001everyone it is monday july 25th 2022 this is the business meeting for the school board of indian river county we are meeting in the joanne islette junior teacher education center and it is six o'clock i'm calling this meeting to order we do not have rotc here today due to school being out so i've asked sergeant bailey to please come forward and lead us in our pledge of allegiance please i stand allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you sergeant bailey there you go all right um board members before we uh adopt the orders of the day we have uh number 14 which is the superintendent's report will immediately is being moved up to follow the proclamation are there
002any items that board members wish to move from consent to action yes 6n yes that is the achievement gap oversight work group okay okay and i just like to add a discussion i'm not moving the item i just want to talk about it and it would be the student parent complaints which is item number it's not being moved it's going to stay in consent but i'm adding a topic discussion discuss okay student parent complaints okay so i'm not moving it i got it anyone else all right call for a motion to accept the orders of the day as amended so make motion second okay sorry um it doesn't matter okay mr barefoot second was me okay any discussion a call for the vote all those in favor say aye aye aye anyone opposed carries450 okay
003at this time i will have a presentation which is a proclamation for anti-bullying i'd like to recognize dr moore for the proclamation presentation thank you miss madam chair i'm gonna ask ms dampier to come to the podium as she does i'll just ask board members to pull the proclamation we've highlighted a section for each of you to read uh following miss um dampier's presentation that i'll turn it over to mrs stampier good evening we are very excited to start off the 22-23 school year with a district-wide anti-bullying campaign which kicks off on august 15th for the first two weeks of school august 15th through the 26th students will learn about bullying and how to be a part of the solution with the theme don't stand by stand up there will be morning announcements activities such
004as random acts of kindness poems posters bookmarks daily challenges for students to complete which will come which will culminate with the students and school staff taking a pledge to stand up to bullying by signing and explain a banner statement i pledge to stand up this will serve as a reminder that we can stand up to bullying by being kind which in turns helps us become stronger together community and family members can join students in taking the pledge at the vero beach community complex kickoff event which will be held on august 27 from 12 pm to 3 pm at the jimmy graves field additional activities will be held each quarter to support this endeavor this proclamation is an important symbol of the school district of indian river county's commitment to the cultivation of optimal learning conditions
005and school environments for students and staff that maximize educational outcomes for all students served by our district at this time we will have a video [Music] this is david moore proud superintendent of the school district of indian river county and we're asking all of our community parents students if you live in our county when it comes to bullying don't stand by stand up don't stand by stand up don't stand by stand up don't stand by stand up don't stand by stand up one in five high school students report being bullied at school don't stand by stand up don't stand by stand up don't stand by stand up don't stand by stand up don't stand by stand up one in six high school students report being cyber bullied don't stand by stand up don't stand by
006stand up don't stand by stand up don't stand by stand up don't stand by stand up bullying increases the risk for depression anxiety sleep difficulties lowers academic achievement and dropping out of school don't stand by stand up don't stand by stand up don't stand by stand up don't stand by stand up don't stand by stand up youth who bully others are at a greater risk of mental health and behavioral problems don't stand by stand up don't stand by stand up don't stand by stand up don't stand by stand up don't stand by stand up nearly 14 of public schools report that bullying is a disciplined problem occurring daily or at least once a week don't stand by stand up don't stand by stand up don't stand by stand up don't stand by stand up don't
007stand by stand up don't stand by stand up at this time our board members will read the problem anti-bullying proclamation we will start with mrs barron okay whereas bullying is physical verbal sexual or emotional harm or intimidation intentionally directed at a person or group of people and whereas bullying occurs in neighborhoods playgrounds schools and through technology such as the internet and cell phones and whereas various researchers have concluded that bullying is the most common form of violence affecting millions of american children and adolescents annually and whereas targets of bullying are more likely to acquire physical emotional and learning problems and students who are repeatedly bullied often fear such activities as riding the bus going to school and attending community activities and whereas children who bully are at greater risk of engaging in more serious violent
008behaviors and whereas children who witness bullying often feel less secure more fearful and intimidated whereas the school district of indian river county is committed to engaging all stakeholders including families and the community in signing the pledge to stand up now therefore be it resolved that the school district of indian river county is committed to providing safe and supportive learning environments for all students and be it further resolved the school district of indian river county is committed to training all staff and students on bullying and engaging in a year-long anti-bullying campaign all right negative proof thank you okay adopted by the school district of indian river county florida 25th day of july signed on behalf of the school board all board members have signed thank you um i'd like to ask for a motion make a
009motion okay and uh rosario first shift second any discussion all those oh discussion go ahead i just want to say that this is um a welcome a proclamation it is a great way to start our our school year um i'm thankful that the superintendent is adhering to the request time and time again for anti-bullying to be addressed or for bullying to be addressed in our school district it's one way to address some of the discipline issues that are going on that we are seeing so i'm happy to support this proclamation and i'm also happy that it's going to be a year long if not maybe more than that because it it will take that long to change culture and and hopefully we will engage in more activities so that we can progress in uh really
010attacking bullying head-on anyone else i'll call for the vote those in favor say aye aye anyone opposed kerry's 5-0 thank you next is the presentation and i quickly want to take the opportunity to pull up the the presentation and this is going to be a very succinct and to the point presentation regarding the outcomes for last school year and i want to begin the presentation by setting the the tone and as you re as you recall in the spring of 2000 the school doors were shut across the entire state of florida we actually lost 300 hours of face-to-face instruction we replaced that loss of 300 hours of instruction with quickly developed and implemented home school adaptive learning not adaptive learning but we did the best we could in a two-week period in order to close
011out the school year with a undefined or un determined return date we actually stayed home for the remainder of the entire school year which is over 300 hours of lost face and face face-to-face instruction when you look at the 2021 school year which is not the last year that finished but the previous year we began the school year with only 67 percent of our students in face-to-face instruction the majority of those who did not return to school were those who needed to be in school the most at no point in time during that school year did we exceed 85 of our students in face-to-face instruction you throw on top of those low percents and you think about the quarantines you think about the students who had code with the faculty who had coving it was
012an absolute school year of disruption and broken consistency in the delivery of instruction and then when you opened this last school year that just concluded we were very excited this time last year as the delta variant began its climb word upward the impact here in our community was drastic we had school attendance for the first six weeks of school hovering around 60 65 percent there were two schools that had to be closed for an extended amount of time it was chronic absenteeism taking place during both the first five six weeks of school and then when we returned in january we once again that second semester had to deploy district staff to schools with the next variant in order to maintain effective instruction for our students once again when you look back at the struggles that
013we had last year a new curriculum that was promised to be in the hands of our teachers prior to the opening day of school that was not the case so i set up all of this reality to really kind of bring home the impact of what this pandemic has been over the course of the last three years it has been a very tough and trying time so when we look at outcomes despite those challenges despite those obstacles when you look at what the school district of indian river county has been able to accomplish uh people are calling people are inquiring they want to know how we have accomplished what we have accomplished a must amidst all of those struggles so when you look at ela language language arts and what it is this is 1819
014this is the outcome with absolutely no interruption no pandemic a full consistent year uh there was no break in instruction and then you look at last year's outcome and you rank where we were of the 67 districts before the pandemic and compare it to where we were after the pandemic and you see in ela language arts performance we went from 30 of 67 to 22 of 67. when you look at ela for our bottom quartile we went from 25th to 13th when you look at math our bottom quartile we went from 17th to 25th that is significant movement in the midst of a very hard and struggling time when you look at overall science performance we went from 37 to 23 an improvement of 14 state rankings when you look at social studies 46 46
015of 67 to 39 still work to be done but you see us moving up the ranks and then middle school acceleration we went from 56 of 67 to 21 a improvement of 35 state rankings how did we have such a high rate of movement we provided the opportunity to every single student who had the ability based on data to have the opportunity to participate in middle school acceleration courses and look at the impact the trajectory of those students lives has changed forever because now they will be able to enroll in the high school courses that will that are required for specific entries into colleges and into universities they'll be able to take the advanced level courses that will have the colleges and universities looking at them when you look at our overall math performance it
016looks or appears as if it has gone down and the reality it has but when you see it has gone down because we've increased the opportunity for students to have access to the rigorous courses as soon as they have the ability to take their rigorous courses you have a deeper understanding as to we will provide every opportunity to student as quickly as they're able to do so that's a point of pride for the entire school system to see that rate of movement now when you look at the achievement um spring assessment results looking at 1819 and this is our achievements looking at our state rankings and our black white gap so we spoke a little bit about this prior uh in today's meeting and you can see our 1819 state ranking was 45 of 67.
017we now move to 37 an improvement of eight but obviously still significant work to do when looking at economically disadvantaged 48-33 once again moving up the ranks we're in the mid-range of the all the districts in the state of florida but our goal is top 10 in all areas top no top ten percent which is top six so tomato tomato um in in looking at our black white gap for mathematics an improvement of six 43-37 hispanic math 40 to 32 plus 8 students with disabilities 48 to 35th still significant work to do there our ells 22 in math to 18. slight improvement economically disadvantaged in math 45th to 16th significant movement so you're seeing when you're looking at students from all students broken down and looking at the gap you're seeing significant movement but yet
018significant opportunities to continue the momentum that we have built this school year now looking at grades as you know grades from 2021 to 2022. now i wanted to point out this slide because the state didn't grade schools last school year they gave us the data but they didn't apply the grades but if they were you see the grades here in the column 2021 compared to 2122 and you see that beechland moved two grades to an a you see that dodger town went from a d to a c you see that liberty magnet reclaimed its a you see that sebastian elementary school would have been a d last school year move to a b so schools as they leveraged the pandemic at the end of last year you see some schools were hit extremely hard the
019impact from one school to the other varied but when you look at their outcomes or their growth just in one specific year you have to have a high level of pride for what those schools have been able to accomplish when you look at 1819 to 21 2122 these are the schools that improved a grade level fellsmere moved from a c to a b meaning no pandemic no interruptions the school was to see it missed those challenges and obstacles they were able to improve a letter grade indian river county from a c indian river academy from a c to a b knocking on the door to be an a sebastian elementary school from a c to a b storm grove middle school got the b and treasure coast elementary school also moved the beat now when
020you look at the percent of a's and b's in our school district pre-pandemic it was 47 percent today that number is 53 once again growing those numbers we're still pending the results of two schools but even if those schools uh both were below the b status we still would have the exact same percent of a and b schools that we had pre-pandemic we are the only district on the treasure coast when you to increase the percent of a and b schools uh so once again significant movement here are our a schools all of these schools were a's pre-pandemic and they all were able to maintain their a's post pandemic that is no easy feat to do with such disruption over the course of the previous three school years so beechland liberty osceola rosewood all outstanding
021outcomes matter of fact when you look at osceola and you rank all of the elementary schools in the state of florida the outcome produced in osceola magnet puts it in the top six percent of all elementary schools in the state of florida significant increases pre-pandemic and putting our county on the map in terms of what's happening at that specific school now for those of you that were around pre-pandemic when i first got here this is a slide that i went around the county talking about the need to transform what's taking place in our classrooms to improve the quality of instruction and what i did is compare indian river county to the most like county in the state of florida to us which is martin county and you can see when you look at the percent
022of a schools martin county was 50 and the percent of b schools it was 35 85 of their schools were a or a b where 53 of our schools were a seat as we leveraged and managed through the pandemic not only did we succeed when you compare us to where indian river is in comparison to that we now on the top side of 50 where they're only at 45 percent looking at a's and b's with 10 percent of their schools being a b and you're looking at they're only having 45 percent a's and b so once again how do we manage crisis how do we continue to stay dedicated to be providing quality instruction to our students this is evidence of the hard work and dedication of our teachers and staff when you look at
023surrounding district grade comparisons we all were faced with the exact same reality indian river county maintained its b with the exact same percentage of points brevard dropped martin dropped okeechobee dropped st lucie congratulations uh for hanging with us they were able to maintain the b as well so when you look at this rate of improvement from where we were pre-pandemic stacking all 67 districts and then doing it post ac post pandemic last year's results we went from 38th to 22nd that's a 16 percentage 16 point increase in state rankings no other district with except the exception of washington a very small district had that rate of improvement it is the most movement in the state of florida along with washington uh and looking at where we were before the pandemic and where we are where
024we are after the pandemic that is a sign of hard work that is a sign of problem solving that is a sign of dedicated and committed uh individuals doing this work when you look at our graduation rate you see that red mark it looks from 1819 to 21 22 once again you're seeing us grow six percentage points where the state is only growing three percentage points we are top five uh chairman berenborg and graduation rates that that rate of improvement of six percentage points puts us top five of all of the 67 districts when you're looking at sdfc graduating ranking by subgroup our black student state ranking 93 that's eight hispanic state ranking of five 97 95 for white population state ranking of eighth student with disabilities 88 13th still work to do there economically
025disadvantage state ranking of seven 92 percent and our our english language learners 98 state ranking of third so we have some significant improvements over the course of the last three years i highlight this data because it is a true indication of the hard work and the dedication of the teachers the principals our community and when you look through the craziness that has been the last three years and you evaluate the outcome that this community has been able to experience imagine what we can do when there is not that disruption just last week we spent the uh the better part of the week with our administrators and teacher leaders going through what we call reignite that is our summer conference the energy is high the focus is right where it needs to be improving the quality
026of instruction inside of cultures that allow every student to succeed and feel valued as they walk in schools there has been so much that has taken us off mission for the last three years and we have reorganized our district over the last two years to do everything in our power to keep us on mission to keep the main thing the main thing and when you look at these results it is a great indication that the school district of indian river county despite the obstacles despite the challenges is finding better success than every other county in the state of florida and we'll tag on washington because they also improve 16 state rankings so as we move in to next school year we are very very excited there are significant opportunities to improve we use this as
027momentum to move ourselves forward so with that board members you should be extremely proud of your teachers of your principals of your support staff um of your students of your parents and community uh they have been through hell and back they have been tested beyond belief where when you look at the outcomes and i'll end on this there are only five districts in the state of florida that actually improved from 1819 to 21-22 51 of them declined we're not one of those 51. nine maintained so when you look at all things equal and you look at the what we were able to accomplish you should be prior proud also i also want to provide a a quick presentation there's been conversations months ago regarding the administrative guide that we had which was the lgbtq resource
028guide i want to provide a quick update to that that form has been modified strictly referencing board policy state statute and title ix requirements so it has been modified in a way that ensures that our administrators have a reference to the exact language and policy the exact language in statute the exact language in title ix requirements and when they need support ensuring that every single student in this district is providing an environment in which they are not being discriminated against uh miss dampier and her very able team are there to support them so we're excited that we can provide a level clarity uh to our principles and continue to the work that we've done to ensure no children in this district is discriminated against thank you madam chair okay thank you um congratulations to the
029entire team on those rankings all right at this time citizen input um there are guidelines for citizen input i need to read them according to school board policy 0169.1 each statement made by a member of the public shall be limited to three minutes in duration persons will be recognized in order in which the requests were received the time shall start when the speaker is at the podium and the school board attorney will be the official timekeeper you will hear a beep at the end of your three minutes persons may speak for up to three minutes at the beginning of a business meeting during citizen input as indicated on the order of business and for up to three minutes to each action item during the action agenda and each board member discussion item as indicated on
030the order of business persons may only speak once about a given item the time period may be extended by the presiding officer only the individual speaks submitting the speaker's form is allowed to address the board time may not be yielded to other speakers during the meeting please refrain from clapping or outbursts of any sort so that we can proceed with dignity and with decorum by not infringing on any individual's first amendment rights i need to remind everyone to direct all comments to the chairman not to individual board members or to the superintendent board members may or may not address any citizen input statements at the end of the citizen input comments as board members listen to citizens without interruption citizens are asked to give board members the same respect as per florida statute 1001.372 subsection
0313 the presiding officer of any district school board may order the removal from a public meeting held by the district school board of any person interfering with the expeditious or orderly process of such meeting provided such officers first issued a warning that continued interference with the orderly processes of the meeting will result in removal all right we have six speakers and i will call the first speaker up julie page on deck is paul westcott good evening my name is julie page i am the mom of two young boys in the public school system i was born and raised in vero beach and i graduated from vero beach high school in 1993. i received an excellent academic education back then and i fully expect the same for my children now however the past two plus years
032have shown me that the public school system has taken a left turn into the seas of awoke agenda it makes me sad that this is happening in the town that i grew up in shocking really but not surprising the loudest minority voices have taken over the school board and all common sense has been forgotten while we appreciate the positive changes that are finally being implemented regarding the sexually explicit books crt and gender ideology training we are fully aware that this is only happening because your hands have been forced by the new laws in place it is painfully apparent that most members of this board discarded logic and reasoning a long time ago your recent efforts are too little and too late to save your seats it is also vitally important to note that even if
033all the policies and procedures within the school system are acceptable we will still have issues with rogue teachers librarians principals administrators and yes even the superintendent to the parents who may be watching and listening now is not the time to stop advocating for your rights and what is best for your child you must stay involved and be vigilant in your child's education every step of the way concerned taxpayers in indian river county you are either a customer or an investor of the school system you have a stake in the game an excellent academic education is the best way we can ensure a strong future for our community i highly encourage you to give your votes to jacqueline rosario and thomas kenny they will advocate for parents students and teachers give them the opportunity to be
034voices of reason and right the ship they will be champions who will not disappoint parents are willing and eager to partner with the public school system we do not co-parent with the government thank you okay paul westcott next jennifer pippen is sunday i'd like to start uh ms behrenborg by just saying thank you to dr moore for listening to the community um i think it was last meeting or meeting before i've had the opportunity over the course of my practice to see a number of similar guides directing workforces in hr departments and this is a good one that is instructional and accurate and direct and and he's to be commended for the work that he and his staff have done and thank you for that um at this point i'd like to pivot and start
035with two quotes one is kind words or a kind word turns away wrath and second of all it's a quote from president lincoln someone we can all appreciate and that is do we not destroy our enemy when we make them our friend and i start with that because we're at a point now where i think we can pivot and start looking at our interactions differently and before i do that i want us to reflect on where we've been on we started out i wasn't around at the time but on the mask issue i would ask that we show each other grace when we think about that topic from the standpoint of we were all learning how to interact how to engage then we moved to the curriculum process and as a result of that we
036have amplify which we hear is is is producing good work that was a product of parental input working with the school district to bring that to the forefront and to push through that we moved through the library book issue started in the note in november while that was contentious it did bear fruit there were books that were removed there were books that were relocated to different areas and it gave us an opportunity to go through the process before the new laws come in place and hopefully we've learned enough from that that as we move into this next phase with the new process we can use those experiences to do even better but we've been productive together as difficult as it may have felt through those those seasons and i bring that to our attention so
037that we have that memory so that as we move forward into other issues we focus on how we can work together better and uh on that point um speaking to the parents i would suggest they need to start with you all first emails contacts with dr moore or with you before they bring an issue here to avoid the feeling of a gotcha moment suggest alternatives or solutions avoid recriminations for you all i would suggest for those parents who are here regularly invite them to a meeting where you honestly and openly discuss options to solve problems listen and consider one another avoid recriminations on both sides be honest and respectful and one of the suggestions i would make from you for you guys as it relates to experts we hear frequently that you defer to experts
038i think you mean you consider experts when we hear that it sounds like you're not considering us and your consider experts don't defer to them so with that thank you look forward to the coming school year thank you jennifer pippen is next joanne binford is sundeck good evening my name is jennifer pippen and i'm the proud chairman of moms for liberty indian river florida which is one of the founding chapters in the nation and currently nationally we have a hundred thousand members in 38 states and over 200 chapters in one and a half years and i'm also one of the co-founders of we the people indian river county i first wanted to thank mrs rosario dr moore mrs stampier and the support staff for eliminating the lgbtq administration guy at the will of the majority
039of the people in integrating the legal aspects into the non-discrimination disclosure listening and hearing your constituents as we provided the legal and moral issues with this guide and working together made this guide null and void i would also like to thank mrs rosario dr moore mrs dan pierre mrs basara and support staff for drafting the new policy and procedures to follow the new parents and education law regarding the library books appeals for our district the new plan to make a plan there dr moore we are ready for the committee to be formed and appeal about 200 sexually explicit content and critical race theory books currently on the shelves awaiting children's hands at the start of school august 10th also please don't forget we have a ton of books to donate and hope with this policy
040and procedure for removing the books we can donate them with true history and pornography free books after hearing the superintendent's workshop today why can't the district purchase career and job-orientated books that are not controversial for students why can't we do that in our district the cancel mob has been coming hard the past few years and the majority of the media media and trying to make everything political and not on parents morals and community principles common sense has been a dying breed with this board the past few years we are willing to work with the district we always have but we will always continue to hold our elected officials accountable thank you very much for your time we're looking very much to this new school year and again like julie said we want to partner with
041the district as we always have but we do not co-parent with the government thank you and joanne binford is next chris kebbel is on deck i want to say thank you and i've been visiting the board meetings here and you guys have made progress and i'm proud of that because i worked for the school district for 16 years and i know there's an amazing group of teachers and staff and we all care about students today with all the great work that you guys have done thank you and parents need to stay involved but today what i want to bring to your ear is we need to start thinking about this bringing shop classes back to the middle school and i know you guys call it career and tech but i'm talking about home economics i'm
042talking about drafting wood shop and in replacement of of typing stenography that is a great trade skill that a woman can independently raise her children on her own and work on her schedule it pays it can pay up to six figures so a single mom or a single dad can do that job and i want to see that come back to the schools we really need it we have a working class out there that does not does not want to go to college they're not college bound so we need to start focusing on those students again have those shop classes come back give them options so that they can go and be the workforce and that'll help our economy as well because we can we can attract businesses that will bring more trade business here
043for those families that are not going to college so i want to put that in your ear so you could start thinking about that working at the school district for 16 years we have free aid periods we definitely have a period for shop classes so please think about that student body that's not going to college that has a skill a hands-on skill and bring those shop classes back for them please thank you all right chris kebbel and on deck is thomas kenny dear school board members and mr moore dr moore i'm sorry today was the first time i came to a superintendent um workshop workshop and i was impressed you guys worked so hard and i thank you very much it's been a hard you know pandemic years and then on top of that you
044know you have all the other things the parents coming and all that kind of stuff but i really appreciate what you've been doing there's one other thing i'd like to say i want to discuss policy 5710 i am specifically addressing the exception it's called withholding of information this is an area where the district could find itself in litigation and or draw unwanted attention due to allegations of violating parental rights there is no doubt the statute includes language consistent with the policy stating the obvious the implementation of this will be the tricky part i suggest you draft the procedure in a manner that has a superintendent or other high-level administrator make the final decision not to inform a parent the decision to withhold the information is a significant one it is unfair and unwise to put
045a single teacher or other member of the district staff in that position additionally the procedure should make it clear that not informing the parent is a last resort decision that has been invented i appreciate the policy including a reference to state law and policy 8462 insofar as there is a potential for a duty to report to appropriate authorities a concern about a child's safety you should explore ways to involve law enforcement or state resources in order to inform the parents and maintain safety for the child doing so might help the family and there may be helpful services to facilitate a safe sharing of information with the parents while providing a safe environment for all concerned this would be a good area to seek guidance from the florida attorney general additionally what would be the process
046for helping the child whose parents are not informed more than likely this child is at the greatest risk in a number of ways thank you thomas kenny and that's our last speaker hi thank you i just want to uh reassert what joanne bimford just said i think that's really important it got me thinking about my brother dennis who passed away a couple years ago he had a 30-year career in audio engineering but it started because he took drafting and he worked with a a construction firm and learned how to do drafting and different things like that and they wanted to recruit them and send them to school and he said i want to do audio but he learned how to read charts and all these different things so he could design and do audio and
047so i think it's really important that we bring some of that stuff back that's not why i'm really here i just want to thank you for this resource reference adjustment that was made to the lgbtqia guide i think that's very significant only because this school system has always been non-discriminatory in its goal and so to assert these uh things is wisdom it's really good wisdom because it just a lot of times we see things happen to individuals in the public and we're like well we need to make up a rule real quick and we rush to these things to correct it when all this time all we have to do is remind ourselves of the eternal truths that we've already put in place in our policy and procedure and so hats off to you and
048you and everyone else for doing this because i think it's really important and secondly i just wanted to honor two of the schools who were shut down because of covet for like two weeks i think it was beechland elementary and treasure coast right beechlyn's scores for ela were off the charts high 76. coveted was not a deterrent to them i think they were like third or maybe four the one was 84 there was a couple of 80s a 79 and i think a 76 but i'm not sure about that 84 so they might have been third which is amazing they were closed for two weeks and treasure coast elementary was above average as well 64 i believe it was and so you look at these two schools hats off to them and congratulations to them
049for for being persevering people and students and teachers and with that i yield back thank you okay board members um can i get approval for consent agenda items uh call for a motion i make a motion are we going to have an opportunity to speak to anybody oh i'm sorry yes would you like to sorry sure okay i would love to um one of the things we didn't get a chance to talk to dr moore's presentation either um so i just wanted to say thank you for that presentation dr moore um having our schools um at a 50 or rather our schools at a 53 percent that are now a's and b's collectively is definitely something to celebrate i would like to see however the achievement gap numbers that you the achievement gap information that
050you provided on the screen you provided it in rankings i would like to see that in numbers okay i'm interested to see what the numbers are there i have the numbers from the state but i'd like to see it with the the gap information for those sub groups um and mr kenny you were right it was 76 percent at treasure coast i'm sorry at beachland for ela achievement and treasure coast was 57 so uh the other thing that i wanted to mention is the shop classes um i will tell you uh and i'm probably aging myself here when i was in junior high school we had an it wasn't called shop it was called home economics i don't know if anybody's ever probably aging really aging myself and we learned it was one class and
051in that one class you learned different skills you learned you had some some cooking and then there was some sewing i made my first pillow learned how to needle you know i mean thread a needle and so why it's true i did it was my first pillow it was in the shape of a tennis racket i'll never forget it and there was wood shop part of that was wood shop where you learn how to nail hammer a nail and cut wood and put things together and obviously typing was one of those back then we didn't have the computers we just had traditional typing which i would say is a skill that i think everybody still needs even balancing a checkbook so i just think some of those skills are so needed and i would i
052don't even know if it's possible for us to return to that but i would it would be fantastic if we could and i think even at the middle school level if we are missing anything at the middle school dr moore maybe that might be an area that we can capture kids to start introducing i know that we've talked about introducing some of the trade skills to the middle school this might be a way of kind of getting them involved in hands-on experience but through the through i guess the old-fashioned way right right um i don't know if that's possible but it would i would definitely be interested in a conversation um on that and i think that's it thank you any other board members dr john just dr moore one thing in public education we
053do not do well and that's pat ourselves on the back we're always saying okay we improved we improved we've got a long way to go but you the teachers the administrators support staff it's a team effort you need to pat yourself on the back for all the growth that we had maintaining a b i know we want to get to that a sometime but you know these these teachers well they're my heroes talking about the career classes and so forth i think it might be good if some of our parents had contact with our career people who gave us a presentation at a workshop on what they were looking at what the state was looking at they talked a little bit about that with middle school and high school but that would be a good
054reach to our career tech people and at the high schools it's tom lange and christina burr they can give you a lot of information on that because the good points were made and again when you look at all the specifics that you sent to us you know i'm just proud to be a board member here and that we're always always looking to do better which we all know we want to do because i think all of us as board members we want our teachers to be able to teach and and that's why we're here to support them thank you anyone else oh i'm sorry i forgot one more thing on the administrative guy dr moore thank you yeah i i'd too like to thank you for that um because that threw me for a loop
055as well um you know it used to be i'm so old it used to be shop and homec and the boys could take shop and the girls could take home act and we could not take the other so we've come a long way which is great um one thing that i did learn though from my father was how to change the oil in a car and how to change a flat tire and things like that and you know those are things sometimes you learn from your parents and sometimes you don't you know the school can't be all to everybody but we do need to offer some variety of things to really get kids excited if they don't want to go to college hey i might be excited to do this instead so i agree um
056cte needs to be expanded in middle school all right um i'd like to call for a motion then to approve the consent agenda items make a motion okay motion by mr rosario second second by dr jones any discussion all those in favor say aye aye anyone opposed 5-0 carries okay um so there was an item pulled from consent to action it was item 6n approval to set public date for um i believe it was the achievement gap oversight work group mrs rosario um yeah we talked earlier today about this so i encourage anyone who um did not listen to our earlier workshop me yeah she pulled the item i know it's mrs jones i know it's dr jones at the workshop but she pulled the item so technically roberts rules she speaks first correct okay
057she pulled the item go ahead i don't mind if she you want her to present it doesn't really matter i'm still going to discuss i think the attorney had something to say okay about the order yes i was just agreeing that um whoever pulled the item can discuss it okay okay um earlier today we had a discussion in our workshop in the superintendent workshop that this item anyway so if you did not have a chance to listen to that discussion please go back and listen to it my concerns with this policy is that a year ago in may it was brought to us to discuss a unitary sustainability policy which would address the work moving forward for the district and our commitment to the court order the desegregation order that we are under with the
058naacp the sustainability policy at that time in 2021 seemed to just be a rush to attempt to capture the work that we would be committed to after we reach unitary status we are not at unitary status yet a year ago we were not at unitary status we're much closer to unitary status now than we were a year ago and yet a year ago the push was to create this policy to begin whenever we reached unitary status today we are this what was the sustainability policy has now changed to become what we're seeing in front of us which is the achievement gap oversight work group in march the school district went to court correct me if i'm wrong dr moore and all of this on any of this the school district went to court as a
059follow-up to provide all of the data where we were the naacp was there and long story short the court uh ordered that we or stated that we met all of the requirements that were in the 2018 joint plan with the exception of two areas the first area was mentoring of new teachers and instructional staff and the second area was in student achievement so we have through the chair the judge did not make that ruling that was mutually agreed upon between the two parties gotcha okay so mutually agreed upon between the school district and naacp we met all areas with the exception of those two areas what also came out of that was a mutual mutually agree agreed upon work group that was purposed to utilize data-driven a data-driven approach to monitor and assess the school
060district's project that and it would essentially replace the equity committee that was that was that we had we had an equity committee for a few years and so this work group would replace the equity committee its function would be slightly different they wouldn't function in the sunshine they would function as a committee a group of community mind community that were selected some people that were selected from the naacp and the school district and they would look at and have been looking at the achievement gap i'm sorry not the achievement gap the work of the work group was to identify barriers to achievement for each section in the joint plan define and assess performance indicators and expected outcomes for each section of the 2018 joint plan and agree on the data elements required to monitor the
061progress of the district right now that work group is functioning as it was intended correct what this new policy does is it takes the idea of this work plan it includes portions of the desegregation order to say well what we're doing with the achievement gap what we're doing in the work plant in the work group right now it's working really well but why don't we make a commitment to continue this work for five years after we reach unitary status and not only will we look at just the african-american subgroup of students but we'll also look at everybody so we will turn it into an achievement gap work group for the entire district to show our support for the work that we are already committed to with the desegregation order and the joint plan my concerns
062with this current policy are several if you read the current policy there is mention in here what the purpose of the policy is and it it talks specifically about the desegregation order the board's commitment is slightly there's a lot of red line in there so the african-american mentoring recruitment representation all of that has been taken out the superintendent's commitment is in there as usual as as should be his commitment and then there is monitoring of data to make recommendations and it brings it back to the joint plan but at the end of the day the work of the achievement gap oversight work group in this policy is different than the work group that is happening today the only thing that remains the same in this policy is that this policy doesn't take effect until we
063reach unitary status so again we don't know when we're gonna reach unitary status we could reach unitary status tomorrow or 10 years from now and so we would approve a policy that wouldn't even go into effect it would remain somewhere in our policy place and just sit there and would not even be a policy that would be active and ready to work on and move on and attend to right now which to me is the job of the board member as we read in statute is to approve create and approve policy that the school board will adhere to in the moment not in five years or five months or at a later date what i recommended earlier today were a few things remove the african-american the desegregation order things from this policy and allow the
064superintendent to create a an achievement gap oversight work group to function today to address the achievement gap as we saw up on that screen there's a huge achievement gap that's not being addressed you can create a work group of your own right now tomorrow to address that achievement gap and it would have nothing to do and it would not impact the work of the current work group as superintendent you have the ability to do that and therefore we wouldn't need this proposed policy that doesn't go into effect for whenever the other thought that i had was to or change the this policy to only address the two items that we are missing and have it go into effect also right now i think my biggest problem is that we're approving a policy that doesn't go
065into effect until whenever is an issue for me last year when we talked about it being a sustainability policy if we approved it then right now we would have had a dormant sustainability policy and then you're wanting to now change it to an achievement gap work group policy so we would have had either two dormant policies or replace one with the other which you don't need it just create the policy when we reach unitary status when we reach unitary status then create the policy and what happens if the court comes back and says you don't need a work group you don't need an equity you don't need any of this we can then create our own policy to to promise to do the work moving forward depending on whatever the outcome is when we go
066to court so i pull this item um because i think we should have more conversation about it i'm not saying that the work is not important because i think the work is incredibly important i want to be clear about that i want to be clear that not approving this or not supporting this in the way that it is formed now does not mean at all in no way shape or form does it mean that i'm not committed to the work or that i wouldn't ensure that the superintendent would be would not be committed to this work um it's just this wording and how piecemealed it appears to me uh is not something that um i believe we should approve at this time thank you okay all right so i have an item that has been
067moved from consent to action i need emotion can i get a motion oh i'll make a motion sorry i need a second little okay i'm going to second it for the sake of other board members being able to have discussion okay all right so discussion at this time dr jones this was your item you brought up today would you like to discuss it yes i encourage everyone to take a look at the workshop where there were specifics that were talked about in case i forget any um you know we all up here at board members that are following policies from 10 and 15 years ago because they're still here and we renewed them now just to make a few things clear i am on the work group the one board member who serves on the
068dseg work group with dr moore mr seymour and dr shafty and then the naacp team a lot of work has gone into this work group digging into data every minute we start at the very beginning where our students come into kindergarten so we're hitting it hard and we're working hard um just a few things i remember i said earlier of the 67 districts in the count in the state right now six are in litigation we're one of those 26 have achieved unitary status and 35 just have never been in litigation at all if you take a look at the achievement gap uh several of those who have unitary status or not in litigation at all have a higher achievement gap between black and white students and we do and that is you can get it
069from the doe one reason i brought this forward and i believe dr moore did discuss is one of the reps of the naacp was that i think it's very very important that this board sets a tone if you will i've been in this district for about 40 years and we have never really put this in policy as far where we want to go this work group unitary status group will stay like that until we have unitary status that's a given but let's say when that gets done then we are going to commit commit to all of our groups our black students our hispanic students english as a second language economically disadvantaged i mean all of those groups and if you take a look at the charts yes we have improvement but we still have a
070way to go and what does this say if this board would memorialize us in policy to make sure that the work is ongoing we just okay we have unitary status put it on the shelf we're done the judge decreed it we're done is just something that i think we are saying to our community that this is important we want all children to be successful we want to make sure we have the support and resources to help those children because as said tonight not everyone's going to college we want to make sure that they will move on to the next journey again as i said earlier the this is enacted after unitary status and we're not contradicting the current work group we're the next work group would be similar to that because it seems to be
071working with representation so um i just think it's very very important for this school board to finally say this is important for all students and that's one of the main reasons i brought that up that's all for now okay thank you anyone else yeah doctor yeah i i don't we talked about this a lot this afternoon and i don't feel the need to belabor or repeat most of that conversation other than to say that what this policy does and what i think is dr jones intention and the intention of the work group in putting this forward is that this becomes a policy of the board it's not a court order it's not a requirement by some entity outside of this district or outside of this board but rather states and puts into both substance and
072uh symbol symbolism that this matters to us that this is important irrespective of what a court says irrespective of what is said outside of this body and for that reason i think it is important not just as a policy but to honor and respect the hard work that went into this the commitment of the community members who spent their time developing it and who believe it is fundamentally important for this board in this district to take a stand irrespective of what the court is doing or not doing that's it that's all i got mr barefoot you want to speak to it no i'd like to call for a vote oh i okay i wanted to speak but i i you know you call the question i i will defer if you want to speak okay
073could i could i just i want to make a statement all right so you know we have policies in case something happens we don't always put a policy in place because something's happening now we put it in place if something might happen so i see this is this um this shows i think good faith on behalf of this board and this board's been dealing with a dsec order since what 1950 64 and then 97 and 2018 there you go there you go so um you know making it a policy instead of a superintendent's procedure i think shows the board strongly supports the work that has been done towards unitary status i think that's a strong message to send to the court i think that showing good faith and coming through this with a different perspective
074is important to show that we're we're trying to do that so in that case i support this call the vote you'd like to call the question all right do i have a second i'm calling the question yes okay all right so i've called the question so we're going to a vote all those in favor say aye can we clarify exactly what we're voting on sorry thank you we're voting on um thank you for saying that because we were voting on the title of the item that mrs rosario brought up mr rosario would you like to state your motion you made the motion um yeah i i pulled it for just further discussion um but i don't have a motion to um [Music] no i don't have emotion okay i asked for first and you gave
075me the first yeah but i didn't make any changes i wasn't making any changes i pulled it for the discussion okay just for the discussion yeah okay so since we didn't vote on it during consent then we're voting whether or not to approve it right now it is up for approval correct okay we're voting on just just to be 100 clear we are voting on approving adoption of this policy or yes we are we're voting to approve the adoption of this policy it was pulled she pulled it for discussion we're voting on moving this policy forward for public hearing yes i'm going to go back to this date of 8 29 yeah yeah let me go back at item numbers 6 and the last the last one yeah it's 9b i'm sorry no the wrong
076one i'm sorry that was wrong okay so i'm going to read it off of here so on july 25th 2022 which is today the school board discussed the new board policy and requested to move forward with the adoption process the purpose of the new policy is to be consistent with present practice and and legislation the public hearing and adoption will be noticed for the regular board business board meeting on august 29 2022. okay all those in favor say aye aye aye aye anyone opposed opposed okay so it passes 4-1 to move for uh the august 29th meeting okay so that does not mean it's been adopted it means it's just been moved for um that date okay thank you all right action items so we have a public hearing to adopt the volume 22 number
077two school board policy all right this item deals with the adoption of volume 22 number two school board policy dr moore have you documented that this public hearing was properly advertised in accordance with state statutes yes i have okay we now recess this meeting to conduct the public hearing is advertised the public hearing is now in session dr moore are there any written responses to the advertised public hearing to be read at this time not at this time the public is invited to address this issue at this time is there any individual representing organization or his own personal or public interest who wishes to speak you don't have to have a form you can just come to the mic all right we have a public speaker please state your name into the microphone it's thomas
078kenny i'm tend to concur that there's a policy should be put in place so you have something to adhere to this policy will not be here too the good faith that a court will take sir are you are you referring to volume 22 number two squad i'm sorry i was listening you can speak to that policy only on this okay this is a public hearing for that policy right but you can explain that this is what we're voting what you can speak to now if you don't mind madam chair is a set of policies that were public and are now going to pass because all right i thought you were continuing what you were no no no go right ahead fair okay thank you all right so the the chair concludes that the announced public
079hearing on the adoption of volume 22 number two school board policies has been conducted pursuant to notice and the ample opportunities to address this issue has been provided to all anyone else want to speak okay so the board meeting the board meeting is reconvened at this time i like to call for a motion so moved second dr schiff second by dr jones any discussion all those in favor say aye aye anyone opposed okay this passes 5-0 all right we are now to the superintendent's report which is done which is done that is correct we move that one item forward all right we are to discussion uh we start with discussion a um because there was a desk discussion item added then we have a discussion item b so discussion item a is board commitment to
080focus on student achievement mr barefoot yes thank you um one of the things that when i came to the school board we had not had to deal with covid or we were beginning to deal with covid but it seemed that last fall when the delta variant was raging through the community and no one knew a lot and i think a couple of people referenced it tonight in their public comment um we had a a vote on masks and that vote stirred up a lot of controversy and um and when you when you think back about what the school board is supposed to do and what is its focus and we've talked about this in our workshops and trying to come up with protocols that would enable us to to act in the best possible manner
081there are three or four specific things that the board's responsible for certainly policy and we certainly spent enough time today in the past talking about policies we're obviously responsible for budgets we're responsible for oversight oversight of the superintendent evaluating the superintendent hiring and firing etc but over the last year in my view we have spent far too much time talking about things that are not consistent with what i believe i was elected to focus on and um and my biggest concern and the reason that i ran was that i felt that the academic results were not what this community deserved that the academic results frankly in the state of florida when you compare it to 50 states and this goes back a couple of years pre-pandemic we're not results that we as residents of florida
082should be proud of we were pick a number somewhere 40 42 all sorts of different rankings and if you think about indian river county and let's just take 40 as a round number we were ranked 40 out of 50 states and this district was out of 67 that doesn't say a lot about the average ability to perform of our graduates obviously dr moore came with a plan it's one of the reasons that those of you who are on board hired him and i think when you look at the results we've achieved on a relative basis it's impressive however if you look at it from an absolute point of view we may have done very well relative to others but it's nowhere near where we need to be and uh you know you can make numbers
083sing and dance um and i'm i'm i'm proud of the hard work and everything was done but i think we have spent um too much time focusing on things that are not resolved will will not result in improved academic outcomes so here we are starting a new school year and i would i my plea i guess you would say would be that the board meetings and our workshops focus on how can we offer suggestions provide support whatever the proper choice the words are so that our kids are better prepared in every way to go on and achieve whatever success they're able to achieve i think the comments made here about the trades just the use of broad term is critically important um i happen to be on a high school board in in vermont vermont's
084a little different than florida in many ways but the profile of the community is similar and a lot of the opportunities are in the trades elect electricians carpenters plumbing particularly in the environment where we're in now and we just actually created what we now call the an academy the bern burton uh technical academy we've got the branding of what this is is important and what it's enabled that school to do and one of the other long standing academies in vermont is to really pull in um the community businesses and adopt the idea they are they're part of an academy a real educational institution the focus not as maybe on on science or math but it's on the trades and we've we listened last year when we had the conversations uh about the uh the welding
085and the young man that came in here and said that i believe in if i'm a little off on the numbers but in his first full year i think his his income was eighty seven thousand dollars and somebody else had been added about a year and a half and his income was a hundred and twenty thousand dollars and i have a a friend of a friend actually the husband of a teacher at sebastian river high school is the general manager of ford here and we have dinner from time to time and he tells me that he's got eight young young men not to exclude women seven of whom are from sebastian river high school the other from vero beach high school and these kids come in a couple of afternoons a week and it satisfies
086their curriculum and they come in on saturdays and they get paid and they get paid whatever the minimum wage is which the last time i talked to it was 17 an hour probably a year ago was 12. and and according to him any one of these young people could do the job when they're finished graduating from high school and i believe some of them have just graduated capable of getting a job because they are trained under master mechanics and they will do very well and we know there's a shortage of workers in almost every industry dr moore and i had a meeting here a couple of months ago with dr rosenkrantz from the hospital and the ceo of piper and the number of open-eyed open positions were i forget the number it was a big
087number my point is that i think we have a responsibility to make sure that our conversations focus on academic achievement public education in this country and all the political noise around it for the last couple of years if we want to talk about national security concerns i think an uneducated youth should be one of the top couple of national security firms maybe not for necessarily our generation depending on how old you are but certainly for the future you can't fill the jobs because either people don't want to work or they're there they don't have the skills um there's plenty of open positions everywhere and i would like to for for my sake at any rate to commit to when we have workshops and we have discussions we really have the most of the conversation around
088improving academic outcomes so that our all our kids have an opportunity to be the best they can be down the road and the last the last point i would make it's it is a political environment unfortunately uh and there's nothing that we can do about it but you know i i i read an article the other day in the wall street journal i forget who wrote it but one of the points that this person said was politics is the art of the possible and when we stop listening it becomes impossible and i think some of the comments tonight from the uh the audience is there seems to be a feeling that everybody's now listening a little better than maybe was the case before so if that's the case i think that's great but we have
089a real opportunity here um i think that i want won't say refocus but put a stronger emphasis on the academic part of our responsibilities because i think that in the long run is going to make the big difference and that's really all i wanted to say okay any other board members like to speak dr schiff um thank you for that you know i'm listening also to a lot of this conversation about workforce education and technical ed and i want to say i am that parent i am the parent of a graduate from sebastian river high school who decided not to go to college and decided to go into technical ed he completed the dual enrollment program at treasure coast community college and then decided to get further education and welding by going to tulsa welding
090school in jacksonville first off shout out to tctc and principal shields and all of the other outstanding faculty there who i think when we need to acknowledge when we talk about the support in this district for uh technical education and workforce education um my son got a great education in technical ed and he went to pursue that further and in fact at tulsa welding school they are viewing him as a test case to see what he learned at tctc and how he can enhance that at tulsa welding school and are looking for him to be to showcase in that we'll see how that goes um i understand also dr moore we are expanding technical workforce education into the middle schools correct i believe we have had that conversation about how we're expanding it into the
091middle schools and further into our high schools am i remembering that correctly through the chair we gave a presentation to the board regarding the how we're drastically expanding cte across the district if you look at the opportunity for every student in our district to graduate with a dual enrollment ap course or career industry course that leads to certification that number continues to grow being very strategic in what we're looking at in our middle school levels looking at computer science things of that nature really trying to make that experience relevant for students so there's always opportunities to explore and look at how do you connect a middle school into a secondary school so we do a pretty good job with some of the visual and performing arts but significant opportunities to improve regarding some of the
092cte and technical programmings yeah thank you so i think we are doing that and i appreciate all the comments around it um but i also appreciate the work we're doing and i appreciate the work we're doing towards academic achievement as evidenced in your presentation earlier tonight to clarify to return to your comments mr barefoot um a couple of things one when we say focusing on academic achievement i want to expand that to include academic achievement and workforce preparation or success or whatever that is in the ways that we do that um or in whatever ways we can do that and i'd like to suggest that perhaps moving forward either in a workshop or another discussion session we talk about specifically how we're going to do that it's it's good for us to say it it's
093good for us to acknowledge it here it's good for us to be aligned in it but what we need is specific actions so that we are committed to those and when we veer off course from those we can call each other back in and we can be clear exactly what conversations we're having that contribute to academic achievement and workforce preparation so i'd like us to continue that conversation in a productive way at a subsequent um discussion session in the afternoon dr jones [Music] well i think each board member here is very passionate we're here for students we want students to be successful whenever a decision is made on my part in any action item or anything that comes before the board i think how does that affect our students our teachers and our parents because
094if we are doing our best for our students and teachers that will reflect and then our parents will feel good about it so all those things are meaningful to me i agree with mr barefoot and dr schiff has said and we need to look back at that career and tech presentation because they have a lot of specifics in that and i'll review on that too but i know they were expanding as much as they can and they look you can't just expand because we want it has to go through the doe and career and and all that we may want a certain program and they'll say nope so we we look at that stuff i guess my main question after uh mr barefoot brought this up dr moore how do we as board members help
095you get the job done that you are required to do what is it that you would say to us you know a lot of times you're just listening to us what would you say that you need as a superintendent for you your staff your teachers your principal support staff to do what we need to do unload the question um it is thank you through the chair i i think it's really looking at the district's strategic plan and being advocates and fully supporting that that's that plan uh having a clear pulse on the reality of what's happening in schools providing that information back what individuals will tell me versus what they will tell you are significantly different things and i think some of the conversations that we have behind closed doors regarding the relationships you have
096with parents with teachers with principles give me provides to me a great gauge on the reality of how the school system is impacting those people as individuals as well as community members and allows me to reflect and modify my practice or structure or system in order to ensure that we're continuously improving there needs to be an unwavering expectation um i i would say you know politics is is is one thing but we all can agree on children and providing the highest quality education to children um and we need to be unwavering in that expectation and i think what we've been able to accomplish in the midst of a lot of drama both because of the pandemic and because of other issues is something that we have navigated and learned how to do but always opportunities
097to improve be united uh support one another listen to another one another keep focusing on the work in order to ensure at the end of the day we are the literacy capital of america we are that district when everyone else uh is looking to come and visit okay thank you mr rosario do you want to speak to it yeah i have my notes here um the commitment that we made to academics dr moore i'm so glad you mentioned because i have stars here next to the strategic plan but how do we get their strategic plan the protocols that we have already in place talk about the strategic plan and academic achievement and getting students and having conversations around the academics around academics but that's not the only role of an elected school board member the
098elected school board member and if there needs to be a review statute 1001.42 talks about the powers and duties of a school board the powers and duties of a school board are tremendous but they are the oversight of number two here the establishment number one is establishment of the school of a school to serve attendance areas lying in more than one district and the plans for maintaining the school which in our case we have more than one school and providing educational services to students shall be affected by annual resolutions and so on and so forth there's also control of the school or schools involved the settlement of disagreements the settlement of disagreements the classification and standardization of schools the opening of schools career classes the district school boards may establish public evening schools that's also
099part i don't know if anybody knew that we could do that um ensuring high quality education for exceptional students designating personnel and positions to be filled having discussions around that standards of ethical conduct ensuring that there are standards of ethical conduct in ensuring that there is um support for employees and instructional personnel and professional development and as i'm i'm just scrolling down the list here student welfare courses of study and other instructional materials our instructional materials adoption process is part of our responsibility a transportation of students all of these things that come to us on every single one of our agendas come to us because it is it's needed for the board to approve it by way of superint by way of the superintendent that's why he meets with us on a weekly basis and
100we have a long list look at all of this list everything that's on tonight's agenda every single thing on this consent agenda has been discussed previously with us in individual meetings and brought to us at our workshop and here obviously because we have to vote on it so i think that we're already doing it and um i think we need to continue to do our work okay um i'll just say a couple things i i jot down a note about evening school i thought that we have that at treasure coast technical college so i asked um and we do we do some evenings yes they do yes not k-12 but they do do evening adult courses yes yeah um but not for current students not for k through 12. okay no not k-12 um there
101is some some of that so um i agree that in statute uh we have a lot of duties as a school board i'm not speaking for mr barefoot but i think what he's saying is now that we've gone through everything we've gone through could we get more on focus on academic results is that what you're referring to yeah there's a laundry list of a lot of things but i'm talking about that what the pr what i believe we need to spend more time at and i'll have one more comment to make when you're finished okay um yeah i mean the focus is on strategic plan and so as long as we focus on the strategic plan then those outcomes will happen and that i'd like to get back to the focus of the strategic plan
102okay uh mr barefoot the last the last comment i would make is and this is credit to ms emerson and tom lang we had a uh entrepreneurship forum back in whenever whenever it was february i believe january february and at the end of the day whatever you choose to do whatever any of us choose to do whatever these young people choose to do i've learned through the colleagues that i was president of and my own business career is an entrepreneurial mindset goes a long way to enable success in whatever you choose to do and people think of entrepreneurs as people who start businesses well actually um it's a lot more than just that it's a way of thinking it's a way of acting and i think that and this is a new initiative that miss
103emerson has started and is expanding in part on some of the trade discussions that everybody's mentioned tonight but i would i would encourage us when we're talking about strategy and how to implement or enhance some of the things that we've talked about and we could probably add a few more to the list that we keep in mind that if you approach it from an entrepreneurial mindset point of view putting more emphasis on that whole word build up the local ecosystem the ecosystem here is not what it should be there's not enough opportunity for kids that go to school that have all these different interests even if they're trained they leave at least that's been the case the county's growing that means the needs are going to increase and hopefully we can keep a lot more
104of our young people at home here and part of the answer to that besides the specifics of whether it's trade school or whatever college you choose to go to or university is how you think about what you're going to do and how you approach it and that's what an entrepreneurial mindset is so that would be you know one of the umbrella initiatives that i think we ought to explore more with ms emerson and some of the things and by the way the vera beast community complex which we haven't talked a lot about one of the things is the entrepreneurial student center and the programming i mean in my conversations for example with florida power and light they are prepared to provide content for those initiatives pipers prepare to provide content for for that initiative so
105there's a lot of things that we can do here and i think that's what i that was my purpose in raising this and getting the focus more on that and less on some of these other issues which have preoccupied too many meetings and too much time dr chip i one of the things that i think might be helpful towards that end is when we look at the strategic plan there's five key areas academic success equity culture and climate communication engagement talent development and support organizational and fiscal responsibility when we bring an item to the board either in disc doctor we have no we are now doing this on our board docs agendas but i think it is important for us to be rigorous when we bring items to discuss with one another or when they
106are brought to us in workshops that we are very clear exactly where on the strategic what they support in the strategic plan and that we keep the discussion focused on how it actually supports these particular objectives it will help uh keep us focused in our intention in bringing things forward as well as in the discussions we have so that when we veer off course we can all be cognizant to remind one another to bring it back to these five areas and the specific targets within them that would be one suggestion for how we might do that that's a good suggestion because our budget is aligned now according to strategic plan in guiding principles anyone else and it's it's it's actually it's right here on the strategic plan i'm looking at it on page seven and
107then there's 2021 targets i think we um should actually be moving into 2022 2023 targets which i assume will be an ongoing discussion but each of those will continue to keep us focused and reel us back in when we when we move on focus okay okay anyone else oh man all right thank you mr barefoot miss rosario you brought up another item and your item is about this dude i'm sorry there's a column i don't know oh it was a comment or a night for this just yeah just a discussion about the student and parent complaint yes so yes so earlier today we um we we didn't get a chance to talk about the challenges to the adoption we didn't mention that that was an item that passed during consent um today was the challenges
108or the objections to the library instructional materials so i'm happy that that's finally another one of the first steps moving forward in the process to review library books and align with the new statutes but one of the other items that is also new that also passed in consent today was the student and parent complaints now proposed policy 5710 one of the citizens today mentioned it during her citizen comment and so one of the things that i just wanted to make public um even though i just bring it i guess i'm even though our earlier discussion session talked about this in detail i remember when when we had these discussions from the diocese to be completely transparent with the people who are present with the citizens who are present and now we have these discussions during
109the day and people aren't present and then they have to wait until they hear the discussions later on and it kind of um brings makes me feel a little like we're not being completely open with with citizens when it comes to new policies such as this one and because it is it's really connected to the new parents rights and education bill and another bill as well that that passed i think it's important that we have an open discussion about it at our business meeting this evening which is why i pulled it there is an exception to withholding of information on page two of three of it um that i just wanted to uh reiterate what we discussed earlier today um and again dr moore by all means just interrupt me if i say anything wrong
110what we discussed earlier today was my concern over the the wording that is in here that states that um the entirety of this new policy basically just says that we are not prohibited or we cannot withhold information from parents that's that's really the sum of it we cannot withhold um issues relating to a student's well-being or academics from a parent and we have to make every good faith effort to contact the parents by telephone or by email or by any other means to engage the parent in the education and upbringing while the education of their child but then there is an exception there that says notwithstanding the above school personnel are permitted permitted to withhold information about a student's mental emotional and physical well-being health or well-being from a parent if a reasonably prudent person
111would believe that the disclosure would result in abuse and abandonment and then it goes into the reasons or the the state law that actually mandates um educators everyone in the school system to be a mandated reporter um which is which is necessary right we we absolutely need that um but my concern earlier today was what is the district going to do to ensure that there is a distinction between god bless you notwithstanding not withholding information from parents altogether and assuming that there is going to be abuse or presuming that there would be abuse and then therefore withholding and so anyway we had that conversation earlier today as a result dr moore reiterated the importance and and mrs dan pierre did too the importance of ensuring that during professional development and training and dr lewis as
112well who is here during uh develop the professional development and training of uh teachers and guidance counselors and everybody kind of coming together at the beginning of the school year that it there is going to be a clear delineation between that that it's going to be understood that the overall emphasis is on being completely transparent and open with parents and involving parents in every aspect of their child's educational academic and mental well-being but also protecting students from obviously from from being in a potentially abusive situation which we certainly do not want but that was part of the discussion so i really wanted to have an an opportunity to share that publicly because i know that a lot of people were not here during the day and i'll i'll pass it i'll give it over to
113you dr moore after of course then the other thing was to publicly thank um ms dampier and miss lewis because what what is going to happen uh also combined with this was the discussion of having a um checklist ensuring that we were providing parents with an opportunity to uh kind of have this portal this focus portal or this portal on focus that would allow a parent to opt in or opt out of mental health services and health services mental health services and health services kind of like an a la carte menu checklist so if a parent now has the opportunity of saying i do not want my child to have guidance counseling services check no i do not want my child to have group counseling services or whatever it would be check no or check
114yes i do or i do not want my child to have uh screening you know or often yes check my my child's eyes there's scoliosis screening and eye screening and hearing screenings and those kind of screenings so all of this is going to be in one place the nice thing about that is that we're kind of capturing all of the requirements that are provided in this new law which is there's multiple there's 1557 uh and there is also 1447 as well but mostly 1557 is that right yes um so we're capturing it all in one place to because part of that law is to that we are required to provide an opportunity for um parents to give permission for these things and one of the ways of doing that is through this kind of portal
115where they can check and look at everything that there's going to be other things that are going to be on there too so that's a good thing that's a definitely an opportunity moving forward from what i understand other districts do not have this process and hopefully we would be the first where other districts might be able to kind of look over at indian river and say great job we want to copy what you're doing some have started majority have not but some have okay so we will be one of the few that have started but dr moore i'm just going to turn it over to you if you have anything further to say about this i appreciate that i i really don't i am extremely confident that our our staff has a deep understanding as
116to when something should be reported when it should not be reported and not using uh any excuses or wonderings or considerations to say uh or assumptions it's very clear so there are opportunities and i can speak firsthand from a counselor this is hard information to share with your parents but let's figure out how we're going to do it so i do not see there being any implementation issues with this specific policy as it is written all right any other board members like to speak to that okay i do know um a lot of that language is pulled right out of the statutes yeah so um i thank you for following exactly what the statute says all right with that we are to school board member matters who would like to go first i'll go okay
117dr jones four members we just received this in our box classroom emergency manual when i watched the presentation that milo thornton john teske gave it's on video for you to look at it and then when i was at the principal and assistant principal meeting they talked about giving these to principals and i think it's really good information that kind of ties everything together for the schools in case of emergencies um i haven't met a long time i went to the drone camp at sebastian river high school the shark entrepreneurial tank at vero beach high school kind of out of the box if you will for summer school and i really enjoyed them went to the last mcam meeting in june it was well attended uh the assistant principal and principal startup on friday there was
118a lot of good energy in there and just like i said to dr moore you know what can we do to help you because we want our teachers to be able to teach and our principles to do their job uh we did have a meeting very beach high school on the joe graves it was after the last june meeting and then the open house i think it is august 27th to see what's going to happen there but there are a lot of good uh comments from citizens around vero beach high school area and i think that's moving forward very positively a very special thank you to mr fagan and his budget team and and uh you know we go i go through those things and take a look at it anytime i ask him a
119question it he answers immediately and i thought the summary sheets that we could share with our public and so forth were really good especially what is it really going to cost the taxpayer depending on the property value i mean that's what i always look at on my tax bill and you know as i said this a little bit earlier but as we begin the school year teachers come back soon and then our students again i want to thank you for what you do for our students on a daily basis your job is very very challenging i know we still need to hire around 38 teachers i think it is i think right now the state is down to fort meeting 4 000 teachers it was just 9 000 a week ago so just a very
120special thank you for everyone doing their jobs in public education it's a lot of hard work and i'm very proud of you thank you okay we'd like to go next doctor yeah i really i don't have anything to say i've been out of town and out of the country most of the time since our last meeting so um don't have a lot to add that's it all right mr bear okay no thank you rosario i'm excited to start the new year i'm excited for the work that is currently underway with um the re-engage training that uh is happening with our staff in the the school district leadership so i am hopeful that we will start the new year with no controversy with no issues and it's going to be a good year okay um yeah
121fagan's team rocks so good job um summer school programs were really interesting because you know it was an academic focus but all the kids seem to be having a great time even a child that was writing writing writing and said i don't like to write but i am enjoying this so i was impressed with that um i stopped by reignite last week and you know when you put on twitter pictures of people and survivor outfits and having fun and horsing around and that sort of thing everybody thinks it's a big party that we're paying people to go to um you know it wasn't that it was it was really focused on the work and on what we're going to do this year and focused on the strategic plan i saw the strategic plan out there
122and and front focus so i appreciate that treasure coast waterway cleanup was this last week now i've done the beach cleanups before but i've never done the waterway cleanup and i did it on saturday i couldn't believe how much i collected in just two hours but um what i noticed is first of all a problem with the i'm gonna go talk to city council about the garbage cans or too close to the mangroves but um i didn't see any groups out there i didn't see any it would be nice because it's right around this time if we did it next year with the school teams to get get teams out there to do that it's cleaning up the the mangrove lines and the parks in our on our lagoon area and they only had a
123couple of areas because they didn't have that many volunteers so it'd be nice to see if we could possibly get involved in that and make it a true that would have been perfect for survivor by the way um i got really beat up in the mangroves but it was it was still you know worthwhile to do um with that i have nothing else other than i'm looking forward to this school year i think it's going to be exciting and hopefully we'll get everybody hired in time and i know you're working hard on that and people are interviewing like crazy right now because they were in reignite last week so appreciate that all right at this time it's superintendent's closing just uh in in closing i think a lot of people assume that a school district
124is taking their vacations and resting and relaxing during the summer it's actually from a district perspective one of the most busiest times of the school year and i can see as items went up and down i had staff go home and and rest because it has been an extremely busy summer but i can tell you the vibe at the district in terms of its focus its ability really to connect and work with one another align align to clearly define priorities there there's a momentum growing here in in in this district as you looked at reignite last week that planning was intense you know you have a a great pd when you say okay it's lunchtime and they continue to work you know you have a great pd when you say okay it's time to go
125home and no one leaves so the focus in what those teams are problem solving together teachers assistant principals principals and counselors all sitting at the same table saying this is our outcome from last year these are the issues that we can address and let's create a plan to communicate that to the entire school moving forward so i'm very excited about the work that's been done over the summer your school year will be very very similar to your opening and we have more than enough bus drivers we have more bus drivers than we have buses you you reference the number of open positions this friday every principal will have a clearly defined plan regarding uh what certified instructor will be sitting um in front of those students on on day one uh miss christophole will be
126going school by school to go the opening school checklist are the grounds done are the hallways done uh the appropriate signage up in classrooms are they print print rich do you have your opening and closing the schools it's like a four or five page document um but we're really looking forward uh to a smooth opening of schools this is almost three years for me and i'm yet to have one uh so it's very very exciting you see some of the you know principles i'm like well when's the other foot going to drop because they have been reacting to so many different things as they have come up to say that energy has been taken and spread them so thin that same level of energy can go so deep on this very few strategies that they
127will be able to implement uh this upcoming school year so you should expect as board members the community should expect a very high return on investment and i say uh i'll say that right now i'll say it throughout the year and i'll fully acknowledge the game changes next year we're moving to new standards the elementary school grade was made up of seven different components 700 points they lose 400 of those points next year they only have proficiency in math proficiency in reading three and above in reading math and science that's it the bar has been risen we do not have learning gains we do not have lowest 25 percent uh it's strictly about making sure students are three four and five so even though the state has pushed the bar up we have accepted that
128challenge with great ease and looking forward uh to ensuring the district is in a the percent of a schools a and b schools continue to increase and i can tell you now take you to the bank that will be the reality for the school district thank you okay with that i'm going to close the meeting 7 55. you