a pavilion at a park. you know, it was kind of back to the one room schoolhouse, so to speak. they got together and started educating their students. micro schools are a private type school that parents are taking their dollars and choosing. they have flexibility with curriculum. they have flexibility with time. and so there's there's a lot of flexibility in the learning that takes place within a micro school. we would be looking at hybrid versions of that. Obviously when it comes to standards we would

298be looking at standards that align to state standards as these become OCPS run micro schools and there would be other things that we would be looking to do. one of the things that our provider would like to do next year again we're still working on theou we don't know how this is going to play out if it can play out yet. he actually would like the students in these micro schools to actually take the state assessments. so we'll see how that plays out. but part of that narrative would be then if those students are being successful yet a case for us to make as we converse with the state about further options for us in providing choice that benefits our students. So we'll see how that plays out. a lot of parents that maybe are

299making these choices are also not in favor of state assessments. so there's a lot in that conversation as we work through theou but he the company they're a great partner the site that I visited honestly was very impressive. It was a neurode divergent site in Winter Garden. the students were all across different grade levels on different curriculum working at their own pace. two former teachers that are the learning coaches. and I met a variety of students in there. yeah. Okay. Well, I have a lot of questions, but I will save those for the appropriate time. thank you for that information. I guess I'll just end just by going back to the consolidations. and then and let other members speak. just that this is a difficult decision, but I think my bottom line is that I

300don't want to punish any student because they live in a neighborhood with older people or because they live in a neighborhood that has a high immigrant population in a state where we're passing outrageous laws and scaring people and empowering ICE. or I don't want to punish students that you know their neighbors have decided to take part in the taxpayer funded voucher system or to go to charter schools. those our students don't deserve to be punished in that way. And so I feel that the way that we ensure that they get what they need is to consolidate schools so that they have the best opportunities and services and resources. So that's sort of where I'm landing. Thank you for your presentation today. Thank you board member. Thank you member Vanos. a great summary there as well.

301A couple of questions with regard to our teachers that are at the schools. One, one point at the I want to make at the beginning, I hear the term close a lot. not necessarily from us, but out in the community. And I'm I we all know what we're doing, but it does concern me that I think some people are envisioning close as in these kids are losing their school. So I just want to make sure as we're talking we continue to talk about consolidate. two, so with regard to the teachers at these schools, what are their options going to be and how how do they rank? And when we're looking at placement versus other teachers given the fact that you know we are creating this need for change. Dr. Vasquez. yes. So there is nothing

302in our current contract that speaks to school closures. so we are going to work handinand with both Mr. McCracken and Mr. Pard on that process. the OESPA contract speaks a little bit more in in detail about movement of staff. And so the classroom teachers association I believe Friday at the labor management committee meeting spoke a little bit about the process but because the decision has not been made by the board we really could not get into a lot of the details. from what I read they make some very good suggestions some some things include you know giving them priority make first of all making sure the timelines are clearly communicated so they're aware priority since they're going to be displaced so we would want to make the process as painless as possible I believe some

303of the suggestions were that they would be able to solicit or provide you first, second or third choice based on you know vacancies or location and that we would work with them. So those details it's very important to me to our team that we work with both of them so that this difficult process is not made more difficult because of how we are dealing with our staff. Yeah. Well, thank you and that's that was exactly what I was hoping to hear. I also to the extent that our teachers want to stay with one of the consolidated schools there's probably a great deal of advantage not just to the students but the collaboration that's already taking place amongst those teachers. So while I know we're talking about in most I think in all cases going to

304more than one school still I think there would I want to make sure that we create that opportunity for them to do that if that's that's their choice. So I'm I'm really glad to hear the answer to that. we I've heard me several of board members talk about getting ahead of this in the future. looking at looking ahead at where we think we may have to consolidate and talking to the families and the personnel sooner than we did. And this situation, you explained it very well. It's it's been kind of rattling around that financially this just doesn't work and can't continue to work. And I'm going to add to that we are always one referendum away from being in a crisis situation when that makes up 10% of our operating budget. So, that makes this

305decision even more important. We've been we've been so blessed by a community that is so supportive of of their students, of their kids, of public education. but I think we've only had one one serious year during the recession where we've had to go out for a referendum. We still came through it with flying colors. But being a bit of a you know a cautious person as far as taking risks with something so important I do think that we have to act as fiscally responsible as we can while still doing the best that we can by our communities and I understand to a number of these communities how really really part of the community the school is. I mean, my school has always been that to my community. So, anyway, I relate to that. But I

306would hope that as we're looking at schools that we may need to close, we've had some conversation about the resides and how important a factor that is in those situations where we have enough resides that the school could function well or even at capacity to be able to share that with families early enough so that they really might be part of that recruitment effort. And I don't remember who it was up here that said that, you know, nothing that we can do or we can hire anybody to do compares with a family saying, "Yeah, and you're so right. You're so right to say, yeah, I say that about campaigns. Nothing like a sign in the front yard because that says, hey, my neighbor, you know, not some flyer, my neighbor supports this." And it's it's

307the same thing with schools. but I one of my questions on this is I know we have student ID numbers and we get certain amount of information. We know how many people resides. Do we have information specific enough to let families know that okay these kids over here are in charter school or these are homeschooled or Yes. I mean I think we talked to Quesa. Is that what it's called? Yeah. So we have that data. Is that something that we would be able to share with families? It sounds a little like Yeah. So chair having information yeah we have some level of that information. if I'm understanding the second part of that sharing it with other families. So if families are wanting to figure out how how do I bring families back I think where

308we would have to stop on that chair is the conversation that was had earlier you know you've got the way I saw it done in another part of the country was there was a community meeting and the question was asked how many of you know somebody in the neighborhood that doesn't attend our school and what was described desried in this article was every hand in the room went up. And so then the conversation was, you know, we need your help. Yeah. Yeah. And you love your school. Yeah. your kids are having a great experience here. And so help spread the word and tell your neighbors about that. because you know, we do have the best offering and we want your children to attend here and we need them to attend here. All right. Thank you.

309And that answers my question. the other question if when we're looking at a student that's home ed and is coming in to take one class or two classes what does that do in terms of our capacity numbers? So they're they're taking one class a anybody know I mean this collocation do you know the fish answer on that? I don't issue with the state continues to I'm looking I'm wondering if anyone behind me has that answer chair so I mean from an FTE perspective you know if they're taking one seven courses and one with us then you know 17th of the FTE if they're taking 10 courses and two with us 210 of the FTE but as far as how that impacts permanent capacity with fish if it's not a certain amount of time. I think

310I don't know if anyone has that answer. I would have to look into that. I want us to research that because I there is Oh, do you know, Greg? No. No. Okay. No, he's going He wants to talk about choice. He wants to know about choice. I would I would I would feel more comfortable going back to our finance team and Dorian that works with the FTE and then collaborating with you know facilities around that because I am not I've read something recently but I don't recall and I don't want to give you misinformation but we will email the board with what we find out in our research. Yeah. Yeah. And as we're talking, it's possible that there's no clear answer on that right this minute, but I think there I think there is. I

311just don't remember what it was because we were talking about the dual enrollment when students are like attending Valencia for part of the day and then they're attending our school the other part of the day. How does that impact capacity? I just can't recall right now. Okay. All right. Thank you. And the last question the micro schools my understanding is we're going to use this company for this next year. They are going to hire their own teachers or possibly our teachers. Are they just administering or are they literally running the school? So they would be leasing space essentially from us chair and they would be operating their micro schools in our available space. we would be using the opportunity for several several ways. One to learn from them. two also to see if the programming

312generates interest in the community and then is something that we could replicate within our choice options. so those that's a couple of of the benefits. so but they'll they'll be responsible for the teachers. Those won't be our teachers. Okay. Yes, ma'am. We're working on that right now. But they would they would handle personnel. They would handle the whole the whole operation. There was something that you said about so what I thought was if that works the next year we would take that on as our own but there was something that you said in a comment about it. I thought you said it had to be private. I might have misunderstood. Go ahead. So chair I'm not sure if it was related to the additional flexibility we're hoping that was it that we're hoping to gain.

313So we believe in reading the information from FDOE that if we have no DRF schools that we have an ability for additional flexibility that would allow us to operate our own micro schools and then even have additional flexibilities as we look at choice offerings. So all right, just so I'm clear, we can operate our own micro schools right now, but not with the flexibility. So we our what we believe if we were able to obtain charter district status. Ah that would give us additional flexibility with how we're providing educational services i.e. maybe hybrid opportunities. flexibility with timing some of the things that we currently don't have and then that those flexibilities are part of what micro schools do. Okay. Without gaining that status that charter district we can still operate a micro school or not.

314That's I'm trying to figure out whether you're saying we have to have that we don't have to have that. So, chair, we believe right now we need to have that status. I will I will add on though to say that and just take this for what it is. It's a grain grain of salt. Texas and Arizona have similar legislation with choice that we have in Florida. in Arizona, there are public school districts operating their own micro schools already. my understanding is their legislation was actually mirrored after ours. but they do have public school districts operating their own charter schools. For example, there's Camelback Monastery in one of the districts. they have a micro school where students are actually doing experential learning out in state parks versus in a brickandmortar school. Texas, my understanding is having

315a pilot statewide with micro schools and legislation with how that will roll out within public school districts. So yes, we believe right now the path is that we need charter district status. However, maybe there'll be additional opportunities as well. Okay. And last last question on that, the micro school, and you might have already covered this, but can it operate out of an out of one of our schools? Can it colllocate, if you will, within one of our schools? So, I don't want to use the term colllocate just because that's a bad term, but you know. Yeah. Yeah. So, yes. we're working on theou right now. They would be leasing space. there are things that I've received from several in one of our schools that's operating as a school which has excess capacity. Yes ma'am. So

316within a current elementary school that has capacity working with some of we've been having this cabinet discussion and so cabinet members have surfaced some things that will need to be in theou that they're signing on to commit to regarding safety supervision and different other aspects that they're agreeing to for operating within our school. Okay. All right. All right. Thank you, member Fant, you're up next. Thank you. And thank you team again for, getting all this information for us. Definitely not an easy meeting to have and not easy receiving emails from families who are personally being affected. I think that's probably the hardest thing is reading the emails and knowing that this decision doesn't just affect a school building, it affects the families, students, teachers, administration. and so I think the biggest thing that I really

317want to convey to families is as we look at consolidating, no school was targeted due to their grade or staff. It truly is just the fact that these schools are under capacity. They don't have enough students in them to be able to pay the bills, if you will, and to provide each student with the high quality excellent education that we want to give them here in Orange County. So, for every letter that I receive and the parents or maybe even staff members talk about how incredible their schools are, they really are incredible. the vast majority of them are, you know, A or B schools and great schools, but the amount of kids in them, we need more kids to be in them. So, that's the main reason we're even talking about consolidation. it is a

318tough decision and a tough topic to even, you know, discuss. You kind of want to just push it aside and think about something else. but in the long run, this is something that will benefit every student then because now we have the funding that we need to be able to provide them with all the extra bells and whistles, if you will, as long and including high quality academic education. So, I just wanted to say that part, but one question I had, so I know I mentioned this at our personal meeting, but I would love to just bring it up because I had a question from a staff member at Meadowwoods Elementary, and they had talked about turning Meadowwoods into a K8. Basically joining with Meadowwoods Middle School and Meadowwoods Elementary. In theory, it sounds amazing.

319And so, I just want to say publicly that we really thoroughly discuss this the option. I'm I love K8s. My kids have grown up in K8 school. the K8 model although maybe not financially as our our best model, but I love the way that it keeps those middle schoolers younger longer, if you will. and just like a tight-knit community. but could you share just a little bit about why the like just moving an elementary school into a middle school and making it a K8 isn't quite feasible? I'll let Tommy because he's better with numbers. So, we discussed a bunch of different options just looking at the school. So if you were to make say Meadowwoods Middle a K through eight do doing all that it would you it would it takes three elementary schools to

320to fill a middle school. So you would basically be turning three elementary schools and you would probably be consolidating three elementary schools and you wouldn't really I you wouldn't have enough space to be able to do all those things. also you can't just take an elementary school and say have a large 6 through 8 population because when you do that you would have students entering at that school at an upper grade level. So and I think our model the way it works with the K through8 is they metriculate through all the grade levels with to all the way up. So if you were to add additional students at that grade level, they'd be entering the school at the sixth grade level and that goes against how we run our K through8s. Very true. Very true.

321So thank you. And that really helped me understand it as well. that even though we have an elementary like those kids, we're wanting them to just continue along. So they graduate fifth grade and then they go into sixth and then seventh, eighth together. where at a middle school now you have extra students who didn't come from the same elementary school. It's just going to be a little more of an issue. I think we're going to if we were to do that you'd have to make like quite a few K8s in the area or somehow then it would be we would be meddling if I don't know if that's even the right word but you know more more kids would end up affected if we were to do that. The other one that had been brought

322up was creating a dual language magnet, but as was discussed earlier, that would take several years. but I would love to see that those happen even if they're not. What is the difference between the I know we have a dual language there's like magnet programs and then there's immersion. Is it different or same thing? I feel like there's a difference between the two. We're going to let Mr. Moody speak, but we're going to start the clock. Oh, but you give the best explanations. I love So, this one will be short actually. so, we have dual and ELLL department may be the best to to answer it, but I can take a stab at it. so we have some dual language programs that aren't magnets. I think Sunshine elementary may ha may have a dual language

323program. Hunter Creek and Tildenville are dual language and Union Park Elementary are dual language magnets. So they can attract kids from across the district. But the others would be just homegrown so to speak within their zone school school of enrollment is their dual language program that they have. It's not a magnet. Do you know Weatherbe? Do you remember if that's that's not a magnet? That's like It is not a magnet. I'm not sure if they have a Yeah, they do have a dual language program there. And basic what a dual language program is. Traditionally in Orange County, it has been English and Spanish. And so it's typically starts kindergarten, sometimes first grade, and then goes all the way through fifth grade. and children will learn in English and in Spanish. So they may have science

324and math in Spanish, and the rest of their classes are in English. And the class is ideally made up of students that only speak Spanish and then students that are only English speakers. And then by the time they gradu I'm sorry, by the time they leave fifth grade, they are fluent in both languages. and so that is at Weatherbe. and they we have looked at some of the numbers of taking some of the families that may want that program and putting it in another school. What happens or what has happened? We used to have a lot of schools with a dual language program. In fact, I think Union Park Elementary was one of the schools that comes to the top of mind. And what happens is if the interest is not there, the program then

325doesn't sustain itself. And so you'll have families that decide, no, I don't want my child to do it in third by the time they leave third grade. And so now you're faced with having to fund two teachers for the fourth and the fifth grade even though you don't have all of the students. So it the schools that have wellestablished dual language programs are phenomenal and have been in existence for a number of years. The immersion program relates to the instructional strategy that is used for our children who are second language learners and are learning English as a second language. Perfect. Thank you. I would love as we reimagine schools and try to kind of broaden our look on just from the traditional public school to what can we do to attract students in. I would

326love to see more dual language programs. My older two were enrolled in a dual language program. they learned Spanish beautifully easily. It's just wild to me what what took me a while to learn as a teenager. they were in there and my daughter was three or four when she first started and within a month she understood it. By two months she was speaking it like you're kidding. I wish it was that easy for me. and really incredible to see. And I know we have such a huge Hispanic population and Spanish speaking population. I know that's huge. Maybe there's other languages out there that I know we have a is it French in district six. so just kind of looking at those that would be something I'd like to to look at. let me look at

327what my other one. Okay. When we're also looking at facilities, we are not looking at selling facilities. Correct. I just I've had a lot of people reach out to me like, okay, you're okay. When when can we purchase a facility? And I thought, well, I we're not selling facilities at this point. So, the schools that we are currently speaking about tonight, we are not considering selling any of those schools. staff has worked on some alternative uses for those and they're not quite finished. So, we'll be able to come back to the board in January with more details. I am not saying that we're not going to sell facilities because after we look at optimization strategies, some of which were shared, we may have some facilities that the board may decide they would want to sell.

328And an example right now would be Fort Gatlin was a pro was a property that we owned. there was a facility on it and we are the board is now engaged in selling of that property. So I don't want to say we wouldn't sell any of our facilities but we are certainly not considering that for any of these. Perfect. I think well my two cents is I'd love to see us renting these facilities so we can continue to bring in funding. especially not knowing I feel like it's a little early to just sell schools and then if something happens in four or five years where there is an increase in students and now we're that board is saying why would they sell these schools? This is crazy. So just trying to think really being proactive

329and thinking ahead. I do just want to make one comment. I know board member Vanos, you have mentioned that there's $211 million being diverted to the scholarships, but you have to understand that those students have chosen not to be in our schools. So, there's a reason why they're not coming here. I do think we have to continue to keep that focus on high quality academics. We can have all the bells and whistles, but if our basics are not top tier, that's why parents are putting their kids maybe in different locations or different idea. Maybe for them a smaller setting is best. And so we have to remember that those parents are choosing to leave for a reason. The scholarships are not always easy. It's not like the easy way out. for them. They're happy that

330they can take another maybe there's a different avenue that works best for their family, works best with their what they're doing. the structure of their family. and so I think we can't even worry about funding that's going to people that aren't in our schools. If they were in our schools and we weren't getting that money, then that's a different story. But they are no longer in our schools. So, we can't to me I'm not worried about 211 million that's not in our schools. Let's look at what is happening in our public schools that's making parents choose something else. So, if it is that they're wanting a smaller setting, awesome. Let's look at micro schools. I love this. If it's that they want a dual language opportunity, well, let's check it out. We have this is

331how incredible this is that this board gets the opportunity to dream forward, reimagine how the public schools are being operated and presented to families and provide more options within the public school setting, bring families back in, but maybe in a different format than has been traditionally had. And I think there are a lot of parents who are wanting that one room schoolhouse feel kind of the old school getting back to the classical education. you wanting to share? Yes. I'm I'm sorry. And I've had opportunities to say this and I haven't thought the time was appropriate and I don't disagree with the fact that we need to listen as to why our parents are leaving. Like why are they choosing another charter school? Why are they choosing a private school? My concern is that I believe

332the numbers support that the vast majority are choosing homeschool. And I worry that the children that are being homeschooled, there's nobody looking out for their accountability. Florida touts, and I agree with this, of having one of the best, if not the best, accountability system across the country. And I like it. So then why not for parents that are homeschooling their child require as part of the fees dollars take the assessment? We gladly will open up our doors, have them test in our school, their neighborhood school, and then see the progress. If they're in a private school, they're tested. If they're in a charter school, they're tested. Number one, it gives the parent a true understanding of how their child is doing compared to the other children that are in in in public schools. It also

333alerts the parent maybe they believe their child is learning but their child is not and could they need to ask for additional services. And so that's where I have great angst is not that we need to listen and see why they are choosing an alternative. It's for those that are choosing homeschool. Where's the accountability? Because we have seen children whose parents have left have come back two years later and they are three years behind. So the time that they were not with us and they were homeschooled, the parent must have believed the child was learning. And you know, I know everybody, a lot of people think that they went to school so they can teach. Those of us that have taught know it, that's not true. It's very difficult to teach. And so while they

334may think they're doing a great job at home, their child is not learning. And then what does that mean for the future of these children that are being homeschooled? So that is where I have huge angst about the future of these children who the accountability system is not there when we have the tool here in the state of Florida and it's a great tool. I do know that just to comment back on that like in private schools for instance they don't necessarily test their students through the fast test. Correct. But they take a standardized assessment right and so does all PEP students and all they all are required to take that in order to maintain their funding. I have friends that are on but not correct. And that's what I'm saying that what what happens

335like if our students aren't doing well in our schools or the charter schools, they have to put together a plan to show how they're going to improve. And again, I'm not I'm not saying parents don't have the right to choose how they're going to educate their child, but if their child isn't doing well, how how do they know if they are not taking a look at the results of their assessment and then trying to get additional supports? And so, and we've seen it in some of our schools. We've had families that have come back after two years and when the principles are looking at the fast assessments, those children are two or three years behind. I would say nine out of 10 homeschoolers, if not 10 out of 10 that I've met personally are way

336above. but we'll get back to some of the questions. So, just wanted to say I'm really really happy to see that we are offering classes to the homeschool students and I know that's something that Mr. Moody and I discussed a couple years ago and just being able to offer that and bring those funds in and let them be able to explore some of the awesome things that we have to offer here in Orange County and then just also excited about the micro schools. I think that's all I have here. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you, member FR. Member Douglas, this is truly a great conversation. seriously. but the whole situation is heartbreaking because I have taught at Union Park middle school, okay, for a year. And to see that it's going to

337we don't know yet. Okay. But I know that we're going to find the best solution for Union Park for sure. my the question that I have here you had community meetings, right? I would like to know a little bit the parents opinion about how to save their schools. What what do they what are the the solutions? if you look at the best scenario scenario and the worst scenario, what what do they bring to the table? What do they think could help with those school? because we're talking about the schools, we're talking about the principal, we're talking about but what about the parents? What do they think about? Thanks, Miss Douglas. I'm going to turn it over to Michelle in a moment because she has dove into the thought exchange information with some things that aren't

338trends, but some things that came up that I think you may be interested in. you know, we talked about magnets earlier. Some of you have brought that up. you've been contacted about magnets, but as we know that's a process that takes time. and so that's one of the solutions that came up. others have been about continuing to operate the school with less support services. and as you heard Dr. Dr. Vasquez say earlier and I would echo that these conversations are very difficult. but also we want to focus on the student experience and if we're no longer subsidizing these schools, which we no longer can, the student experience is impacted by not having those resources. And so, you know, while we appreciate that feedback, our current recommendation is that that's not an option that is in

339the best interests of students, families, or staff. So, I'll turn it over to Michelle for some additional insights that came out from some of the meetings. Thank you, Dr. Border. everything that we've shared today, parents were wondering if they want become a magnet, a K8. Everything that we've mentioned today came out in those community meetings, but I do want to highlight something. Sometimes we kind of listen to the big group, right? The loud voices. But in our community meetings, we did have a small group that said that consolidation would provide some benefits for their students. Oh, okay. And that increased resource sharing and improved facilities would be available to their students. So I want to highlight that even though we had a large group of community members and stakeholders sharing their concerns, we did have

340those outliers and those families that said, you know what, this may be a good thing and so I wanted to share that. Okay, that's wonderful. Okay, my next question is we talk about magnet and we know that magnets take a long time. What aboutmies do we think about it? I was talking to you about environmental you know some academy something to to bring something new to those students. So I'll attempt to give the short answer Miss Douglas and Mr. Moody can come in with what I leave out. So the process to become an academy school has an idea they sub typically submit a proposal they work with school choice staff. that's typically year one where you're you know you're you're putting that idea together and then if feasible and something that we think has potential

341then you're looking you're starting the academy year two and then if that academy is successful then you can look at transition to a magnet program which may or may not be the following year depending how successful that academy year is. How urgent do we have to make this happen? I mean if we want to start an academy, is that possible to do in one of those schools? So I believe from when from when the former school choice office which Greg Moody was also a part of told me no in the past. I think those conversations need to start in the fall. and so I'm not saying they couldn't start now, but planning typically takes a year of submitting that proposal to be able to have an academy the following the following year, Miss Douglas. Okay.

342All right. Thank you, Dr. B. And I think Dr. Vasquez has additional additionally remember they do not have the enrollment currently to bridge that gap and so it does take time for themies to take root. So we would still be in a position where we would have to be putting dollars in to the school because it would not be breaking even so to speak. Okay. All right. Wow. well, thank you so much for your work because you have done really very comprehensive work trying to find solution for those schools and I know just like we are you do not want the school to close or anything. So I know you're going to find the best solution again. Thank you so much for for the families and for our community. Thank you so much. Thanks board

343member Douglas. Thank you member Douglas. I have a bird. Thank you, chair. Okay. I'm just going to preface this by saying that my page is all messy and it's I'm probably going to be like all out of order when I say things, so just bear with me. first of all, I want to encourage us to, as we're talking about, sharing about our schools and our successes, I really want to encourage us to share about our partners that we have in our public schools. That is where I think our big market differentiator between us and other educational options. Even schools where you know you've got let's say you've got a charter school that's an A school down the street from one of our schools that's an A school. The big difference is that over here at

344this school we've got partnerships with Disney. We've got partnerships with Universal coming in. we've got partnerships with Loheed Martin and God, I can't even think of them all. There's so many partners that we have in this community that are partnering with Orange County Public Schools. And every one of those partnerships offers our kids a unique opportunity that they're not going to get at a smaller school. So, that's something I think we should when we're talking about advertising and getting out in the community and marketing our schools. That's something I think we really need to push. it's just the enormous opportunities that our kids get. I love the idea of the micro school with the kids going out into the park and, you know, I live right down the street from Wokiva Springs State Park. Just

345saying. great opportunity there. you mentioned that Renaissance, the students at Union Park Middle, there's several that are attending Renaissance Charter. Is that a K8 school? Renaissance. Do you know? Yes. Renaissance is a K8. Yeah. we've had a lot of discussions. I know we talked earlier, some of the other board members talked about K8s. We've had a lot of discussions about the K8s over the years and, you know, really went all in with them and then pulled back because there was maybe some less opportunities for the middle school kids than there were at our regular middle schools because they had more funding for more teachers, more electives. But I have to say, middle school is a scary time for parents, scary time for kids. And we are always hearing about parents being nervous. I just met

346a parent Saturday night that was at an event that was asking me all about middle school because she's all nervous about her fifth grader going to middle school. So that could be why a lot of parents maybe leave, especially as they go into the middle school if they're if they're in like a smaller K8 environment. I mean, middle school's scary. I'd consider pulling my kid and putting him in a little K8 charter as opposed to a big 1,200 6 through 8 that you know it's it's a scary time. So I really think as we look through the future and reimagine our schools, I think it might be time to start looking back at these, you know, what are parents really asking for? Are they do they love the K8 model? I know my parents in

347my community absolutely love it and maybe that would be a way to attract back a lot of parents and keep all those fifth grade families that leave. and we mentioned about the communication and I and again I'm going to reiterate what my board members said. I would highly recommend that we look at this next layer. If we have another layer of schools that we're considering that are looking, you know, that are low, that we immediately start communicating. And when I say communicating, maybe not just declining enrollment concerns, maybe we use the language closing schools, consolidating schools, because when when that language changed these past few weeks with those town halls and then the media got a hold of it and then there were stories then the people the communities were outraged and upset and you

348know it was a totally different ballgame. So I think but even though we have been talking about declining enrollment for like you said like nine months up here from the board table there's just nobody's listening to our board meetings first of all. Second of all second of all that's just that's not the same language as we're considering closing schools you know or consolidating schools. So I think that transparency is going to be really important. can you just or could someone just explain about with the schools that are if we consolidate schools and then we've got this campus, we can or we cannot let that campus sit unused. Now, with the new with all of our new legislation, if we had a campus that closed and we weren't going to sell it, but we wanted to

349hold on to it in case we need it down the road. are we allowed to do that to just because I've had people say, "Well, why not just close, you know, close the campus, but hold on to it." You know, when someone else talked about selling, we don't want to necessarily sell. I thought there was a problem with that. like we couldn't just let an empty school building sit there. Correct. Don't we have to? So, Madam Chair, may I please? Absolutely. so there's the provision of the charter statute that says if we have an unused and vacant building, we have to offer it up on the same basis as we would any other public school. So, if we had a charter school, for example, come in and say, "Hey, thank you. We've got a vacant

350building there. I want to use it." They could. Okay. That's important for everyone to know. also it's also important for everybody to understand how important this whole collocation conversation is because you know these are schools that we already struggling or we're already you know compensating for that gap of what they're producing and what we're spending. And then if we left this left it the way it was or if we shut down just one particular section of the school and then a charter a charter can come in there and then we have to now not only compensate for what we need to do for our students. We now have to compensate for having that charter in there. We have to pay for all those extra costs because of the new law. So, that's something I'm still

351not hearing enough people in the public talk about. you know, people are still coming to me and saying, "Well, why can't you just shut down a certain part of that school if you don't need it?" but, you know, it's much more complicated now with collocation. it was also mentioned that you've got Greg, you talked about home the home education families are you've got home education families that are not Florida empowerment scholarship recipients. But I'm trying to understand why would a why is that? Why would a family not take the scholarship money if they can now? Now there's no income, right? Good good question. So the little background obviously the scholarship funds were the PEP scholarship funds more recent were really targeting homeed students. then this so that the parent has absolute control of how they

352spend the $8,000 allocation. So then the state came out and said well if you take the scholarship you cannot be enrolled in home ed as we know at home ed. So we had to take them out of home ed and then enroll them in into another entity. Bottom line is a lot of home ed parents want home ed for the autonomy and the control of their students their child's education. Some I would say have have shared they want no part of public ed. they prefer to do it on their own. they don't want any involvement in in public ed. It could also be awareness, right? There was when it first came out the scholarship targeting home ed students, there was a lot of confusion within that community. so the awareness is not probably where the

353state would like it to be. I think that will change next year. I think you will probably see more and more students from home ed and the traditional home ed move over to scholarship as parents become more aware of it. and I think to as we public ed maybe provides partners and contracts with with those entities with those parents. they would take those dollars as well. But I think it was awareness. I think they don't want some just don't want any part of it of home. I mean of state involvement in education cuz when they take the state money then there is there's involvement. They have to show how they're spending the money. Isn't that correct? They have to Okay. It's not just like they're given a $9,000 check and it's just a $9,000 check.

354But it is very it is very lenient isn't it about what they can spend. It is my understanding. Yes, it is very lenient what they can spend that money on. Okay. So just to kind of I agree with you member FR. I know a lot of homeschoolers that are excellent and I don't think that they're all not good. I think we've got 9,000 of them though. I'd be willing to bet there's a there's a huge number of them that probably the good homeschoolers are not thrilled about because they give the really good ones a bad name just like really good really bad charter schools give good charter schools a bad name you know it's the same thing there's bad players but I do know that there are a lot of families now that you know

355are struggling to pay bills struggling to pay rent. struggling to put food on the table. And when you're you've got three kids and that represents an extra $27,000 a year that's a that's incentivizing to a lot of people probably. So, I would be really interested to know if we could look at if we could get like a little more information on the children that we know in Orange County that are doing homeschool, if we know just a little more about the situation, how long they've been in homeschool, if if they're new homeschoolers, what grade level. I'd love to know that, too. how many are elementary, middle, or high? I think I think it's all really important information. And the other aspect of this that worries me, when Dr. Vasquez was talking was just people not

356having their eyes on these kids. you know, I know that the Florida abuse hotline kicks up in high gear when it that first week of school because kids are being seen for the first time in two months that have been through a lot over the summer. And so, and I know when we were in COVID and we had kids home and parents and teachers had cameras in the home, there were concerns about kids safety. So, there's a lot of kids, that's a lot of kids that are not having eyes on them, too. So, that is that's always concerning to me. I think that is all of my comments. Thank you. Thank you, Member Bird. Member Salom, Vice Chair, I will keep this quick because I know this is our second round of folks and folks

357want to go home. but thank you for answering our questions. one, I did want to iterate two points because I don't want to be having a lot of these conversations again in the future, but really on on communication with the schools that potentially could be at risk based on we have tenure projections. If we know the projections of our reside in that area are nowhere near that then we need to have that conversation with our families way ahead of time. They will do a lot to save their schools if we give them the opportunity to be those recruiters. And so and that is beyond communicating to our principles and staff that it's really communicating to our families. and a lot of families did see that email saying, "Here's a community meeting for consolidation." They had

358no idea what that was because it just did not speak the language that they speak when they think about something like that. and so to we need to do better on communication. We really need to do better. because I think that's one of also the reasons why our families don't choose us is they don't know how much great things are going on. they don't have the opportunity to be active engaged family members in our schools always. and so that's for sure one of the things. I'm also excited to hear I know a lot of the stuff that you presented today to the board is really early in how we are thinking about these facilities. I want to iterate that to the community as well. from the community meetings, we got a lot of questions of

359what is OCPS going to do with these facilities? there was a lot of bad information out there of we're going to profit off of them, we're gonna sell it, we're going to do all these types of things. So, I know in a lot of our meetings, I know in my meeting I asked you all to come here with what are we going to do with our facilities and bring all the things that are being considered even if these are early in the works and that was for the sake of transparency. I want to flag that because I know you're getting a lot of questions on what is this 9K home school and what's this micro school thing. and that doesn't mean we have decided one way or another on a lot of this stuff. And

360what I don't want people to walk away thinking is OCPS has set in stone that we're going to do all these 10 things and we flushed out every part of it. Like this is something we have not done. and I and we requested transparency of all the things being considered so that folks know they're being considered. but that is not set in stone because I know some families are saying looks like these decisions are made and we're going to do all this stuff and and in the future there's going to be more opportunity for feedback and for this board to talk about these conversations. So, I'll say that because I think I'm starting to get some emails as we have this conversation about some of these questions and it sounds like, you know, we have

361it all figured out. and we don't because this has been a really tight timeline. This board did have some heads up on obviously low enrollment, but this board did not have a heads up on the type of budget we had to work with and the budget we're going to have to work with. So, our staff has been working really hard. to appreciate a Herald and staff to everything you've been doing to bring some solutions with a very limited amount of time because we required that we didn't just say we're going to close our schools and we'll figure it out later. We this board did kind of hold you to a hard bar of don't just bring us problems, bring us some solutions as well. the second thing though I do want to say to the

362solutions that you did bring is that there are a lot of students that are not choosing OCPS and to some degree I don't think we're the best at communicating what we offer and doing a good job at staying competitive and we're trying to address that accordingly. But we also we need to be creative. there are other states who had voucher systems like Texas and Arizona and those districts are getting really creative about how to bring back, like you said, educational service money back in micro schools, charterled. And these are really touchy subjects for a variety of reasons, but we have to figure it out because the trend is clear and what we've been doing has not been working. And so if we keep doing what we've been doing, I don't know that we're turning the

363ship around. And so to the degree that we can think outside the box, whether it's the micro schools or this charter district statue, all of that, I am really happy to hear that OCPS and the state of Florida could be at the forefront of innovating this. so I do want to thank our superintendent Vasquez for doing this because in education it is really hard to be innovative and swing for the fences with some of this stuff because it's inertia and education is big and it education is notorious for being the most riskaverse industry along with healthcare. but education is suffering and we are bleeding students and funds out of education. and I welcome everyone to come with ideas and an open mind about what we can do. And that's what's exciting that I think folks

364mentioned that we get to think outside the box in how we respond to this. and I'm I feel grateful that we have a superintendent and staff that is thinking outside the box. It's not going to be easy. but I'm I'm excited that we have that opportunity and we should learn from other states that have rolled out programs like this and what is working for them or not for bringing some of that money back. So, I look forward to the ongoing conversations we're going to have about this. I'm sure there will be a lot of thinking that we're going to have to do. I don't know that we're going to get everything right. and I think we should be prepared for that, but I think we need to try our best to do something. And you

365know, just like the Casia marketing, right? We can do it in-house. We've been trying to do it in house for a long time. It hasn't been working. We had to go to a third party to learn and do it. Well, we brought in 134 million net in FTE because of that work. Are people unhappy about the 1 million that we had to pay them? Yes, of course we are. but we also got 14 million we wouldn't have otherwise. So, anything that can bring that kind of money back into the district that allows us to pay our teachers more to keep programs and offerings and services that keep us competitive, I'm all for and I definitely encourage you all to to keep thinking about it. So, thank you for that. Thank you, Member Salamanca. Member Gallo.

366Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I want to say that I agree with what member Salamanca said about look at that she's smiling about being innovative and thinking outside the box because I do think that while this is a challenge it has the potential to offer a better learning environment for our kids. And for that I'm I'm excited. I'm excited because school shouldn't look like it did 50 years ago. And too often you walk into a classroom and with the exception of technology it does. And so we do need to be innovative and think outside the box. At the same time though, while we're doing that as others have mentioned and member Solomona just mentioned, we have to ensure that every student is learning. And I think when you see myself get frustrating frustrated

367or other members get frustrated or the superintendent get frustrated, it's because we care so much about kids and we care so much about the future of education and the future that they're provided, right? We want a skilled workforce. We want to keep talent local and with the numbers of homeschooling rising because I think when I talked to you Mr. Moody before like before COVID we were at like 3,000 for homeschool students. Is that correct? He's not in his head for those who can't see it. And now we're at 9,000. And that 9,000 doesn't even include the amount of homeschoolers that are within the PEP program getting a family empowerment scholarship. And yes, family and scholar, if you're in the PET program, which is the personalized individual or home education program, you do have to take

368a norm reference test, but the law about renewing your home is when you submit it. You've got to submit it before the deadline. It says nothing about the score that you get on that. And if you choose a norm reference test, your parent can be your proctor at school and it could be given on the computer. we saw during COVID how much how how many times a parent was doing work for their child online because we saw the numbers when they were at home and we saw the numbers when they came back and I'm I know that a lot of homeschoolers do it right. I know so many that do a fabulous job but I have seen adult children come from homechools that their life has been completely destroyed and they can't make a livable

369wage because their parent thought they were teaching them and they just weren't. and now they don't have a career technical education. They don't have they can't go to college, you know, they're they're doing the best they can, working two to three jobs, and they just don't have the knowledge that they need to thrive. And that's what breaks my heart because every child deserves to have a high quality education. and they deserve to be successful and to have a family and a good life. That's all we want. I do have a question because this was asked of me. I had a teacher that is at one of the schools and she is probably about three years out from retirement. And I don't know, I don't want to get into bargaining and John will glare at me

370if I do, but are have there been any discussions with the union about maybe offering an early retirement if there aren't jobs available? Like, will we be doing anything for those teachers that are so close to retirement? Is there anything that we can do? I said I would ask this question. May I? Yes. tell her that you can't answer. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. That's going to have to be done at the bargaining table. So, it would have to be a discussion with the union. Obviously, we'd have to come to agreement and, you know, there would obviously have to be discussions about, you know, funding and funding sources and all of that. So, there is a whole host of things that we would. So, I just so I'm clear, it's a bargaining issue, not an FRS issue.

371You can incentiv and forgive me I want to make sure I'll look this up to make sure I am right. You can incentivize folks to leave early, but what happens there is whether they leave early or not, that doesn't change their eligibility for FRS and it doesn't change the subtraction. Like say if they were short of 30 years by 3 years, there's a certain percentage and I think it's 5% per year, but don't quote me on that you have to that you would have coming off the top of your benefit. So they could retire early. We can incentivize them to do it, but F FRS would still charge him that penalty for retiring early. Okay. Well, I know Clinton McCracken's been here the entire time that we've been here, and I know he's listening, so

372I wanted to ask that question. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you. We are 20 sec. Member Galla, so we are 20 seconds away from finishing the meeting and you pushed your button again. No. Okay, that's all right. I just heart palpitations there. I we need consensus. I just want to make sure that Oh, okay. Okay. We're 20 seconds away from board discussion being over. You got the last 20 seconds. Then we'll go back to the super. Yeah. Sorry. This is I forgot because I know we need a consensus. So I was going to bring it back to the consensus which was today's been long and we started a very long conversation with a school that we are leaving open even though their performance is clearly failing students. and that was a really difficult

373conversation to have. and it kills me to think that we have schools today that we're going to be consolidating or closing that are big schools while there are some charter schools out there operating or students getting homeschooled for which they are being failed. They're they're not doing well. They're not they're being retained and there is no accountability for that. And so I think we had an insightful conversation. I'm glad we're on the same page about what we have to do next to protect our school district and and the budget that is ahead for us. but it is clear that systematically this is not a fair equal playing ground. because in just one day of I don't know how long we've been here, we saw schools that were not doing great and failing our students and

374families and not being transparent about it, being rewarded or allowed to stay in business. And then schools that are doing great, whose families love them and are fighting to save them and keep them open, whose teachers want to keep them open and we have to make this really tough decision to close them. And so and that is systematic and it's really hard to live with. But that being said, I know what we have to do. It is my fiduciary duty as a school board member to think about how we keep our budget, how we are responsible with taxpayer money and just fight another day and hopefully communicate better for future schools so that we are not back here in the future. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Member Salamanka. do want to clarify for anybody

375who just tuned in when you said we started out this day keeping open a school blah blah blah I want to be clear for the audience it is a charter school we do not have the authority to close that school because of its charter status the board did have a lot of questions and concerns and rightfully so and we'll be back revisiting that u at a future time with that school. But again, it is outside of our purview to close that school down. So, but everything else I mean, I agree with everything you said, but I just don't want anybody to think that we're saying, "Okay, you're not doing good. That's fine. You're doing great." Yes. Okay, superintendent, you're recognized. thank you, Madam Chair. before I pose a question, I do want to I want

376to clarify when I spoke spoke about home education students and accountability, I was not referring to fees. I was referring to those that are in a traditional home education program. And certainly we know that there are some incredible students that are doing some amazing things. we've seen them come back after and so I just want to clarify that and so madam chair we need consensus from the board to be able to begin the reszoning process at the seven schools. what that would entail given the board's consensus to move forward. we would advertise to the communities the dates of the community meetings where we would come back share a similar presentation that we did today with why my school respond to the questions that they posed at their particular community meeting. And then we would have

377student enrollment produce potential maps about reszoning. And we would follow the resoning process as we would with any other reasonzoning. Clarification. In starting that process, are you actually asking essentially for this board to approve of the closing of those schools? not an official vote. But in order for us to be able to begin the resoning process, we need to start having those meetings in January so that we meet the timelines. It will come back to the board for a vote and at that point you would be voting to close the schools, consolidate the schools. Okay. You are asking to start the resoning process but not finalize the resoning process because we wouldn't be resoning if we're not closing a school. Okay. If we're not consolidating schools, we would not be reszoning. So, you're starting the

378process, but ultimately the reasoning and the final decision, both of those would come back to us. Okay, everybody okay with that? All right. Thank you. Thank just wanted to make sure we were clear. All right. Anything else? I don't even Never mind. I didn't ask. We're done. We're done. Who did? That's what I heard you said. Meeting is earned. You gave me the Yeah, that's why she was asking. Heat. Hey, Heat.