001thank you for being with us tonight at the Museum we have been fortunate as our community is in having elected to vote positively on that referendum that has brought so much resource to all that we aspire to do the Dal museum has been a partner with the with pine educational initiatives for many years and they have accelerated we have a number of of programs I just want to remind you of we have the junior dosen program that we run and there are scholarships for your students in this we have the dolly mobile which visits every Elementary School in pinelis County bringing lessons of art and its relation to critical thinking proportion mathematics and science but we have the student surrealist art competition that we work with the educators of this community in as well it
002wouldn't be the initiative that it is it wouldn't be the undertaking that it is without the dedication of of a School Board of the leaders in learning and the Educators who give us amazing things like this performance tonight so we honor that and we honor the open Forum of listening and learning that we are a part of tonight so thank you very much for being here and I'd like to ask Jane Lucas who will moderate this to come back forward thank you thank you so much give it up for Dr hin again I think I'm going to take it from here and thank you once again to the DOL Museum and to our student musicians there just couldn't be a better place to showcase our student students as I said before and I hope you
003had the opportunity as you were walking in to see the incredible artwork the visual arts from the penis County School students and again what a what a great way to come into this beautiful venue and with a session and focus on the Arts and then to have our scholar performing artists with us this evening I am Dr Jane Lucas the director of strategic Partnerships for pelis County schools and I am delighted to be here with you tonight to be host and moderator this evening the purpose of the listen and learn series is to provide the opportunity for stakeholders of pellis County Schools to engage with the school board superintendent and District leadership to promote continuous Improvement for our students families staff and community over the last two years the board and the superintendent committed to
004continuing the listen and learn sessions as they represent their promise to be visible in the community as we continue to strengthen Partnerships both as a district and within our school communities this school year the sessions have specific areas of focus I practice saying that specific areas of focus so that the superintendent and board hear directly from stakeholders regarding areas of Interest PCS Community listen and learn sessions are open to all stakeholders students families staff partners and community members to start things off I want to give our board members and superintendent the opportunity to introduce themselves and welcome our stakeholders here tonight Schoolboard chair Hine would you please begin the introductions yes I'm happy to good evening thank you so much everyone for coming out tonight my name is Laura Hine I currently serve as chairperson
005of the pelis County School Board I was first elected to the school board in 2020 and then I was just reelected in 201 24 my coming here started when my children were coming of age for school in 2015 I now have an eighth grader at John Hopkins Middle School we love the arts program at that Middle School and then we have a fifth grader at Northshore Elementary I became passionate about our Public Schools when I came to know that we must and we can provide excellence and opportunity for every student and that's the lens through which I consider our my work today thank you for being here good evening my name is Don Peters I'm a penis County School Board member I was elected to the board in 2022 and both of my daughters attended
006panel's County Schools I volunteered and worked within our school district and my daughters now both graduated from college and my oldest has gone on to get her M's as a library director and my youngest actually works for a cabinet refinishing company so she went on to the trades I just felt like running for school board it was my next step in serving our school district and I really believe in public schools and I believe in pineis County schools and everything that we do here so I look forward to your questions tonight thank you good evening and thank you all so much for coming out it's exciting to see so many people to attend our performing and arts orientated listen and learn so my name is Lisa Kaine I am in my seventh year serving on
007the pelis County School Board first elected in 2018 and reelected again in 2022 the Performing Arts is my number one platform for being on the school board and was the reason for my running to promote Arts education in our district and make sure and ensure that those dollars are being spent in the Arts I am the founder and creative director of the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Academy a musical theater company company for children K through 12 I've been teaching musical theater for 17 years and have had the honor and pleasure of working with hundreds of students in our district outside of pelis County schools in an after school program to teach music the Arts and dance and it's been a wonderful wonderful journey and I look forward to continuing on in addition to my work
008in the Arts I am a voting member of the Grammy Association and before I had children I was heavily involved in music and recording Arts it's continuing to do that in addition to that I have four children currently in penel County schools and so ranging from elementary middle and high school so I get a good experience in all the different levels and good evening I'm Kevin Hendrick superintendent of penel County schools and my third year is superintendent a lifelong educator mostly in pelis County a high school teacher a high school principal and then oversaw academics for 5 years before becoming superintendent I started these listen and learns when I first became superintendent I think we did nine of them and the board really lik them and said let's do more and so we've been doing
009them since then and changed the format this year to make them specifically about topics of Interest so that people could come together and discuss those and so tonight we have one on the Arts later this year we'll have one on our Bridging the Gap plan and in the fall we have one planned on Athletics and so we're excited to have you here tonight to hear more about the district a little bit more about the Arts and then take questions and answers from the crowd Dr Lu thank you I want to do a quick review of the agenda tonight before we get started first superintendent Hendrick will do an overview for about 25 minutes next we will conduct the question and answer session with the superintendent and board members for about 45 minutes as you came
010in this evening you received an index card to write your questions on if you need an additional index card or have written your questions already just raise your hand and a staff member will be by to collect or provide you with another card following the Q&A there will also be an opportunity for all stakeholders to provide feedback regarding the Arts in our schools everyone will have the opportunity to participate in either a survey or by posting comments to posted questions during this time the superintendent and board members will also be present and will continue to speak directly with stakeholders superintendent Hendrick I will now turn it over to you thank you Dr Lucas and so we're excited to be here tonight and just it said about 25 minutes and I'll spend some time going over
011some items of interest for the school district none of them they don't all flow together just different items that are relevant sort of for where we are in the school year and other topics of interest and then we'll specifically talk about the Arts I did want to mention we have three of our Schoolboard members here at tonight we decided when we set these up that three was the right number seven was too many in order just for questions and one or two was not enough and so the board members get to choose which ones they attend and I think all of them wanted to attend the Arts one but they won the armed wrestling contest and so here they are tonight but we are Guided by our vision of 100% Student Success and our mission
012of educating each child for college career and life and we're Guided by a set of core values and you can see those core values here on the screen those help to develop our strategic plan which is now almost in its third year starting in 2023 and it last last until 2026 there are six priority areas and then 16 specific goals in our district strategic plan and you can see those online and we'll we'll briefly touch on a few of those tonight but today we actually had a Schoolboard workshop and we provide an opportunity twice a year to kind of review the district strategic plan but one of the things that the board asked to do when it was developed in 2023 was to create a public dashboard that goes over each and every one of
013the goals so you can go online to our district or to our website go to the district strategic plan and you can see a live interactive dashboard that has data points on it related to the 16 objectives and then also contains highlights each quarter and so ironically that was just revealed for this last year today so one of the things that we've recently highlighted and is relevant is around academic recovery so going back to 2019 and all the way up till 2025 now there have been a number of efforts for students to recover academically socially emotionally and their mental health and well-being in our schools and there was a lot of funding directed from the federal government into our state and then eventually to our district to support that funding in our district over $200
014million in terms of when you think about just reopening schools and all the operations that went into reopening schools and then how do we catch students up what are the things we can do for enrichment what are the things we could do in the summer and all of those funds cease to exist in September of 2024 and so one of the things that has been studied by researchers at Harvard and Stanford is how did districts do across the country in recovering student achievement versus pre-pandemic levels and so that report was recently released for this year and as it relates to Florida the report highlights pelis County it talks about our efforts and the performance of our students in school and that there have been bright spots in pelis County even when the data does not
015look great nationally or even Statewide so there's a couple of charts and both of these were shared last month at our at our Schoolboard Workshop but this is what academic recovery looks like going back to 2019 through 202 4 in pelis county and essentially the researchers looked at National scores on the nape assessment the nation's report card and then did equa percentile rankings versus State assessments to see where were students versus the nape and their state assessment in 2019 and where are they today and so what this chart represents or or this graph is free percent of students in the district who are free and reduced lunch across the bottom and the overall change and achievement in grade levels so a score of zero essentially means that students in that grade level are about the
016same place that students in that grade level were 5 years ago all right so they're they're back to where that grade level was if a score of negative one means they're about a year behind so a student in fourth grade is really at a third grade level so to speak and then obviously anything above that means that they've progressed Beyond where they were and so you can see panelas highlighted there other districts in the state in different ways but we're proud to see what our students have done in terms of pushing to recover their efforts in math in Reading achievement the overall data is much lower across the state and the nation but you can still see that pelis County students and really this is across every single subgroup that all are all measured male
017female free reduced lunch students with disabilities Etc across all of our subgroups have been outperforming the state in terms of that average so we're very proud to share that information with the community and know that our students and our teachers are doing amazing work in our core responsibility of educating students for reading and math and we will continue to do so even after the funds have dissipated so put that topic aside for a second I'm going to jump to a different topic that's relevant to our school district and that is enrollment Trends and so enrollment in our schools over the last decade has continued to decline and you can see going back to 201819 about 97 98,000 students in district schools this year about 84,000 with a prediction of about 3,000 fewer students next year
018there's a whole host of reasons for this across the Spectrum certainly age of the average citizenry in penel county is one of those reasons the fact that we have been built out for decades and decades there's no new housing except for this beautiful housing around here but there's typically not 25-year-old parents with two children moving in to the condominiums that are nearby there's also also the family empowerment scholarships which have greatly expanded over the last couple of years there is the fact that during the pandemic and homeschool and people doing things different virtually traveling with their children all those things contribute to enrollment decline but also contributes to enrollment decline specifically in pelis are birth rates and so these are birth rates in penis County from the Department of Health going back now a decade
019and so the sort of teal bar represents the number of births in a specific year so the very first one there is 2015 and then 5 years later how many children enrolled in kindergarten in pelis county and we have data sort of over the years of what percentage of births actually enroll in our schools and for 20 years or so in the 1990s 80s and 90s it was about 85 86 sometimes 87% of students who were born would enroll in public school kindergarten 5 years later that number with the pandemic and all those other factors that I just talked about is it about 7 8 77% now so you can see the natural decline in kindergarten enrollment and so for the last couple of years we have graduated around 7500 students and we've taken in
020about 5,500 5,800 kindergarteners and so it's sort of a natural evolution of lower enrollment and there's a lot of different ways to address that as a district and we continue to have conversations some of those are just around pure Staffing models others are around actual Financial issues some are around programming all of those things and there's different ways to actually make things better as a result of that you don't have overcrowded classrooms you can offer more VPK in every single School in the district and those are some of the things that we have done separate topic I told you this a little choppy in some of these sort of time related topics is starttime legislation so state law was changed about two years ago that said that beginning in the 2627 school year every school
021district in Florida must follow a new state law regarding start times for students middle schools would not be able to start earlier than 8:00 a.m. and high schools no earlier than 830 a.m. for those of you that are in the in the room that know our start times now our middle schools start typically at 9:30 9:40 in the morning so that's not a problem but our high schools all of them start well before 8:30 sometime between 7:15 and 7:40 depending on the school and location and there's real obvious and clear reasons for this sleep time research and we've cited some of that here in terms of when teenagers fall asleep and how much sleep they need we've talked about how that plays out in school and all of those reasons are true there's also other
022issues and one of the reasons that we have high schools as early as we do is because our commitment long-standing commitment to magnet schools in pelis County we have over 80 magnet programs in our district from careeres to magnets to fundamental programs and by and large we've provided transportation to all of those programs across our district in different ways over a couple of decades and our high schools are our Mo most robust programs every one of our high schools has at least one magnet program most of them have two or three and some of them the transportation grid is countywide others are regionalized depending on the program and it takes us about an hour and a half to run buses in the morning some students get picked up as early is 545 or 550 most
023in the 6 P you know 6 a.m. 615 620 range but the runs for high school are larger the zones are larger and so to move high schools to a middle tier or upper tier in the third tier because we have three tiers of busing would be a challenge to continue that magnet Transportation and busing and so we've talked about these things in other listen and learns and we proposed a couple of different solutions to other listen and learn groups like yourselves and asked and solicited feedback those things include combining middle school and high school bus routes to create a little more efficiency and allow things to run a little smoother we've actually piloted that now we did it in Summer Bridge programs for a while we've piloted it at East Lake Middle School in
024high school and at Bayo Middle School in Lakewood High School where we've moved the middle school earlier not actually ending the or starting the school days later but paired them together to see what that would look like can middle school and high school students ride the bus at the same time the answer is yes some of you may even put a middle school child in the car with a high school child all the time and occasionally have to yell in the back seat but it works and truthfully this happens in smaller districts across the country all over the place where students even K12 ride the bus together in every one of these buses we have an additional adult on the bus we have the driver and a bus assistant just to make sure that everything
025is good in the back of the bus but it's worked well and it's something that we could if this legislation comes through look to do in other parts of the district one of the options that really isn't tenable but is obviously an option is reduce transportation for district application programs it's not something we're interested in doing certainly switching High School start times and Elementary School start times and you can see what that would look like on the screen behind us there are concerns about elementary students being out in the dark at a bus stop and those concerns are valid for high school students as well but certainly more mature and able to navigate that a little bit better earlier Elementary start times mean more daycare and coverage for parents in the afternoon so there's no
026perfect solution in this but these are the things that have been proposed by different groups one of the other things is to Advocate during the 2025 legislative session to give local control to school boards it is quite clear from public conversations from our board that we want to start our high schools later but also we don't want to ruin our system of a lot of other things in order to do that and what are the costs for that and even with additional funding could you implement some of those things like find more bus drivers and buy more buses and all those different things so both houses both the Senate and the house currently have legislation to repeal that starttime legislation and give local control to school districts we are advocating for that as recently as
027today we had an update from Tallahassee on that perhaps our board will comment on that later but it is the Avenue that we're taking if the law comes into play certainly we will meet the letter of the law so we are proud of our a-rated school district for the first time in the 25 years of grading public schools in the state of Florida penel County Schools was an a-rated District this last year it's something we're extremely proud of we've gone over the data in previous iterations so we're not going to do all the data tonight but one of the things that we have emphasized in the improved academic achievement of students is the student and staff experience what does school look like how does students get motivated to come to school how do we make
028it so that they are enriched by the activities that happen at school and yes we want to see achievement improve in all different areas but not at the cost of not having school be fun not at the cost of not having school be a place that people want to be and as interesting as the p mmic was for educators one of the clear things that we learned is that if school is not more U important or more fun than the screen in front of me attendance will go down and in fact in some ways I might be able to learn better through a YouTube video or Con Academy or something else then I might be able to learn in school if all you're going to do is put me on a computer or all you're
029going to do is say here's the book and read it so the classroom has to be a place where learning comes alive in different ways and yes that's pretty easy in some courses but in others it takes more effort and that's something we've tried to emphasize included in that are experiences within the classroom experiences that connect to the classroom and then ones that come outside of the classroom as well and so we're going to touch on just a few of those this evening and then a lot with the Arts in that student and staff experience this year has been a push for digital responsibility we know that our students our teenagers our middle schoolers even our elementary school students have more access to things online than than certainly maybe all of us would like them
030to have access to and so how do we teach them more responsibility in that digital footprint that they carry this was a priority of our school board last year as they revamped our cell phone policies in schools to be more restrictive to make sure teachers have absolute opportunity to say off and away and cannot be used in our class but also not just pretending that they don't exist but let's educate students on that and so this year we have implemented across all grade levels different lessons on digital responsibility and they are age appropriate lessons from kindergarten 1 and second grade right about sort of always make sure your parent knows what you're doing never talk to anybody you don't know those types of things all the way to 9th and 12th grade where we try
031to teach students what are those algorithms that are in the different feeds that you have and what is it doing to you and what does that mean for the decisions and choices you make it's not a master's level course by any means but it's certainly raising awareness and trying to bring awareness to digital responsibility to our students and that's been a big Improvement this year as has the cell phone policy each year we've also tried to Showcase to the community things that are great in pelis County schools and show what it means to be part of that experience the last two years we've hosted that at Clearwater High School and you can see a variety of some of the activities that occurred Arts Athletics culinary chess competitions a little bit of everything and I think
032we have a video to show you about that experience event so we're at experience PCS this is our third year of trying to show the community what's available in penel County Schools we have demonstrations from students from everything from culinary to vettech and everything in between and then we have a lot of competitions there's musical drum line today behind us in the gymnasium is an indoor soccer championship for middle school so it's just showing the community and inviting everyone in to see what penel county schools has to offer we want to show the community what we have it's so infrequent that they get to come inside and experience School the way it is today which is very different maybe then 20 years ago 40 years ago and so you get to see the new things
033all the new technology what this young man is doing he's using our virtual reality prisms headsets and he it is designed for mathematics from middle school math all the way through advanced math and high school but this is really engaging their mindset on reality it makes the lessons come to life so we're experiencing our second annual chalk mural challenge we've got four participating schools the theme this year is spark excellence and so you're going to see some kind of imagery that's connected to that the other thing that's that they need to incorporate in their image is the PCS porch logo we've created a family engagement event around math give me five thank you believe that parents are the Cornerstone of partnering with our schools to ensure that students achieve and so what we have here
034is an example for Elementry and secondary using Bingo to instill those math concepts he loves math and it was great because he got to use his math skills and memorization and everything that he's learned in school as the parents and the families go through this process they then end with an area here which is conversation and so we know that the Cornerstone for all levels is having that conversation with your kids about their school day this was fun because I got to learn new things about like animals and how to like make things this is fun because I really like Hands-On activities and I got to experience that today having a really fun time I think about this was so fun I like dressing up as a firear because this my first time being in
035a firan Sho and a glow it was fantastic I didn't even know they had this and to be able to see different areas of different schools and what's offered throughout the penel county schools was astonishing I think this is so cool I'm excited to touch the tarantula I think it's cool that they're keeping the PE the kids and their families involved and teaching them about animals I think it's great a learning experience for Science and Technology and both my kids have had a really good time I think the drones are really fun but it's a lot of fun and educational and it's it's different my daughter Mal she have a very great experience with the singing at night CH it's amazing for her this is a very great event that I have experienced it's awesome
036so a little background there on on what that experience looks like in our schools petting the tarantula is not an everyday experience but nonetheless one that is possible but tonight we do want to talk about our commitment to the Arts and give a little background on what we offer in the Arts and then take you through some of those experiences this year so of course Performing Arts is one of the two big areas Visual and Performing Arts and in the Performing Arts you can see the sequence of courses that students take in elementary school and then in middle school and high school offerings all of these courses are available to students nearly most at every school some specialized at certain schools but certainly offerings nonetheless whether it be in magnet programs or in traditional schools
037a couple things that we continue to work on in these programs is the expansion of students who not just perform at their school but have the opportunity to perform other ways and so a couple years ago we created the elementary Allstate workshops because the elementary sequence is a little more limited than the middle school and high school because everybody gets that same experience but we knew that some students wanted more out of that and so we created workshops for our teachers and students to participate and have the opportunity to try out for All State competitions and in the past three years we've had as many as nearly a hundred students audition for all state with a very high acceptance rate of 25% acceptance which is an abnormally High when you look at across the state
038and the number of spots available you can see the total enrollment and performing arts classes across the district in the visual arts similar sequence at elementary school and then you can see the middle school high school courses in high school there are some semester and year-long options certainly are students have access to a sequential Visual Arts curriculum that you see all of the different 2D 3D films animations photography and many more annually we have about 4,000 student artworks of 2D and 3D around our district in 25 different exhibitions at countywide exhibitions most of them at Art organization partner m Museums Art centers and Galleries and there are about 800 art Awards earned annually by students through these competitions you can see the enrollment in the visual arts courses as well and then that experience beyond
039the classroom is something that we definitely going back to the pandemic times really tried to elevate to get students out and back into museums and spaces of cultural interest you can see some partner museums that students have taken Visual Arts field trips so far this year and we continue to see those increases year over year over year as we dedicate additional funds to have students go out and experience the Arts some of these like the sixth grade experience at the Museum of Fine Arts is for literally every student in the district experiences that and then others are specifically in courses some of them are teacher-led some of them might be on clubs or others but certainly available to all students it was briefly mentioned earlier that we have a number of school programs that have
040a an Arts theme in the magnet and you can see those listed Perkins Elementary School which is a whole school magnet Sandy Lane Elementary School Conservatory for the Arts which includes magnet and Zone students John Hopkins Middle which has a school within a School magnet as well Tarpon Springs leadership Conservatory for the Arts both the middle school and high school have magnet programs within traditional Zone schools and then of course the pillar penel County Center for the Arts long standing at Gibbs High School which is a magnet program within a larger one I didn't see any pcca shirts here tonight I'm so surprised and we have a lot of points of Pride when it comes to these and you just saw some of those but one of those is the Florida seal of Fine Arts
041which is a diploma designation that students can now earn on their actual diploma and that seal of Fine Arts comes from the Florida Department of Education and was actually sponsored by Senator darl rousan who's one of our local representatives and was pushed by staff with penis County schools and it just got approved just this last year and so students will be able to earn that for the first time this year for the Last 5 Years pelis county has been named as the best community of music education by The National Music Merchants Association which is a really big deal they don't actually give that out to every single community in the nation it's it's only select ones you saw briefly in the video that we played earlier the students who were singing had on ignite choir
042shirts that's a program that we started I guess it's been about 5 years ago now with the summer programming with the ignite summer program and then it's expanded and expanded and expanded and it's all about trying to have students in elementary and middle school keep the passion alive so that they get into the Arts programs as high school students it includes concerts on a whole host of levels it includes certain Invitational things it includes camps in the summer and much of that is referendum funded we've also had some Superstar teachers recognized as teachers of the year Gerard madrinan was the penel County School's teacher of the year in 23 24 and this year Natalie stator yeah that's her she's got married name too but stator is on there she was a top 10 finalist she's
043an art teacher at curu Creek Elementary School and then I'm I'm going to run through a number of slides I'm going to go through some of them quickly but they all are help represent the commitment to the Arts and how excellent the Arts are in penis County and so I want to start with just recently the Florida music education ass Association recognized different schools for art for students enrolled in the Arts in their schools schools can only apply for this award every three years but we had winners this year in the N Statewide competition carwise middle school has 47% of its students so nearly half the school en enrolled in music classes dunan Highland Middle School has 50% enrolled seminal Middle School 50% enrolled in Tarpon Springs Middle School 70% 77% of students are enrolled
044in a music class at those schools we had two bands earned state and National Awards this year the seal High School Marching Band won the Statewide competition for marching bands in class 4A and the Tarpon Springs leaders outdoor leadership Conservatory for the Arts won the bands of America Regional competition for the Southeast region and then won the national competition for 2A bands one of those pictures there is at IND Indianapolis at the NFL stadium there extremely proud of both bands and what they've done and as if winning the state championship was not enough for seminal High School they went to the Rose Parade in Pasadena California on New Year's Day and perhaps you saw them on TV you can see the band there and amazing performance did not have a chance to go out and
045see them there but I did see their kickoff sendoff party at seminal High School truly amazing performance and what they have to do and the amount of time they have to do it is just remarkable and don't take my word word for it take the word of the rosebowl parade which awarded Mr madrinan the top band Director award at the rosebowl parade beating out college and high school bands including like University of Michigan and Ohio State and others the president and the committee were Beyond impressed with the unwavering perseverance and incredible humanitarian spirit for our students and their band director also remembering how the Hurricanes affected particularly the seminal High School Zone this year and what that did and so we're so proud of that band we continue with our All County Performing Arts series
046from elementary middle school to high school band choir orchestra guitar dance so many of these things we sort of take for granted now because we've been doing them for so long but I can tell you when our visiting clinicians come and they stand on stage and they tell us how impressive this is and this is not the way it is all over America it resonates every year and we hear that and so we're so fortunate to have spaces like the mafy theater and Ruth eard Hall the dance one at the Palladium to give students a world-class experience with clinicians who come in from around the country that are well known to provide this opportunity for our students so far this year 1100 students have participated in the All County Music Fest our Educators have been
047recognized across the state for a number of awards you can see a couple of those here U 59 penel County school art teachers attended the annual Florida art education Association professional development conference which was actually held here in St Petersburg back in October 40 of our own teachers taught sessions and Leed workshops for their colleagues across the state three of our Educators or two of our Educators and one retired were recognized for Statewide contributions including Jonathan ogul our Visual Arts specialist who received he received the art supervisor of the Year reward our retired prek-12 visual artart specialist Sue cman received a career Legacy award and Richard El Sanders art teacher Zach Thompson received the Adaptive art teacher of the year award one of the things that I think is most impressive about our Arts commitment
048in pellis county and particularly the referendum is that it's designed for every single student the referendum is not designed to support one program or a small sector of of music or Visual Arts but it's literally if you support the referendum and you live in Oldsmar or you live in Safety Harbor or you live in St Petersburg or you live in Gul Park all students get that experience and get those funds into their classrooms I think this is a great example and something we've added recently is an art show specifically for students at our special education centers we have four of them in our district and we have an art show specifically highlighting the work at the James Museum this one was recent we're really proud of the diversity of art shows that we have and
049that we touch all students in doing so the Shine music festival was recently held in November here in St Petersburg as well and one of our art teachers Dwayne Shepard at from Oola Middle School partnered with Gibbs High School visual arts instructor Brian McAllister to facilitate a web shot on mural design for artists from across the state and then they work together with 80 art teachers from across the state to produce this mural which is on Central Avenue in St Petersburg an amazing piece of art and showcases the work of our teachers I mentioned all of our art exhibitions across the county in the visual arts 2025 Clearwater Arts Alliance March is youth art month exhibit is going on right now highlighting 142d student artworks by students across the district until March 30th over 400
050people attended that kickoff showcase we also have 60 student pieces of work at the Lea Ratner Museum right now in Tarpon Springs for a high school exhibition we have a New Perspectives exhibition that is currently going on at the dunan Fine Art Center and by the end of this quarter which ends Friday 5600 works of art will have been displayed across the county in our partner museums we also recently held the pellis county art region of the Scholastic art and writing Awards exhibition reception and ceremony at Gibbs High School on February 6th it recognizes penela middle school and high school students who earned Awards in this nationally adjudicated competition 625 awards were given to penis County students all of the gold key awarded work is now being judged nationally and the national awards announcement will
051be March 26th this is something that our students have excelled in for really decades and the winners go to New York City to receive their Awards in the summer and the referendum helps to fund those trips we also have student exhibitions all over the place this one at the Maran Arts Center I've said so many of them currently a student piece of art is in the art in the capital competition one of our students won that Capital competition from dunan Highland Middle School and that is currently on display we also recently had a new exhibition in the dunan city hall in their new city hall and they wanted to have an exhibition and here they are and they awarded a first place prize to one of our students the Florida state fair just concluded we
052had a number of students participate in that there were 32 entries and of only 30 pieces of work chosen Statewide to highlight eight of the chosen Works were from penis County students I'll say that again 30 Statewide eight from pelis County students just amazing and while we have these amazing gold key national award ones some of these ones in this room it's also exciting to see our beginning artists and this is one of our kind of most popular programs is the kids tag art ceremony which happens every year this is now I think year 10 or 11 with the it would be year 11 with the penel County tax collector's office and students in elementary schools draw designs of vanity license plates and they enter it into a competition all of the vanity license plates
053can be purchased through the Tag Tax Collector's office you can go stand in line and buy one if you want or you can buy it online and a portion of the proceeds go to support art classrooms and since 2014 more than $300,000 has been raised to support the Arts in our elementary schools photography of course is related to the arts and our Journeys and journalism program has an annual Exhibition at Studio 620 and this was just held not too long ago and it's always interesting to see their themes and this theme this year was the changing City and if you look close enough you can see some hurricane related damage and sort of gentrification pictures in St Petersburg and what that looks like and it helps students Express across the board this was a recent
054do Museum exhibition here I think if you look on the walls now this is the Hillsboro County one but a few weeks ago it was the pelis county where we had almost 500 attendees come and visit and have their student artworks displayed here and annually 3,000 students help to tour the mini Dal Museum that comes to their schools in a trailer each year and we're very proud of that they go to half of the schools one year half of the elementary schools the next year nearly all of this is possible because of the community support of the referendum since 2004 penel County voters have voluntarily voted to tax themselves and property taxes to support amongst other things the Arts in pelis County those of you that are familiar with this over the years know that
055percentage is very high when you compare it to other things that might be on the ballot and that includes in the referendum not just the Arts but support for teacher salaries music reading and Technology programs and for the first time in this last cycle in 2024 support staff salaries as well and so according to the board policy and that's coming up for final vote but 70% goes to teacher salaries 15% to support staff salaries and 15% of the portion goes to programming and because of the increase in the millage rate from a half M to one M by penel County voters this last year there will be an increase in funds dedicated to each of the program areas So reading Arts and Music based on the tax role we'll all see about a 50% increase
056in funds that go to support those programs across the district and so tonight after we have the question and answer section we do have a number of posters out there but we'd like your feedback and ideas on the funds and how they should be spent what's going well and we'll talk about what those questions are on the posters but one of the ideas that has consistently come up as we talk about the Arts and the potential referendum use of the Arts is to how do we continue to push students beyond what they get just in the regular portion of school and so we have have a few ideas here that have come from Arts organizations and partners across the district and we'd love your feedback on it tonight and I'll break it down in in
057basically simple ways looking at an elementary school creating more robust after school and weekend programs for students to who are really interested in the Arts to accelerate that experience for them almost like I mentioned earlier with that all state but a little bit more in all of the genres and then as students get to middle school and start to really develop their skills in in particular in the art area of interest and so we provide that comprehensive look in middle school and everybody if you've ever listened to a sixth grade band concert you know what I'm talking about right but how do we accelerate students in their instruments how do we accelerate them in their area of Interest whether it's dance or technical theater whatever that is through specific tutoring in the Arts so think
058of what we do to tutor someone in math or tutor someone in English and we do a little bit of this now where we have clinicians come into the classroom and some of our teachers in the room can verify that but this is on a more holistic basis and more systemic so that every student has access to Growing their specific interest and then the third opportunity that has been brought up by partner organizations and teachers and some small focus groups is how do we capitalize on those Master clinicians that we have in our schools and spread that word and pay them for doing those workshops so that they can bring up and educate some of our own and how do we bring in others to do that same work there's a lot of talent in
059this community there's a lot of talent that wants to be part and grow our schools and so those are some ideas and we'd love your feedback on that a little bit later so that's a highlight of where we are with some District initiatives and programs and a little bit in the Arts and I'm going to pass it back to Dr Lucas for the Q&A portion all right well I mean I know I'm supposed to remain neutral and I will as moderator but wow right I mean those accomplishments so thank you so much for sharing with it yes incredible incredible thank you so much much for sharing with us superintendent Hendrick for the overview information and about how stakeholder feedback is being used to guide our district we will now move on to the question and
060answer portion of the evening there will be 45 minutes for this portion of the agenda we are going to try to get through as many questions as possible during this time if you need an additional index card or have written your questions already just raise your hand and a staff member will be by to try to collect or to collect and provide you with another card I will read the questions aloud and will then give the superintendent and board members an opportunity to respond the board and superintendent are committed to a standard of Civility and decorum in conducting our community meetings this includes refraining from clapping or making audible noises during or after a speaker or staff member comments We Appreciate You assisting Us in maintaining a civil civil and constructive environment it is everyone's
061responsibility to ensure decorum respect and civility for all present lastly please note that this meeting and all comments will be broadcast live on the internet and the video will be publicly archived members of the public may always communicate with the board or superintendent through their respective email addresses board pcsb.org or super pcsb.org and now for the first question and as Dr Lucas does those also we're also here part of this purpose is when we're done with the 45 minutes we're happy to stay around and answer questions individually so we do put a timeline on it so that we don't sit here all night but also we're here and that's part of the purpose of the listen and learn is we're available to just talk informally afterwards so Dr Lucas far away all right the first
062question and I think you may have touched upon it maybe someone could expand are there opportunities for outside organizations to bring performing artists into schools for outreach programs yes and we love them so the answer is yes and so the obvious next question is how do I do that right certainly Jonathan Ogle and Jory Spencer our Performing Arts supervisor there's a Jory over there by the door can connect with you about what those look like when I talk with partner organizations about that I always talk about think about what you can do in a one class period type of scenario right and what can you do for the greatest amount of students serve because if you're a principal you're thinking about logistics and how do we get students in and how do we get them
063out and all those different things and so that's sort of our regular way of work I know we have a lot of Arts partners that come in and do assemblies for students both for rewards for motivation to just build up their interest and skills and so those are some pretty easy ones and then we certainly have a lot of Arts organizations that come in and do specific ring and skill development but Jonathan and Jory are here tonight and can certainly talk with you and help connect in that direction thank you and this one is it there's an A and A B so I'll read them but if you need me to reiterate the first part is if the scheduled changes are not reversed are there plans to minimize damage to student education and why did
064the why didn't the public such as students parents and teachers get input on the schedule change I'll start with this one and then if the board wants to chime in they may so part A was about damaging students education you know I think when you look at our schools and you look at the leadership from our school board to to certainly me and a Jor and Jonathan anybody else in this room our only goal in our whole career is to Advantage students in their education that's why we exist and that's why we're here and we love our children we love our schools and we want to see them all Thrive and succeed when you talk about the block schedule I can't believe it took two questions to get there I was shuing but nonetheless you
065know unfortunately could communication be better of course it could all right so I will own that as superintendent but also in doing this we have to look at a whole host of factors and so I want to provide a little bit of a history lesson I don't want this to be soapbox is but it's relevant so when you go backwards and some in this room may even remember this and so if we talk about the penel County Center for the Arts as an example when pelis County started magnet programs it did so with magnet grants and there was a six period day in our schools and so they created the penel County Center for the Arts they created the Center for Advanced Technologies IB which is not really part of this discussion and added a
066period onto the day to do that and most students went to school sixth periods and students in those magnets went to school seventh period and they paid teachers who taught those magnets additional money to continue that instruction later in the day so teachers got paid more for that then you know we went to seven periods in all schools and kind of stayed that way for a while and then in 2010 at four schools that were under State oversight because of low grades we went to an8 period rotational block and there were a lot of different reasons for that but the largest part of that was to give students the opportunity to make up credits during the school day we did not have robust credit recovery programs at the time students would have to go to
067night school and do packets or go go to summer school and there was a large concern that whether they could or should or would they weren't going and so how do we capture them during the day during that time I was actually the director of high school education so I worked at the district office and helped to oversee the implementation of that and people were angry at us that we were moving to that schedule they didn't like the idea they didn't like they had to go a longer day they didn't like that they had to teach more all these other things and now we are 15 years later and angry again that it may go away and so that's okay and that's a valid piece because people have adapted to it and see that I
068say all that to say our programs on a seven period day were amongst the very best in the country and operated on a on a traditional straight schedule with certain classes paired together in a block and did an amazing work and did and will continue do amazing work the change the change this year is around Staffing of the schools and so it's not a change to say you cannot do Block it's a change to say the Staffing is changing in accordance with our reality of fiscal responsibility and we did actually approach the schools in 2019 about this and didn't change because we had all those Esra dollars that I mentioned before and we're able to continue to fund additional Staffing where and not just at these four schools but a lot of other schools and
069so that has to be adjusted one of the things that is a little bit of a misnomer is that it has to be seven straight periods it does not we staff certain schools at the same model we anticipate Staffing the four high schools next year and those schools do eight periods they do block schedules I know this my son went to middle school where they had eight periods every day for all three years he was there and they were staffed the same way we're Staffing these schools next year so it takes creativity it takes the opportunity for people to think a little bit differently in a reverse world would we have said well let's plan all that out first along with long time ago maybe but we also didn't know what our budget reality would
070be and we know what that is now and so that's where we sit no one wants to hurt children no one wants to take things away from children eight is less than or seven is less than eight and six is less than seven we all those things are obviously true and we will work with each and every student and parent and school to make that happen and so that's the start of that the second part of the question was oh wow I shuffled it back hold on I got you why didn't the public you kind of address that a little bit that you know and I even said this today at our Schoolboard Workshop that some people are not happy with that and I understand that it's not sometimes you can be disingenuous and saying
071we can continue this model when fiscally you can't and so if you can't what are the other options and I think that's that's the input that should have been had and in retrospect could have been done differently but there is plenty of time and this is the normal time of year year when you start looking at schedules for next year our schools will tell you that they haven't received their units yet for next year because now's not it actually happens in about a week or two so it is the regular process for that I'll pass it to the board if they want to chime in on some of that I'm going to chime in on this so as I mentioned earlier I have an eighth grader at John Hopkins Middle School and I'm actively involved
072in that school I'm treasurer of our of our of our PTA there I coach the boys volleyball team team I'm around and so therefore I'm very fortunate to really know the teachers and leaders at that school a few are a few of whom are here tonight and they also know that I'm dedicated to our arts program so when the when the schedule information first came out I got a call from Miss V which I really appreciate it because I tell everybody all the time please call me if you have any questions why are we here why are we here on the school board if you don't feel like you can call me and ask me my thoughts on things right so thank you for calling me and what does this mean what does this mean
073for my arts program what does it mean for my dance program as Cardinal's here tonight who's an extraordinary dance teacher she has raised and spent like $10,000 this year sending her kids to programs at Santa Fe College and I mean she's just an amazing dance teacher and one of the worry one of the worries for them immediately was does this mean I only have 45 minutes for Dance I mean I can't even dress out and dance and then dress back in and it's because and I do think we had a failure to communicate here it's because this got pushed into a block non block discussion they say no block they say block and that's and that's not what this was in my opinion I'm just going to share with you in my brain what I
074understand the directive to come out was that we should have core every day for most students so I think most people who are here tonight know know what I'm talking about right so I don't have to explain so right now there are a number of schools that only have math every other day or have reading every other day my student attends one of those school so I understand it so that means weeks when he only has math twice a week on on on every we week or every other week that is fundamental he cannot miss those classes I wouldn't want him to anyway but it's it's a different than having math every day and what we know or what we hear from our leadership who has extraordinary experience in academics is that it is better
075for most students to have core every day I'm using the phrase most students on purpose I'm not saying all students because there might be teachers who are exceptionally good at block even for their math class or for their literature class there might be science classes where in order to do that AP Biol laab I've got to have at least one block a day right there might and this is where the local opportunity at a school is so important for the principal to work with their teachers to identify okay how do we do this we know that we've heard we should have core every day for most students not necessarily all students and we also know the funding model piece is this you know I the math I do is 85.7% as far as teachers time
076in the classroom because if you if you look at these schools they spend about 75% in the classroom compared to other schools that spend 85.7% in the classroom and that's where the money part comes in and so the way I think of it I think because I studied aerospace engineering and I build buildings and so I'm very sort of mathematical around these things is you have each school has a certain amount of time in the day we at John Hopkins have six and a half hours a day other schools might have 6 hours and 45 minutes a day and what I believe the superintendent is saying is in that time in that 6 hours 45 minutes I would like to see core every day for most students and you meet this funding model however you
077do that now there are a lot of other parameters you know obviously busing with School start school finish you need passing time you have lunchtime Dr Vasquez can educate us all on the number of minutes you have to have for a semester for each course and we can't start school before August 10th because of the legislature right and we want to finish exams before winter break because how terrible to have to come back from winter break and take exams who wants to do that so the first semester is super tight so with all of those different parameters how can a school then take those and meet them and if you can meet them if you if you want to do a modified block like look at Mangrove Bay Middle School school they're they their their
078their schedule is really interesting right so different high schools different middle schools have different schedules right now and so my understanding is the directive isn't Block verse non-block it isn't even 8 verse 7 verse 6 it's core classes every day for most students and to meet this funding model and so we're still working and as you said we don't have our numbers for next year we don't have our units we won't for a little while I think what's really hard in what I'm hearing is that people are worried because you know and when you don't have an answer if you've mapped out your child's whole career right or or your school Works a certain way and if you don't have it figured out exactly how it's going to work it causes a lot of fear
079and it does take a little time to solve the math problem so I think each school might solve it a little bit differently and if I've said anything incorrect I would like to be corrected but I think you can and I love the different things that I've gone through where I think you can achieve core every day for most students still be able to block the arts classes and even block some science block some literature if you want to but maybe it's not full block maybe it's one block a week so those are the kinds of things you can do and have the conversations with in Meet those new parameters so I would love for us to get out of this block no block you know and figure out how to how to solve it
080and it is about student achievement and it is about student experience and teacher experience our teachers know you know what you need to be able to give to give to your students so I hope that you just continue to work with your Administration continue to Advocate but also partner and try to solve it all right you mentioned the Florida seal of Fine Arts requirements what are what are the requirements to achieve that seal so I don't have them memorized so I'm going to look at Jonathan jury or maybe the person in the back of the room who wrote it but it's a certain number of courses in the pathway and then a grade point average in those courses and I believe it's four with a certain GPA Jonathan the Jory you want stand sure so
081you need if you get an A in three years of art courses and they're broke down by discipline so you have music dance Visual Arts and theater so if you get three years worth of AIDS then that allows you to proceed where you can then choose two of five different options so if you take an advanced course AP IB that sort of thing if you do 25 volunteer hours for Arts related Community partner if you do let's see what are the other two Georgia jur Event jur Event oh yes and an award recognition in a district state or a national events so there's there different things that will allow you to then earn that seal for your diploma we have it on our website if you go to pcsb.org finearts seal Fine Arts seal you'll
082find all the information there including the student application form can download and start going out now thank you what is the strongest evidence that Arts education fost 's academic growth what do that again what is the strongest evidence or evidence that Arts education Fosters academic growth I would mention I don't remember the exact numbers but for a brief period of my life I was a museum director and I remember doing doing this research and learning it learning about it but it is measured there is measurable success in academics so we know that students who participate in the Arts are four times more likely to participate in math and science competitions we know that students who participate in the Arts are three times more likely to graduate high school we know I mean there are there
083are many many metrics about a direct academic link to participation in the Arts so I can't quote them all but it is measured absolutely it is measured there's variety of Statistics that are available in our National Arts organizations for National Arts education but Mena has some very interesting ones geared around music education and brain function there's some statistical research or scientific data I should say on brain composition U when students have a number of years in music composition it strengthens the connecting core tissues of their brain and actually creates a more fluid ability to use both sides of the brain simultaneously through performance and the understanding of Music Theory and music composition so there is a lot of scientific data available on how music and the Arts do enhance brain function which carries forth to
084all other academic areas of Education whether it's science and math or English and reading Etc so there's just a variety of places that you can look to find that it's a great great passion of mine is understanding how the Arts is not only enhances your education but also enhances the person as a whole and can heal them emotionally and can be a just a grounding for all sorts of other activities it's really the glue of our educational fabric to me that holds all the other academic areas up and keeps them together thank you yes thank you the dolly and many public spaces of of art were built by workers with technical skills vocational programs lost funding diverted to Hurricane recovery when will those funds be replaced vocational teaching benchmarked set a 1 to6 teacher student
085ratio ours ever experienced more how will you continue to or can you reduce that ratio so a couple just points related to that so we had about $45 million thus far in expenses related to hurricanes to repair schools that were damaged certainly madira Beach K8 and Gulf beaches are chief among those but there were other schools that had roof damage and things like that no Career Technical programs were hurt as a result of that you're you're talking about two separate pots of money so you have operating money and Workforce dollars and then you have Capital dollars so there were capital projects delayed across the district as a result of that so if if one of capital projects happen to be a CTA classroom which I don't think was off the top of my head but
086if it was then it will be just in the next cycle of funding in terms of actual Staffing of classrooms so Florida staffs its classes on an average basis across schools and you're familiar probably with class size and what that Amendment means and what it doesn't mean many in this room but in general core academic classes in high school and middle school 25 to1 22 to1 electives typically 28 to 32 some such as physical education might have more others have less in our district we stick to that model for the most part with a couple of exceptions the penel County Center for the Arts we staff at 18 to one most classes you know I've looked at their master schedule recently most don't have 18 in there but it's staffed on average at 18 to1
087and then there's a few other elective type courses driver's education things like that because you have a range and a car and an only one teacher and those that have to be staffed a little different but for the most part that's the Staffing you know it's it's a balloon you lower the Staffing on one side somebody else has to go up so if you want to run an AP statistics class with 10 students in it another core course has to have 15 more students in it somewhere I mean that's just the reality of how that works so I would say our CT technical classes are like most SE qual programs whether those are in the Arts or in C technical education typically the lower level the entry level classes are larger and as students get
088older and more specific they get a little bit smaller in terms of their particular number of students in the class what we look for is an average over the entire program in terms of how do we support that thank you can you speak to any homeschooler activities or programs that they County can provide to these students we don't govern H school students register with us for hom school so that's about the extent in fact there's there's law about what we can and cannot do in that regard what I can say is that homeschool students students who are in Virtual School part-time all those types of things it's very open now that students can enroll in specific classes in schools and be there for one period or two periods or three periods they can't enroll for
089example in a magnet programs dance class because they need to be in that magnet but they could enroll in a general education music class that would be offered at their Zone school thank you Holland oh oh I'm so sorry and superintendent correct me if I'm wrong homeschool students can also attend Sports and clubs at their Zone schools if they are homeschooled as well so anything that's offered at your Zone school as a homes school student you can participate in that sport club dance whatever that is thank you Holland's High School Academy of entertainment Arts was pursuing The Academy of Distinction in 2024 but did not make it this was lack of school board support this writer is saying what happened and is there a way to support Hollands in attaining this next year yeah I
090wouldn't say it's lack of the school board here but the emies of Distinction is a program run with a specific rubric there's 10 national standards based after the national Career Academy Coalition standards programs apply they do a self- rating and then there's a validation process by partners with the pelis Education Foundation who are on their stabos education board and then they look at those rubrics they go do interviews at the school and then there's a rating that's determined and our Cur technical department interacts with that in terms of the support there may be things that were lacking in that applic that may be needed and that's something we could certainly help with but we just recognized I think five or six school programs across a bunch of different schools that supported that just a few
091weeks ago thank you Florida ranks 50th in financial support of public education how can we as Citizens increase our state support of our schools so we can afford to staff our schools and provide the block scheduling or extra number of periods that would be so effective we need to reach out to our Representatives on a constant basis and let them know we want that in our schools I have been serving on the pelis county legislative committee for I think three or four years I'm also served for two years on the Florida state school board's legislative committee and now serve on the Florida state school board's board of directors and federal policy committee and I think there is a conversation about a lot of conversation about Charters and private schools in our in our state and
092about funding those models strongly and I think that we as Citizens need to reach out to our representatives to let them know that we want to continue to be funded we want our public schools to be the best that they can be and we want to be able to have the control of those dollars on a local level often times local programming cannot be what it could be because of State mandates or legislative initiatives that don't align with our district strategic plan and it's important for our community members to continue to reach out and participate in that process because I think things do change when we have a voice as a community thank you next question say something that Dr go ahead yes yeah I I Echo what Lisa just said now and then I
093think so one we need to Advocate with the state as far as the importance of public education and funding it appropriately but they really need to hear from you and this is your state representatives your state senators so you can come tell us and you know what we agree with you we are with you on this we are School Board Public public school advocates that's why any of us are sitting here and so we need you to also talk to those legislators as well because otherwise they do hear from the lobbyists and the activists for charter schools and for the Florida empowerment scholar ship funding private schools they hear from those people loud and clear and often and so we also need them to hear from public school advocates as well so please tell your
094story and appeal to them as well the other thing that I think penis county has done which I want everyone to be proud of and I know as has already been mentioned is that referendum so the fact that we here in pelis choose I think we were the first county in the state even second county in the state to choose to tax ourselves because we know that paying our teachers is fundamental having the best and bright I mean teachers are the number one impact on student achievement and having the best and brightest teachers matters and pay matters and so us passing that referendum I think we can we can be happy about that should go into effect this Coming school year is it is it still enough to deal with the rise of you know
095cost of housing and affordability in pelis County it's tough but we are at least our community is loud and clear telling our teachers that we support you we believe in you and we're helping to respond the best we can I yes as an example of what the power of communicating with your state leaders can do you all remember when the they wanted to add pickle ball courts and Resorts and things to our state parks right people reached out from every this is this is nonpartisan issue people reached out they found a common ground and they made their voices heard and it doesn't take I've seen I've seen what can happen when even just a small group of people reach out to their legislators and their their representatives and emails phone calls it doesn't take much
096it really doesn't but if you keep doing it just send an email send an email get your friends to send an email it they will hear you and they will respond but they do have to hear from more than just us I do think I'm sorry oh you're okay I do think since you're here and you care about this as much as we do just a couple numbers to be aware of so the state is approaching $4 billion and EXP ense on that Florida Empower empowerment scholarship piece so I think some of you know that you know it started early on with the vouchers with with with McKay scholarships with gardener scholarships it was very specific for very specific students and then as vouchers opened up you had to have below a certain income level
097you had to be at a public school and then apply and be below a certain income level to be able to get that voucher to go to a private school and then just a couple years ago they went to Universal vouch where there's zero income limit and you can already be at a private school so families that have been choosing private schools we are now and so when you see those numbers because we we have those numbers the number of students who have that FES scholarship and when you see that jump in the last couple years it's because it's was families who were already in private school they didn't jump they didn't leave and take it they were already there and then I would just tell you from the research I've done more than half
098of the private schools in pelis county that receive your tax do are unaccredited by any academic agency now we have very strong private schools there are some excellent private schools in this County by the way I'd put our schools up against any of them any day that's why I send my kids to our schools but the fact that more than half of them are unaccredited you know is and then plus more than 20% are for-profit companies you know so I think there are a lot of questions if you want to Advocate around this you can start asking questions about the account ability when it comes to your tax dollars the other thing is those FES scholarship students yes they have to take a test but they can choose from one of 28 nationally normed tests
099to pick and then those scores are not reported in a way that you can actually see there is no data that says that those schools do any better than ours and I would actually challenge that ours do far better we also know that we have students who have left the school system and taken one of these vouchers they think it's this Shining Light and they turn around they come right back and so any of those stories that you have or you want to share and tell I certainly want to hear them because I do think this is something that we have to tell the story about and Advocate on questions thank you I and I'm trying to align them because there are a lot that follow the same kind of line of questions so I'm
100I think this one is important around the scheduling can you clarify are you open to allowing stud students to enroll in eight periods course requests credits for 2526 sure so the simple answer is yes you can enroll the more complicated answer and suspected we've had some questions on the on the scheduling tonight so if we can put up that slide with just to explain this in a little more specificity so this is the breakdown and some of you may have seen this but this is the breakdown of how units are allocated and it's based on students enroll in the school and then what those targets are and there's there's a whole host of other things so the very first column there in Gray is number of students that would show up in Focus so if
101you were a teacher at this school and you went in you said how many students we have in the school you would see that number not all of those students attend school full-time not all of those those students may be in early college they may be there just for sports right anybody who is associated with the school at all is there so the Target in yellow is the actual students that earn FTE during the school day and then the Target and blue is the total that are sort of if you put all those together that earn full-time what that looks like and then there's magnet enrollments and how that works out so at the very bottom of the page you can see the units for six of seven that would be generated by the number
102of students in those schools the additional units that are there for block and then what that difference is so at boaa the difference between what would be on a six of seven schedule versus the block schedule the six of is what it should say is 11.15 units and you can see Holland you can see Gibbs you can see Lakewood I know the teachers in the room are saying that's not the average teacher salary of 88,000 that includes benefits and Fringe and all those things but what it costs to have a teacher and so you can see the additional cost as compared to a Traditional School on a regular schedule under no set of circumstances do we think that we're just going to cut all those 40 teachers not not at all and in fact there
103are some vacancies at some schools and things happen through attrition and all those things but there is a point and this is the conversation earlier where you have to say you can't continue to go higher and higher and higher with the cost as enrollment goes down and down and down and you have to offer every single program and so there's a few teachers in the room who were at Gibbs High School in 2011 when I met with them as the Director of high school and we talked about enrollment and programs and how many students you need to run a program and you have to have a certain number of students just to have say a dance program or an entertainment program or what that is and it depends on the program or what it is
104but you know you can't run an entire program with a full-time teacher and have 12 students right you have to have a certain cut and Gibbs and others have done a very good job in getting to sort of those minimum numbers but as we look forward and to get to that question a couple others that I've been peeking over Dr Luca's shoulder no we're not going to cut 40 teachers there will be some savings I suspect it'll be less than half of that number but there does need to be be a spot where you say you cannot continue to overfund when you don't have the money for that and that's where we are and so I figured we'd have some questions on that tonight we've shared this with a number of other folks and so
105that's what that is does it mean that one program is going to be treated differently than another no but if you've been in schools long enough you know that in a master schedule annually there are always economic decisions you have to make do I have seven sections of AP Literature or do I have six and if I have six what does that mean What's the total class size do I have a full-time teacher of avid or do I have a part-time teacher what is the rest of that teacher that happens every single year and that's that's how that happens so to go back to the question and several others that are sort of similar to that is there a mandate that it has to be seven no I said earlier there are schools who are
106staffed this way we have a middle school staff this way that has nine periods and their schedule just looks different and some of those meet every day and some of them don't I was principal at a high school that had some programs that all of those classes were blocked all the culinary classes in in grades 10 11 and 12 were blocked all of the automotive classes were blocked students had two periods every single day and they were done in a full block so those that have individual programs or specific things they're thinking about when you think about the sequence of courses that your students take and the regular way in which they do that for most programs it's fairly easy to say and if you look at say the penel County Center for the Arts
107a lot of those students are taking three and four classes in the Arts that's easy to pair if there's similar cohorts of students it's not always perfect and that's the case with every schedule any parent here can tell you their child how to choose at the end of the day between AP stats and AP site because they were both only offered one period and that's all I could do and that's the way it runs for everything and so when you have those conflicts then you have to look for what are the other options to do so I think that answers a couple I know there's several on that but wanted to share that thank you how many schools have a d dance or theater teacher that are not magnet schools and those that do not
108have either one do they work or partner with an outside organization to give all students these experiences so I'm looking at a Jory because he could probably tell me theater most schools have a theater teacher of some sort maybe not always full-time but some sort dance very few would have that outside of the magnet do they work with outside organizations yes you can see our Schoolboard agenda almost every single one you see outside folks that we pay to come in and support sometimes that is for musical theater Productions or things like that sometimes it's classroom instruction so that's a pretty regular way of work Dan is pretty much at our Arts Magnet programs there are concerns particularly in Middle Schools about students being pulled out of electives for tutoring or testing especially mock testing where
109students have been pulled out multiple times and arts education is often collaborative an important instructional time is being lost in those arts classes I don't know that there's a question there it might just be a statement yeah I mean I can tell you from the district level no one says pull kids out of this elective to do this mock testing that doesn't happen those decisions are made locally at the school level and if there's concerns you can certainly reach out to me or a board member and we can talk to the principal and address that so that it's done in a way that is fair and Equitable and also that it's not done too frequently or not enough I would say the flip side of that is there would be some teachers that say you
110know in the weeks leading up to that big performance my child's been pulled out of my class all the time to go down to the theater and I support it but don't come yell at me when I'm at so it does work both ways and but certainly if it's too much one way or the other we can address it we have exceptional physical and Performing Arts programs many of our extracurricular events performances art shows are led by the teachers or run by the teachers and they're giving their extra time to transport and to educate what supports can we offer to take some of those extras off the shoulders of a teacher and onto the community or compensate those who are responsible for the extra work and time I'm looking for some help here no excuse
111me one of the things that one of the things that we were adamant about with the referendum in this particular version of the referendum and actually Jonathan and a Jory do provide a lot of funds in the in the previous versions of the referendum to Arts teachers to do those things that money doesn't exist a lot in the other disciplines and so for example band directors High School band directors get I think Mr Spencer pays for a whole week of band camp right whereas others don't get paid for say a preschool whatever that might be and that you know I'm not no one is suggesting they should do it for free but also it's nice to have those funds to be able to pay people and I know when when Jonathan or Jory ask for
112people to help with certain events whether it's putting up the art show in our district Hall they pay teachers to do that so we're fortunate to have that but one of the things we asked for in our negotiations with our teachers union around this version of the referendum was in the teacher salary portion of it could we dedicate some funds to increasing supplements for teachers who do extra activities and our board supported that the union has supported that and there is a supplement committee that's meeting to do that and so there's about $1.8 million that will be allocated this year to go to supplemental programs across the district in in all supplements Arts Athletics clubs National Honor Society whatever those things might be and there's a committee of of teachers that work and they help
113to spread that out and it's sort of the committee's decision what that looks like and they're they're fair and Equitable in the way that they do it and so we recognize that people who do the extra work should be compensated for that and we're using some of those funds to do that especially when every teacher in the district as Mrs hin mentioned earlier U will receive at least a $4,000 raise next year from the referendum and unlike other counties that have done the one mill they have extended the teacher day to eight hours or given them more days in the year to work and we haven't done that we've said we want to keep the hours the same the schedule the same and the pay will increase but as you increase the pay you do
114run that risk of well I'm I'm making $4 or $5,000 more just from the referendum why would I do this supplemental position for $800 when I'm up 4,000 already and so we need to increase the supplements as well and that's something that has been negotiated and we look forward I don't have those specific numbers but if you look at our total cost of supplements the $1.8 million really is probably about on average about a 45 50% increase to those supplements next year and then I have a couple of similar questions one from a Gibbs teacher and then one from the perspective of St Pete high again talking about block nonblock but this teacher says this is not a block versus non-block discussion it's a reduction in funds from South County low-income Title One schools we've
115seen a reduction in funding when can we you know expect to stop losing resources and then also just is there a way to look into as we've been discussing keeping currents Arts magnets intact with creative scheduling Can two different Bell schedules be aligned and I think you all had addressed that I just didn't know it kind of was merging a few questions and a few different schools yeah let let me just address the funding in general our staffing models are very public anybody can look at them you can compare a North County School to a South County school or a non-title one to Title One it's just not true that title one schools receive less they receive a lot more you can look at our budgets and you can see that it may not be
116what people think they need and that's a fair and valid argument but they are staffed at a higher ratio a lower tpr certain schools different ways the title one budgets the El is a completely different conversation we don't control Title One budgets we receive that from the federal government and when you have fewer students guess what you get in title $1 less money and so next year we'll have $3 million less in Title One both because we have fewer students and or the federal funding of Title One changes and so we don't actually control that at all there's a formula it's called Rank and serve it's based on poverty and then it goes down the line on that what we try to do and what we there's two models we can choose from and what
117we've tried to do in those models is give as much money as we can to more schools and so I will tell you the choices this year in the two models one of the models would not have well let me just say this the next School in in the shorter model list where you give more money to fewer schools versus the one that has more schools included the first school off the list in the shorter model was Gibbs High School and to me that's an incredibly school that needs money to support its general population and the Arts population and we want to include them and there's a bunch of other schools below that we felt how can you not give title $1 to those schools and so we've tried to Advantage as many schools as
118possible but it is a Formula that is driven by the number of children in the school and then the federal funds that come similarly there's other Federal programs title two title three title four which all are based on student population and we don't know from one year to another the next next what the those funding models will be they've been generally consistent although down a little bit each year and then further down for us because of student enrollment so I certainly welcome anybody who who wants to see the Staffing models at schools and how Title One schools do off the base out of operating outside of Title One receive more resources and that's part of our board's commitment in our strategic plan and we could defend that all day long not because we have to
119but because it's true thank you so much I've been given the sign that we ran out of time and so this is not the end of the program though and I know that there will be more time for interaction I want to thank everyone for your questions your engagement this evening and thank you to Mr Hendrick Mrs Heim Mrs K Mrs Peters for being here with us tonight I am going to turn it back over to superintendent hendrik to give an overview of how everyone here tonight can give direct input to inform the board and District leadership superintend H thank you so you can do so in a couple ways we have the posters outside where you can write sticky notes and give feedback there this QR code also has the same questions and essentially
120we're asking questions around specifically the Arts what's working well in Partnerships what could be improved what's working well in school day programming what could be improved what's working well in sort of the after school and summer programs what could be improved we do want specific feedback on those ideas that have been generated by the community and teachers on how to improve the Arts I gave you those specific ones and then there's a couple posters and questions as you go to here on just anything related to The District you can give feedback on and there as well we do summarize these and we put a summary of it on the internet for folks to take a look and look at our board takes a look at it obviously I do as well and so that opportunity
121now exists out there in here and as I mentioned earlier before I pass it back to Dr Lucas the board and myself are here to talk individually as needed all right that includes our session thank you so much and one more comment yeah I'm sorry I just have to I have to go back to that last question about South County it concerns me if there's a perception out there that this is a slight on South County I live and work and my kids go to school in South County we have another board member who's also South County resident and it is a place that we wholly and completely advocate for and I think you know we know that these schools that are affected again they were in state oversight a number of years ago so
122they were given these additional periods given additional funds because they were struggling we have made incredible gains at these schools they are no longer in that kind of academic situation I do not see this as a reduction in funds and I by all means talk with me afterwards but from my math lens I don't see this as a reduction in funds at those schools I see it as an alignment of funds so if all other 14 high schools are at this again this 85.7% model and these four schools or five are at a 75% model why does that make sense I want someone to tell me why that should be the case so I see it as an alignment but I in no way see this as a reduction of South County or anti- tile
123one I am I do this work because I care about those kids and I just wanted to talk about that if you want to talk further as far as that perception it's the first time I've heard that so thank you thank you so much thank you for your attendance tonight and please leave your feedback and we appreciate your engagement and input tonight thank you