001good morning everyone and welcome to the Orange County school board's work session which has been scheduled for today for the purpose of discussing School Board policy bedh public input at school board meetings the pilot program that's starting July 1st and a legislative review the public will not have an opportunity to participate in this work session to provide public comment because this is not a regularly scheduled school board meeting no action will be taken and there will be no pre-agenda period in which the public would normally address the school board in relevant topics that are related to the work of the board nonetheless thank you so much for joining us this morning members are all attending in person and in addition to having some members of the superintendent's cabinet we also have some interns with us
002in the audience that are interning for member Salamanca and we also have an intern in Avi so we're excited to welcome you all to the team and we look forward to seeing the great work yes ma'am Avia the audio visual yes yes yes we have a young man back there who is working with us he's a senior I'm trying to remember the school he's at Ocoee thank you and you'll have an opportunity to meet him when this meeting is over so with that I just want to remember the remind the board and the public again that during our meetings we don't we don't communicate electronically with a constituents so if you're sending an email to try to get our attention please recognize you will not hear back from us during the meeting and to my
003fellow board members and anyone who will be speaking to this I think that's about three of y'all here to speak directly into your microphone and try not to do what I do and turn your head while you're talking because we can't pick you up with that we will now take a moment of silence I invite you to join us in the pledge of the legions next and now for the pledge pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all right and Dr Vazquez I will call on you to take the floor thank you thank you madam chair good morning we are going to be having discussions around our public input the board has expressed
004a need and a desire to change how we are currently conducting business and so this is going to give us an opportunity to solidify a pilot that will begin in July and will run through October and then at that time we will be able to decide whether we want to proceed with the new format or make additional changes I am now going to turn it over to members of our wonderful legal team who will lead us in this discussion Miss Endwell good morning thank you madam superintendent chair members of the board we are here today to discuss policy bedh public input at school board meetings and we're talking about the pilot program we don't have any can you hear no better okay we don't have any red lines to this policy because at our work
005session on the 20 I'm sorry May the 16th you had brought a number of things for us to consider and we're going to do a pilot program so today we're going to talk a little bit about what we gathered we sat collectively and combined our notes what that pilot component program is going to look like and you have a couple decision points and so we'll get started with that so on May 16th during the work session the school board considered some rough draft language a very rough draft of proposed or visions to policy bedh we focus primarily on the public input period portion which is not required by law but it's the portion of the meeting that you hear from your constituents about items that are not on the agenda right now we call that
006pre-agenda public input period so like the superintendent says beginning July 1st and running through the first marking period we are going to do a pilot program and we're going to try try to see if this works better for for your meetings to make them run more efficiently many of the components of the program were discussed we start we talked about the implementation of electronic sign up program which we're not going to have ready to go by July 1st but we are well into that process and it's kind of like a Choose Your Own Adventure so they will essentially pick which meeting they want to speak at and then start the process and so we can open it up seven days before three days before two days before the morning of week the timeline is what
007you'll have to decide when we do the electronic portion of it but you also talked about the start times of your meeting and extending the public input period right now you have scheduled for 30 minutes and you talked about extending it up to 45 minutes so once we decide what the pilot program is then we'll look at further revisions to board policy bedh so what you discussed at your last meeting was a 5 PM regular school board meeting start time that will eliminate the pre-agenda meeting speakers must sign up to speak prior to the start of the of the regular our school board meeting so we're currently using the blue cards for public input period and the yellow cards for a public comment period items that are on the agenda we talked about no live
008stream of the public input period and we extend it for 45 minutes and then my notes conflict with so what what I thought I heard so we need to know we have a decision point for you to tell me whether you want it after consent or after non-consent you talked about a time allotted for speakers during the public input period if there's between 1 and 10 speakers each speaker gives up to gets up to three minutes if there's between 11 and 15 they get up to two minutes and if they're more than 15 speakers each speaker will give up to one minute to speak and then you also talked about the priority of public input speakers you would like to have them set in an order parents legal guardian students and employees and Priority One
009individuals who reside in Orange County Florida is priority two and priority three for individuals who do not reside in Orange County Florida this is already in your current policy as it relates to your public comments so this would be consistent with that and so this would allow staff to get all that stuff together and prioritize before so that so that everything runs a little bit more smoothly some of the things that you need to talk about is whether the public input period whether you want it after consent or non-consent so it'll be depends on we don't have a lot of non-consent items sometimes when things are taken off the agenda those are added so I need direction from you or where you want that on the agenda and then also we wanted to talk about
010telephonic speakers and so I had Mr Dr shanoff give me a little bit of background about what's required for telephonic we instituted telephonic speakers during covet as you recall we went to Florida School Board attorneys Association last weekend or this past weekend and I believe only Alachua is also doing phone in but no other District was doing telephone callers and I just wanted to give you a little bit of data on that from January of 2022 to May of 2023 we have had 15 callers total so a year and a half for 15 callers when I asked Dr shanoff about what's required for those callers he said we require assistance engineer to maintain phone's permission on WebEx for members and callers the managed Services phone support will open and close the lines and receive the
011callers and place them in the queue one senior director will manage them and relay the queue to John or I so we can tell you how many callers on the line and then also David and Caesar who are in the boardroom with us and then someone to announce the caller to patch them into the WebEx environment so that's when they're fully staffed for meetings otherwise they're forced to combine roles and but we wanted to make sure there was redundancy there that's why he had a number of people working the phones so there is a little bit of so basically a skeletal unit will consider a forced staff time to manage the phone still so that's just a consideration that you need to consider so I think that's really short because I know you're going to
012have a longer presentation today so I'm ready for comments and questions all right any questions member farant let's start with you thank you madam chair and good morning I do like what we are looking into I think the pilot program is a great idea just to give us a an idea if it works or not I would when I look at this I see that we don't want to on there it said that most do not want to have it videoed but personally I think we do need to have this recorded I think it should be available to the public I think when we shut things off it makes it gives the illusion like we are hiding something or we don't want people to see what's happening and so I would personally like to ensure
013that it is just one streamlined video and members of the public who are not able to attend which are quite a few if you notice we have how many thousands of parents and they're not able to see and hear what is happening and if we needed to have something where we say beforehand anything that you're saying just remember that this is being videoed if it's something regarding a student and you would prefer to speak with us personally they could step aside and speak with somebody personally but I do think having it videoed is essential to creating that transparency and then the other thing was the wording with the public input public comment they both sound identical and I think if we could have something that says public comment is just the public comment they come
014and speak and share their comments and then public agenda input and differentiate those two I think would be would be helpful so those are my comments all right thank you member farant let's hear from Dr Castro Dental thank you madam chair and I have a number of points to make as well so I'm gonna follow up with what member farant mentioned about better differentiating public input and public comment because I still have to look and see which one is which I can't tell which one they are and I have changed my mind on broadcasting our pre-agenda public comment period I don't know which one it is but I have changed my mind and I understand that there is a concern that there are some who might play two of the camera if they're live streamed
015or broadcast but I think allowing the public access is more important and I don't think it can get much worse than what we've seen without it being broadcast and people still do often record it themselves if they want to so we're not preventing anything by not live streaming it and I think people would benefit from seeing what is being brought to our attention I think the phone lines I think that's an accessibility issue and I favor keeping the phone call in as an option when it comes to and this isn't addressed in this in your presentation but I don't I'm not sure where it would go but we've talked about when someone is speaking to the board that when they have when they're speaking about an employee or a student of course they don't use
016their names we don't like we protect our students and employees but when they're talking to us I don't think we really should shut them down if they want to address US individually or as a group with their concerns I think that as public officials they need to have some kind of redress and that's it so we shouldn't really censor when someone is bringing a concern to us about us that doesn't mean that they should lack Civility and they I think the chair can still and the board members can still have an expectation of Civility and respect but I don't think that we should cut someone off when they're pointedly addressing one or any of us I'm not sure if where this goes so I'm just going to add it as well that's part of our
017meeting structure maybe this is where it would go but I do think it's important to have a union voice in our meetings I don't know if that's considered part of our hearing process or where that would be in our regular agenda meeting but to to preserve or Reserve time for them to speak at each meeting I think is important because they do represent so many of our employees and it's a good will gesture as well and then my final concern and again it's related I'm not sure where it goes but when it comes to our public hearing on a policy that we're about to vote on this really stood out to me last time when we've workshopped an issue or policy for so long we're familiar with it we've kind of gotten the policy where
018we would like it we're ready to vote but then we present it and we allow the public to weigh in and it's almost like why do we even allow the public to weigh in our minds are made up so I don't know how we remedy that but I think the public should have a better access or ability to weigh in either along the process not just when we're about to vote on it because there's a lot of pressure on us to just go ahead and vote for the policy that we've been working on and it's really like it's almost too late for the public to make any worthwhile comment I know we advertise for our all those work sessions and workshops and people can always participate but it's really not set up to invite public
019participation so maybe there's a way we can look at that as well I am glad that Amy's not there to time me thank you thank you member Caster now Vice chair gallo thank you madam chair okay just a few things I agree I agree with with member Caster Dental about the policy and the public input and I know and I understand the challenges to some not not due to our fault bills get passed they only give us so much time before we have to put it in policy because policy takes so long because that's in statute on how we have to handle policies a lot of times the reason that happens is because we're between a rock and hard spot and it has to get approved and then we've got to revisit which creates a
020lot more work for y'all and for the board so I don't know what could be done for that but I'm I'm in support of doing something so that if the public comes to speak to us because not everybody can get to a meeting at 10 A.M which is when our rule development workshops usually are in the evening and they bring valid points I'm all for pulling the policy and reviewing it and going through the process if necessary again I just don't know how that would work with the time constraints were sometimes given so maybe we need to look at the time constraints up front and think and schedule like in our scheduling thinking hey this could get pulled and we have to start over again and build in some time if that's possible I know
021it's not possible with every policy because there's again sometimes we're under we're not given a lot of time after the legislative session ends and the school year begins and we have to have policies in place so I also agree with member Castle Dental about allowing giving Reserve time for people to speak I a lot of districts do it I do think it's a good will I understand the concern about our current CTA or os president may not be the president moving forward but we may not be the same board makeup either like everything changes and that doesn't negate the fact that we still need to hear from the community and we still want to make sure that teachers understand that we're listening to their voice and their voices heard so I'm I've said it before
022I'll say it again I'd like to see ospa CTA I'd like to see a student rep come and talk about what's happening in in the students principles I'm for all giving everybody just three minutes and they don't have to use it if they don't want it they don't have to use that time but allocating some time for them to come and speak to the board in a public fashion I would always support I think that leads to more transparency and at times Maybe it might be a little bit uncomfortable but we didn't run for office so we could always be comfortable and then flexibility within the time frame on the time allotted for speakers I agree with this I'm just a tad bit concerned that once we put something in policy there's there's no altercation
023so I didn't know if under time a lot of for speakers and I and I'm trying to think in my mind an unintended consequence of this and one immediately is not coming to mind but I have no doubt that there is one so I would just like to put like unless otherwise decided by a majority of the board like this is what it's going to be unless something different happens and the board decides to do something different that we're allowed to then change what we're going to do here and we would you know we would do by consensus or open or whatever just so that we have flexibility for those unintended consequences to which I cannot think of right now but I'm I promise you there will be some and lastly the callers is there
024I know that you mentioned that there's extra people that staffed do we have a cost that's associated with that just Dr chanoff just said it's four four staff members so right now I believe they're fours and I would have to defer to them but I believe there's there's staff time that it's within their work day right now because our pre-agenda public input period is before five o'clock okay and so to move it forward to some undetermined time after consent or non-consent I would imagine that those four will have to there might be some overtime applications there might be some other considerations is that correct okay so as long as we keep pre-agenda prior to the end of the workday which is five there's really not an Associated cost with it well there's dedicating four people
025just to that but you know it's kind of yeah I'd be interested to see the cost but as of right now I would still support having the ability for people to call in because there there are issues with people getting down here especially when we have our rural development and stuff during the day and maybe we could do a better job of notifying the public that's an option like the email you can call you can be in person just so that maybe more the word we get out maybe people would use that option more that can't get down here I'm always going to support prioritizing those who are in person first just because they did make the trip down here but I still think that we need everybody should have accessibility by calling in so
026those are my comments thank you thank you Vice chair remember Gould so what if we were to have the four reserved well which I'll call Reserve slots at 4 30. so that those folks because they have more flexibility to get here and we know students can get here by then and or 445 whichever we want to do so that those folks don't always have to stay till you know midnight either which I think is Kinder to them since they all have very early mornings and I also am in favor of the call-in component yeah for that as far as filming and that I it's not about the lack of transparency it's about the lack of misinformation that is said and we don't have a way in its constant it is absolutely constant I remember the
027woman who would come and talk about vouchers and she didn't have the information right it sounds like a public service announcement and the wrong information is going out to the community and how vouchers really work so I have a lot of concerns about that unless we have a mechanism right after to say you know here are the actual Pathways here's the actual statute here's the actual facts of things that are brought up otherwise it's out there and I know people come and film it but they're in their own ecosystems they are not in the 220 000 homes of of our of our constituents and the 1.5 million of our community so that's my concern is that we would be propagating more misinformation if we don't have a way to respond to it with fact in
028a very maybe it is the next day a you know a post-board meeting with the chair or or the superintendent that shares the facts of those things but then we have to have somebody who's fact checking during that night I mean it just causes such issues I wish that we didn't have to worry about that but in this age of dis and Mis intentional dis and misinformation I we don't need any more barriers to really getting the public to understand where we are in in our board meetings we have that ability and when we do public hearings we have that ability but in in what we're just taking public comment we're trying not to respond and make it debate and that's what I worry about and then we look dysfunctional and there's misinformation floating around
029the community thank you member called member Salamanca thank you chair right on the same topics here I am still against doing this live because of the misinformation I can appreciate the transparency aspect of it but I do appreciate our ability to quickly communicate right after board meetings what was discussed and what were some of the core topics I do think however if the majority of the board is in support of live streaming the entire thing we do need a space allotted for the board and the superintendent to respond to some of the things that were discussed during the public common par because I agree that there's many times students parents teachers will come and talk about things that after that get distributed as truth or as fact that can we have to deal with for
030weeks after that in clarifying and so I'm still against it but if we do it I would say we do need some specific structure to respond to it I've also been thinking about the slots and you know I was also skeptical and giving kind of CTA and some of these orgs but I have come around to truly believe that I think giving a student leader CTA aspa some speaking thoughts would be important I think every time they come up here and talk they Center the conversation around topics that are important and present to their day-to-day which many times are not necessarily what is being talked about on the agenda or in the political discourse of the day and I think it's good for all those here for public comment to also hear what's actually top
031of mind for our parents and teachers and students so I would be be supportive of this and I understand that it can get uncomfortable and this is a decision that will impact board members that are elected after all of us but I agree with member Gala that we are elected to hear from folks and from who we represent so we got to be comfortable with that discomfort same with being called out by name individually I think it's uncomfortable when we cut off people and make them rewrite their speeches when they come to speak to one or two board members I'm perfectly okay with being called out by name I think it also comes with the job of running for office so that's okay and then last point is on the renaming as member fund mentioned
032I think clarifying general public comment and then calling the other one agenda public input makes it very clear that what is general comment about anything on everything and the other one is public input on agenda it is confusing for myself as well every time I go through and I'm like which part is that and I know it's I get a lot of questions about folks that come in of like which one is the one I'm allowed to speak on what topic so it's just a small diff difference in wording that I think will help clarify a lot of time thank you thank you member Salamanca all right let me let me try to run through these with my thoughts on each one with regard to the way we the terminology we use to refer to
033the two different types of comments I agree with everything previous board members have indicated so I think we need to find something that's more descriptive I agree excuse me with allocating time for our unions member gold I like the idea of maybe starting that at 4 30 the only I think the only concern I have is if there is no comment and if we're not taking the rest of the comments until 4 45 then we're pulling everybody in to hear nothing and then waiting so I think we need to I liked it but when I think about the practicality if they sign up in advance maybe that would yeah that would probably work if we knew like the Friday before then we would know whether everybody needs to be down here that's a good idea
034because I hate to move the public comment time up much early for the general public so yeah that could be a good work around so that there is time in terms of in terms of allowing the public to comment on policies before we get to the point of advertising member Castle Dental I think that was an excellent point and that's always frustrating to the to the public and it's frustrating to us and I've always felt that if you're going to invite the public to provide input we need to be in a position where we can take the input and so I think that the simple change of allowing public input at an earlier stage which would generally be a work session would be a good idea however I do think there's value in having time
035set aside where board members can hash out issues that are not necessarily publicly debated so I think we might want to think about whether we add an additional meeting in those cases or we just open up the work sessions I recognize the concern that member Gallo pointed out that there may be times when we're up against a tight legislative deadline and we're not able to do all three of those meetings I think those times would be rare but I think we do need to build in especially if this is going to be formalized in a policy I think we need to build in that caveat that in the event that there's insufficient time and we are mandated to make policy changes we will proceed forward but I actually think a lot of what we're talking
036about would be better not addressed specifically in the policy because as we move forward there may be things that we think need to be changed that aren't working I really appreciate the idea that we're doing the pilot because that gives us a chance to test things that's an excellent idea but I would I would keep an open mind myself as to whether or not this is codified in the policy or whether or not the policy refers to board adopted practices so again not married to either one I just think it's worth thinking about on the things that I'm I'm not supportive of at this point in time is well and I agree as you all know that the public it's very detrimental if the public is calling out employees and saying things that aren't true
037and undermining The credibility and the trust in the classroom of our teachers and they don't have an opportunity to confront that so for that reason I really support the practice that we have right now I agree that I don't think that's a right that we as board members should expect as elected officials so I do think that there should be cordial behavior obviously but I think that people should be able to say what they think about us and not have to tiptoe around that when it comes to televising I having worked in an environment having personally championed the right to put to put in our Charter to put it in front of the voters whether or not people should be able to come to Orange County Commission meetings and provide input without a without it
038being on our agenda that's something I believe really strongly in I still think that's extremely important we televise all of our meetings I can tell you from personal experience how how many times I can show you my text messages to my staff saying please find out immediately is that true because somebody would say something and I wanted to either apologize to the individual who accused myself or other staff members of something to apologize publicly right then and there or to correct it because it was so offensive and we could not figure it out in time and that left a cloud that in most cases turned out not to be accurate and even in those cases where it might have been accurate I still think there is value to the public in knowing that board members
039are regretful if something happened or the superintendent is going to address it the problem that we have and the reason it's different in during our regular board meetings we know what's on the agenda we are prepared to discuss what's on the agenda if somebody stands up and speaks to something on the agenda the right people are in the room who have the facts and can prevent the present the facts when we don't know what somebody is going to say we are not prepared and I know the board members that have been here for a while can recall times when we would have some I'll call it testimony some comments during the pre-agenda meeting and then a week and a half two weeks later we would get an account of the conversations that happened the email
040threads the other side of the story that completely invalidated what we heard but there's no way we can have that information when these comments are being made that's and you all have made that point several of you I am very concerned about that and I'm much more concerned than I was at the County Commission and the reason being if somebody complains that we didn't clean a retention Pond or we didn't fix a traffic light those are important things but they pale in comparison to the education of our students to how we treat our students to the support or lack of support we give to our employees these things are so fundamentally important that for misinformation to be spread and for us to be the ones who are providing public resources to facilitate the spread of
041misinformation I think it's just I fundamentally I think that it's wrong to spend public resources communicating misinformation and there's no way for us to protect against it secondly if we're going to allow people to criticize board members and we're going to televise those criticisms then I think it is only fair that board members can respond with their position and their defense then what we have and you all know you've watched me I hope you know I try not to respond to most of the things that are said here but sometimes the things that are said need to be responded to in one case it was it was students who felt really really hurt and not responding suggested that we didn't care but what we what I would hate to see is this turn into a
042debate forum between students or parents or teachers and board members but I think I will be feel compelled to allow each of you to defend yourself remember Castor Dental I remember you in that situation specifically you didn't even let me you didn't even give me a chance to tell the person they were out of order and I don't blame you because what they were saying they shouldn't have been saying but that's what that's the kind of back and forth that we're going to have at the diocese televised for the public and they're not going to know it's like have you ever watched a debate where the moderator has no clue who's telling the truth and it's so frustrating when you watch those debates you're like okay great I just heard a bunch of people argue
043but would somebody please tell me what the facts are that's where we're going to be and I don't know how that serves the public well when they see a bunch of people arguing and all they do is lose confidence in all of us in the process because they don't know and it's just not conceivable that we will be able to get the facts out real time to correct that and if two weeks later or the next meeting we can we don't even have the same audience so it's out there so and then I guess the last comment will be on that is very difficult to stop somebody from saying something they shouldn't say okay and oftentimes they say it as the last thing they say and they're walking away and whoopty do out of order
044I can't take it they can't take it back you all can remember one time when all of you all glared at me because I didn't pick up on a particular word that a person used that by our policy they were not allowed to say in these Chambers I didn't catch it in time and then when I did figure out what was being said I couldn't get that individual to stop and if that had been televised as it was I know you all got I got emails from across the country about censoring the speaking of somebody and it wasn't televised if it was televised it would have even been more widely broadcast so yes we could put some sort of a Time Gap so that in the back they decide whether or not to allow that
045to go forward but I've got to tell you when you record something and then you don't put it out that's even worse now we are definitely censoring now we're deciding what goes out and doesn't go out because we have the recording but we edited out that part so I don't think you can record something and then start deciding what you're putting out not putting out without answering a lot of criticism so the reason that we have done what we've done is that we provided this opportunity for the public to talk to the board not for the public to talk to the public there are other ways the public can talk to the public in this day and age there's lots of ways and you all read those ways I'll you all know a lot of
046the things that are said out there so there is a way but this has not been that has not been the purpose of this and I find so many reasons why it is a bad idea and the only reason that I can argue would be a good idea is for the public to communicate with each other but they have that ability through social media so that's that's my thoughts on televising allowing the public to comment oh we already talked about that rule development I think that's a great idea allocating unions already said I agree that is a good idea I think if we can ask ahead of time so we know whether to allocate that time in terms of I think it was vice chair you mentioned not locking in the time frames having the
047flexibility for the board to change those I think giving the board flexibility is a good idea with regard to a lot of this and again we could do that by not making it a part of the code or having the code reflect that the board not the chair but the board can deviate from certain things by board decision and frankly as chair you all know a lot of times I'm like are you okay with this it gives me a lot of comfort to know that this is our decision and not my decision calling in so the one concern that I have with calling in is when we I'm more concerned with calling in during board meetings than I am at pre-agenda and the reason for that is we have a finite amount of time at
048pre-agenda we have to listen to everyone who comes to a board meeting on something that's on the board agenda or at least correct me on this we have to take unlimited public comment on which issues okay proposition before the board any proposition before the board okay so anytime the public has a right to speak to something on the board agenda whoever's here has the right when you think of the number of people who could call in and this has happened to other boards where the amount of time crosses over into the next day it certainly happened on the County Commission and that was without calling in where our meetings went until two o'clock in the morning and that was without opening it up to 25 000 employees and the families of 200 and nearly 10
049000 students so I worry about the feasibility that we are opening up by allowing that during our regular board meetings so it again I just I want to come back to I took a lot of heat as a county commissioner going up against our mayor to make sure the public had a chance to speak and when when he decided instead of me putting it on the ballot for the public to vote on he would take care of it himself and he so he adopted a practice that the public could speak after after our meeting was over to anything that we had voted on on the consent agenda that they weren't allowed to speak to or anything else the problem with that was one after we already voted it was kind of pointless to speak to
050what we had voted on I thought that was insulting the public too nobody ever knew when our meeting would end so it wasn't as if the public could say I'm going to come in at five o'clock because I want to speak to something that's not on the agenda or something that was on the morning's agenda whatever I'm gonna come in at five well if the meeting goes till two in the morning they're there all that time if the meeting ended at three they missed their chance so not knowing when to be there the safest thing the board could the public could do was get there at the beginning of our meeting and just sit through the entire meeting so given I tell you all that because I thought that was such a bad idea I
051went forward and pushed to get this on the charter commission's approval and have a ballot for it I strongly believe in this but I believe in doing it in a way that is feasible and protects the Integrity of the organization and the individuals that work here because their credibility is incredibly important and frankly so is you all so you have you should have that right to defend yourself I think I've covered all the issues if not I'm so sorry I've taken way more than the normal amount of time but we did Cover a lot of huh it's a good thing I'm not timing you good thing you're not timing okay and which I think makes sense in this form okay let me take member our vice chair then member ferrant and then member Kester Dental
052in that order thank you thank you madam chair okay just a few things the names I agree with what the chair said I don't I think that any employee's name is absolutely off limits as elected officials if members of the public want to refer to us we ran for office it's within their right to address us so I don't have a problem with them using our names live streaming the pre-agenda I always support I support I've I supported it I think I was on the fence the last board meeting but I initially I supported it only and my reasoning was everybody else is recording it anyways and it's going live and it's going on over so many platforms then we actually my concern was we actually have others dictating The Narrative versus US dictating The
053Narrative like they're creating the narrative that may or may not be true versus US creating the narrative and giving us a little bit more control over the narrative I see the cheers point in that we're really not controlling the narrative if we can't respond immediately then it's just it's just the narrative and I have heard from some teachers and from some employees that have asked us to please don't live stream and so for that for that reason because I'm afraid it might cause harm to our teacher in the morale of our teachers I'm not supporting it I don't think I would support it at this time however if we're gonna allot time for the Union in ospa and other groups to speak I would like that to be at the top of the agenda where
054it is live streamed so that the public can hear their opinion because I think their voice matters and it doesn't have to be in policy it could just be something that's on like we don't put in policy what's on our agenda it could just be at the top before we even after we do our pledges and maybe after recognitions before we go into the Strategic plan we have three minutes for those speakers to speak and then public comment or whatever we're going to call it and I agree with member Salamanca on what to call it Remains the Same we just add that up there I don't I don't I'm not I don't need to see it in policy I just need to see it on the agenda and that way we could do it as
055part of the pilot it works well if if there's some unintended consequence that I can't think of right now then it's in the pilot and we can make adjustments after those three months but I would like to see that and I would like to see that on camera where did we where did we land on allowing people to sign up to speak because I know we had conversations at the last meeting that this 15 minute drives me crazy that is if they're in if they're in the building and maybe it's just for people who are present if you're here and you're paying attention and you didn't either we need to expand the window of when they sign up or they should be able to sign up whenever they want because when I'm up in Tallahassee
056we could be three quarters away through the meeting and if I decide I want to speak I'm filling out a card I'm handling the Usher and they're calling me up and I think that accessibility to us is needed I'm always going to promote accessibility transparency for the for the public so I don't know where we landed on that and then I don't know I have little notes here but I think that was that public was there was something else I think the chair said public comments calling in I support it yeah I support public comments calling in I'm I'm willing to like finagle that during the pilot and see what happens I just I just again accessibility is important to me so any way that we can promote accessibility so that people who would like
057the board to hear from them I want to make sure that we're doing due diligence and we hear from everybody who wants to connect and speak to the board thank you and then please about the time frame thank you Vice chair I was going to ask for clarification the time that the time that they have to sign up so right now we get like and I'm thinking this is correct is that for pre-agenda or is that for regular agenda I'm more concerned about regular agenda because that's where we've run into some issues yes regular agenda because pre-agenda is it's a time constraint and we have to know how many speakers there is so it wouldn't work for pre-agenda but for agenda items like when they want to talk on the budget when they want to
058talk to anything that's on the consent if they pop in and the board has said something that have kind of promoted a thought like like oh my gosh I didn't think about that's awful they can't do that I didn't know they were even thinking of that I want that person to be able to fill out a card and come tell the board why they think that what just came out of my mouth is a horrible idea or if they want to be nice and tell me how fabulous I am and that's a fabulous idea I will take that as well okay perfect thanks for clarifying that all right member for Ron thank you I definitely agree I think we need to have more accessibility for the public to be able to speak especially during those
059the agenda input period comment whatever we're going to call that because it's true we've had people who came and sat through the entire thing and they weren't even able to sign up because they didn't sign up at the before the pre-agenda meeting very confusing I think just streamlining it the five o'clock time I'm really hopeful that this will will work there was a question of when we want to have the public comment time so not on an agenda item I think after recognitions but then before any of our consent would be my thoughts because the recognitions come in we don't need to hold them up or have them sit through crazy comments or whatever happens at those at the comment time we can't really control any of that and so I think letting those recognitions
060come through and then the public can come up and comment that would be my thoughts on that again with the live streaming I have reached out to quite a few board members throughout the State of Florida and the vast majority that I spoke to if not all of them live stream their public comment time I will continue to say we cannot lead with fear of what could happen or what could be said I think it's this is what's happening in our meetings we can't hide any of that and this it's just what it is I also don't have a problem with the public saying our names they'll if they don't say our name specifically they will say D3 or whatever District we're in so I think that's it is what it is my concern is
061when we're favoring one group over another if we have if we're asking the public for no clapping no hissing no booing but I do notice that they're they're the board tends to kind of not worry when one group does that and then when another group does it the entire board will leave and have and walk out of the room so that happened a few weeks ago where a sweet Grandma came forward and she began to speak and as she's speaking the people behind her began to make comments say things to the point that she's saying can I'm speaking and then when she addressed the board it the chair you had said to her don't worry about them just focus on me while they're going against our policy and so we need to let the public
062know hey that is not allowed and so if we continue to allow it they'll continue to do it and it happens every single time that anybody speaks from one side so I think if we're gonna if we're gonna say it to one we gotta say it to the other even if they're students and to me especially if they're students because students need to understand that we respect our elders we respect those in adults who are older than us and even respecting other students so we can respect each other we can all have a civil discourse and be able to to share our side that's an amazing part of our First Amendment right is to be able to speak our mind and speak what is on our heart and so I think we just need to
063have consistency in that what the board indulge me in responding out of order member Salamanca I'm sorry remember I'm I'm sorry I'm so I'm just kind of frankly Blown Away I have gone back and watched that meeting multiple times what happened at that meeting I started off the meetings by explaining the reason that we want people not to cheer boo his clap is because we want to give respect to the person who's speaking what took place at the meeting and the reason I called the recess was not the woman speaking it was because of predominantly the students who were interrupting her I called a recess on the students not on that woman and you refused to recess with the rest of the board I did exactly the opposite for exactly the opposite reason that you
064interpreted it I would welcome the opportunity for us to play the video during this meeting right now to clear the air on this because I have always been perplexed by why you took away from that I was trying to stop the speaker I was trying to get respect for the speaker the other reason that we recess is because we have some safety up here the audience is the group that I worry about and you can remember some of those meetings that got very very contentious between the audience the only way that I can control what's happening with the crowd is by taking away their audience being us that's why we leave not to be disrespectful to the public but out of concern for their safety we have a bulletproof dice here they don't have that
065if you've watched other meetings Across the Nation they get I'm just so sorry about that maybe they can audit that out if you watched other meetings Across the Nation you've seen how hostile they can get that's the only way of simmering down the temperature in this room between what's happening out here between members of the audience again with respect to your understanding of who I've stopped I would love for you to present all the times you think that's happened because that particular time I can only tell you what my motivation was I don't know how you saw it differently but my motivation was to stop the students from violating the protocol of not not shouting hackling whatever they were doing so can I rebutt him or just say one thing sure yeah you can you
066can rebuttal and then I'll hear from by sure okay so really this the last it was the last meeting where we had public comment there was a grandma that spoke and that was different than a few months ago when the entire board got up to leave so this Grandma comes to speak she was the very last one real sweet very short she comes up to speak and as she began to speak the entire crowd behind her began to laugh and to say oh please and they're all making crazy comments at her and she turned and said excuse me I'm speaking and very kind and then she continued and she wasn't saying anything ridiculous she was just being very sweet and speaking her thoughts and then they said it again and she said could you please
067ask them to stop and you said listen just focus on us don't worry about them okay okay so those are the things where it's being ignored and it happens quite often when someone who is has a different point of view than those in the crowd and they I just think it's disrespectful and I will go back and look at the video where everybody got up and left personally as a parent when I sat in the crowd and you guys got up to leave I felt it was rude and disrespectful there's other ways I think that we can control the audience and say Hey listen we're done continue next speaker whatever but I think getting up and leaving it just it as a parent to be really honest I just always felt like a temper tantrum
068and everybody was leaving so that was just my thoughts and I will go back and watch that last meeting I will tell you that I have gotten a lot of complaints from the other side that I'm favoring I want to say the right yeah I get I can show you the email about how I let a fascist Pig speak and wouldn't let somebody else speak because they didn't show up in time so I get ample criticism on both sides that doesn't mean I'm doing everything perfect but when it comes to crowd control having done this for a very long time maybe I need to explain to the public initially why we will recess because it's the only way that I have found to keep the public safe and to keep the situation under control Vice
069chair and then we'll get back on that job thank you so I just the incident that happened when we were recessed when someone came up and spoke there was a loud outburst and you looked at both the chair and I and you said are you going to do anything about it so in response to that the chair recessed because we were telling them she was telling them to be quiet and they wouldn't be quiet so out of respect to that speaker we reset we recessed because you looked at us and said are you going to do anything about this and what she was doing wasn't working so out of respect for you and respect for that speaker we all got up and left so that people could calm down and then when they did we
070came back in I'm only going to speak for myself in this next sentence the event that you speak up happened after that and because you got so angry when we recessed if I would have been the chair at the time I might have respect funded similarly because I don't want to recess because that clearly makes you mad I can't get the people to calm down so the only thing at my disposal really is you don't want to cut off that speaker because that would have been even worse is just to try to get them to ignore that because either we recess or we tell the speaker there's enough time you don't like the recess you would be really upset if we cut the speaker off so I guess as Vice chair I'm open up to
071suggestions on what you would have done in that situation yeah I would have looked at the group and said one moment please we're going to give respect the same way we respect you as you get up to speak we're going to respect her she did not do that I'll go back and look so maybe I'm yes maybe but I just think I think so but I think the biggest thing obviously I'm definitely a minority on this board but I think we just need to understand that when people get up to speak we have to be respectful and then just say enough is enough we lead with we're the leaders we're the leaders and so when we sit here and we lead we can't Pander we just we lead done member Felder thank you so much
072just very quickly since we're still on this it was a very sort of frustrating meeting that day and I just wanted to respond that was to what happened and the concern I had as a board member when the confusion occurred and our chairperson said I am going to stop the meeting we're going to reconvene we're going to stop and as we were walking out board member for Rod you said most of us were out and you said you see what I'm saying this is what bad leadership looks like now yeah weak leadership okay I that Disturbed me I understand the frustration that you had and I wanted people to stop all that arguing and we can agree to disagree but I just felt and then a lot of things board members may say or do
073that I mean I necessarily agree with but when something like that occurred I believed as a board we should have come together in support of the chair and then if there was some some issues when we're there chairperson I felt like we should have stayed and we but I just think when you said this is what weak leadership looks like you invited a division that should not have occurred even if you disagree there are a lot of things that happened you know I got an agenda I'm going to be transparent I'm only black person on this board I got an agenda I've been teaching this County for almost 40 years I got an agenda I've had an agenda I was raised in Orange County every school I attended is in my district and I still
074live where I was I grew up I got an agenda but I have got to learn even the things that I disagree with the things that I'm unhappy with that I don't understand I've got to learn how to strategically navigate what I'm not liking and I'm assure this and I'm going to be quiet when I first was voted in on this board I had a meeting with Barbara Jenkins and she said why did you run I said I ran because I ain't liking about that paper Bridgette I ain't know nobody and she said what if she looked at me she said what I say no I say but I didn't I don't like what I don't like what the boy doing I've been a teacher and I'm mad that's why I ran but as I
075stay on the board membership I'm a member for Ron and began to see how things really work and how important it is even if you have your own agenda and I still got it you have to learn how to strategically navigate and I just felt a drop in my spirit when we got up and you said this is what weakness you know I wish you hadn't said that and even though you may have felt that way because we were all caught up in Emotion I understand I wish you would have kind of come out with us and said to Teresa why did we get up I don't want us to get up we should have stayed but when you verbally because that was recorded that was recorded when you verbally said that I it appeared
076to me a clear Division and we have different thoughts different political parties different ideologies I know everybody got one different from me because I'm I'm from a different place but let me tell you something I am learning I'm learning how to navigate with my differences and with my agenda and I want I want you to work I want us all to work together and you can still Express what you don't like there are many meanings that go in and close though with Dr Vasquez and I went in with Dr James go I mean my name is Dr Jesus last two hours seriously because it was going head to toe but I had to learn some things so I just wanted to share that and I believe that it's just my opinion I wish you had
077not have said that out like that just come back with us and then say it in the back that's all I wanted to share with you okay thank you member or a superintendent did you want to comment I do just very briefly and I'm not going to mention the meeting where we had to adjourn because it was very heated and I think emotions were high I think part of the problem may be that when we do have some individuals here that are making comments that you may not hear them on that on that end because I have seen a couple of situations where the students were making comments and then when you stopped it they were they were finishing up so I don't know if there is a way that maybe if if there is
078either security that's here and they are talking there's a nod because I know that sometimes when there are people over there I may not hear them and that may be an issue but I know how passionate this board is about the work that we do and I know that we're going to be able to move forward with this and I love the dialogue that we're having so that we can put in place a practice that meets everyone's needs and whether we're able to have input from all of the various stakeholders one other small comment is I agree with the chair that I would limit what we put in policy and reference practice that way if we do want to make a change we don't have to go through the entire policy revision practice thank you
079thank you Dr Vasquez that I appreciate your observation there are times Kelly sits in the back of the room there are times when she'll tell me after the meeting some of the things that she heard that I can't hear I will go back and watch the last meeting definitely but I don't think that there isn't that I don't always have something that I can learn and improve on I pretty sure that won't happen until I take my last breath in that'll only be because I ran out of time in spite of how I felt about the things that you said after we left I have tried to pay respect to you and was not ever going to bring that back up had you not brought it up I did want to have a meeting of
080the board about the recess process and how we can make sure that we are protecting the audience from it getting out of control and solicit other suggestions so we're all on the same page that's the purpose and not not trying to be disrespectful to the public because I do think it's important how they perceive it you want to comment and then after your comment I'm going to try to go back get it back on just a quick question when you say that you're wanting to make sure that the public is safe what do you mean by that like we're not doing anything do you mean like against each other yes but that's why we have security here and that's why I believe the security can stand and they go over and they say excuse me
081this is not the behavior that we have you can either calm down in the hallway or you can leave those are your two options it is hard for them to do that while we're conducting a meeting so we could just take a time out sit here and have law enforcement try to do that I will only tell you from watching other board meetings when they've done that the situation hasn't calmed down it's gotten more agitated and my experience has been that we are part of the problem we are the audience that keeps the situation from resolving that's been my experience and it's and I have spent time watching other meetings to see what went wrong versus when we have left and how the law enforcement officers and others have been able to get everybody to
082calm down so I very much get concerned about the emotions in the room we actually at one point you know adopted a practice that everybody had to remain in their seats because of situations where individuals were getting up and coming at each other during pre-agenda and so by telling everybody they had to be in their seat it was also a method of trying to control the safety in the room so we did again on my list of things that we haven't gotten to but then we're just now getting around to the code of conduct and we're going to talk about that I think next week but we're not going to be able to make any changes but the statutory changes because we're behind on that so soon to be up behind on a lot of
083stuff healthy conversation glad that we had an opportunity to at least talk through this because for anybody who's watching we don't get to just sit down and discuss this one-on-one it has to be an open public meeting which is a good thing for the public not always the most comfortable thing to disagree in public but an opportunity to clarify anyway thank you and I think it's been like I said helpful and productive member Caster Dental you're actually teed up next to speak on the rest of the issues thank you madam chair I want to come back to the discussion about broadcasting our public General comments and you did bring back some really awful memories of of what that was like the last two years and how that did play out and also you're you reminded
084me about how you know some things that are said really do do need explanations and so I favor having access or public access to what's happening but we are giving the public access to us and we can it is different from our general meeting where they can speak so I will concede on that issue and also about the phone accessibility because I do remember when people would call in they weren't even in Florida and they were weighing in on what we were doing in our school district and using that time and we under our procedures at the time had to consider or not what they were saying but still they took advantage of that and I don't appreciate that so I will concede on that one as well and I do want to address what
085we've been talking about I know that there are a lot of people in the audience when there is something that's just said especially surrounding books or lgbtq students and I do see a lot of people heckling laughing and I've I've had conversations with people I said you know your purpose is not to put on a performance for us hopefully you're coming to persuade us and when you do that you're not being very very persuasive so if you're going to laugh when someone that you disagree with comes to the mic you make yourselves look bad it's hard to favor what you're saying when you act that way so I've tried when I'm not on the board at the diocese to counteract some of those behaviors the best I can but I also understand where a lot
086of the students and members of the public are coming from because these issues they're not simply about the reading Wars whole language versus phonics or whatever these are about people's identity and who they are and that is so fundamental and I understand why there is such a passionate response and I just hope that these issues will settle and as far as the security when you know why don't we just use our security Force to enforce our rules that's extreme and it has not always gone well when we've done that in the past when we have said to our police force please go ahead and use your authority to remove people who appear like they're not just following our rules they're they're being dangerous they're they're harassing others and even when we ask them to do
087that's then broadcast on Fox News someone's recording it someone's using that as a as a time to get you and we have had people who come here who are on hate groups who come and speak and they're not always just speaking from the heart it's almost like they're trying to inflict pain so these discussions are they're Raw and I get it and I really wish that it would stop and I'm I'm afraid that if we were to live stream these currently under this atmosphere I agree it would not benefit us or the public or the people who come to our meetings thank you member Castor Dental member bird thank you chair okay so as far as the input maybe we could just make it simple and just call it agenda public input non-agenda public input
088call it the same thing except agenda or non-agenda that way everybody's not trying to figure out is it public input or public comment or you know just simplify it either public input or public comment but that way non-agenda and agenda and then I think also to answer your question I think that I think we talked about this last meeting I would prefer that non-agenda public input to be after the consent agenda because I think that as we discuss less meaning it's it would be beneficial for people that are here to hear some of the business that we do specifically like the strategic planning section that we usually have before consent agenda I think that's really beneficial you learn a lot about the district and I think making sure that they're here and hearing all the
089recognitions and the positive things that are going on in our district is a good thing so my suggestion would be putting it after we approve the consent agenda but before the reports from the superintendent legal and all that I am willing to concede as concede as well to televising based on the fact that I don't want to give any more air to the hate there's been a lot of really hateful disturbing comments that are made that are as member Caster Dental said are not just about policies within the district which is really what these comments should be focused on when they're speaking to us you know policies that they want us to change this is based on people's lives and people's identities and people's lifestyles in in their hurtful and they're damaging and so just
090because of that because I've always been in favor of I never you know hey televise everything it doesn't make sense to turn it off but they really are here to speak to us they're not here to speak to the public so there's no need for the public to see that I will say though that there it could work in our favor because I know that when we had those 12-hour long meetings back when the pandemic was going on and those were all televised because they were consent items the comments I got from my constituents were like I am so sorry you guys are going through it I cannot believe the things those people are saying so I think it could probably work in our favor for them to be able to see what we go
091through and see what we're hearing and what people say but on the other hand it's just so hateful I don't I don't want to give any extra air to it so I'm willing to say turn the cameras off for the time when they're supposed to be talking to us on non-agenda items I do agree with the Union time I would like to see that the union and the student and principal I'd like to see that time put in after proclamations and recognition but before consent and I do think that we should allow some response time not debate back and forth but I think chair you do a pretty good job of that responding when things are definitely like when it's definitely misinformation I don't think that sometimes it's very obviously misinformation or or they're saying
092something that we've done specifically that's just we did not do or they've misinterpreted so I don't have a problem with allowing time for that and then just to clarify oh as far as like if things are going on and maybe the chair cannot hear I think when we had the pandemic going on and things were really crazy in here we did ask security to to go ahead and comment or you know try to control as much as they can you know talk to people say no we're not calling out or you know you need to be quiet and then I think at one point we said they can signal the chair and let the chair know you know like if they're not having if they're not having any success quieting a group down then they
093can signal to the chair there's a problem over here then she can address it as the chair but I did just want to clarify real quick and I won't linger but we didn't get up to leave that meeting we were asked to Recess by the chair of our school board who was elected countywide and she is the chair and that is her part of her role to be able to recess a meeting and I just think that it was a perfect example of why we recess we remove ourselves and it usually would shut down what's going on in the audience because they don't have us and that was very obvious when that happened and member farant stayed because all of that continued for another who knows how long because they were all commenting up to
094member for art and it was just like if she was not there then I think all of that would have quieted down even more so I just wanted to clarify that it wasn't we were getting up to leave to be disrespectful we were asked to Recess by the chair and that's her job in her position thank you thank you member bird member Gould I am okay with the elected officials being called out I do like the idea or I do want to make sure that we capture that sign up does happen as long as possible for both and we have to figure that out because I know we have some time certain things in there I like the idea of after recognitions or after consent for our for representatives and the possibly the full public
095comment or or before I understand member front that you've talked to other board members about across the state but a lot of those same boards are perceived as very dysfunctional in their communities and they have troubles passing referendums and getting really community-wide confidence in their leadership so I would be still very cautious about things that we cannot have an opportunity to present the facts on in a timely or in the same time frame manner for the very reasons that the chair talked about it because when those things are called out they deal with our children they deal with families they deal with very personal issues it's not lights and streets and in those other items so I just if we could figure that part out I'd have no problem but until we can figure that
096out and not have disinformation constantly spread and widely spread I'm not for that I do like the idea and I don't know if this is security light but when security does hear something if they can not in a bold way but in a way you know this happens in courtrooms a lot if people talk they just walk up to them and say you really need to be quiet it you know that's not the protocol here and then if it blossoms from there the only recourse I can see is for us the audience of that behavior to dismiss ourselves I would not want to have an officer coaching a an audience while we're sitting here because then it questions our Authority versus us saying we want you to do this job it's a completely different image
097and look and I don't want anything that takes away from our authoritative and Leadership of this County through this board and I also want to thank member Felder for expressing I think the feelings that we have about wanting to work purposefully and through protocols in order to have our diverse opinions and thought processes work well and we can be functional and get our legislative duties done without with outbreaking protocols and be a much more highly functional and get the puck move down the court much faster and more efficiently than if it appears we cannot talk and work with one another and I hope we don't ever go down that path because function is important especially when we have two referendums coming up and that would affect the long-term ability for us to deliver on competitive
098and good education so I think as much as we'd like it to be the ideal and we always want the transparency I think if we can't be fully transparent about something and have two sides we have to be cautious about how a tool is wielded in a way that is not efficient so those are my thoughts thank you member gold Vice chair thank you madam chair I agree with member Gould about if when if people in the audience are getting because it is extremely hard to hear there's sitting next to the chair there's sometimes I hear things as she doesn't she hears things that I don't especially the call the people who call in it's it's extremely hard sometimes to hear what they say and we've at least had one color I remember that was
099using totally inappropriate behavior to be like broadcasted anywhere so we do miss things but yeah if our law enforcement could Monitor and just say hey that you're that's not within our code of Civility we're respectful of speakers that would be helpful I also think maybe moving moving the mic from there back up to the podium because anybody who ever used to speak was at the podium I think that will it'll take people out of the audience and I understand people sit here but not a lot of people usually they're all and so that may be helpful in getting people to be more respectful that I don't know being in a Podium is just a little bit commands a little bit more respect than a microphone so that might be helpful in controlling some of the
100dialogue that we're we're hearing in the audience because regardless of what people are seeing at the mic they're here to speak to us they deserve our respect and they deserve our undivided attention thank you madam chair Dr Vasquez please so we'll certainly have our team look at that I believe the reason it was moved was safety because now there isn't a barrier but I do know that we have some of our law enforcement officers that sit behind here so we certainly can have the team look at it so that we can move it back here oh thank you actually I was thank you for jumping in because I was gonna I actually I do like that idea if we can do it in a way that law enforcement feels comfortable with but I think that
101some of the noise coming from behind the people that are speaking even if none of us are hearing it I get this feedback that it's still happening and I think for the speaker's benefit being here and removed as from a distance would be beneficial I also a couple of things I'd like to comment on one of the things I have tried to do is use our security and law enforcement during the meetings and I would text them rather than obviously pick up the phone and look like I'm not paying attention to the speaker and point out if somebody wasn't complying with our rules I gotta tell you that was really difficult I'm trying to remember who was my vice chair it might have been I think it was you Pam and sometimes you know you
102would tell me so and so is not doing this or not doing I'm like text them and because saying you know the person in the third row to my right two seats in I'm as I'm texting you do you think I am paying attention to what the person speaking is saying I've completely missed what they're saying so the multitasking that was going on with that was really really challenging and the other difficulty was when then law enforcement would come up and try to talk to somebody then that was disruptive and frequently not effective because whatever the behavior was it would stop law enforcement go out the back of the room it would start again up here I'm texting again tried that and I can't tell you how badly that functioned I do remember the one
103time when we had a person walk in with a backpack a hat in the middle of the meeting sat in the back scared the death out of me and I'm sure you'll remember Dr Vasquez because you and yeah me going over trying to get law enforcement's attention trying to figure out you know if you see something odd that jumps out as not characteristic so I do really take very seriously the issues of safety and I think in this day and age we all have to so I did want to comment on why that why we have tried it and why and how it didn't work the member bird the idea I was thinking about your idea of after consent agenda the one you know I go back to the County's response to me wanting to
104let people talk at the beginning of the meeting was to let them talk at the end not knowing when the end would be I get the fact that and I had even spoken to this at the last time I talked there's value in people hearing everything and seeing a different perspective as a lot of times like one of our teachers that comes often and every time she speaks regardless of which side of the aisle you're on when she tells her story in the classroom I think everybody walks away going that's what I want that's what I want and that helps to not just simmer down but it helps everybody come together a little bit more rather than divide so there's great benefit in that but I think about the times when we have a student
105discipline case and we're telling everybody in the room they have to get out and while we technically only give the parent or the student three minutes which is a separate issue altogether but I don't think that's fair for our employees or our students to only have three minutes when employees job is on the line or in or a student's future I just think that's just unfair for us to have unlimited time to present the case them to have three minutes but we also now that we're asking everybody to leave some of those hearings have taken a long time and rightfully so a lot on the line so we're going to ask the people that showed up at the beginning of the meeting because they're not sure when it's going to end to now leave and
106sit outside for an undetermined amount amount of time and then come back my so my concern is one that's not fair to them and two I can only imagine if I'm them how Furious I am by the time I come back if I stay so in terms of recognizing we're all humans and some of how we react is based on how we're treated understandably I just am a little concerned my first thought it was a good idea but as I sat here and thought about it more I think that I think I would still stay with what we're doing and entertain those comments at the beginning of the meeting and the other thing if we're not going to televise those comments then we're televising our meeting then we're not televising our meeting then we're televising
107our meeting and we're telling people we're not televising this part of the meeting and we need to explain to them why we're not televising this meeting because as member points out when you're not televising something then there's questions what's going on and as much as it's a valid explanation we need to be explaining that so for those reasons I would still support the process of taking those non-agended public comments at the beginning let me go to member bird remember bird you it wasn't for a you know a rebuttal non-rebuttal it's just you know I buzzed back in because I forgot to talk about telephone I agree that I don't think that we need to continue telephone anymore just because they can email and I am also concerned about where people are calling from there's no
108way to really know that as far as the comments I was I was thinking it would be before like if we pull a discipline that comes off the consent agenda so it would be non-consent so I was saying after the consent agenda after we approve the consent but before we do non-consent reports so but then I'm thinking there there are public hearings sometimes we have and those can take some time so I was looking up one but that usually happens yeah before the consent so maybe even if it's just before public hearings so maybe it's just after the section section two the opening the recognition strategic plan updates proclamations and then we have non-agenda public comment and then we go into approving our consent agenda and everything else that way they're not stuck here for
109public hearings on something else or like you said employee or Discipline matters I just I've I don't want to open up a board meeting if we've got recognitions and all that with nasty non-agenda public comments I'm sorry but I just don't I would I want to have open a board meeting with the positives the recognitions all the good things we're doing strategic plan updates even talking about that and then we can get into the business you know or the non-agenda comments and The Business of the board that's my opinion thank you anything member Caster down thank you madam chair I just want to as I'm replaying the last two years in my head and the issue of the need it is painful the need for the chair to have some control over the meeting and
110the people and it's not just about keeping the board members safe but it can get so heated in here and they come in heated and they leave heated and they will I mean remember farant might not be aware and maybe remember Salamanca might not be aware but we've gotten death threats we have an added layer of security as board members we are we have to implement a metal detector and we've had people who had ballistic vests knives tasers pepper spray guns coming to a board meeting a school board meeting so the threat is real and I appreciate everyone in here who tries to keep the temperature down and the chair I appreciate your huge responsibility people have said don't you want to run for chair I'm like heck no I do not want to do
111what she has to do your job is so difficult and you have to do so many things at once listening to policy and people people's comments but keeping everybody safe is an awesome responsibility and I appreciate what you do and how alert you are and the superintendent and how everyone else is watching for possible dangers and I'm glad that we're in a place where it's not as heated but for some members in our audience they are feeling the pain like they have never felt before and we can't I don't want to continue to inflict pain on anybody but I know that it's it's the dangers are real so I don't take it lightly the added Safety and Security measures and keeping the temperature down so thank you thank you member Castro Dental Dr Vazquez and
112then I'll call them Amber gold well I was going to I'm looking at the time and I was just going to see if Amy would be able to recap where we are just so that we're we're on the same page and we know I know we have the legislative reviews still coming up I'm not taking time away from whoever else wants to speak but I want to make sure we've covered what we need to before we move into the legislative okay this is a that was a perfect time member Gould is teed up to speak I'm going to make a closing comment and then I've got my own recap here of where I think we are and you have hopefully a better one because I'm also trying to participate in multitask remember bird you reckon
113I remember called you recognized so I'm wondering if rather than doing the text Security Management there are just some Benchmark protocols that we put in in reposition security halfway up the aisle so that they're visible and not blending in with the back of the room so that may be a thought just so that they can nicely and politely say please give this speaker their their time before you have to get into a management of them situation and I agree with member bird that I think we're going to get much more benefit out of having recognitions even if they're not live broadcast for those who are coming for public comment and then having the public comment like right after those recognitions and then going into our consent agenda or or do it right after consent but
114that gets a little hairy I don't think it's a bad thing if they stay for a strategic Plan update or a rule development that has public comment too I don't think that's a bad thing I think the more people can learn about what we really are dealing with in doing the better off we are as a community so I really like that idea we can always film and take pictures of the recognitions and put them out in the slice put them on our school board social medias we can get those recognitions out there so that's it thank you member Gould I would yeah I was going to say the only thing I find uncomfortable is televising not televising and televising you've offered some suggestions for how we might do that I think we should explore
115that I think it's a really good idea we're doing a pilot and the idea of bringing somebody up we don't need to put that in a policy but we can certainly test that out and see how that is I do I do want I did want to take the opportunity to close out with a comment but member bird and then I really want to be able to go first no you want to close out I just want to I did not I did not think we were not going to broadcast the beginning of the meeting and the and the recognitions and proclamations on that I definitely think those need to be broadcast especially when we do new principles and now we've started having them recognized again which by the way I'm so thrilled we're doing
116that and letting them come with their family because I actually had an administrator reach out to me asking if we could do that because they had family across the country that wanted to watch so I definitely think that we need to broadcast and I don't really think it's that big of a deal to turn off broadcasting for that period I've seen I mean we do it anyway when we have the yeah when we have to recess or we have like the employee things I don't think it's that big of a deal and if it's and we're only talking 30 30 minutes anyway I think that people will get used to that so that's that's my opinion I think that they know that happens sometimes so all right thank you member Bert and because we're we're
117going to do a pilot that gives us the opportunity to do that and we have two separate meetings we have a recognition ceremony and then our regular meeting starts at such and such a time that could definitely be a way of handling it the last thing I wanted to say was in response to member Caster Dental your comments about the temperature in the room is not as as heated as it used to be in terms of the back and forth in the room but you're absolutely right the emotions of a lot of our students our teachers our local community are very brawl right this minute I'm not sure how many of you all might have been at the pulse Memorial ceremony yesterday but I it was an absolutely incredible ceremony and if you didn't have
118an opportunity ago I would urge everybody to watch it because it was I would say it was the best that I've seen in the seven years of just what the families are going through the loved ones the survivors and the one thing that I took away from being there before and after and visiting with people is the feeling that we had come so far in terms of not just not the rights the resp the rights yes but the respect the understanding the compassion for our lgbtq plus community in the last 10 years so much has changed and especially here in Orlando it was like transformational and what I kept hearing is how in the world did we take such a giant step backwards in such a short period of time and the feeling that we
119had taken a step backwards way further back than we started that the hatred that some many of our community members are feeling is it's tangible and we sit here as a district wanting to support all of our students and in many respects having our hands tied so I just I wanted to comment on that because I think this get the day after the seven year mark from pulse is definitely a time to reflect on the pain that our lgbtq population has experienced for since the beginning of time and is back to experiencing right now is a factor that goes into my mind every time our students stand up to speak on this subject recognizing the that their students that if it's hard for us as adults to sometimes control our emotions it's certainly hard for
120them that doesn't mean that I have tried to ignore the behavior but I think I probably do respond to students to your point in my heart differently especially when I know that their comments are coming from a place of deep pain and rejection so that's my final comment on that but I'll go back and look at the videos well they're not videos that's right I'll go back and I'll listen and I'll listen critically with that Miss emblem so I think there's a couple things that we can cross off the list calling it so the statute requires what we call General Public input and public comment the statute says that members of the public shall be given a reasonable opportunity to be heard on a proposition before the board so we had originally the terminology came
121about the public input was for General stuff and the public comment was for the proposition so what I heard from you all is we want to probably call it general public comment or input and agenda public comment or input the other option that was thrown out was non-agenda and agenda which I so maybe you wanted do you want to pull the board between those two options yep okay so not a vote but would you are you in favor of non-agenda agenda I'm going to start with that and the other one is General and agenda okay non-agenda agenda favorite that no no I like that one I like that one non-agenda agenda okay okay the majority of the board would prefer us start with non-agenda agenda next subject okay okay so then the next thing the
122policies what I heard from you policies are hard because they're governed by chapter 120 of the Florida Statutes so we have to do all of that but you're exactly correct under a rule event Workshop process that we have the public can provide input but at that point we've already advertised and it's kind of hard to do that so what I heard and what I think the solution could be is we're probably gonna have to bring policies to you to work sessions one to bring it to you and say hey we need to change this policy this is what we need to do so you can have that General discussion the second work session we could add a portion at the end of that work session for the public to provide input and that would also
123then trigger either another work session and or move forward with the rule development workshop and we could advertise thereafter let me give you feedback on that and then we'll see if the board agrees with this I think that the first work session General discussion is helpful because if the public comes to the next one they have an opportunity to understand what we're talking about and what we're debating in general terms at the next meeting if we have a work session then we take public input at the end if that public input changes our opinion or broadens the issues that we want to address we won't have the benefit of discussing that and giving direction so we advertise the right thing so I think at the second work session there should be a presentation by the
124by the staff of what the issues are that the board is contemplating in terms of the broad issues then take public comment then the board has the benefit of digesting that and then determining based on that input has that just like we're here today and between us you know we change our mind I do it all the time when I come in and I listen to my fellow board members I'm like geez I really thought I was here but now I'm over here because we gain so much from each other just like we do from the public so my position on this would be that we take the public comment right after the staff presentation anybody disagree with that before the board huh so the staff would give a presentation saying the this is the
125issue in front of us here are some of the things that we're contemplating changing in Broad terms then we would hear from the public who might say yeah I don't I don't like that because of this and this and then after we've heard from the public then the board would take up its discussion as we do with most public hearings where the public knows what the hearings what the issues are but before we debate it we hear from the public yeah I like that yeah please remember Castor Dental thank you madam chair I think there is a concern I guess with the way we notice these meetings they don't really get to the public even though it's a public notice if there's a way that we can announce during a regular meeting that we will
126be having this work session I know it's announced at the end but we will be having this work session to work on the code of conduct and welcome the public comment at this point in the meeting giving them advanced notice it you know we speak it into the microphone instead of just relying on someone to look at board docs or I think would help the public understand it better and I agree anybody disagree with that okay yes member France I agree with that totally I had that on my notes to to bring up because most people I think right now we just do it in the newspaper correct it's on our websites in the newspaper and it's on board docs okay so yes all three of those are I'd say 90 of people don't read
127it down here too okay on the glass jar right right so I think if there was a way I know online social media type things as well if that was an option where we can and you take comments off because it's just an announcement you're just making a statement of this is what's going to be happening just to inform the public and the public can then share that with their friends and whoever and just say hey this is coming up I think that would be really helpful and I love the idea that Dr Castro Dental mentioned of saying it during the meeting I think that would be helpful as well because most people are not going to our website most people have no idea how to use board docs I'm still learning and and most
128people aren't coming in here to read on the site large agreement on that and okay member bird do you want to comment on that I was just going to add the suggestion of social media and I was just looking up some school boards and they do advertise their like meetings coming up on a lot of them on their social media so that would be a great way to get it out too okay but sure yeah okay all right great all right we got a thumbs up remember Salamanca I think we're all good and all on the same page there next okay so next I heard something we can check off that we're going to keep the with respect to names keep the you don't name an employee or a student but you may also you
129may direct your comments toward a particular board member or should you have one so I think we checked that off live streaming I've heard no we're not live streaming public input period or what now it's going to be non-agenda public comment flexibility don't talk about flexibility in your current policy you have us you have a provision already that's in your bedh it says by motion and vote of the board the limitations on time in this provision may be waived or amended so you already have that so that gives you a little bit of flexibility already and then tacking on to time I heard 30 minutes and 45 I thought we were going to do 40. your mic is kind of sorry sorry I heard 30 and 45 are we going to stick to the 45
130up to 45 for the public for the non-agenda public comment yeah I think remember bird mentioned 30 which is our normal but I we're going to continue to go to 45 should we need to absolutely yes and listening to your comments it took me back to 2013 maybe 2012-ish which is why the pre-agenda public input period was established because it was always a Time certain it was always a distinguished you know so nobody had to wait so it was it was interesting how the conversations kind of went back to why that was instituted to begin with with respect to signing up if you want to have the priority we have to have a cut off time for those people to sign up because staff you're going to have to have some some member of Dr
131Williams staff here throughout the entire meeting however long that's going to be taking cards and so that is something that you all need to discuss I don't know if you want to discuss that now the logistics of that we can kind of figure it out but it may be difficult to clarify we are talking about for comments on the agenda so that I think I think there are two separate discussions because you have agenda comments we definitely need to have a time I mean they need to sign up and speak I don't know if if it's different for your Public non-agenda public comment time bye sure thank you okay so here's my vision I and I mentioned it before with the with the non-agenda public comment I understand the need because it's time certain for
132there to be a sign up window for agenda items we always have like there's Deborah we always have dead they're here the entire meeting so I don't see a problem with us putting yellow cards outside of the chambers and if someone wants to grab one in case they want to speak bring it in with them they hear something they like they don't like they fill it out they walk it up to one of them and then it gets brought to you Miss inval or and then to the chair I don't I don't see that as being extra work for anybody I don't or they could handle it hand it to the people some of the law enforcement they have stationed and they can bring it up so that they're not walking up the dice for
133security reasons we have security around they can hand it they can bring it up just like we do when there's stuff that they want the board to see It'll Get handed somebody and distribute it so I'm fine with it being time like a time frame for pre-agenda comment period for agenda items I don't think it's any harm or foul to have I'm not asking staff to stay the entire time just put some yellow cards out there they can pick them up or not pick them up fill them out hand them to someone who will then hand them to the board and we would look at that comment at that time I think that's an easy thing to Institute okay I go to him in just a minute assemble let me hear from the superintendent and
134then we'll go to you membership point of clarification this is prior to the consent agenda being approved if someone walks in after the agenda has been approved are you also allowing them comment so I would say it would have to be germane to the conversation so if they're wanting to comment on something that we've already approved that would not be Jermaine we already voted on it's over but if we're having a different conversation well no yeah no so that would be pre-ogenous and I just confuse myself so if we've already voted then yes no thank you okay we do take public hearings before we take the consent agenda yes poll hearing is on your agenda right after recognitions they would have to comment prior to the public hearing yeah like like clarify real quick so
135up in Tallahassee if a bill has already been heard and moved on they're not going to take public comment on that because that's that's we've moved on so it would be the same thing with the board meeting if they're wanting to discuss anything that we've moved on from and we have a vote or consensus from the board that's off limits you got to move on to whatever's next on the agenda or not at all one other thing I don't know if there's any reason we couldn't do this it always made more sense to me to take the consent agenda right off the bat you know take that first most of the time we don't have comments and if we do have something we're going to pull it off consent and it's going to come up
136later so if we just dispense with the consent agenda and then go into the public hearings and then I think to your point if you want to speak to a public hearing you have to get your card in before the public hearing the only question I have goes back to that issue of priority voter position okay even with that if we're trying to prioritize so we always take public comment before we even discuss so the staff introduces the public hearing and then it's practice it's not policy but I've always asked you all do we want to hear from the public first which helps inform our dialogue and vote then yes okay as far as prioritizing they're going to be at the end of the they'll be at the end of the stack right okay but
137yeah so but I think on the prioritizing we're asking the staff to get the stack and then sort out from the stack who's a student and who's a teacher and put them at the beginning but then anybody who signs up late is just going to go to yeah if you sign up late then you have to understand you're not going to be prioritized because we're not going to reshuffle the deck okay yeah okay they're already yellow in blue I mean I that's kind of a operational decision but anyway I think that's the answer we're not once if you don't get here at the beginning we're not going to re-prioritize one of the reasons for taking people in the order in which they present goes back to again a prior experience where a certain person would
138stack the deck for all the people that were in agreement with whatever the entity's position was here all those first put all those opposed at the end and that might be three hours later and so for me it was really important that there be a process that's more objective but I think the priority idea works fine is still kind of the first come first serve in that priority like if you're a student or a teacher we'll still take them in the order that they're turned in but they'll come before others so I think we can make that work we can certainly try it at this point okay Vice chair and the member Castro Dental they share anything else remember Castor Dental Vice chairs physio she's telling thank you madam chair sorry you snooze okay I'm
139kidding I'm kidding I want to make sure that I understand that we're talking about just the period of time in the meeting that is considered public hearing and not just any time throughout our meeting for something that's relevant because I don't I don't know if I want people commenting on our proclamations or we're just talking about that time of the meeting that's designated public hearing right so public hearing would be on your rule development Workshop items to your policies or rezoning or something the adoption of instructional materials those are specifically under section three of the agenda which is public hearing right okay we're not opening up the whole meeting for anyone to comment right we're not doing that okay I'm good and you differentiated or or Mr Pomerania you differentiated can you ex can you
140say that again because it's it's beyond public hearings but it's not everything that happens at the meeting right so by law any person who wants to speak at a public hearing a rule your policies your rezonings book adoptions they get to do that so for me folks coming in to speak at those prior to you all closing the comment period for that particular item they should be allowed to speak even if they were to miss the technical sign and deadline because at that point we would not be giving them their lawful right to speak on that regular agenda items you guys get to set the time Spa time place and manner that people get to speak to those you all get to adopt reasonable regulations on that so you can say for a regular agenda
141item that's not a public hearing you have to sign up by the start of the meeting in order to speak to those particular items you have given them a reasonable opportunity to speak but to member Caster Dental's point we don't take public comments on proclamations no we don't right okay so it's the things that are statutorily required to take public comments and that's the distinguishing yes Factor okay assemble okay so moving back I think another thing we want to talk about was you had asked for specific times for some of you had but not all of you for unions students those types of groups I have some bargaining concerns with that has not been our practice and if you watch some other meetings from other entities you can see where that turns problematic I'll let
142Mr pomerini expound a little bit more on that so obviously and this is a very interesting time for us to do this because we are getting ready to go into bargaining with our unions so typically it is an unfair Labor practice for a bargaining agent such as the union to directly approach you all on a bargaining issue rather than going through your management team now I don't think given the current leadership of both unions that's going to happen however it is entirely possible that it does occur right and the other thing is and I'm not going to say this about either the leaderships of the unions right now but it is entirely possible you all have talked about whether or not misinformation could go out over you know it's not over the Airways but things
143are stated to you in a public meeting that are not true and so do we have to then have the superintendent's bargaining team back here also with a period of time to respond if a bargaining issue is brought up as well so those are all things that concern me I don't think that given the restrictions which those folks know about that they are going to bargain at the table essentially but we don't always have that current leadership either so that's the concern from a legal standpoint okay thank you member bird I'm not sure if this is old or did you want to speak to this now pardon me no go ahead you recognize thank you say because you start talking about the Union yes oh thank you the agenda I just need a little clarification
144because we can allow the public hearings are separate on from what I'm seeing it's number three on our agendas they're separate from consent items so if a if a public member of the public wants to come talk to us on consent items not public hearing but just anything like construction right there are you know the grant whatever they could right there we don't legislatively have to allow them but we could allow them so right so with consent items you do have to up until about four or five years ago they people did not have the right to specifically speak to an item on the agenda most government agencies did it by practice but that wasn't a right that they were allowed they adopted 286.0114 that says at a reasonable time at some point before the
145vote you have to allow the public to comment on something that the is going to be on the agenda but what they did there you all can set reasonable regulations as the time place and manner in which they are allowed to speak so you can place a regulation under the law that says if you want to speak to this agenda item you have to be here prior to the start of the meeting and sign up prior to the start of the meeting that is separate and distinct from your public hearings where anybody who wants to speak to that has to by law be allowed to speak to that and so if they come in at some point during the meeting and you all have not closed the public comment on that public hearing and they
146want to speak to it I would advise and Miss involved with Mrs enball would advise to allow them to do that in order to give them their lawful rights to speak in the public hearing but that's separate and distinct from the agenda items sorry for that technical explanation it's okay I dare not gluting people from okay I think that having a different a different practice for consent as opposed to public hearing is adds that whole confusion Factor again I think I think we just need to make a decision either way for all of it you know if if we're going to allow them up to the vote then that's what we allow because I think when she start adding in all that little nuanced language if you're if you're coming to talk about this as
147opposed to this you need to be here before this time that makes it all confusing and we're trying to make everything easier so that's my opinion on that as far as the union this is why I thought it was a good idea just to have this be a practice and not a policy because as you said we have good relationships now that could change we could change but I do I think that if at any point it they were speaking of bargaining issues then I think the chair would could easily shut that down and I also think that we can always take away that time if if we had a particular representative that was using it in the wrong way abusing it right but I think there's a lot that they could would come and
148speak to us about that have nothing to do with bargaining issues just have to be that could just be representing their groups or employees thoughts on you know something that we're voting on or even highlighting positive things I mean it doesn't have to be you know I think there's a lot that they want to probably share with us from the voice of the employees that don't have necessarily anything to do with bargaining so thank you member bird member Gould I'm following up what member Byrd is saying I don't think I think our practice of having a chair who who has the ability to kind of stop that comment and also legal counsel who can kindly interrupt and say territory wrong territory manages that well and yeah no never and if it's a if it's a
149repeated practice then we can say we're going to have to you know eliminate this opportunity if you can't stick to topics that are allowed versus not allowed because of legal reasons so I'm not as worried about that thank you member Gould Meister Madam chair I agree with member Byrd and member Gould I'm not as concerned about this I believe that they understand what the rules are and if they violate the rules they will be reminded that's a violation and I do believe there's way more to discuss with the board other than bargaining issues I think there's a lot on everybody's plate there's a lot of policies are going to come before us they are on the front lines with their teachers and understand the issues in a classroom that we need to hear about I
150got an email last week There's still so much confusion around the library and the media practices and I'm trying to figure it out and I'm hearing things have been rejected they have been rejected so it's just I think the time is right for us to hear from more people and here for more voices so that when we make good decisions and I hope we always make good decisions that they're educated decisions as well thank you thank you I just want to Echo member Gold's comments I will rely heavily on our Deputy general counsel to jump in because a lot of things are a bit more nuanced than you realize besides I'd like to have another a bad guy cop good yes and that's good and on and in the event that there's ever pornographic conversation
151I'll rely on him as well because I don't know all the terminology and he's an expert in that so just so you understand the expanded role that you have of support I rely on both you and Miss envel heavily to help me make sure in addition to the fact that any policies that are broken I rely on y'all and I want you to jump in if I miss something moving forward I think you generally do but don't feel hesitant if you think there's a direction that a chair I should be taking then I'm not okay I much rather be publicly corrected than allowed to be publicly wrong I know he is yeah I know I know like the voice like Mr Oz yeah Mr Oz I was going to say the voice of God but
152Mr Oz is more appropriate thank you The Man Behind the screen all right foreign member Salamanca I agree I think we just rely on Council for this one but I think it's worth having CTA voice in most of these meetings here I'm supportive of a Dr Vazquez because people are listening I need to clarify a comment that Boardman board member Gallo made about the books and I believe we sent communication out to the entire board that the books are being reviewed by media Specialists some of them have been deemed inappropriate but the district team will review any book that is has been noted as not appropriate no books have been removed at this time all right thank you okay next assemble okay so I need to know where on the agenda placement on the agenda
153you want this new non-agenda public comment period because I am not exactly clear and also where do you want this new location for CTA oespa students and I believe someone said in ocasa yeah where do you want that to be on your agenda all right Vice chair you pushed your button go ahead my personal opinion would be it would be like 204 it would come after the call to order recognitions proclamations then we would hear from them prior to public hearings however if you want to push it after the public hearings as I believe member bird suggested I'm fine with that I think that's where the people should speak as far as pre-agenda I'm still I'm still supportive of it being prior to the board meeting but I'm open for discussion I know there's various
154opinions on the board thank you okay before we move on clarification so if they're speaking to something that's a public hearing we have always taken their comment after the presentation on that public hearing and before board discussion we would continue to do that yes I was just referring to the CTA OS but those speakers thank you that's where I would place thank you them on the agenda to be able to speak to us ah Claire okay so the first option on the table is vice chairs oespa those entities right after Awards or recognitions before public hearings or consent okay okay and pre-agenda would be before the meeting that's where we would take non-agended public okay next I'm sorry it's okay thank you I would like to have those four groups before public hearing because again
155I think there's very Salient information that they share that I would like the public to begin to understand so I personally would like them before okay and to make this a little easier let's stick with when we hear from those entities first and then we'll go into the second issue so we have two board members that want to hear from them pretty much at the top of the meeting before we get to lengthy hearings remember Castor Dental the member for rent thank you madam chair I just want to make sure that we know the entities our CTA osba but in the event that there is a different change we don't just name them or any Union right and then the principal Association and then the students how do we decide which student is it part
156of the super well the superintendent's advisory yeah that's yes that's what we would be thinking okay and no and with respect to the designation and nomenclature of the unions so we could say the certified bargaining agent for instructional certified bargaining agent for education support professionals and the principles and the principle says yeah or the administrators Association whatever it will be called I was just using the acronyms for shorthand so everybody knew what it was right and then so the students is that superintendent is that a group that you would feel represents the voice of the students your student advisory or rotate SGA presidents may I please so we have representatives from every High School on the call and so certainly we can actually have them select when they would like to come and speak and
157that would give them an opportunity to make sure that they have spoken with you know whether it's SGA many of them are SGA council members and have them come and speak we and again it's something since we're not making a policy we could always revise who that group is and I think we can see how it goes but I do believe they're incredibly articulate group of young men and women who have a true pulse on what's happening in their schools thank you I just wanted to clarify you had mentioned something just a moment ago about pre-meeting yeah yes what is we're gonna we're gonna take these up separately we're going to take up when these groups would speak and then we're going to come back and take up the non-agended comment but the public comment
158whenever whatever we're saying non-agenda public comment is not happening before a meeting correct we're gonna we haven't what I had said yeah what I had said was what we do what we've been doing as the pre-agenda let's just not take that up right this second let's deal with those four entities and then we'll take that up separately because it was kind of too much to in this right now at one time to take up both issues it gets confusing so we'll get to that in just wanted to clarify thank you the only observation I want to make is because the legislature has adopted such broad sweeping terms for the sunshine meetings law and applies that to all advisory advisory entities I think legal needs to look at the groups that we have right now that
159our advisory advisory oh I can say this word counselors or committees to this superintendent and also might be advising the board in terms of whether or not those fall under the sunshine committee huh no no it's the question of whether they can't talk to each other out of the sunshine I hadn't given it a lot of thought but I do remember when that law changed and what implications that had on advisory committees throughout the state so I just want to ask legal to take a pause and look at that and make sure that the groups that we have don't fall under that and if they do that they know it just like when we formed our redistricting committee and we had to advise them they can't communicate with each other outside of literally posting a
160meeting and holding in the sunshine so Mr pomerani so the general rule on that is if you've delegated some recommendation Authority like this committee is going to make a recommendation to you perfect example medical advisory committee during covet reapportionment committee that absolutely has to be noticed and open to the public and the members can't talk to each other outside of the meeting if the superintendent creates a staff committee to advise her and it's a committee of staff that is not subject to the public or to the sunshine laws and public meetings and notice and all of that is separate and distinct but any advisory committee to this board most certainly would be and if there are specifics that we need to we'll take a look at those but I'm quite sure that Mrs Anvil advises
161all of those committees because she gives the public Records Sunshine Law Speech to him at the very first meeting that they always have so I think all of those committees are in line but we'll make sure yeah I think I'm mostly worried about if we give them this opportunity let's make sure that we use it in a way that they don't trip over that and now we have to tell all of our students that they can't communicate with each other on these types of issues I just don't I don't want to go that far so whatever they present to us can't be in the form of you anyway I'll rely on you to look carefully at that make sure that doesn't happen Okay next issue are there oh next issue is when would we take
162public comment on non-adjusted items Okay who wants to jump into that one first well okay our options one option is to continue to take those comments before we start our official meeting another option was to take those comments and what I'm remembering and have jotted down take those comments after we have started our regular meeting although maybe we have a different name for that but after we've had proclamations recognitions but before we start the business business portion if you will of our meeting where we're taking up consent agenda we're taking up public hearings we're taking up action items whether it be before or after the Strategic presentation of Staff I've heard different input on that so I think the first thing is does it happen before the recognitions or after the recognitions so how about
163we take input on that huh yeah yeah I want input from everybody before we take our start our meeting with recognitions and proclamations are after before okay do you want after how many people I think most of you all want after we've had the recognitions and proclamations after one or before okay one I don't care two two one and after who wants it before all right okay so just so I know this would be 45 minutes of pub non-agenda public comment period while the recognition people are waiting to be recognized no it would be similar to what we do right now where we start the meeting at say 4 45. and we take foreign and then we start a meeting let's take another poll exactly I want to make sure everybody knows what we're pulling
164whether it happened to go my way that last time but that but I want to make sure we all know what we're talking about so who wants to take input from the general public on non-agenda topics after we have done the proclamations and the recognitions afterwards for okay of course I'm so sorry about okay we tend to get we tend to get quite a few people members of the public who want to just talk to us during agenda if we have all of our recognitions especially when we're doing like those false Sports winter sports Spring Sports how will we manage all of those people oh that would is that just not my problem I think that's why we ended up with pre-agenda the way we ended it up with because it becomes a lot of
165people in to manage because you'll have your public non-agenda public comment people in here waiting while you have all those recognition folks going through as well and the kids will come in and out but the people to your point earlier they would they would see the recognitions they're going to be we're not going to let the public in because there's going to be too many children needing to be recognized which is appropriate but unless we I guess have all the TVs rolling they're not gonna they're not gonna know what's going on in this boardroom anyway so all right member foreign I think if we can just designate the middle and you designate that for however many people are coming to be recognized even if there's a small amount then you just do a small amount
166and the rest is for anybody coming to members of the public who want to comment or maybe are just here to to to listen and then they can fill in on the sides I think we've done that before if it's going to be a massive recognition then we do it where they're held out in the in the lobby and if people can't control themselves then they have to stand outside I don't know but something to that effect that would be my thoughts and just for clarification this is for the pilot okay member Gould so the last recognition we had so many students we couldn't fit them in here and we did rotate the students in and out so I like the idea of you know maybe you're staggering it so the first group comes in
167and they're seated there as they're getting recognized the second group comes in so they see one recognition they know or you just wait and switch them out but the public would actually be in here to see those recognitions and then if it's not large groups like that then I love member ferrant's idea of as we do now we reserve seats and everybody else fills in and if we have to we open the back because the staff could watch it from somewhere else they don't have to be there they just have to be nearby in case we need them but they could watch it from one of the conference rooms in the cafeteria they could watch it from the back there's there's places they could watch it from and we bring that seating back which we
168have also done in the past Dr Vasquez except if we're not broadcasting and we usually when they have a concern we direct staff to help them they wouldn't be able to I'm not saying all staff but like cabinet probably would yes once the recognition portion is over with the large groups that we're talking about would have left before we would get to the non-agended topics freeing up space also so the idea being that if we go this route we will Reserve whatever number of rows we think we're going to need to recognize whoever we're recognizing the rest would be open and we would start the meeting with our regular opening our proclamations our recognitions then we would go to the non-agended public input then we would go to the business which would include the Strategic
169plan just making no no it's not that I'm just making sure we also had the unions and that so proclamations recognitions Union speakers and then public comment or not or flip it public comment s well one of two things either the Union groups are going to speak once we are reconvened and running live stream after we've taken the pre-agenda or the I'm sorry the non-agenda to public comment or we're taking the those groups after we've had recognitions but before we go into the non-livestreamed go ahead remember cool your proposal I push my button so could we have our Representatives the four representative groups do their comment then do recognitions and protocols then public comment then business yeah can you say it again I'm sorry I was confused because I pushed your button but I see
170member bird because I took it off oh okay so the four representative bodies the students and the unions the association are proclamations recognitions public comment then business they're up front yes because we're televising the proclamation so yes everybody okay with that so we do the we do silence the pledge allegiance our partner comments our proclamations our recognitions public comment not then if we have a you know a strategic I mean not strategic plan a rural development public hearing whatever non-consent Etc all right everybody everybody seems to be okay I'm like lukewarm could go both ways but it's a pilot it's let's try it absolutely let's try it let's try it absolutely bingo absolutely I'm I'm glad somebody took decisive lead on that thank you member bird remember Salamanca you want to comment on that oh
171I mean oh God I'm so lost now remember bird remember when I remember Golds came up remember bird member oh God okay so I know I agree I mean I understand but I'm a little concerned about putting the comments from our unions before we do proclamations and recognitions and any group celebration just because I think that's also positive and there may be negative comments from so I'm just saying flip it let's just get all the celebrating the new administrators the proclamations all that kind of stuff done in two point that's 2.2 to 0.3 2.4 and then 2.5 can be or even next one number three can be Union reps and then it can be public hearing and I still think we need to do vote on consent agenda clear that and then have get all
172of our business business done and then we are opening up the opportunity for our constituents to speak to us on non-agenda items because as we've said many times that is something we are giving to them it is not an obligation I don't think it's too much to ask for them to sit through letting us get our business done before we hear them speak and that doesn't always take a really long time and then we can and then it makes more sense to pull do our if we've pulled things off the consent agenda and we have to turn off tell televising that it's all turned off anyway during that point before we do not for non-consent things if we've pulled them off anyway so that's just my idea I just think that makes more sense and
173I don't think that's too much to ask of them if they want to come out here to make a point to make comments to us that have nothing to do with what's on the consent agenda then I don't think it's too much to ask them to sit through us doing the consent agenda work right now I want to diagram then we can move things around and make it a little bit easier to follow okay but I've done so remember okay because we still got to get through legislation yes yes okay so what I have on my diagram is opening proclamations rate recognitions your special groups your union groups and students then consent I'm sorry then public hearing if we have one because we don't always have public hearing your consent and then non-consent or then
174non-agenda public comment because you still have none you've met we don't do it very often but sometimes you have non-consent which may be a student discipline issue an employee discipline issue which then they're going to have to go out so G are you would you or was your prop I'm going back to member Bird's proffer was then non-agenda pub non-agenda public comment after consent yes after consent but before any non-consent items so that means that any item that is taken on non-consent I.E or student discipline issue or maybe your employee discipline issues they have to sit there and wait through the 40 up to 45 minutes of non-agenda public comment before we get to the business portion of that student discipline issue and or employee discipline issue okay okay last one did you have something
175else sorry yeah just on the on the union groups I think we are just in are thinking this but want to make sure three minutes per group yes I didn't want to assume okay I got one final thing on my checklist and I think we're good phones I did not get a I have a two no and a one yes and I did not get a consensus from you all as to whether or not you want to keep the phone lines open now that you've set your whole thing you're gonna have to have four staff that sits all the way through just all of that so okay no phones no phones no phones who wants to know who said I won't fall you do they're dirty rules yeah okay okay no phones okay I think
176that catches that has all my checklists okay and that's recognizing that I believe member Gould was in support of phones but we it still was a clear majority okay okay all right we have something to try we really do need a break yes we definitely do need a break I am so sorry I am dying to hear your presentation I really I honestly am I'm looking forward to this and it's important and I apologize that you've waited this long but it's really important to us hey you know he's been he's up in Tallahassee he never has to sit through any of our school board meetings so it's okay I promised my interns to talk legislation and just I apologize and just for the record contrary to member Gallows experience when I was president of Florida
177Association of counties president I sat many times in those committee meetings scheduled to speak and was never allowed to speak at all speakers no they would they didn't allow any comments in fact it was on the one where they were voting on whether or not to enforce that we had to have public comments that they didn't allow public comments so you have a different standing yes a different experience or possibly a different standing I hope it's it's both okay let's adjourn or recess and we will come back how much time do you think we need guys are we as any I'm sorry are we getting something to eat is 30 minutes too much 215 is your food you're gonna do 10 minutes 10 minutes ah we got we got a vote out in the audience
178from an intern 10 minutes 10 minutes yes ma'am foreign thank you thank you foreign thank you thank you foreign thank you foreign yes yeah yeah thank you thank you foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign thank you thank you foreign foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign foreign thank you foreign foreign foreign foreign thank you thank you foreign thank you thank you foreign thank you thank you foreign thank you yeah that's easier thank you all right we are back in session and we are ready to take up the legislative review and Mr lagash welcome and thank you for your hard work in Tallahassee thank you and we look forward to your presentation all right thank you appreciate the opportunity to be here today I will do my best to keep this to a
179brief presentation I know many of you have already received some version of a review or recap here in recent weeks through other channels and I know all of you have been reading my weekly legislative updates thoroughly so most of this will be repetitive for you but nonetheless I want to get through all of the bills that had a sort of meaningful impact on public education in general in the state but also on District Operations so let me ask you if we can do this at the conclusion of each bill in your presentation if we can just pause to see if board members have any questions on each bill is that okay rather than waiting until we get to the end please I'm sorry I was going to say to my opening comments but we're good
180so they have chunked them in buckets so everything that has to do with teaching and learning everything that has to do with safety so we thought we might try that is let them get through that each chunk and then open it up for questions thank you absolutely I'm sorry Dr Vasquez I should have called on you first no we're good thank you for that clarification so that's how we'll do what she said sure got it so we'll get to it in a minute but fair warning the first section is particularly long that's where a lot of the bills are and sort of teaching learning curriculum but we can take that and we can pause if need to so the 60-day legislative session concluded back on May 5th just kind of recapping there were over 1800
181bills that legislators filed this session about 350 of those actually passed both Chambers and have either already been signed by the governor or or could be signed here in the coming days again I've pulled out about 35 bills with a direct impact on on District Operations and public education in the state just a brief overview of the budget I know the board has already received an overview from the finance team and I think there's a more thorough summary of the budget coming in in the coming weeks as well but just to highlight a couple of things one the base student allocation which is typically viewed as the flexible dollars that the district has available to spend on operations you'll see a notable increase there of over 12 percent I would just caution that that number
182is a little bit misleading because the legislature this year actually rolled a number of the categoricals in the fefp financing model into the base student allocation so they took a lot of dollars that were already in the formula and just moved them to a different spot on The Ledger and in doing so they didn't actually eliminate the requirements for how you spend those dollars so the the where they look on the ledgers gone but the requirements in terms of how you spend the dollars is the same so some of those categoricals included spending for teacher salaries instructional materials reading teacher classroom Supply assistance and so those things have been rolled into the to the base student allocation if you back those things out to sort of compare to what we did last year I think
183you'd see a base student allocation increase of 162 dollars in the district or about 3.25 percent and that's much more in line with the total increase in per student funding at 4.11 and then just highlighting one categorical I know that's important to the board student transportation in the district that number increased by about four percent and that's about 1.3 million dollars for the for the county again we'll start with some bills the bulk of the bills I would say are around teaching learning and curriculum and we can pause as needed the first bill hb1 which was based on the bill number itself was a legislative priority for at least the house this was the school choice bill it expands eligibility for the existing Florida tax credit scholarship and for the family empowerment scholarship programs to
184include any student in the state who is eligible to enroll in K-12 Public School and so the scholarships have existed this is this is a broader eligibility open to anyone and instead of sort of the current process where you get a certificate or a voucher this will come in the form of a savings account that the parent will then control and they can use those funds to to be spent on any sort of educational services including private school tuition despite the fact that it's open to everybody that the legislature chose to maintain a priority for for low-income families and then a second tier priority for for families who are at another level of poverty and then they also establish what they're calling a personalized education program which is a parent-directed choice option that students can
185tap into that's similar to The Homeschool program that exists today the other thing they did on the scholarships was increase the amount of available scholarships at a faster rate for students with unique abilities there has been a long backlog there of students being able to get access to those scholarships and the hope is that by increasing the growth rate in those scholarships more students will access them more quickly and eventually we can eliminate that backlog bless you some other issues that were included in the bill unrelated to school choice one in particular I think is a significant opportunity for the district so in an effort to reduce unnecessary regulations and provide more flexibility and efficiency for public schools the bill requires a state board of education to develop and recommend to the governor and to
186the legislature proposals for repealing and revising existing sections of the State Education Code so the department is actually working right now to sort of set up a process for submitting those comments both from interested stakeholders be it boards districts staff and then I think they were going to work on a separate portal for the general public to provide input as well so those things are happening now there's a sort of parallel track that I think the legislature will be doing their own work and so there will be a point in the fall going into the new legislative session in 2024 where we could see an opportunity to revisit a lot of what is currently in the Education Code and look for some ways to make improvements efficiencies for District Operations so I think internally as
187a district we'll work to identify what some of those things are be it through a task force or some some working groups to try to identify some things that we can take back and provide both to doe and also to the legislature some other Provisions in the bill it exempts from the required cost per student station any school construction projects that were started prior to July 1 of for purposes of teacher certification it adds some additional options to the acceptable means of demonstrating general knowledge subject area knowledge and professional preparation and education competence extends the duration of a temporary teaching certificate from three to five years which is something we've already the district has already reached out and notified our temporary teacher teaching certificate teachers of that change so it's a great great way for
188us to keep them longer and give them more time potentially to earn a full certificate the bill extends and then lastly the bill removes the requirement for at least one course within the 24 credits needed for graduation to pay to be completed through online learning so no longer digital or online learning component hb19 supports students with disabilities and their parents when the student attains the age of majority while still in school so generally educational rights first for students transfer to the student when they turn 18 the bill requires districts to provide additional information to a student with a disability along with his or her parents about options for maintaining parental involvement in their education decision making going forward and that'll take some state board rules to to adopt and probably some changes potentially to the
189ese student progression plan SB 196 expands guidance Services on academic and career planning in two ways first by requiring Middle School students personalized academic plans to include information on Career and Technical education graduation pathway options and also work-based learning opportunities and second by expanding the required School District parental notification on high school acceleration options to include information on CTE programs work based learning opportunities and other soft skill credentialing programs that's a process that will likely require some updates to our student progression plan as well HP 225 makes a number of changes to the ability of students to participate in interscholastic athletics it also modifies how the Florida High School Athletic Association operates going forward notably it authorizes students who transfer from one public school to continue to participate in activities at the former school for
190the rest of that school year it requires fhsa to adopt policies and procedures allowing schools to make brief opening remarks and including potentially religious remarks at State Championship events and then it modifies how the FHSAA board of directors operates by reducing its membership from 16 to 13 members to be comprised of the commissioner of Education eight members appointed by the governor and four members elected by FHSAA member schools and then the fha's a fhsaas executive director budget and bylaws must also be approved now by the State Board of Education Senate Bill 240 provides support for stakeholders in Florida's workplace development system to better provide students with high quality Career and Technical education programs it does this in a number of ways so it supports CTE for middle and high school students by providing some new
191funding through a grant program to allow for expansion of CT CTE programs for our middle and high school students it modifies options to complete required credits to earn a high school diploma by replacing the Practical Arts option with the option to complete at least one credit in CTE and it provides some additional funding through the fefp as well to further incentivize CTE participation it expands opportunities for students to engage in work-based learning by requiring high schools to host annual Career Fairs and also to provide students with work-based learning opportunities and then provide some additional flexibilities for districts and recruiting and hiring CTE teachers House Bill 265 addresses high school equivalency diplomas so current Florida law requires a student to be 18 to sit for the GED exam however a 16 or 17 year old student
192may sit for the exam under extraordinary circumstances and currently each school district is response is responsible for determining what constitutes such extraordinary circumstances and therefore the requirements today vary widely across the state so I think the district currently was requiring students to come in and sit for 12 hours of class time in preparation for taking the GED I know other districts it says money as 20 or I think even upwards of 40 hours of class time some some districts have no requirement there but to provide consistency across the state the bill prohibits a school district from requiring a student that's reached the age of 16 to take any course prior to sitting for the GED exam if they can demonstrate a passing score on the GED practice test foreign Bill 290 gives parents of students
193with disabilities the right to retain their child in pre-kindergarten without risking an additional retention before the fourth grade to ensure that child has a strong Foundation before entering kindergarten so if a student is retained and the student demonstrates a substantial deficiency in literacy skills the student must also receive intensive reading interventions prior to kindergarten and then in doing so the new law revises the existing good cause exemptions for mandatory retention by allowing a student in grade three to still be promoted to grade four if they've already been retained in the VPK program and this is another one that'll require the district to update our ESC progression student progression plan House Bill 443 makes a couple of changes to how we work with Charter Schools and then a couple of additional unrelated changes as well so
194the bill requires a charter school sponsor to annually provide to its charter schools on what administrative and educational services are being rendered from the sponsors portion of the administrative fee that's something we do currently we communicate that information right now to doe will now be required to share that information directly with the charter schools as well it requires the charter school sponsors to make timely payments and reimbursements of eligible Federal grant funds we do a lot of that now obviously and it takes up some staff time to comply with the new bill I think there's going to be a capacity component and we'll have to revisit sort of existing Staffing levels I think to to comply with the stricter timeline around around those funds separately the bill expands the Florida teachers classroom Supply assistance program
195to include less than full-time teachers so this is the program that provides funds to school districts for classroom teachers to purchase classroom materials and supplies and so in some instances we have administrators or substitute teachers potentially who are holding ballot teaching certificates and are filling a vacancy on a long-term basis who otherwise weren't eligible for the supply assistance and then lastly the bill requires school districts to post step-by-step instructions on how to provide first aid for choking in every High School cafeteria within the district and this was actually an idea that was added to the bills sort of late in the process that was proposed by students in Broward County so a student derived idea Senate Bill 478 converts The Early Childhood music education incentive pilot program into a permanent program and that provides assistance
196to school districts in implementing comprehensive music music education for kindergarten through second graders the program will be administered by the Department of Education and is subject to funding on an annual basis from our from our legislature this year they appropriated four hundred thousand dollars in recurring funds and 10 million dollars in non-recurring funds to get the program started House Bill 551 requires school districts to annually certify and provide to the Department of Education evidence of instruction on the history of African Americans in November of last year the department had adopted a rule requiring districts to annually report on how instruction was provided including on the history of African Americans and so this bill essentially codifies those requirements the bill also requires each district school board to submit an implementation plan for the required instruction to
197doe for review and to post a plan on the school district's website the house bill 633 repeals the class size reduction penalty that exists within the fefp for schools that are exceeding class size maximums but it maintains the requirement that Department of Education monitor compliance and require compliance plans for any districts that do exceed class size maximums so they did away with the financial penalty but you still have to meet the meet the law and if you don't you have to have a compliance plan and then separately the bill provides that a student whose parent is on active military duty and is transferred within the state after the control to open enrollment window ends can still enroll in any other school within the state House Bill 733 relates to middle school and high school start
198times the bill requires that by July 1 of 2026 middle schools may not begin earlier than 8 A.M and high schools may not begin earlier than 8 30 A.M districts are also required to then inform the community including parents students and teachers about the health and safety impacts of sleep deprivation on high school and middle school students and the benefits of later school start times along with strategies to successfully Implement those later start times a few things to know here I think this is a this will be an ongoing study by the by the our transportation team along with our school staff in terms of how to best accommodate a new schedule I know this board is very familiar with this issue and has looked at it a number of on a number of occasions
199I think most notably back in 2019 the board did a deep dive and there was a an actually a public survey that was done and looked at a number of models I think of all the cost neutral models that were considered at that time there was only one that actually would comply with the new requirements of this bill and when the district surveyed the public so parents teachers community members on those proposals 67 percent of them opposed that proposal so there is some language in the Appropriations Bill requiring the Department of Education to further study this issue and actually partner with a handful of districts across the state to get a better understanding of what the implementation challenges could be both in a financial sense but also from from just sort of a scheduling process
200I know the district as well also has some challenges around length of school day which aren't consistent at each grade school level and so that makes it a little harder for us to just flip this the bus schedule to accommodate the changes required in the bill House Bill 891 creates a year-round school pilot program that Doe will also administer doe will create an application process to identify school districts interested in the program and select five schools to participate five school districts to participate those districts should represent a variety of demographics and include Urban suburban and Rural school districts upon completion of the program then doe is required to provide a report to the legislature to include data on participation benefits of the program barriers to implementation and recommendations for Statewide adoption the program would begin
201a year from now and last for up to four years House Bill 1035 makes a number of changes that impact teachers first it creates the teacher apprenticeship program as an alternative Pathway to entering the teaching profession and authorizes a five-year temporary apprenticeship certificate creates the dual enrollment educator scholarship program to assist High School teachers in obtaining The Graduate their graduate degrees and credentials necessary to provide dual enrollment coursework on a high school campus it creates the heroes in the classroom bonus program to provide a one-time signing bonus to retired First Responders and Veterans who become full-time classroom teachers and for those folks to participate it requires them to be eligible for a temporary or professional certificate and commit to teaching for a minimum of two years and it requires the commissioner of Education to conduct
202a comprehensive review of all existing federal state and local teaching training requirements by the end of this year and provide recommendations to the legislature for changes in the next legislative session the bill also creates a teacher's Bill of Rights to catalog many of the rights of teachers specified elsewhere in Florida statute regarding employment continuing education controlling their classroom and directing classroom instruction the bill establishes a new state-lighted state level administrative process to protect teachers who may be directed to violate state laws or or rules it does so by authorizing a teacher to request the commissioner of Education appoint a specified special magistrate to recommend a decision for resolution to the State Board of Education state board then can approve or reject that recommendation and like we've seen in other contexts any cost of the special
203magistrate process must be borne by the school district under the bill bill when a student is sent by a teacher to the principal's office for Behavioral issues the principal must determine whether the student violated the code of conduct and if the principal deviates from the teacher's recommended course of action the principal must inform the teacher in writing of the basis for such deviation from their original recommendation House Bill 1069 I think build up Builds on or follows up to two bills that received a lot of attention last session House Bill 1557 which was parental rights and education and then House Bill 1467 which had to do with instructional and Library materials so this bill includes a requirement for specific terminology and instruction relative to health and reproductive education in schools and requires that all materials
204used for that instruction be approved by the Department of Education rather than District school boards it extends the prohibition on classroom instruction related to sexual orientation or gender identity to pre-kindergarten through grade eight so the bill previously said get grades kindergarten through third this is grades pre-kindergarten through eight and the State Board during legislative session took that even further and extended it out to all the way through 12th grade the bill also prohibits District school boards from imposing or enforcing requirements that staff or students be referenced with pronouns that do not correspond with their biological sex and then the bill makes a number of changes to the library library classroom library and instructional materials processes so it requires District School Board policies regarding objections to specific materials to include objections on the basis that the
205material depicts or describes sexual conduct material subjects to certain objections must be removed from circulation within five days of receipt of the objection and until the completion of the objection process committees convened to review objections must include parents of students who have would have access to those materials those meetings must be publicly noticed and open to the public and parents have rights to read have the would have the right to read passages from any material that is subject to objection and if a school board were to deny the right to read the passage due to the content then the school district should can shall discontinue the use of that material immediately additionally if the school board determines that any materials depict or describe sexual conduct contain content not suited to student needs and their ability
206to comprehend the matter presented or contain content inappropriate for the grade level and age group for which the material is used the use of such materials should be discontinued for any grade level or age group for which such use is inappropriate or unsuitable and then again a similar process that we've seen in the past in other contexts as well a parent who disagrees with the district's determination on on an objection may go to the Department of Education and ask for the appointment of a special magistrate to review the objection and again the cost of that process is borne by the school district lastly the bill revises the annual reporting requirements regarding objections to materials by requiring the inclusion of the grade level and course from which the material was used and a list of materials
207that were not removed or discontinued along with the rationale for non-removal and the district actually is in the process now and I think the superintendent mentioned this earlier today of reviewing a number of all of our classroom Library materials I think we have as many as 80 certified media Specialists currently working on that review process and sent out some guidance just yesterday on on where we're at with that and I think the new law will also require some additional revisions to policies that the board recently just passed related to this subject House Bill 1125 adopts the interstate teacher Mobility compact model legislation into Florida law so the compact establishes a regulatory framework to allow teachers with an eligible teaching license held in one compact state to be granted an equivalent license in another compact member
208state and for the compact to go into effect it must be adopted by 10 States before before you can take advantage of it currently Florida is one of eight states that have adopted the compact although there are as many as 12 or more additional states that have a similar Bill pending House Bill 1259 requires public school districts to share their discretionary Capital millage outlay with eligible charter schools on a per student basis or per FTE basis currently funding for Charter School capital outlay is primarily provided by annually appropriated State funds so this year the legislature appropriated 213 million dollars for Charter School capital outlay and so this will require so Charter Schools will now have access to both those funds and also to the local 1.5 Mills to provide a transition period for the required
209sharing of that millage the bill provides a five-year Glide path so school districts will be required to share 20 in the first year escalating 20 each year until in year five they're sharing a hundred percent of the calculated amount in Orange County it's estimated that the charter allocation then in year one will be around three million dollars and it increases to 17 million dollars by year five and if for some reason the state no longer appropriates additional dollars for Charter Capital outlay then the amount escalates to as much as 27 million dollars annually going forward House Bill 1537 addresses a wide array of Education policy issues it requires a Statewide shift from professional development to something called professional learning and requires the department to create a web-based Marketplace of high quality programs for teachers and
210educational staff it adds required instruction on the history of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and also on the history and significance of September 11th beginning this fall the bill adds an additional measure to the school grades formula to include the percentage of eligible students who who earn an achievement level three or higher on the grade 3 standardized Ela assessment that number is already reported in our in our school grading formula now this is requiring it to be broken out and added effectively a second time we're sort of double counting that information now in our school grades and so that could have a particular outsize impact on on schools that maybe have a have a low grade 3 Ela score and then the bill also maintains the concordance scores needed to meet Statewide assessments for graduation
211for a class of 2023. this was I think an issue that kind of came up late in the process but was something that was particularly impactful for the district it helped I think hundreds of additional ocps seniors graduate this year and I think it's probably worth acknowledging that I think superintendent was engaged in and very active in terms of advocacy with our delegation and legislative leaders on on this issue and getting it fixed basically it allowed our class of 2023 to be held to similar graduation standards that our previous two classes were held to and gave them a little bit more flexibility in terms of meeting graduation requirements because so much of their High School career was disrupted by the pandemic Additionally the bill authorizes school districts to use the classic learning test for an
212annual district-wide Administration and allows those students who take it to earn a concordance score to meet the requirements for bright future scholarships those students could also then use volunteer and paid work hours to meet bright future scholarships requirements the bill also provides a rebuttable presumption in any disciplinary action that a student who intervenes using only the amount of force necessary to stop a violent act against other students staff or volunteers was necessary to restore or maintain the safety of others House Bill 7039 aims to improve student outcomes by improving strategies to support pre-k through grade 5 students who are struggling in reading and math specifically it directs the Statewide Focus for literary instruction in all public schools to employ the science of reading and requires phonics instruction as the primary instructional strategy for word reading
213rather than the three queuing model it requires District reading plans to prioritize the assignment of Highly Effective teachers to K2 through two classrooms in the assignment of reading coaches to individual schools it requires districts to identify and provide immediate tailored instruction to students in grades k-4 who exhibit a substantial deficiency in math and it expands the new world's reading initiative to pre-k students and provides K-5 math scholarship accounts so I will pause there for questions comments from them absolutely let's begin with member gold hello okay so the stuff we knew would be more difficult I think we've had a lot of discussion about but some of the really good stuff like the CTE stuff I would like to talk about a little bit more I'm wondering if we can go beyond the letter of the
214law and maybe do virtual tours and this may be an explanation of how all career paths work right that if you do college these types of careers not only these careers open up to you but in CTE and then do a virtual tour of our CTE centers this happens and often can lead to college later or you could go right into the workforce especially with the goal of having everyone certified in something by the time they leave school so that they have some options but I think this is a wonderful time and it would be great if that video could be produced by the students who are currently at one of the schools either one of our magnet schools that has a TV production or the through the CTE I had a question in one
215of the slides and I think it's around 16 I'm not positive Arts replace the CTE can you clarify that a little bit more like you can swap it out did I hear that correctly yes so it modifies options to complete required credits to earn a high school diploma by replacing the Practical Arts option in the required Credit in Fine Arts finer Performing Arts with an option to complete one credit in CTE those are not good choices so do we have the flexibility to do both and meet the requirements so if we wanted to maintain the Arts credit they could do that but we add the CTE credit is that still staying within the statute and then you don't have to answer that right now but could we investigate that and look at it because the
216the Arts the Practical arts and the Performing Arts are as important for their Workforce skills as as the option for CTE which helps them kind of decide on the direction that they're going so if and I know we're already in a compressed education requirement model but I would in any way possible want to advocate for us not giving up that Arts Credit for our kids the other question I had was slide 11 about the VPK and I love the idea of being able to not hold it against the child and hold them back but since VPK is not a required or offered globally we could be holding a lot of kids in kindergarten and maybe doubling our kindergarten population if I'm understanding this correctly a comment on can you comment on the retention would happen
217in the VPK program to the extent students are enrolled and parent parents make that select that choice but wasn't it if they didn't meet the requirement for kindergarten so if the kids don't have meet the requirement for kindergarten and they've never had VPK what are we doing with them it's not a requirement it's not a requirement for them to meet to move on to kindergarten this is strictly an option parents have available to them if they have enrolled their child in a VPK program see that there are learning deficiencies or early literacy skill challenges allows them to be retained without having to risk another retention when they get to third grade okay I love that but what about all those kids that don't get access to VPK how do we chair the superintendent has it
218come Dr Vasquez thank you so currently when our students come to us entering kindergarten we do an assessment to see a level of skill attainment and where they are and then for those students that are either above or below or at they receive instruction either remediation for those that are significantly behind the or they receive enrichment most of that is done either through an intervention block or through small group instruction as part of rotations that take place additionally schools whoa additionally Amy's back dang it yeah we also have in in our Title One schools we also have some of them that have like a Jump Start program where the kids are invited to come in from the Pre-K and do like a couple of days of getting acclimated into the kindergarten world and we also
219have provided summer school to help some of those children that didn't quite meet the benchmarks during the school year some of them maybe those that did not have prior Pre-K experience excuse me how long have we been doing those programs I would say that first many of them we've been doing them for a number of years the assessments that we are currently using now I believe are a bit more refined we are also being much more consistent in how we go about making sure that those are done in a manner that allows us to have information early enough to start to provide interventions for the students and part of that goes back to training on early literacy and how children acquire the skills they need to be able to learn how to read that's great
220I'd love to see the statistics of those kids that have been through those remediations by the time they're in third grade where they are because and I know we have a new reading format that may have much better outcomes so we might not be comparing apples and apples going forward but I still worry about this VPK group that doesn't get VPK they get into kindergarten and we can't intervene enough with them and then they get taken away from things that make school fun for them so it's it's a big cycle I'll get back in queue for the rest of my questions thanks thank you member Vice chair gallo thank you okay so first I want to say there was a lot of good things that came out of this legislative cycle so we've got we've
221got drop we got we got some help with teacher retention we expanded CTE which we've been asking for forever we got some flexibility within CTE we which makes us all happy because Workforce Development is the direction that we're heading we have I won't I'm not gonna we had 70 39 which was talking about student outcomes and the science of reading which helps us all do what we know is right for students within hb1 which you could argue for it or against it there was a lot of deregulation language in there that's going to deregulate how school systems operate which is going to be very important for us and I know that the Department of Education is going to put together a work group they're going to be asking for input from the community they're going
222to be asking from input from the districts so it as a as a body as a district when that becomes available we really need to push it out to our teachers and to our staff to make sure that they want to to provide input they would I asked for who was going to be asked to be on that work group they're getting back to me but we'll see how that goes but I wasn't sure that there would be there would be districts there would be superintendents there would be teachers there would people be people representative on the work group that could really speak to the deregulation and what's needed in public schools so I'm super excited about that Capital outlay weren't we already sharing part of our referendum with with the charters we were not
223no this is this is specifically a capital outlay we've been sharing the discretionary one mill that we use for operating and we've been sharing that on a proportionate base with proportionate basis with the charters but we have not but the statute today allowed for districts to share Capital Charter Capital outlay but most districts do not okay okay hb1 my concern that I have with hb1 and I do think that they did they try to do a really good job with the funding piece that they at least listened to us when we came to them and we said hey we have issues we've got to be able to project a budget we've got to be able to do some things they did give us some help in that direction which I appreciate my biggest concern with
224hb1 is we're going to lose sight of a lot of kids because I think the initial the first year that people I don't know that students are really going to go to private schools I think they're going to go more to homeschooling because they can make money and I'm not concerned about students that come from good homes I'm concerned about students who go are from abusive homes and who will have eyes on those students because that's a perfect breeding ground for for them to take them out of school they can homeschool them who's checking on that student like who's going to be monitoring that student is okay and that student's not being abused so I have concerns that this may harm some children and as I'm hoping in the future I'm hoping there'll be conversations
225maybe DCF I don't know but I hope there is some kind of conversation had about who's keeping eyes on the students just to ensure that they're okay and they're healthy and they're being well taken care of it because I think we all know there are there are parents and Guardians that will abuse the system and that concerns me greatly and then there is I think it's the 240 where we're not allowed to use pronouns 1069 which one was that no 240 was a good one 10 16 10 69. I have concerns about that and I actually know this the sponsor in the Senate he's a nice guy he's really really a nice guy but I just think I think if we're either we're for parental rights or we're not and if we're telling parents they
226have a right to raise their child how they see fit if a parent walks into a school and they want their child to be called a certain pronoun I feel like that parent has the right to do so and we just that was just taken away their right was just taken away to do that and I do believe in my heart that will harm some of our students and so for that I'm sad and I know that we have some challenges and I know that this is a really tough session when for you being up there I didn't go up there as much as I used to because it was just it was tough and so kudos to you and Scott and for all that you all did because I when I was up there
227y'all were working hard and you were in offices and you were having these conversations so that these bills that I just said we love now it's in large part due to the work that y'all and fell did to make sure that our voices were heard so that the good stuff got added to the bill so whether there may be still stuff we don't like I'm really concerned about the a few of these bills I think will be concerning but I just want to say I appreciate y'all and I appreciate all the hard work because I know how I know you guys were double teaming and getting in there especially with the FRS and we were trying to make it known how much money that was going to cost us and y'all did it at the
228end of the day that got excluded and it we're not going to be out millions and millions and millions of dollars and it was because of of y'all so thank you thank you Vice chair member Kester Dental thank you madam chair I want to thank Scott and Jason for being in Tallahassee I think I have to say that every year that I concur with Angie it's tough to be up there but you did make a lot of impact and I appreciate all the work because just being there is work so I just have a comment about HB 1069 and I guess that third bullet it prohibits District school boards from imposing or enforcing requirements that staff or students be referenced with pronouns that do not correspond with biological sex it I did not realize that
229the law was that the school boards couldn't Force a teacher to use a pronoun that the student prefers is that right but they could do it's just the district couldn't tell them they had to correct so it's it's really like the district cannot tell a teacher that they either have to or they have to or can't Okay so our district could say you still have the ability to be respectful to your students and if they choose or communicate to you that they prefer a different pronoun it's okay for the teacher to use that pronoun we're not going to force you one way or the other but it is okay for a teacher to do that is that correct I would probably defer to general counsel but I think that's running close to the policy I'm
230reading the bullet so I don't know yeah the bullet is meant to sort of summarize into some precise language but all right yes pomerani so from the statute itself it says it shall be the policy of every public K-12 educational institution that is provided or authorized by the Constitution that a person's sex is an immutable biological trait and that it is false to ascribe to a person a pronoun that does not correspond to such person's sex this does not apply to individuals born with a genetically and biochemically verifiable disorder and sex development and then it goes through a whole Litany of it so it's the policy of the state and for K-12 institutions that we that sex is an immutable trait and it's based upon biological sex at Birth I think that's the intent of
231the law that's written and I don't think and I'll be we'll be happy to look at this again but I don't think in the legislative history that it was the intent to allow a school board to say you can call a student a the pronoun that they choose that doesn't match up with their biological sex at Birth I think that's the intention of it I do think can I interject just because I when you brought this up I pulled it up it does say that an employee or contractor of a K-12 in institution may not provide to a student his or her preferred title or pronoun and it says a student may not be asked by employee contract to provide their pronoun so we can't ask them to but I was pretty sure that I
232read that while we can't require a teacher or threaten an employee with their employment that were not prohibited from they're not prohibited from using the pronoun we just can't make it a condition of their job so I just want to again I was trying to read this quickly when you were going over it let's that was the discussion that was had in the legislature that if two students said that this would be my preferred pronoun and the other student chooses to call them that is entirely left to their discretion the same thing between two staff members it's simply that the policy from the district cannot be to either mandate it or to prohibit it as oh here's where it says it an employee committee that question was asked so in committee there was a question
233that was asked of the sponsor and the question was if a parent comes to a school and would like to use the affirming pronouns for that student would they be allowed to do so and the sponsor in the house unless that change said no no but this would not require every other student or staff member to refer to him by those pronouns but if individual students choose to refer to them that way then that is entirely allowed so the so the teacher if she chooses to could use the affirming pronouns yes I understood it differently right yeah the language it gets into tricky I Think It's Tricky but I can can I read you that pertinent language an employee an employee contractor or student of a public K-12 educational institution may not be required as
234a condition of employment or enrollment or participation in any pro program to refer to another person using that person's preferred personal pronoun if the pronoun does not correspond so neither a student an employee or a contractor employee can be required to use it there's nothing that I've read that says that they cannot choose to use it right it does make it clear that the adult cannot ask this the students to use a pronoun but in terms of the students right excuse me I don't see anything regardless of what the sponsor might have meant if you and John would take a just a really you know you guys go through and scrub this thing down and make sure we're all clear because I'm just reading it real quickly but that part seems to be enabling but
235not we can't require it record right that's a really important distinction my time is up thank you I'm sorry okay where did you run out did we all use up your time we're gonna okay that was a good question all right remember Gould so I had one left on page 25 or by 25. the rebuttal act of violence so we've had a lot of discussion about that up here about you know trying to protect oneself or protect someone else how are we going to implement that and make that clear for our code of student conduct and that it was slide 25. okay yeah how how are we going to do that so the fourth bullet provides a rebuttal presumption in any disciplinary action that a student who intervenes using only the amount of force necessary
236to stop a violent act against students staff or volunteer was necessary to restore or retain the safety of other students so if I'm jumped by somebody and I begin to fight back to get someone off of me or I jump in to protect my friend help Dr Vazquez we have added language to the code to incorporate this so yeah so how will you I think I'm more concerned about how it will get trained and benchmarked than I am about language right because I can see a lot of appeals coming to us if it is not clear with examples and well thought out scenarios I mean you can never think of everything but to keep it consistent consistency is the key word We Will We Will train as we do every every summer our team will
237provide guidance as you know we have centralized discipline for the up for the start of this new school year effective July 1st and that I believe is going to assist with having consistency across the board obviously there's going to be a lot that goes into the statements Witnesses and how we will determine what is the appropriate amount of force necessary and that's that will be something that our team will continue to work with other districts and with doe we have a very close relationship with Julie up in Tallahassee whenever there's questions about the code and implementation and we rely on their support as we are trying to interpret and making sure that we are affording due process and that we are interpreting the code appropriately all right thank you okay remember bird the House Bill
238one the savings accounts or whatever the actual name is for them how what was the discussion around that about how they are going to be monitored or are they going to be monitored these accounts when these parents get this money do they have to show what they're spending the money on and does the money have to be spent by the end of the year or how does that work so there's the funds are set up into it's essentially an individual savings account but it's all on a reimbursement basis so you have to provide documentation of how you're spending the funds if you're using it for private school the funds need to be drawn down for purposes of private school before they can be used for anything else the process will be administered much like it
239is today through Step Up For Students and other scholarship organizations state that provide a lot of the administrative support for the for implementation of of those how those dollars move around there is a cap on how many dollars can be in the account so if you're accumulating the scholarship on an annual basis but not drawing down all of the funds there is a cap both in in the education option so this sort of the standard scholarship but also in the unique ability scholarship so that you can't just accumulate funds perpetually and then there is also I think a provision where when you get you can use those things they carry out so they would carry over them from year to year advice because there is a lot of discussion I hear in the public about
240that they're just getting this money but it's not really like they're getting an eight thousand dollar savings account that they have I mean they have to actually they have to like okay like if you're homeschooling okay they have to actually submit a reimbursement for like say the textbooks or the curriculum they're using and then they get reimbursed doe is supposed to set up or identify sort of a Marketplace in which that they can be providing purchasing some of these things if it's specific items but in terms of services yeah I mean some of this is going to be difficult from a transparency and accountability standpoint to know what the service is if you're just seeking reimbursement for for payment you know I know we've heard in the past in some contexts you know students might
241use like equine therapies is that is that an acceptable service for example well I'm thinking food can they yeah I don't know that I don't know that food has been has been listed as an acceptable but you're right I mean we think about the things that the public school is providing to students potentially it does open to door to open the door to other things sure yeah okay and then the only other thing I saw that they are allowing students now to combine work hours and volunteer hours for Bright Futures that's great do we have any is there anything in that statute or is there any discussion on I know that some schools have their own ways to decide what counts and what doesn't count for those hours is there anything in the statutes that
242outline and the reason I'm asking is some schools ask for work you have to provide a paycheck stub I don't know if all schools do that but I know some schools do is that something that's in statute because I know that there are paid jobs that don't get paycheck stubs like tutoring or babysitting private work so I'm just wondering if that's in statute or is that just something that's a district decision I suspect that's probably a rule some sort of rule rule making requirement but we can go I can go back and look and let's others notice some certainty please so that's partially correct that there are things that come from the rule but that is an area that we are working on to have more consistency across the district with what's required so there's
243not more of a burden on one group of students that at another school and so the team will work to provide that and I'm looking at Mary I'm not sure that it will be ready to go by the start of the school year but oh it will thank you and then we're also looking I believe member bird you brought up the app I think Hillsboro is using so we're looking to see how we can make the process as easy as possible and still comply with the requirements of the rule member Felder I think after listening when you put your thing in all of the sometimes the same conversations I had but I was concerned after going to Winter state conference and we talked about these bills one of my concerns about like the vouchers that
244people are going to be getting how well are they going to really do the check and balance because some people you know may think that what a thousand or more dollars is like a free fall and that's not my concern is that people really understand or is that how closely monitored with his check and balance because they said something about you just so you have the specific things like for tuition at schools if you need a taking AP classes or tutoring how is that going to be managed and then the fact that if an event that the student has to come back for some of her some for whatever reason gets put out the private school whatever has come back you know is there guaranteed after we the FTE counts has been made we'll be
245able to get money for that student they say that we can and are we sure you know what I'm talking about was once the kid leaves and then then we're not accounted for him and then they get put out the private school how is that going to be checked to make sure that we would get the funds that we need to pay for that student to return I'm just concerned that it just seems kind of unfair even though it's they say that it's coming we listen to this legislature legislator that came to our meeting I'm rolling everything she said but you know I'm just concerned that we're going to be caught with not enough funds because students are coming back and then some of these parents who may not have the education of understanding really
246what to do with that money and whether they're getting and it's just I'm just concerned about the check and balance yeah so you presented a number of good issues there I think in terms of the dollars the accounts are supposed to be funded to match the calendar year and the FTE count so that those students who elect a scholarship aren't getting all of the dollars on day one so in the sort of the scenario you described where a student starts off in a private school or in a homeschool setting and chooses to come back to public school at some point during the course of the academic year then we would be able to account for them and hopefully at some point shortly thereafter then pick up their funding stream that they would that they would
247otherwise have forfeited by by relinquishing the scholarship so on that show on that issue there is a mechanism to try to get the dollars to follow the student a little more closely I think there's some concern from The District's perspective about how well that will actually happen and then separately I should note too the legislature did set aside an additional 350 million dollars in reserve funds in the event that there's a particularly High sort of I'll say subscription rate to the scholarships and so that they have underestimated the number of scholarship students typically that would ultimately result in some level of proration to districts so they've set aside this money to prevent any sort of proration so that districts are essentially held harmless in terms of changes to to per student funding okay thank you
248member Salamanca thank you chair okay I have a couple I'll try to go through as many I can page seven so can you elaborate on this like what notification requirements are we talking about so these are so in middle school it's for students personalized academic and career plans and so those have to include now information on Career and Technical education graduation pathway programs and other work based learning opportunities and then at the high school level it's notification on acceleration options to include information on Career Education and planning work based learning options again and then soft skill credentialing programs okay for page the bullet point says requires districts to provide high school students with at least one work based learning opportunity is this can be curriculum I can because it could be any like it doesn't
249have to be like internship based star I'd have to go back and look at how it's specifically defined but I think typically work based is some sort of off-site work offside opportunity yeah got it okay I'm just curious on kind of how we're gonna Implement that because at least one work based learning opportunity obviously if it's individualized it's not going to go through guidance counselors like I'm just thinking on the requirement of at least once dude okay I can't read my own handwriting okay 10 69 or is that one yeah so on this one I would love some legal clarification as well on the third bullet point imposing and enforcing is very different than just using pronouns if the student parent and teacher are all on the same page and I think we're going to
250get a lot of questions about that particular case so teacher parent student requesting pronoun for that student I read through the statue I just don't see anything saying we can't so I just want to make sure is that coming yeah so Madam chair may I of course thank you Mr palmeri so you're looking the first part of the statue says it's the policy of K-12 so we're going to have to adopt a policy that says sex is basically it's false to ascribe sex as something other than what's in biological sex at for at Birth so then you go down to subsection two which says an employee contractor or student may not be required as a condition of employment or enrollment or participation in any program to refer to another person using that person's preferred personal
251pronoun so yes you can't force an employee I get the force it's the reverse of that no no and I get it there's obviously these this legislation is not the most clear thing in the history of the world but I think you have to look at it in totality so then you have the subsection three an employee may not provide to a student his or her preferred pronoun so any one of our teachers can't say my preferred pronoun is X and then subsection 4 says a student may not be asked by an employee or contractor to provide his or her preferred pronoun so the teacher can't say would you prefer to be referred to as he or she can't do it and then number five is the probably going to clear up a lot of
252this because then number five says the State Board of Education May adopt rules to administer this section so I would suspect that coming very soon here the State Board would engage in rule making to describe what will or will not be allowed under the statute and I hesitate to speculate as to what they would do but they could make it very clear that personal pronouns are based going to be based on biological sex at Birth or they could give some wiggle room don't know but I would assume they would engage in rule making rather quickly on this okay and then last one is for the superintendent on HB a91 number 17. the year-round school pilot program just contacts on how that impacts us do we have a we did not volunteer but we did not
253volunteer to be a part of that pilot okay I wanted to double triple check okay I have one more but I'll come back thank you we'll come back around member for on okay so mine is on page two when we're just looking at the budget summary it says the second line says total number of students what we had at the end of this year and then what we're projecting that 7 000 more or less increase is that actual students were expecting to come into our schools or is that going to be for from hb1 total new students coming into the fefp so that could be homeschool students who haven't been accounted for previously that would be taking scholarships private school students who now are eligible for scholarships and then new students coming into the district
254I think our district number was somewhere like 1200 students okay in terms of new students coming into the district itself great so I think just for the public to understand that those are not students coming in sitting into our classrooms and money that is for students in our classrooms for whatever reason and those are things I think we need to continue working with the legislators and asking them to separate I think they need to separate that completely the same way we have FLVS and that's totally separate and if somebody chooses to do FLVS there's a whole they have their own yeah bucket of money and I think the same thing needs to happen here with anyone who is doing family empowerment or not empowerment but the Step Up type funding the grants that should be
255coming from a different bucket that way there isn't confusion because right now in the public there are they feel like money is being taken from the public schools where they're just funneling it in here to make it seem easier on their end but it's more complicated on our end so I just wanted to clarify that and then love page nine with the ctes I think all of us are excited about that and the workforce I did have a question on page 16 with the High School Middle School start times is this something that is that's 100 required then by the way the law is written yeah every District must comply by July 1 of 2026. again I there were some dollars in the budget for doe to look at the issue I think more closely
256recognizing that there are many districts who will have a number of challenges in meeting that requirement so hopefully that study will provide some I think Clarity around the feasibility of actually having every District comply by that date okay because I think that's another one that I think would be nice to be able to speak with or at least advocate for that to not being required because if that is something that our constituents are not in favor of the high schoolers are saying no I'd rather just get there early and be able to get out so that we can go to work and have after school activities and such I haven't spoke to any high schooler that wants to go in late and get out really late so I think that's something maybe I don't know
257if you do that or I mean I'll be doing that on my own but that would be something and maybe even parents could be sending in high schoolers you could write in okay my last one was page 26 the science of reading that HB 7039 is that right love it love love love and so I think we're on the right track with that we've already we're implementing that early reading but making sure that every single one of our schools and the teachers are being getting that education from the science of reading I love the read foundation and what they provide that information but we're seeing huge results and I think if we can get kids reading we're going to see math levels go up if you can't read you can't do your math well and
258I think reading is key so I'm super that's probably my the one I'm most excited about but thank you member farant following up on your comments about the school start times I think it would be very helpful the state is As I understood you saying is going to be reaching out to some districts to provide input and I'm sure other districts have done similar this week but I'm not sure in pulling our students and really evaluating this I think we had a team that went to I want to say Seattle to look at their model and some of the things that we learned besides the opposition as you mentioned from our surveys but also the challenge even if we had enough money to change the schedule so that it didn't have to disrupt everybody we
259would end up with Mr pacheco's in the back of the room and they did the research on this we would end did I was actually the busing yeah what they what they found was that we would we would have to have less than a full day schedule for bus drivers if they don't have all three shifts in which case it's hard enough to find bus drivers right now but finding bus drivers to work less than a full-time job was going to be another challenge that I think until you get into the weeds the way our team did that doesn't occur to you so it would be really great if we could have input into that and provide the legislature I'm glad to see that they slowed down enough to say let's ask questions let's make
260sure before implementation but it would really be I think pivotal for us to be able to provide that input and so member farant in terms of your talking to people spending some time with Mr Pacheco and his team if you haven't already to to get well-versed on all that they learned just for the record the whole board was a hundred percent in favor of the idea of not starting that early in terms of we don't think that's the best thing for our high school students but the idea of starting really late wasn't a great idea either and what we preferred was starting them like at 8 or 8 30 but we could not make the schedules work financially and because of the challenges with getting bus drivers unless we altered it in a way that
261there was so much lack of support but anyway they can go into a lot more detail but if you are going to be advocating on behalf of that spending a little time just to have a really the best knowledge I learned so much as they went through this study about things that I don't think we'd even considered so good job Mr Pacheco to you and your team on that the other the other comment I wanted to make Mr pomerini I see I definitely see where you're coming from in terms of the I think it's 1069 and the language in the beginning that says that basically it's false to ascribe a different pronoun and then the later language that doesn't prohibited as long as we don't require it and why you know you think it will
262be decided in rule making and all of that makes all the sense in the world your perspective and insight on that the one question I have for you is not us obviously but would parents have standing to challenge the rulemaking if they felt that it was not consistent with the statute yes all right thank you sir thank you all right yes I think parents yeah because you know I mean I it's I think it's an arguable a conclusion to reach that it's not permissible but I do see the language that Mr palmerini points out in the beginning I can see that moving forward I think it's like I said I think it's debatable and I would like to think that with our state's focus on parental rights that there would be an opportunity for parents
263to have that right to assert that right and to advocate for that right I just want you to know Mr pomerini thought that because I certainly wouldn't think that would be our right from what we've learned about our rights but thank you okay member Salamanca no that's me mine is going to be super crucial take over questions okay page 22 HB 1125 who are the states that have adopted this do you have the list in addition to Florida Colorado Kansas Kentucky Nebraska Nevada Oklahoma and Utah got it okay thank you that was it thank you I would like to propose that we give John a hydraulic chair like the podium so that when he speaks he could rise like rising from the ashes so that we can look at them I think that would be
264a great use okay all kidding aside I do I do it I didn't have questions in 1069 where there the instruction the legislature moved it up to eighth grade didn't the State Board of Education already moved out to 12th grade so that law is really kind of null and void because it's really it's confusing because it's really up to 12th grade it is yeah they implemented that rule while the bill was still moving through the process and the legislature didn't further amend it okay that's what I thought okay and then the classic learning test is the Department of Education going to be working on that concordance score this summer was do you know what was there discussion around the concordance Gordon who was going to set the concordance score I suspect that would be the
265department yes I don't know that they've finally think of the timeline what that is yet no and then going back to high school start times so art I'm sorry man please so our team did attend a meeting and they are looking at a two-year rollout of of this program including the assessment so sometime within the next two years wonderful I'm all for giving our students another opportunity with another concordance score High School start times I know like the chair said we all agree that and the research is very clear that starting students later is beneficial to them it's just how do we get there I was surprised to find out at fsba that there's multiple districts granted that they're small so they don't have the challenges we do here in Orange that do start later
266already and there was even some districts that are running a four-tier bus system four-tier and I was like how are you doing that and there are some school districts that have used coaches to bus I'm just throwing it out here because Mr pacheco's in the back of the room they use coaches they ask coaches if they want to be bus drivers and they ask teachers custodian workers anybody that they can use they're they're they're throwing that out there and they will and this would be hard in Orange County but they will actually use one bus for multiple sites so in like for example you have Columbia and Corner Lake next to each other they would have a bus that would go to Columbia and Corner Lake that's kind of reducing traffic time I don't know
267if any of that would work but anyways it was a very interesting conversation that we had on the 1537 the third grade counting twice was there discussion around the reasoning for that because I in my mind I'm thinking at our a schools it would probably help them maintain the a because that bottom 25 there's there's measurements in that bottom 25 that already get counted twice that hurt us so that could help some schools correct it would just hurt our schools that struggle with those third grade reading scores this was an issue that was pointed out in a number of committee stops there was never a sort of a clear justification for why they thought that they were needed to double count it I think there was an intent to provide more clarity around this specific
268specific metric because of how important it is to student development and success doe did run I think some modeling based on this change and I think found in I don't have the specific numbers in front of me but the number of schools that change letter grades either went up or went down was like 10 or 11 when in One Direction and 10 or 11 when in the other direction Statewide so it was from their perspective in a very small amount that were affected by the change the idea is just to highlight more specifically school performance on that issue that makes sense that makes sense and then for hb1 there was the choice Navigators I know that language stayed in the bill but it was kind of watered down so what so homeschoolers do they have
269to use Choice Navigator it's just an option for them now correct it's an option available to those students who participate in the personalized education program which is essentially a homeschool type program that students can then tap into the scholarships but it's optional it is optional yes that was something that The Homeschool Community pushed back on quite heavily but they're they still are required to take some type of Norm reference test at the end of the year so that was a requirement to participate in the program and receive the scholarship although it was less than clear what happened after they took the test and reported the score there wasn't any sort of follow-up or accountability or anything beyond that I simply had to take it and report it so we were at and I'll go quickly
270because I'm about up representative tuck who's a sponsor of the bill talked to fsba and she said that she understands there's some concerns around hb1 and that they're monitoring it and she felt very comfortable that there would be changes made as they see kind of what bubbles to the top so I just wanted to throw that out there okay at this point I have member Caster Dental queued up is there anybody I have bypassed doesn't mean you can't jump in but member Caster Dental thank you madam chair back to house bill is there any language in there or consequence or pronoun police force mentioned or how is that going to be determined when it's violated there's not any language in there in terms of how you sort of enforce the provisions specifically I think there
271was some concern raised from a number of parents that you could be in a position where a student who has been attending school and been referred to you by certain pronouns can no longer be referred to as those pronouns and so up until this point students staff have only known them one way and you could effectively be outing them in some fashion and so there are some real concerns about that but nothing sort of to otherwise I think get to your point about how we know who is actually I guess being honest about biological sex and the use of their pronouns so I have to agree with I think it was member Gallo who mentioned was it parents rights I mean it seems like a protection could be the a student parent teacher agreement the
272parents rights to assert that my child is allowed to be addressed by their preferred pronoun as they've been referred to as a way to protect the teachers but I'm thinking that I wouldn't put it past the governor to call a special session just to fix this one bill but I would hope that there is some Grace and understanding of the humanity of our students and the fear within our faculty and I hope that we can address this in a responsible way thank you member Castro General member Byrd yeah I think this is basically for maybe those those staff that are not comfortable with it or students that are not comfortable that they don't have to be forced to use a pronoun but my question is if you are using the wrong or not using the
273preferred pronoun that a student wants and a parent wants of their child I would assume that those are some pretty those could be some pretty serious Federal violations I'm looking see this is when we need the chair I'd be pushing the up button right now right I'm assuming there's good this is a whole mess just waiting to happen right okay that's what I thought I just don't understand how are we how are we and why are we in the situation anyway so I have to balance this you know Federal protections and this I just I don't understand but I could definitely see it and I'm thinking in my mind's eye people that we've heard at board meetings that you know I could I'm sure there are people that will say well I'm not I that's
274not what my paper here from the district says that you are I'm not using that pronoun and then they feel protected now because of this law and I'm just so scared for our kids but anyway all right thank you member bird ready to move on okay so just a handful of bills related to Information Technology services and data privacy SB 258 directs the department of Management Services to create a list of prohibited applications that present a security risk potentially to public employers Information Technology systems so public employers which includes school districts have to block access to those prohibited applications on their networks districts also must restrict access to prohibited applications on any District issued device and retain the ability to remotely uninstall those applications DMS is working then to compile a list of applications and
275then also establish some procedures for granting or denying waiver requests in certain circumstances I think the district already has a number of in internet filters in place to block out some applications and so I think we'll have to Simply look at the list that DMS comes up with and make adjustments accordingly HB 379 sort of a related bill it takes steps to ensure the safety of students while accessing the internet at school it requires public schools to provide instruction for students in grade 6 through 12 on the social emotional and physical effects of social media and for doe to make social media safety instructional materials available online and for districts to notify parents of its availability there it requires District school boards to adopt an Internet safety policy for student access to the internet provided
276by the school district and it requires districts to prohibit students from accessing social media platforms through internet access provided by the district except under certain circumstances when it's necessary for educational purposes the bill specifically requires districts to prohibit the use of tick tock on District owns devices as well as through internet access provided by the district and as a platform to communicate or promote any District school or activity and then lastly the bill requires District District's code of student conduct to prohibit the use of mobile devices during instructional time except when expressly directed by a teacher and specifically for educational purposes again I think our IT services already restricts a number of social media sites for for students and for staff on on District issued devices but we'll review those with our existing internet filters
277and then I believe that the revisions to the code of student conduct already include an updated internet policy to comply with this law Senate Bill 662 creates the student online personal information protection act to restrict the operator of a website or an online service provider used for K-12 School purposes from collecting disclosing or selling student data or from using student data to engage in targeted advertising and there are some limited exceptions for under federal state law that require disclosure or for specific K-12 School purposes those are the Bills on Information Services I can stop there or I can keep going if they're let's stop there we have a couple of questions and then given the hour I think we need to take a lunch break and all right well all right okay we have three
278questions all right superintendent you Amy and I have been overruled I think all right Jason how many slides do you have after this one yes thank you I have roughly 20 but but I think these I don't want us they're quick specularly but I think we can get through most of them pretty quickly I know the sort of the question those contentious bills have been addressed thank you so much and we may have oh I'm on okay thank you we may have talked about it but I do recall when we were at a meeting back in Tampa when one of the legislators came to share with us the HB 379 the tick tock and the technology and the restriction on children in the public schools but they were not going to have unless this change
279he said I forgot the Senator's name yes he said that they would not have the restriction for private schools and I said well I said that sounds sort of unfair like public school students won't have access but private schools but then we they still at some point fall on the jurisdiction a little bit of State statue as it relates to policies and procedures for education so my concern is in the Democracy in which we live because I still believe in that's very unfair I just I'm just expressing my thoughts on that the public school children you know I'm not a fan of Tick Tock but I do know people use tick tock for various reasons and teaching things and so forth but you're gonna restrict public school children from it but not private I just
280I have an issue with that you're gonna restrict it restrict it all and I just feel like well well then leave it alone if you can't do both but I just want to express that you know thought if I could have just two quick points there I mean as you know well there are a number of Provisions in law that apply to public schools that don't apply to private schools and secondly I think here specifically the justification is that Tick Tock being what is perceived as a Chinese owned or operated website and application has some additional data and cyber security threats that some other applications may not and because this is a government paid for provided wireless network internet service or government-issued device that there are some safety concerns with with data privacy there that
281don't exist in in private school HP one and I was standing but we're going to give them the government is going to give them vouchers for eight thousand dollars I mean the government's giving them money so they're going to function on some of the money I'm just I'm I'm just ready right now but that seems so very unfair because they're gonna get money from vouchers that's coming from government funds but yet you it's just so it's something that's discrimination but anyway okay thank you member Felder member Gould so I'm going to work my way backwards on the operator restrict operator of websites online services blah blah blah from appealing to kids and the data collection what about things like sports tutoring Arts how do we make sure they have access to enrichment programs that we
282may not operate but have Partners the YMCA the Boys and Girls Club how do we distinguish that and is there a mechanism within the law to do that I think this is in the context of services that the district would contract for and so in our agreements with those those potential service providers we need to be able to restrict their access to our student data for purposes of targeted advertising and some of these other things so it doesn't mean they can't share their opportunity they just can't collect the data and we can regulate the kind of information they're sharing with the students yeah I think what you're going to see is kind of uniform agreements the district's require of of these service providers going forward member gold we already have very strong restrictions in our
283template contracts about that so yeah and I and I knew that I was just worried this was going to lock down you know knowledge of I need help you know with my math and now I can't even I assume our pie partners are covered in this and have a way to still be a resource for our students because I don't want to take away resources either because we can't do it all for the student the delivery of social media Ed I know we do a lot of that in the mental health so I'll be interested in hearing this isn't a question I'll just be interested in hearing what additional educations and how we're going to kind of check on the social emotional learning that I didn't think we were allowed to use those words anymore
284but the social emotional impacts you know how will we check on that kind of mid-year I mean I don't know or along the way so that is for future and then wasn't their legislature about no cell phones in the classroom yes and it did that passage I think that's included here so it's okay part of the required part of a District's student code of conduct okay I missed that I'm sorry I must have zoned out for a second so the cell phones will need to be tucked away all day long unless teachers would have the ability to designate an area of the classroom for their use for specific educational purposes but beyond that you're correct okay perfect great I actually like that thanks bye thank you member Vice chair thank you so I'll be very
285brief 379 it goes into effect in two weeks so I guess my question might be for the superintendent are we because this sounds like and maybe it's not I'm not an I.T person this sounds like we have a lot to do we'll we be ready for that to go into effect by July 1st 2023. parameters f379 with all the preventing all the social media platforms and what this bill requires yeah Madam chair yes we will the team has been working on it and I don't know all the technicalities but to be able to restrict act access while they're on our network is not as difficult as it sounds will there be so will there be restricted access will we be blocking internet servers or not cellular service into our buildings like will we be blocking
286would the service be blocking actual sell signals into so if a student has a cell phone on campus and they're on their cellular data they can still access all the social media platforms correct it well there's a couple of parts of that so first the fourth bullet is on district-owned devices so on our devices they're not able to access but on their own device they can and I don't believe I'm going to deferring to the two wonderful gentlemen here that we are we're not blocking their capabilities their own network while in our schools correct but if they have their own device and they're on our Wi-Fi we will block it so basically every child who has a cell phone will sell your data will still have access to all the social media and remember that
287we are bringing back to the board a recommendation from the discipline task force about cell phone usage wasn't there a bill that passed that limits cell phone usage to that's this one 379. not bad okay sorry I wasn't my age that's all I have thank you so much yeah you're done member Salamanca thank you chair are there okay no it's forget it doesn't matter as be a page 30. it's the next one what data are we talking about here do you know the specifics there's all kinds of data right there's like Social Security all the way to email do we have a sense of what data I can go back and look at the bill I don't know that the bill defined the data I think this is going to be something probably in rule
288making got it okay because I think there is a couple of companies who just want emails like newsletter is just an email and there's like there's the question of is email actually data or obviously there's like name address cell phone and so I'm curious because I think there has been some confusion it in some districts that I've heard on the procurement side on what we consider student data and if emails is enough and I just want to know because I know a lot of tech companies that just use the email and I'm concerned there's a lot of the ones we have that just use you I'm not prepared to respond as to whether student email is considered data that's something that we would probably defer to legal and I.T to discuss and then come back
289with God I wasn't sure we had a list but currently I don't believe that we I mean that we consider it data thank you thank you madam chair okay so mine was on it was page 29 regarding the social emotional and physical effects of social media and I think it's something I had spoken to on Dr Vazquez about before but in one of our schools we had a speaker come in and speak just specifically to the parents and it was regarding social media and the effects of that the consequences of using social media good or bad and she was phenomenal and I would love to see somebody like her be able to come in and maybe even just speak to our principal leaders if that's you know maybe what we could afford or be awesome
290to have her come in and speak to individual students as well in in a group setting but having information that she's given if it was given to the principal leaders for instance we could then take that information and create our own sort of I don't even know if it's curriculum but sort of something that we could then give to the students because I think it really is vital and not just for students but for staff we already had an issue this year with the effects of social media and I think just allowing everybody to realize that there are consequences good or bad of using social media and just how we gotta kind of look in the future and so those are that was really just my thoughts on them thank you member bird I just
291want to get some clarification on the social media real quick because it clearly obviously prohibits Tick Tock but then it says the other ones prohibit and prevent students except when necessary for educational purposes does that mean that they are not going to be blocked the other platforms Facebook Twitter whatever that they are not going to be blocked on our servers or that we're just supposed to discourage the use of it can I get clarification thank you we'll send clarification to the board on that yeah I think in just in general there was some discussion around if you're in some sort of career preparation type course is LinkedIn in an appropriate site for you to be able to access in the context of that course and the reason I was just asking is just since we
292are strongly encouraging schools to be using social you know Facebook and Twitter to promote and advertise I'm just wondering how we would restrict it or block it remember Salamanca yeah I so the exception of one necessary for educational purposes I also would want to some clarification I know some teachers sometimes might say you know there's certain assignments they can do in school because of internet and they don't feel now and with some of the new rules they don't feel comfortable asking students to do it on their phones in the classroom because they're not supposed to have their phones but historically many teachers would say hey you can't look this up here but can you go on your phone whether we agree with them doing that or not it has happened and some of the assignments
293are great assignments but I'm just curious on the exception and just also when some teachers do want to use social media for educational purposes how like is there an exception is there some process for them to be able to do it obviously we may be pre-approved some of that curriculum but they're like oh or nothing is interesting Dr Vazquez sure so for what we typically do when we have any type of legislation that comes down we first of all wait for guidance from doe that further clarifies what this means and then from there we derive the guidance that we send out and help our schools disseminate and train that will be what happens with this particular with HB 379 I know when we were in Tampa last week we had questions about this and doe
294was vague on their response and that further guidance would be would be coming as it relates to this but it is very challenging because some especially at the secondary level the use of some of those social media platforms are embedded as part of the curriculum Manhattan being able to balance what is educationally relevant versus inappropriate is going to be what we're what we need to balance as well makes sense and then I have one last thing which is on the communication of no cell phones during instructional time or from like the first spell to the envelope we really have to be proactive here there is that parents themselves have gotten used to being able to get calls from their students between Class periods especially in high school and during lunch they themselves are usually the
295ones advocating for access to their students during these time periods because scheduling changes whatever it is who's picking you up is changing because something happened at school that they saw on Facebook that they want to ask their kid if it's actually or not but I think that there will be at least from my district significant parent questions and skepticism on this and I would like to make sure we communicate very clearly that this is a Tallahassee ruling as well so it will be an opportunity for the board to have discussion about that as I mentioned the discipline task force felt very strongly that some of the issues that we are seeing and some of the increase in fights disrespect bullying is related to usage of cell phones and while I do agree that parents should
296have it should have the ability to reach reach out to their child and vice versa there are ways to do that without a child just using their cell phone and in schools that have implemented this they have found success in how they rolled it out communication to the parents but key to that was making sure that when a parent needed to reach out to their child and vice versa the appropriate Avenues were followed and so that will be up to the board to review that as a recommendation and then we'll follow through with what the will of the board is before me before we move forward we have 45 minutes before our pre-agenda meeting and we have a closed session after that apartment and we haven't eaten I don't know about anybody else but I
297need to get something to eat before we go into that meeting I think a few of us do and I am concerned I'm pretty sure you're a part isn't going to take long I can't say the same for our part how long is your part going to take I mean I can move through the bills quickly right so the only concern I have is if the board is going to want to discuss it rather than come back and discuss it at another day Dr Vazquez you so a place I have a recommendation oh I'd love to hear it so because we have limited amount of time and because Jason is now here not in Tallahassee I might recommend that the Board review the following slides and on their own and then we can set up
298individual meetings with Jason to discuss any questions that you may have related to the new legislations that are coming that came down I think that a great recommendation member Coolidge you have a comment so I love that conceptually but there's a Le here's here's the issue I don't think that we should continue today but we do have an extra board meeting this month and maybe we could come in or in July one of these times we have an extra board meeting than we normally have could we add it on an hour ahead of that because I think people don't always research these themselves and this legislation a lot of it that we're still going to discuss even if we don't have a lot of comment make great changes on how the school system is going
299to be governed in the future so I would not want to take the presentation of this legislation away from the public eye thank you Dr Vasquez so I no no it probably no needs to be before August because these many of these are going into effect July 1. so let us go back to what we currently have already planned the July the first July board meeting has some issues with attendance and who will be here and so and it was a very light agenda and so at this point we're leaning towards not having the first board meeting in July and then having you just recommended that we tag this off I love it yes so that it may be that we already we have a couple of work sessions and meetings that we already have
300in place and so I'm thinking an hour is going to be sufficient so let us go back to it and then we'll will make the needed adjustments on our calendars to incorporate the additional hour follow-up chair go ahead I and I appreciate that some of the things later on in in Jason's slides are not is time intensive and the I it glancing through it most of them that are we don't really have any say on whether they're going to get implemented or not so yes it's important that we hear it and if there is some things that are going to be in policy we get to be able to think about it ahead of time but we can review that but the presentation I'm not sure is time is time certain on the balance of
301these issues it's more that they get to hear it and understand the implications after school starts and in the next few years with some of the changes we do have August 1st I believe is a date where we're going to have our budget hearing so we may be able to tack it onto that as well we'll look at the calendars okay based on that we're going to adjourn all right let's all go grab something to eat for tonight foreign