OCPS | 2022-03-01 - School Board Work Session

001good afternoon everyone and welcome to the orange county school board's work session which has been scheduled today for the purpose of discussing the following board policies policy overview and planning ijl library materials selection and adoption kec challenge materials policy ba school district operational goals bdd board superintendent relations bdf unitary status advisory oversight committee bdg school attorney legal services bg board policy school board policy process bgc review of policies the public will not have an opportunity to participate in this work session to provide public comment because this is not a regularly scheduled school board meeting and no action will be taken taken and there is no pre-agenda period during which the public would normally address the board on germain topics that are not related to the matter at hand thank you for being with us this

002afternoon as a reminder face masks are today officially optional and we have i believe all members but one present but let me go ahead and take a roll call not present all members but two present and i believe member caster dental will not be able to join us due to a family emergency so let me do a quick roll call member gallow are you on the line with us hi madam chair i'm here thank you remember lopez okay thank you will oh there you are remember lopez we're just doing a quick roll call good afternoon afternoon i'm here good afternoon remember cobert good afternoon remember gould good afternoon member felder good afternoon and as i said dr castro daniel is not joining us vice chair bird good afternoon chair and of course i'm present i

003want to remind the public that board members will not be engaging in outside electronic or digital communication during the meeting so we can focus on the meeting itself to my fellow board members district staff i'll remind everyone who's going to be speaking to speak directly into the microphone and now we will begin our meeting with a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance and i would urge everyone in the chambers or who might be watching us to keep the people of ukraine in their thoughts and prayers during this extremely extraordinarily horrible time so and now for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right i am

004i read off the policies that we're going over today i do want to acknowledge before we start that it's a very aggressive schedule we are not expecting to make any final decisions here today this is just a work session but it is an opportunity for the board to discuss these issues and get some sense of where the board is and where we need to focus our time i also want to point out we do have two board members who have community meetings already scheduled for this evening and we'll need to be leaving here by 4 30. so i wanted to make sure that we are realistic in our expectations we will get as far as we can get and with that dr jenkins you're recognized thank you madam chair as you've already mentioned this is

005a time to go through several of our policies as you were reading the titles i will also mention there will be some opportunity for us to determine if we keep that lettering system i know how cumbersome it feels at times that can be part of the discussion today as well if we get to it before general counsel involved begins i want to commend her for finding the road map if you recall we were talking about we had it in training with fsba we wanted to put something on the website so folks understand in general the difference between governance and management and so we found the road map that we will add to the web page as well but i want to thank her because she is responsible between her and mr howard actually found the

006fsba document for us that's an a wonderful cover for policies you have work to be done so i will hand it over to general counsel involved thank you members of the board welcome we are going to talk about school board government governance this is actually the road map we're trying to figure out the best way to depict how things work and so this is a really good image from fsba hang on technical yeah perfect thank you sorry this is a really good pictorial depiction of what is so governance the school board is on the left and on the right is the superintendent authority so the board authority is to adopt vision and goals to adopt policies and to evaluate outcomes and that's the oversight of management and then it circles around at the top to

007evaluate progress implement operations and develop plans and regulations and that's management and that's recommendations on the superintendent and it goes around in a cyclical manner so if it was only that easy that would be great and we just had one side and one side of the road but it's not it's all intertwining you have many different roads sometimes there's things that cross over there's many statutes there's your policies there's rules that govern how everything is supposed to work so anyway but we thought this was a pretty good pictorial representation to start with today we're here to talk about the policy approval process i've provided you all with a hard copy of a packet it has our school board governance page on the front your next pat i think a lot of times what we've been

008having is how do our policies get adopted i know you all know that too but i think it's a really good time to go through how those i think the last policy pro presentation you had was probably a year year and a half ago i think miss fernandez did one for you so i thought it was important to bring it back and i also put it into i think this needs to go on our website as well just so everybody understands the process that it goes through this all follows chapter 120 of the florida statutes so it's all required so the first step in a policy approval process is the identification and it's either the school board we'll bring it to our attention or the superintendent will or i will we'll identify new policies that

009need to be created in response to legislation or existing policies that need to be revised our office at the office legal services we facilitate the policy approval process and we work with the cabinet member who oversees the areas that are in the policy and we work with them to determine which staff members will help us in the policy or vision process there's sometimes there's multiple cabinet members involved so we have a big a bigger policy revision team so then step two the policy revision team we create a proposed policy if it's a new one that's required and or we review existing policies and when we're doing that when we're looking at existing policies we have a checklist that we follow and a lot of things we look at is technical changes formatting spelling grammar terminology

010consistency we're going to talk about that in one of our upcoming policies you know it's important to once assign it kind of like in a book when you set forth the characters make sure the characters stay the same and they have the same names throughout the entire process we look for substantial changes we want to make sure that the provisions are added or clarified to make sure it's clear lately we've been adding some headings to each of our sections and then we also look at all the specific authority the laws the rules the statutes everything that govern to make sure that they're clear and that all goes into the policy revision process once the policy revision team works on those redline processes we work with legal services takes a review of it we present it

011to cabinet those red lines and get practical feedback from cabinet members onto what this policy revision may what kind of implications it might have across the district cabinet is very good to provide some impact and feedback and they look at it sometimes when you're revising something you get so entrenched in the weeds that you don't realize it doesn't make sense so cabinet's a really good sounding board to go back and forth with the policies to let us know whether the policy revision proposed policy revision makes sense once we do that a work session so work sessions we bring to you if it's a new policy that's being proposed or if it's an existing policy that needs some further input and further direction so today we have a work session work sessions are designed to have

012the board meet with staff to tell us what you want us to have the policy say so that's why we're here today work session we look on everything we'll we'll either schedule another work session for the policies or we'll the changes will make the changes if they're simple enough we'll make them and we'll we'll move it forward in the process to rule the event workshop either way it goes back to cabinet one more time just to make sure that we're still clear with everything once it's approved by cabinet the office of legal services we prepare an advertisement and it's important to know this is this all this process is governed by chapter 120 so we have to follow all this if we know we want to put the advertisement in the paper on sunday we

013have to get that orlando sentinel by wednesday we advertise a minimum of 14 days after the advertisement for workshops and a minimum of 28 days after the advertisement for the school board meeting so that's why it's so far out when you see it on your schedule you'll say gosh we had a work session a long time ago but now what are we waiting for because we actually we usually advertise for a little bit longer than 30 days because depending on when the wednesday and sunday fall i wanted to let you know too that just so you know for advertising it's all required by the statutes but just so you know orlando sentinel from july 12 of 2021 to january 24th of 2022 we spent fifteen thousand seven hundred thirty dollars and seventy five cents on

014advertising for policies so it's very expensive but it's required by the statutes so roughly about thirty thousand a year with orlando sentinel fur but like we just discussed in a lot of our legislation sometimes they haven't caught up with the different ways that we could advertise we also put our policy revisions on the website as soon as we do them and there is a once we advertise we send it to the union in the very very back of your packets there is a settlement agreement from scoot down real quick there's a settlement agreement from with the cta from february 13th of 2014 that requires the board when recommending revisions to the district grading policy attendance policy and our code of student conduct to provide cta with written notice prior to the presentation of recommendations to

015the orange county school board so we actually do that but not only do we send notice for this to the cta so they can pass it on to their memberships but we also forward it to ospa and we also put it on the website so they're all available for that and those when we do our red lines you've seen the red lines we put those on the website so everybody can see them moving forward to the rule development workshop that's the public's first opportunity for input and someone will present the policy during that usually using a powerpoint presentation and then we get public input and or further revisions from the board if there are further substantial revisions we start the process over and we have to re-advertise if we only have technical changes like let's

016say a word was spelled wrong or we need a comma somewhere or whatever those we can make after the rule event workshop and then we'll move forward to the school board meeting and at the school board meeting that's the public second opportunity to provide input and board can make any final changes it needs to then if it wants to as long as they're technical if they're substantive we have to start the process over and then the board does final approval for those of you that are visual learners sorry the fourth grade teacher and me thought that this was probably pretty helpful we created a flowchart so you can kind of see how they go and there's some dotted lines that go back and forth depending on each one but essentially that's that's a policy approval

017process in a nutshell in your packets you also have a you have the statutory rulemaking authority they call it rules and you have that we call them policies if you're in a county you call them ordinances municipality calls them ordinances but at a school at the school level we call them policies but they're essentially your rules rules are all jet you can go ahead and read through this at your leisure everything is defined in both section 120.54 and 120.52 that we provided to you moving forward you have a very colorful depiction you had asked me to bring forward a plan for revision for some of these policies we have 222 policies if you were to revise all of them every year you would have to do 19 policies per meeting or per month if you

018wanted to put them on a two-year schedule you'd have to do nine policies per month and so you can see it's a very aggressive it's a very aggressive plan so what what you have in front of you is a color-coded version of which policies were last revised in 1993 and those are the ones that we're trying to get through you'll see a lot of them are very similar the b policies some of the b policies and everything there was a substantial policy revision that occurred in 2008 and you'll see a lot of those are all here in yellow well at least they're kind of yellow on my page and then they go further and they're all the way at the very end we have the ones that we have adopted already this year i haven't

019done a lot of policy adoptions this year just because we haven't needed to we really haven't had a chance to because with everything else going on so i'd like to kind of up that schedule a little bit more and get some more policies done this year so this is available so you can see all 222 policies and see what they are we have them broken down into the policy itself on the left what it is called and then the different sections that are in there too one of the one things that i want to do is revamp our website a little bit because you know when you go to our policy approval page you have to search through them they're not searchable they're not easy to find so we have some plans to make that

020a little bit more user-friendly one of the things that we can do is we can put them all into board docs as well i don't know if you've realized but in board docs there's a policy tab and a lot of other districts use their policy tab and we can do that as well but there are some things that i want to do before we put them in there because that's a huge project for someone to have to copy and paste and put everything in there so we have a couple things that i'd like to do to make it easier for the public to find our policies and as we do our policy revisions we're going to bring some of them to you and recommend that some of them be repealed or combined into one like

021today you're going to talk you're going to learn about two b policies that are about policies why not put them all in the same policy instead of having two separate ones for people to go to so that's kind of we're looking to combine i would love to have around 150 policies total because i think that's a little bit more manageable but you know with the legislation and stuff we might need to have some more so anyway internally just want to let you know we office of legal services each one of the policies assigned to one of our attorneys to work with the department in revising it and internally this is just a sample of what we use so you can see when the cabinet meeting was when the workshop is and on the left hand

022side we have our deadline so we know we have to do the deadline to board docs for the workshop when we do the advertisement we notify the cta and all those things i just wanted you to see that we do have a internal tracking mechanism for each of those so we know and these are your next policies that are coming up for revision some of them are on your policy calendar and some are not yet because the dates are they're just are hopeful ones to get to so this is where i need your help when you see any of these if there's others that you want us to take a look at please let us know so we can add them the ones with asterisks are the ones from 1993 so i'm trying to work

023those in there so we have them updated a little bit because i'm guessing that some of those things like student conduct on buses i'm guessing that has changed since 1993. so anyway so there's that's my presentation i think i got through almost everything today we have a number of policies for you actually do you want to can i stop is there any questions you have for me on the policy approval process okay all right so we're going to start with policy ijc i'm going to click out of this and we're going to start with mr dragon i believe is going to start with you i think ijc or ijl igel sorry okay thank you i mixed it with kec and i'm going to explain to you why we have all these crazy lettering systems as

024we get through our policies mhm the red line okay real quick four docks pull up today's meeting then you can pull the red line so here it is here thank you all right good afternoon madam chair members of the board and superintendent so there are two policies that i'm going to review with you today the first one is policy i jl within policy ijl this policy manages the library media and other reading materials suggestions our select selection process as far as any red line changes that were made to the policy there was only one which is in section two underneath the responsibilities for selection of materials in that section there it previously said school board and that was changed to to say board and then there were some very slight changes that were made as

025far as with adding a comma after the word program specialist but outside of that there were no other suggestions as far as formatting that were made to that policy so to go over the policy overall the policy talks about the objectives of selection when a library media material is being added to a collection and inside you can see in the subsection a b c d and e there how that the things that we've put forward as far as what staff should look at when they are going to select a new materials for their library underneath that it does have some responsibilities that should be looked at and then the criteria that should be used inside of that selection process finally towards the back there are some considerations that are placed forward and then a procedure

026for selection the only other change that was really made is as far as formatting is towards the bottom where it has a specific authority there were some updates made to make sure that the statutes that are listed are shown in numerical order but outside of that there were no other changes that were made madam chair yes dr jenkins just for clarity for the board the only thing done at this point are just the technical adjustments we are open to hearing the board's discussion around what you would like to see for potential revision staff has not made any such recommendations at this point i think it's also important to note as mr bixler reminded us yesterday there is so much that may come down after the legislative session that will direct this policy as well but

027it's a good time for us to start that discussion yes thank you dr jenkins dr jenkins you're correct currently as actually as we speak several house bills and senate bills are being discussed and so the thought process on this was to go through both these policies get up get your feedback and thoughts and then as these bills wind through completion and then we can take your thoughts on what what comes from the senate and house action and then incorporate all that together thank you okay let me we're taking it we're through with this policy right now take board comment thank you vice chair is there something else just me and you i was just looking for something i couldn't find it i want to just address the objectives of the selection in the first section

028and while i agree that all of those five reasons that are there are all good reasons obviously for selecting books i think being that one of our objectives in our strategic plan is the mental health of our students i think that part of another good reason to select books for our libraries is to enhance the mental health and well-being of our students and i don't really know i had an example of how that could be worded but i can't find it at the exact moment right now while i'm looking for it of course but something to the effect that would obviously you know children when they see themselves in the books or you know the issues they're dealing with you know may not have any specific you know curriculum ties but those are also important

029so i would love to see that be one of the objectives in this section as well for can you email that to me we'll most likely okay thank you thank you and following up on that perhaps we could work into that to support their social emotional learning and then include the language that you're talking about i think it's it is the one thing that seems to be missing in terms of selection of materials i have some questions on the paragraph the first paragraph under responsibility for selection materials erectionize we may be rewriting all of this but when i when i read this it says that the materials shall be selected by professionally trained personnel employed by you're going to change it to the board which may include doesn't say has to include but may include

030which means it might not include which means not really sure who it will include because it's pretty vague from that standpoint but not be limited to principals teachers program specialists and media specialists so if it's the goal to have those individuals then i would suggest we change the word may to shall but if that's not the goal i just want to make sure we're all clear that the sentence really doesn't say anything about who will be on there just who might be on there coordinating the selection of educational materials and recommending purchases shall be the responsibility of the professional trained personnel fine with that criteria for the selecting i was a little confused when i read it about who's actually responsible for the decision of what goes into the library so it says that the

031coordination or coordinating the selection and the materials and recommending purchase shall be the responsibility of professionally trained media personnel so i guess that's just a statement but at the end of the day i wasn't entirely certain of who is making who's accountable for making that final decision and you know what this might get addressed in the latest version of one of the bills i think the principal ultimately is going to be responsible so okay i also and i know this is going to be misinterpreted but when i under 2 a standards to determine the propriety of the library material and other reading materials shall be in accordance with 106.34 i'm not sure it would it's obviously here so it should be known by everyone who's reviewing materials and selecting materials but that does specifically preclude

032pornography any materials that contain pornography and i'm just not sure that's been abundantly clear and i'm not i'm pointing it out because it's it's in the law and whether we agree with what's in the law or not it's in the law so it seems like maybe we could be more transparent about that so that everybody that reads this but i would want to point back to that it comes from the statute right not that it's a board decision that because i think there's been some discussion of what level of pornography is okay at what age and the problem with that is in the law the answer is none but then the other problem with that is that whoever it was who said pornography you know when you see it wasn't living today apparently wasn't huh

033in the yeah i don't think there's any universal agreement on what constitutes pornography but i do think it ought to be more clearly spelled out here so that it's clear to everyone who reads the policy what is in the law and of course that's going to carry over to what becomes law fairly soon which we're all going to i think most of us here are going to have some consternation over but i think it's still better to have it obvious in our policies what we own and what is put upon us so with that i thought member covert i thought you wanted to be recognized i did but i think my comments belong more with the kec gotcha i understood all right let's move on to kec then real quick chair jacobs this has quite

034a few changes would you like us to go by section or you want us to read through with the whole what will be the best these are your technical changes correct yeah just go through all of them i think certainly so in policy kec there were more substantive technical changes but these changes were made to increase the consistency in the document more than changes to change the actual policy itself and so the wording was added to say that the school board of orange county establishes the following procedures and then you'll notice that there were some sections that were added because this policy really is in four chunks and so this or in in several chunks so the sections were added to make sure that it was clear as someone was reading it which part of

035the policy or which part of the process or they were in so the first one is the initiation of a challenge and one of the first changes you'll see there is that the word citizens is scratched and the word concerned is scratch and part of the thinking behind it is that throughout the policy there was a inconsistent way of identifying the person who was bringing forward the challenge and there was inconsistent terminology used to as far as naming the challenge in some places it was called a challenge in some places it was called an objection in some places it was called a concern and so the word challenge was chosen as the consistent term to use moving forward and the name individual was used as a consistent terminology moving forward to make sure that as

036you were reading it you knew that it was the individual was bringing forward bringing it forward and it was the challenge that they were bringing forward so that's what you see in section two i'm sorry in that first section of the initiation of a challenge really a lot of just terminology changes to make sure that there's consistency in identifying the individual and the challenge they're bringing forward another title was added which was the school literacy council and this leads now into the section that talks about the procedures at the school-based level of appeal and there were some changes that were made there to identify the folks that were that were actually notified once this part of the process was initiated previously it only had there the appropriate area superintendent but we do have some learning

037communities that have associate superintendents and we also have the chief of high schools that's over high schools and so we wanted the languager to accurately reflect who would be notified and then we also had that added inside of here that there should be a non-voting staff member to guide the process that is as we've gone through the district literacy council component a piece that we have found that is a helpful part of the process so that was added in there there are just some changes as things are being moved around to make it consistent as far as with the numbering and the lettering but as it goes down it does add in there in the section three here that the school literacy council would consider the specific challenges and that the non-voting member would help

038with setting the timeline and that was a change from where it just said it just said principle added inside of here which is added based upon expectations with that are going to with laws are going to come into effect is that the school the meeting of the school literacy council shall be open to the public however the public shall not be entitled to provide input at these meetings and so this is in line with requirements that will be coming in place in july that basically puts these meetings underneath sunshine actually mr actually mr dragon that's currently a requirement i apologize but i believe and general counsel need to research this i believe if they're under sunshine that you have to take public comment i'm quite certain of it we need to look into this hi

039madam chair i'm not obviously not general counsel but we've looked into this so when we looked at this obviously a decision could be made at any one of these various places to to turn down a book so that's why we decided to be open to the public but we didn't think that public comment was appropriate at either the school or district literacy council level because eventually if it got appealed high enough it would come before this board under the current version of the policy and when it comes before this board obviously there would be public comment because it would be an agenda item at which point the public could comment on it we have not seen any requirement anywhere else in the law with respect to having public comment at these lower level councils okay

040we have following following that the finding is a matter of public record and that the transmission of that finding would be to the area superintendent the associate superintendent chief of high schools and that the principal would inform the individual that put in the challenge and also that in writing the associate superintendent of curriculum would also then inform the superintendent and the board in writing of the decision most of the substantive updates that were made there were updates to make sure that the titles that were listed were titles that were in line with the titles that folks currently have then a new section there the title the district literacy council added in there is the updates that were made again to make the language consistent such as calling the end calling the person putting in the

041challenge the individual instead of a complaint and then although there's a strikeout of the part that says that the committee member shall not be selected from the school where the challenge of the materials originated that would simply strike that from one because it was moved down to two just to make it flow better but it was not a change to to remove that from the from the process there in two it goes through that process of the district literacy council and it also adds in that designation of the non-voting staff member outlined in that section three is the liberation of the challenge materials and inside that deliberation it though it just changes again to make the language consistent and again the language there to say that it will be open to the public the language

042there in five this was changed and it was changed to make it also match the language that from above with the school literacy council as far as the folks that will be informed of the decision the decision the associate superintendent of core of curriculum will be the person here making the in informing the individual that put in the complaint and will also be informing the superintendent and the school board and then finally a new title was added but the section is still there on the appeal to the board and in the appeal to the board there is changes that are made there to just make it flow better as far as saying that if the if the individual disagrees with the decision made from the district literacy council and it's not satisfactory then it comes

043to the board for review you already have the school literacy council decision that's part of the written record that's already been provided to the board from when that decision was made so that was struck from this section is because it would not need to be provided again and then the major changes that are underneath as far as the specific authority again that was made to take the statutes and put them in numerical order and there was not a need for laws implemented because those were the statues so that was that was struck out from underneath the bottom mr pixel you open for comments all right thank you remember cobert you're recognized thank you madam chair i'm and i'm uncertain if this is the right place to bring this up but i think it is because

044its concerns about instructional resources i am wondering if the board would be willing to consider an opt-out option for parents where he they have three options some other school districts around the state have done this where they would either have full access to materials in school libraries as one option two a parent could flag on their students library card up to a certain number of books that their child will not have access to or finally the most restrictive access where parents would have to approve books that their child checked out i've looked at a couple of other counties flagler is one i think this might be a protective policy give parents some peace of mind so i don't know if this would could be rolled into this policy or would need to be a new

045policy but i'm wondering i'd like to hear the thoughts from the rest of the board thank you member coburn so remember gallo you're queued up next before i go to a subject another subject can we remember della can we stay focused on member covert and just take input from her thoughts and if so do you have any input you'd like to provide back to the suggestion yes madam chair i've actually been reviewing those counties as well i've intentionally looked at flagler because they kind of came out of the curve on it in terms of opting out and proposing what member covert just suggested i've actually sent some information to the superintendent i am in agreement with member cohort i think that we need to provide a parent opt out i think the parents have a

046right to choose material that they feel is appropriate for their child that's our right as parents but what they make considered to be appropriate may not be the same thing that another parent would consider to be appropriate so while it's i think this is a good way to make sure that parents have a say in what their children's reading without imposing themselves on other parents children so i'm in agreement with what member covert says and i'd like to see us review it as well all right thank you member gallow i have a potential revision or alternative to also put out there if i could put that on the table also just for input as we go through this because member gala i want to come back to you also on the issue of also giving

047the parents the more restrictive option of their their students can't check out anything without their pre-approved permission so i want to get your input on that the other i looked at flagler also one of the things i thought might be somewhat difficult and i really have not landed the plane in my own mind on what the best thing is to do and that's what i love about coming together with this board is sometimes when something sounds really good and enough of us hash it over it can sound really bad or vice versa so take this where it's coming from as a possible option would be for us to identify material that we think has a mature content and allow parents to elect that their children have access to mature content or don't without having to

048identify specific titles would put a great deal more burden on the district to identify what is mature and certainly dr jenkins we'd want to hear from the cabinet about what avenues and what resources are out there to kind of independently determine what is a mature audience but that would be another possible avenue for parents to have input not necessarily instead of what you're suggesting but perhaps in addition to so if i can put that on the table as well remember gallo you're still in the queue to answer the question how you feel about the what are now three different options you've weighed in on one the second one parents have to pre-approve materials and i think we're primarily referring now to media center materials and then the third being the district identifies mature and parents

049opt their children into mature materials or out of mature materials one way or the other your thoughts on those too thank you madam chair so i'm in agreement i like the mature content solution that you brought up i believe that was one of the considerations or the recommendations with the book that was just reviewed right that we were going to possibly tag it as mature content so that we were being very transparent to to the content of that book so i would like to hear from cabinet on how much work that would cause and an opt-in or opt-out on the restrictive books i you know i as long as you know my concern would be just books that are attached to curriculum because i believe that at some point in time if we haven't already

050we're going to get challenges on books that are used to meet standards or in our curriculum especially in english language arts and how what would be the process if a parent didn't want it a child there's child to read a book then would we offer an alternate book would they still be able to participate in the course work so how would that look like or what would that work would be one of my questions but i think these are all great recommendations i just you know i think whatever we do has to be extremely transparent so that parents understand the process what we're doing so that they can make the best decision for their student so you have an agreement i do want to circle back after we talk about these things just to talk

051about the overall policy because i do have some ideas on that as well thank you okay thank you all right let's go to vice chair bird and i'm taking everybody in the order that you all were cute oh okay thank you so much member cobert please thank you remember gallo i've seen that play out recently at my daughter's school where there was a book assigned that a parent was uncomfortable or did not want her child to participate in the lesson with that book and the teacher provided alternative books that the student could read and then write the paper on so that does happen and that is in my experience worked out between the teacher and the parent okay and let me i'm going to go to dr jenkins to to comment on these i'm sorry

052i'm also creating my own little chart over here to keep track of who's on first but go ahead thank you madam chair i was going to mention the same thing we have a provision if a parent finds a book that is a class assignment to be objectionable that the teacher will assign a different and alternative book or an alternative assignment so that's not unusual i think this is also one of those points as mr bixler mentioned a lot of the determination around parents opting in and out and helping with the selection of materials is what we're waiting to see come out of the legislative session so we would be preemptive to assume i can almost i could probably predict some of what's going to come out of the legislative session so it will be helpful

053for us to get guidance from there i do believe sometimes well-intentioned efforts by the legislature may cause untenable results or extensive efforts on the part of districts when they actually try to enforce them and so we will we will certainly give a look at what comes down from tallahassee member gala also mentioned wondering how much effort it would take by staff it's probably premature to indicate that some review of all of our books and determining which ones are of mature content will be labor intensive but it's probably too soon to say how much labor it would actually take to get it done and what expertise would be necessary but we can certainly have that simmering as we wait on the legislative session thank you dr jenkins all right let me go to vice chair thank

054you chair okay i'm going to answer the question at hand but then i have some comments about the policy i am in full agreement with the idea of letting parents opt their child out of certain books from the library because as soon as i heard that idea from other districts i thought it was a very good idea because we you know we have 200 000 students all of them from different families there is no way we are going to have a set of books in the library that every one of those families finds appropriate or wants their child to read it's just there's this and i think that the environment that we're in it's just going to continue being more divisive so i think the idea of allowing parents that are uncomfortable with certain materials

055or don't want those their children exposed to it they should have the right to have their child not exposed to it but at the same time i do not want to see those books out of the hands of children that need them so i'm in full agreement with that if i wish there was some kind of you know just rating system like for movies where they came out in their you know rated r or even television shows have tv 14 or whatever you know tv17 if there was just some kind of if there's any organization and i'm sure you know that's what staff will be looking at that does some kind of you know rating if if we could find one that's my only concern is then i don't want to see us start getting

056challenged as to what's going to be labeled mature and so if we could find some kind of just you know organization that does this already that it's that it's respected established and then we just use that as our guide i think that would take us out of the equation and make it make it easier and then my i had a question following up on member cobert when she said that you know the teachers will replace is that something that's just practice or is that in policy somewhere the teachers do that it's in practice okay okay thank you all right thank you again i am taking everybody in the order there in right now for comment on this and then i'm going to come back through because i know you all have other comments unrelated to

057this suggestion so member felder you're recognized to give us input on these three options that we're yes thank you chair first i'd like to thank board member covert for bringing to our attention some of the other districts and looking how they handle books i'm totally against censorship however having taught the number of years that i've taught in orange county and being an ela teacher having books that were questionable and as a teacher member bird i sent letters to parents explaining what the book would be entailing it's a book that i chose that had a section on side of me and i wanted the parents to know when they came to the first initial open house i had the book out i had answered questions i talked with them and of the what last 10 or

058more years that i taught the book there's been a total of maybe three parents who did not allow and i gave them a fresh alternative for the children for their child to read and it was just so it was such an easy task because it is important that you consider parents we are helping them but you must still consider that they do have the final word when it comes to their children however they are they their children are left to our control for seven and a half hours every day with the exception of saturday and sunday we have that control so it would behoove us to give them that opportunity i specifically like again we're going to have to wait until we hear from our state legislature in terms of how we're going to do

059a lot of this policy but i think if we're already on board in our minds as a board to think about if we have that option to give the parents an opportunity to choose and trust the teachers that we've hired that they will make feasible and rational decisions about books that they're going to read at the same time not getting in the way of any type of learning experiences for some of our children who may have the only outlet they have is to read the books in their english classes because they have been barred from school i mean from home to read or to to to even watch tv and so forth so i hope and i believe that because we're having this deliberation as a board i do believe that whatever we decide that

060it would be a good decision because the liberation discussion is important but i want to just stand on the record that having those three options that board member cobra mentioned those are some things that i'm in agreement that parents have that opportunity and then i want to leave with this the teachers that we've hired in this county they are intelligent enough to make a decision and to allow the parents to have some input i need you to know that i'm coming out of that environment thank you thank you member felder and one of the things i think your example of being very transparent with parents inviting them to the discussion rather than reacting to it is exactly i think why you had the success that you had and no i'm serious and i think to

061the extent that we can take that same approach and it reminds me of the feedback we've gotten from florida freedom to read the emails and the suggestions there about put the information out make it very public what's been challenged what the results are of those challenges and that will also help our parents if they're looking at what material might i want to look more carefully at they don't just pull up a list of books and see thousands of books but they have a place to go where they may want to say well if that was challenged do i want to do i want to think about that but i so i think with regard the first suggestion of parents identifying books i'm comfortable with that the third suggestion that if we could find a way

062and i like the point that was made i think it was i think it was vice chair about being the independent way of identifying mature content that it would be ideal if we could find an independent source and then and it looks like remember covert has pulled something up on her laptop i don't know what but it might be helpful based on the body language that i see coming from you and we'll come to you in just a minute the one concern that i have about the approach of allowing parents to pre-approve any material their students have the one concern i have is that we do have we have some very very busy parents and i'm not saying that all parents are busy and i'm not saying that busy is a reason not to be

063engaged but we have some parents that are extremely taxed and if you are a single mom or a single dad and you are homeless and you are just trying to figure out how to get your child into school the next day and to figure out whether you're going to sleep at a friend's house or you're going to sleep in the car deciding what books your child can read and pre-approving those books is just one too big of a burden now in most cases i would think parents would just in that case would just say just let my child read whatever but i would have a little bit of concern about a parent who's like in the absence of being able to approve they've given me this responsibility i'm not in a position to exercise it

064responsibly therefore better safe than sorry my child won't read anything so i do have a little concern about that approach for that reason alone and that's where i think the other approach of being able to say here's the general material in the library that is not mature content and do you want to opt out of this other material would make it easier on it's amazing how incredibly committed a lot a lot of our parents are and they have the ability to be there but but some of them don't and i don't want our kids to miss out accordingly so that would be my one reservation there let me go to member goals oh wait can can you answer your you pulled up something and there's a picture of somebody yeah so when the question was

065asked is there a national book rating system or trusted entity out there there are a few and i think that as we work through this potential addition to the policy that's where staff can help guide us there are some that review books and give it a rating based on age and we can also probably look to the american library association i think there are some entities out there that are doing some of this work thank you before i'm sorry before i recognize remember there was one other thing i did want to add one of the reasons i think that the suggestions are very valuable i am quite certain that what will come out of this is the ability for parents to sue and the district to have full responsibility for those legal costs and i

066think that the legislation is likely to be as clear as mud and hence there will be lawsuits and we will only find out what's meant by the law through court cases as a result of that i think what we can do to eliminate some of those cases by allowing parental input but as you all are all discussing doing it in a way with that parent is not not having control over all of the other students in the school just having some responsibility and authority over what their children are able to read will hopefully strike the balance that we're going to need to strike in order to be to serve all of our children well and to do it without unnecessary litigation remember gold so i would be in favor of the opt out and looking

067at you know the age appropriate i think that's in most books that i used to screen for my kids and quite frankly it was an opportunity to talk to them about usually timely content that was in the going on in the community or socially in the world and it was our opportunity to really open up the communication channels on that and i would never ever want to take that ability away from parents it's hard enough to get communication opportunities with your children about very pertinent things and that you utilizing a tool like that is often great the flip side of that is you may have a child that's not maturing as fast or as ready for some content that you don't feel would be appropriate yet for them and as a parent you should have

068a right to opt out of that content as member felder talked about and that's all about just great communication so i don't want to make it burdensome for the parent or for the team and i don't want it to be so hard to get books into kids hands or make them too curious about books that they we don't want them to read quite yet as parents so you know i think it's kind of like when you say don't look at that picture you can't help but to look at the picture because you it's just human nature so i think the easier we can make it and certainly the tools we have with canvas and all the online progress checking and reporting there's much more efficient ways now to be communicating with families about those books

069especially if they're in the curriculum built into the curriculum not just on the bookshelves so the technology's kind of caught up with this too remember lopez thank you thank you madam chair the the up towel i believe that we can not do it in every classroom for example because i'm thinking about ap classes for example if i think about ap literature we have a certain amount of books and nobody can obtain because based on the content of that specific book of that specific title they're gonna be evaluated to to receive those credits so i think that the policy should include something about if you know parents cannot opt out on these cases because of these reasons because in ap literature you don't have the choice of i'm thinking about my ap literature for example we

070have different type of titles but i can i can not opt out from the books that they're gonna be evaluated they have comparison even even if we think about this it's not only books it's also arts appreciation it's also it's so many things and involved in terms of i want to be political for politically correct but i can't but i think that we have different opinions in reference to the books we have conservative parents we have more progressive parents we're going to have a very difficult situation in trying to please every parent and i also think that it's going to be a lot of work for teachers when we have a group of parents complaining because they don't want his child or her child to read that specific book so now i have this alternative

071book no i don't like it either i want another one so this is another no no no because my so i don't know to to which extent we're gonna allow the parents to decide how the teachers are gonna are going to to teach i don't want to sound redundant but i'm thinking in spanish most of the time that's my native language so and also the terminology mature the terminology mature for me is kind of confusing because appropriateness make more sense to me in terms of age but the mature are we talking about also inclusion because the policy is not providing it's not providing the opportunity to be inclusive and respect diversity that's the way i see it maybe i am wrong but i don't i just see a very general policy but i would love

072to hear more from my board members absolutely that's certainly not what i think we're talking about but remember cobert you wanted to respond and then let me call on dr jenkins also i just wanted to clarify remember lopez when i brought this up it was with reference to the media center not with reference to curriculum the teacher's choice of books in the classroom that's where mr bixler was talking about that provision which is which happens on rare occasions but i was talking with specifics to checking books out of the library dr jenkins did you want to respond thank you i think remember lopez brings up a critical point and actually member felder had mentioned the same thing to me privately so there will be an issue because ap courses advanced placement courses are college level

073courses that our students are allowed to take and when they take the exam at the end of the year they can actually earn college credit recognized by most institutions that is a national curriculum by the college board and so we would not be able to alter that particular curriculum remember lopez i suppose what we'd have to say to individuals is if you want the advanced placement courses which will give you college credit you are agreeing to the prescribed curriculum you cannot alter college board's curriculum because then you won't be able to pass the exam it's a waste of resources so i suspect unless something different comes out of the legislature that there'll have to be some carveouts if you want a college-level course advanced placement course then you have to agree to their particular curriculum

074i don't know how you can get around that i'm glad you raised that issue mr bixler did you want to comment also i was jumping james and i have talked about this ms lopez you're correct depending on what kind of legislature you think about ap courses ib courses a dual enrollment courses so we'll have to navigate that as those things begin to come through and i want to i can want to respond because also the word mature content i threw that out that may not be the right word to use i think we need to figure out what that is but certainly it's not it was not my thinking i don't think any of us were thinking that subject matters wouldn't be that diversity wouldn't be welcome included in our library that's not part of

075the this is mature or this is i don't know what other term we might use but i think there is material that appeals to all types of diversity that would still be in the library and if not i think we're all going to have a problem so i appreciate you bringing that up because if that's what we ended up with as a result of our language so we need to make sure that we work through that to prevent that from being misinterpreted as again i don't know what the other i think there's i don't know what the other term would be but that's why we have a great cabinet to brainstorm this and see if they can come up with some other language all right remember gallo you're recognized thank you madam chair so just

076a few things first off i want to touch on on what was mentioned about current legislation going through tallahassee i agree and i believe it was you madam chair who mentioned that we're we're going to have to review it and that it'll probably play out in court and i believe you're right because i think if you look if you look at the bill in its current form it the intent of the of the bill is very vague people have asked a lot of questions in committee because the intent of these laws are vague and usually when that happens it's really hard to get clear guidance from the department of education because they're not the judicial system and they're trying to figure out intent along with us and so i think it's it's it's imperative that

077we do make sure that we are getting parents opinions up front that were very transparent i believe one board member mentioned about being transparent with the information when it goes through committee so that it's online i would love to see every book that is challenged the outcome on what that committee decided the verbiage i know that it goes to the school board that's some policy that it goes to the school board and then it goes to others with the district but i think that information needs to be posted on the website i think any any book that comes to the district level to be reviewed should be videotaped i understand that we may not be taking comments from the public but it should be able to be viewed or reviewed at home just in an

078effort to be transparent i have faith in our district committees but i think that the more information that we could put out the more transparent that we are with parents the better off they will be to make educated decisions for their students so i wanted to put that out there i also wanted to talk about the mature content i agree that maybe that's not the best verbiage to use but i know we could probably do like an age appropriate maybe like this is age-appropriate for 16 above i don't know if the information that member covert found online is that detailed where we can maybe put an age level of what's appropriate not appropriate so that it would be very clear that if you're under 16 14 whatever it is this content may be a little

079more mature for you and that would kind of clue the parents into maybe reviewing that before allowing a child to read it or maybe that would be a book that they would say well i want to opt out anything that's not on their that's not age appropriate for them as however we rank them and then i wanted to talk about the third the restrictive part i i hear what you're saying about that restrictive part about having parents opt-in chair and so i'm wondering if it would be better just to to create like a two-tiered system where parents are opting out given the choice to opt out versus opting in and i didn't know if if that would create even further problems so i that one is the only one that i would like to need

080to to malt over and think about a little bit more but other than that i just i think it's as transparent as we can be putting putting stuff on our website as soon as something goes through committee that we make that available to our community to our parents i think that in in these committees we need to have parents on the committees i know that we've listed in this policy who sits on the committee and what i didn't see listed as parent involvement and i think that it's important that we have parents involved in in this pro in this process and in the book review process so that's my comments for now thank you thank you member gallow vice chair byrd thank you chair so i just to add to what has been said i

081think that as you said chair parents are busy our media specialists are also very very busy especially many of them have to deal with the technology at the school as well and the computers and so i do not think that this needs to be something cumbersome it needs to be super easy and it and i agree with i don't want to see kids left out so i would be i don't like the idea of opting in to anything i think if there are parents that this is a concern that they have to be the ones to initiate the opt out and i think it i think it could be something relatively easy as member gold said we already have the you know skyward everyone there's an easy way to tag students we could even do

082it through that if we needed to and attach it to their library services where it just pops up on the screen you know when they go to check out a book and i as far as you know the policy and i think you mentioned chair the email that we got from the florida freedom to read there there is a policy a sample policy in that there was a sample policy in that email and it was titled resource material reconsideration policy and what they did is they got it from the new jersey library school association of school librarians and they adapted it a little bit and there were some things in that policy that i thought were really good it was way more detailed than our policy and i think that you know there's obviously some

083of it that i feel might be more operational instead of policy but but some of the things that i thought were really good was that it was very explicit to how you hit a parent would handle a issue they had so now it's kind of you know you i mean we say go to the principal or whatever but this was way more detailed it was you know if if you if a parent feels this way step one and this is what they recommended in this policy was that at first you start with your teacher or your school librarian and have a conversation and really you know our media specialists are so knowledgeable about these books and these resources i think if if we directed parents to go to them first with their concerns about a

084book it could be resolved at that level you know and so there's steps in there and then step two go to the school administrator and have a meeting with the school administrator it doesn't say directly to file the form and complaint have a meeting and have the principal has to set up the conference within 10 days and you know there's a lot of details about that then if you're not satisfied then you request an appeal of the principles or then you'd go through the committee and then they also very clearly identify who is on the committee and that's one thing and ours i think is it's a little a little bit vague i think we need to be a little clearer and they have the media specialist the principal one teacher not including a teacher

085if they're involved if it's like something a teacher is using one parent or legal guardian not the one bringing the complaint and one student representative which i also think is a great idea to have a student and then it goes and then it talks about going on so i love the way it's very detailed and there was also and i think it may have been member lopez that talked about inclusivity and there's a little section at the beginning of this policy that they sent us that says you know talking about the parent or legal guardian should use the following procedures but then it says challenge materials shall remain in the library just like we say but then it says no challenged material may be removed slowly because it presents ideas that may be unpopular or

086offensive to some which i thought was a pretty neat unique statement that kind of gives the impression that we obviously want to be inclusive of everyone and their different viewpoints within our district so anyway i think i sent that to you i'm sure you already got it from somebody else too but i really like a lot of those things in that policy so i would like for those to be reviewed too thank you vice chair i agree with you i think one of the things i loved about that when i read it was it started with a conversation we're missing the opportunity just to sit down have a conversation and i also i like that language about that you just referenced but i would also like to see the language i think it is in

087here but i was just looking for it the language that was in that constitutional challenge mr palmarini you're standing up so you'll know the language that you can't ban material from your libraries based on the content can you come to the mic i don't remember the exact language but i would like to see it in there because i it's important that it be clear to people that you might not like the content but pornography we're not allowed to have but content that makes some uncomfortable is not a basis for restricting a book to the entire school so the language that you're referring to is the board of education versus pico case you all have seen that it's the united states supreme court case that's the one that split four one four four people were for

088the constitution four justices for the constitutional holding four against and one in the middle who just said this needs to go back we don't need to decide it so but what that language said is our constitution does not permit the official suppression of ideas thus whether the petitioner's removal of books from school libraries then i responded their first member rights depends upon the motivation of petitioners actions if the petitioner intended by their removal to deny respondents access to ideas with which the petitioners disagreed and if this intent was the decisive factor in petitioner's decision then petitioners have exercised their discretion in violation of the constitution now remember that just got four justices so it's not the official holding but most of the cases do say that you can't just remove it because you don't like

089the ideas that are in the book but they say you can remove books if they contain things like obscenity vulgarity especially when in consideration of the age of the children involved right and even i recognize obscenity vulgarity pornography all of those are judgment calls i just i think it's important that somewhere in here we incorporate the idea that it's not when the part of the decision-making is not based on comfort level with the ideas because that goes to the diversity point that you raised that i think we're missing in this and we all know what we're thinking but it's if it's not in writing we don't know what somebody down the road is going to think we were thinking and it could be misinterpreted one thing that's missing in here there's a lot of detail

090in who's i'm sorry that was from new jersey was it yeah there's a lot of detail and we generally try not to put that much policy or detail the policy but i think that our policy could reflect that those that details need to be what would be the form that you would what would be the term for it that you would put those details in your procedures but one thing that isn't in i only think it's in their procedures is i don't see any time limits am i missing that because it does seem to me that if you appeal i mean if you file a complaint if you're the individual you're not the complainant you're the individual that there ought to be some expiration on an appeal process yes there was it could not a

091book could not be appealed within five years couldn't be appealed within but that was what wasn't clear to me is so you got turned the book got put back on the shelves say at the school level i don't think in our policy there's a period of time by which you have to you would have to make a decision to appeal it to the district or it or the appeal or the complaint just what's the word terminates so i think we should establish a time i don't wanna i don't want three years later somebody come back and say i'm going to appeal that and they're yeah and again i don't believe that needs to be in the policy but i think the policy needs to create the authority for the superintendent to develop procedures like the

092legislature could have done for the governor when it came to mass mandates for our students which they ultimately did but not in time so let's put that in our policy up front let's go to dr jenkins do you have anything else madam chair i only had one question i was trying to take copious notes and when member gallo if she's still on the line mentioned a two-tiered process she lost me there i wasn't sure i captured what she was thinking about when she said a two-tiered process that was my only question yeah let's go back to her because i was also trying to and when it came to remember gallo i think i know but let's go back to member gala remember gal are you still with us yes madam chair so what i was

093referring to is i know that remember cardboard had listed like three things and i so when i was referring to like the two-tier process i was really referring maybe we just look at one and two and i wasn't sure how i felt about three the more restrictive piece okay so i have them as i have the numbers differently but we have the least restrictive of the restrictive which would be the parent identifies specific books the most restrictive is the parent doesn't allow any checking out of books without permission in advance and the middle ground being that the district in some way identifies books of certain age levels and parents then can opt their children out of certain age levels that they might find inappropriate or opt-in which i don't know if we ever landed the

094plane on opt in or out opt out okay so your your question was on the one that the parent that children couldn't take out any books without first having approval from the parent right yes that was the one i had issue with just for some of the reasons cited yeah by other members it seems very restrictive and i think an opt out policy would be more beneficial gotcha okay and less restrictive yeah i wouldn't say that we have necessarily five votes on that but i think there's some common degree of concern around that approach unless we handle it differently okay we are finished with this subject for the time being we're not finished but we're finished for the time being and let's move on to the next policy mr palmerini i saw you stand up

095yes sir so just as as food for thought when we're doing this when you talked about maturity probably would be best to track the statutory language in 1006 28 where they talk about well the materials pornographic prohibited under 847.10 is not suited to student needs and their ability to comprehend the material presented or is inappropriate for the grade level and age group with which the material is used that way you're tracking directly what the legislature is stating would be the criteria upon which a parent could choose to challenge some sort of material okay thank you i'm sorry i thought you were suggesting that you could opt in to those books no no i was just saying when you all said mature yes and that wasn't the term you were looking for i was going for

096hey let's this is probably the way to phrase it and it's compliant with the statute yeah what we were talking about is if we were going to give parents and you and i discussed this the option of here's gp material and here's some more material do you want your child to have access to that or not that's where i use the term mature and the question is mature right so i don't know what the term is so like if the lie so like if the publisher of the book says for example this contains mature kind is that what you're referring i was referring to that because i know that sometimes they refer to adult contact content or mature content and we're kind of wrestling with is that the right terminology and basically we're remanding this

097back to the cabinet and the superintendent to give a lot of thought to what they've heard from the board and come back to us we've got some half-baked ideas doesn't mean that they're not good in a sense of half-baked it's just that they're not finished literally half baked not figuratively okay and your job is to not only finish baking them but make them delicious when we're done remember gallo you're recognized thank you madam chair i i think before we move on that i wanted to bring up the imb policy i know it was one of the things that was mentioned in the florida freedom to read i think that policy kind of goes hand in hand with kec and ijl in the form of how it's written and i think we need to look at

098that and reviewing that policy as well so i just wanted to mention that thank you member gallon i'm glad you did this is timely for us to to have that discussion i did check with ms embal to make sure there's no reason we can't have a discussion this would not count as our work session in terms of if we were going to make any changes we would still have to go through this process again and start with a work session but it's certainly appropriate for conversations so mr bixler is jumping out at the mike here and ms emball is at the podium as well i'm explaining because remember gallo is not here with us present yes chair jacobs this guy was correct there's there's a couple of policies one of them is imb and the

099other one is actually ij that deals with the allocation of instruction materials and some of the statutes that are being discussed now at the legislature will impact both of those and so miss embalming i talked about was we'll begin to once everything is passed and voted on and we know the outcome we can maybe look at combining some of these policies together and streamlining them instead of having four maybe narrow that down so we do understand the imb and ij will need to be addressed also we'll bring those back and work on those as well all right wonderful and you know one of the things that we might consider doing because we're going to decide whether we're keeping the system or not i understand the value of the system from the fact that other districts

100use this and everybody knows where to go but perhaps we can find a way to code them so that people that are looking at them from the outside can figure out what policy might i go to to find some of this content so that we're not stuck with something that feels a bit antiquated but has value so maybe a translation mechanism of some sort all right we're ready to move on remember i'm assembled did you have anything else no okay thank you all right ready to go okay please hold while i switch back to the other red line and remind me to i need to announce the executive session at the end please remember to do that oh yes i can do that now if you'd like let me remind you to announce the executive

101session before i forget i have i have my blue folder out here so i'm hoping it reminds me when we're done why don't you announce it now i can announce it now i'm just going to try to find the for me i know okay because i've never forgotten okay i'm good because that's pulled up okay so let's take a little take a little break squirreling a little bit i need to announce an executive session pursuant to section 286.011 subsection 8 florida statutes and in accordance with board policy bec an entity may meet in private with its attorney to discuss pending litigation to which the entity is presently a party before a court or administrative agency provided certain conditions are met including the requirement that a transcript of the executive session be made part of the

102public record upon conclusion of the litigation in this case i am requesting the school board's advice concerning pending litigation that styled as teresa javier javier perhaps versus orange county school board and case number 2019-ca-000308-0 on tuesday march 8th 2022 immediately following the school board meeting the executive session will be a closed meeting held in conference room e at the elc and will take approximately one hour a notice has been drafted for posting and those in attendance will be theresa jacobs chair pam gold vice chair angie gallows school board member perhaps she might be out of town no pam gold is not by share this time oh tara sorry sorry let's let's let's try this again shall we thank you i'm so used to reading it those intents will be theresa jacob chair melissa byrd vice

103chair angie gallows school board member johanna lopez school board member linda covert school remember vicki lane felder school board member karen kaster denner school board member and pam gold school board member and dr maria vazquez deputy superintendent amy envol school board's general counsel john palmerini deputy general counsel and michelle morales our outside counsel and a court reporter and that's all i have thank you thank you to change my template all right so moving on this is we're going back to our second set of b policies i know we had seven or so work sessions on our first set of b policies we are starting reviewing your second set of b policies and these are the policies that are in the heading that start they all start with the letter b and we're going to talk

104about the nepm classification system but the section b is reserved for all the policies that start with section b are about school board governance and operations and so we're going to start with our first our next batch the first policy is school district operational goals and it's policy ba you will see here in the red line it's the same kind of terminology changes that were that we're having and all of our other ones there really are not any and these are just ones that i've looked through i just made went through and made my technical formatting changes this is really for the board to discuss there really hasn't been much that has changed in this area the statutes remain the same so i don't really have any legal recommendations for this unless the board has

105some other things would you rather me go through each section so you understand what they all are is that more helpful or do we need to go through them okay go ahead these i mean these are so basically the first title is school improvement and educational accountability it talks about your school improvement plans and how the initial plan what what's included in the initial complaint plan components that it has to be developed based upon the recommendations of the school advisory council and then the district process for the initial approval and subsequent annual approval of school improvement plans the commission communication program is section c and it goes all the way through upon then it ends at section two which is the school board approval i do not believe we've had any statutory changes or any

106procedural changes this would just be taking a look at it because it was last adopted in and just making sure i've changed some of the statutory revisions down there as well and just making sure it's terminology is consistent okay no comments no comments on that one the second policy that we're going to talk about is policy bdd i'm going to scroll down a little bit sorry this one is there we go titled board superintendent relations again this sets forth the whole the balance between the board and the superintendent it goes back to that graphic that i showed you at the beginning of today's session where we have the operational versus the setting the policies section again i don't have a lot of changes in this particular one not legal changes anyway just some more technical

107changes the biggest change would be down on section 5 that talks about the written evaluation for the superintendent just changed it a little bit to read a written evaluation document will be compiled by the board chair or designee and shared with the superintendent in a noticed meeting and then a summary shall be shared with the board at a public meeting not really sure how we got executive session in there but there is no there's no provision in the statutes to have an executive session to go over the superintendent's evaluation that was my one question thank you yeah i'm not really sure how that has it ever been practiced no it hasn't we've never done it either so anyway so there we go this is a perfect example of why we need to look at our

108policies sometimes because they have things in there that we're not really sure how they got in there so do we have any questions about that one yes ma'am okay so if it's not supposed to be in there when are we going to discuss getting it out are we just going to so yeah this is our work session so we're going to talk about what what the board wants these are your board policies so all the b policies are owned by you all this isn't something that like staff can bring to you with proposed revisions these all belong to you and they haven't been revised or taken a look at in a while so that's why we're doing that so i've made my suggested changes and i'm waiting to hear from you all but this is

109these are very this second set of b policies is very it's pretty much standard there's not tons of changes and i think these can probably move through the process pretty quickly so we can put those in our done in 2022 category so okay so we obviously have to take the word executive out because that is not there's there's nothing in the statute that allows for a closed door meeting the question is the board has not been having a board discussion it's been a matter of each board member doing a completing a review they come to me for compiling and producing a final report so i think we do need to discuss whether that is something that should should come to the board as a public discussion of performance and remember gould you're recognized so i

110think what we've done in the past is acknowledged it and then that document is available to the public if they wish to see it i think unless there is disagreement among the board like you know one of us gives a one and one gives a five on on a particular area if there's kind of a consensus in that range and agreed upon i don't know that there needs to be more of a discussion than that at the table about it so does that cover under that language that if we acknowledge that it was done and it is available for the public is that considered a discussion i guess is my question all right well let me ask miss emval if you have an answer to that i don't have answer that i would also have

111to look at your superintendent's contract so that might that may dictate i believe there's a whole evaluation component in there i don't know if it actually even contains the word august in it so that might be a disconnect and if you are selecting a new superintendent this policy may change again so perhaps it needs to be a little more vague not vague but a little more policies as we've discussed needs to be a little more broader to allow you to have that because even though it says each august i know we didn't do it last time because we had covet and we didn't have evaluations for anyone so i think that needs to be something that you can discuss i'll take any suggestions and try to wordsmith a little bit for you well i'll be

112honest with you i'm right this minute i am trying to find the changes that you made i'm not seeing in board docs yeah i just don't i don't have a big screen so i was trying to pull it up so that i could go back and forth because it doesn't seem to be how did how do you have it's in board docs it's under the first policy they're all together in one pdf i didn't do them separately because it was making it was going to take me too much time to switch back and forth because some of them are only a half a page long i'm sorry sorry i'm multitasking and it's not i wasn't doing that good of a job at obviously so let me go to can you all see my screen on

113your screen okay let me go to member vice chair bird for comment i hear what you're saying remember gold my concern is what if we are in a situation where we have an issue like you said and you know i mean we have got a great superintendent now but let's just say we have we have a problem and i'm i'm just saying you know in the future i don't i think maybe when we and i can't remember now when we did the evaluation before was were the results because it says a summary shall be shared with the board at a public meeting was a summary ever given i only it seems like i only remember it being in the documents in like consensus and we just approved it but nobody ever says okay so then

114i guess it could be just pulled off the consent agenda and discussed if there was a problem okay sorry i was just thinking it out loud okay never mind i'm good remember covert as opposed to each august we could put annually annually no later than you can pick a month end of the calendar year end of the school year and then i believe what you've read lined here is in line with the practice that we have had so yes we each meet with the superintendent and go over our review chair we'll meet with the superintendent as well and then what i recall remember gould correct me if i'm wrong generally the chair would make a statement that the superintendent has received a review sometimes the summative score is announced at the table and then the

115documents are on board docs for the public to review because i also recall having newspaper articles where the reporter would quote some of the comments that board members put in there so that it that's how it has been shared at the board table and with the public right so i think we might want to slightly massage this language but it sounds like by having it on the agenda and maybe it isn't a consent agenda i don't know that so much matters that there should at least be an announcement at the meeting i have a slightly different question it's under three b and says the board will review superintendent performance as identical will view i'm sorry we'll view superintendent performance as identical to organizational performance so that organizational accomplishments accomplishment of board stated goals and avoidance

116of board prescribed means will be viewed as successful superintendent performance so i was so the superintendent is successful if she avoids board prescribed means the i don't understand where the an avoidance of board prescribed means has anything to do with this sentence except there seemed like when this was we've discussed this before we went through the board policies seemed to be a lot of issues that were trying to be resolved by policy and i think this was a carryover to maybe board members that were engaging inappropriately at at individual school or operational levels i don't know but if you read the sentence if you take out an avoidance of board prescribed means it makes all the sense in the world but her performance his or her performance is identical to organizational performance so that the

117organizational accomplishment of board stated goals will be viewed as successful superintendent performance and avoidance of board prescribed means i don't know i just don't know i don't have the history of why that was adopted in 2008 i tried to look back through our electronic files and we don't have anything that i could find that would identify why certain language was used back in 2008 yeah i think there's sufficient language in the policies about the role that the board should and shouldn't have that i don't think that we have to include it in there that the superintendent is not going to be successful in the board's eyes unless she avoids board prescribed means i think that's kind of more of a board board control issue that we if we're going to have language we should put

118it in the section how we govern ourselves so i just take out those am i hearing that i'm seeing some nods am i seeing a general agreement to to cross out that person yeah an avoidance of border tribe means it does make more sense that was it was a little oddly worded yeah yeah thank you well i just got confused when i was reading it i had to read it about four or five times so when i have to read something four or five times clarification needs to be clarified okay so basically if we butt out then then you get you're okay but if we don't butt out and you can't ignore us then you failed so i think the problem on that one is us so we'll make sure that we tackle that on

119our own responsibilities i think that's it yes i think so yeah there's no changes substantive changes to what i thought anyway board expectations for the superintendent i thought they were pretty clear and along with it mentioned your strategic plan just like we talked about when we did our other first set of b policies if that makes sense all right moving or over to file file we call them files back then i don't know where that came from but policy bdf so this is your unitary status over advisory and oversight committee i wanted to give you all a little bit of background about why we have this policy and where it came from because i think that's important there was a desegregate there was desegregation litigation that lasted almost 40 years and as a result a

120settlement agreement between the plaintiffs and the orange county public schools was executed by the parties on october 12th of 2010. in settling the litigation the settlement agreement was required ocps to take certain actions with respect to three main issues number one was the diverse recruitment of ocps personnel number two was the disclosure of extracurricular activities at the middle schools and high schools and number three was the construction renovation replacement and utilization of ocps facilities including portables in an effort to ensure the public's confidence and trust in compliance with the terms of the settlement agreement the school board voluntarily had voluntarily adopted this policy bdf the unitary status advisory and oversight committee establishing that committee and it outlined the committee's purpose the composition the procedural duties and the responsibilities also as a result of the settlement

121agreement ocps policy jj extracurricular activities was amended and ocps policy gce recruitment and retention of a diverse employment staff was implemented to include information supporting the settlement agreements objectives in 2013 at the suggestion of then school board member kat gordon the composition of the advisory committee was increased from 8 to 16 members now it consists of one voting member and one alternate member appointed by each of the elected members of the school board in addition the policy was modified to allow for the terms of service to be staggered to reduce the amount of committee member turnover from year to year and participation and engagement in on the committee was increased and a quorum was met at each and every occasion the last thing that i can find in our records was a report from 2017

122to 18 for the fiscal year for the advisory committee and they had five meetings on those dates and there was a there was a report that was provided it divided up into the human resources component the facilities component and the extracurricular activities components on our website i know that we have had once coveted hit in 2019 when we were getting ready to have some meetings we got a number of course with everything with the with the pandemic we got a number of inquiries that we're not comfortable coming in so the advisory committee has not met the changes that are in policy bdf are actually very very limited i do not think that there is any recommendation to discontinue this advisory committee in fact i think we need to reconstitute it and we're looking at doing

123that in the near future because i believe the composition some of the people may not want to serve and i believe we may have one that's no longer with us as well so i welcome any questions about this particular policy i agree with you i think we need to continue the advisory role of the oversight committee i think i was concerned about the fact that since i've been here i haven't had a request to reappoint anybody and so i wanted to make sure that we had the board still though it was fully manned so it is at this point we do yeah we still have if you look under the it's actually under the board tab school board tab on the website there's a drop down box for unitary status commit advisory and oversight committee

124and it's all there it shows you all the membership and everything you have a very robust membership some of them or are also on your re-apportionment committee so i would have to reach out to each of them to see if they're still interested in serving and if they are not then but we can reconstitute that in the near future so we can start to have those meetings again as you recall there is legislation that says that we can have advisory committee meetings we just can't take any action so for those that may not be comfortable coming in person we could still you know maybe use some technology means for those but i just wanted to let you know where we were on that okay and what is the maximum term they can serve i'd have

125to read it again i don't remember i'd have to read what the what the resolution was establishing there i'm going to try to look at that when i call a member covert right now yeah do you know what they were thank you council envol if you could just clarify for me in section one and i think i know why but if you can just clarify where it says except for the initial term for members of the usaoc nominated by school board member representing districts one two and three as well as school board chair all other nominees including alternate shall be appointed to serve a term of no less than two calendar years it's just a little can you just clarify that what i think happened is i think once you once you established the committee

126and set it up everybody had the same terms because they all started on the same day so i think it was that was designed to be a staggered term so you don't have everybody going off at the same time so you have some constitute continuity that's that's what i thought so do we still need that in there probably not but i don't know if you want to i mean i can i can maybe cat when it was originally established i can probably write some language into there that the original establishment of this committee was you know just to kind of capture it because that's not how it is anymore that would be i think that would be good to clarify thank you remember so yeah so i am concerned because it says that they can

127be maybe reappointed for additional two terms and it sounds like although i don't know that it was clear in here that a term is four years so they can be appointed for eight years and then according the way this sounds it certainly leads me to believe they can't be appointed after four years or after eight years and we may want that to be the case we may want to have a provision that if they are willing to serve and if the district board member nominates them for reappointment maybe it takes a super majority or something but we may want to allow them to serve for more than eight years i don't know why it would necessarily be beneficial to us to have mandatory term limits on these advisory members because frankly their knowledge and the

128continuity on there is i think a strength for us so that's one thing i would like for us to change in this i'll i'll definitely look at that and i'll see if i can find some more historical documentation let's see if i can find some history i know we have binders and binders in our office i just didn't have a chance to look through them all yeah and maybe we've maybe since i've been here we've reappointed some of them we must have but i just don't remember seeing it so all right is there anybody uncomfortable with us not having a mandatory eight years and you're out a term limit on no that's right no okay good thank you i'm sorry i didn't remember gould i am in agreement with that for the reasons that you

129stated chair because you know particularly with this committee i think we need the people a mix but we need some people with that historical knowledge that may have even been part of creating this because this was a huge pivot point in setting up ocps for success so that is really essential to make sure we don't lose that background in knowledge i i agree with you and also think that the watchdog role is extremely important so all right so if there's not objection we'll see a version back that doesn't have this limit on two yes and then i'm also going to look we need to make a revision to section 10. it says the usaoc shall be terminated shall be targeted upon a vote of the board or upon expiration of the settlement agreement whichever condition

130occurs first the settlement agreement is has been expired so i need to work on that language if your intent is to keep that moving yeah so it could just say may may be terminated upon a vote of the board because the experts i think the intent is that you want to keep it going so that review continues to ensure that we comply with those terms of the settlement agreement even if it's expired already somewhere yeah but we just have we have to get rid of the language this is yes either we get rid of the termination altogether yes but we change it to say right i'll make a note to put a red line sorry i didn't catch that the first time okay dr jenkins so i was going to add i i like that

131you just took the step to eliminate that language just as a reminder when dr gordon when she was on the board was so adamant about it all the research around unitary status and vestiges of segregation there was clear national research that said districts reach unitary status and then there's no oversight and then they slide back and the data then starts to reflect that there's some segregational practices coming back into play whether intentional or not and so the intent was oversight voluntary oversight by the board was intentionally to make sure that there are not any slippages back in those particular areas back toward the days of segregation and so that critical rationale behind it would also i wanted the board to come to that conclusion initially and then just remind you that was part of the

132rationale was at a national level there is slippage in districts sometimes after they're declared unitary so appreciate your careful attention to that and on the heels of that of of your explanation it'd be nice if the language reflected that some of that very language that it i think the intent so that a future board reading that will see that this board made a decision that they want they felt it was imperative that we continue to have this oversight to prevent what we've seen in other school districts so leave it to you to come up with your great team of wordsmithing over there and you're probably doing it right now i hear the superintendent typing it up as we speak no it's okay it's good okay thank you we'll work on that okay i think i

133think we can attend it might have it just about done now thank you very much good direction there okay so moving on to we don't have many left i think we'll meet our deadline today moving to policy bdg which is called school attorney legal services this one pretty much has i mean it's pretty much stayed the same since we enacted it in 2016. your first section is initiation of lawsuits or appeals then we have some counter claims and third party claims and attorneys fees and costs in subsection three i actually added tpas because a lot of times people don't know what a tpa is so i think it's important i said that out third party administrator do you want me to go through these individually are you familiar enough with the policy third party administrator

134and i think it talks about the litigation the authority and then the let's see the authorization to prove other legal expenditures is there those are ancillary costs of litigation in court reporters arbitration all those things those are already what i approve of any questions about that particular section moving on to the next section litigation settlement authority again not proposing any any changes we had a little a little bit of a hiccup once we putting designee there for the senior director of risk management there was a time she was not available and so we want to make sure there's a designate there just in case because a lot of times a lot of these litigation settlement authority when we're looking at that needs to be made relatively quickly if we have deadlines coming up so i

135think that's only one the pilot the amounts still remain the same anything over 50 has to come to the school board for approval yes ma'am remember gold so i'm noticing a lot of inflation everywhere and i don't know that it's just around this policy but i'm wondering if we as a board should be looking at some of those limits because 50 000 today is not what it was yesterday in signing authority even though it sounds like a lot of money i'm just seeing costs go up between 20 and 30 percent across the board and maybe we need things to settle a little bit but i would want to put it out there that may be something we want to look at and then wherever those maximums are if the board decided to adjust it in

136the future i'm not sure where that falls because that covers a lot of different policies but i do think it's something we're going to need to look at or we're going to end up meeting on a lot of things that are very in-rote and not extraordinary i will tell you that john we were we just had our florida school board attorneys association conference and the limits are pretty much the same throughout the state that's what pretty much they are now but i agree that we have there's more litigation if i if i can opine and i think with our with some of the stats the legislative changes that are coming it might be something you have to evaluate absolutely and what is the what's the proposal in front of the legislature right now regarding statutory

137sovereign immunity i believe i think it's been changed was it it was it was tiered right so it was a million 400 i forget so it's a tiered system where it was initially going to be a million dollars and then it went down to like 500 per person to a million dollars and then it went down to a tiered system where it said depending on how big your county your city is your municipality is the limits would be different so if you happen to get in an accident on one side of the street and it was in the county and the county had 250 000 residents you would be entitled to more money than if you got in the accident on the city side of the street if your city had less than 50 000

138it's still being worked through they're looking to to bump it up a little bit the current limits are 200 and per person and 300 000 per occurrence i we've heard numbers like 300 and 500 300 per person 500 per occurrence but they're still working that through in the legislature okay so maybe after that issue is settled we can come back and look at that in that relationship it makes sense percentage yeah perhaps it's even a percentage of whatever the sovereign immunity is because this is about 10 percent to 20 of the current sovereign immunity maybe there's rather than a dollar figure that may because hopefully inflation will come down to i would want to definitely though look at what our peers are doing because i do think that while that might make sense i also

139understand the optics of us saying okay well we're just going to up it and nobody else does and so why is it that we're willing to spend more money without board oversight so i think we've got to be cautious but you're at the right table all the time having these conversations you can take member gold's input into consideration absolutely and it is worthwhile looking at absolutely i don't disagree okay next policy we're getting there okay and you know i like policy so the last two are my favorites so it is going to be recommended we have two board policy policies we have bg which is called board policy school board policy process and then we have b gc which is called review of policies bgc is one paragraph long so as we're condensing some of

140these policies but we're going to talk about those in just a minute i think that's kind of what we look like when we're looking at them i mean even like we just talked about with your instructional materials policy you have four policies does it make sense to put them all into one or maybe put them into two depending because you just certainly don't then want a policy that's 40 pages long either so anyway so let's let's move on to bg it is going to be recommended that policy policy bgc review of policies be repealed in its entirety and incorporate it into policy bg and you'll see that i have done that here so recommending the normal standard change the school board of orange county florida added some titles here so just like in the other

141policies added a traditional rules portion there this is this goes back to what i did at the very beginning of this that the term rule is defined in section 120.52 and those are your policies just like a county or municipality has ordinances the school board has policies moving on to subsection 1a we have the superintendent or designee shall give immediate and proper written notice to the public when the school board has determined it'll be give due consideration to the proposal for adoption did designee because that's something that our office has been working on so we are the office of legal services has been the cruise director if you will for the facility revision process so just technical change there spelling out the word 21 and then so the language here is just there's just been

142some red lines added i'm sorry to the bottom red line part it's hard for me to read but that's consistent with what the statute says i added a provision that if anybody who's looking for a full cop text to the proposed rule and a summary they get a copy of that without cost that's in the statute it's with implementation of electronics and technology we have the red lines available on our website and it's very easy to find those when you go on our policy page there is a policy revisions tab on the left hand side and those have all the policies that are currently the red lines that are currently up for review these are not there yet because they haven't been scheduled for a work session so they're just in draft format section b

143of course has some more spelling out the word 21 and capitalizing the word board moving down to section d so they talk about policy handbooks and so a little bit of history up in deborah mcgill has custody of our original board policies that were actually in a bound book and they're very large and she uses a gloves to turn them because the paper is very thin but it's kind of neat to kind of see that and we also have if some of you may been around long enough to know we have the orange books and they were just binder like four inch six inch binders of policies and so every time one was amended poor miss mcgill would sit there and take out the old one and put the new one in so all of

144our policies you'll notice are totally indented on the left-hand side and the reason for that is so that we could punch holes in them and put them in the policy binders at one point all the schools had their own policy binders and they were responsible for updating them all the time and that has become not only is it not very environmentally conscious it has been come with the implement of the internet and our website everything is available there so i'm trying to incorporate some of those changes here but remember we're still confined by the specific language of chapter 120 so some of the language that's in here has some of that in there so added to section d that will post it also to the district website section two we added a provision the first

145as you recall the first section is called traditional rules because that's normally way we adopt our policy i put a heading for emergency rules because i think it's important to for the public to know there's two different ways that we can do them we really hadn't used the emergency rules provision as far as i can even track back at ocps i'm sure they did it some but we did have to do it recently as you recall and so again added to subsection the new 2b the superintendent or designee shall properly record the effective date for any such emergency rule remember they're good for 90 days and then we start the normal process policy passes if we want to make sure we extend those emergency rules so section 3 is a new section that i proposed

146because i think it's going to be a little bit easier and some other districts we're going to talk about in just a minute we're going to talk about neola and where that comes from and some other it's a little bit farther along the line we actually follow the nepn classification system that was established by the national school board association a lot of other districts do not do that but one of our things that is consistent with a lot of the districts across the state is they have a technical changes in their policy process and this one i'm just going to read it so you can kind of understand periodically it may be deemed necessary to make technical corrections to policies that have already been adopted through the normal statutory procedures these technical corrections may include

147consolidation of sections transfer of sections combining or dividing sections renumbering sections sections chapters and titles corrections or additions for grammatical or typographical errors and or alterations and emissions not affecting the constructions or meanings of those sections subsections chapters titles or policies as a whole so for instance in a couple of our policies i've noticed that we have improper statutory citation and sometimes it was maybe it's an older policy that was all of our policies back in the 200s but they've all been moved to the 1000s or maybe we incorrectly did a subsection citation that maybe was correct at the time the policy was adopted but the subsection has since changed with further litigation or legislation so moving on to subsection b my proposal and you can please feel free to not take it if you

148don't want it should it be determined by the board the superintendent or designee i have to change that a little bit sorry to make such technical corrections it may be accomplished by resolution as part of the consent agenda without going through the normal policy adoption procedure so this would be an example of we have the wrong statutory state citation and policy abc right so it would be a red line on the consent agenda that says hey we're changing the statutory citation because it's incorrect put it on the consent agenda for you to do so those technical changes like some of your b policies actually don't even have statutory citations in them right now and it would be like adding those it's not going to change the text of it or what you approved but it

149would be a method by which the board could adopt those technical changes right now i can't go in and make any of these formatting changes or whatever i would like i'd like them all to be justified back over so they're not super long because when you click on them and you have to scroll through we have some policies i know you've seen them where the text is on the right hand side and you have to scroll all the way down to go through it doesn't make sense to have somebody do that so that would be my foundations you oversold it would make my life a lot easier no it would make all of our lives easier and speaking of which and it may have been caught and one of the citations that we went over

150today and one of the rules was wrong did you find it was something something point one six yep should have been one five yep it's fixed no it will be okay yes let me know afterwards because i can't find it right now as you said that i've flashed back to wanting to point that okay good so that would be that's a great example yeah yeah because it just it makes sense and so i'm justifying them all back over but so remember we talked about at the beginning of adding our policies into board docs potentially right now as it is i can't go in and move and change them and renumber them and re-letter them we have so many different titles and some of those in my mind they should be roman numeral one like we

151have a standard template for them roman numeral 1 roman numeral 2 and then abc underneath and 123 under this little abc under that so that's all the same but for staff to go it would be my staff unfortunately to go back through and renumber and reformat things they would have to do that before they would upload it into board docs and then board docs would be searchable we do have an interim measure that we would like to do is we have a mock-up of what the website could look at look like now that would have right now for instance i'm gonna give you an example because we have to follow the nepn classification system our board policy add is called safe schools but that's our bullying and harassment policy well because we follow that lettering

152and naming system nobody's gonna know that our bullying and harassment policy is in policy add so i have a temporary website fix and then a permanent one once we get but this is a monumental task to be able to make those formatting changes and stuff like that but those would go to we would start with our new policies as we go through fix the formatting and then fix them all and but go through that technical changes provision in this particular policy if that makes sense yeah okay change the next section section four to rule proposals just and we have had these actually this is a actually a provision in the statute anyone can get information relating to the method proposing a rule or can submit a proposal to the superintendent so we have those we

153consider those copies of rules this is one that's a little bit outdated a little bit copy the compiled rules as updated shall be available for inspection in the office of the superintendent or designee because i actually have them which as my staff as each policies are adopted we pull out we actually have a hard copy as well and we also put it on the district website which i've added to as well so any questions about that coburn first may i just say that i love that you have favorite policies i do throw that out there this is just please answer the why behind the what so if our the rules are our policies and this is under school board policy process then why are we calling them rules instead of policy so the statute calls

154them rules and the statute calls them rules for everybody so the ordinances are technically rules by statute under chapter 120 5 two and five four so it just depends on what you know like a county calls them ordinances we call them policies someone else might call them something else but ours have always been policies that we could change them all to rules but that makes it a little bit i don't know if that answered your question it does it clarifies so that's in line with statute for this portion that's fine but that helps thank you is that because i you know when i came here i was struggling with that because i knew you went through rule making i remember asking woody okay we're going through all this rule making but you're adopting a bunch

155of policies what when are we going to get to the rules so is that clear anywhere in here for okay for the public okay so under section 101.41 which is the general powers of district school board it says under section one that you have to determine policies and programs consistent with state law and ruled a rule do necessary buy it for the efficient operation and general improvement of the district school system and two says you have to adopt rules pursuant to chapter 120.536 and 120.54 to implement the provisions of law conferring sorry conferring duties upon it to supplement those prescribed by the state board of education and the commissioner of education hence the confusion starts there it sure does it sure does but i was like i don't understand why you call them policies well

156we do because and a lot of times it gets confused with procedures because a lot of places have policies that establish their conduct but our policies are actually your rules and your procedures are under your rules yeah thank you it's my phone a friend i know all the statutes by heart person all right so moving on the next section of the policy is scheduled for legal advertisement that hasn't changed that's still in accordance with the statute 120.54 i just i put at least 21 days because the way the calendar works sometimes we can't if we have to put an advertisement on wednesday to advertise on sunday it we have to make sure it's at least 21 days i have a comment or question from them from vice chair i was just going to say could

157we maybe in this policy just put a sentence explaining rules and sure yep i think that would be helpful for the public also as far as that big job of transferring policies is that maybe something that and i don't know you could totally say no absolutely not but is this something we could maybe bring students in on i don't know like a internship or something or community service hours or i'd have to consider that because i'd want to make sure that everything was transferred forward right so we have legal interns too so maybe that would be a good legal earned turn right that was a really good thought though but yes no i think i think adding a definition of rule and why we call them policies i think that would be very good clarification

158we're almost done i promise okay so policy maintenance which it's already been said in the policy but i'm just going to go ahead and leave it here because that it was here already it basically says the superintendent or designee shall establish procedures for the maintenance of rules adopted by the board these procedures shall address the manner by which the new policies will be developed classified adopted and disseminated this portion is this is where we have that most people don't understand that we have it and why we have it the procedure shall be administrated shall be administered in accordance with the national education policy network the national school boards association nepn nsba policy classification system so that is i actually i didn't print a copy of it for you because i didn't want to waste that

159many trees but it is a document i think it's 30 some pages i posted it on board docs so it's available for the public but this is a classification system that we have to follow and that's why we have to follow them section a policies are all about foundations and basic commitments section b is all about school board governance and operations section c is all about general school administration section d is about fiscal management section e is about support services f is about facilities that one's easy because it starts with the same letter g is about personnel h is about sorry negotiations i is about instruction that kind of made sense too j is all about your students all your student policies are under j and then k is about public community school community and

160home relations is k and then there's one l about education and agency relations so that's that's what we've been following and that's why you have it starts with an a then it goes to a and it goes a b and a c and aca and there's a whole litany of what the policies are supposed to happen i think way back when this was last adopted the nepn classification system was last adopted in 2012. it was last revised in 2012. i think originally it was established by the national school board association as a nationwide methods by which school boards could classify their policies so if you moved from maryland to florida you know that policy j.j is that extracurricular activities was your policy jj in maryland was the same well not the same but you knew

161where to find it anyway when you moved to florida that was about extracurricular activities i can tell you over the course the years i do not know another school district in the state of florida that is still using the nepn classification system i did check neola's website neola is a new it's a policy company if you will i was 31 of the 67 florida school districts have switched to neola what they do is they actually give you sample template language that you borrow from and it's a numbering system you can look for examples of that it's brevard alachua polk a lot of them use that i'm not saying one way or another if i think we need to go to that but i just want to let you know there's other systems and then i

162believe seminole does not use neola but they have another numbering system as opposed to lettering system when i checked across nationwide to see if other districts are still using any pns msba classification system i can find some districts but there's no there's not like a national trend where everybody's going to one one system like i think there was in the past i think they're going to whatever works the best for them right now so that's that's how we ought landed and with our lettering system okay so two things one i guess you're looking for input from the board as to whether or not to stay with this that's one why don't we just stop there and then i want to come back to this overall and recognizing if we switch it is a monumental task

163so i don't know it's it's going to be very well then i'm not sure i mean we'll take input but i think frankly i want to understand the amount of time and effort that goes into that before asking you to do it so that would be a critical decision point of the decision making i mean part of so part of my personal recommendation not necessarily legal but having dealt with the policy since 2013 this system it makes sense we have it but i think we need to get all of them revised to where they need to be but if we were to switch to let's say we were going to switch to neola all of our language that we did would go away because neola what they do is they essentially copyright or they give

164you standard template language and you kind of massage it a little bit to your purposes but you pretty much have to stick to their to what their template language says so it doesn't allow you as much leeway because then they don't guarantee they supposedly are i'd have to let them give you a sales pitch or whatever but the reasoning behind it is similar to what the nsba classification system was to begin with is so that districts are consistent you know across so you know that board policy two two four zero in one county is the same you know you'll find the same information in two two four zero in another county so i guess it's just a policy classification system by another name okay so let's hear thank you for that that was helpful and

165i do have concerns about the paragraph on the top paragraph on page 15 but we'll come back to that remember cobert thank you yes i did want to hear your personal recommendation on this and did i hear you say that it would need to change in order to put it on board docs it would need to go to a numbered system did i hear you no no i just before i had so in order to copy everything onto board docs board docs doesn't allow you to copy the formatting exactly and right now our policies have these strange boxes and so anyway long story it's a technical thing but in order for staff staff would have to my staff would have to copy the policy completely paste it into board docs and then reformat it and

166i don't want them to do that and have to reformat it the way that our policies are now if we're going to change that formatting so we don't have six titles in a policy rather than roman numerals i'd rather be able to have the flexibility to fix the formatting and then upload them so we only have to do it once to to board docs i haven't checked with board docs that we can still use the policies tab but i can tell you that staff my staff has access to the policies tab and they have started to put some in and that's when we realized that there was some configuration issues and i don't want them to spend all that time putting them all in there until we can have them the way they need to

167be okay so and that's a that's a management thing for you all to look at as far as as your time in the in the workload but i don't see any necessity to go to neola i think we develop our policies based on what we need here in orange county so in my opinion we don't need to to change that thank you member covert remember gala thank you madam chair i agree with linda i do have a question because i don't like our numbering system in our policies i do find it to be confusing and it's hard for parents and our community members to navigate through it so i would be interested in getting more information on how we can streamline it and make it more efficient but i don't know that we have to

168use someone else's system to create more work by formatting and changing our policy like would there be a way to keep the language and the format currently matching them all up and then kind of use our own system or find an easy way to to group our policy that would make sense for everyone you want to respond to that i think we i could certainly do that i do think that the lettering system is sometimes confusing or very some a lot of confusing i do think we could probably come up with their own system like if we're going to do you know numbers like number one number two number three whatever and 3.01 or 3.02 or whatever and just keep the titles of what they are the other thing that historically we have done with

169our policies is we have not strayed from the titles that are used in the nepn classification system and so that's a perfect example as to why our safe schools policy is called safe schools instead of bullying and harassment so if if we were to adopt or go with a modified you know keep the same system that we have but maybe renumber it then we could also re-title some of those to actually reflect so the policy contacts are actually reflected in the title remember that address all right vice chair thank you i yeah i'm in agreement with member cobert that i don't think that we have no we have no need for neola just because they're basically they would basically be doing what our own legal department does they work with you to create the policies

170and i think there's probably some districts that help is beneficial but i don't think we need that i am in favor of putting the policies on board docs so that it's searchable i think that's a that would be a lot easier for our families and then i also think it's a great idea to be able to regroup them where it makes sense either with new numbering i mean new lettering or numbering and also changing the titles for sure it just needs to be something where it makes more sense and where it's more intuitive and just easy for people to find what they're looking for thank you all right got some feedback so let me let me share i think we're almost done right so the one concern that i have with the paragraph at this

171top of page i think it's 15. it reads the superintendent or designee shall establish procedures for the maintenance of orange of i'm sorry of rules adopted by the board so when i saw maintenance i thought that meant making sure that they're they're posted they're available but then when the next sentence the procedures shall address the manner by which new policies will be developed classified adopted and disseminated so when i saw that suggests that to me that the superintendent or designee is going to establish procedures by which the board can adopt policies can develop policies and i don't i don't have any discomfort with where we are right now with our superintendent and with you but it seems to suggest that the superintendent has the ability to decide procedures by which the board can develop policies

172and i think the board should be able to develop policies without being constrained by procedures established by the executive branch so perhaps it's that second sentence that is causing some yes concern yes because when i see maintenance of rules i think the board establishes rules the superintendent executes those rules and maintaining them sounded like executing but i'm not sure what maintenance means when i read the sentence second sentence and it the second sentence suggests would suggest to somebody that if the board wanted to go forward with a policy there might be a procedure in place that interfered with the board's ability to initiate policies the board should always be able to initiate policy yes the board i think should adopt procedures for initiating policies but i think the board should not let go of the

173ability the ability i don't think anybody has ever read that deeply into that sentence before so i recognize that i recognize i read things very literally but i just i think we need to re-work this so that it's clear that the board can initiate policies you can and actually it's interesting because i took a look at the superintendent's job description and mine and both require us to bring policy revisions to you for the board which is interesting and then you can do it on your own as well right i believe i have no problem with with the superintendent and you being able to bring us policy revisions but you can do it on your own as well exactly i would have a problem if the board could not do some could not initiate or revise

174a policy without you starting it that would be problematic so just to make sure you all have your entertainment for the day please 1149 the general powers of the superintendent it talks about rec it says in subsection 2 that the superintendent shall recommend policies and then in subsection four it says the superintendent shall recommend and execute rules so in two separate subsections she's recommending he or she is recommending policies and recommending rules so when you see the confusion as to why that is the statutes actually call them two different things so do you have an implant in your brain by the way i've read some of these futuristic sci fi books and i'm wondering if you have implanted the entire online sunshine in your brain yeah all the statutes there there the rules do you

175have those two here's an app for that yeah no it's unfortunate that when you were talking about the superintendent's authority i'm like 1149 and it just pops it's just okay but the good news about all that is beautiful that may be confusing there's nothing in the statute that says that the board cannot no or can only react to things that are brought so let's just i'm not going to try to wordsmith this here but is it everybody's we'll work on it okay we're all good all right work on that thank you okay so we have two more sections policy exemptions for changes in law that basically says that if the law is an accident i am so sorry member felder oh sorry but i just want to make sure that the policies that we make

176as a board and then the superintendent for an example so i want to make sure i'm clear we talked about the mask mandate and how that needed to go but as a superintendent we gave her that ability to go ahead on and put in her policy that this is be 30 days with the mask right so that's a rule so that as a superintendent she has that ability and that power to to enforce that rule with members of the district but as a board we always will remain to have the right to institute policy we're hoping that we're going to coincide with what is feasible for the district like we're not going to institute a policy of this out the back door and nobody's doing it you know everybody come to work naked no we're

177not going to do that kind of policy however i think that anytime you're doing policy and wording it takes a lot it's a it's a lot it's very much involved because words of what we live by as a society and they have various meanings so and what board member byrd was saying about the simplicity of it for people that are coming on the website parents and community people i'm not in favor you trying to redo the thing but if there's some type of clarity in terms of i don't know content page or something bdg means this or what you know i can follow that because it is i mean i know you have to do all these alphabets or whatever what have you to make sure you know you keep things in place but i

178this may be a section in our policy that we may need to deal with in terms of the wording you can't hurry through this right even though we all have other lies but the thing of the matter is once we put a policy in place this is what we have to go by so i'm hoping that the consideration is being taken by board members that we have to have clarity and the policy that we're supposed to be instituting what does that really mean and that everybody stays in their lane you know what i'm saying we stare in our lane so that's my only concern about the wording that we're clear okay everybody stays in their lane yes and then when we get the end of our lane superintendent makes a u-turn on us and then

179she gets the end of her lane and we make a u-turn and it goes back to you know i mean we can look at a policy till we're blue in the face which we have done and we make language changes that we think make it are clear and then you look at it again you're like oh maybe that wasn't that clear you know so i mean that's that's part of the board's wordsmith thing in the way the way things go and that's why we have to then go back to the whole process again and do it and it's not we are actually confined the board is confined unless it's an emergency policy you're confined by following chapter 120.54 and that puts you at minimum you know five weeks out to making a policy change and

180it's it's hard it kind of hamstrings you a little bit which is which is why you've delegated your authority sometimes the superintendent for different things so good observation okay okay so policy exemptions changes in law basically says if there's if there's a policy if there's a rule change then our policy changes with that law and then we bring those forward to you that's why you usually see more proposed policy revisions after legislative session because those things have changed and then the last policy the last section it was policy b g c review of policies but i've copied it and pasted it into the end of bg wait basically says staff review of rules the superintendent shall establish and maintain an orderly plan for preserving and maintain making accessible the rules adopted by the board and

181administrative rules a lot of it seems kind of redundant to what we've already talked about but then this goes back into having all administrative instructional and non-instructional employees to become familiar with the board rules and other policies regulations memoranda bulletins we have our management directives those kind of things and then it goes back into kind of up it kind of crosses over a little bit into a g policy for personnel that it talks about the willful violation of board rules subject to dismissal or lesser penalties and then giving the superintendent the authority to to look at those individually so then i think that brings me to the end all right remember felder oh yeah okay you just read through the bgc right this is page 16. okay all right so this you're scratched through it

182so you're going to put this in another yeah so if you look on the bottom of page 15 i've already copied it into the bottom of page 15. hang on okay see sorry i got a right hand 15. sorry i didn't i didn't i didn't move my so basically if you look this was bgc so i struck through it all and moved the whole thing up to 50 right here okay all right i just want to make sure i understood okay thank you okay i think i have a lot of direction so all right anything else from the board before we adjourn all right meeting us now adjourn oh okay foreign