School Board Discussion Session 10 a.m. 4-13-2021

001school board member discussion session and we are starting in the joe n idolette junior teacher education center i believe we're finishing here as well and we have dr moore here today to present with us our discussion items so dr moore thank you just to set up the confines of the day this is a a condensed uh workshop only two hours in length um but nonetheless we do have a number of healthy agenda items one is the review of the progress sdrc and our safer schools plan that was an item i placed on the agenda because two board members placed it on for this evening whether it be action or discussion and i thought it was a good time to to maximize this time to really have a dialogue and conversation about uh the creation of

002what that plan would be then the much anticipated code of student conduct uh it says here ms dampier but dr packard is here in the absence of mrs dampier who is returning to us soon in good health and we're excited about that and then a the final option or option presentation will be the strategic plan quarter three update as well as the uh update on the joint plan and where we are referencing the 53 recommendations that was a conversation that took place during the uh one of the first joint meetings so the first item is the face coverings and i will set this up uh briefly then turn it over to board members for any input or support that you may like to provide and i think that the premise of this conversation is if

003you fail to plan you plan to fail and this is an opportunity for us to engage in conversation and dialogue regarding um the steps to return to normal and taking the steps in a very respectful taking the steps in a very open and honest process to ensure uh that we as a district uh uphold the commitments that we have made uh while at the same time going through the exploration determined conditions as to when we could health in a health safe respectable way begin to unmask children this is not a conversation in my mind regarding the remainder of this particular school year i think we are in a place uh in a place implementing a plan that has provided a great deal of flexibility and our principals and teachers should be commended in the implementation

004of that plan over the course of this year there are 32 days of school remaining just last saturday the health department are in partnership with the health department we went through our last offering of i guess all call of any district staff or employee who wanted to participate in the vaccination process that process for those individuals would be completed uh going into the last week of school so we need to allow that to happen as we look at summer school summer school we feel uh with the current plan in place there are a number of accommodations that we can make to maximize a mask free space because of the size of schools and the number of kids and the ratios that are there a lot more flexibility when you have less people in our very

005very big buildings which gives us additional opportunities to reorganize use larger spaces with smaller numbers of students and ratios to maximize opportunities to take a mass break if students feel the need or educators feel the need and then really determining what needs to be present to move forward for the opening of school years opening of next school year what changes or modifications are being presented by the cdc uh what is the uh feedback and review of our plan by our health department uh reviewing with our local pediatricians the parameters that are in place the availability of vaccination for school-aged children where that would be make no mistakes about it i want to move to a mass-free environment but i want to do so as do all of you in a space in a time and

006with a plan that ensures we are sound in our decision making we have not jeopardized the environments or the health of anyone in our particular schools and that we give enough time which i think this is the right time to begin the conversation to inform our families as to what the 21 22 school year would look like it is a commitment that we all should make to be respectful honest because the the truth of the reality is there are varying viewpoints on what is the right way to move forward and it is not a easy decision for me or an easy decision for board members so as we move through this process over the next several months it is engaging in the dialogue and make being nimble enough to make the right decision uh with

007as much information as we have available so the the item that miss baranbor presented is very very straightforward i think it is appropriate in terms of that i would ask for consideration to move the the date to provide the plan back uh maybe into july and i asked for that simply because the the we need as much time as possible to ensure that we're making uh a plan that's in place to be as accurate as possible given the amount of time and how quick shifts and changes take place uh so if that can be a consideration that's just to set up the the conversation of the dialogue so i'll turn it back over to the to the vice chair uh because she is the maker of the item oh thank you yeah i i obviously

008have a lot of thoughts on this um having done some homework but i will i will reserve my comments to the end since i'm running the meeting who would like to speak first i would okay thank you dr moore and a special thank you to our staff and students in doing a really good job this school year as most people would say it's very hard to wear a mask but you know when i look at our bylaws and policies and one of our bylaws states that the ultimate responsibility for public education in any river county rests with the board and to me that means a safe education now safe when i was a principal was a little bit different connotation i became a board i'm sorry principal six months before columbine so that changed my

009perspective as a parent and as a principal and now we're at war with an enemy we cannot see with this virus i agree with you on not making anything happen these last 32 days i think we do need a plan and if summer school can work where we have the six feet i mean i think each school each principal could determine that in a plan is good but once we do this plan and we open it up to mask optional it'll be very hard to take back if other things happen or if we have more situations in the summer or we have more our cases are rising in indian river counties so i would you know just be cautious in our plan knowing that our ultimate responsibility is the safe safety of our students and

010staff thank you mr rosario um would you like to go first i personally am in favor of going to optional masks that is not a secret i put this item on as a discussion for this evening um quite a while ago our conversations have evolved since i put it on the agenda a while ago and so we we are where we are now um however i don't get to make the decisions on my own obviously my decision my thoughts and my views are are just that they are mine and i realize that as a board member we are to make decisions collectively together and so i called up several pediatricians i called up several pediatric dentists i called up some principals and i just kind of picked their brain asked them questions about their opinions

011on masks and obviously with regard to children in school and quite honestly they were all everyone was just had mixed feelings everyone there wasn't one opinion that weighed more than another some pediatricians said if it was up to me i would have no masks a dentist said the same thing if it was up to me i would have no masks they do not in his practice he had not seen anyone come in with any um mouth gum disease or mouth issues because of the mask because in his opinion as were with the pediatricians the masks are worn during the day and predominantly when they go home they're they're not wearing masks at home but then i had the other part you know that said um it's just safe it's smart for us to keep the

012masks on essentially why not we are at a time where our numbers are low county wide and here in the district i calculated based on the numbers that miss um that kristen sent us that miss maddox sent us since february 25th i counted and and my count may be off one or two but i counted 23 students who were positive cases for kovitt and 107 students quarantined since february 25th um that's a lot that's a huge difference i understand that there are certain um limitations that we have because we have opted to um i don't even know if opted is the right word to collaborate with the health department the local health department the cdc's recommendations and by the way the cdc does not demand or command or tell us what to do what they

013have on their websites are simply just recommendations and it is up to us locally to make those the decisions from there and obviously every district is different every county is different different in their numbers and in their cases so with that said we are working closely with the health department we have been doing that since the beginning of the year to ensure that we are doing contract tracing the right way and thus the quarantine i can sit here probably for another hour and share the very many opinions that have come in on all on both sides the bottom line though is um as succinctly as i can as i can make it we are ending the year we have several weeks left we do have testing coming up um and i think that testing is

014a critical factor in this equation that i think that we ought to pay very close attention to the question then becomes if we were to continue with masks for the rest of this school year even if we weren't what are we doing about the quarantine situation especially during testing do we quarantine those who have come in contact or do we not and that to me is a bigger concern at this point because i don't want any students to be hurt because of the whole quarantine thing i reached out to north county charter school in our community to speak with the principal i have not had a chance to speak with him directly north county charter is the only school that i am aware of that does not have a mass policy they have not had

015a mass policy since the beginning of the year it is my understanding based on feedback from staff members and from parents there that their numbers for covet have been near zero i don't want to say zero but very very very low so then i started to wonder and i wanted to ask and again unless i i hear back before this evening i i'll let you know if that is the case and they do not have a mask policy or they're not enforcing the mask policy if masks are optional in their school either way and if they are not reporting uh not saying that they are but if they are not reporting to the health department then they are not quarantining the assumption the fair assumption would be that they are not quarantined and if they

016they're not quarantining then where is the health department within that factor now i don't have those answers there um i don't know who does and and it's not for us to debate my point is that if it is possible for some then it could be possible for us for the rest of this school year i would like to ask that we not quarantine i would like to go to optional masks if we don't i would like for us to stop the quarantining one of the schools in our district has reduced their number of quarantining students from the beginning of the year working with the health department i'm going to say it was it's imagined school they purchased and i forget exactly how much he said i don't know if he said tens or hundreds of

017thousands of units or dollars worth and and i'm not sure which of desk guards i've been talking about dust guards for a long time so what they worked out was a plan to desk guard um the students who would have been quarantined so instead of being quarantined at home you're quarantined to this particular area with your mask and the dust guard and you are in class i personally think that's a stretch but it worked for them so their numbers for quarantining did not have not been as high and from what i understand the health department said that they their plan to do this has been one to be modeled after um so where am i going with this i'm going to ask that we i haven't even heard what terry has to say but i

018would like for us to for dr moore and his team to take a closer look at our safer schools plan our plan that we unveiled in august page by page line by line there are new guidelines that have come out recommended by the cdc much of which has gone from six feet to three feet which we should know and that the definition of how we contact trace should be we're saying you've been in contact with this person for five or ten minutes and so therefore all of you are quarantining um i i'm not sure that we're doing that but i think that that might make a big difference however i would like us to stop the quarantining i would like us to go to optional masks if possible if we cannot do that district-wide overwhelmingly

019the majority of the people who i have spoken with professionals in this area said at a minimum with elementary school students elementary school students um could go optional middle and high school probably not they would hi the majority highly recommend that middle and high school remain masked i'd like us to take a look at the role that the community plays in this decision-making process i don't want us to keep adding on more things to do and then therefore by the time we make our decision at the end of the year and so we've just wasted all this time but i do think that a new look on parent and teacher feedback would be very key to the decision that we make as well so many people have been vaccinated and so our employees who have

020been vaccinated vaccinated and parents who have been vaccinated they may feel different than they did in august and so their role in their feedback would be critical i think for our decision moving forward as well the quarantine thing is my is my biggest concern at this point um if we are going to have regular um graduation ceremony and prom are we mandating masks for those um dr moore i don't know through the chair that we are offering school system is open those events will take place graduation prom our high school principals along with all of our principals have done a absolutely outstanding job of adhering to our current safe red school plan and providing those opportunities they've engaged with students to create those experiences so everyone's looking forward to having uh the proms at the

021two schools that we see high schools that we supervise graduation also will take place and once again based on the size we're very very excited to create a space that will allow students to follow the safer at school and pretty much have the option of wearing a mask there may be opportunities as you walk in um but to create a space where you can get your your picture and all that we think there's some things that we can do using glass dividers and such to provide those opportunities for their students to be as close to normal as possible okay so with that in mind um for everything else that we do i'd like us to start to move in that direction as well to make things as normal as possible whatever our new normal is

022one of those things that i'd like us to do sorry one of those things that i'd like us to do is to ask the board to go back to the diocese if we are going to set the stage for moving in a new normal we can ourselves have dust guards up there um we we are the ones who are the examples for what we are asking um and so i am willing to do that um i don't know the feedback from board members um and my last thing um here is transportation the one area that i um i'm not willing and i'd like us to consider not changing are wearing masks on buses because they are definitely in closer quarters you know they're confined more for obvious reasons at least maybe until the summer or

023the fall and i i think i will leave it there dr well a lot's been said um i guess first and foremost i will acknowledge uh that i as a human being am risk averse in being risk averse i believe we go for the strategy um i don't want to take risks i don't want to take risks uh with illness i feel incredibly blessed that i have gotten through the last year without having gotten sick i am unbelievably grateful for that that's not true of a lot of people i know i know people who are suffering severe deteriorating long-term consequences it's called long long covert people who are now on heart medication people who have lung problems people who are not back to work um we have done an exceptionally good job in this district

024of keeping our schools open we opened on time we got kids back to school we got roughly 60 percent back to school when we first opened we're now at roughly i believe 85 percent we have not had to close a single school we have not had um over i think it was was it five percent of students was our threshold criteria i believe correct me if i'm wrong we have not exceeded that in a single school i don't believe that that is because we are over masking or over quarantining i believe it is because we are following medical science and thus we have kept our schools open and we have had as normal a school year as is possible under the circumstances so that said um i agree with dr moore in keeping the current

025safeguards in place until the end of the year my understanding um but teachers can feel free to correct me on this my understanding is that that's what teachers wants that's what has teachers feel safe in our buildings i want to support teachers in that because if we don't have teachers who feel safe and are able to do their jobs we diminish everything else in this district we diminish our academic capacity we our academic achievement the degree to which students feel safe and so on i don't need to repeat all of that so i agree with dr moore and i believe dr jones in keeping our current standards in place i agree that we can take a look with those at those in the summer given that we are able to distance in ways that have

026people feel safe my primary intention is that people feel safe i i don't know how much you all everybody is paying attention to the news but for example michigan is having a dramatic upsurge in cases right now having lessened requirements i'm personally not willing to see that happen in indian river county i feel quite strongly about that again i feel incredibly blessed at how well i and most members of my family have done in the last year and i don't want to take risks with that i don't want to follow the example of michigan and and some other states where we don't know what's going on so for that reason i do believe in pushing back the date because this changes daily um this changes daily we don't know what the scenario is and we've

027done really really well this year um i believe i want to keep that trend i don't i don't want uh to threaten that trend or dismantle that trend in any way when we are ready to make a plan i could be supportive of starting in elementary schools where there really is um there seems to be evidence and there is a tremendous amount of evidence in many ways out there that this is not transmitted to great degrees by small children who don't seem to catch the disease as much and whose the the trajectory trajectory of their breath doesn't go as far as to infect others and i'm willing to consider that when we're ready to do that um i want to highlight i really agree with dr jones point uh that once you go there you

028can't take it back that's something i practice in a lot of areas in my life also as a parent i want to err on the side of caution i don't know what's going on in charters i can't speak to that but i do know that making decisions for 500 kids is very different than making decisions for 15 000 kids and so what you are able to do in a smaller space with limited students is far different than the responsibilities of the district for 15 to 16 000 kids which comes not only with with logistical challenges but financial challenges um cleaning challenges how do we clean those guards every night so i'm not sure that that's strategy that works for us given the the um given our capacity given the magnitude of what we have to

029deal with it's on a very different scale than any of our individual charter schools as to going back to the dais um the only way i'll do that frankly um is if either there are guards i would consider um but if we're all masked if you will note in these meetings you'll notice i'm backing up to this this the only way i'll wear a mask not wear a mask is when nobody is on my right side and i move farther in that direction in the evenings when the room is much more crowded i'm i'm wearing a mask i am airing on the side of caution i believe in doing that i believe that's what we model for our district i believe we model what is the safest what is the most responsible what is the

030most risk averse and what follows the guidance of our education and medical professionals so that's where i am with it okay mrs barenborg my turn um thank you for all these comments and it's great to hear that you've called pediatricians and people like that because i made some phone calls too but to do different people just to give a little history on this back on october 13th on an action agenda item i had put a request for a plan to be created and that request for the plan got delayed due to a lawsuit that was filed on 1028 so because of that lawsuit everything got pushed back um i'm a planner i believe in not doing something erratic i believe in not doing something that caused chaos i believe in doing something with well planned

031out thoughts that is why i'm asking for this to be discussed and acted on today because i'm not looking for an overnight quick i am looking for let's plan this out carefully and do the right things and follow the guidelines that we're supposed to follow that's my request so so that you know um when i put this item together i went back and forth and back and forth with the superintendent about it because i felt like um we needed to all consider certain factors because you all do your homework and we all do separate homework which is great because this is only time we can really talk about our homework um when we originally put masks on kids it was because of the hospitalization rate if you remember back when we were told to mask

032people because of the hospitalization rate so we can get them down i checked today um they are down big time so that now became something different it's no longer the hospitalization rates is why everybody's mass now we're used to it now we're now we've discovered other things so i'm not saying that it's wrong to not follow what we originally said however my feeling is you know i know for a fact that maths don't work for a personal reason but i also think that the only reason why a mask would work is if somebody coughs or if they speak loudly then of course that's going to go farther and so i understand that i understand the six foot rule and i understand why somebody would want to be masked i follow the rules i mask when

033i'm not within six feet to be kind to my fellow man [Music] and we are six feet apart from each other here so i don't worry about that the concern i had you know is i watched the governor's round table and he had experts on there um immune immunologists and um pretty pretty high up their experts and whether or not social media has decided to censor him or not um that's a political issue and that shouldn't come here i've had people email me about it and call me about it and i'm sorry but he's our governor he had experts and he had a panel and he had a discussion during the discussion they talked about how masks are horrible for children so i called his office i was up in tallahassee i was meeting with

034different people and i decided all right i'll call his office so i called office and i spoke to an aide and i said i watched the round table i'd like to know are you giving us guidance is there going to be an executive directive are you telling us as school board members that we should be unmasking children what are you saying i wanted it right directly from the governor's office and the answer i got was the same answer i got when i called six months ago and that was call the doe and i said well i'm kind of disappointed that you would have a round table and talk about you know unmasking children and yet when i call your office this is what i'm getting because i'm going to tell you when i told the

035girl last time i called the due they told me to call our follow cdc guidelines out cdc guidelines say to have children wear a mask and she said i know that's what i have to tell you to do which i was a little disappointed with so i called the doe and i left a message on richard corcoran's voicemail and um didn't get a reply so i happened to be with some people the next day up in tallahassee and was a little frustrated that i hadn't gotten a reply in a week so um they made a phone call and i got a reply within an hour interesting how that works up there so um the interesting conversation that i had was it's still follow the cdc guidelines and a lot of it has to do with

036protecting people and protecting our government and protecting us and protecting society and and it's a little frustrating to be in this circle and um when i asked you know well okay follow cdc guidelines cdc guidelines say to mass children and he's he said yep i know that was not richard corcoran that told me that just so you know for the record um but that is that is kind of the run around i got up there and i'm putting it out there because i think people should understand how frustrating this is it is not black and white it is gray and it's very frustrating so just when you hear somebody saying okay um here's a great medical report can you believe it here's you know people are sending us stuff left and right it's amazing and

037it's amazing to me that people think if you cut and paste something and send it to you like that not the entire document that that's a valid way to send research sorry but it's not okay i'm just putting out there that's not the way to do it um send us accurate reports send us things that you feel like we can research because i do i do go back and look at that i understand our laws and policies peggy i i do not want to go against those i'm not asking for that i am asking for a plan though i'm asking for how are we going to what nobody is saying when will this end when can we finally unmask children what are we looking at to do that you know are we looking at numbers

038hospitalization rates are we looking at vaccines you mentioned dr moore vaccination review of children are you referring to having children vaccinated with coping with a covid vaccine right now it's available to students 16 and above and they're considering allowing 14 and above yeah i don't think we should use that as a factor at all i think that's a parent's right to decide whether or not they vaccinate their child and so i don't think that's a factor that we should be using period i'll stand straight on that one the prom in graduation i ran into a parent recently that first of all she thanked us tremendously for allowing prom so i wanted to put that out there she's very appreciative of their child getting to have prom searching for a prom dresser on here is hard

039so she went to his palm she went to west palm and when they were searching for prom dresses the lady said wait you want a prom dress why do you want a prom dress they're not having prom and she said wait we are and so what schools because none of the schools south of us are having prom i'm not sure if it's now opened up down there but this was two weeks ago so she was very appreciative of that uh graduation i feel like if they are six feet apart sitting outside you know um i these poor kids have had all their pictures taken with a mask on you know if i were a parent right now i'd be frustrated because all my kids great opportunities of taking their picture has a mask on them

040so um i would love to see them and when they're socially distanced with the mask removed and when they go up on that stage and be able to have their picture taken make it so that we're away from them so they can have their picture taken without a mask please i think that that's important i think looking at summer school is the time to do it i don't think right now is the time to upset all the apple cart we are starting testing today third graders correct taking reading tests so the testing session goes from now until basically the end of the school year so i don't want to upset any apple carts i know people are frustrated with all this but if they can see a light at the end of this tunnel i

041think that's helpful but i think if we pull back immediately right now we're going to have anarchy because we're going to upset the assessment schedule we're going to upset parents and that want masks we're going to upset a lot of things so we do need to stair step this and be careful with it i did ask for our attorney to send you guys senate bill 72 this week which has now passed into law the governor signed it if you'll look at it it's talking about quarantines [Music] here's here's the issue you know and suzanne is susan here oh there you go suzanne sorry um could you kind of give it to us in a snippet as to what sb 72 says welcome back by the way thank you so much thank you it's wonderful to

042be back thank you so much um yes now understand that this bill was signed by the governor the end of march and so it was effective the end of march not a lot of guidance has been issued on it so there may be more information coming but i'm just going to summarize the portion of the bill that would apply to you there's a section that applies to health care providers which we are not so i'll just do the part that it would apply to a local government that provision of the bill provides that we are eligible to be exempt from civil tort lawsuits arising out of issues that happen because of covet 19. civil tort lawsuits i want to be clear this is not a get a jail free card this applies to civil tort

043lawsuits and a great example would be slip trip and falls bus accidents a fall on a playground those are your typical civil litigation lawsuits that would apply to this bill so if we were faced with a claim by anyone that fell into the category of a civil tort lawsuit arising out of covet 19 that was somehow caused by covet 19. if and there's an if if the school board was following the standards and guidance at the time in order to protect people and ourselves from covet 19 and the court finds that we were following that guidance then we are exempt from being sued we have immunity from that suit if we are following the guidance and the court says yes you are following the guidance the bill goes on to say that if you are

044not if you are found to not have been following the guidance the lawsuit will continue however if there is a heightened standard of proof the individual who filed the lawsuit must show by clear and convincing evidence that their damage their illness whatever cause of action they may have um by that heightened standard of proof was the the cause of this was the fault of the school board then the lawsuit will continue on so if we're following the guidance there is complete immunity if we are not following the guidance the lawsuit continues with a heightened level of proof so the the bill gives us some protection with regard to lawsuits which may come forward in the next year or so with regard to covet 19. thank you of course and that guidance and um the standards

045and guidance is the question so for example when i called the governor's out office and asked for guidance i was told to call the doa call the follow cdc which again the standards on the cdc say to mass children may i just add one sure i'm sorry um there isn't necessarily a lot of bills or or statutes will will define terms for you and so i went searching to see if there was anything in this bill that defined what is that guidance how do we define what that guidance is and of course there's unfortunately there's nothing in the bill but i was able i've not completely listened to every all the different um conversations you know on the floor committees about this but what was coming forward in some of that discussion which is not

046necessarily going to be definitive but what was coming forward during those discussions amongst the committee members and on the house and the senate floor was cdc guidance at the time florida department of health guidance at the time and governor executive orders that was part of the discussion didn't make it into the bill but that gives us some idea of what to perhaps look at for assistance and determining what are the best standards to follow in order to come under this immunity that's provided under the bill okay thank you not that we have to be worried about lawsuits my concern number one is safety of children and so i think you know keeping that forefront is is number one um seeking guidance from experts because i'm not an expert in immunology is number two and um

047i think that you know when we're looking at something like that though it's important to know what's going on up in tallahassee so i just wanted to make sure that you understood that part after school dr moore we talked about after school programs you know when kids go after school off campus of the school district i have witnessed it myself there are no masks on these kids they are going gathering in groups of 50 and 60 kids i see it all the time i'm i'm concerned that the health department and by the way we don't quarantine children the health department does so i am concerned that the health department is only working on the actions of what happens in school district and where are they when they're talking about big events outside the school district

048how come those events aren't being quarantined they were at the beginning and now they're not maybe because they're overwhelmed down at the health department probably i don't know but it almost feels like we have to follow certain rules and the rest of our community is following different rules and it's unfortunate um because you know i think we got to do what's best for our kids but i also think it's time again and you have surveys out there right now i didn't get a copy of the parent survey but i would like it maybe other board members would like it because i think that should be a question in there is it in in the climate survey notes it's very specific to the actual school climate but it'll give us a lot of meaningful data as

049we problem solve over the summer in terms of shifts or modifications because i agree i think mr rosario brought that up to have um sort of sort of parent and teacher feedback i think that's important you know because now teachers have the opportunity to get the vaccine if they want it and i know they haven't gotten the second round done so once that second round is done then we can assume that the employees that wanted that second vaccination have that vaccination and so if that's the case you know that kind of might give us some different feedback i don't know mr rosario did you want to speak yes please thank you um i i wanted to ask suzanne um i sent you an email yesterday i haven't had a chance to go back about the

050where we are in terms of the health emergency the state health emergency and so on can you give us an update on that please absolutely mrs rosario the dr rivkas rivkas which who is the state surgeon general he renewed the declaration of public health emergency back in february and so his declaration of public health emergency expires april 20 of 2021 i don't know what if anything he will do closer to that expiration date but but currently we are still under the declaration of public health emergency by the state surgeon general in addition to that the governor governor desantis renewed his state of emergency back on i'm sorry back in february as well and that expires april 27 of 2021 so the governor state of emergency for the entire state of florida with regard to covet

05119 is still in effect and again he's extended this several times but i have no idea what he might you know do closer to the expiration of these orders so i think that that plays a part because um i did not um intend to suggest that we are quarantining but we are partnering with the health department and providing the information for who are social who are the students who are in close contact um the close contact information um the cds this the health department would not know who those close contact people are if it weren't for the schools working closely with them the district working closely with them but in light of the ongoing emergency orders until the end of april at least at a minimum my question my next question to you legally is

052in order for us to ensure that we are not negligent that we do not fall in any type of negligence to be sued during covid or as a result of covid and and all of the items that you just mentioned previously do changes are changes to our plan if we decide that we want to make any changes to our current safe at schools plan and we decide whatever those changes might be and we decide to adhere to a new edited version of our safe at schools plan with that suffice under the state of emergency with that device still under the health emergency and because we do not have to follow cdc guidelines because cdc are just guidelines to what extent do we have authority under these emergency plans under these state of emergency and health

053emergency to what extent do we have the full authority to make the decisions at the local level and still remain safe from lawsuit etc um so i'm gonna i'm gonna take your second question first do you have the authority to make changes to the plan and my answer is yes yeah the school board does have the authority um as the governing body of the district to make changes to that plan okay um with regard to changes um what the what the bill says let's talk about the the bill that we just discussed first then i'll go to the first question what the bill says is substantially comply with authoritative or controlling government-issued health standards or guidance so if that's what as long as we are in compliance with the authoritative or controlling government-issued health standards

054or guidance then changes to your plan in compliance with those standards would still allow you to have immunity under the bill immunity from civil tort lawsuits okay if changes to the plan deviate from that what that means is a lawsuit can be filed and we would be in the lawsuit we wouldn't be able to get out the very beginning we'd be in the lawsuit but the individual who sued would have to prove a heightened standard of clear and convincing evidence that what we did caused their injury their sickness whatever the issue was they sued us for okay so it just means we're in the lawsuit with a heightened standard for the plaintiff to prove with regard to your first question i don't know what your changes are to the plan so it's difficult for me

055to say whether we'll be in compliance with government standards without having more detail of what you're looking at doing because the cdc has lots of recommendations and the department of health has lots of different recommendations but i'm sure your local department of health has lots of different recommendations those would be the the the universe if you will of standards or guidance and how does your plan fit into that those recommendations but if you deviate from those recommendations can you do it yes does it mean that you could get sued yes so here's why i know i apologize for that the mix-up of that because i was actually asking as i was thinking at the same time kind of walking it through in my head what am i supposed to say here because i know what

056i wanted to ask but it just didn't come out um um as clear as i thought but i appreciate thank you you're the you're good at what you do um one of the reasons why i'm asking that specifically is because our plan identifies social distancing as being six feet apart the cdc's revised guidelines recommend three feet apart if we were to change our current plan to three feet apart because we're going by the recommendations this is just an example and someone gets covet would that be considered um would we be considered immune because we were following suggested guidelines and we were not being negligent in that we did change our plan but if that's what the cdc's guidance is is individuals to maintain a distance of not less than three feet well masked you know

057whatever they're yeah their guidance is abc and we change our plan our safer at school plan to be abc yes you are following the authoritative guidance from the cdc so whatever that abc is so it's even with the masks though their recommendation is should with regards to the mask in elementary schools students should be at least six feet apart there's another place here that says that they should wear masks but it's not mandating that they it's not a elementary school students must be at least three feet apart that makes a big difference so the the ultimate question then is uh well suzanne answered it we have that authority we have the ultimate authority to make those decisions here at our level i understand dr dr jones suzanne i wanted one thing i highlighted from that

058bill was heightened legal protections and that really stood out to me you know if you're following what you should be following um dr more correct me if i'm wrong all of the lawsuits the judge in this state i think there were six or seven was in favor of the schools correct to my knowledge the answer is yes and i think i remember saying that one of the wording was something like um keeping students and staff safe and of course we we hear from a lot of different people and we listen to them and one thing i've heard consistently is my child is back there because of your safety guidelines right they are here because i feel safe you know there's many parents who can't stay home with their children they have to work and once

059they understood that we were doing our best at masking and social distancing and of course encouraging to wash hands was so very important and i think every person up here wants a plan nobody wants to jump in this august first and say we're going to do this i'll reiterate i don't think there should be changes through the end of the year we've got to look at summer school to see what we can do and then you know hopefully be ready to go with a plan that will keep our students safe in the fall and you know my hope is that we have optional masking but again once we go there going to be hard to pull back and we must consistently watch what's going on in the county and i agree and i just as

060a straight fact i won't bring an item to this board that hasn't been reviewed for legal sufficiency and i cannot in good conscience uh jeopardize or expose the district uh to any liability so you know as we do this work moving forward as dr jones said yeah i want the mass to be optional but we do it in a way where we're not putting us out to you know risk it is a thought out process considering the wide perspective that is in this community um allowing opportunities i think one of the things we've had so few issues um by no means i'm saying that we haven't had issues but we've had so few issues because our principles are problem solvers and our teachers go above and beyond in identifying situations in classrooms to provide the

061flexibility and that needs to be acknowledged and we continue to do that work moving forward um but i i agree with miss barenborg i think having a plan uh the best defined criteria that can be available and the truth is that criteria may update from week to week um but it it kind of puts a stake in the ground um where it gives us a level of clarity and and we want to be consistent one of the things that i think we're going to approve upon is not saying a and then learning something new and having to go to b that was part of the frustration um that the nation really faced as well as us individually because we made a a plan and then new recommendations came in place i i think those days

062are are kind of over with with covet as they the research is kind of not moving as rapidly as it used to be but i think we can say this is the stake in the ground this is where we want to go um as mrs barenborg captured it it is saying hey you know what's the plan to move us there so dr moore you mentioned moving the date back i had put in the action item april 27th workshop um could we have at least a plan for summer school by then yes because um as a parent you know they don't like finding out things last second i remember we changed dress code years ago and they did it the week before school started and it was just i remember that that was just horrendous you

063know because parents had already done all their school shopping as a matter of fact tax-free weekend had already come and passed so you know we can't we can't make decisions quickly we have to make decisions with a lot of forethought because parents are wanting this information they want communication they want to know way ahead of time that way they can make a decision if we decide to go optional masks in the fall then the parents that don't want that can make that decision and the parents that want that can make that decision so i think it's only fair to parents to put this out early i think i'll amend my item for then i want summer school guidance for the april 27 workshop and when are you asking for to you mentioned july that to

064me is too late for deciding something in the fall the item says june 27th june i think that that's what the item currently says june 22 it says sorry april what are we looking at okay so you're saying that the plan on june 22nd okay so the plan for next year you're willing to have in place i'm looking at my item for tonight um you're willing to have it on in place on june 22nd i'm asking if we can discuss it and have it moving forward um and then a final decision you're saying mate made on june 22nd through the chair my my concern is june 22nd may not be late enough to have as much information right i get that to make the right decision but but i agree um and that's the intent

065of my you know starting this conversation and without a plan you failed um is putting that information out i think june 27th um is more than appropriate for our summing programming offerings um i believe there are you know tweaks and modifications that we can make into that plan as we go into summer school and then continue to update my desire would be by you know the end of the first week in july the community has been fully informed which is a a four week period prior to the opening of schools which gives us enough time to respond and act and that's just kind of what we learned in the past one week you don't think one week make a difference but um in this reality it is it gives me more time to engage because

066uh we are on the front end of having this conversation and dialogue every every system will be having this these conversations as well so it allows us to pull up on that expertise as well okay so on my item looking at april 27th workshop you can give us a presentation then about summer summer programs and possibilities of on the discussion points that i put here possibilities on those discussion points okay and then um you're asking for did i hear june 29th what was the date i would say prior to the the first tuesday in july the second tuesday in july which is the so we have one meeting in july i know that's them may go ahead um i think that that's still too late we should be able to tell parents before july at

067least by the end of june what our plan is parents go away a lot of parents are not receiving communications over the summer communications are much more difficult for that fact you know we don't have school obviously so i i would prefer that we have notification even if it's a tentative notification and then letting parents know that um a final decision on this barring no other outbreak barring you know nothing tremendous coming our way this will be the plan but we will absolutely with 100 certainty uh confirm it by the end of july however by the end of june i think would be appropriate i think that's fair thank you so which date in june are you looking at uh the the item as is okay i'm sorry okay i agree with miss rosario just

068just know this is a fluid document um as she said barring any kind of you know increase in what we're dealing with in the summer and with everybody home in the summer and they're in activities we don't know can you just clarify um mrs barenborg brought this up and i had it but skipped over it on my notes the criteria that you'll use you mentioned legal sufficiency obviously so we want to be consistent with cdc guidelines which we have been doing to date what are the criteria can you just clearly articulate the criteria that you'll use in order to determine the plan and how we move forward given it the only issue that's coming up here is optional masking or not right everything else is fairly straightforward and the the answer to your question is

069is really to convene with the medical experts in those particular fields and lean on that expertise and that guidance to say you know school district make a plan without vetting it through multiple resources and multiple individuals who have that level of expertise would be negligent so it is just not simply a school improvement plan or a district strategic plan uh it holds the mustard or stands the test in terms of you know multiple medical professionals in different arenas to say hey this adheres to the current guidance and right the guidance can change from june to july to august but we need to be fluid enough to continue because the guidance will become less or the the reactions to the guidance you know the report what you would have to do we become less over time

070so as that guidance is shifted or modified we then too would shift or modify i'd like to add to that if i can i don't mean to interrupt um let's not forget the feedback from faculty staff in a survey you know i don't know if you want to make it as simple as yes or no asks yes or no uh parents students no and thank you miss rosario and we will convene the task force once again we'll replicate the process um i've made a number of uh extent offers to to extend to to ensure the task force has multiple points of view both on the pro and con side of mask i think that's going to create a very good dialogue for that problem-solving team moving forward local pediatricians will convene with staff and teachers

071uh as we close the year we won't make decisions in in a silo but we'll use all of the resources that we have available to us to get as much information and data to have a deep understanding as to where faculty staff parents students feel in order to make the decision that holds the holds up to the medical guidance while the same time is being informed by the thoughts and opinions of our community i would also challenge you to also add to those professionals not just pediatricians but pediatric services in dental and ent just to get some other perspective with regard to masks around around mountains obviously okay dr dr schiff you weren't finished correct yeah i guess my only other point is the the issue of vaccinations has come up and i and i

072want to be clear because i think there's confusion around this getting a vaccine doesn't mean you're not going to get covet it means you're not going to get long coverage you're not going to be hospitalized and you're not going to die from it so the availability of vaccines doesn't mean that we are decreasing necessarily the possibility that people can get covid or the transmission of the disease it means we are decreasing the likelihood that that the disease will be severe and so when we talk about vaccines uh i didn't hear dr moore in any way suggest that vaccines would be mandatory for kids for students so i want to clarify that because that came up in new york no i asked him to clarify it right yeah so that we're not mandating it um or

073at least to date we have not done that um but the availability of vaccines doesn't mean the disease goes away or people aren't going to get it it just means we're not going to die from it so i want to be clear if the likelihood is is is significantly diminished that we will experience severe long-term harmful effects hospitalization or death and i want to be clear because i think there's there's constant confusion about the idea that if you get the vaccine that means we're all immune and the disease goes away unfortunately it doesn't i wish it did rosario yes thank you um we're still the the whole lot the immediate um concern for um um not so much for the students or the staff who get coveted during testing for the rest of the year

074but the quarantining of students um what what what's the plan for that now moving forward for the rest of the year i don't want to isolate kids from from testing if it's not necessary well there's it's a not a short answer i i think as miss barenborg said um i don't think there needs to be any any confusion out there schools whether they are private whether they are charter whether they are public do not quarantine children we are not in the business of quarantining we have no authority to quarantine this district challenged this district of school board challenged that process in october a school board tourney and myself engaged in multiple conversations uh to determine if there was a a legal um battle that we could fight at the direction of this board through the

075item that miss baron board brought back in i want to say october october um that exploration ended in the validation that it is that the quarantines under the authority of the health department so in looking at some of the numbers um from charter schools they seem to be very consistent with numbers of equivalent size um within our district so when i look at the charter high school they have quarantines of 24 16 17 17 12. when they do a quarantine the health department goes in with the tape measure puts out puts it out six feet does a little circle and if you're inside of that circle whether you have a mask on or whether you don't have a mask on whether you have a guard or whether you don't have the guard quarantined quarantined even

076with the the three-foot rule um and they're still quarantining at six feet so 14 is that why aren't they following cdc guidelines that would be a conversation that would be a conversation for them but but that that is in fact the the reality and the rules don't change for the public school system than they do for a um a smaller school now other schools we go to school five days a week there are charter schools that do a and b options which would be considered a blended option still those schools have quarantined very similar to school dis or schools our size schools five day a week schools two days a week so the reality is quarantining it is being equitably done across the district by the authority of which who does it which is the

077health department currently we have 60 students who are quarantined the length of time of quarantines has gone down drastically since the cdc and health department following that recommendation did make the modification to the time that a student was quarantined as it comes to the assessment windows first the assessment window has been drastically expanded so assessments take place between now all the way through the end of may so there's a great deal of flexibility provided by the state and conducting those assessments a little bit later in our presentation the just friday as i emailed the board concessions were made under a new executive order that allowed schools and students to opt in to the grading of schools and we need to continue to move forward in this school system to really put the child first and

078miss rosario is right there were schools that are very small elementary school had 10 students quarantined now i don't know what grade those students are in but if they are in the fifth grade in a small elementary school that school may not meet its lowest 25 percent because we have schools in our district where the lowest 25 percent which is 200 of a 700 point grade is nine students 14 students 17 students that is not a true representation of what's taking place in grades k through 5. and that's part of the flexibility that the state has provided to us um so as we you know are continuing to debrief what the executive order that was just released uh the advice that we're giving to to principals is is to move forward with compassion and grace

079to make sure that we're looking at if a student was quarantined for 10 days uh maybe we that family makes the decision and working with the school um we're going to we're going to take another two weeks before he or she is is assessed uh there are still going to be families uh in our community who don't want to return to school to take the assessment and we don't have to feel that obligation or pressure uh to conform to convince them to come in and that is that is just fine we want to test as many kids as possible i think we'll be around 90 to 95 percent of our students tested that gives us the needed data and information really to make the appropriate decisions on what has been the true impact of covid

080and there's multiple impacts of covet whether it be attendance whether it be quarantines whether it be students that went from one model to to the other mother so many different variations have come into play this year so the executive order provided by the state has given us a great deal of flexibility and it is the the right move uh to allow us to be adaptable in terms of how we service our community and our students so if i can follow up on that what what happens with the students who choose with the parents who choose not to bring their students in for testing are they exempt i mean is that an opportunity for that child to choose to be exempt you opt in for the the grading of the school our our goal is to

081test as many kids as as possible um so that that remains the same now if a family makes the decision just not to test because of i am in virtual or i am transitional we've made accommodations at each of the schools to provide spaces for them to take those environments and speaking to our principles uh they feel very very comfortable that they'll be able to hit their their percentages okay okay can we move on to the next item um i i'm not quite done with the with um what i was saying okay i wanted to share here on our plan and i know that you're going to review it but i wanted to bring to your attention on page 18 of our plan there is a flow chart there that shows the overview of case

082response and contact tracing is a part of this according to the new guidelines the definition of close contact is someone who was within six feet of a person diagnosed with covid for a total of 15 minutes or more for over a 24-hour period now that's pretty specific i don't know if any of our children would then qualify if you have been around someone who tested positive for a total of 15 minutes or more or over a 24-hour period um however the definition of close contact also applies regardless of whether either person was wearing a mask or not so some of these i think need to be and i don't mind giving this to you but some of these need to be considered when revising our plan and moving forward and i'm really only i'm thinking

083about testing period here last is quarantine should be used for students teachers and staff who might have been exposed to covid close contact identified through contact tracing should quarantine unless and there are some this is this is what's new unless they are fully vaccinated or have tested positive in the last three months and do not have any symptoms those are your edits right this is from the cdc okay okay guidelines from the cdc okay all right so if we do not have students who have any symptoms for the rest of the month we'll be covered because following their guidelines if they do not have any symptoms you don't have to quarantine them those are the those are the updates yes sir i will hand this over to you but the health department does the quarantine

084so they agree yeah but we but we have to we have to make sure that they understand that the cdc updated their guidelines but this helps i understand but the cdc also just updated their guidelines said three feet but yet they're still quarantined at six well this is my this is my issue this is the frustration this is my initial i think the i don't think i'm gonna alleviate the frustration but in our conversations with the health department i can give you uh here is how it is being interpreted and being implemented in this particular county so i want to ask one last question before we move on um how many kids that have been quarantined this year do we know have gotten positive result back but the jury is probably not able to know

085all of them but it there's been we were that was a point of of pride for us going into october november since then we've had a number of both staff and and students who have um who tested positive because it was zero for the longest time it it was and that has since changed january and february were not kind months in terms of of the um covet and maybe we need to look at that breakdown when you're making the decision in june of looking at by how many people you know adults versus kids because everybody's saying you know kids are virus transmitters and we know i know from working you know with young children for years i'd get a cold about 10 days after school started so yeah the common cold gets passed really easily

086with little kids but we can't blame children for all virus transmissions and i think that's the frustration is that's what i heard at the beginning of all this and i would like some data looking at that for us as to um you know prove that or not are kids really transmitting this are they not and and i know we're not the ones that are medical experts but we do have our data and we do have our communities data so let's take a look at that data because i think we're getting so many people are getting the fear factor from the news you know you read the news the coveted cases are down you get all excited and then you hear okay michigan is having a problem and it's like okay now we're supposed to worry

087again so it is frustrating to live in these times and i know we're not the only people that have lived in times like this when the flu came out the flu was the same issue you know people were dying from the flu and then you know now we have the flu shot so and i agree that the you know the shot doesn't take it away but it definitely lessens the blow and that's what the flu shot does as well so um i look forward to your presentation i look forward to bring this item up board members i'm asking you to really look at this as a stair-stepping opening long-term plan not a last-minute let's fly by that the night plan let's let's really be careful with what we're looking at because the community wants us

088to to really communicate well and um by just sitting here and saying nothing i don't think that's communicating well so one way or the other we just need to communicate it okay thank you thank you and our our next item is going to be presented um by dr packard i will turn it over to here uh regarding our code of conduct and the work that we've done in preparation to bring this item to you tonight hi good morning thank you so much uh for allowing me the opportunity to talk through the work that we've done focused on the proposed school year 2122 code of student conduct so for today we're going to review uh just a timeline of the work that has been done thus far we'll talk a bit about our advisory team members

089who contributed feedback we'll review the proposed changes and then we'll have time for questions so our timeline this work commenced in january 2021 we had 24 community members half of whom were members of our sdirc community participate over the course of three team meetings they gave excellent feedback they had homework in between each session they worked hard during those two hour sessions and we appreciate their time their commitment and the opportunity to improve the code based upon their feedback we also challenged ourselves to really elevate student voice this year we thought it was critical and to my knowledge it is unprecedented we had almost 100 students across our secondary school campuses participate in a series of 90-minute work groups with us and so that was just an incredible opportunity to be able to hear directly

090from our students as members of stakeholders as we engaged in this process of revision in february and march our office of strategic planning and support services teams met to really review all of that feedback ensure it was aligned the changes that we made with state and board policy as well as state and federal statute we continue to make changes throughout the month of february and in early march we held a virtual team meeting for those constituents who had participated as advisory team members to review the additional changes that we had made up until that point and solicit additional feedback in april we submitted the proposed code of student conduct to you for your review we're here today to review those changes that are proposed and with your approval we will move into may with a

091public hearing and proposed adoption for school year 21 22. so as i mentioned we had 24 members on our advisory team evenly split between indian river county community members and stakeholders as well as sdrc employed staff and faculty for our students we had 99 so literally just shy of 100 students you can see the breakdown in the slides based upon participation from our different secondary schools as i mentioned we had a very diverse group of students which were proud that diverse voices again were elevated and represented in the feedback that we obtained and changes that we made based upon race and ethnicity as well as disability status and economic status student feedback overall was quite positive as was community feedback both internal and external the changes that were made for the 2021 school year were

092positively received and so we really focused the bulk of our effort and discussion on increasing accessibility in terms of readability and clarity for all stakeholders so this is an iterative process we go through this each year in this iteration we've taken additional steps to ensure that the language is truly accessible by each stakeholder so that they understand the the code the purpose and the steps that they can take to learn more information so you're going to see updated responsibilities very minor updated responsibilities for students parents and staff including a link to a page that will be created with more information we have added additional information for our students in transitional and virtual models so we have highlighted when things are applicable excuse me as well as some information that is specific to them we really

093felt it was necessary to expand the corrective intervention examples and so we have added additional resources for our students and our school teams in those areas we created the alternative school-based program to inspire renewed excellence excuse me aspire which is a alternative to in-school suspension we're very excited about that due to sessor language changes from the florida department of education we did modify our own language to be consistent with those modifications we streamlined wherever we could so if there was redundancy we attempted to correct that redundancy to eliminate it again to ensure that it was clear for all stakeholders students families as well as our staff members we added nicotine and cigarettes to our tobacco-free statement with regard to dress code we removed any language or examples that disproportionately were associated with different subgroups of

094students and individuals we added and removed glossary terms as appropriate and then we have added hyperlinks related to our appendices as well as other documents and information that is pertinent to our families and our staff up next once we have received board approval we will move forward with revised training for our staff as well as for our students and our families and we will update our website to reflect all approved changes and so that leads us to questions okay any questions all right um dr jones you want to go first this time thank you miss packard um i wasn't on the team last year but i observed quite a bit and i was really pleased with how the format changed i think elementary middle high school a little bit different which i thought was really

095good for our students um the types and teens were looking at out of school suspension dr moore if someone is sent there and they go they do their work that's not counted as a suspension if they're in that program correct yes that is correct okay and do you know at this point how much that has reduced suspensions this year suspensions are down tremendously tremendously when you look at that initiative it's twofold a it is an alternative suspension where you're just not sending the student home you're sending them to receive services and support um so the best way to evaluate the impact of that particular program is repeat offenders so if a student did something did we empower him with the skills or the ability to problem solve so when that same scenario happens in in

096the future he now has those particular skills in your plan for the alternative school i read a little bit about that with making some changes in the students how will that what would that look like as we've problem solved um there are opportunities to continue to address the maladaptive behavior while at the same time ensuring that we're continuing to provide the instructional support to students so ensuring that the opportunities to engage in the instruction collect the work bring it closer to the school sites in in some scenarios do that at the school at school sites we believe that we could um not disadvantage the child by returning to him or her class uh and falling behind so not that they're not doing the academic work uh while at the altas but more times than not

097it was just academic work not 100 associated or aligned to what was going on in that particular class so we think we can provide that connection so the students don't get behind and one last one um the in-school suspension which i used to call timeout but um heard some good things about what we're doing in there can you be a little i mean looking at behavior changes and so forth how's that going through the chair and that is once again another area timeout is a a what we would call as a principles we just need to kind of check the behavior we need to give some reinforcement uh cool down and get back in class so really using or empowering our our school counselors our success coaches with knowing if we could provide the intervention

098in a small window of time and then get the child back into class where he can find success then that's what we need to do it doesn't need to be three days or two days or a full day in some cases our goal needs to be to address the behavior to ensure success while in the classroom that's all for now thank you mrs rosario yes thank you so much for um presenting this i i do have an addition on page seven i received feedback from several parents and it it's very minimal the res under responsibility of parents slash guardians are you there okay the 10th bullet down which is actually the second bullet from the bottom it is underlined visit your child's school and observe in a classroom consistent with school processes and procedures the

099insert would be after classroom to add and or at extracurricular activities um so essentially it would read visit your child school and observe in a classroom and or at or you know extracurricular activities consistent with school processes and procedures thank you um i actually have an item dr moore knows about um a couple years ago there was an actual part of this that said parents rights did you find it dr moore um yes i did okay what year was that it was 2018-19 okay and in there there was a section of this is a parent's rights for when they come to school correct yes yeah and that was removed and i'm not sure why it was removed but understanding that there is um a bill that's going through very quickly um and supposed to be

100voted on the 20th of this month i believe in the senate so if that bill goes through which is expected to do so we'll see barring another issue the parents bill of rights then would um be something that i think either should be injected in here or because this we talked about the fact that this need to be printed in and out and or not printed but posted now for parents soon do a second or s or a supplement that says these are parents rights so i um and and problem solving with you yesterday as well as the the team there were a couple things that we problem solved around um in that previous version what we did is shift from parental rights to responsibilities of parents and guardians and the the content is overwhelmingly

101the same with with minor modifications for redundancies as dr packard mentioned but i think we do have a policy that is in place um and has been in place and as the parental rights legislation works through there's no reason for us not to reference what we currently already have and and in that is policy so i would um be open to adding at the at the last bullet which would basically say please reference school board policy 5780 for student parent rights for additional information and okay i'm sorry i have a night the reason i want to reference the policy uh when and if that goes into law uh each district in the state of florida will be required to act right we already have a policy um that substantially meets the requirements so we may

102have to depending on where things land make modifications or changes to the policy um but we're not changing the policy number just the content based on whatever the law would require us to do so this would allow us to continue with the code of conduct while the same time referencing it and as it goes through adoption or changes or not it's still there in a very transparent way so let me talk the difference between policy in a in a handbook um i'm gonna i'm gonna tell you a story of when i was a parent and i had an issue in high school i believe i've told you this story but um and my child was having a grade mark down because of a health issue and it really upset me so i went to the

103teacher and the teacher says my class my rules i went to the administrator and i was told our school our rules and so i had to pull out the policy book i actually had one and the reason why i had one is i was an assistant principal at the time in the district now i knew policy but i'm going to tell you most parents don't and so i was able to turn that policy book around and show them that it wasn't their school their rules it was the school board's policy that gave my child that permission so of course her grade was put back and i was apologized to which i appreciated it it was furious for me at the time to have to go there though to a policy and i had the same

104situation happen this week with a parent who called me they were a little frustrated that they were told noah something and then had to research the policy to be able to come back to say here's the policy this is what gives me this right so and i'm not talking about parents visiting school i'm talking about something else but my point is yes we have policies in place but sometimes and i think with the bill of rights this is a good opportunity for us to come up with some sort of handbook that we put on the website next to this through the chair i don't want to put mr meyer on this on the spot but i'm going to put mr meyer on the spot um because this is something that we're actively working on um

105in order to ensure we have a the what's called the sister document document but maybe the the sister document so mr meyer want to give a brief update on the work that we're leading yes dr moore i i agree mr borg i mean the the parent facing uh handbooks are very important um i think there has to be clear alignment between the policy and those handbooks and so what we want to do as dr moore said ensure that once the legislation passes that we amend both the policy and then create a standalone comprehensive document that's easy for parents to digest and understand that references everything clearly and concisely i do agree with the the way in which we're discussing this i mean we have a lot of different documents that if we were to try

106to include all all parts of all documents in each document we're going to end up with many documents that are 400 pages right so referencing within like let's say the student progression plan where you would need to go to the parental bill of rights handbook or referencing within the code of conduct where you should reference that within the code of conduct it would cut down and streamline uh the the size of those different documents making sure that we have an appropriate parent-facing document along with uh official more offenses and legal words within the policy that makes everything give the power that's there so that's what we're working on so we're already developing in anticipation of um the passage of that just because there even if it doesn't pass there are many things listed within that

107that i think we could create a document that would be comprehensive and a benefit to the parent so we're working on creating one regardless so so what i'm hearing is you're making a a parent-friendly version of the bill of rights and statute yes okay thank you thank you anybody else yeah quick follow up on that is there something comparable that we have or will create or anticipate for students so that the health safety and well-being of students is is equally recognized and protected there are some things i know we are stan state mandated to report but i know there are concerns around this about um also protecting the well-being of students do we have a student rights handbook a way that that students have a document as well to know their own rights and responsibilities

108for their own well-being i think the the code of con i just remember when i was principal gifford middle and sebastian for high school within our agendas we put student rights and responsibility parent rights and responsibilities and that was a while ago but we used to have that and i think the way that we've designed the code of conduct really kind of looks looks forward to what the responsibilities of students are responsibilities of staff and administration now one of the things to kind of ensure that there's a deep understanding by all members of that school community is really ensure how we're sharing that informations with students and i think as i reflected on our opening of schools last year there are significant opportunities to be more intentional of how administrators are communicating the information around

109the code of conduct the expectations that govern uh behaviors within a school so i i see significant opportunities in normal how we do that across the district and ensure that we're not putting teachers in situations where uh they're the bad guys um but ultimately you know being more intentional around informing students of what the code of conduct is in in in a way that gets buy-in and understanding versus um i'm being barked at a bunch of rules in my first couple of days in school it's not what we want yes that's rosario i wonder where she's from oh sh doctor sorry yeah i'm not um yeah i won't belabor this right now but i want to make sure that everybody is really clear um moving forward exactly what they are required to do what they

110are not required to do you know where their rights and obligations begin and end and i'm i'm i am sure that we will have many discussions about that moving forward i'm sure we will too um i would just like to add um that mrs dampier myself and and dr moore um and uh mr meyer have been in communication um on many occasions about creating a virtual school code of conduct essentially um there are virtual schools too our virtual school students are our students and so this code of conduct would apply to them however there are certain behaviors that are expected certain manners in which virtual school students the way they communicate with each other online via zoom or via teams the the way that they email the teacher or how the teacher engages with the

111student in these chat rooms and so on and so forth those behaviors um are in the process of being created specifically for virtual school so we did add a a bullet um within the responsibilities of students that it states in addition online students must participate actively in class through discussions posts and other assignments as directed by the teacher however some of these online uh learning platforms or the ones that we we are using um are currently in in the works of being created so just wanted to share that with board members appropriately okay thank you i believe we're on uh item c thank you and and thank you dr packer thank you thank you and at the will of the board ms behrenborg i i still would like to add that statement to reference back

112to the to the policy oh yeah okay would that be an amendment though yes that would be yes okay between now and next meeting cut it i just need um and i do want to acknowledge uh ms damp here before we we finally move on to our final item um as i said she is eager to return uh in good spirits and in health she did a absolutely outstanding job as did dr packard in putting together this presentation this is the third quarter update that i will provide this will go through some of the information as it relates to our strategic plan african-american achievement plan as well as information requested by the equity committee the equity committee during its last meeting asked us to consider the 53 recommendations that were made by the equity committee

113uh following that request we did have a joint meeting with the naacp um although we did not come to consensus finally on what the fifth status update would be during that meeting we did communicate uh to the naacp that we would review those recommendations and i want to walk through what we have done with those recommendations for you today so i'll move relatively quickly through this presentation highlighting some things when you look at our strategic plan during the third quarter third quarter really is in a lot of ways not a dead period but not a lot of data is coming in because it's full on uh teaching and learning we had the mid-year data that was presented during the previous quarter update so this is not as fruitful in terms of of information but we

114did transition back 900 students from the second semester that moved us from the 60 odd percent to the 85 percent we continue to take impact reviews both second and third round that work is led by mr meyer and his team looking forward to taking uh board members to that process next year we did expand uh tykes and teens and as it relates to mental health services both vera beach high school the flick by at the flick and wabasso we continue to do amazing work with with power bi i will be bringing a presentation to the board on how we use uh power bi and data solving we have significantly outpaced our growth in terms of using data to drive and inform instruction it is getting a lot of attention and i'm super excited to bring

115that information to you and we continue to inform and engage whether it be community activities and information stars of the year gala vero beach high school student learning center just really trying to keep our community informed um some more accomplishments i contacted multiple community partners to survey the preferred district communication method that information will continue to grow but we're making great strides gaining a deeper understanding on how to better inform our community initiated a new onboarding packet for upcoming hiring season um i i can tell you there was a buzz about in hr last when was your hiring fair that was it it was it was thursday it was absolutely a a team effort uh district-led principals interviewing presentations being provided i think the number was over 160. applied to be interview advanced contracts being

116offered we're making significant strides uh under the leadership of miss hofer continue to maximize our our gear grants and completed a successful round of school choice so we used a new model for school choice this year that model had been completed we are now under that second window this ensures that we moved away from the paper process and we have a computer-based process um that we built into focus and paid for which ensures that services and assignments are equitably assigned some targets that we've accomplished so you know when you look at our annual targets you know some some information is beginning to roll in as you know the majority of the targets surround academic outcomes uh but we do have some information coming in where we've hit certain targets and we're excited about that early

117learning program state ranking has been accomplished opportunities to engage our community district activities has been accomplished parent accessing the focus parent portal has been accomplished that's going to really help inform our parents as to where students are in school so we're excited about that compliance with our material audits compliance with our financial audits looks like mr pagan is doing a wonderful job this year initial health and safety violations uh we're in uh we've hit that target in compliance with the florida uh safe schools assessment tool so we're beginning to see uh information come in continuing to monitor in some particular areas these are annual targets that we we keep our eye on obviously we always keep our eye on the academic targets as hard as it is in the midst of covet our eye is

118on it high school accelerated performance this is information that's banked from the the previous year uh and it was very very hard for our students uh or our counselors to make sure kids our seniors were in the appropriate courses to ensure the accelerated performance and the truth of the reality this is information or data that should be captured in year one when students enter ninth grade so we have a master scheduling requirement system that ensures that this number continues to uh not be an issue or a area of concern at the end of the day we still think we're going to exceed drastically the goal that we set for ourselves instructional staff members with out of field waivers as you may recall we've already celebrated in two different uh the last two times that information

119has come to the board but we set a very very high bar so you know you saw there was courses going on this saturday here to make sure that we we hit that particular area representation of hispanic instructors is a it is a very very big area or opportunity for improvement we need to be a little bit more attentional in that particular area as we go into our our hiring season and schools with internal audit findings and to be very honest with you that's a target that we're probably not probably we're not going to make those audits took place earlier in the year from the previous year so we did see a reduction in school site audit exceptions but mr fagan is continuing to connect at prevent principal professional developments workshop with the bookkeepers uh

120to ensure the appropriate systems and structures are created to ensure schools have audit-free findings as you move to the african-american achievement plan i'll cover some of these areas receive application and magnet choice for 140 african-american students with 100 percent being offered in choice seat we did expand choice offering in those particular schools uh uh gathered feedback for secondary students from superintendents advisory council related to equitable access structure activities that was some of the information that was shared with you all uh earlier in this uh earlier last week where our students really uh spoke to us in open and honest ways that we need to do a better job of ensuring access uh to extracurricular activities and that's work that mr seymour is engaging in and then beginning to the establishment of florida future educators of

121america chapter and middle schools and both high schools really starting to grow our own um in in our system in looking at some of the data that's associated with our african-american achievement plan you could see our baseline dot data for african-american white disparity and classroom removals being removed four times more likely to be removed from a classroom if you are african-american in comparison to a white student right now for a third quarter three that number is 2.19 and our target is three and as i look at that the target it's still in a lot of ways it it's you know we'll hit our target but still two and a half two times more likely is really a behavior that we need to continue to be aggressive in having those kinds of dialogues to ensure that

122that no longer is a reality uh certified instructors right now the school year started at nine that's a number that has historically been at for a number of years we're at 11.4 right now we can't claim 12 until we actually get there but we are making significant movement we are monitoring school by school mr bass continues to ensure that we're looking uh and we're being very very strategic we we believe we're going to see significant movement in this particular area and we believe that movement is long overdue our retention rate of african-american teachers is down three percent it was 100 if you recall from the last update now it's at 97 that was one teacher who went in a different direction continue to be very concerned for the achievement gap and we won't have this

123information until assessments come in i can tell you if you want to jump into schools you're more than welcome to go and see the absolute hard work our principals are doing how they're disaggregating data how they're providing very very explicit instruction uh aligned to the deficiency of children i think we have done great work in that but the make no mistakes about it covet has had a significant impact we had uh under 50 percent of our african-american students in school when it opened uh and today we're just at 80. so there's a significant amount of students uh who need us the most who are uh in environments not and and finding success but we would we would prefer to have them in brick and mortar uh and looking forward to welcoming them back if that's

124the direction in which they want to go um still still looking at the over-representation of african-american students at the alternative center for education uh i am very very proud of the work that mr brown is doing and we'll be rolling out some programs to extend services and support both on the to keep children from going to the alternative center and to ensure that they never come back in the alternative center um and we need to make sure that we're being equitable in that area as well and then over representation of african-american uh students in exceptional student education this is going to be a very solid focus for me in the coming years um we are esc as a whole we're drastically over represented you know and when my previous district was nine percent students uh

125in the exceptional student program here it's 16 going on 17. so there is some drastic work that that needs to be done when you're looking at the uh alignment between the superintendent's accountability system and our strategic plan they are one in the same but i just wanted to provide some just additional updates there as well in addition to the 900 students that we we push back continue professional uh the provisions of a2 acclimate and accelerate data commas on here this is a process that we use that allows the principals to sit and speak directly to me and say if you want me to be successful you need to give me a b c and d and over the course of the last year and a half they're not being shy they are stating what they

126need to be successful and it's the responsibility of cabinet and myself to make sure they have what they need really to be problem solving and we're glad that we're able to to do that superintendent's esc advisory council you've heard me share on multiple occasions that that that group of of parents is actively involved providing professional developments we meet tomorrow night and we're looking forward to engaging in conversation and some new initiatives that we're going to going to be rolling out we've established monthly progress monitoring updates uh to the 2018 joint plan and push that information uh to the equity committee on a monthly basis uh conduct feedback sessions with the superintendent's council i've already said that i i've continued to ensure that i'm out there volunteering and connecting to our community we all know this

127but we were able to negotiate a multi-year contract with our teachers union currently negotiating with our uh cwa looking forward to having a successful negotiation period with them as well that three-year contract really speaks dividends to the relationship and the support and the collegiality in growing the system forward continue to work with the the health department to ensure that we've have provided the opportunity for vaccinations we moved extremely quickly and putting that together i can't say we did it the fastest but we got to be up there in terms of that level of speed and getting that done updates on standardized assessment i covered some of this in our earlier presentation but as miss barenborg referenced you know we are in the midst of testing and will remain in testing uh pretty much through the

128rest of the school year uh mr meyer and team will be working as it relates to students graduating the state is providing a little bit of flexibility for students who do not have that concordance score in either either reading or writing the district has to determine what that criteria would be if they don't have that concordance score um so we will be meeting to determine you know what is a fair and equitable way we have to work with the grad a the charter school that has a graduating class as well because it has to be basically a district plan um you did information came out friday and tuesday was our uh in-school uh non-timed uh s-s-a-s-a-t so there were students like do i have to take it like yes yes you have to take it

129that may be a part of the equation in terms of of of graduating students but we're excited about that we will be pushing out information as it relates to that emergency order third grade promotion is involved eoc exams are involved the grading of schools is involved so a lot of information that provides us the flexibility at the local level to determine uh where and how we need to go moving forward moving forward i mentioned that no sorry now when you look at and this is information that i i have shared with the board uh there were 53 recommendations and i want to review the the timeline and the work that the district has has made 53 recommendations were made by the 2019 equity committee when those recommendations were made it was in november they were

130shared during a board workshop as that information was shared it was a very very good fruitful meeting in terms of the sharing of those recommendations i think all parties left feeling encouraged i was not the superintendent at this time in december the first board meeting that i attended still not the superintendent the then chair marshawn green addressed the board very discouraged and upset saying that the recommendations the 53 recommendations that were provided were not being act upon or not being shared with the the judge and the required joint plan or the joint notification to the courts as they came in december it was clear that there was a number of things that needed to be done in this particular area to move the work forward there was no african-american achievement plan a clearly defined expectation

131by a federal court had not been in place since the development of the joint plant that was the first step that i took to create the joint plan i'm sorry to create the aft the initial african-american achievement plan worked with staff reviewed recommendations to create that particular plan brought it to the board and before the cope it shut down we were able to get that plan approved as you know during that same time we were overhauling the strategic plan and that strategic plan is the driving document within this school system and what we did is a first get the african-american achievement plan because it is a requirement b do the collegial work across the system gather the information that is needed to create a strategic plan and the board members that were sitting at the

132time can recall me being intentional and saying that as we create the strategic plan we will create a system to ensure that the african-american achievement plan doesn't become something who's that sits on the shelf that's these presentations that's how we monitor and drive this work to ensure that we're not going over here then going over here and things get lost the strategic plan the african-american achievement plan supports the strategic our strategic plan in which we provide those updates to our board and drives our thought and decision-making process here in our school system so what i did and provided to to the uh the district as well uh attached to this item in its entirety this is just the a snippet of it is did the intentional work of looking at the 53 recommendations and identifying

133where there is overlap and supporting strategy steps whether it be in the strategic plant or in the african-american achievement plant as we move through mediation there is a concern that we did not act upon those 53 recommendations that we took them and we put them to the side and we just did not move upon them this is the supporting documentation to say that we have honored those recommendations did we act on all recommendations to answer that question is no were they foundational in the development of our strategic plan yes were they foundational in the creation of the african-american achievement plan yes is the information provided uh crucial for how we develop our plans moving forward the answer to that question is yes so um my recommendation and let me just finish with this slide here

134you see the district strategic plan the african-american achievement plan the joint plan aligned to the 53 recommendations and you see where there is overlap we are now entering um the well we're entering a new equity committee we did not have the advantage of feedback from last year's equity committee this information is vital to the success of this district this information is vital to the behaviors and the realignment and expectations that we need to make within the school system really to continue to move this work forward um that is the the presentation as it it uh has been presented my recommendation is that we have honored those 53 recommendations we took them as recommendations and we did the deep analysis in the creating of a district's strategic plan that moves the work forward and be very

135eager and excited about the next recommendations that would come forward as you also know in order to make this work easier for the equity committee what staff has done is to break up the the volumes of information so we have the five five inch binders that everyone keeps talking about that we created over the course of an entire year last year um and as we went for the opportunity to go through or ask that equity committee to do it it was it was daunting and we had already kind of taken a pause because we were trying to work with naacp to avoid mediation at the time that we did we came back together as you know it was it was a daunting task to ask anyone in a very very short amount of time to

136conduct a thorough evaluation of such a high volume of work in that reflection we made the decision to provide information to the equity committee in every basically quarter so we provided uh the work that was done between january and march we've identified from staff this is the work that we're doing between march and the end of the school year aligned to the joint plan here are suggestions in terms of how to evaluate the artifacts that we're collecting what this does is ensure that the senior the staff is being intentional around that particular work and not saying after the fact oh look look what i did but telling you on the front end these are the things that we're going to do and you know provide feedback as we move forward so uh that information hasn't

137been provided because the time is not up but i i think the recommendation uh from the school board to the equity committee um is if we can get that recommendation both on january as well as the end of the school year with that data then staff can go to work and present back to the equity committee as well as the school board ultimately the school board on this is the shift in our annual targets for the upcoming school year and right there as clear and transparent as could be this is the information that we receive in june or july as you know as we open the school year will open with updated annual targets those annual targets and our strategic plan uh very very innovative they shift from year to year they're not just this

138one five-year target that you never look at i will bring back to the board here are the annual targets which happen to be how you evaluate my continued employment as your superintendent um putting my you know actions aligned my walk with my talk and have that information available from the equity committee and not have to do this a year and a half after the fact but once again as we're already doing uh provide that information ahead of time so that is the pr that is the presentation i also want to address and then i will close and receive feedback uh the noise and uh confusion in some cases uproar regarding the opportunity for us to seek an individual to serve as our chief equity and diversity officer i have shared with you the the structure

139that i wanted to move forward in this particular position i think i jumped the gun i should have brought it under one comprehensive reorg and that leaves some questions out there in terms of the finances i've said publicly and will continue to say when we bring a comprehensive realignment which will be a minor realignment to this district it will be at a two to three cost two to three percent cost savings to the overall district operation of this budget that's saying the most the biggest priority in this district are students in each and every single year that i'm here we're going to reduce the district's budget to maximize the dollars so not a budget cut we're not losing any money matter of fact mr mister under mr fagan's leadership we went from financial bank on

140the verge of financial financial bankruptcy and academic bankruptcy to being extremely stable our fitch rating being upgraded uh which isn't something that happens in the midst of a pandemic lightly that is a major accomplishment and speaks to the validity of the work that mr fagan is doing um we have received a number of applications over 50 over 50. i haven't reviewed them i haven't looked at them i had staff look at them and i am told there are some very very quality qualified individuals across the nation across the nation and that is very very exciting to hear people are interested and putting their shoulder to the wheel here in indian river county i told staff that i or not not staff i'm sorry mr reserve i told miss rosario that i would look at the

141job description i and one of my areas of concern as i shared with the board is the qualification of educational leadership and there were concerns that educational leadership may in fact exclude some very very qualified individuals around the work of equity the flip side of that is you would want somebody who really understands the structures and systems of a school system and the complexity of a school system uh staff has assured me that the the candidates they feel very very comfortable based on the volume and level of expertise that we do have a significant pool um i am dead set on addressing diversity and equity in this system i am dead set in ensuring that this community continues to grow and our school system continues to be a place where every single student in the

142school system feels embraced feels care for it and knows when they walk into our schools they are welcome i am dead set of ensuring every single student has the opportunity to maximize their full potential and i'm sorry there's significant work that needs to be done about assuring that we're maximizing the full potential of all children our offering of ap for all students needs to drastically increase performance needs to drastically increase we need we are under the state average we're in the bottom 50th percentile in academic reading performance we're 57th out of 67 in middle school acceleration i've lived here long enough to know what's wrong are those outcomes not our teachers not our students not our families but we need to uphold an expectation come together and ensure in every facet of this system we

143are ensuring that we are best by all kids we're best by all kids and the fact that we have pushback regarding the need uh not the need not the need not to have this position to me fuels me as to why we do need to have this position we absolutely need to have this position i think i can do a better job of informing why we need this position we will be doing a number of town hall meetings end of april and early may the focus of those meetings is to collect feedback it's to collect feedback on our master plan as you know we have that presentation is to get feedback on a k-8 school what do you think to look at some of the scenarios that you all were presented with over a month

144ago regarding schools that are significantly under-enrolled we have big big decisions to make as a community i'm going to enhance that presentation now to get feedback on coving and our masking system the timing is perfect and literally i just thought of that just this minute um as well as why equity is important and it is about all students academic performance uh then at that time through that dialogue and conversation maybe we do change the job description maybe we don't maybe we realigned the district to address this particular work but i will bring uh in very very early end of may early june a district reorganization that addresses uh the needs of this particular district to ensure uh that we are moving in the right direction so taking the time to communicate the need uh to

145our community receiving feedback from our community uh and then taking that into consideration uh not reacting right now in this particular moment uh going through whatever interview process uh or appointment that we would do towards the the end of may bringing a complete reorganization to this district um when i say complete i anticipate it being very very minor to the the shifts that we need to have that allows us to move this work forward so with that that is my presentation and we'll be happy to answer any questions you may have okay thank you dr moore um i'm glad you brought up the fitch rating because i wrote that as a note that you skipped over that and i think that's worthy of stating because i was here when we were unstable and that was

146not a fun thing to go through board members it's over the two-hour mark are you okay because we have another meeting at one to keep going and take breaks as needed i think i know how dr jones feels are you okay with that or do you want to take a break i'd like to be able to have a break between the meetings okay um my question is do you want the break now or do you want to go ahead and ask questions and see if we're going to be done before no if we can get done by 12 30 that gives us at least half an hour okay everybody fine with that and welcome mr barefoot all right thank you so who has questions nobody no can i just one comment please make sure this

147thing's working um i think uh dr moore uh the uh you have you're going to address the taxpayers tomorrow at lunch um and i think as you as we all well know the primary focus seems to be around the cost to the taxpayers of a position that some feel or is not necessary or it's redundant to a current position although the job description is is certainly different um i suspect that in a polite way you could be in for some challenges tomorrow so i think you're the way you framed it for all of us tomorrow if you frame it for that audience over there will be helpful and i think when you talk about equity i think about the conversations that's on the news with the president's infrastructure bill or at least the early they've

148defined infrastructure about as broadly as you can define infrastructure it's not just roads and bridges and tunnels it's healthcare it's on it's the internet's on and on and on and i think when you talk about equity in the manner in which you just did it's a lot more it's a lot more than the way people now think of equity and you get into these discussions about critical race theory which is frankly something i never heard about until recently but i do think that you this is a great opportunity to give that same kind of broad perspective as well as focus on the dollars and cents of it which at the end of the day it's sort of can you afford to do it or can you afford not to do it and obviously i think

149we most of us feel the answers we cannot afford not to move forward but some tweaking and the feedback i think will be useful thank you okay thank you dr just a couple things and and not major comments for the moment um the risk ratio going from 4 point something to 2.19 with a target of 3.0 i recognize that it's down because of the impact of covet and kids being out of school and particularly which kids were have been out of school i would argue and i'd like to suggest our target should be zero you know we may not make it for a few years but the notion that a tart that we have a target that african-american kids should be three times more likely and that that's a a good thing i would argue

150that number needs to be zero and i think you read my face when i was i was sharing that because that's that's the realization that i have um and we have um benched mark it out but in terms of determining targets next year i cannot look at you and say that i disagree with anything that that you're saying yeah yeah whether it's benchmarked out or not in terms of what we think we can achieve uh is not the right answer here no i i agree and i am very encouraged with the progress that we have had and there has been clearly defined systems in place in terms of modifying behaviors and providing professional development uh to reduce that number it's solely it is not just solely down because um there's less african-american students in school

151is that a significant factor yes but we've done a great deal of work a to speak about it like oh my goodness we're we're talking about it yes we're we're talking about it yes we monitor it yes we look at uh what's happening and where it's happening and problem solve in order to ensure uh we're taking the appropriate steps and the appropriate steps is awareness understanding and learning within that some feedback that i've heard and we've talked about this so this is not new news to you some of the feedback from teachers has been that while they are encouraged to write less suspensions and referrals they're not necessarily given a viable alternative so i know that there's work happening in the district to provide those alternatives but i'd like to request that we get continual

152feedback about those what they are how they're going and not just that teachers are being encouraged not to do referrals but what they're given instead what they're given in place of that which evidence shows works better and is more productive and keeps kids more encouraged and enthusiastic about school but i'd like to know more about what those are and how they're going i think that'll be a presentation that i i would like to bring back to the board um and our last executive i have the opportunity uh to sit with the uh teachers union executive committee they share very similar concerns um regarding how do we problem solve with that so what we're bringing back both in the code of conduct addresses that the the alternative suspension at school sites is a first step in

153that a little bit more consistency in terms of what we're doing from school to school making sure our administrators are available to supervise at the appropriate times um so we're actively engaged in that conversation and identify it as an opportunity to improve and listening to our union to to make significant changes to improve that and then my last comment for the moment also in the interest of time um we have this tension in our reports and in the district between actions and outcomes right sometimes you're asked what are the actions you're taking towards a particular goal i you have mentioned in the past wanting uh to have criteria based on outcomes in some of these reports i'm seeing more actions that i'm seeing outcomes and what i'd like to be able to do is track

154the outcome so if we're taking certain actions on um for example there's there's this one report that the quarterly update that talks about the actions in the african-american achievement plan i'd like to create a structure so that we know what are the outcomes of all of these there's some of that in the quarterly reports but i want to be able to track it better i want to be able to know is this action producing this specific outcome and in some places i'm not seeing that so i'd like to request that we have better tracking between the action you know our our intention the action we're taking to realize that and the outcome that we're seeing whether we're making it or not but that's that's important process information and i for me i i don't see

155enough of it here that i can track easily i think as we go through from one year to the next in the problem solving you're right the shift of organizational behaviors uh is what has the influence um on the outcome if two plus two is four uh and you all you don't change twos you've got to change it to five you got to change what you're doing in order to ensure a different outcome that is a lot of the foundational work that we did in this initial year some of the and i'll say it again some of the things that we're tracking are not the most important things um and we need to be you know completely overhaul be goal oriented in defining what are the expectations i think we do have consensus on some

156of the areas uh that we need to modify within that joint plan uh the percent of hiring for teachers i think collectively we agree that is it a shameful one at african american in each school is not that bar that's not what we agree as some of the naacp uh agrees there but in the plan itself it's not specific enough i wanted to be very very specific with goals attached to it that is a clearest way and the only caveat that i would give because at the end of the day the data tells a story and we are in an unprecedented time um where the data is going to tell a story a very very different story for very very different realities uh for very very different reasons um and as we walk into next

157year man we're going to be i i i just choose to believe we're gonna be in a very very stable place in terms of being able to be consistent in providing academic support to children uh all children to move the needles extremely aggressively um dr jones you have your hand of course i'm not sure if anyone said this but welcome to mr brownie our equity chair thank you for being here um mr bass do you know um how many and i was on the virtual career fair for a couple sessions african americans participated in general and were we able to offer any contracts to them through the chair um i can't tell you exactly how many were involved i can get that number but at right now the last check i was at i believe

158we're up to eight to nine i know we have about three or four more that we're working through eight to nine african-americans yes ma'am okay thank you um dr moore when i look at all these 53 recommendations i always hone in on extracurricular and combining that with your advisory group last week which was wonderful in one young man talked about he is one of three children in the same grade level and he's in band somebody's in sports and it's very costly so he suggested something with scholarships to help these families so i hope that somehow we can do that as a principal i know we had more funding for extracurricular in sports but i refuse to do pay to participate i just refuse because you have students not even going out because of the cost

159you know they're not even there so that's something i want to continue you know to look at and that student was like well what are your plans holding me accountable yeah he's holding you to the fire good for him um and mr meyer i know your group has will have a hard task with the graduation criteria eoc and so forth but i just ask that you keep us updated um we have a dsec plan in this district and it deals with african-american students only with academic achievement looking at ese and discipline recruitment of african-american teachers and and that's a solid federal court mandate equity means more equity means how are we working with our esau students where english is not the primary language are we okay there with title nine which mr browning would always

160get on me if i wasn't um how are we helping our gifted how are we helping the merit scholars that we saw so many of them at the pride of the tribe at vero beach high school and then academic achievement in general and i just want to comment on dr schiff's comment getting our discipline to zero you i felt pretty successful with that by hiring african-american teachers they were our models they were our mentors they modeled what they expected i think of that young man out there at gifford middle helping all students in modeling an exempl exemplary professional attitude which i think is key so sometimes we have to look at the proactive verse the reactive so i want to stay on that and like i said equity is is many more things absolutely thank

161you mr rosario thank you um i had a a comment about one of the slides here let me just pull it up real quick um the slide um on opportunities for monitoring and improving it had the three bullets for the academic achievement over representation of african-american students in alternative school in our alternative center and the ese and the esc population and it dawned on me that along with these opportunities that we are engaging in these conversations and how we can do better i'm not sure that we are doing a really great job in connecting kids with our treasure coast technical college and some of our other maybe smaller academies within the schools and maybe those would be opportunities that are right or at our fingertips that need to be advertised more talked about more given

162more to the students to choose we have a fantastic school right in the in in the heart of of gifford and i don't want us to lose that opportunity and just to speak to that and i think students shared their voice in that in that same area we are creating not at a new cost just a redistribution of services at each of our high school an individual who will be the uh most explicit way of talking through it the career in college counselor 100 percent of their time looking at my seniors where they're going next year and connecting with them in 11th grade and 10th grade and 9th grade in 8th grade to ensure when they become seniors they've done that prerequisite work to get wherever wherever it is they they need to go and

163you're 100 correct the the programming and services available we're going to honor that school this evening number one nursing program in the state of florida number one so yeah let's leverage that but if we don't do a better job of informing both parents and students of the prerequisite and requirements then we're fundamentally failing students so this position will ensure that a typical school counselor has the opportunity to be responsive to the behavioral and academic needs of students and this individual will be the expert at fafsa which is you know a very very complex maximizing scholarships uh doing financial aid connecting them uh knowing the prerequisites for each of these programs as you said we're also rolling out a a new program and mr stampier is not here because the name escapes me but i was

164walking um vero beach senior high school last wednesday or thursday and i had the opportunity to to sit in on on that development uh with our principals whether district staff was there really receiving that information it's really going to connect students to what is next for them and that's what we're preparing them for not the end game is not the diploma it is a key that opens up the the pathway to where they're going next so i i agree mr razar yeah thank you for that um i'd just like to tap touch a little bit also on some of the other items that fellow board members have mentioned um you know there i fully support the work of our district moving forward um and the intent um that and the goals that we want to

165reach with regard to equity and equality in our school system there's no doubt about that there's no doubt in my mind that any of the board members do not want that to be one of our focuses in fact that is one of the tenets of the target areas for our strategic plan um and it actually says equity culture and climate but i think that there's a fine line between doing that work and embarking in areas that are very politically charged more partic in particular what uh mr barefoot mentioned with regards to critical race theory um i want us to be very careful that we do not enter into um unchartered territory many people because it is such a fairly used new new term i suppose very general that some people may define it one particular

166way someone may define it in another particular way in essence it is a theory and our governor recently mentioned that there is no room for critical race theory in our school system specifically when he was introducing the new civics um curriculum coming forward moving coming ahead uh for us and for those who are unsure about critical race theory you know it argues that whites have been the beneficiary of our civic our our civil rights legislation or that for some they might take it to a very uh extreme and say that you know white people should apologize for being white and uh in comparison with the black experience we you know we need to focus on children that's really my we need to focus on children children and what we wrote in our as target areas

167for our focus in our strategic plan what we have in our academic achievement plan what we have written down in in our school code of conduct we need to create opportunities for kids that i know that you do not disagree with opportunities for um as you mentioned the reading proficiencies the church more for treasure coast technical college dual enrollment programs academic academies i mean all these opportunities for kids that will benefit them and um and not pit one and one another against um the with the idea of white versus black we have many many students in our school district and we do have a lot of work to do with equity and equality but i challenge you as the school superintendent schools superintendent to be careful not to cross over those lines i thank you

168challenge accepted and you know want to leverage and create relationships as we met with the face faith-based community which is a very very exciting meeting and a number of great connections and relationships made to be the county that really engages in the conversation and dialogue and does it as a way to pull the community together that the public school system can be the entity that pulls a divided world or divided community together and i know that that is a a drastically uh large statement um but we we do need to empower ourselves to take on difficult hard topics and and not to shy away from them but at the same time not not engage in supporting way out here way over here exactly right down the middle we got it okay i have two quick

169questions um on page six of your presentation you had a statement said high school accelerated performance and i wrote ironically the word outcome on their doctorship because i agree with you that whatever outcomes you have at the time i think should be presented to the board so not just here's what our plan is and here's what we're going to do because when you go to an interview they don't want to know what you're going to do they want to know what you've done so same thing here i want to know what have we done that you have i know granted we don't have everything because of assessment periods starting today but um what have we done this year is an outcome so i think currently we're at 54 our expectation is we'll be right around

17080 um that variance is dependent upon whether students you know pass or don't pass the number doesn't necessarily change uh in between that's why you know the second the third quarter is there's taking exams courses aren't over one of the things we will be rolling out next year will be a dashboard that you can look at while you're on vacation or as you move throughout the year uh aligned to our district's strategic plan so um right now and it will be on our home page for for the whole world to see uh right now the the theory of action with those limited resources the limited human capital that we have in that particular area is to get those those dashboards up and running and the individuals trained to use them to influence their decision-making as

171close to kids as possible um but you'll you'll see that also dashboard around the um the equity agenda as well okay thank you and then on page eight um you have down something about transportation uh department transportation plan for implementation of z-pass so question is that like a gps system yes ma'am the gps system is a parent portal where they'll be able to look on their phone and track their child's bus and and in conjunction with that we are planning to install also an id card so you'll have a reader swipe that card right we've talked about that but that's definitely going to be in place then in the fall yes ma'am okay great because i did receive a call from a parent last week about buses being late not knowing and nobody answering the

172phone up here and i called and tell you the truth it's hard to get a person sometimes especially after hours after school hours so unless you have those magic cell phone numbers that i have but i will say that you know i do that once in a while i'll call the district just to see if i can get through to a certain department and i normally get just a name and their voicemail there's a particular one in your department every time and i know the person so i know that she's probably where her her voicemail is the one that's receiving if nobody picks up see i'm saying so if we could fix that for parents that would be helpful because that has been an issue an ongoing issue of parents calling and not getting through

173to somebody in in whatever department so okay that's all i have is anybody else yeah can we have a presentation on what that is z-pass at some point okay and also um last thing board members uh nancy wants to know if you will give her your summer calendar plan for vacation so that um we can decide what when we're gonna meet and teams can be updated um because there are two meetings planned in july i already told you i can't make one of them because i'm going to be out of town so um normally i plan on one meeting in july so i was kind of surprised when i saw that second meeting and i thought i had already made plans so i want to make sure that board members know to get that to

174nancy and also um just a side note last year and it's the time of the year right now where we're being invited to all these fifth grade graduations and eighth grade graduations and high school graduations and um sorry i was just going to say we did pool principals so we're putting together uh the opportunity so you could look at all of them and then select the ones you're going well they're the invites thank you and the reason why i say that is because it you know i'd show up an event and three of us would be there and then nobody would beat another one so it would be nice to know if you're we're planning on going to those things that way we can spread the wealth i'm not that we're great to show up

175at things but you know if it's nice if they want a board member there then it's nice that there's a board member there yeah many we i'll bring it to to our next meeting there might be opportunity to discuss it and i would encourage some some collaboration because many are on the same night um i'm not trying to extend the meeting but one of the interesting things we learned is schools in previous years that really didn't do anything outside the confines of the school day uh are continuing with the drive-through uh graduation so they have their in-school ceremonies that they have but the so now a lot of schools are going back to the to the um the performing arts center so we're going to be we're going to be busy but it's the best

176time of the year okay anybody else have anything all right then the vice chair adjourns a meeting at 12 36. you