001Good afternoon everyone. It is Tuesday, November 4th, 2025. This is a school board workshop and the time is 100 p.m. Sergeant at Arms. Has the front lobby been attended to? Yes. Thank you. There are 12 items on the agenda today. Safety updates, school names, construction change order report, September 2025, construction projects, bimonthly update, November 2025, budget overview, job descriptions, policy review, pre-briefing, first reading. Plan for student enrollment of 2627 year briefing, first reading. District strategies, priorities, recruitment and retention, student advisory focus group, fraud, waste and abuse, public comment and good of the order or other business. Per board protocol, each board member should strive for four minutes for initial comment, two for followup with a total of 10 minutes during today's discussions. We will begin this afternoon with their safety update presented by Dave Nulan
002and Sher Leonard. Good afternoon board members. Dr. Denise Carlin, superintendent and our school board attorney Kathy Deree Bruno. with me, as you mentioned, with me is Sheri Leonard. She's our district threat management coordinator. just to give you a little heads up on that on the requirement for that. So this is required for every district to have a DTMC district threat management coordinator. And actually now we actually have a backup as well. that's also required in the latest legislation. So, we thought today we'd talk a little bit about threat management program, how this was started, and kind of like show you where we're at currently right now. Since the Margaret Stoman Douglas High School public safety act u when that occurred, this is where created the requirement to have threat assessment in every district in in
003Florida. And so this program started back in 2018 and that's we started obviously here with Lee County with different programs as we now we brought the president now when we'll talk about how we've kind of upgraded our program from what it was to what is today my microphone challenge. Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for having me here today. I appreciate the time and your support for the district's threat management program. just real quick, we started in 2018 with a program from a company called Sigma. We then worked to another program and we were staying ahead of what the state was man mandating in our program by at least a year. We were in advance of those initiatives that they legislated. So, that was a positive for our district. we then transferred to a digital platform
004in August of 2021 through a grant that we had acquired. January 1st of 2024 was the official implementation of the states model. It's called the Florida harm prevention and threat management model. And they actually created it. They had workshops and workflow groups throughout the state and they created our own model. And then they implemented just this school year a new digital platform. It's called the safety and threat management portal. We are still working out the bugs as it is new, but it will be a program that will enable us to transfer student records throughout all 67 counties in the state of Florida. That's great. This is just a slide to kind of show you how the legislation came about over the years. It began in 2018 where it required a team at every school. Then
005it transitioned into having an instrument which is what they technically call the paperwork that we use for the program in assessing the students. 2021 were minor changes and tweaks to the program. In 2022 we went through and added legislation about the actual process and the decisionmaking part of the program. And then from 23 to 25, they worked on implementing the Florida model program and the associated software with that. And just so I can jump in real quick. So, so right now we're doing going through the transition going from Navig 360 to the Florida model. All of our data is being transferred to that new Florida model. So eventually all everything will be through that one database like Sher mentioned and we'll have access to all the Florida counties as well. So we have basically what
006the legislation does is it requires that each team at the school have certain members on it. A minimum of you have to have an administrator, a law enforcement officer, which as you know we have SRO's, someone with experience in instruction as well as a mental health professional. Those are the minimum people that have to be on each team at each school. through the Florida administrative rule which is FAC rule 6A1-100019 that clarifies what the roles of the people were on the team and all the documentation required and then also legislation gives us not only the initial training requirements but also we have to do annual training as well. So again that rule 6A-1.0019 0019 defines the process. The overall statute that governs the program is 106.07 through the state board of education. All the documents,
007manuals, forms were approved, and those are what give us the specific details on how an assessment is to take place, the guidelines on how to determine the level of concern, how to create a student support management plan, and how to implement and oversee those plans. that provides consistency and accountability for each of our students and thereby ensures safety for everyone involved. So the threat management theory basically is to guide student safety efforts. That's the whole purpose of this plan. The student support management plan functions not unlike a safety plan would. We put we use the resources available throughout our district. our mental health resources, our accountability and discipline resources, our interventions along with goals when are applicable. it also provides that we notify parents every step of the way throughout the process and there are
008considerations for students with disabilities for things such as baseline behaviors and other federal protections afforded those students. however, we do treat them the same as every other student if they make a threat. The also the purpose is early intervention. We want to catch these behaviors as soon as we notice them so that they don't become egregious and more threatening over time. This is just some information for you from experts about why threat management is so important to the safety of our students. Basically, it reiterates the early intervention and how that supports students before their behaviors escalate to the threatening level. We ensure fairness when we use this assessment by using that multidisciplinary team so that everyone gets the same evaluation. the purpose of having different members on the team is also to have those different
009perspectives because a mental health professional might see something through a different lens than say an administrator who's used to conducting disciplinary approach for the different things they evaluate. that's why we have the multi-tiered system and again it helps us with early identification of these behaviors andor threats that students might make or encounter. Thank you. So if you look at the data that we're you're seeing in front of you right now in 23 to 24 total cases were 736 cases. The monthly average was 74. And you see the spike in 24 to 25. We had roughly cases. The average monthly was 214. If you look at the graph underneath it, you'll see a big spike in September. So it's kind of interesting to figure out like, you know, I'm sure the question is why are we
010having that spike and why do we have so many more cases versus the prior year? One of the things we talked about and unfortunately we don't have an exact answer, but we can tell you is that in in House Bill 1473, one of the things we did notice was within the first 5 days, we sent out four to five Florida training to all the schools, community and everybody else. So, it's interesting that spike occurred that same time frame in September. we don't know if it brings awareness and that's what maybe creates more more reporting possibly. It's kind of hard to say, but as you can see after that point, it drops back down to the rest pretty much stay the rest of the year. Now, I can tell you this year, for example, we did
011exactly the same thing, but there was no spike in September. So, it's kind of interesting to figure out why that is. and then looking at really if you look at the table below, you'll see that the monthly averages, as I mentioned before, I talked about 23 and 24 and 24 and 25. Now this only goes for this year we're only up to October 20th but our monthly average is 109 which is a half of last year. The interesting part of that is if I go back to the prior slide when you talk to the state and then now we have may have meetings with the state about all the other districts as far as threat assessments and we can tell you that in comparison to the other top 10 school districts we are about 50%
012less than the other districts our size. that's in comparison. Again, I can't explain why that is, but there is a difference. that was recognized in one of the meetings that Sherry had. So, we're just, you know, as we track the data, it's kind of interesting to follow to see how these things, again, like I mentioned before, why September spiked, then it went down, but then this year it didn't happen. So, we just continue to do that, track these things, look for trends as we go forward. you know, come up with better answers. But, as long as we're keeping track of all the threat assessments, we're getting ahead of it like we're supposed to be doing. that's the main point. So, and we'll stand by for any questions. Board members, any questions? Superintendent. Yes. So, first
013of all, thank you, Mr. Nulan and Miss Leonard, for your, outstanding presentation. And as always, we appreciate all the work of our schools and your team, on threat assessments and everything that we do inside of safety in our school district. I wanted to share just briefly with the board just to set some context about how important threat management is. So I had the occasion to meet with Max Shar who is the father of Alec Shakar who whose life was taken at Marjgery Stoman Douglas and had the opportunity to meet with him offline and we had a very thorough conversation about Marjgery Stoman Douglas, what happened there, where were the failures. I know several of you including Miss Jordan have had the opportunity to walk that building. but we had the conversation and there's so many
014things that we do inside of school safety and you know that's always our top priority as a governance team is making sure our children and our staff and our schools are safe. But I did ask him, I said, "Of all the strategies that we employ, from hardening schools to everything we do, counseling, everything we do, if you had to pick one strategy, one really high yield strategy out of all the good things we can do, what should we reinforce out there?" And he without a pause said threat assessment. If that had been done and had been clearly communicated in that situation, it is his belief that tragedy could have been averted. So, I just again so deeply appreciate the work of our team, our principles, and all of our folks at the school level that
015take this seriously. It is a tremendous time commitment. I will tell you, having run schools for 18 years, there is a lot of work to be done at the school level. We push on student achievement. We want all of those things to happen in alignment with our priorities. But I am so proud of our schools because they prioritize the amount of hours it takes to meet with our children, meet with our families, meet with staff, and truly understand the level of the threat so that it can be neutralized and avoided. so I'm just really proud of our team and thank you for the opportunity to share some comments. Thank you, Dr. Carlin. Board members, any questions or comments? Miss Jordan, I was just curious. Thank you very much. Again, as Dr. Carlin said, this is
016really good to see this, but what I have noticed lately, and I don't know if it fits ties in with this because I do believe that it does the amount of Baker X, which I've seen, it seems like lately they've been rising, and I don't know if that fits into this or it's tying into part of this, but I just I can let you help with that, respond to that. I have my own, but go ahead. Mental health plays a role in threat assessment. It is commonly a issue with some of our students, a factor in their situations. It could be related to traumas. it could be related to outside traumas at home. It could be something simple that happened in the school and it's a problem. Essentially, every threat assessment is a problem that
017a student has that they don't know how to solve. they don't have the skills or the emotional fortitude on how to solve it. So, they act out in the ways that they feel solve the problem for them. Miss Jordan, we'd be happy to provide that data. I have the same question. I I don't have a sense this year that is necessarily up, but I do want to make sure we get that data to the board and we'll make sure that happens through Miss Brooks and team. So, thank you for the question. Yeah. And if I may I just follow I just noticed because like you know there was a period of time where we did not see not one and then all of a sudden it's like it seems pretty prominent right now and so
018that's why I wasn't sure if this was the appropriate but in everything that you're speaking about it kind of ties into that. So thank you Dr. Bwin. Yes, we'll be happy to provide that data. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Persons. On the threat assessment team, we have mental health professional. There is that a psychologist, school counselor, social worker, or can it be any of the above? It could be any of the above as long as they're fully licensed or certified. Yes, sir. All right. Thank you. Okay. Thank you so much. Have a great afternoon. Thank you. Next, we're going to move on to school names. Presenting to us this afternoon is Chuck Valardi, Shereice Trent, Dr. Jason Curts, Jackie Fantasia, and Rob Spicker. Good afternoon board members. My name is Jason Curts, the principal Hector
019Cafarada Elementary School and also good afternoon to Kathy Dup pre Bruno and superintendent Denise Carlin. I'll let my compadres here introduce themselves. Good afternoon. I'm Jackie Fantasia, proud principal at James Stevens Elementary. Thank you for having me. we are back before you today to discuss the change in names for our school buildings and I'm going to start with Dr. Cafarada. just to kind of review where we have been. this comes before you under school board policy 7250, the commemoration of school facilities. We have a new K to8 building that is being constructed currently in the Northwest Cape. I'm excited to tell you there's some drywall going up in the elementary school building, some painting going on the walls. So, just a little side note there. we had our first ad hoc meeting on September 5th
020and then we sent out a survey of our constituents on the 10th. a second ad hoc meeting towards the end of September and then a presentation to our sack as well. We were here before you on the 7th for the initial workshop. and then now here we are on November 4th. These were the members of our committee. we had a mixture of parents, pair pair professionals, teachers, food service people and some admin. And then our through our survey results about 60% 61% of our survey respondents actually were parents. and then we had about a quarter that were students and 16% that were staff. our top two names were Hector A. Cafrada Jr. K to8 school and the Hector Cafarada Hector A. Cafrada Junior School. And our recommendation for you all is Hector A. Caffrada Jr.
021K to8 school. Superintendent, do you have any comments? Just thank you to Dr. Dr. Curts and the team and to everybody at Hector Keeretta. We really appreciate it and thank you so much for your patience. Postian, we want to get it right and we're very excited to see that K8 coming to fruition. So, thank you, Mr. Fischer. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just as a reminder, my fellow board members, I'll be pulling item I1 in support of this tonight in order to suspend the rules on 7250 board policy as currently K through8 is not supporting it in that naming nomen clure at the moment. we're working I know on that change in that policy but it will not be completed in time. So I just want to assure everyone or you know inform everyone that'll be
022pulled tonight. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Fiser. Any other comments? Continue. Okay. So we'll review James Stevens Elementary name change again kind of where we were following the same schoolboard policy 7250. we're experiencing a change in our school site. we've expanded to preK through 6th grade, effective this school year. It's going very well. we'd like to expand to 7th grade effective next school year and then finally end the expansion in school year 2728 with 8th grade. in August, we held our first ad hoc committee meeting. September 8th through the 15th, we surveyed all of our stakeholders. On the 18th at SAC, we presented our name change. on October 7th, we met with you all and we're back here today. So here's a list of our ad hoc committee. Again, a nice mix of administrators, telk,
023spelk, different representation on our group. and some of us carry u multiple roles. a parent and also an administrator and some of the staff are also parents. So our survey results were about 51% for James Stevens Community School. We also took 43% for James Stevens School. And then there were some people who still wanted to go back to James Stevens Academy, which is what we were prior. So we're moving forward today with the name recommendation as James Stevens Community School. Any questions? Any questions? Miss Jordan? I just wanted to have a comment regarding the name. The community in itself loves this name. So when you're out there and you're speaking to people, they said, "Where did they who thought of the community?" because that's exactly who we are. So, thank you. Yeah, there's been a
024lot of research with community hub schools. so I'm really glad that the community supports this change. All right. Thank you. Good afternoon, board members. Good afternoon, board members. Dr. Carlin, board attorney. part three of our presentation. I'm Rob Spicker. I'm the director of communications, marketing, and public relations. With me today are Lemule Teal assistant principal, Mio Gross Sourers, and North Fort Myers High School assistant principal Samantha Hutchinson. Our job is to present you the survey results for the naming of two new schools, High School NNN. And then that's in Alva and Elementary L in Lehi Acres. So, real quickly, just as a to start off our conversation, Elementary L is going to be opening up in a swing campus between Lehi Senior High School and Varsity Lakes Middle School next August. It'll have a capacity
025for 400 students while there. The campus itself is built on State Road 82 near Sunshine Boulevard. It's ready for 1,000 students in August of 2028. High school NN, as you know, just getting started with construction at 21,700 Tahoe Road in Alba. It will accommodate 2,000 students when it opens up in August of 2027. So, we're guided by the same schoolboard policy 7250. Just to walk you through our process while naming schools, we formed ad hoc committees with community members, parents, and some school or district staff for both of these schools naming process. We solicited naming suggestions from our community that was advertised through a school messenger emails to our parents, social media, news media, and our website for two weeks in October. About 380 suggestions were sent in for the elementary school and more than,00
026for the high school. Our ad hoc committees met on October 29th to review the suggestions, vet them against school board policy, and then recommend up to six finalists. Miss Sour is the elementary L ad hoc committee chair. So I'm going to turn the presentation over to her to go over those results. I'm hoping this is working. It is. Wonderful. Good afternoon board and Dr. Carlin. so we you can see on the presentation we had several names that were suggested that we discussed many of the names dealt with nature. A lot of them around oaks and meadows and malleuca trees. That was a big one. another one was Charlie Kirk Elementary that had about six or seven votes. The following had Lehi Elementary. A lot of recommendations were around and variations on the word Lehi. I'm
027not sure if they realize there's already another school, which is of course part of the naming policy, but there were a lot a lot around Gunnery Elementary. a lot on bright, bright stars, bright angels, anything dealing with bright. And the last one centered around the name of Lee Ratner or Lucky Lee Elementary. These are our recommended finalists for you to review on this first part of our ad hoc committee recommendations to you. Bright Elementary, Green Meadow Elementary, and Lucky Lee Elementary received the most votes of all. High School NN committee convened to review community submitted name suggestions for the new high school and ensure each option aligned with district policy. Some names were not accepted because they were duplicated or closely resembled existing school names, lacked a clear tie to the area, or did not
028meet district naming guidelines. The name suggestions with the most submission was Alva High School along with several several variations of such. Other submissions with high requests included Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump, and Mike Greenwell, which were not considered because they do not meet board policy 7250E.7.1. criteria for school names as it relates to people. The community also rejected Tuahoo and Kousa Hatchee as they lack representation of the entire student body. The committee aimed to select names that would reflect the incredible community response, foster community pride, reflect the school's identity, and honor to the heritage of the region in a positive and lasting way. After a thoughtful discussion, the community input, the committee recommended the following finalist names for consideration. Alva School, the Alva School, Alva Heritage High School, Peter Nelson High School, and Franklin Man High
029School. These names were advanced because they reflect strong connections to the Alva community and its rich history or honor individuals who made meaningful contributions to the area. The variations further deepen the connection to the heritage of the area. Danish Captain Peter Nelson founded Alba and named it after a little white flower in Denmark. Franklin man for his public service. Each finalist embodies qualities of pride, tradition, and excellence, values that represent the vision for the new high school and its role within our district. So, with the next steps with consensus from you today, with these suggested finalists for both the elementary school and the high school, we open up a two-week voting period tomorrow. We ask our community again to rank their choices in order of their preference. Our ad hoc committees reconvene just before Thanksgiving
030to go over those results and we're back before you at the December 1st workshop with a recommendation from those committees and a vote for you that evening on December the 1st. So I appreciate the work that our chairs have put in so far. Thank you very much. And at this point to Dr. Carlin the board if there's any questions or comments. Thank you very much Mr. Speaker and ladies. Really appreciate the work that you've put into this and we look forward to the board's feedback. Thank you. Board members, any comments? Mr. Persons being like, especially the two new schools, will the same committee take names for mascots or how do how's that done in the past? How do they pick it? The principles usually lead that effort and so once the principal is appointed for
031each of those schools, they can work through the community or reach out to ad hoc committee members, whomever they'd like to start to develop a process for the mascot and the school colors. Thank you. Yes, Mr. Fiser. Thank you. one thing again, obviously you have to go school by school under 7250 as a policy. If if it ends up being kind of geographic, I just hope we somewhat keep in mind obviously like an NN there's a future I don't remember the name, middle school that'll go there if we go that route. I just hope we kind of keep that under consideration as some of these schools will have multiple sites. Thank you. Any other comments? All right. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Have a great afternoon. Next, we have the construction change
032order reports from September 2025 along with our construction projects by monthly update from November 2025. And this afternoon, we will be hearing from Scott Rickenbacher and Kiara Soak. All right. Good afternoon board members. Superintendent Carlin Esquire Dequay Bruno. This is your monthly change order report for September as required by statute. On the front cover sheet, you can see we had direct material purchases of 1.2 2 million which resulted in a tax return to the district of $68,599. Non-direct material purchase orders standard change orders $412,000 zero return contingency adjustments of $289,000 and zero return on credits for that. You will see the backup sheet supporting all of the change orders and the DMP reconciliations. Are there any questions on any of these? Board members, any questions? Okay, I see none. Thank you. Thank you very much.
033All right, first slide. Basic. This is your two-month update on all of the projects. I will be adding a little bit of conversation at the end of each slide telling you what has changed in the last 60 days since we last presented to you or from when this was generated and went into the board doc system. So, currently right now on Beayshore, the only exception to the K8, I don't know if you've been out there, but we're out there pouring our pre-cast panel beds, getting ready to pour them up, cure them, and start standing them. vibratory compaction was completed in the beginning of October. There was a groundbreaking out there. I believe several of you attended on the 3rd of December, and we hopefully will start standing panels here shortly in the next couple of
034weeks. Any questions on Beayshore? Okay. Yes, sir. Oh, Mr. Persons, I know they're sort of working really hard on part of a parking lot since they lost their other one. Correct. Will that be able to be open before the school is done? I mean, it's not really adjacent to it if it's finished or is there any plans to have it open earlier? Let me get with the assistant director who sits in on the project field meetings and I'll get an answer to you and relay that back to the board members for you. I know that would be a big help for everybody. We do try to accommodate the school and the staff if we can to make those adjustments, but let me talk with the team first before I commit. Thank you. Next up, BBB
035preK8. currently we have officially submitted all of our southwest South Florida water management permitting, bugs, bunnies, water flow, and sewer. So, that's in the process to be approved. And again, that school doesn't open until April the 28th. So, we're ahead of schedule. This is the last piece of the puzzle for permitting which ultimately when the timing is right we'll put out for public bids and then come forward to you guys with a total project cost. Are there any questions on BBB B? Bonita Springs Elementary Rebuild. I don't know if you've been down there but it's going pretty quickly. It's probably one of the most congested sites other than when I did Dumbber High School or worked in Manhattan. foundations are complete. Building 20, which is the main CM, building of the CMU, is underway. We
036just poured all of the tie beams that locks in all the CMU before our steel goes in. And we started structural steel this week. So, that's going really quickly and hopefully we're on schedule and hopefully we can deliver that a little early if possible. Any questions on Bonita? I don't have a I don't have a question. And I just have a compliment that we were the superintendent and I visited school on Friday when we pulled up. It was really impressive and it was good to see the morale of the people of the teachers there and of course Mr. Hernandez the principal. They're all excited about the second floor going under the school already. So you're right about the steel. They are moving quickly and parking is a challenge. I know I had to park on
037the ground. So very good job. Thank you. And that's the team. I just signed the paper so the dean gets all the credit on that. Next is Cape Technical College expansion. Again, another job that's gone flying out of the box there. I don't know if you've been there. All the tilt panels are poured and stood in place and we're starting steel structural steel this week, which will enable us to obviously get the decking on, close it in, get it weathertight, and start some of the interior finishes. So, that's on schedule and on Q. Any questions? Okay, we're banging this one out quick today. Cypress Lake Middle School, another highly congested project. A lot going on in a small small area. to add to this, we currently have all the tilt is complete and erected. Structural
038steel is being installed as we speak. The main building three, which is the threetory, is actually dried in. So, that's got its decking in and first layer of roofing. And that allows us to get going with interior finishes, duck work, sheetrock insulation. underground utilities are currently underway. All of the duck banks and the FPNL process and conduit going in. total completion and occupancy of that building is in October of 26. we forecasted it out till February of 27, but that's for the demobilization of all the portable to get that area of the site cleaned up and moving out. Next slide. Any questions? Hector Caparetta Junior K8. that school is going great guns. If you haven't been out there and I should have mentioned as we on a construction website, when you click on our projects,
039you'll see a long list of the projects. Keep scrolling to the bottom and you'll see a photo gallery. Every month we update that with all the aerials and interior pictures of each project. Pretty detailed. So if you have time take a look at that. You can see what schools are at what stage and what's going on. but for Hector Cafaretta, all the tilt panel is completed on all the buildings. Structural steel is being installed in the last three buildings. Windows are being installed throughout all the buildings at the pre-cast is in is installed in. A roof is going on. Three out of the six buildings have roofs on it. First layer. And as the principal Jason inferred, we are already painting sheetrock in the inside of building 20. So the finish is done and we're
040putting finishing paint and finishes in that building. So it's it's going LC just provided us with a transformer. So we'll be energizing that building, getting permanent power on and off the generator and the temporary. And we just found out that I think we have a meeting this Thursday, Mr. Fiser in regards to the off-site permit work as we work through atou and ILA. So hopefully I'll be sitting in a meeting sometime Thursday to iron that through. Okay, next slide. Elementary L. you just talked about the name. that is a dual site. L is right there with O. Unfortunately, this particular school everything is shut down right now because of the current government status. So, Army Corps is not reviewing permits. Fish and Wildlife is not reviewing permits. we're hoping that kicks back in so our
041time clock on that school continues and moves forward. the drop dead for me to be shoveling the ground to keep the original schedule for the capital plan is September of 2026. So I've got to have all my permits in place in order to keep that. So we still have some time to push it through. the mitigation banks that we use are officially closed in an auditing process. Now we got through the mitigation bank on NN High School for the Panther crossings and so forth. but this one we found other agencies might be a little bit more expensive. We have to go to separate entities and grab those credits from the smaller entities to to make the volume we need for this particular site. We won't know that until the Army Corps completes their process and
042their permitting. And hopefully by that time the mitigation banks have completed their audit and are reopened again. We just get a little better bang for the buck when we buy the mitigation credits through that bank, that particular bank. Any questions on L and O? Okay. Middle school O we just spoke about. Same thing as L. Elementary M. Right now we have 100% drawings and again another project that we're waiting on the Army Corps of Engineers. Legislative gals Chrissy and her team have been working with us. Not much we can do to push the people that they help focus the attention on these reviews until the government's opened back up again hopefully soon. Any questions on that? High school NN again. right now we're waiting for one literally an email for Fish Wildlife Service FWS. Basically
043sends one email to South Florida Water Management that closes off the wildlife permitting and we should be getting a water permit once that happens within 30 days. So again, that time is clicking. We're waiting for the government to open back up. We have Christine her people focusing trying to put the push on that and we can get literally all of the RAIS which is request for additional information on all of the animals and so forth have already been ironed through. We've already got a purchase order to a tortoise hotel in Arcadia. So that's ready to go and the timing is right. 15 grand believe it or not for three teras it's not cheap. and as soon as the government opens up and we can get that email and get South Florida Water Management to issue,
044we'll get this thing started. Any questions on it? Yes, ma'am. Jordan, if I may. so on this documentation though, it does state that we have received permitting permitting received, which it has not. So, could we just correct that because I you just said we have not received it. Correct? We have Army Corbs and Southwest Florida Water Management District per received, but I don't believe that we have received that. Well, okay. Yes, I will change that language. we have received Army Corps, no permit required. Southwest Florida Water Management, we have answered and responded to all requests for additional information to RAIS. So, it's ready to go, but they cannot finalize their permit until that one piece of email from Fish and Wildlife Service is issued to them. And then it's our expectation that we should get
045a permit far in advance of the 30-day max they have because all of the comments and all of the design has been already answered to their satisfaction. Right. And I understand that, but but it's a play on words. I'll get it correct. Yeah. I've just had a lot of people question like we're not being transparent because have they really received it and it's stating that. So, I just want to make sure that we are being transparent that we're still waiting for that to I will get that corrected so it's it's more accurate. Thank you. You're welcome. Melli, did you have something? Yes. So, we're waiting on you said fish and wildlife FWI. Is that state or federal? Federal. Okay. I was See, normally how it works is when you're involved with Army Corps, they are
046a checkbox underneath Army Corps. So the Army Corps is constantly pushing them to do their reviews, to provide their releases. Since Army Corps, no permit required, they walked away from it. They're out on their own. So there's no entity pushing them. So we have the legislative girls, Christy and her staff, that are helping that with some of the political means trying to get them through that hurdle. Unfortunately, we didn't expect the government in its entirety to shut down. So I'm kind of sitting in a holding pattern. Okay. Thank you. All right, one more question, Miss Jordan. I'm so sorry. So, I know you gave us like a dead September 26 was like your need to have the other information for the one school. What is your end date on this project where it will remain
047the same amount of money? We have already started the shop drawing process. We have we will start the buyout process. I'm thinking by the first of the year I have to be able to make a movement on this site before I realize some financial penalties. Now whether that be rebidding or some escalation in cost because we missed the 45day window for buying materials that has not come forward. As soon as my group feels in our meetings that is something I should alert you to, you'll be the first to know through my boss, Mr. Nice. Thank you. But we believe all the stars will come together by the first of the year and hopefully we can get this thing moving. So we're doing other things to accommodate this initial time. One other email mentioned and I'll
048let you explain it that you know we took out a cop loan to cover this. Correct. And but it says here Capital Millage. I don't think they quite understand that you have to have capital pay off to Well, I'm not going to speak to capital. This job will be funded with a certificate of participation which I believe is just being resolved today. At least that's my understanding from the budget finance folks. once that is done, we just received the money from budget and finance. So, we're able to cut purchase orders to the three vendors that you approved back on October 7th. the mill part is in a different division. And that's not part of my knowledge base. So I wish I could answer that for you. Mr. Berson, we'll be happy to get that information
049for you. It's just the way it says funding source capital mill is confusing to people. That was all understood. And last but not least, Riverdale High School. we are complete with punch list and we're currently in project closeout phase. Any questions on that school? No, that's all I got. Thank you very much for your time. Oh, VPAA, I'm sorry, one last one. VPAA, the whole since 2021, we've been out there on an entire campus. We're finally done. you'll be having a ribbon cutting ceremony out there in the next week or two, I believe. school came out great, getting a lot of compliments. all of the finishes are done. It's been a long run. So, thank you. Hope you enjoy the ribbon cutting. Thank you, Miss Jordan and Miss Ganelli. I have a question and I
050don't know through the chair to Dr. Carlin. I'm not sure if it's for it's regarding 14 the approval to increase expenditures for site preparations and improvements. I know it's not part of this particular topic that we're on, but I can either get an answer here or we can pull it and speak on it later, whichever is preferred. Oh, just I didn't realize it today, so I apologize. No worries. Which slide are you on it? My It's actually it's on the action meeting for tonight. Okay. 14 and it is for the increase of expenditures for SDLC. and it's for site preparations and improvements and it's for 365,000 I believe it is. And I was just curious on what site is that for? Is that multiple sites? Where is it at when we're looking at because it's
051just one lump sum. It's like an addition and I just realized that today when I was re goinging over everything. So I do apologize that I didn't Sure. No problem. Yeah, we will take a look at that during the course of the meeting and I just need to track down the item that you're speaking about. We'd be happy to have staff look into that and get you some information. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Ganelli. So, I have a question. I want to make sure that we don't buy steel before we, you know, like what happened with the Three Oaks property. So, I want to avoid that from So, I want to bring that up just to make sure we don't prematurely buy steel. Correct. Right now, we're doing shop drawings. So
052hopefully the first three months of the job and actually we haven't even issued a notice to proceed to those three vendors because we didn't have the money in the purchase order opened until just recently last week. So we're we're already a month into that 3-month waiting period. So we'll start with shop drawings. We'll start ordering some of the RCP which are long lead. We'll start ordering some of the generators and the switch gears. If it is the superintendents and the board will that I come to you before I do any large direct material purchase purchasing of this material I can certainly do that if that's Dr. Colin's wish and yes let me let me comment on that if I may. Certainly we want to be keeping you apprised if there are delays or you know
053any any developments in in the situation. I think that's very appropriate. So yes we will we will keep you apprised. Thank you. I think that's it. Thank you so much. Have a great afternoon. Miss G. I don't have any more room in the parking lot to store stuff. Trust me. I'll make sure you're apprised. Thank you. Next, we have the budget overview presented by Kelly Lecter and Sarah Cox. Good afternoon board members, superintendent and attorney Dri Bruno Bruno. before we get started on our budget presentation, I'll answer your question related to N funding. So we did take out a cops to fund that school. However, it will be repaid with capital millage funds is how that works. so our budget overview for you today will focus on school allocations. We'll talk to you about where
054we are at in the fiscal year 26 process. Even though we're five months into the fiscal year, there's adjustments that go on throughout the year such as day 10. We shared some preliminary information with you all about that back in September. So we wanted to share some final information with you on that today. And then we'll talk about what we're seeing with survey 2 that was conducted in October. We're also well underway for our fiscal year 27 process. You know, we're typically operating in multiple years as we have one year operating and planning for the subsequent fiscal year. So, we'll talk to you about what that planning process looks like for schools for fiscal year 27. And then the last piece of information that we'll share with you is related to scholarship funding and particularly
055duplicated students. And what I mean by that is students who who were reported in a district school as well as reported as receiving a scholarship through the family empowerment scholarship or the Florida tax credit program. So with that I will turn it over to Mrs. Lecher. Thank you. So just kind of refreshing back to where in previous slides we and presentations we talked about what we were doing moving forward and I just wanted to catch everybody up. we said that we would be working with the regional assistant superintendents and principles on issues as they come up and that is an ongoing process. We do that all year long. adjustments to the allocations throughout the summer based on new enrollments. Of course that's been completed at this point because the summer's done and the adjustments for
056day 10 have also been completed. when we did our and then the next one will be adjustments based on October actual student FTE and projected February student FTE. We'll be making those changes in December January time frame, we'll be have those done before the second semester starts. So, when we're talking about the FY26 and what did that look like? Let's first talk about day 10 at our traditional schools and what that looked like when we do our projections for our schools. There's two different kinds of projections. There's a school by school projection where we determine which school we think will have the FTE and then there's a district forecast which is the one that department of education works with us just overall. When I'm talking about our changes at the traditional schools, I'm talking about
057our actual school by school projections. we were down, 1474 students from our projection on our school by schools at day 10. We pulled back about $9.2 2 million from the schools at that time when we looked at our preliminary survey 2 numbers. So that would be our October FTE numbers. And I just want to point out we're looking at this just the piece of our weighted FTE times our base student allocation times our comparable wage factor. it doesn't include other reductions like class size or ESC guarantee or anything. We are down about 2,083 FTE from the forecast which is about $7.2 million. That equates into two pieces. That would be our charter schools were down about 618 FTE which is about 3.5 million and our district schools were down, 1465 FTE, which is about 3.7
058million. So I know the big question here is why did I pull 9.2 from the schools when it doesn't look like that's what we're going to be losing? Good question. So just so you know when we allocated to schools in the beginning if you remember the legislative session had not ended. So we were working with what was my best guess or projection and I over projected. So when you look at our base student allocation and our comparable wage factor, we allocated $10042 more per weighted FTE than we actually received. So that means that when I allocate more when the cuts are made it's going to come back at a higher rate than when we actually make the cuts. Also our cost factors. So those are the weights that are applied to each level of student
059and the instruction they receive. So if they're ESC they get a different weight factor than a basic student. in the whole list of them they allocated greater in all but and I have two but it was actually three areas I allocated at a higher rate than we actually received. the other area is our Esau allocations. When we allocate to our schools we actually allocate additional Esau allocations to our schools over what is actually received from the state. This is because it was a great area of need that we had. We kind of got hit twice on this one because not only do we allocate more but that was the largest area of our decrease that we saw in the FTE was our Esau population. So the schools got hit with that double because they lost
060their regular allocation and their above allocation for that. And I want to clarify we often use the term enrollment or FTE interchangeably but they don't necessarily mean the same thing. you know, one headcount of a student may not necessarily equal one FTE, and that's because an FTE is based on instructional minutes that student has earned over the course of the year. so we're specifically talking about FTE and the money that's generated based on that. And also within the context of FTE, we're only talking about ESSE preK to grade 12 students. This would not include things such as VPK or or early childhood. Thank you. And I want to also point out on the base student allocation of $10042, that was an $ 8.7 million allocated more to the schools than what we actually received for
061the students. Just to give an idea of where that was. Oops. So, the next thing she talked about that we would be covering is our duplicated students. those students that have are also are getting scholarships or in the personal education program and were in our schools during the October survey. Right now we have a duplication of about 546 students. in the family empowerment scholarship program there are two different programs that they offer. One is the educational options and in that grouping we had 36 students that were receiving the family empowerment scholarship and in our district schools. Of those 10 of them after FTE week dropped out of our schools and then we had three enroll in our schools that were getting family empowerment scholarships after the FTE survey. For unique abilities, we had 451 students
062that were sitting in our schools and receiving family empowerment scholarships. And the unique abilities is this are the students with the exceptional student education needs. So these are actually a higher cost factor. and of those nine dropped after the FTE week and one added back came back or came to the district after that. in the personalized education program or the PEP as you might know it, we had 59 students that were receiving the PEP and in our schools during survey 2. So, we're not sure, you know, we've been working with the state providing this information to them as you know, we work through this. I'm not sure what they're going to do, but looking at just this group of students, this is about a $4.5 million hit to the district if they don't make an
063adjustment and we lose for the stu these students, which is what has happened in the past. So, talking about the future, right? Like we're we're in 26 and we're going, but we're already looking on we're moving on to 27. I'm getting ready for that. So, I just want to kind of give you an idea of the time frame for that. for October, November and December time frame. Of course, we had survey 2 in October. we are working with the regionals and select principles on the FY27 school allocations. We're looking at the allocation formulas. We're working then with them to see what worked, what didn't work, working on some things like the Esau and the ESC to see if we can make some adjustments that work better for everybody. we are also starting to work on
064the district FTE projections as well as the school by school projections for next year. In January and February we'll be making the adjustments for survey 2 prior to the second semester. We will be submitting our FTE or full-time equivalent to the state their projections for those for next year. We will be updating the school's individual files for next year as well and updating after the batch is ran. The legisl legislative session will convene in January this year, which is a really good thing for us. If they stay on their timeline, we'll have the actual information prior to releasing to the schools and hopefully won't have that big gap of over projection or under projection. and then we should be receiving the governor's budget sometime in January as well. and then March and April. We'll be
065releasing the district resource allocations to the schools in March. The legislative session will end in early March and we should receive our first FEFP Florida education finance program calculation which is also called the conference report at that time. And then in May we will be getting our files back from the schools with their needs for their schools for the following year based on the student population they will have. July starts our fiscal year. The state will also certify the millages and things on by July 19th and we'll receive what they call our second calculation at that time. And then August, of course, school begins and we'll start all over again with our 10day school adjustments. So with that, we'll turn it back to you board and superintendent for any comments and questions that you may
066have. Dr. Carlin. Thank you very much, Miss Cox and Miss Lecher. We always appreciate your budget updates and this update provides our board with a point in time where we stand as of today. So obviously there are many items that are discussed here looking at enrollment looking at adjustments to FTE looking at funding and then looking at opportunities around family empowerment and personalized educational programs. I will tell you that we have been in contact with our legislature regarding the last item I just mentioned with the duplicates and and so forth and that certainly is something that is being addressed and being looked at not only by the legislature but also by the department of education. So we do know that is in the works that they are looking at these types of issues and working
067to resolve them. So we do appreciate their work in Tallahassee on this. So look forward to your comments and your questions. Miss Ganelli, this is actually for the superintendent. So, I have a question. it just made me think about this. How is the acceleration academy? How is it calculated? Is it calculated in this or no? Because I wasn't sure and I don't know if you know that answer. I'm going to look to our budgetary experts on acceleration academy. Oh, so the acceleration academy is a contracted site. So they earn their FFP the same way that we earn RFP as one of our site at one of our schools much like PACE does except for PACE is considered a DJJ but it's a contracted site. So it's not really a charter but it earns the same
068way as a charter does basically based on their students. Miss Shaviano, thank you for putting this information together. I have a question just in regards to obviously the students with duplicates and just any of the duplicates overall since it is an impact to the district dollars and the requirement for these funds is not to be in a public school and we're reporting it back to the DOE and all of that when they enroll on their in our system. Is there a flag and we know that and is there a statute or something that says hey you either have to unenroll and take the funds or you know one or the other to kind of avoid this in the future. so no there isn't a way for us to flag them and know that they're receiving
069a scholarship. We depend on the state to send us the payment files for fees and pep students and then we run through a process to identify which ones are also enrolled in our public schools. I know the state has been having a lot of conversation about the process because I think some of the issues are created by the timelines in statute right like when the state is required to pay new and renewing students of the scholarships. That's where you know they're getting that money technically before traditional schools are even starting. So, the information is given to us kind of after the fact to review. but like I mentioned, I know the state is looking at this process and hopefully we'll see some improvements in the future to be able to flag them sooner. So, I
070guess my follow-up question would be if we have the flag or are aware coming in before our next round, is there something we can do prior to the next count? Because just because I mean, we don't have extra money anywhere. and yes, everyone deserves the education, but these parents are going after these funds to do to go a different route. So, is there something that we can do? So, I'll I'll take a stab at it if I can. what I heard from our team was there is no flag. we don't receive notice of that. Is that correct? Until they enroll in right into our system. So, those funds are already out there. So that's why we've brought it to the legislature to one of our delegation members who is actually looking very closely at this
071and we have been in conversation with the department of education so that they are aware of the exact issue you're talking about and they're trying to work through it to see if there's a way to rectify the situation so we're not in the same situation this time next year. Yeah. And Mrs. Shaviano, we do know that you know when the state realizes there are duplicates. I mean, I know for the most recent round of duplicates that were identified, it was over, you know, 27,000 students across the state. And so, what I understand happens is that the scholarship organizations then have to those students accounts are frozen once they're identified as duplicates. Even though step up for students or AAA the scholarship funding organizations have already received that money, the student accounts are frozen and then
072they're making email or phone call contacts to those parents trying to confirm are you enrolled in a public school. If not, there is a withdrawal form that they're required to complete and that's new this year. but until this the SFO receives a response from them, the account is frozen. So essentially the money is just kind of sitting in limbo. we don't have it. The SFO has it, not necessarily the family. so it's just in limbo until there's a response from the family as to where their student is located. Mr. Persons, just a little bit of insight. The problem is the students do not all have a student ID number. All our students do, but when they go to a charter school, whatever, I mean, private or home school and get this money, they just go
073by their name. So, you may have two Sally Smiths. Then, so then once they see that, oh, that could be a duplicate. Then they got to try to look at the birth date. Then they got to try to look at other factors where if they had a definite student ID number, it would be a very easy fix. And I know that's the Florida School Board Association has asked for that to happen. I know the legislators are working toward that goal. So we could even do monthly hopefully or no less than quarterly updates to know who's where by using those numbers. So that's probably the best answer from what I understand listening to the legislaturator as a nerd. So, but that's the problem. They're not it's not universal way to track these students like it is
074within all our school systems. I mean, we could quickly tell if one of our students went to another student, I mean, another district within the state. You know, they would use their same ID number, that kind of thing. But, as I recall, wasn't this something we also talked about last time on legislation were up as far as IDing these funds and tracking these funds? Okay, Miss Jordan, Miss I just wanted to piggy bank this is a and as Dr. Crawling said they everybody's aware of the situation and it is happening in all the districts as well and I know that is a priority of the FSBA as a as a whole for this and again too it's it goes back to parents you know you know that your child is not there that's your responsibility
075to make sure that you're getting this paperwork back in so that other students and children can be taught but thank you so much for this presentation it's a really it's an eye openener when you're really looking at the numbers that you're speaking about. So I really appreciate all your work. Thanks Dr. Carlin. I just wanted to piggyback on the conversation. I want to encourage our board that there is no easy fix here and I think Mr. Personson's clearly outlined the challenge. again we have to remember the sheer number of students that are enrolled in private schools, charter schools, public schools, traditional public schools, home school. there, you know, it's it's really not an easy fix. And I do want to assure you that you mentioned FSBA, FADS, my association's been all over it. The legislature
076is aware of it. The DOE is aware of it. So again, I don't want to I don't want to leave you with they're not moving on this. they are they they recognize the enormity of the impact and we have been assured that they are they are looking at this and they are working diligently to get this turned around because not just our school district it's the other 66 that are in the same vote. So just want to assure you that this work is being attended to. Mr. Persons, I want to give some kudos to our legislative team. They're also on top of it reaching out and you know and they get requests for information. and we give but they're giving it back to the state. And so again, like the superintendent said, it's throughout the
077whole state. It's an issue, one of those unintended consequences that they didn't put in there right from the very start. But I'm I have confidence it'll get corrected. So, I have two questions. I believe I need to address one question to you ladies. so we have students who don't attend a public school and right here in Lee County and all over the state, after having conversations with, our lobbyists that do not accept stepup funds, but they are also not public school students. So those students are Lee County students or Collier County has a situation and they're in a private institution. Do you know where those students tax dollars are? They're somewhere. I mean, every student should have an FT should have an amount of money, but if they're at a school that doesn't accept stepup
078and they don't have FTE numbers, do you have any idea where that money would be? No. I mean, in in my opinion, I don't think they would be receiving any public funding because the current mechanism is that they're either at a district school. It could be, you know, a traditional school or a charter charter that's reporting FTE or they would be going through one of the U scholarship funding organizations, step up or AAA, to get their FTE reported that way. So, if they're not in one of those mechanisms, they wouldn't be counted for public funding or funding through the FFP. I understand that. I was just wondering if you knew where that bucket of money is. No, ma'am. Well, let me clarify. There is the Florida tax credit scholarship, right? And that money does not
079run through the FEFP at all. So whether they're accessing that money or not, we would not necessarily know. the only ones we would know of are the ones that are on the file the state sending to us to ask us to identify as a potential duplicate. So there is money out there that's not being used for public education or for a scholarship. Correct. I mean, I wouldn't say one way or another, right? That's the model of the Florida tax credit scholarship is for those families to apply and access it in however they feel best for their personalized education plan. Okay. I can have conversations offline with some folks. but my second question is a little off topic. If we go back to slide six, I know that you discuss and we've had this conversation in
080years past where the allocations are given in March and April and our schools are seem to have an issue some of them over budgeting for and then having to turn around and then do cuts in like the first month of or the first week of August or even the late July. Do you have you want to talk about that? Just touch on that just a bit moving forward. I'd be happy to. So this is pre- Denise Carlin, but there was a change made while I was retired relative to the allocation process and so I became a co-learner this year as these allocations were evaluated upon the 10-day count and the FTE survey week. And what I found was, you know, with every good model and every good intention, sometimes things work really well and sometimes
081there are flies in the ointment. So I view that as a as a 1.0 rollout of something different of a different way for us to be more transparent with our schools in terms of the dollars that they are receiving based on the students that are walking in the door. And what I mean by that is a traditional student at 1.0 know versus a child that may have English as a second language and children that have exceptionalities what we call ESC. So there was a very good attempt at trying to be more transparent. the challenges were as were described by our wonderful duo here that there were some overallocations in some areas particularly in ESSE and ESOL. some we affectionately call some of those funding cliffs. if you didn't have enough students in a bucket, all
082of a sudden you were losing $200 or $300,000. So, all with good intentions. I'm not here to criticize. I wasn't here. I wasn't part of the process. but what we have learned is that there are some glitches in the in the process and our principles. You have to love it. They're willing to go back to work on it with in partnership with budget and our team to see if we can't shore up some of those areas where we had a handful of schools that lost pretty significant amounts of money. luckily it was not everybody, it was a handful. and so we'll take a look at those situations and try to shore up that process and that's the work that is currently happening with our budget team in partnership with our principal representatives. So I commend
083the team because they stepped out and did something a little different on behalf of transparency and now we just have to shore up some of those challenges to make sure that you know we have a mechanism in place that schools are closely monitoring particularly their ESOL students coming in the door over the summer as well as their students with exceptionalities because we know all of those children are funded differently than the 1.0 FTE. And so I have confidence that our budget team and our business services team in partnership with our principles will be doing that work through the fall and into the winter in preparation for allocations going out next year. Anything you want to add, ladies? Yeah. one of the things that we're doing so that schools aren't caught off guard, right, is we
084are setting up what we're calling the mimic of a FTE. So what it is they would enter in their original projections or their day 10 projections or whatever and then once their FTE their kids are enrolled and everything and then they can enter in their FTE that they have pulled pull pulling from report straight out of focus and it will tell them the areas and what's happening what they need to be looking for in order to better prepare for the reductions that might be coming based on that based on their actual student population. So that will help them kind of have a heads up on what might be coming down the road. It's not going to be 100% because, you know, things fluctuate and things change. We do make exceptions for some schools. if they
085have a growth pattern, like if we see that normally they would grow between day 10 in October or day 10 in February, we'll leave the numbers out there. to their loss might not be what they think, but at least it gives them some idea of what they could be looking at in u making some arrangements ahead. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I knew that we've talked about this. I just and I know that you all are coming up with a plan to assist our principles that may not be as privy to to this and maybe even our newer principles some some sort of training or something. So, thank you and thank you both for the presentation. Not only was it very well organized, but I thought very well explained. So, thank you so much. Thank you.
086All right. Terrific. Let's move on to our job descriptions review. Presenting is Dr. Shannon Johnson. All right. Good afternoon, Madame Chair, board members, Superintendent Carlin, and Attorney Dupe Bruno. We bring before you today one job description, the senior coordinator of community partnerships out of the strategy division, and I'll open it up for discussion. Any questions board members about this job description? Miss Giovanelli, this is on the agenda tonight, right? Yes, ma'am. So, how soon will you advertise if this is approved? Tonight, I believe tomorrow is Okay. And then how long do you plan on having it posted and like what's your I guess what's your timeline? that would be up to the chief of the strategy division. And so usually we advertise for 5 to 10 days and then bring forward a recommendation to the
087next board meeting. who does this position report to? It reports to the director of strategic planning and portfolio management. Great. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on. Next we have our policy review first reading pre-briefing presented by Kathy Dupe Bruno. Give her a few minutes to walk over. I'm here. Okay, Madam Chair, there are three policies that are before you. I don't know if there's any questions. Any questions? Mr. Fisher, thank you. for 01641, I know we talked about board member participation changes potentially. I do not support any changes to that policy. I believe based on participation now that we've had over the couple years, it's incumbent upon us to figure that out. So, thank you. Well, he just submit he just spoke for me. Thank you. Thank you. I
088also agree with that. But I had a question on policy 7105, the site selection committee. That's a pretty potent committee. I just wonder if we should not have a board liaison on that possibly to report back to the board what's sort of going on. I know it's not in there and something we could add later or something along those lines. Miss Jordan, do you have a followup? Yes, because this is part of the way that we have structured it now. anytime we have a site selection committee, they would be pulled out of that was to be pulled out or part of DAC. Am I if I'm correct? Yeah. So, if if we could just a little clarification. So, this is the 7150. The reason that it was being requested to be changed is because we
089no longer have EDAC, which was part of that that policy. And then there was discussion last month about trying to make it an odd number and where would we pull from the odd number. So I'm going to defer to the superintendent as these particular recommendations are her recommendations. Sure. And I think you outlined it beautifully, Mr. pre Bruno in terms of instead of the election from the EDAC, it would be more from the DAC. Any other questions or followup? Miss Ganelli, I was trying to find the language for the ad hoc committee because I know I had read it the last meeting. if you could help clarify because I don't know if it's in this one or if it's in the but you know for for I thought it said parent parental you know part
090of parents being part of that committee and yet again today we had two committees that they were parent slashteers which you know that that's two hats and I feel like we need to have comm we get deemed for not having enough community involvement. So I think that it's key to make sure that we have community involvement and I didn't really see that in in either one of those selection processes that we saw earlier today. So I can you show me where tell me where that's at exactly? So this policy pulls from DAC which is representatives from your Sachs at your school which u many of those are parents and basically the change is so that it follows the enrollment zones to ensure that you have somebody from each zone from DAC that is represented and
091then there is I believe one administrative designate from the board of county commissioners. Thank you. But the problem with that is it's there's still there also consists of parents slashteers as well. And so therefore that community piece kind of gets negated. I'm just not quite happy without knowing that our community is involved. I mean the feedback and making sure that community involvement is for me it's very essential. So, I don't know how we can make that correction or and I'm asking for the board if others agree with me or not. I don't know. But I think it's it's important. Thank you. Miss Jordan, do you have a follow-up? Yes. I believe when it was 9140 when it was under EDAC, it was another number than it was 9140 and then we get rid of there
092was no such thing as EDAC. It was dissolved. Even there on that committee, it was still the members of EDAC was the became the site committee. So it really hasn't changed anything. It's just that they changed it went to DAC instead of EDAC and it's still like the same people from the it's actually it's a larger group because if you if you imagine what you had at EDAC which you sat on that committee and now you have one and this is two from each of the regions. So that gives you more opportunity to have parent participation teacher participation everybody's part and they choose they actually choose who would be on there so it would be amongst them. So yes Dr. Haron, I was going to agree with you, Miss Jordan. the beautiful part about DAC
093is that it is a subset of each school's sack, right? And so sitting on a sack would be a number of teachers, a number of support folks, and then parents, and then a community member or more. So again, going back to many years of experience leading schools, that is a that's a legal requirement. We must have those folks. Now it is acknowledged that you know there has to be somebody that steps up to be the DAC representative right so that's you know again because we are leaning on volunteers it's very difficult to require one particular member of a sack to say you will be the DAC member we really leave it to the school advisory committee to have that discussion with their members and then to submit a person who is willing and eager to
094do that and the other piece I would add is that we also have somebody from what we're hoping will be the planning committee coming out of the county. So, I would argue that is a community member, somebody that is providing some some extra support and information about where the sites should be located based on infrastructure based on what has you know what's happening in that neck of the woods. I think in my personal opinion that has been something that has been missing. because there may be a group of parents and or community members or teachers that say I like that site then the county might come in and say oh my goodness we you know we have some things that aren't quite ready infrastructure-wise but maybe this site would be better. So it gives some
095healthy discussion in that committee with different representatives with different levels of knowledge about our community. So I would argue I I really like the composition because it crosses all regions plus it puts somebody from the county which we have not had in prior years that is able to look at infrastructure, look at roads, look at all of the things we look at that are important when we're selecting a site. Thank you for reminding me that of the county piece of it and thank you for adding that because that is I remember now you telling me in the 101 and I actually love that. So because I think that's a piece that has been missing. So, okay. I think you win me over on that one. Thank you. And if Madam Chair, if we can go
096back to 0164.1 just so I have direction as to whether or not the board does want to amend this policy, Miss Chanelli, I actually would agree with with what Mr. Fischer said and I think I don't I think down there Yeah, Miss Jordan. I think and I think I think Armor did too. So yeah. No, I would actually I would support exactly what he said. I don't think we need to change anything. I would agree. Thank you. Do you have your direction? Yes, I do. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Next, we're going to move on to we have the plan for the student enrollment of 2026 2027. this will be a briefing first reading by presented by Samantha Fields and Clayton Simmons. All right. Good afternoon, board members, Dr. Carlin and Attorney Depri Bruno. I'm
097Clayton Simmons, the executive director for the office of student assignment and administration, and I'm happy to have here with Sam Fields, the assistant director of the stu of student assignment. I just want to remind you all that you received a copy of the red line read through document as well as the executive summary. And then we are going to briefly go through the changes that were made and then if you have questions at the end. I do want to point out that the body of the of the document has been organized and switched around so that it has better organization and flow. And then you'll take note that elementary school L will be added as a choice option for for zone L and that will be the new elementary school housed on the site of
098Lehigh Senior High School. Roman number four defines the addition of Beayshore Hector Aafrai Jr. and James Stevens as middle school options. the name changes will be pending board approval. Beayshore is added to the middle school proximity zone CC and Hector A. Caffreda Jr. is added to the middle school proximity zone AA. I do want to point out that currently there's significant boundary work is underway for middle school zones AA and CC to support the opening of the new Hector A. Cafferetta Jr. K8. Our goal is to present the final boundary recommendations for these two zones at the December meeting. This will this timeline will allow for appropriate student distribution among the middle schools in both zones AA as well as the broader Cape Coral area and that work is being done by the boundary or
099zone committee. Roman numeral 5 has the addition of the high school selection sheet. believe it or not that was not in the enrollment plan and Sam caught that. So, we are now adding up our high schools into the plan. And also, Island Coast High School will no longer be an option for zone E1. It was previously an E1 and that was a pretty substantial busing issue. So, we are and it was really for a relatively few number of students. So we decided that that was not a good option but they will still be an option for W3. All right. So also included in the plan we defined what sibling placement is. so under en Roman rule six it just specifies and defines sibling placement during the open enrollment window. parents or guardians are responsible to
100ensure that the siblings are connected via parent name and address and this is done in their focus parent portal to ensure that the addresses are most current and if the siblings are not properly linked in focus it does risk the possibility of them being split up amongst different schools. All right. In addition to our 2627 plan will be the addition of the eligibility pool or the weight list this will be implemented after lottery runs at the end of April until the last Friday of August. It will then also be ran again at the end of quarter 1 as well as the end of quarter 2. And the purpose of this it will allow for an increase to parental choice and improved customer service overall. All right, for our waivers, under Roman numeral 7, we do
101have a revision of the number of waivers. The plan no longer has the need for the advanced program or magnet program exit waiver or a second semester transfer request due to the eligibility pool and weight list. So that c end of quarter 2 would be instead of the second semester transfers, it would be running at the same time. details are provided as steps to how to enter the waivers through the online focus parent portal. it also includes the windows in which these waivers are accepted. It further explains in the plan that no waivers or choice applications are accepted for current students after the beginning of the second semester of 11th grade. All right. And for the online focus parent portal, the plan provides guidance to all families on the steps of how to enter documents
102online through focus. And this we hope will decrease the wait times for in-person appointments and walk-ins and increase the online portal registrations. And then lastly, we just added the piece about transportation. So the plan in several sections does empas emphasize that the students that reside in P1 which is less than two miles to the school will not receive district transportation. And just a reminder to the families that all transportation decisions are made by the transportation department. All right. And at this time we'll open up for any comments or questions. Dr. Carlin. So thank you very much Mr. Simmons and Miss Fields for your update here. We look forward to the board's discussion today. Thank you, Mr. Fiser. Thank you. I just kind of wanted to, piggyback off something Mr. Simmons said more just for the
103public. I appreciate this. We obviously had our proximity change for middle school that especially in Cape Coral had a lot of shifts where some schools such as Mariner Middle and Challenger have less students versus Diplomat Middle, Trafalgar, and Gulf. So, I appreciate you guys looking at that and trying to balance that a little bit better. So, thank you. Board members, any other comments or questions? Miss Janelli real quick regarding the wa no waiver for second semester 11th grade what if a student moves what happens then? So that if they are moving out of zone, so they do have because they would be in 11th at the end of 11th grade or 12th grade, they are able to remain for the remainder of the school year due to them being in 12th grade so they can
104graduate at that same school. So they are able to remain out of zone for the rest of that school year on a moving waiver which provides them the opportunity to remain there just without transportation. If they do need transportation and it becomes a hardship, then we would be able to move them to an endzone school for the family. Thank you. Regarding that bullet point on slide seven, it's the third bullet point. does that affect students who want to transfer schools regardless of moving, for example, second semester, 11th grade, and they are choosing to move schools for whatever reason, does that prevent them from being able? Are we preventing that? Now, I mean, we're this I'm not talking about a student who's moved. I'm talking about a student who wants to transfer to a school post
105second semester 11th grade. So that's their last opportunity. So for 11th graders, so right now we're actually the window is open. So this would be their last opportunity to transfer because they wouldn't be able to for 12th grade. So exactly like you said. So if they're looking for a different school and they did not move, then that would be their last opportunity. Thank you for clearing that up. All right. Thank you. Thanks so much for the presentation and have a great afternoon. We're going to move on now to our district strategic priorities. This will be presented oh about recruitment and retention. This will be presented by Dr. Shannon Johnston, Karina Valisquez, Dr. Ron Rusi, Susette Rivera, and Dr. Rebecca Savage. And hopefully we have enough chairs for all of you. Oh, love it. So, is
106the wind coming? I can have somebody. You may have to come over here. All right. Good afternoon once again. I am happy to introduce this amazing part of this of the amazing HR leadership team. We have Dr. Dr. Ron Ayusi who's the senior director of labor relations and Dr. Rebecca Savage who is the director of organizational development and retention. Then we have Susette Rivera who is the director of HR operations and Karina Velasquez who is our executive director of human resources. All right. So today we are going to share our HR update as it as it is related to the strategic plan and how we align ourselves to not only the district's strategic plan but the district's priorities our organizational structure our framework of execution and our overall division goal which then each of our
107departments which you can see on the screen we have seven departments within HR how they have aligned their department goals to our overall division goal. They're going to share those goals, their quarter 1 results with you and their wins. And finally, we are going to have a summary and next steps. And as you can see, you all have a pin wheel. The pin wheel represents the life cycle of an employee and how all of these different departments within HR, they represent each part of an employees life cycle. All right? So, for example, talent acquisition, they get the employees in, they're first, right? And so on and so forth. So, I am I have an elementary school heart and so that's where this come from. this comes from. So I apologize but we have to have
108a little fun, right? Okay. So I'll begin by just sharing that you know HR really serves as the foundation of the organization. we touch and support many of the KPIs within the district strategic plan. but through the people of many diff we have many different groups of people within our organization and but HR owns recruiting developing and retaining highly effective staff specifically KPI 6.1 which is to reduce employee turnover for each employee segment you will see references throughout the presentation of all the different KPIs that HR supports throughout the organization not just the KPI 6.1. So, I'm going to go over our results for the for the priority that we own in the district strategic plan. If you look at the bottom, you can see that the teachers our baseline when we first started was
109at 16.2% separation. They that means they have separated from our organization. In 2324, we were at 15.6. 2425 we're at 14%. We are headed in the right direction. quarter 1 results so far this year we have separated with 2.7% of our teachers. We heard you all at the when we updated last time and the strategic plan says that we need to reduce by 1% each year. Well, that is not going to get us what we need with the amount of growth that we have in the schools that we're building. We're figuring we need around 300 teachers in the next four years in addition to what we already have. And so you'll see in a few minutes how we have how we have aligned ourselves with a different goal that's more rigorous. You can see with
110a with staff support staff we're also headed in the right direction moving from 15% in 2324 to 14%. And with administrators, we went up a notch 1% from 8% to 9% terminations. All right. So, more specifically, while the strategic plan focuses on all employee groups, the strategic priorities for HR is specific to teacher recruitment and retention. And this is what we have aligned our HR goal to is teacher retention. In July, we organized HR into three houses. Human capital operations, employee relations, and organizational development and retention. As you can remember, we strategically added organizational development and retention as a new department that didn't exist before so that we could tackle employee retention. And also, if you recall, all the areas in the light blue were gaps that did not exist and we are currently building
111out. So this is our overall HR division that aligns to the district priority that we believe are going to get us to what we need. It is our wildly important goal to increase teacher retention to 95% while allowing for retirements and promotions. This is much more than the 1% a year. We're hoping to to grow about let's see nine nine% this year. That is our goal. So then the first quarter, our first quarter cohort comparison from last year to this year. And we do have a specific cohort that we're tracking for this goal that allows for retirements and promotions. we are about in the same place at this time than we as we were at this time last year. however if you look at the cohort count we have more teachers this year than we
112had last year. we just began project thrive which is our initiative on teacher retention at the end of September. So we hope the next time we come to you we will have more distinct results and you'll hear more about project thrive in just a few minutes. So our HR division is using the four disciplines of execution to drive the work around teacher retention. 40X is a framework that helps teams move from strategy to results by focusing on what matters most and executing with discipline. The first discipline is focusing on the wildly important goal which you saw is for us to increase teacher retention by 95 to 95%. The second discipline is to act on lead measures which each are each HR department identifies key actions that directly influence retention for example faster hiring reertification support
113so on and so forth. The third discipline is to keep a compelling scoreboard. Our teams are tracking progress visually so everyone knows whether we're winning or whether we're not and if we need to adjust on the spot. The fourth discipline is creating a cadence of accountability. Regular check-ins to ensure progress, remove barriers, and celebrate wins. We share these with you in the board updates every week and also with our cabinet. Every week we have a report out and we share this also with the school leadership every week. That's our accountability. Everyone knows whether we're winning or whether we're losing. Each HR department has a blueprint. that is their action plan detailing out these four disciplines. This is a work in progress. Our HR division is learning together through the framework. as we try to activate
114results for our district together, every department drives the shared goal of teacher retention, retaining great teachers so that our students can reach the highest potential and we can reach our collective goal of becoming in a school district. So, at this time, I'm going to turn it over to our executive director of human resources, Karina Velasquez, who will introduce us to the life cycle of an employee in our school district. She will introduce each department within HR as we walk you through the rest of the presentation, which focuses on each department's goals, strategies, results so far, and the department wins. And I just have to say I am extremely proud of the team and all that they have accomplished in such a short time. Karina. Awesome. All right. So, pull out your little spinners and let's
115spin into the first segment. And you'll notice the animated GIF app here. We're going to start with talent acquisition and HR oper operations which is the engine of human resources. And with that, Susette Rivera. All right. Thank you, Karina. Good afternoon, everyone. So, I'm very excited to kick off our presentation to highlight the critical work being executed by our talent acquisition team. Their strategy is centered on not just bringing in the best candidates, but making sure that they stay and that they thrive. This is captured in our two wildly important goals, or you'll hear me call them wigs. So, the team is committed to retaining 95% of firstear teachers. And in addition, they are laser focused in filling 100% of core instructional vacancies with a certified teacher by the first day of school next year.
116One of the most powerful levers we have for filling teacher vacancies is the retention of current staff. Retention is the new recruitment and we cannot afford to lose the talent who is already here. This work includes fostering engagement with teachers. We are currently conducting stay interviews and creating some networking events. We're also focused on creating a positive culture of support at the district level where HR recognizes the success and efforts of our teachers through social media, handwritten cards, and personal visits. So, here are the early results of the team's first wig, which is the retention of 95% of firstear teachers employed in Lee County. So our defined subgroup for this goal includes our temporary teacher intern certificate candidates who actually transition into teachers after their internship. College of Education graduates and TPG international teachers. At
117the end of last year we retained 91% of this subgroup. As of quarter 1 we are we've currently retained 97% for this specific subgroup. So we're well on our way. And then to highlight the achievement of the team from this past year, Project Belief took us where no one thought was possible. Due to this initiative and the dedication of the team, we started the school year with a record of 39 teaching vacancies, which equals to less than 1% of total instructional positions. That was a great transition here to our second wig, which is starting the school year next year with those 100% core instructional vacancies filled with a certified teacher. Through targeted recruitment strategies and strengthened talent pipelines, we will achieve this goal. The team has remained committed to filling both current vacancies and creating
118sustainable pipelines for future growth. Our current strategies to achieve this second wig will position the district to begin the next school year with zero teaching vacancies in the core areas. To do this, the team is executing a three-pronged recruitment strategy. First, we are leveraging virtual and in-person events to connect directly with candidates. Second, we are deepening our community connections to source our local talent. Finally, we are increasing our marketing engagement to ensure that we are the employer of choice in the community. Okay. Beyond immediate recruitment, our long-term success hinges on building robust future teacher pipelines. With our partners, we've established several key programs and even a few more that are coming soon. I won't go through each one here on the screen, but we'll just highlight a few. So, our temporary teacher internship certificate or
119TTIC allows us to hire eligible candidates to serve as a teacher of record before they officially graduate from an approved college of education. Cultivating internal talent is the key to growth of our current employees. In partnership with our local university, the FGCU school personnel toteer pathway program or SSP enables our school support staff to earn a BA in education and become certified teachers at no cost. We continue to expand our internship opportunities with various colleges and universities. Currently, we have active with 39 programs and that number continues to grow. So here is the early progress towards our second wig. This time last year our district had 211 instructional vacancies. So let that sink in for a minute. Now this slide states that we were at 27 instructional vacancies. But as you're aware, this is a
120moving target. But I am super proud to say that due to the team's relentless efforts, we are down to 20 instructional vacancies in core areas with no core vacancies in our risk level three or four schools. Oh, right. So, we have several key wins to spotlight for the talent acquisition team this quarter, and I will go through a few. The team has successfully contacted 754 employee candidates within 24 hours of their exposure to the team. This is a huge commitment we have to providing timely responses. In a few weeks, we're also excited to launch our first signing day to celebrate our upcoming College of Education graduates from local universities. These graduates are ready for hire and we want to start them off with a powerful sendoff to show them how excited we are to welcome
121them as teachers in our classrooms. So once the talent is on board, the focus shifts to our HR operations team. If talent acquisition is the engine that brings in the talent, HR operations is the support structure that manages the critical processes and compliance necessary to keep the talent in the classroom. Compromised of our HR generalists, credential specialist, business partners, and retirement manager. This team's core mission is to excel in customer service and efficiency, and they are channeling that into their primary wig listed here. The HR operations team is committed to ensuring that 95% of teachers with expiring certifications are successfully reertified for the next school year. I'd like to begin by outlining our strategic focus within HR operations. The team centers our efforts on excelling in customer service with our partners across three key areas.
122Our first priority is adopting a proactive approach to the reertification process. Second, we are focused on optimizing our workflows to ensure the HR operations team delivers service with maximum efficiency. Finally, we aim to strengthen the partnership with school and department leaders through clarity and transparency in the hiring process. Project Renew is our initiative to reertify at least 95% of teachers in our district. As a team, we knew that our past practice of simply sending expiration emails wasn't enough, as it only resulted in around 700 to 875 annual renewals. As you can see here, we initiated Project Renew shifting to an intensive proactive outreach strategy. Beyond the more frequent emails that were sent earlier in the year, monthly tracking tools have been built by one of our team members, Lindseay Boles, and shared with each school
123principal. These tracking tools now allow principles and HR in partnership to monitor all expiring credentials and assignments. We've also scheduled in-person and virtual meetings to provide personalized support to our staff. These strategies are already showing us some positive results. Last year at this time, we had 98 teachers reertified and this year we have 130 teachers reertified which is 32 more than last year. Our second strategic focus is enhancing our team synergy by finding opportunities to make our internal processes more efficient. The second wig has us reducing our average processing time for instructional hires from preliminary offer notification to pre-boarding. We are targeting a reduction from 19.94 days down to 15 days. It's important to note though that unlike some organization where that term time to fill is controlled solely by HR, we measure the time
124it takes our team to process a hire after a school submits a forward hire request through Peopleoft. And to maintain our focus, we've developed a compelling scoreboard, which you can see on the screen, where each HR generalist is tracking their processing time weekly. Our proactive monitoring is already yielding results. Last year at this time we were averaging a processing time of 16.78 days. We just celebrated an amazing week in October where our averaging processing time dropped to just 10.72 days. The scope of work managed by our HR operations team is immense. Our team processed a total of 9,349 transactions between July 1st and October 15th of this year. Considering we have over 10,000 employees across this organization, this high volume is managed by our HR operations team which speaks volumes about their dedication to the
125work. And here's our final strategic focus which we are super excited to share with you. And this is in building a stronger partnership with our school leaders. And we achieve this by giving them now immediate access to accurate HR data. This transparency helps them act quickly, stay compliant, and keep their classrooms staffed with qualified teachers. Specifically, our new data tools offer two critical views. The certification and out of field snapshot, which is on the left, displays the current teacher certification status and out of field assignments. This allows our principles to proactively manage compliance. And then on the right is our HR hiring snapshot, which tracks key personnel actions in real time. Everything from pre-boarding and fingerprinting to E-Verify and Peopleoft processing. Now principles can monitor their staffing compliance and see exactly where all of their
126new hires are in the pipeline. I'm going to transition back to Karina. All right, let's pull out your spinners one more time and follow with me as we continue to navigate through the employee life cycle. We're going to proceed to organizational development and retention. You've heard all about the engine to get the folks in and now it's how do we retain them? And with that we have Dr. Rebecca Savage. Thank you so much. All right. While organizational development and retention is honored to drive the core work of our teacher retention initiative project thrive in the top right hand corner there. We're simultaneously committed to a variety of bodies of work in support of developing our organization as a whole and supporting retention across all employee groups. This slide highlights some of our key work as
127a new department supporting these areas. Next, we will dive into one of our most exciting programs, Project Thrive. Project Thrive is our major teacher retention initiative aimed at accomplishing our divisional HR goal of retaining at least 95% of our school-based instructional staff. In order to accomplish this wildly important goal, we've committed to providing specialized support to our schools with higher retention needs. We have created a Project Thrive dashboard providing schools with clear and transparent retention data. And we meet with these schools at least monthly to provide data, resources, and systems to support increasing teacher retention at each school site. Here's a snapshot of our annual timeline for our Project Thrive schools. First, we created teacher retention goals for each school and establish an in the- moment plan to support teacher retention within our organization in
128the event a teacher provides notification of intent to separate from the district. At number two, we launched a teacher retention preassessment survey that is used as an ongoing needs assessment for our schools, focusing on assessing the strength of our retention supportive systems. For number three, we established and provided individualized support for school retention teams who support the continuous improvement of retention systems, creating and improving the conditions for teachers to thrive. For number four, we then created a system for and commitment to both lag and lead measure tracking for our team and the school's team goals. Five, we provide consistent communication and collaboration with schools and HR to support teacher retention across the entire organization. And last but not least, we're looking forward to completing our full annual survey cycle to be revisited at the midyear
129and end of year to evaluate the effectiveness of Project Thrive and provide a continuous improvement path for FY27 and beyond. Thrive focuses on direct consistent support for schools and teachers. We've prioritized working with our schools with the lowest retention rates, providing individualized support bi-weekly for our tier three schools and monthly for our tier 2 schools and providing all schools with a project thrive toolkit and monthly leadership development for all school administrators supporting the strengths of their retention retention systems monthly. We also provide a direct line of communication to teachers through our new pulse and perks monthly newsletter including a just for teachers pulse check survey where we ask our teachers to engage directly with us about their perceptions of the support that they receive from our organization. it's a consistent needs assessment along with the
130wellness and well-being resources providing opportunities to directly connect with our district. We actively track our retention status at the district, region, and school levels. Here you can see a snapshot of our regional teacher retention status along with the status of our organization as a whole. On the right hand side is a bar chart just more clearly breaking down our regional layout. And then in order to achieve our wildly important goal, we believe that our key lever is building capacity through retention in our schools. We partner with principles and school-based retention teams meeting monthly to support the strength of teacher retention systems across the organization. We track this commitment and have met our month one goal for Project Thrive, working with 100% of our tier 2 and tier three schools. And like I said in the
131beginning, project thrive is a is a huge lift. our whole division is behind us and our department is very proud to be undertaking this work. but we also encompass a wide body of work. from the first slide and just some key highlights from our wins from the first quarter, we're very proud. we also support the evaluation system and we launched a new school nurse evaluation system process. we also support leadership development and recently we got to train at the superintendent's cabinet a refresher on the four essential roles of leadership. A followup from our goal this year throughout the summer ending in October of 100% of our administrators across our organization receiving Franklin CVY's the four essential roles of leadership. We also support new teacher development. We had a big kickoff of our summer new teacher
132training camps and we continue that training camp process throughout the year. And of course, last but not least, we're very proud of Project Thrive. And with that, I will let Miss Velasquez take it away. All right, pull out your little spinners one more time as we proceed in the employee life cycle. We're going to talk about employee relations and what it means for growth, performance, accountability, professional standards. And with that, we have Dr. Ronusi. thank you, Karina. good afternoon board members. Dr. Carlin, attorney deploy Bruno. as Miss Velasquez stated, we I am the senior director of employee relations. And actually, we have quite a few houses within our big house of employee relations. We include labor relations, benefits, benefits and wellness, professional standards and compensation are all part of labor relations. and as you can
133see, all of you could imagine all of those departments play a key role in supporting all of our employees by providing them the supports necessary so that they can have a successful experience from hire to retire. our wildly important important goal that supports the 95% retention in HR is by June 30th, 2026, 95% of our principles will be trained on the most frequently grieved contract articles to help reduce grievances and support teacher retention. And the reason we thought about this goal is, as you can imagine, our principles are primarily our boots on the ground folks that are responsible for the implementation with the fidelity of our collective bargaining agreements. And as we track phone calls and issues that come up in labor management and even some grievance issues, we have realized that typically it's it's
134due to a misinterpretation of the contract or maybe not clarity that's provided. Many of our principles weren't there when the contract was negotiated and sometimes the intentionality of some of the language needs clarification. So we feel is if we can continue to educate our principles on really the complexity and the issues that are included in the contract, we'll have a much better job of of solving some of those issues before they're started at the building level. some strategies that we have to achieve our wildly important goal is we are in the process of implementing a case management system. So we are working very closely with it to have a case management system so that we can track on a regular basis the phone calls and some of the emails that we get regarding some issues.
135again I talked about principal trainings on all the new language in the collective bargaining agreements. Every month we have an opportunity to to present in front of our principles. So we present them with scenarios so that they can work together to to help think about what issues that might come up in some of those scenarios and how they would resolve them at the building level. And we also have monthly labor management committee meetings and that's where we really work closely with both talc and spalc on a monthly basis to talk about issues so that we can kind of resolve them before they get to the grievance level. Up to this point 100% of our principles have received information on the following. So implementation procedures for the nine additional minutes were which is part of the
136tenative agreement that you'll be reviewing this evening. all changes to the tal tenative agreement meeting requirements that are in the collective bargaining agreement planning language progressive discipline and the types of leaves and processes involved are all part of the training we have up to this point. some labor and employee relations wins. very proud to say we have a spout collective bargaining agreement that will carry us through this year that was ratified and approved and actually our payouts went out to sp on October 31st. we are do have a tenative agreement that will be before you tonight. Talc has ratified the tenative agreement and we will have hopefully payout which I'll address here in an upcoming slide and our contract committee. So we have had both our contract committees that involve both SPAL and TAL. very
137pleased to say that the insurance task force has made the recommendations again that you will see tonight at the board meeting for the next plan year as far as our medical and prescription benefits. And we do have a recommendation to the board for two years worth of calendar instructional calendars. on the benefit side, some wins that we have from them. first time in a long time, we actually have a fully staffed team and with the changes that we're anticipating in in benefits, those folks are going to be busy here, especially when it comes to January during the open enrollment period. we have a plan that we feel reduces the deficit, projected deficit of $28 million down to below almost a quarter of a million dollars. we are in the process of doing an internal audit
138and we have a projected over $1.3 million in savings just by auditing our processes and carrying out with the rest of the audit. we do we do have some proposed savings that we might see in in Family and Medical Leave Act by looking at our policies and really our processes for making sure that we have accurate information of people when they apply for FMLA and our processes are there to support those folks as well. And on the wellness side, we talk about this on a monthly basis. I know you know Heather Parker and her team and the accomplishments that they've had in wellness. and they're from April 1st, 2024 through March 31st, 2025, they've reached their goal of 76% of employee participation in the wellness incentive programs. Again, that continues to grow on a yearly
139basis. And really the significance of that is in the next couple bullets, which include the fiscal year 25 impact. So 29 almost $30 million in savings through wellness initiatives and we measure that through cost avoidance. As people participate in wellness initiatives they become healthier and that's through cost avoidance. All of this has been verified by AON for the accuracy. in the last 11 years the projected or estimated savings has almost $300 million and again healthcare avoidance over 11 years. which results also in employees saving on an average of $227 per month in their health care premium costs thanks to the wellness programs. from the compensation side, some compensation wins. we have just completed schedule N which typically follows spout. So the same process that we use for spout, the collection of all of our work
140experience in the application of that work experience to help place them accurately within the pay grades that are have been approved by this board are in place and the salary adjustments are scheduled for November 26. So all of our schedule N folks will receive their salary adjustments. Falcon and Spal obviously I I mentioned what we've done with Spalc and the contract and their implementation. Obviously, the tenative agreement is be will be before you tonight. If that's passed, we are looking at a December 15th payout for all of our instructional staff. on the school-based administrative side, we've been working very closely with an advisory group of school-based administrators. we are looking at implementation of a salary schedule that many of our administrators feel as as well as we do on from the HR standpoint that is
141very transparent simple to figure out and really I think a lot of our school-based administrators have appreciated the work that's been done into that. That will be for implementation for fiscal year 27. So, next year we have a couple more parts of that we'll be working on throughout the year, but we expect to fully implement that plan in FY27. that plan includes rubrics that include risk levels, years of experience, grade levels, and impact measures. our school-based administrators along with our central office administrators in that transition period will receive their cost of living adjustment for this year and they will be paid on December 15th as well. Along the same lines for our district administrators, as you know, we previously presented in a board workshop all the work that the compensation team has been doing in
142phase two. And that really again is the evaluation of all of our departments and the positions within those departments to make sure that all of our job descriptions are accurate and that all of our folks are placed appropriately based on the job descriptions on the right pay rates. And so as they continue that work, hopefully we'll we'll finish that next spring. But in transition, all of our district level administrators will receive their cost of living increase on December 15th as well. And again, this is just a reminder that this is a continual process. So once we finish for the year, we start all over again to make sure that we're accurate and that will be ongoing. Just again, a group timeline, which you've seen in previous meetings and where we're at. Next up, we have
143ESSE, health services, payroll, maintenance, psych services, food and nutrition, and operations are all slated for the end of this year as far as phase 2 is concerned. so, professional standards, I believe, is the last group that we're going to talk about. they have a specific wildly important goal. By June 30th, 26, 2026, 95 95% of school-based teacher discipline outcomes will require a mandatory training element. And so, this is something that I think that the professional standards group has been really diligent on working to really educate as many folks and give them the training they need so that we don't have recidivism rates with teacher discipline. Some of strategies to achieve that completed items and drafts. I'm not sure if you understand what Frisk is, but Frisk is basically a training that we give to all
144of our administrators, employees on really the whole disciplinary process. So, from investigations all the way down to outcomes and how that's conducted. they're creating letters to be involved in that. they're creating rubrics for our administrators to to use so that help them make some decision about disciplinary outcomes. They've given an investigation flowchart so they know where they're at in the process and who to call if they need to. and then discipline outcome rubrics again. So not only at our school base but also for ORT and those folks responsible for some of the decisions on employee discipline. We're implementing rubrics to make sure that we have consistency and transparency in how we how we make some of those decisions. some quarter one results. So we've had so far this year 31 cases opened. We had 16
145at this point in 2024 25 and to provide a transparent system and really help educate all of our employees so they don't get to the point where they need to be at our professional standards. Some of their wins maintenance and tal trainings again as I said they take their show on the road. They've been out out to different buildings and some of our compounds reg around maintenance and transportation just to provide fris training and to talk a little bit about how to stay out of trouble. complaint resolutions finalized over 70 complaints in the past month. they are really working very hard on on increasing the time between when a case arrives to them and delivering a final outcome. the professional standards process. Again, the initial standard or the initial draft of professional standards investigation flowchart
146and the communication cadence is all part of what they've accomplished so far in a short time since since Mike Harris has taken over that department. All right, and pull out your spinners one more time. Whoops. Spinners one more time over here as we continue and wrap up in our summary and next steps for ATR. Now, you've heard all kinds of bodies of work being presented to you today. There's a lot going on and it does not happen without the powerful wind behind the pin wheel of our team. Our HR team deserves and merits all of the stuff that you see here today is because of that team. Right. So, very quickly, we're focusing on regulatory compliance. So, everything that we do is about board policy and following everything that gets approved by you all. So,
147thank you for your support in all of these initiatives behind the scenes and in front of the scenes and also for HR policy revisions and reviews. We want to stay current with what's happening. We paired up with our legal team. We're also incorporating standard operating procedures, also known as SOPs, for each of the board policies so that we could refresh, refine, renew, all of the good stuff, right? And technical upgrades. You might know that our systems are somewhat dated sometimes. So, we're going through that process and shout out to our friends at IT that are helping us to beef up our equipment, right? And really helping us to automate a lot of our processes. And finally, we are really really focused this year on proactive communication and engagement with our employees. We are looking for
148ways to get feedback, to reach out to schools, to principles. Huge shout out to the regionals that help us with this work every single day. We cannot do it alone. It takes a collective lift. And with that, we turn it over to Superintendent Carlin. Thank you. Thank you very much. first of all, Dr. Johnston and team. Wow. just wow. When I think about all of the information that you've shared, things like retention is the new recruitment. I heard you, Miss Rivera, and I couldn't agree more. Dr. Ayusi just with the work that you've done with as the chief negotiator for the school district in partnership with talc and with spelk really appreciate the efforts there successfully negotiating in partnership with our unions collective bargaining agreements salary adjustments and lots of other benefits for our employees.
149so just appreciate your work there. thank you to HR for recognizing the need for 300 new teachers over 300 new teachers coming in the next several years with the building of new schools and for recognizing that we're going to need to hold on to our teachers we have right setting that bar high at 95% at least 95% really appreciate that and then the last thing that I could go on and on but the last thing I want to talk about is CVY and the four disciplines of execution so in speaking with Collier County. You know, several years ago, Collier County was a B school district and we were an A school district and then we did a switch. We became a B, they became an A. And we've had conversations, our team has had conversations
150with the superintendent and with other leadership team members there. What made the difference? And I would argue leadership makes all the difference. But when we asked about professional development, they said CVY 4DX. And you can see why. When you set those wildly important goals and then you go after them and you have a very simple way of tracking them, you have a better shot of achieving them. Think about when I was first sworn in and Miss Javiano, Mr. Ribble joined us on this governance team. One of the things we started tracking immediately was the deficit in teacher vacancies. Over 200 teacher vacancies a year ago. We got that number down to 17 by having a very simple goal of reducing to zero. Now, we didn't get to zero. And then we had another issue going
151into the school year. 575 teachers with retirements, promotions, and with people just leaving the profession. We got that number down to 37. Now it's down to 20. It's not zero. So, I know I'm looking at Dr. Johnson and the team. They are so committed. They keep telling me we're going to get it down to zero. But I want to give you some numbers. 20 teacher vacancies, four in the east region. I'm going to say that number again. Out east, four teacher vacancies, four in the in the north, five in the south, and six in the west, and one special center. I just want those numbers to just sit for a moment. It has been a very long time in this school district since those were the numbers. And the reason I point those out and
152underscore them is the commitment of this team, our principles, and our hiring managers in the schools. What a partnership. And guess who wins when that happens? Children. Children this year have a teacher. And that hasn't happened in many of our regions, including the east and the north for many years. So just thank you for your commitment. Thank you for focusing on recruitment and very importantly on retention. And thank you for having a forward vision to address the needs as they present to look forward at what is coming and also to acknowledge that there's still work to be done succession planning job satisfaction culture leadership development in this building with divisional leaders with department leaders. We focus on the schools and that is absolutely a great place to focus. We have to also remember our divisional
153and our department leaders and thank you for acknowledging that is work to come. So I'm very excited about the presentation. We look forward to your comments today. Thank you board members. Mr. Ribble. Wow. After that I don't what I can add but I am going to I am wound up here. The key word is wow. What a difference in the last 12 months. I mean the way you folks have like the retention number at 97%. And who had ever thought? and all these processes that you're measuring the time it takes to execute whether it's a benefit plan or a hiring panel or incident phone and someone applies that's just outstanding and as in any business the manager is really the key person in our business it's the principal and I was really glad to hear
154the things you have in place to support train coach and counsel our principles especially in dealing with teachers with a contract that you know we don't need to have the aggravation of not understanding an agreement We have hard feelings, mistrust. So, it sounds like we really have the team in place. And again, wow, I thank high energy group over there to five of you. Thank you very much, Miss Shaviano. Yeah. So, thank you. I love when you guys present because you always bring treats. But, no, I mean, thank you for everything that you guys do. I read the newsletters when they come out and none of it really like sets for me, but I love all the information in there. So, I'm hoping that everyone in the schools are really taking the time because it
155is like jacked full of information. Like it's pages and pages of stuff. So, like kudos to to all the work that you guys are doing because it does show. and you guys are just so peppy and like happy and wonderful and that's the way that they are like that's the way that it should be and it should be exciting and happy. So to that like yes in the last year it has been a 180 in this you know division of the business and that's exciting and excited to see what the next year brings and all the other things and you guys won me over at KPI so I'm just I love that. So thank you Mr. Persons. Yeah, I'm very happy about the few vacancies on the east zone. I've been tracking it for a
156long time. No matter what the number was until this year, there was as many vacancies in the east zone as the other three zones combined. And that put a huge deficit there and a huge burden on those schools to produce. I do have one thing that we didn't talk about today that concerns me greatly. I mean, if our goal is to have a certified teacher in every classroom, we have 10% of the rooms substitute every day. I was looking at the numbers. I've been tracking it for a few weeks. Last week, we had the lowest we had out was 529 teachers in one day. The most we had out was 737 teachers in one day, which is about 12%. That may be normal with sickness and thing. I don't know. But I think we need
157to look at that. I mean, if our goal is 95% retention, they could be better if we had 95% of them actually in the class on any given day if possible. And I don't have an answer to that. I just want to put that on your radar screen to check into because I think it sort of defeats the purpose. Thank you, Miss Giovanelli. Well, I just want to say thank you. you'all knocked it out of the park on this one. and I just want to say kudos to y'all and I can't see I can't wait to see what you do. I mean, we got a pin wheel this time. I think a bell and I So, I'm going to start collecting the things from HR. So, so just thank you. and I'm excited. I'm excited
158about everything that you're bringing forward and Oh, there you go. Thanks, Ar. But just thank you. That's I just really want and we see it. I can't wait to see the outcome because I believe it's going to really drive home. Thank you, Miss Jordan. Well, I thought you were trying to hypnotize us with this, so I stopped looking at it. No, I really do appreciate everything that you said, but I do have a couple questions, please, if you don't mind. the temporary teacher internship, what is the difference of that's on page 15. What is the difference of the temporary teacher internships and the flyers? Because I think the flyers are students as well. Correct. So who who exactly are they the temporary teachers? Sure. So is that So our temporary teacher certificate interns are candidates
159that are in lie of finishing their final internship. They actually go and become the teacher of record and take a classroom vacancy. So they're filling positions before they graduate. So what's the difference of the flyers are part-time and they take they have they get a stipen. They don't make a salary like a teacher the temporary teacher intern certificate teachers. Okay. Yeah. So the flyers are still under the internship model. Okay. That's why I was like a little bit confused because I saw multiple ones and then the other one I is Dr. Savage and that was page 29. How many people are how many responds do you get? you stated that you sent out like the pulse and then you're hoping to get the response back from the teachers. Do we get do you track how
160many people are actually responding to us or to you? Yes. So, we just sent out this past month's about a week ago and we're in the 400s in response. but we're always encouraging increased participation and we do use that data. We look at the data in real time to help guide our organizational efforts in response to the retention needs from the voice of our teachers. We also use the newsletter to celebrate our teachers. We do teacher shoutouts special localized teacher discounts. So shout out if anyone knows of any of our local you know restaurants or businesses that would like to be featured and contribute, please let me know. thank you. And then is that also is that just teachers or is it our kitchen staff or bus drive? I mean because I know every time
161we speak it's about teacher teacher retention but we also have to make sure that we have so many others that are involved in the whole process. So absolutely 100% our and our teachers can't do their jobs without the jobs of everyone else in our organization. for this first goound we're starting everything with the teacher model. So this is a teacher retention specific model. However, we have a framework that we've built out to support this one employee group that we do hope to replicate in the future and have an expansion of you know of models to go to to our different employee groups and we want to prioritize our rollout based on data. So whatever our needs will be would be our next group. Okay. I have two two quick two two more. summer camp we'll
162I think last year we had to cancel that. The giant one that we normally have at the high school we canceled it. Then did we have smaller ones? Great question. The new teachers our new teacher training camp is that the summer camp? So we gen we usually have a very large scale one in the summer. we did offer a shorter version of that to the same denominator of all new teachers and we did have a very strong turnout for that. it was on pause because of the status of the grant funding and then when we got it we were able to still we did it regardless. We did it during the preschool week. Okay. but we don't just do one because we don't just get teachers in the summer. So we're about to do our
163next one coming up soon. We have a winter camp and a spring camp as well. so as our teachers come through and we intake them, we get them taken care of and supported with that onboarding process. Perfect. Thank you. And then the last one is for Dr. Aruzi. when you do the receiving the notification, how are they receiving the notification to submit all of their documentations of their credentials in order to to get paid properly. So we're talking about schedule N and sp. so those hourly employees particularly the schedule N which are the unbargain positions and spal. So most of those are non-exempt positions. And so the pay grade then exists for each one of those different job classifications. And so we're transitioning from that market rate system to now an open range system. So
164we do take into account then the years of credible verifiable experience. And so that's what the whole process really entails for those hourly positions is going back through collecting the information so that we can accurately place them with on the within the pay grade. And so really what we've we've done this year is we've tried to determine where they should be on the pay grade and then what the what we're using is 50% of the way there. So hopefully over a two-year period we can get all of our employees to to those targets within the next year. So that was the you know that's what was bargained through this through the spout negotiations and agreed upon and so that same process now is being implemented for our schedule. Okay. Did I answer that question? Well
165specifically it was I know that some had reached out and were speaking about like the psychologists how they did not get their paperwork in in time in order to get paid properly. And of course I directed them to you. but I'm just curious on how do we send that from the district to all of the employees to make sure that we are or do we already have their information? Well, we we sort of do we do have some information on our employees and when it comes to instructional staff, we refer to that as years X and that's kind of the term that they've used. So we determined, you know, when you get hired, there's always been throughout the years a limit on what our employees can bring in as far as experience. So it may
166have been seven years for teachers at one time. It was 10 years not too long ago. Now it's 20 years. So you can bring in 20 years worth of experience. So we have kind of information on our all of our teachers. And you can imagine, you know, we have 25 year teachers as opposed to 5-year teachers and trying to track what everybody had as verifiable years of experience. So, we haven't quite got to that point yet, but that's been the conversation that we've been talking with TAL about. That's where we want to eventually end up is really taking a look at our teachers and what skills and experience they bring to the table. And our special instructional staff is all of those counselors, LMHPS, all of those folks. and our contract has been the case
167where they really didn't bring in a lot of they weren't permitted to bring in a lot of experience. So we're looking at you know some ways to solve that problem coming in the future. Again I hope I answered your question. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Miss did you have something? No Dr. Carlin. Yes. My apologies. I forgot to u mention two things. I just wanted to give some shoutouts to our board members. Miss Javiano for serving on the calendar committee. Congratulations to you and our team for the two-year instructional calendars. That's really fantastic as a as a mom having sent two boys to our school district. I would have absolutely loved that. So, thank you to you and to the team for your work. And of course to Mr. Ribble who
168serves on our insurance task force as the board's representative. Just really appreciate your business background and the contributions that you make to that insurance task force. I heard some numbers batted around reducing the deficit from 28 million to about a quarter of a million. That is a really big deal and I did not want that to go unnoticed. So, it's been a pleasure having both of you serve on these committees and the board can be very proud of their representation. So, thank you. All right. the only thing I will add if anybody everyone is okay I'm going to come at this from a different perspective. but for somebody who once worked in this district there were many reasons in HR that I left and the environment and the culture that had unfortunately kind of unwound
169itself. But I would be happy to come today to work for Lee County School District. And I want to say thank you so much for the efforts put behind this because you're going to touch a lot of educators lives in ways that you probably won't even realize because you are here and they're boots on the ground in the classroom. But just by having an a culture and an atmosphere that you are creating where a teacher feels like they can ask questions they h and somebody will answer them and not degrade them for asking. is really kudos to to what you all are building. And I just want to say thank you so much on behalf of all of teachers should should feel really proud of what's happening down here at the district and as well
170as you and your positive energy. I just love it. I'm an energy kind of gal. So I love that you bring all of this to the table and and I think that it's it's it's going to it's going to be catchy throughout the district and I can see an upswing already. So, thank you so much. You're welcome. I'm going to go take my pin wheel and put it in my office next to my bell. Thank you so much. Have a great afternoon. Next, we have the student advisory focus group presented by Dr. Nathan Shaker, Dr. Colleen Tim, and a member of our student advisory focus group. I know we have a special guest this afternoon. Thank you. Good afternoon, board. Good afternoon, Superintendent Carlin. And I would say good afternoon to Miss Kathy Preuno, but
171I think she stepped out. we're happy to have a VIP guest here with us today. She's someone who I think has shaken many of your hands multiple times. but we're we're here to share the next iteration, the next evolution of our student advisory group. Dr. Collehen Tim who many of you have met is leading the charge in kind of the reinvention and the recreation of our student advisory group. Nashini is our first leader who's going to be sharing today. So we're going to go through with you briefly the policy or the process and the system and then Nashini is going to have some information to share with you today. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share student voice with you today. As Dr. Shaker said, "We built on a successful model
172for collecting student voice and we've grown it into this opportunity to share with authentic audiences, one of whom is you." So, thank you again. so we have a group of students who have signed up for each of our four topics this year and Nini will get into a little bit more of that in a minute. but our purpose was to invite middle school and high school students from across the district. We did those as virtual meetings so that transportation wasn't a barrier for students and we put forth and are putting forth topics that we are working on as a district staff to invite student voice into that so that we can really work on creating a culture that is positive and does support next level readiness for each of our students. So high school students
173have the opportunity to facilitate those online meetings and then they also have the opportunity to indicate their interest to be with us today. So our first group was a small group small but mighty. Their their voices were spectacular and we did have Mr. Persons who who joined us. I'm sure he'll be able to attest to that as well. Nashini led that meeting for us and she's going to take you through slides and then I'll wrap it up and talk about next steps. Hello. So our first topic during our first meeting was attendance. so during this meeting we had middle school and high school students attend. And so we started out with a really positive note in that the chronic absenteeism is down from 29.2% last year to now 21%. And this is likely following CO
17419. people are starting to get back into the swing of things and come to school more often. And so some of the things that the students on that attended the meeting discussed is that the students were able to attest to the fact that attendance was better and some of the middle middle school students talked about how their schools did celebrations such as stickers, popsicles and the color free shirt days and then students are able to check in with each other and look forward to events like hello week. So we also discussed some challenges and barriers that students students face when coming to attend schools. So the first one was the transportation issues and not being able to sign up like for the busing or missing busing and then not being able to come to school.
175And I can personally attest to this because like for example at my school I have a peer who is able to come to my school because we have like a specialized technology program and because of that he's been able to take advantage of a lot of the different like certifications we offer. But imagine all the students that may not be able to do that would strongly benefit from being able to get to the schools and not have to worry about transportation. the second topic we discussed was the mental load and just being overwhelmed and technology of course staying up late on your phone and not being able to wake up in the morning and then heavy homework causing people to just stay home just to get catch to catch up because they feel really overwhelmed.
176And the final issue here is like parent understanding and parents not realizing how disruptive absentee being absent can be for students. So some suggestions that we had for improvement was addressing the transportation gaps and making sure that students are signed up for the buses and the routes are consistent and on teaching students tech use and homework. And also like another idea that we had was having some form of video that would show students like the consequences of not going to school and like 10 years down the line what would that look like? And those could be done at different like age appropriate levels for like elementary, middle, and high school. And also making sure to like give these creative incentives that some schools are already doing. So next step next steps will be to share
177the findings with a group of teacher volunteers who are working with members of our department on improving the wellness Wednesdays. So we have we have heard clearly that people would like to see some improvement in that area. and building out what Nashini just shared, we think we can bring in some opportunities for some different videos and speaker opportunities. Certainly sharing this information with principles so they see already what students say is resonating with them as being effective strategies to encourage good attendance and also be aware of challenges. Sharing that information with transportation, I know they're working hard on transportation. I've seen some great improvements and sharing this information with them again on that. mid year we will also undertake another attendance campaign. You saw that Paul Milford from our department worked with our communications team
178on that. Dr. Carlin was featured in that. And so we want to ramp that up again mid year and encourage a nice strong end to the school year. And then again talking with our student advisory group our fourth topic as you would have seen on one of the earlier slides is on technology usage and we heard clearly from from the students in the group that time management gets way with them when they get into their technology. So we do have a topic in the fourth quarter talk about that and that'll feed in with some of the work that's happening in the academics department about how much technology is too much. So, lots of teams will get this information and be able to factor that into their work. So, I thought the students were great and
179forthright and wonderfully confident in sharing their voices and really pleased that Nashi could be here with us today to share with you. At this time, we would turn it over to the superintendent's comments, any board discussions, and Nishini might be eager to answer, so we'll give her a chance. All right. I love it. So, thank you Dr. Shaker and Dr. Tim and of course Nashini. It's always a pleasure to get to see you and know I got to talk with you a little bit last spring at one of the meetings and just really appreciate you stepping up into a leadership role again this year. So, we look forward to your questions and comments u from the board. Thank you, Mr. Persons. I really enjoyed your meeting with the other students that night. It was fun
180to sort of team into it or zoom into I can't remember which one we used that night but it was really good. The one thing that I did notice is the one reason I had really good attendance wasn't mentioned. I did not go to school to learn anything. I went to school to see my friends. That was the main reason every day. I and I imagine most of y'all did the same thing. I mean, we did not have the cell phones to text all night long and everything. When I tried to do that, my parents, you know, we had a I think we're talking the other day, a party line type thing. So, we couldn't use the phone like we did. So, it was good. So, I think we missed that a little bit. That
181was that was the only thing. But, I don't know how to get that culture back where they're actually looking forward to seeing each other. I'm hoping the lack of cell phones will help do that because they are talking to each other much more now than during the lunchtime. But that was just the one thing. Mhm. Thank you, Mr. Fiser. Thank you. kudos on this. As I said, I love and we've talked about this before, the difference of having active engagement versus passive engagement. I love this. So, Nashi, you're a rockstar. We always appreciate seeing you. So, did you feel and I apologize I'm weren't able to attend. I'm glad that Mr. Pson was able to. Did you feel there was a good act of engagement, a good discussion? Do you feel like the students felt
182like they were being heard, including yourself? Yes, I would say so. Especially having been on like the committee in the different formats that it was in the previous years. Being able to have like this format where we have the discussion and then we're able to make the slideshow and then come present it to you all is really it's nice for us to know that like we see the effects like of our the discussion we have rather than assuming that it gets to the right people. Awesome. I'm glad to hear that. Thank you Miss Jordan. It's always great to see Nashini. We've watched you grow up. I feel like I'm doing for eight years now. I just this format I and I know that I we've had this conversation I really do believe that this is
183a great format but Nini do you think that like after doing all of and I apologize that I did not make that meeting but do do you feel that it's getting to the right people you said so I assume that's us so how do you get that information back to your pair you know your peers and back into the schools to take what you have shared with us, how do you all get that back into the schools? I think part of it would be based on like discussions that the district makes and then handing that down to teachers. I'm not sure if I fully understood the question though. Well, how do you Okay, so how do you anticipate sharing what you've the conversations that you've had and you shared it with us. So now we
184understand what you have done. Now, how do you take that back to the students back into your schools to share what your group has has discussed? How do you share that back with them? I think one great way is to have more students like attend these meetings. Like during this past one, we had four students, so myself and three middle school students representing three different middle schools. So it'd be great if we could have representation from a lot of different schools attending these meetings so that more people have more students have like a say on or can pitch their ideas that eventually get included in these presentations. Okay. So now you go back to Dumbar. Okay. Because you represented Dumbar. So you go back there and you share amongst the students there. Yeah. I mean
185like the way I can like kind of promote like cause my friends to come to school is by being like a good peer. So I think those lessons are kind of just instilled like I can't just lecture my peers to come to school because that's not going to help them. So I think just the person I am and like the person students want to be. I think one thing we mentioned during the meeting is like to teach students to not be the reason that someone else doesn't want to come to school. so just like being a good person I'd say. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Well one thank you for this. I know when it was shared originally, I said I was super excited about getting student feedback and to kind of hear what was
186going on and the thought. So the numbers underneath each of these quarters like the six and 16, what does that represent? That's the number of students who have signed up. Yeah. So for quarter two or quarter three, are we going to open it up? Maybe think like, hey, this is how many people sign up, this is how many people show up. Can we reopen it with a possibility of saying like four showed up for quarter one? Yeah, we can definitely do a another call for people to do it. I knew I would do it for the quarter four one because we had added that one late, right? So that six is just represented from the kids who have signed up for the first three. So we'll take that one back publicly and we'll do reminders
187so we easily could open that up again. And then two, I think for the subjects and I think the attendance piece, I think the feedback is great and kind of hear the technology piece and the staying up late. I have elementary and middle school so I can attest that I see that. I'm looking forward to code of conduct and all the different pieces especially with technology. there was a mention of like cell phones and kind of seeing what that looks like and it's off subject but since you're here and you're a student in our schools kind of curious your experience so far this year with the cell phone policy and kind of what we've rolled down and how it's been in school. I really like not not having phones. I've noticed like personally in my
188school there's been like a lot less fights because I don't know if it's a direct result of the cell phone policy but I would say maybe because sometimes when there's fights people want to have their phones on them to like record it and so by not having phones I think there's that less incentive to have fights and that's just something I've observed in my school. But I mean like the people that are going to sneak their phones to like to the bathroom or stuff they're going to do that anyways. But I think for the general population of like the people that follow the rules I think it's really benefiting us. That's awesome. Thank you for that. Well, no, I'm excited and thank you for participating and looking forward to the rest of the feedback for
189the year. So, thank you for doing it. Thank you, Miss Ganelli. Yeah. So, just thank you. Thank you for participating. Thank you for keeping this going because I was a little worried about it honestly. So, I'm excited to see the increased student Participation. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, and I'll just reiterate, thank you so much for being a part of it. And I just, you know, it I have I have young kids, too, and there's nothing more frustrating than giving your ideas and then nothing ever comes of it or sharing your opinion and your thoughts and you're like, are adults even listening? So, I look forward to these open communications and I would encourage you to continue to stay engaged in your school. and hopefully more students will see that this is benefiting you all. I
190mean, you're an advocate for your peers and I think this is going to lead into some great things. I already know that you're going to be a great leader and do great things in life, but this is just one more little feather in your cap to add to your resume to the to to the next step. So, thank you so much for being here. All right. Thank you. Have a great afternoon. next we have a discussion with fraud, waste, and abuse presented by Dr. Ken Savage and Dr. Shannon Johnston. Do you want me to pull anything up? No. Okay. Okay. I'll kick this up. good afternoon, Madam Chair, board members, Dr. Carlin, and attorney Deo. pleasure to be up here with you today. Dr. Johnson and myself, we're here to basically close a loop with
191an earlier board ask from the October meeting and prior where we discussed the potential for a pilot with the clerk of courts office. I know that each board member had an opportunity to also ask questions directly of the clerk of courts in the last superintendent one-on-one. So what we wanted to do today was just bring a couple artifacts forward to you just to demonstrate how we are procedurally through the administration side approaching this potential pilot that we are looking at with the clerk of court's office. essentially we have two attachments in the board agenda item. you have printed those items with you as well. the first one just is a very quick visual overview of the of the flowchart for the waste, fraud, and abuse. And it kind of outlines how this would essentially perform
192related to the rest of of similar types of things like this that we have where a complaint essentially is received. the clerk of court's office has a hotline a form that where they receive them. they receive it presently on behalf of all the different county agencies. so for example, board of county commissioners the clerk of circuit court and comproller as well as the port authority and so we would just be added to that piece and received in the exact same format that they do. then once that is done if they believe that it falls within the scope of that then we would receive a notification and then they perform just like all the other third party entities that perform investigations with us. they are independent. that includes things such as RSM for us as our
193board auditor. They do independent work. Even in our office of legal services, if we have our government compliance, they do an independent. They're not, you know, we're not directing in any way. Whether it's our professional standards, we don't direct that they have to do particular things whether it's the auditor general through the state of Florida or any of the other entities. this would be organized very much in the same way. Once they are completed with that report, of course, we have to cooperate. depending on the nature of what it is. That's part of how we as the administration go is that we cooperate by providing access to whatever things are needed to do that. Once they are done, they issue a report and that goes to the administration as well as the board. because the
194administration role in that is that we have to get it and then actually have to compile what we do about it. but the board gets it from your compliance oversight role. You are have to be made aware of that. But the superintendent acting in that day-to-day operational capacity has to figure out how do we respond to that. Then the board determines whether or not that is an acceptable response. And of course that's completely between your relationship with the superintendent and how you do it. So that visual one pager kind of outlines that piece. The second attachment that we have is actually the individual process document which gives a little bit more of a detailed breakdown specifically of what that looks like in the organization. so you understand how both from the complaint being received what
195that notice the written notice that goes to the school board as well as what happens for the complaints that don't fall within scope and so forth. so all those things are provided today. I know some of you had questions of the clerk of courts directly, but really this was just to kick off your board discussion today at the workshop so that you could ask any additional questions you may have, have any discussion you might have and that we are stand ready to provide information as well as support any discussion you have related to this pilot program that we are interested in implementing. That's it, Madam Chair. Dr. Carlin, do you have anything first? Okay, Mr. Ribble. Yeah, I took a I took a gander at this just now. take a look at the processes. This
196is almost exactly the same thing that UPS and Delta Airlines did back around 1992 when we were put in a compliance line. and the thought was we had all these lawsuits coming every nobody was going through the process agreements. They weren't start they weren't talking to their immediate manager or the person they reported to. They wanted to go right to the top right to the attorneys and all Bill Lowers were up out of the roof. So then it became, okay, how do we do this? How are our employees going to trust us to call the company and complain? We don't think so. So we went to an a third party vendor and then we shared a lot of the same business practices with Delta. As you know, both corporate offices are in Atlanta. And that's
197what we did. We went to a third party outside vendor and the morale of the people, the trust of the whole process went way up and guess what? Bill hours came way down. So, I applaud the efforts of doing this and I'm glad to see that we can partner with the county to get this done. Thank you, Mr. Ribble. Miss Jordan, I'm going to be the negative one, of course. I asked earlier, I know we're supposed to have the information 7 days before, which of course this did not come to us seven days before. just now seeing this to even look this over at this moment. So that to me is concerning that we would present something for us to have a conversation when we haven't even had the opportunity to read this. So I'm
198not sure what happened there. And I specifically did send an email earlier to find out where there was nothing attached to this. So now we have this information. We're having a conversation about something that we have I mean I know I have not had an opportunity I don't know if anybody else has had an opportunity to read this yet. so I have a problem with that. And not only that, when we did have our one-on-one, we had a conversation, and even the last time we had a conversation, it was we wanted to make sure that we had some type of agreement, anou or something on this so that if we wanted to back out, we could do that. And I'm not really sure why it's so imperative that the clerk of courts gets involved in
199the Lee County School District. So there's multiple things and again this all I believe is in the contract of the our at our attorney if I remember correctly Mr. Brie Brun would know that but so yeah I am compelled to I have I have an issue with this Mr. Fischer. Thank you. I was able to review this yesterday in board docs when I got the notification my email about it. So, and I'd also previously asked the superintendent, the clerk of courts and the deputy superintendent regards this. I support this just as I did last time and Lee County these last few years has been a leader throughout this state. And I think this is a thing where we continue especially where you're seeing, you know, Doge and really looking into school districts and municipalities. I
200think again we need to be a leader and as I said, the clerk already does this for the county. It doesn't cost us any additional dollars and again it's a pilot project. So I don't see why we need some kind of long-winded agreement and this I believe this falls in the power of the superintendent. I've been through with many of you with you know three different superintendents and when there's anything I believe that has encroached upon that I've spoke up. In this case I don't see it. So thank you Miss Janelli. I would like to see a little more contract. This is the process doc document and I'm good with that except that I have several questions that I'm just reading. but oversight is the board not the superintendent though. So I don't really understand
201what you're talking about when you said this is the superintendent but oversight this is oversight and that's us. I can I can help. I think just I'm happy to try to add some clarification both to some of the earlier member comments as well as to Miss Juvenelli's. So I think under this under this idea, you know, really the goal here was to kind of outline not for any kind of vote or anything along those lines, but really just to outline administratively how we would be processing as we work with just yet another one of these members. not to take the place of the lighthouse office or or encroach on any of the other areas where constituents can make complaints or employees can make complaints, but really to offer an additional channel above and beyond what's
202done at no additional expense on behalf of the organization so that the clerk the clerk of court's office could could function in that capacity. What we're doing through piloting this work the intention behind that is strictly to see how that goes. is that something that is helpful to the folks who who would wish to avail themselves of that anonymous or non-anmous reporting that they do and to see if this is a value ad or not. and I think the clerk of courts outlined that pretty well on our one ones as well. as it pertains to oversight, just to kind of clarify really all of you are responsible for the oversight of the district. So the board members obviously being members of the board, the school board is ultimately the authority for the school district. However,
203the superintendent is the is the secretary for the board. And so on in the day-to-day function when the board is not in session meeting, it is a superintendent who who has general authority as prescribed by statute to be responsible for the general oversight of the entire school district every single day 24/7. not just in meetings and not just that's that's an individual charge that her role carries with it in addition to so it isn't just so I want to make sure that's really clear the oversight is a shared collective responsibility that the entire school board and superintendent both have and that is specified in statute I'm sure the school board attorney could read their this under the powers of the stat the powers of the superintendent and the schoolboard authority for oversight is listed as
204one of the chief responsibilities as it pertains to these specific documents these were designed strictly to help demonstrate to the board how we would be interfacing with them. Again, that's just really to guide our work and to demonstrate also how similar it is for all of the other entities that we engage with when we go through these types of things. furthermore, this was done after we had the board member 101's taking feedback from the board members in the most recent one to one. That's when these were produced to be responsive to those board member asks. So that's member Jordan why that happened after the fact because the board members wanted that type of clarity. the reason why we moved away from the idea of a of a formal contract or something in that nature is
205because we're still really in this pilot phase where we are attempting to gather and see is this something that folks use? Would they use it? What is that total amount of intake look like? How does it perform related to that aspect? how easy is it to coordinate with this additional group? Does it result in in a in a value ad for the organization? And that's something the clerk articulated as well both both in our one-on- ones as well as in the prior the prior exchange. So that said, I hope that answers the questions that you had at least from from our vantage point. Thank you. So I still have more. so then so in some of this, I'd like to see a couple other I love the check the third page where the kind of
206outcome and you know what you what they do with it a little bit and gives us direction and guidance. and I like the process document. I just what happens? And so when the step one, what if it's, you know, a personnel matter like you could have one complaint that could touch three different departments. So how I don't see that how that would be addressed and then my third on the step three back to the reporting the findings. I would like to see that it goes to RSM/board auditor. I'm hoping we have a board auditor by then and then that would be the in-house board auditor. and then board attorney because I think that I would want to ask questions and that's who I'm going to probably ask especially in legalities that maybe I would need
207to know or may not need to know and that would that would have you know have that. So how does that work? I can take the first part of that. So the if we were if the clerk's office was to get a a personnel complaint that wasn't like you know very serious or you know something you know silly for lack of words those would come to the superintendent's design to then disperse to the appropriate or the superintendent or the design to come to the appropriate department to handle whether that be a school principal or a department manager or to professional standards. and then they would just investigate waste, fraud, and abuse cases. So that's it's part 1 C. It kind of spells that out there. Okay. So how do we know who the design would
208be then? I Yeah, I'm happy to respond again. So the cases of the things that would come to the board for review would be the cases that were deemed to be within scope and where they have an actual where they're going to be looking into. We're given notice essentially when they believe they found an issue that warrants investigation as well as once they've completed that investigation. Everything that does not fall within scope essentially is rejected, redirected to us. So and we get them every day. We they come in the form of emails, phone calls. You all receive them in your inboxes as well. And so I'm sure people you meet in the grocery store. it happens all the time and it's a huge part of what we do in running the day-to-day operations is we
209receive complaints of all natures both labor as well as constituents for all manner of things. What what this is really about is it within the scope of what he can look at or not and if it is not within that scope it is redirected. Essentially they it's a closed loop from them. if they believe that it is and it and it validates that initial communication essentially saying they believe it falls within scope. Obviously for us that's a pretty critical moment just in turn because it it commences a body of work of review just like many others investigations based on their different scopes and then when it's completed we have the opportunity to review the work after of course with all the cooperation we have to go through for them to be able to complete that
210process. So it's it's not designed to take the place of anything else. We have tip lines. We have Fortify Florida. We have all the means of communication that folks can can avail themselves of all those things. Nothing precludes anyone from going through those different methods as well. I hope that answers what you're trying. It does. And it follows pretty much the same process that we use for all those other you know hotlines that we have. we follow the same process. So they're they're also dispersed out. Some have to be investigated and some are dispersed out to the appropriate people to handle. And excuse me because I'm I'm still I still have old wounds, I'll say. So I just because I'm I'm concerned because I've been here when there was ongoing cases that the board attorney
211didn't know. And so how do we avoid that if they're not in part of the process of it when it gets kicked back here? if it goes to a designate, how do I know that it's going to get in the right hands? I think that's a great question and just I would say and I think you know I live some of that journey with you as well. So I think one of the things that we've tried to commit to is this idea of one vision, one team. we aren't separate bodies of work here. We are one vision, one district. That means one governance team. That's where it starts and begins. The time period you referred to, I remember you weren't even meeting you weren't allowed to meet with the superintendent. Correct. So again, that demonstrates
212a dysfunctional governance approach where the superintendent and their governing board aren't even meeting and briefing on information. And in this in this organization, our intention is that we all work as one vision, one team with with even though you're all duly elected by the voters, the fact is you all have different roles and responsibilities. And every member of the governance team, including our board attorney, we all support the mission of this district, which is to do our work the proper way. And so part of the superintendent's obligation is to make sure you have the information you need as well as because her responsibility to run the 247 day-to-day operation is a very significant burden as well. But yours as a governance team is also quite important as well. And so that's part of what we
213attempted to do by showing the procedures here is that level of transparency of what we're doing. Even though only pieces of it land with the board, you're still ultimately responsible for all of it as she is. Dr. Carlin. And so what we want to make do is be very transparent about that with you all. Miss Ganelli, I'm going to go to Miss Shaviano and then I can come back to you if you have another question. I'd like to hear what other Miss Shaviano. Yeah. So to that point, I read part of it and I had a conversation on our one-on-one and kind of walk through it as well. So my understanding and kind of my I'm going to break this up the best that I can. So waste fraud abuse just like fortify just like
214lighthouse all of that information comes in we're notified after the fact a lot of the pieces that come in even when we get communication 90% of the time it's administrative and I find myself saying thank you for this I'm going to send this to the superintendent's office and they're going to direct someone that's going to handle that on your staff which pains me because I can't do anything it's out of my realm so with this in that same light, right? Much like Lighthouse, much like Fortify, and everything else, this is out of that realm because these are waste, fraud, and abuse at the schools, with our staff, at the district office. These are people that are outside of our peace. We find out when something comes up, there is a case that gets involved and
215we're notified, we get our text message, we get our email notification. I feel like it falls within that same bucket. Please correct me if I'm wrong. And again, it's another layer of opportunity and in the same way that I asked, we may not even get a tip in this avenue, which is why to that point, anou hasn't been done because it's not something that the clerk does with any other entity that they provide this service for, which was the other ask. because my question was is yes, we're going to put this out to our district and our personnel to say here's another channel where you can report something an honestly or not an honestly and they it may not get a tip or it may get one or it may get three. What does good
216look like? What does effective look like? Does it mean if we get one we have no waste, fraud, and abuse? I don't know. Right? So we don't know what that is until it's launched. And again, that's what the pilot is for, to then say, "Hey, in 6 months, we get two calls. Does it mean we're really good or does it mean we need to do a better job advertising this channel or do we need to look at our other channels and say what else came in along these lines?" Right? It's it's another method to review the data. so me personally, I mean, I support it. I don't see what's wrong utilizing a free source that's already out there to manage all the other information and things that come into this district because this is a
217very large district as I'm learning with so many things that happen every single day because we employ people and we work with people every day things happen. So, to have this system in place makes sense. because we don't see Lighthouse when they come in. That's not something we get notified of every day. And so, unless something happens, and I wouldn't even want to know what that looks like to be quite honest, every single day on our side. so I'm going to trust the process and trust the clerk's office and what they do every day as they're elected and to do their job and what they do for the other entities in our district. So, I mean, I support it. I don't have any questions. I think I asked all my questions in terms of how
218this is going to get communicated and what the success the success of this looks like. We won't know until it's rolled out and we get the data from it. So, I'm good on my end. Thank you, Mr. Ribble. Yeah, I just wanted to go back over. This isn't for somebody that stole a box of paper clips. This setup is for the real serious serious somebody takes a vehicle home and they go on vacation for a week that the school district owns. That's fraud. That's abuse. somebody has has their garage doors redone on their home with with new threecar garage and they get three new motors and they build it for the school district. That's what this is for employees or employees or people that work for the district that have an avenue to go to
219someone besides the district that they trust that they can confide in and report the severe situations. That's what it's for. It's not for somebody, well, I don't like the way my principal looked at me because I didn't have a chalkboard erased in the big in class or some nonsense like that. This is for the heavy drama cases. And that's why I think our counties who who deals with this stuff all the time is perfect a perfect marriage for us to at least give it a try. It doesn't cost us anything. I got to tell you, when you have a big corporation and use a you buy a third party vendor to monitor this, you're spending millions of dollars and having them process these cases just to fill out the complaint and send it to you.
220You're getting a big bill here. We're getting this pro bono. So, it's it's it's giving us sleeves out of our vest. It's a no-brainer. Mr. Parsons sort of a realist. This is either going to work well or it's not. If you have anou, it's a pain to get rid of. We're finding that out in another situation where if we have a pilot program, I think it unless the attorney tells me I'm wrong, I think we could vote at any time to end it ASAP. I there's because there's no parameters that we're stuck to. So, I think we just have to monitor it and see if it does work well or if it doesn't work well. So, again, for the reasons some of us said it's free and this and that, I say give it a
221chance. but I think we need to be vigilant because of the things in the past like Miss Janelli is pointing out and like Miss Jordan's very aware of also. I think we just have to see where where it goes. and that's sort of where I am. I'm going to be looking at it, but I'm not against trying it out at this time. And I think we'll know quite quickly if someone tries to go way further than what we as a board think they should be doing, trying to get into maybe minute things and everything like that, then we just vote to end it. Miss Jordan, do we vote to end it? Because if it's not us, the board doing this, it's it's up to the superintendent, it's under her if she's deciding to do this,
222then the superintendent, whoever that may be. How does the board vote to Dr. Savage? Yeah, I think I can help with that. because really when four or more of you direct the superintendent, she is the secretary of the board. So you give direction to superintendent. She makes recommendations every single time you have an action meeting. While this isn't a contract to be ratified, an agreement to be verified in that piece is as I thought Mr. Person eloquently stated, you give direction every single time you come together as a governing body and you give it to your superintendent in the form of we have a concern with this relationship that we have or we do not or we love this, we'd like to expand this. When you give direction like that and four or more of
223you come to that type of direction, then as long as it's not illegal, the superintendent carries your wishes forward. That's her job. That's her role to do it. It doesn't have to be in the form of a contract to make it something that can direct her work. Thank you, Mr. Jordan. However, so we gave that direction. I believe there was four of us who gave that direction that we would like to look at if we were going to do this, we would want something in writing. Now today we're here today and now everything has changed but the at the last time we spoke on this I believe there were four who had spoke about that we wanted to see something in writing. Okay. And then and then even reading this I went back and looked
224at my emails. I emailed yesterday at 2 202 to find out where the information was for this. So that's 2:00. Of course, you got life. Did I see this last night? No, I did not. So again, this is the first time I'm seeing this. and our audit RSM is our auditors. They very and I've had multiple conversations with them to clarify. Do you do this? Do you do waste fraud and abuse? They said yes, they do. Okay. So that's our auditor. So we're going kind of like against our auditors. We have an audit committee. hasn't even been brought up to our audit committee and what did our audit committee that's misselli what did our audit committee say on this did they say that's a good idea bad idea should we try it and what is
225the pilot program what's the date on that how long is that a year two years happy to answer that question as well we did the it was we actually scheduled an audit committee meeting with the audit committee specifically so they would have time to provide feedback to you prior to this meeting and that's just to kind of again answer the other question that we did hear board member discussion. That's also why we dis discussed that we would bring it to your one-on- ones, get more expansive insight into that. We did bring you written documentation as well today to demonstrate that it's still procedural. We're not, you know, this is obviously not anou, but it is detailing exactly how it performs. We did go through that, but the audit committee as well weighed in in the
226most recent audit committee meeting and they were also supportive. They actually did Robert's rules. they did took a formal vote and did vote to bring that recommendation forward that this is something that I think one of the comments that was listed was it's a no-brainer. it's free free of charge and a great way to do it. So member juvenile I believe you were at the meeting if you'd want to share kind of from a board member liazison perspective. My apologies for not mentioning earlier I got too involved with the papers I just saw. they did support it. and they feel like that's a second set of eyes and opportunity. and they were briefed on the lighthouse process that we have presently in place and it's not to take it take away from that either. But
227I also want my concern and going back to history when the clerk court was Linda Dogget. I this is why I'm concerned regarding something in writing and maybe it shouldn't be and that this would be as Mr. Persons mentioned asking the attorney if we shouldn't have one it would be easier to get out of but when Linda Dogget came here and we were trying to decide on RSM or clerk she seemed that she was adamant that she would have to hire staff additional staff to accommodate and do this. So, so then that's made me think what happens if we are doing this and we love it and then the clerk said, "Wow, we're really busy. We need to hire somebody now. We need to y'all are going to have to help pay. You know, we
228split right now the SRO's salaries with the sheriff. I don't want to be caught off guard and then decide that we now have got to pay for our auditing with them." And we already have an audit process that does fraud, waste, and abuse, RSM, I think. And then we're still trying to get an auditor that we're having difficulty doing. So, I mean, there's just I have a little more questions or a lot more questions that I would like like this is what happens when this happens. This is what happens when this happens. And I guess that's if that makes sense. I don't know. I'm sorry, but I'm rambling. But I just I there's lots of questions that come through my mind and that's those are those are that's what I'm having problems with right now.
229That's the only reason why it's just and it is last minute for us. Thank you. Attorney Depay Bruno. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just going back to Mr. Pson's comment. I as councelor I do have an obligation just to make sure that the board is aware of this. Yes, the board can direct the superintendent to move forward with the program and if the board decides I don't want that program anymore, then the board can direct the superintendent to stop the program. So that's very clear. but I do want to make sure that the board is clear about one thing in all due respect to the clerk of court. He has indicated that he has inherent authority to come into the school district and constitutionally he does not because the school district is a political subdivision under
230article 9. The tax collector, the sheriff, the county appraiser, all of those are county agencies and we are not a county agency. So, I do have to make sure I advise the board that if at some point the board says, "I do not want the clerk to be here anymore. There may be an issue because you've allowed the clerk to come in without parameters." Denise, Mr. Fischer. Oh, okay. Dr. Carlin, that's all right. Yes. I appreciate the council by our by our general counsel. couple of things that I'd like to say. First of all, I want to go back to something Mr. Person said, and that is this is a pilot. This is a pilot. the other thing I'd like to share is, our general counsel, our board attorney, myself and Miss Gia Vanelli were
231on the meeting with the audit committee and one point was brought up that I don't think we've mentioned and that is that if I'm an employee or I'm a constituent, I can have the opportunity to go outside the district to report something. And if we want to talk about public trust, that is important. We have employees that will not report information because Lighthouse does go to your employee and it's not meant as an affront at all to your employee at all. It is the perception that the complaint is going to somebody inside the school board and the inside the district. I do not feel comfortable reporting that. So, I just wanted to just reemphasize something that the audit committee had had brought out. Again, no cost item. Going outside the district helps build public trust.
232very supportive. This is a smart idea. Independence is important. Multiple ways to report fraud, waste, or abuse are important. And I also want to give you my assurance. You know, I'm coming up on a year working with all of you as the superintendent. Nothing is more important to me than making sure this district is run in the appropriate way. Nothing is more important to me than making sure that our employees and our constituents who elected all of us to office have a mechanism that they feel comfortable with reporting. because if we don't know about problems, we can't go to work on them. And again, this is not meant as any disrespect to anybody within our dis our district or our board. There are constituents and employees that do not feel comfortable with the current system
233as is and they will not report. This is one additional avenue for this reporting to be made to an independent party. And I'll be quite quite clear on this. My conversations with the clerk have gone like this. This is a pilot. I will be watching this carefully as well as well as our board. I am not going to allow nonsense. Those of you that know me well understand that it is my duty along with yours to make sure that this district is run in an appropriate manner. And I take that responsibility and the oath I took a year ago extremely seriously. So I do want to assure you from my heart that this is a pilot that we are giving our employees one more avenue and our constituents one more avenue who may not be
234comfortable with our current procedure. It's one more avenue. That's all it is. As to the process, the process follows exactly what we do when other external investigators are involved. We're noticed as governance team that there is a potential issue, the investigation occurs, we are reported back to on the outcome of the investigation. If there is employee discipline to be meed out, that comes from me. If it includes suspension without pay, termination, we follow the board policy. we bring it to you. This is absolutely in alignment with our other external investigations. Thank you, Mr. Fischer. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just briefly through the chair to member Juvenelli, you had mentioned about obviously volume and stuff like that, but that's why the pilot project's here. Let's see where we end up with that point. If that is
235an issue, then we can figure out later. That's what the pilot project and the data will be for. In regards to RSM, I appreciate the job they do. I don't see this any different than diversifying where we do with our legal services where we use multiple attorneys from outside the district. In regards to RSM doing versus us, you know, this is a the clerk is a trusted governmental agency. This is not some fly by night thing. And I don't know about you, I'd rather not waste any more taxpayer dollars if we have somebody that can do it that's already been paid for from that instance. I'm here to support anything that will help bring about or bring forward anything that's fraud, waste, and abuse. Thank you, Miss Giovanelli. I'll be quick, too. thank you both.
236because I do appreciate and agree with you. my only concern is we're not here forever. You and I are not going to be here forever and neither is that clerk of court. So, what happens when things change? And that is my concern then because Linda Dog said one thing, now we've got Kevin Kins that says another. And I respect and appreciate him for that. And I'm like I said, I'm not against it. I just am worried about the parameters or the lack of or like I want to be able to if for some reason we don't like something, we need to be able to have be, you know, have that information. I'm just a little concerned cuz we've had we've had lots of investigations that didn't we didn't know anything about that has happened and
237I'm afraid that could be that another situation for that and I'm just that it causes me to pause. Thank you. That's it. Okay, I'll go ahead and give my thoughts since there's been so many that are repeated up here. first of all, I'd like to say thank you to Kevin KS for taking this on and to support the school district of Lee County. he is offering this and his staff as free of charge. Mr. Ribble, your opening comments about this topic were spoton. Corporate America does something very similar to this. We run a seriously large corporation and one of the, you know, one of the largest school districts of the state of Florida. We need to walk into that with a corporate mindset whenever we are running the business and the day-to-day business of the
238district. As a former employee here in Lee County and in another district, Dr. Carlin, you're spot on there. We can sing to the ceiling and put out these cute pinw wheels in every classroom and bells and candy, but I am I promise you there are there are staff members that no matter how welcoming we make them feel in feedback, they are not going to they are not going to file anything when they know in their minds that it could end up on our desk. and to be able to have another opportunity for someone to voice their concerns. I just don't see anything wrong with having more transparency. I mean, we get that's one of the number one emails or complaints we get is about transparency and we're trying to block this from every perspective. it's
239a pilot program. We have the authority as a board now, four years from now, a new superintendent from now to say, I'd like to make a motion to stop the pilot with the clerk of courts at any time. And if you can get four people on board with you, then that pilot program can stop. I just think that I mean, we also have a committee. We've we've also talked about our committees that our advisory committees and we have a an audit committee that takes their volunteer time to form and they're giving us their suggestion and their suggestion is to please begin this pilot program. So, are we not listening to our committee suggestions either anymore? And those are those are just some of the things I've written down. I am incredibly excited about something like
240this because I think it is an opportunity for us to see to just some shed some light on some things that we may not be privy to right now because people just don't feel safe enough. And I think that the district is headed in an really positive direction with that, but we're not there. And I don't know that in a corporation this size you'll ever fully be there. so I just want to I those are my thoughts. you have my complete support in this pilot with the clerk of courts and I want to say thank you again to Kevin Cards and the staff. Anything else? Okay, thank you. we're going to move on to public to public comment. attorney Dupe Bruno, do you want to address public comment? Yes, madam chair. There is nobody who
241has signed up for public comment. Okay, thank you. We'll move on now to go to the order of other business and I'll start with Mr. Fischer. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll try to make this quick. Horizon Council just going off committees. we did not have a meeting this month. Many of us attended the industry appreciation wars which we saw some obviously great local community impact. Obviously, some of the what's happened in the school district was highlighted. So, that was really important and good to see. You know, we're the number two economic driver in this county. So, I'm glad to see that's recognized and we're supported for that. foundation. We had a foundation meeting Dr. Carlin and I did last week. they had an update on Golden Apple nominations. They received 4,390 nominations. So that's fantastic.
242So looking forward to that. Also, if you haven't received yet, the foundation sent out their calendar of events and you know continues to to ask the board and everyone else to to attend those events. They're we all know they're awesome. So DrugFree Coalition last month just again and Miss Langford Fleming talked about this. if you have an opportunity to get out when it happens in Wintertown Drug House Odyssey, that's always a great thing to see and to see the different interaction from the schools with all the scenarios there. It's always a fantastic thing. last thing I attended along with Miss Jordan and Mr. Person's FSBA board of directors meeting. I did send you kind of a complication of notes of things that happened there. You will see some different things in regards to strategic plan
243that will come forward in our December meeting. So that's all I have now. Thank you. I attended the do the right thing a award ceremony and that's always fun and I think it's your turn next. So I just would give you a little heads up on that. I attended the Edison Parks book fair. That was actually fun. I bet a couple days of that. my daughter worked it for two weeks and she had a sbatical for her work and she wanted to really shout out to everyone that works and does things at schools because she was ready to go back to work come November 1st just for the record because she spent two weeks at Edison Park and that was you know all day long. That's a lot. It was a it was a lot.
244She was it was very enlightening for her. most of us had I think attended the appreciation ind industry awards that was actually fun and to see how well our community is really partnering with each other and doing you know just bringing jobs and so forth to our community because good jobs are a great opportunity for our community. culinary showcase taco we at the Shanganger taco cookoff was actually very fun. I ate I will say eight tacos that night just for the record. and they were all really good. except for kind of I'm not wasn't into the actual the one with no meat that Bill and his wife love. I like I like my chicken. but the Florida Restaurant Lodging Association is really good about partnering with us and they do several other events throughout the
245year. So, I encourage the next time there's a taco cookoff, go to it. and then the United Way annual campaign kickoff, that's a very interesting event of all the community members and the people that participate. But I think the key is for us is that what a partner that the United Way is for our the school district and what they do for us is far more than I think what we do for them. So, I think that's really important to acknowledge them. I also want to bring up the, the two-year the Yeah, the two-year calendar that we're approving. I thought it was exciting because we're actually I want to give kudos to whoever's on the calendar committee where it's pretty much done Memorial Day weekend. Like I know my daughter is going to be ecstatic
246and her friends with they not having to go back to school technically and you know until August and they'll have really a full two months of being off. So kudos to to the calendar committee because this is amazing and they did it two years in a row. I was able to she's they're planning their vacations already. So and their time off so I think that's really great and exciting. so I just wanted to bring that up and really that's all I have and just I think the conversation is really good that we've had today. I am for the record I was not against anything more transparency, more opportunity for audits and so forth. I was I'm very much for it. I just want to make sure that it's always devil in the details and I'm
247concerned that the details are going to have a pro of a loophole. But I think that I'm confident that the superintendent or one of us can bring that to the her and that'll get corrected and fixed at the time because I just know it's not going to be perfect. so I look forward to our first audit with Kevin KS. Thank you, Mr. Ribble. Well, the first audit's right around the corner because I'm going to call him and complain that you ate too many tacos. You weren't You weren't supposed to eat That's abuse. You weren't supposed to have eight. You were supposed to have four. It was a I had to vote. Okay. All right. I'm not going to filibuster with all the things I did, but I do want to mention this. This taco situation
248was the best outstanding event I've been to in the district yet. It was so well done. You could go to any one of these schools that had their stand. There were eight or 12 students there cooking. Their mannerisms were so professional. They all were dressed neatly. They talked fluently. They were excited. And we are lucky to have those chefs, I'll tell you. And I want to give you a compliment for the calendar. I can't believe that calendar. That's the best calendar I've ever seen. But in closing, I do want to talk about the insurance task force that I'm on. We just had a wonderful negotiations. I've heard a lot of stories, but the facts be known. I think without a doubt, Dr. Russy, Dr. Johnson just have done a great job working with the union
249here. Kevin Dailyaly was fantastic. We talked about being in the whole $28 million. We had a handshake after three short meetings and now we're in a whole $280,000. So, I don't know how you do that, but we did a heck of a job. I'm not going to tell you all the cuts we made, but believe me, if we can still get this monthly expense under the $2 million additional that we're spending every month over last year, that's $24 million a year if we keep trending the way we're going with benefits. So, we all need to take a look at the benefits, make sure they're not being abused, and continue a good relationship with the union. I'm really pleased that went that well. That's all I have, Miss Jordan. Well, I just have to say I
250wish that I had heard the report from Miss Giovanelli regarding the audit committee prior to having this conversation would have been totally different. So, thank you for sharing that information and I want to say congratulations to Mr. Ribble here. He has become a certified board member. So, congratulations to you. and he is the newest class emerging leaders for the Florida Schoolboard Association. So, congratulations on that. Midelli stated a lot of the events that we all attended this last month. And with the cookoff, Island Coast did take first place in that. I wanted to give them a shout out. she's only been there two years and the kitchen that they had to produce that product in is very small and I know that they've been cooking and using the teachers and staff to try everything out
251before they presented it out there. So they did a great job. I was excited and Miss Ganelli was out there as well. We I actually did my first garden built and with students at Gateway and we were out there, you know, with the hammers, the screwdrivers, the dirt and everything else making sure that we had the gardens put in place for these students and the students were amazing. They came out and they actually were showing adults how to build wagons. So, that was that was a lot of fun. And Lowe's was out there with us. They were one of the sponsors and I hope that they picked up some of those students because they really did an amazing job. We also did this past weekend too the marching bands all our marching bands at the
252MPA at Fort Myers High. They did an exceptional job. We had some from Clue Leel in different areas, but every one of them did a great job. One was better than the next. So they all were winners. and I can go on and on. you know, we had the story book parades all over the districts. All the kids were characters in a book. You had to figure out which character they really were though in their book. So, that was that was a lot of fun with all the kids and build my future at JetBlue. I mean, I've been everywhere this month and thank you very much and just congratulations again. So, thank you, Mr. Persons. Well, there's not much left to talk about, but I did go I did go to one event that many
253of y'all went to, but my experience was definitely higher than your experience. That was the builder's future event there at JetBlue Park. All the construction people came out and put on demonstrations of high-tech equipment and everything. And Mr. Ribble there. And I would have vetoed your certification if I could have there, Bill, because he talked me into going up on a lift. It was the Department of Transportation, the ones they use for those super high lights at at the interstate. I went up 55 feet. Bill, you look very small from up there. Don't ever worry about your weight as long as someone's that high above you. But anyway, it was it was an exciting experience. I know many of the others went out there also. Mr. Matthews, thank you for showing us around too and
254introducing us to everybody on that one. That was a great time. That's all I have for now. Miss Shaviano, I hate to like mimic the the kudos, but like the taco event was awesome. It was my first time going and I've never been at Shangla, so that was an experience in itself. But I don't want to say I ate my weight in tacos. I was trying to be very cautious about how many tacos I was eating. I only had four though. So cuz I had to go to cheerleading practice, so there was nothing. but like I was super impressed with our kids and when you went to each station, they were super passionate about what they were doing and explaining how they made it and their ingredients and the entire process and they were just
255lighting up and it was I was just proud to even watch it and like just get the food and just say like thank you. Like it was just beautiful. So, it made it incredibly hard to just vote for one and I just like I was trying to hide when I voted cuz I was like I'm sorry. Like I'm just voting for yours. So, it was incredibly hard because they all work so hard and everything was incredibly delicious. I did not try the vegan one for very obvious reasons. but just kudos to to our teachers and to to our schools for just putting this together and supporting our kids and to the partnerships with Florida Restaurant and Lodging, Jay Johnson and what they do to to partner with us and our kids and our culinary to
256do that cuz I joke that like I worry that our my kids can't boil water, my youngest can cook. Thank god they can fund for their future, right? So like these these kids have such an opportunity to do such great things anywhere and they can feed themselves. So I think that's great. and yes, I had my first time doing the calendar committee and I didn't know what to expect when I walked in there. So kudos to talc and spout and the admin and all everybody was in there. I heard I was a lucky charm because it was an hour and a half and we got two calendars done. That's like a whole record. So, I will I'll do it again next year or two years from now when we have to do it again to
257kind of keep the flow going and we'll break the record. but other than that, I will save the rest for your action meeting. Thank you. Thank you. yes, I attended a ton of things which I'm not going to bore you all with, but one thing I did do as well is I went to the United Way kickoff and you know going into the holidays which we're entering in, it's very eyeopening as to the fact that there's still one in six kids that go home hungry every day. One in six. That's just not acceptable. And so I would, you know, I know I know my family is going to do our part with what we can this holiday season, but alongside of that I was able to tour the brand new Franklin Park Elementary. And inside
258Franklin Park Elementary is the United Way like I guess a little satellite office if you will. And man is that organized. So such a great do job. I met a gentleman David who was just so passionate and I could have talked to him for 30 minutes about what was going on but they also have the you know the partnership with Lee Health inside of their building which is so great for our employees and our staff and the surrounding community. So that was really just that was such a great visit with Dr. German and I can't wait to go back. So, I will save any of my other comments for this evening and move on to attorney Dupe Bruno. So, Mr. Verbble, there was something that flew across my email about FSBA has an announcement. I
259had no idea what it was, but your name was there. So, congratulations. And that's my only comment. Thank you, Dr. Carlin. Yes. Thank you very much. so just thank you for today. If you think back on all of the topics that we addressed today, they touched on virtually all of our district priorities. School safety, the school responsibility, student achievement, teacher recruitment and retention. So, just hats off to you for the great job you did. we went a little bit long today, but as you can see, our team is very committed to the work and working very diligently. I also want to give the board a kudos for the public to know most all of our board members, I believe at this point all of our board members have joined me on a school visit, at
260least one if not more. And the opportunity to hear from the schools about their instructional improvement plans. if you haven't joined us, we'll we'll be getting invitations out to you, but to hear about the school's instructional improvement plans and then to be able to walk classrooms and to be able to see those in action. And Mr. mentioned an opportunity. I know a number of us have had that opportunity. if we have not extended that to you, I invite you to join us when we visit schools in your in your region. I think I can speak for the board members that I've done that with so far. the experience of hearing from the principles, hearing from the administrative team, and really understanding what their wildly important goals are, their wigs, everything they're doing is helping us
261to improve student achievement, which leads us to become an a school district. So, thank you very much for your time commitment. I know it is it's a long day. It is definitely classroom by classroom we take a look at what's going on but I think it's important for you as a board to see that what we talk about here at the district office and at the dis manifesting itself out in the schools and so just thank you for your donation of time thank you for taking the time I know our schools appreciate it when they see you out there many of you go out without me and that's great too but please know that the schools recognize your commitment they understand you stand with them in their very difficult work each and every day to
262help us become a school district that's rated A. And remember the A is the kudos is less important than what it represents. And what it represents is more children walking across that stage at high school graduation. So that's what we're after. And just a big thank you to all of you that do that. And again, like I said, if you haven't had the opportunity, we'll have Kim hook up with you and we'll we'll get a time on the calendar. But really excited and just thank you for your commitment and for your dedication. Thank you, Dr. Carlin. Today, we'll have a student performance finally. That's so exciting at 5:45 p.m. followed by our schoolboard action meeting at 6 PM. At this point, having no other business to come before this body and seeing no objection, this
263meeting is adjourned and the time is 4:43 p.m. Thank you.