001so good evening and welcome to the orange county school board's regularly scheduled meeting this tuesday december 14 2021. thank you all so much for joining us here this evening as a reminder face masks are optional indoors and that includes the board chambers and the lobby i also want to remind the board the public and the board that the board members will not be engaging in outside electronic or digital communication during the meeting so that we can focus our full attention on the matters before us to my fellow board members district staff any members of the public when speaking please make sure that your microphone is turned on and speak directly into it so that your our youtube and orangetv viewers have an opportunity to hear you clearly again thank you so much for participating in
002this evening we're going to begin with a moment of silence and then i'll invite you to join us in the pledge of allegiance and now the pledge of allegiance before we begin we have one proclamation toni this afternoon sorry thank you and that's a proclamation proclaiming january 2022 as national mentoring month here in orange county public schools and since we won't be back at the very beginning of january we wanted to announce that at this time dr jenkins do you have any newly appointed administrators to recognize i have two i'd like to recognize in absentia i believe madison brown jones who was a resource teacher at rolling hills will be the new assistant principal at lovell elementary school and then we have travis edward bryant who is acting ap at lake nona high school he
003will become the official assistant principal at lake nona high school that is it madam chair thank you dr jenkins so we congratulate and appreciate their new service and wish them the best and are confident in their future endeavors with their students let me ask dr jenkins i we have a strategic plan business roundtable update can i defer to you at this time absolutely very excited we've had a project going for some time now under deputy superintendent maria vasquez i think you may recall we've had a few comments in the past about are there things that we can reinvent that we can invigorate that we can transform after going through a pandemic that really did essentially shut down the way we knew schools to run and so dr vazquez has been tasked with some of that
004reimagining and the first report to bring back to the board i'm very excited about it has to do with business roundtables and what leaders in our business community have been sharing with us in our cte program and that can impact k through 12. we certainly acknowledge the first transformation we have the potential for is at the high school level so dr vazquez is going to share with you along with her cte assistant i believe share with you what's been going on in those round tables dr vasquez thank you superintendent jenkins for more than 18 months we've worked to support and engage learners amid an ongoing covet 19 pandemic the virus is leading to new trends in what was already a changing labor market automation of low-skill occupations a growing cadre of remote employees and even
005workers reevaluation of the jobs they want to pursue are clear indications that our understanding of the workforce has evolved and demands we reimagine our schools to be able to not only ensure every student has a promising and successful future but also our ability to create enriching and diverse pathways that lead our students to success creating high quality pathways requires we create a structured sequence of academic courses technical trainings and related work experiences that help learners develop the skills and knowledge they need to be successful in the career of their choice as a result of the pandemic we face new challenges our response to covet 19 has given us new options to use technology and innovation to respond to the needs of our students and support our business community workforce given these challenges we must ensure
006our students have opportunities to pursue high quality affordable pathways from k-12 to post-secondary education and career this requires rethinking traditional boundaries of education and workforce systems to design a more integrated set of experiences that can lead to a post-secondary credential and workplace readiness so how do we best conduct and organize this work we chose a business roundtable approach to dive deeply and strategically with some of the area's largest companies in order to address these challenges as we look to build a resilient foundation for our reimagined schools we plan on taking a research driven approach to develop a framework for the future building on existing models like the brookings shared accountability model in concert with critical findings from groups like mc the orlando economic partnership and excel in ed we strongly believe we can build a
007system for lasting change in 2020 the brookings metro policy program ran an inclusive economics indicator lab to help three regions indianapolis memphis and orlando develop compelling and influential indicator projects that use metrics to drive more inclusive local economic outcomes the framework identifies three phases beginning with steps to set the conditions for success by identifying key stakeholders to ensure we are reflecting the values and objectives of growth focused and equity focused organizations in our region and agreeing on shared definitions and motivations for pursuing inclusive economic growth the business roundtables provide a starting point to these discussions beginning in beginning october 13th and concluding last week we hosted six business roundtables at related industry partner locations with roughly 30 to 40 attendees per session each roundtable was themed around a critical sector advanced manufacturing health science i.t
008hospitality and modeling and simulation during our round tables we spoke about the current climate in education and our need to innovate more the round tables were designed to both educate the business community of our work for students and to garner critical feedback on how we can reimagine our schools through the expansion and development of new career pathways we accomplish this through engaging tabletop exercises and question and answer sessions we post three main topics to the roundtable attendees what are your high need hard to fill positions how can we partner to create better learning opportunities for students and what are the credentials of value that matter in your edge organization and industry the first priority was determining the high need hard to fill positions in business and industry since we are interested in identifying gaps in
009programming all sectors indicated they are desperate for help and indicated a significant lack of qualified candidates from entry to middle to high level jobs business and industry partners desire to collaborate with orange county public schools towards a solution provided those efforts are organized and managed using a centralized structure employers repeatedly and with passion identified the area of soft or durable skills as an area of high need here are two examples of how we can integrate these learnings into our schools orlando health came to us with the need to upskill applicants to be qualified as pre-cnas our orlando campus team worked with orlando health staff members to create a training program designed to quickly fill this talent gap today they've been able to hire 300 employees through this partnership another example is orange technical college skills
010based program in the area of information technology ocps targeted internal tsr candidates for retraining as well as displaced workers from hospitality and the tourism industry to micro credentialing i t programs these were fully funded through post secondary cares dollars students enrolled in the skills based training program had the opportunity to earn certifications making them immediately eligible for entry-level positions within the i.t field cte worked in conjunction with our hr department nit department to develop an internal talent pipeline to fill high demand hard to fill positions within the ocps it department we now have a strong desire from industry to grow these skill-based opportunities for secondary and high school students all stakeholders outlined a need to create deeper and broader opportunities to educate students parents and community agencies regarding the career opportunities available to all students
011career exploration activities need to be designed to provide students from elementary through post-secondary relevant engaging and industry-based learning experiences employers shared that learning environments need to be flexible immersive focused around pathways and mirror current industry requirements classrooms need to take a step forward through modern technology innovation and artificial intelligence to mirror the business world most importantly there was a great optimism and excitement about reshaping our schools around project-based learning and stackable credentials now let's take a look at a model that expands career opportunities for students the work-based learning is a model in which students have sustained interactions with industry or community professionals in real workplace settings to the extent possible or through simulated environments at an educational institution these interactions foster in-depth first-hand experience in performing tasks that are required in pro that are required
012in a given career field and that are aligned to curriculum and instruction a work-based learning continuum involves three types of experiences career awareness career exploration and career immersion experiences are designed to increase in intensity over time as students move through the continuum the continuum experiences are flexible meaning different activities may overlap or occur multiple times throughout a student's learning other examples of career opportunities that were shared at the round tables include developing innovative pathways via school within a school model for students outside of the traditional high school creating an elementary school financial literacy model to serve as a district demonstration site and developing a network to provide international internship opportunities for our high school students with an emphasis on entrepreneurship and globalness globalization of business the idea of skill-based hiring has been adopted by the
013orlando economic partnership and is growing substantially across industry with many employers creating their own credentialing training and onboarding programs local employers are engaged in the skills-based hiring process and indicated that degree attainment is not always required to gain medium to high-wage career opportunities in all sectors an executive from apple shared during one of our roundtables that they have hired more individuals without college degrees than they have hired with college degrees business and industry partners are interested in working with ocps to develop a model to micro-credential specific technical skills through these roundtables we learned we have gaps in pathway offerings that need to be filled based on labor market demand manufacturing health care finance and space aviation industries are examples of sectors where we can add programming to meet industry needs and these programs lead to
014medium and high wage career opportunities for our students no degree required now that's not to say students cannot pursue cannot pursue college options but rather graduate graduating in ocps with a strong foundation for their futures having earned credentials of value that also articulate to post-secondary credit giving students a leg up on future coursework it will be critical to find willing partners in helping the district fill gaps in knowledge namely technology to work side by side with teachers on the student journey a recent example is the district's work with the university of florida and the florida department of education in developing the first artificial intelligence pathway framework to develop and ensure teacher preparation the roundtable shed light on the credentials employers value these credentials include everything from a valid clean driver's license to a high school
015diploma to various industry certifications such as microsoft office specialist wastewater operator cnc production and machine specialists and many many others credentials of value play an important role in communicating to employers the qualifications potential candidates possess and often lead to medium and high wage employment opportunities reimagining our schools will require us to alter the student experience to one that provides students options flexibility and support our next steps include the creation of a new sector-based advisory board boards to develop systematic highly effective strategic initiatives to engage students on a consistent basis the creation of a council for school transformation who will analyze the roundtable data and provide insights into how we revise our instructional delivery model to provide more experiential learning opportunities for our students that align with new pathways develop the orange county public schools work
016based continuum that will provide career awareness and experiences to our students beginning at the elementary level continue to expand magnet opportunities such as the global research institute focused on project-based learning our goal is to provide learners with high quality academic and technical training through pathways that lead to high skill high wage high growth occupations the business roundtables have reaffirmed ocps is essential in supporting the area's local economy and workforce by collaborating with our community partners in new and innovative ways we can reimagine our schools now is the time to rethink the use of time place and resources as we prepare our students to be college and career ready thank you dr vasquez two comments and then we'll certainly answer any questions you might have and listen to your discussion this was just the first step
017a foray into this notion of reimagining and i will tell you what i'm very excited about first of all two things first of all we had so many of our business partners not just engage but almost insist that they can help us in these endeavors and willing to invest significantly on behalf of our children i'm very pleased about that very excited about that i want to thank the oep partnership for working with dr vazquez to get those round tables together i'm also very excited for our students and what this can mean that we can captivate their attention and inspire them and most importantly launch them into a career pathway and so what we've seen done in small numbers previously i think we can start to see in large numbers for every one of our students
018having those career pathways open up for them very excited this is just the initial discussion around it we will be engaging certainly are more of our teachers board members and additional businesses as we look to partner to reimagine i've said before i will say it again after the pandemic and the shutdown there is no returning to normal and normal was overrated because it was not sufficiently serving every student and so i think the new normal can include wonderful career pathways and opportunities and engagements with our business community so their students are launched into a career path many different facets true to the board's actual vision and mission madam chair thank you dr jenkins and i'm going to hang on to that noon the normal was overrated i love it thank you and we can always
019do better than the old normal you're right let me call first on member caster dental thank you madam chair and thank you dr vasquez for for that presentation and sharing the efforts of bringing those businesses together i think it's it's powerful to engage our business community in that way i mean we need their support and their investment to get this done and this only serves our students better when they are trained and ready and have those high-tech skills and durable skills for almost any position and there and those positions are available and i really liked hearing about the financial education lab and then i also i was looking at the businesses and corporations that were included in your round tables and i don't know how broad some of the areas are that they're training for
020but i would like to suggest if i may that we also include some areas surrounding sustainable renewable energy and sustainability jobs that can transfer to any business or corporation because that will not only serve our students but our their future when we are focused on our future our climate changes and our needs there because i know those are great and that's another area of opportunity for innovation and stem fields and if i can help in any way i'm happy to but thank you very much i think that's great to align these programs with the businesses so that our students can leave and be ready and go right into a high-paying job thanks great comments remember gala thank you thank you madam chair and thank you dr vazquez for this great presentation it's it hit all
021the high notes like the exposure at an early age kids don't know what's available if we don't expose them to it early so they don't know that it might be a field of interest or for them i would argue that the world normal should just be thrown out i think it's very subjective and i would i would replace it with innovation because my normal is going to be way different than anybody else is normal and that's a good thing but i this is this is i do have some questions but this is fabulous what we're doing for our students and what we will be offering the collaboration with our business partners and what we'll be able to do not just for our students but for our community as a whole is going to be a
022game changer and so i'm super excited for all of our students and for ocps but i have so a couple of questions the credentialing like how we talked a lot you talked a lot about high quality credentialing high quality programming how do we define that like how do we define what is high quality credentials over something that wouldn't be high quality is it the market value and if it's the market value how do we track to see if it's a success so if we know that a child or a student got credentialed in a certain place do we do any type of tracking to say yes he that student has been successful in that area of expertise and has moved on and is thriving in the community so there are several metrics around the credentialing
023and we track those as well as the outcomes and how they are placed that's something that we review regularly with our team to ensure that there are viable pathways for our students and do we track if the student like do we track it you know post-secondary or when they're in the workforce yeah job placement thank you pam pam's really the expert on this do we track them in the job placement yes we do we have various metrics that we use to be able to measure the successes that are part of of the programming awesome and then we you talked one of the things mentioned in the round tables was really the lack of soft and durable skills can you give us some examples of like a soft skill or adorable skill and maybe what our
024plan is to make sure that we're teaching those to our students so soft skills deal with skills having to do with conversation how you're engaging with individuals sort of the personable interactions and those are difficult to teach and so a lot of the work that we do really involves real work experiences real opportunities to practice those those types of skills so do we have plans like to expand on because we live in a digital world and one one would argue that the reason that we have the lack of soft skills is because we're so digital and children can't make eye contact they don't know how to have a conversation properly there's just a lot that i'm hearing the same things that a lot of the leaders will tell you that this is the last they
025can't handle conflict so i just didn't know are we going to try to be intentional on helping our children our students learn those skills yes and through program evaluations exit interviews we identify those areas that we might need to work more with our students and add additional training and support and the soft skills is definitely one i think that requires more practice we're seeing in some of the this younger generation that they do have less interactions with individuals and so that is a skill that takes practice and that's infused through the programming that's wonderful again i think that this is this is wonderful and i'm so glad that of cps is a part of it and i just can't wait to see what comes of it so thank you very much thank you member galum
026vice chair byrd thank you chair and thank you dr vest because it this is exciting stuff i know we've had several conversations and i've had conversations with melanie as well that how important engaging the community the business community is for our success and how much we really need that partnership to help our kids and i just i love the whole idea of reimagining education i was just having a conversation today with someone about about making classrooms more engaging getting kids excited about learning and you know it hasn't been that way for a long time for our kids so i love this and i think you touched on something really important and that was educating the business community i think is a really important point i think that sometimes we think everybody knows the programs or
027what's going on or what we need but really they really don't and like dr jenkins said we are so fortunate to live in this community that has so many companies that are willing to be partners with us and they're so generous with their resources and their time and so i think we really need to hone in on that and i love that's what you're doing with this you know like randall academy is a great example that's a business that had a need for construction workforce and apopka so they built took one of their warehouses built it into a school and partnered with us with school choice and created a randle academy where kids go to get their classes in the morning and then they go to work at randall learning construction skills in the afternoon
028and they're getting paid while they're in school so that's great and speaking of getting paid those kinds of partnerships i think are so fantastic because so many of our kids you know a lot of our families struggle and a lot of families rely on their kids to help pay those bills and when i talk to principals about in my area about kids that they can't get to that finish line for graduation that's usually the comment is that it's because they have to make money and school you know they're not making money sitting in school for seven hours a day so anywhere we can look to find those kinds of partnerships where businesses might be willing to do paid internships i think that would be really advantageous for some of our kids that were we've got
029to keep them engaged and let them get their diploma but also meet those needs of their families and i love the early exposure as well as member gallows said i know that an organization i'm involved with ibuild they do these middle school construction camps over the summer and some of the districts around our area and those kids leave those summer camps like so excited about industry things you know that they never even thought of you know or never even knew that these were jobs and it just maybe plants that one little seed just like you said in elementary middle school that could grow into something else and then just real quick soft skills i will just reiterate that debate is a great way to build those soft skills so you know how i feel about
030that initiative so you know i would encourage us to keep pushing our debate initiative in the district because that's a great way for kids to learn those interactions and how to speak to other people and everything thank you absolutely we'll need to continue to build on those durable skills that our students tend to lack because they may be more focused on the technology aspect of it all right remember gold yay could you bring up slide 12 please so this has been a dream of mine and collective dream it's not only my dream there's been many board members linda in particular and i did some initiatives early on when she came in this is exactly the kind of integrated career path thing that we need two cautions that i always have one is if kids are
031not on that path to higher education they need to graduate certified and everybody hears me say that and i know that's in this plan but i can't stress that enough they need to be certified in something if they have trouble and this is something we've struggled with combating right now those lower level learners that are really still struggling with basics in order to get them across the finish line because of state statute we have to pull them out and give them extracurricular things out of extracurricular and get them you know help in reading help in math skills whatever whatever that discipline is that is a graduation requirement those students may not get to participate in this as robustly and so what short certifications can we offer i.e driving a fork truck i.e sous chef skills
032can we offer that take three days five days 30 days to accomplish so that when they cross the finish line because they get there with the help of our folks they have a job skill that puts them at still a higher competitive level than maybe their peers and gives them access to a career so i don't want to leave out those that won't naturally flow into this i know this is to kind of help everybody get excited a little bit more about school which should actually help with the engagement earlier because we've seen it time and time again if they have a hands-on experience that gets them excited even if they're struggling with reading all of a sudden the reading scores go up there's just no question so those are just a few of the
033things and to the education of the community leadership ocps leadership orange does a great job and it shows all the back of house stuff but i'm not sure how much we immerse those leaders in some of the creative curriculum and one thing that i think about is that middle school groups that go into universal and universal partnered with another education never mind the art of tomorrow but that's separate they go in and they learn the velocity of a roller coaster because they have to actually go out and try to guess before using their formulas and see how accurate they were and then they go out and watch rock and roller coaster wrong wrong park whoops but they watch it go and they have to mark the trajectories of that i don't think people know that
034we have those kind of innovative hands-on things sprinkled in already and that we have the opportunity to grow them so that might be a way to deliver curriculum just rather than on our traditional they know what a classroom looks like but maybe looking at some of those alternatives to really share you know the the ibuild programs and the partnerships that we built with dr phillips charities with the construction those are hands-on real world experiences and of course they already go to the tech center so they see how phenomenal the course structure is there but i think if we could get them understanding because i still every room i go into we should bring back vocational training i took shop we have certification trainings everywhere so those are those are just a few thoughts but i
035want to end this on super positive wow and thank you and i can't believe how robust this is gonna become and it's amazing awesome remember bird vice chair bird sorry i just thought of something member gould reminded me of that the point another point that i wanted to make that when we're talking about the industry you know i think it's all of our jobs to share that with them as much as we can you know and she's right that they really don't know yesterday i took a an agriculture industry leader in our area nationwide i took her on a tour of our agri-science magnate at wekiva and she was like so impressed but mostly she was impressed at what we were offering the kids so there was so much there's so much land that the
036school has dedicated to this magnet she couldn't get over you know they have a whole aquaponics thing she's you know the research possibilities that could go on there you know and then they have the culinary magnet so the partnership between them growing vegetables and cooking them you know she just she was blown away and the teacher you know mr use is phenomenal and he did a great job hosting it so she was so impressed that later that night she emailed me and thanked me for bringing her and then i asked her if she might be interested in serving on our advisory board for the magnet and she was like absolutely because you know this is what she has expressed to me numerous times the concern for workforce labor people that are willing to go into
037agriculture you don't hear anybody's kids saying that's what my life dream is but without agriculture none of us eat so she loves the idea that we're immersing these kids in these ag programs at the school so that was a perfect example of a of a powerhouse business person that is now going to be engaged in the program but did not know about this opportunity before that so my two cents would be spread the word as much as you can and engage them as much as you can thank you member felder yes dr vasquez wonderful presentation and when i look at this work based learning continuum we are an educational facility here and we are about the business of educating our children i continue to marvel at the many opportunities this district offers to students as
038it relates to learning because we only got them 12 years and it seems like a long time but that's not a long time i remember vividly my first day of school and next week i'll be 65 years old so i'm so excited about the opportunity even from kindergarten you're looking at grades eighth and then ninth you know we have to in the midst of all this madness we must always as leaders of education we must always offer to our students a ray of hope and this presentation gives them that it also gives parents and again i'm not going to repeat a lot of what my colleagues appear said about education and of course vocational education but business that's what makes the world go around that is why people do what they do because they want
039to have wealth and the way you have wealth is when you are empowered and you have a skill that somebody wants to invest in and you can tell them how much it's going to cost them to invest in your skill if that's what they want so i just want to say that i thought this beautiful presentation and i'm excited about the little kindergartners i mean you can start right from there right there i have to tell my friends in closing i don't have any biological children but if i did at the time they're able to suck on the bottle everybody would make money because they'll go into commercial everybody got to bring money in the house so i am so yeah they'll be doing the gerber commercial yeah so i'm excited about what you're doing
040and i just want to thank you for the presentation thank you member felder well excellent job i know the board has said it all but this is exactly what the board wants to see happening and we're excited the collaboration in and of itself is meaningful because when we involve our business communities we all work together better but the opportunities for our students are just unlimited so i know member gold discussed it but anything that we can do to remove barriers for our kids who are struggling because i constantly worry that they're going to give up and that motivation of seeing there's something there's something out there for me there's something i can do there's yeah there's hope and there's a there's a good positive path forward i think is what our kids that are struggling
041the most need the most out of us so thank you congratulations and we'll move on to the agenda dr jenkins any changes to our agenda no changes madam chair okay if there's no changes i will entertain a motion to accept and approve the agenda as published is there a motion motion by member coburg is there a second second by vice chair all in favor please say aye opposed motion carries unanimously we are going to move on to item 3.01 our public hearing i am so sorry remember gold of course no please i just want to highlight this we just passed a proclamation from mentor month and i'll tell you between find your voice generation wow latinos in action my brother's keeper our days where we bring in teach in all of those things our partners
042with the ymca and the boys club and the girls club and rotaries all have an incredible incredible impact on students and anyone who listens to this if you're not currently a mentor in our schools please sign up because if you want to see a difference in education that is the path to it and by the way genoa will be january in the end of january so watch young ladies and young men are welcome to watch too for the gen wow positive and possible i call it a party convention inspirational moment because that's kind of what it is and it will be virtual again this year but thank you and thank you to all our mentors thank you all right we are on item 3.01 public hearing for reapportion advisory committee and i'm going to turn
043it over to ms envel in just a minute but before doing so i do want to take a moment to recognize and appreciate our chair of the reapportionment committee woody rodriguez our former former general counsel and somebody who has dedicated an enormous amount of time and energy to orange county public schools and continues to do so also serving on our foundation and willing to take on this huge responsibility in a very short period of time and i also want to recognize all the members of the reapportionate advisory committee and anybody in the room that served would you stand so that we can recognize you i will tell you when i walked in the room and saw the group of individuals i as i said at the time i knew personally about half of them i
044knew most of them by reputation and i was just in awe i want to congratulate this board for doing a phenomenal job of picking the best reapportionment committee i think anybody could have hoped for and i followed the pro the process and i want to say the progress and stayed in touch through woody throughout the entire time but i was constantly reminded of the professionalism that you brought to this the understanding that you brought to what your responsibility was the seriousness that you brought but also the ability to debate and to take on these issues and to do it in a respectful fashion i would say that it was a model that our citizens should watch and emulate because you did exactly what we asked of you and more so god bless you thank you
045and now you're going to hand it over to us and hopefully we will not make you we will not disappoint you i'm hoping we can make you proud mr rodrigue let me turn to miss empel and she will announce mr rodriguez thank you madam chair members of the board it has been an exasperating and fast-paced 10-week process since we received the 2020 census on september 30th this group has been amazing to work with we kind of started off slow because we were waiting for public input and had a couple issues with software but once we got the maps flowing we had the committee considered 19 maps in your chair rodriguez is going to go over those for you and i'm going to go ahead and turn it over to him looks like he's got it
046all set up thank you ms nval thank you madam chair members of the board this is i will say sort of a labor of love this is one of the things i knew i was going to miss when i left you guys a few years ago just a very brief history back when i was in the legislature as one of our board members used to say my first assignment almost right out of law school was working on reapportionment with a district that was challenged all the way to the u.s supreme court so i carried the bags of really amazing lawyers and got my name on the inside cover of a u.s supreme court brief that's as close as i will ever get and that's okay but that sort of spurred a life passion for this
047kind of work and i was fortunate enough to be in 2001 at the orange county government orange county attorney's office and did their reapportionment then was here with you guys in 2010 so this is the first time i actually get to vote on the plans and the proposals so i'm excited to you know share the work of our committee and it really was i can't say this enough i know that you said this madam chair but this was an incredible committee the depth and breadth the diversity of thought from crane riley who have admired and worked with for years as a member of the unitary status committee we had a teacher we had developers julian impressed the heck out of me as a very young fellow i think in my estimation but he brought folks
048to the meeting so they would learn and all of our members met diligently we met corman exceeded quorum they did a fantastic job and as you pointed out i've pointed out to many other folks i've watched what the orange county commission is doing in their committee and our committee handled all of those difficult issues that come with reapportionment race and dividing communities and which lines should work and whether you use a highway or something else but they handled that and when they had differences of opinion they respected each other immensely so i do think they do deserve a tremendous round of applause and appreciation for the work they did so our presentation tonight is a couple of things first of all it's just a very quick primer for the board because you will ultimately be
049making the decision on which of these plans proposals you will select but we'll give you that overview which was taken from presentation from your general counsel to our committee we'll also explain some of the activities that we had some of the legal fundamentals and traditional legal principles as well as some of the recommendations based on the three plans that you received i'll figure out the powerpoint here and you can see there the members like i said before i know they stood up before but the they really they came from different communities we had folks that were professionals we had professional parents those parents that stay at home they have tremendous input they know more about what's going on in their communities sometimes than those of us that are working so really great group and like
050i said this process would not have been the same without their input so we start with section 101.36 of the florida statutes this is the statute that charges the school board to re-evaluate every so often the school boundaries that you have by law every 10 years when the census comes out with new numbers you now have an opportunity to reassess are you meeting the principles of one person one vote and through that process we learned that sure enough as we suspected certain areas of the county grew immensely and other areas did not grow at the same pace so ms gould and another one of the districts district four in district 2 had way too much population as you'll see and other areas had the right amount for them but certainly did not keep pace one
051of the tremendous challenges was in getting the information we cannot just do it based on our own numbers we have to rely on certified numbers by the census and those numbers because of covid were significantly delayed this year we did receive them on september 30th and our charge was to try and finish this presentation and your selection before the end of this calendar year because the statutes call for you to do it in odd numbered years now historically the school board has recreated this process to call it the reapportionment advisory committee trying to stay away from things like rezoning and redistricting i can tell you the number one issue that we addressed and everyone and joey cadel i forgot to mention could not be here tonight she wanted to make sure to let you know
052former school board member but she brought that experience with her and from day one she would tell us all you know please remind the audience that this is not for rezoning of the school zones we did a wonderful job with our connect orange calls in fact i got mine when we were in our district and not realizing that we have been sending these out all along which was impressive but sure enough at every meeting we had at least one or two parents that would show up thinking this is going to impact my child's school zone it's going to impact my elementary school my middle school my high school so we would start every meeting with that caveat sometimes most of the times when they heard that they would quietly leave and go i've got better
053things to do with my time which we understood but again this is for those in the audience today who may be concerned one last caveat these maps will not impact where a child attends school however these do determine where we all get to vote for our elected officials so what are some of the things that the reapportionment advisory committee did to make sure we got the word out as quickly as possible we have it on the website and we did take out newspaper advertisements i know they use social media and text but truly your connect orange system which you have is probably the most effective way that we had as an opportunity to get the word out as another way of gathering public input though i watched some of the committee meetings that the county
054was also having and they would have two or three individuals that would attend those comments i would bring back to our committee whenever possible because i figured if you were attending a county commission meeting and saying to them that you wanted orla vista to stay together or you wanted us to take into con you wanted them to take into consideration lines and how they impacted edgewater drive you would probably say the same thing to our committee you just didn't have the value of time of going to every committee that does that so we took those into account as well and we did have sort of a an entourage a group of individuals that took it upon themselves they we i told our committee we are all members of the public even though we serve on
055this committee but we were asked to serve we had at least five or six individuals that would show up at almost all of our committees and we thanked them as well for their input whether they spoke or whether they just met with us afterwards it was very it was very much a great process as well one of the things the public web page did provide though was a constant ability for the public to be engaged for those that choose chose to do so it provided the meeting schedule the video and audio links some frequently asked questions all of our materials as well as any comments that were received an opportunity to submit electronic public comments in advance and those were limited but we did have those distributed our committee members in advance of our meeting
056we had a specific email address which was monitored by staff we had our proposed maps and then of course the ability to create your own map and you will hear today that we actually had not one but several maps that were created by what i would call members of the public members that weren't on our committee so we held 10 public meetings seven of those occurred at local area schools we held one in each of our school board member districts to make sure we got a flavor for all of the community members of the public as i mentioned were not only encouraged they were invited to attend all of them and we always had an opportunity for public comments to be shared there are three main redistricting criteria that the school board should adhere to
057must adhere to those include equal population and that's the simple notion that one person one vote i will share with you that when we did congressional districts they were not just one person one vote but the variation had to be within one person so they take the population of the state of florida they divide it by the total number of congressional seats and you're either right on the number or you're one over or you're one below but that is it you don't get the chance to have any percentage of variation for local districts understanding communities of interest and other factors the courts have held that a plus or minus of five percent is sufficient meaning if your standard is a hundred thousand per district you can have a district that maybe goes up to 105
058or has as little as 95 000 and that combined variation that deviation that they call it should be no more than 10 percent the closer you are to zero of course the closer you are to assuring you've got that one person one vote the federal anti-discrimination laws are simply put we were charged not to discriminate on the basis of race gender ethnicity religion or any other factors and that was never really a concern or consideration that we had to work with with our committee and then our traditional redistricting principles these are laid out in the next slide but these are factors that the courts have said these are the bare minimum you should consider and most of these are objective criteria when you see them you'll understand well obviously these are things we should all
059consider and take into account so compactness is one that for the most part you can look at a district and tell it's not long and stringy i know there were some good samples that masenval shared with the group but there have been a number of challenges over how a district will be drawn in such a way so that they can grab certain populations whether it's for political purposes or racial purposes contiguity means that you have to have a district that is contiguous and carries from one side to the next and it's there are no gaps in the districts you cannot stop at state road and then pick up several miles later and continue the district unless there's some way of connecting in florida because of the number of bodies of water the courts have said
060you can of course cross bridges and other bodies of waters lakes etc to capture population but for the most part you're using roads as well the preservation of political subdivisions this is done to avoid the disruption of cities and towns those are established subdivisions but there's also communities of interest this is where you get into some more of those gray areas what exactly is a community of interest that's where we relied on our community members that participated in this process that's where we looked at things like the census designated places which are these nebulous areas that are not incorporated but people know them and they kind of have a sense of where they are the town of eatonville has very specific boundaries but lockhart for example is not a city and they may or may
061not have boundaries that are recognized pine hills is an area that as mr reilly told us to our committee you know that boundary will change depending on how long you've been in orlando and what you consider to be the area of pine hills but the census has designated those areas and so we looked at those areas and tried to match and keep them from being divided as much as possible the preservation of cores of prior districts meaning the existing districts this is important because every time you remove an individual from the existing district that means they voted for one of you and in their next election when they go to vote they're going to look and say why am i no longer able to vote for that person they're still on the school board and
062so it does not mean you have to preserve them exactly the same but it does mean that the more you displace voters the more frustration they're going to have the more likelihood it is that you'll have a challenge and the more likelihood it is that those districts may not match up with your community standards as undertaken by the last group 10 years ago and then the last topic is avoiding the pairing of incumbents with school boards specifically they talk about the notion that we should have incumbents not necessarily protected that's not an appropriate term but making sure you don't place two incumbents in the same district because that would mean one of them would be unable to truly fulfill their term if they are required to reside in their district so every one of these
063districts were drawn with all six of those factors any one of the three you picked tonight will with flying colors past those legal bare minimum standards we also looked at some other key factors the first and foremost of those was the number of high schools and i'm going to pick on poor ms gould but she had only three ten years ago in her district after she got elected somehow we jumped up to six why because horizons west exploded right so in that period of time that meant as miss cadilla pointed out six graduations six football games times whatever number six number of of concerts and so forth and all these events plus six times the number of parents that are contacting you because it's not based on if you contact your school board member necessarily
064based on where you reside many times you're going to contact the school board member who has that high school in their district and as you all well know it doesn't matter who calls you're going to answer their call but more likely than not if that school is in your district you're going to have to pay extra special attention to help them and you've got a rapport with those schools so we looked at the high school specifically our goal was to try and make sure that each school board member had a minimum of three and no more than four and i think for all of these maps that was accomplished as well we looked at the attendance zones for high schools in part to think that if we can get as many percentage of those individuals
065residing in your district in your district that you have that high school that's also beneficial we looked at feeder patterns to some extent with elementary and middle schools we looked at projected development and future growth a lot of time was spent brent downs and tommy moore who are here today who are part of your ocps staff did an incredible job of feeding us this information kind of piecemeal meeting by meeting and telling us oh we're now talking about district six now we're talking about district seven now we're talking about district three and kind of going through those growth areas so that we had a better understanding some people came in with a tremendous wealth of knowledge in those areas but some of our other committee members this was a great benefit to them to understand
066that the east and the west sides have districts that are surely to grow but you can't draw those districts with such a negative number you still have to stay within that plus or minus five percent then we also looked at what are called minority majority districts and the composition of those specifically district five had over fifty percent african american population and we had two districts that were close to or exceeded 50 in hispanic populations those districts you cannot over pack and you cannot dilute them if we took district 5 and made it 25 percent african-american and dispersed that population throughout the county that would certainly lead to a legal challenge by the same analysis if all of a sudden district 5 consisted of 65 or 70 percent it could be seen that your motives were
067racially motivated does that mean that's the case possibly but the reality is that those questions would then have to be answered in a court of law answered in a format that would require judges and learned individuals and experts to testify as to what the motives were for the committee and the board and that leads to an excess amount of expenditures for the district so we tried as well as best we could to make sure that we avoided those pitfalls and finally the shape and configuration of the cit of the districts the supervisor of elections office also gave us a brief tutorial on what their preferences were many times they know that they have to put our layer down but you'll have a layer that comes in from the county you'll have another layer that'll come
068in and it'll be from the state in which they'll draw their state house districts their state senate districts and finally their state congressional districts so if we start to use lines and roads that perhaps are not as likely to be followed by others then what will happen is they will have districts in the supervisor of elections office that will have multiple ballots needed to be created whenever possible we try to use things like major highways or if we had geographic features whether they were lakes or other areas and then the census designated places as i talked about before all right so this is the existing data as you can see they show you districts one through seven and the population back in 2010 was 1.1 million today our population in orange county has grown to
0691.4 million and you could see the deviation shows you what percentage those districts were either above or below and unfortunately once you start moving population out of one district it's like a cycle you move them into another well now you perhaps need to move something else out of that district and so you place those individuals somewhere else on some other border and it's always a constant shift that was the part that probably took the longest for some of our members who took the time to draw the maps you also were provided a list of tables and i'm not going to present all the information there because this was given to you it's also available online but our staff had prepared things like our high school location comparison which told you which high schools were in
070each new district or proposal as well as which ones remain the same the percentage of essentially what percentage of the population existed from that high school a breakdown by census designated places as well as municipalities a comparison to the deviations that one was simple enough and that was usually on most of the maps as well as the district demographic comparisons the school locational alignment we did not receive this but it's for your benefit as board members for you to review and say okay not only am i looking at high schools but what elementary schools and middle schools will i now be charged with to work with in the future and finally the displacement comparison again we didn't have tables six or seven the displacement comparison shows you a comparison between the three proposals how many
071individuals were physically moved from one district to another your goal there would be to get to the lowest number possible so the recommendations we had 14 proposals that were submitted by reapportionment members we had five proposals that were submitted by members of the public and all of the proposals submitted by a member of the public we did sponsor we did make a rule that it had to be sponsored by one of us mainly to avoid having to spend time analyzing a proposal that we knew would fail if it was submitted if it failed some of the legal criteria but all of the legal proposals we received met that and exceeded that we had at least five members of our committee that created maps in particular i want to call out mr william mcnartney are you
072here please stand be recognized william is a freshman at dr phillips high school in 10 years i suggest you all fight to figure out which one of you will appoint him to the next committee but he deserves a significant round of applause william two of the maps that we have tonight are actually proposals that he worked on and one was a combination of his map as well as the other half of another public proposal an individual that we never saw come to our meetings he just submitted the information online so i will say that again this was a process where the committee was open they were knowledgeable but we certainly we did not label any of our maps as my map or your map we knew who the presenters were but every one of these
073was a committee proposal because we were taking ideas from each other as we heard and those maps at the beginning that sounded like great ideas by the end we knew okay those did not make any sense because now we've heard from you we've heard from the public so i'm going to briefly go through the maps you were also provided three maps with each one of these map proposals the maps will show you either and these are again available online the current school board districts are the multi-colored it's harder for those in the audience to see but as you can tell for example in district 1 it stretches beyond the black line into the central part of the map that's commissioner gal our board member gallows district and that includes currently some portions of winter park
074and azalea park so this committee proposal changed the boundary so that in the future anything in green now would go into board member caster dental's current district district six these changes were helpful for us to identify areas we were moving in comparison one map to another committee proposal 16 is one of the three maps you see before you we also had for each one of these maps high school zones these maps also represented in different colors and shades the different existing high schools so you would be able to understand how much of that percentage of the high schools you're capturing in each of the districts so just as an overview with regards to committee proposal 16 here are some of the key distinctive features as they compare with the other two maps for every one
075of these for example we moved winter park into district six for every one of these dr phillips was moved into district five west orange was kept in district four lake buena vista was moved into district three but for these three maps in particular there were some key differences that will help you tonight in making some of your decisions this map has evidence still remaining in district six it has boone also remaining in district three it uses the florida turnpike as the dividing boundary between districts four and seven but as a result oakland and winter garden which were previously divided continue to be divided under this map proposal 16 was also the only one that was unanimously approved by the committee but i will say this in terms of the votes some of the votes on
076the maps were more with regard to just whether or not they would move them forward at that time but all three maps like we said before were approved in the sense of by a majority of the members of the committee so this is district committee proposal 18 this is one of the two that william helped prepare with the help of miss cadill as you can see this would be a very different configuration than proposal 16 it includes all of lake buena vista's zone into commission district or school board member district three it also uses even though it's a scraggly line it uses the winter garden boundary lines as a dividing line between six and seven and that's a key distinction because now all of winter garden is located in district four as opposed to its
077current division as well as oakland this map also places evidence in district five that was one of the requests we heard from board member felder and it was important for us to make sure we acknowledged your comments not because of your preferences but because you have the experience of being in the community and understanding what your community wants as well so when we heard from board members when we heard from your committee members we understood this is coming with wisdom in working in your communities this is the map that shows the high school zones and again the key distinctions are evans is now placed in district five boone is now in district 6. it uses the city of winter garden boundaries as a dividing boundary between four and seven proposal a team was approved by
078the committee but what was the one flash point was the comment regarding evans there was a lot of divisiveness about what the status of evans should be we heard lots of testimony mostly in favor of keeping evidence in district six but to bring to this board only proposals that had evidence in district six i think would have been unfair to board member felder and those that we had a few that said we think it should be in district five so we thought as an option for the board we let you do the heavy lifting and determine which one of these proposals you would prefer finally we have committee proposal 19 this is the one that matches on the eastern side really the eastern side was a proposal seven public proposal seven but on the western
079side it was very similar with the one exception being now in proposal 19 evans is back in school board member six in in castro dental's district these are the high school zones and the key distinctions here again it preserves the lake buena vista high school zone it does use winter garden as dividing boundary as it does 18 but the key distinctions are evans and boone is now more evenly divided between three and six but it does put boone in district six the last portion there of that comment regarding proposal 19 we went back and double checked so that's not accurate with regards to being rejected by members from district three but it did it did it was approved by a 13-4 vote so had a couple of descending votes as to the purpose of the
080this proposal so your considerations tonight are making sure that the census population is within plus or minus 5 percent that minority voting interests are not being diluted fragmented or packed that race is not your predominant factor in creating any districts that districts are contiguous and appear to be compact with no irregularly shaped districts that the extent possible municipalities are contained within a single district and to the extent possible neighborhoods and subdivisions are not divided that each incumbent is still residing in her district and that the percentage of residents who have been displaced is kept to a minimum with that i would suggest that all three of these meet those standards and so this evening you'll need to consider which of these maps to move forward then you will need to publish this map usually as
081a link to the information online as well as a submission of the map in its census designated blocks to the secretary of state and the orange county supervisor of elections with that if you have any questions now at this time i'll stand ready i think if you'd advance it to the next slide awesome there they all are all right we have before i take comments or questions from board members we do have four members of the public that wish to offer comments but before doing that if there are questions specifically questions that mr rodriguez needs to answer now let me know otherwise i will go to the public remember cobert you've pressed your button do you have a question before okay all right so if we can move forward and mr rodriguez stay handy in
082case we have questions in the future you have a question at this time remember gala i said stay handy i really do i'm so sorry and look i'm just in the map the reasons i know one of the one of the concerns within the avalon community was that we try to stay they try to stay together in a community and committee proposal 18 puts avalon middle in district two so i was just curious as to the rationale behind not putting it in district district one if there was a particular reason the other two have avalon middle in in district one yeah i think we noticed that when we had that comparison table today at least i noticed that today i don't think there was probably i don't have any specific knowledge i don't know the
083committee discussed or debated that particular issue that's obviously one that stands out on the chart when you're looking at it side by side i know that william is here if you want to ask him since he helped prepare that portion of the map but wow i don't want to put william okay he was pretty good he's unless he's comfortable oh i don't know i just saw him well that's not my job yeah no i so let me just say his mother is our communications person at the facilities department for ocps lauren roth former writer and a sentinel writer so i think he's comfortable with this whole debate concept you guys were talking the other evening when i when i saw him present okay so i am my name is william mcnardy i live at 725
084west winner park street in orlando and i'm a ninth grader at dr phillips high school in the center for international studies program committee vice chair mrs cato asked me to make different proposals because of my interest in maps i created prep committee proposal 18 and the western half of committee proposal 19. for both maps 18 and 19 my goals were to even out the number of high schools in each six to three or four high schools including site 50 as a high school for district 4. another goal was to relieve district 4 of two of their current six high schools to retain a hispanic majority district to retain african-american majority district district five and to put into the generally put district lines along more major roads or high schools or high school zone lines another
085thing i had i put i'm putting in there is the border between district four and district seven is between the west orange high school and ocoee high school zones oh and also in addition both maps have boone high school in district six for a couple reasons for for one this is at the suggestion of mrs cadle edgewater and boone high schools have had a long history and district 6 is more slogan compared to some of the other districts the major differences here in between the two maps is in that map 18 evans high school is in district 5 while in proposal 19 evans high school is in district 6. other than that the eastern part of proposal 19 has moved a few schools in the avalon area at community request and the and so in
086the western boundaries of 19 with like dr phillip zone boone high school boone west orange lockhart lake buena vista etc were modified based on committee feedback such as the moving of lockhart into district seven and in general these are the boundaries between districts three and three to seven and of course winner parks between six and one so are there any questions avalon middle school was there a specific reason why in in committee pro 18 you left it in district 2 but in proposal 19 it's in district 1. i'm not exactly sure that's fine that's okay don't worry about it you did a great job william thank you for all your help you were phenomenal thank you and i will add in his defense again for proposal 19 we took the half the right half the
087eastern portion of the district from public proposal seven because again if we would have sent you his half it would have been identical to the one in 18 and very similar to the one in 16 so we thought giving you some choices at least we'll get you some some other things to look at wonderful thank you thank you so much william and for that record i don't think william needed any defense at all does anybody else have any other questions here not at this time but you'll stay handy stay handy all right thank you remember lopez and then we're going to open it up to comments from the public are you ready okay thank you all right let's we have four speakers from the public we have sandra fatma hall sandra good to have you
088with us pleasure to be here i'm so excited good seeing you all thank you all right good evening dr barbara jenkins board members and all in attendance my name is sandra fatmihall and i stand here before you this evening as a resident and proven game changer of pine hills and surrounding areas for several months we have been attending the weekly reapportionment meetings throughout the county and know the importance of sharing with you this evening our strong and united advocacy to keep evans high school in district 6. when you invest in your community you have a responsibility to use your voice approximately eight years ago five community leaders came together and formed the united foundation of central florida to empower communities one family at a time after research we discovered that evans high school graduation rate
089was at 50 percent at that time a year after forming the future leaders united after-school enrichment and mentoring program we knew we had the responsibility to be the change we want to see so with a passion for young people we knew we had to bridge the gaps in our young people and community using a holistic approach and we did just that through investment in the community educational scholarships and fulfilling needs i proudly fast forward to today as the largest after-school enrichment and mentoring program in evans high school please ask our representatives to please stand representing flu this evening which is the after-school program yes i proudly enhance and let you know that with an investment through our village of over two hundred thousand dollars we are proud to thank our board our businesses investors partners
090and everyone that has invested in the lives of our young people today evans has a graduation rate of over 95 percent yes i would be remiss not to thank our principal bailey remember leadership is not just a position leadership is action so as you can see we have an outstanding group of young people we're on a successful path with a village behind us and leaving evans high school in district 6 and our current leadership at the school board will allow continuity for the benefit of our students school and families thank you to the committee members over the past 10 weeks for your hard work week after week under amazing leadership let's give him a round of applause please i really appreciate how fair he was thank you dr barbara jenkins and board members for the
091opportunity to appeal to your hearts as you consider and place value on the voice of the public and last but by no means least having mentored over 500 students throughout orange county i represent every single person and i vote for map 16 and to keep evans high school where it is thank you okay i skipped over my part where i talk about no clapping and booing and hissing and yeah we were all bad and i started it by recognizing mr rodriguez and the entire committee and applause so now that we are into the public comment portion i'm going to have to and now that we've all done a lot of clapping and that felt really really good by the way to be so positive let's try to refrain from clapping and i really appreciate the
092fact that this has been such a positive group and i haven't had earned any booing or hissing so thank you for that also let's and i misspoke we did have four speakers but since we've already heard from william let me call on cynthia harris miss harris welcome thank you for being here thank you for having me try to get my notes kind of where i need to see them i'm cynthia harris 12 janet avenue orlando 328 11. the residents of district 5 are endangered species and they must be protected our demographics have been used but the money and the resources are not fairly distributed in our communities we have environmental crisis with detrimental intrusion through gentrification we have poor transportation low wage employment that puts away puts us way behind the curve of fairness and
093opportunity imagine facing those dilemmas in your community you cannot because you've never had to face them we've always had to strive to live up to your standards but without thought you've never had to live up to ours when marking these district lines i want you to think about the gentrification of the black communities located in district five i brought some numbers so that you can understand that there are six public housing units in district five that five of them are out of the six are permitted for demolition through department of hud in the city of orlando the first one is murchison terrace located at 323527 northwest circle there are 190 units in that dish in that complex the hot the schools that are affected are washington shores elementary jones high memorial and we already lost
094richmond heights lana doom located at 1617 west central has 104 units we stand to lose washington shores orange center college park middle and students from jones high lake mann located at 624 bedoon drive 210 units washington shores orange center college park jones high griffin park located at 520 callahan 198 units we stand to lose howard middle school jones high we've already lost grand avenue ivy lane elementary we ivy lane apartments located at 24 fanfare we stand to lose students from ivy lane college park carver middle jones we've already lost evans reese terrace which is located in i believe district six units they stand to lose reeves terrorist head start hillcrest elementary howard middle school boone high school we don't want to be remembered as just a marker with no people just like they did rosewood
095we want fairness in these maps along with opportunity i know you have a difficult task ahead of you when deciding these maps but you have to also remember through gentrification because these permits have not been revoked by the city of orlando we stand to lose a lot thank you all right thank you remember gala you have a question yes thank you thank you madam chair so my question is do you prefer one particular map over the other are you were you speaking in favor of a map or just in favor of making sure that the lines were drawn equitably i don't particularly favor one of over the other okay some of the maps that are the finalists or not some of the maps that i particularly chose but i would like to make sure that
096when you're considering these maps that you consider what we already stand to lose already we can't afford another 10 years by losing population to wait to see what the maps are going to look like in 10 years in the next five years these people are going to be gone and they won't be in district five thank you thank you miss harris before we take the next week i think one of the challenging things for the board with regard to this is that while those communities may be identified for demolition what we don't know and what we can't predict is the demographics of the replacement housing that's likely to go in there so i think it is a relevant point and i appreciate miss harris i appreciate you bringing that to our attention i think it's
097relevant i'm not exactly sure that there's information by which we could predict the future to know what would be what adjustments we could make at this point in time because again it may not be housing it may be something else that replaces it but the concern about removing that housing is recognized and understood let's hear from derek edwards i'm sorry oh miss felder you want to comment remember felder wants to comment at this point in time thank you first of all thank you cynthia miss harris for coming to the meeting and expressing your concerns and i guess later on i'll be able to talk about my preference as it relates to the maps but one of my major concerns you didn't hit on it exactly but when his name escapes me woody he talked about
098gave us several examples that was considered when the maps were put together and i certainly am concerned about the voter percentage in the districts that that remains the way where at least there's a chance as it relates to future board members that appear on this board but i do want to again later on i'll probably talk but again i want to thank the gentleman the young man from dr phillips i opened dr phillips i appreciate your effort and yeah we do need to prepare for you in some years to come i think you're gonna be ready but i just wanted to say that but i guess when we hear all of those persons that have something to say and you get a chance to talk to each board member i can then put forth some
099thoughts that i have about district five thank you so much thank you mr edwards thank you for joining us this evening thank you for having me good afternoon madam chair and scuba members my name is derek edwards and i represent evans high school and united foundation of central florida's future leads united after school enrichment mentoring program i am here today to express my concerns in regard to the maps that will be proposed by the 2021 ocps reapportionment advisory committee first i speak on behalf of our students we strongly encourage the board to strongly consider map 16 that is being proposed this evening as it protects the integrity of our community pine hills as well as keeping evans high school in the school board district six we believe in continuity map 16 maintains that continuity for
100our families evans high school being in district six has positively positively impacted our school and its surrounding communities we want to continue this progress with our respective school board members seat our community our school and our programs have come to know the representatives of district six our primary example of that would be the relationship that we have developed and maintained with dr karen castor dental since being on the school board she has advocated for the schools of our district and most importantly evans high school secondly i speak on behalf of my fellow peers at evans high school we believe that moving evans into high school district five as recommended in map 18 would not be beneficial for to our community in the long term potentially leading to the negative impacts on our school community and
101programming lastly i speak on behalf of my fellow peers at evans high school we believe that map 18 and 19 would also have negative impacts on our community these aforementioned maps split pine hills into three school board districts instead of two on the pre-existing maps or just one district no other community is as divided as pine hills in these maps we understand that other maps were taken into consideration because of protected communities from being divided well i please implore you to take that into consideration when thinking about selecting a map i close with the original recommendation that is to strongly consider map 16 when deciding as a board when map to move forward with the ball is in your court and we are looking for you to make the best decision possible for all of
102orange county madam chair and school board members i thank you for letting me speak and i thank you for your time mr edwards excellent presentation all right we're not clapping but we all want to clap so here we go all right we can show that was wonderful what a great presentation his name derek edwards edwards yes and whether you know regardless of what position you might be taking on this issue you have to respect the eloquence with which he just delivered that message as well as william i'm telling you what a lot to be proud of and look forward to in the future yes member gallow yes come on update can you come back up to the microphone future it's the futures lee's united after school enrichment and mentoring program at evans high school thank
103you so much this is the program under sandra right yes ma'am yes and i am the president of the organization oh well thank you president you're welcome thank you president and they attended our meetings too i love that we should expand that program karen well they are working on it madam chair absolutely remember caster dano thank you madam chair and as evidence of someone's hard work for 12 years derek is he was accepted to princeton with a full ride okay now we have to clap so and his mother his proud mother is next to him so i'm sure she's gay mom so whoa the group really is all right i should i'm not surprised but i'm i'm overwhelmed that is so awesome yay whoa whoa boy that's so cool okay i've lost track of where
104we are i think that was the end of our public comments so we'll go into board discussion nope that was that was our last speaker so i'm going to take the board members in the order that i have them at this time remember caster dental that was your comment correct just now okay okay so let's go to member covert where we initially started off member cobra thank you chair so quick thank you and kudos to this committee this committee was so impressive the level of intellect and integrity dedication and the time that you put in it's really you've gone above and beyond as as citizens and we all thank you for that and we had the utmost faith and trust in this committee led by mr rodriguez so again thank you all for making a
105difficult task look easy and do it with such grace so and i also again kudos to william and derek it's young people like you that give me faith in the future and know that we're gonna be just fine i'm going to kick it off by giving my support for proposal 16. and i'll give you the reasons why i tried to look at this from not only my district i represent district 3 but looking at this universally for the entire ocps organization as well proposal 16 if we look at the entire district it relieves district 4. let me say again relieves district four it cleans up the west orange zone when we talk about unifying communities like like pine hills i think that is important it keeps the evans attendance zone together again unifying communities and
106it decreases the populations of our high growth districts including four two one and seven for district three this was important to me that it unifies the hunters creek community hunters creek was divided between three and four and you have certain communities that just you know they're not a town but they function like a town and hunters creek is one of those communities i thought that was important it also does not divide conway when we talk about keeping huntress creek together keeping pine hills together the other two maps do divide conway by three and that's a lot i think the natural dividing line of 436 in proposal 16 makes sense to me but dividing conway into three does not proposal 16 keeps that community together and i do think that is a clean line of semaran
107or 436 to divide districts three and two so also listening to the community keeping communities together is a priority for me and finally this proposal was the map that was unanimously approved by the committee those are my thoughts for now thank you chair thank you member covert remember lopez thank you madam chair i am also very proud of all of the members of the committee this is a hard work it's very challenging because i think that everybody have different opinions and but you know the conversations and the wisdom from woody is also very you know i really appreciate it i value the conversations thank you for listening to all of us i think my only concern is the division of avalon and that is the reason why i will be more in favor of the
108map number 16. and i highly appreciate their in speech thank you so much because make me analyze even more further not looking not only into my district but across the whole you know orange county public school every every district district one two three four and i never advocated for one school to keep it or leave it and i think that all of us are just looking for the best for our communities and to keep them together so we're going to serve everybody anyways we're going to serve every school we are very proud to to serve and i'm sorry that i'm just speaking on behalf of you but i but i know that we feel very proud to serve our constituents and our schools but i'm in favor of of number six because i think that
109is the less divisive i can say that maybe stone lakes elementary i know that you know the committee trying to do something there but keep avalon apart from timber creek i don't think it's fair and i also want to share an email just two sentences from one of the constituents one of my constituents from district two she said good morning member lopez i live in avalon park board district 2 currently i am an ocps parent and serve as a sac secretary at timber creek high school after reviewing the proposed reporting maps i have concerns about map 18. map 18 creates an arbitrary division between district 1 and 2 within south village one of the small neighborhood villages within the avalon park homeowner association area so this proposed dividing line separates some of the south village
110town homes from the reminder of south village and will be very confusing for residents of south village this also puts avalon middle school into a different district than both avalon elementary and timber creek high school additionally map 18 does not decrease the population numbers for either district 1 or district 2 to allow for continued growth of the east side of the county so you know at the end at the end she said please vote against map 18. when i visited the school elementary school i visited all district 2 schools in my first year when i won this seat and i remember just visited avalon middle school they have the spirit of timber creek you know they they are just whoop since since since elementary school even the elementary school the walls are purple i don't
111see avalon you know in another side so and i would love to to keep them of course but i think that the fair the fair decision is to keep them together because avano is the community of interest that needs to be taken in consideration thank you well thank you member lopez member gallo thank you madam chair so i received that same email from that same constituent and i've and i've spoken to a few others that have been very vocal from the avalon community that they wish to stay together and for there to be continuity amongst avalon and i do believe that proposal 16 and 19 preserves that the best 19 actually preserves it a little bit better than 16 does it just because it captures a larger population of that avalon area and puts it
112into timber creek which adds to the continuity so i'm just going to go say my pros and cons of what i see in my district because i want to hear from fellow board members that know their districts better than i do because i'm looking at the numbers and i do have some concerns in other districts when i'm looking at the breakdown of high schools and different numbers you know it's just about representation and make sure that everybody feels represented in their community i like remember lopez do not particularly enjoy losing winter park i think it's a great community it's wonderful i will be sad to move it in every single map i do lose winter park but i recognize that they are a community and it's a community that needs to stay together and i
113know that remember castro dental will represent them well or and whoever comes after her in district six because it is it is it is a community and it's almost like a family out there and to be represented as such it matters and so i'm happy to see that there that they will be together even though i'll be losing them but i'll still be available so 16 i like i do like 16 i like 16 because it there's a fair representation for all of my high schools 19 when you're looking at avalon i like it just a little bit better because it draws it in what i don't like about 19 is then i lose district 1 and i'm going to say district 1 because this is for the next 10 years and we don't know
114who's going to represent district one it's not my district it belongs to the people but it the numbers for university higher lower so it goes down like to 43 and i feel like that leads less representation for university high and so that was the issue that i had with 19. with 18 because of the of the issue that member lopez mentioned with avalon being in district 2 i can't support 18 because that's not the desire of the community and it doesn't make sense when we're looking for continuity and i don't believe that there was a real good reason why avalon was into i think it might have just been an oversight of the committee or whatnot but it does make sense for for avalon to be in district one so for that reason i can't
115support 18 i don't know if we'll be looking as we go through down the line of school board members of maybe shifting doing this i don't know what their thought process is are that's why we're here this evening but from a standpoint i would support or 19 i'm leaning more towards 16 just because of the representation of university high that's that's in proposal 19. that's all i have for now thank you thank you member gallow member felder oops i'm sorry i'll put you right back that was me thank you thank you so much i looked at the maps and my i am in favor of 18 because i am looking at the voter presence for the district also i don't want you know i guess i really don't want community split you know i understand
116that that's not a good thing but i'm also looking at it's just when i went to the meeting at jones and i saw that i had his district five was just as close in getting to evans as opposed to dr phillips and i you know i'm really happy with the two schools i have but i do understand that board member google would have so many high schools and that's the only thing that i'm concerned with her having so many and i do understand that we need to be able to share the high school but i'm looking at the population of voting because students don't vote adults vote and i'm looking at that in terms of making sure because long after i leave this seat i need to do my best and i'm going to do
117my best to protect the seat however i do listening to fellow board members and really understanding about that split between one and two that you know that may be something i need to maybe reconsider and look again at 16 but i'm definitely not looking at 19 not not at all but 18 and 16 maybe i can look because i had not paid that much attention to what was going on between one and two i was just looking at what was going to happen to the district in terms of the vote of representation and i wanted to make sure that was equally distributed that is why i went with proposal 18 but of course however the board votes i'm going to go along with that but i need to go on record i support 18 and
118i know why i support it because i'm looking at the voter turnout and what will occur and i'm trying to protect this seat thank you i'm going to call in a minute on vice chair okay if i can i ask with the board mind if i ask a question because i wasn't completely member failed or i wasn't completely clear so i it's and i think it's an appropriate concern that i have i want to make sure that we maintain a district with a likelihood of african-american representation that's important to me and it looks to me that 16 is slightly better than 18. yeah so i wasn't sure when you were talking about voters what what you were referring to so 16 has 50.7 percent african-american 19.4 percent white actually and 18 is actually 20.5 white
119and 50.6 they're they're very close but but of the two 16 is actually slightly preferable for maintaining an african-american representation there that was my concern i didn't i guess i really i was so caught on trying to make sure that representation was there because that's very important to me and i'll i'll take a look at it again i really seriously just i'm sorry i didn't think about one and two you know what that wasn't going to do yeah but after hearing and then looking at it and karen was kind of showing me the lines over here so i could see and i guess you know 16 probably would be what i would like take a look at it as we continue to have this discussion but i kind of zoomed in on that was one
120of the first things i wanted to make sure i had confidence in the in the committee but i still wanted to make sure that any one of these options would preserve a strong likelihood and then when i saw that 16 was preferable and i started seeing the number of board members that were supposed to supporting it i was thinking wow this might be a kumbaya moment here okay so okay so let's go then and thank you board for the indulgence let's go to vice chair i was waiting for pam oh that's funny okay first i just want to again add my congratulations and thank you to this committee this is not a big task and i know one of my members was in here i don't know if he's still in here but i know
121he thanked his wife on facebook the other day for allowing the time commitment because it was quite a time commitment away from family and so i certainly appreciate it i also want to commend the committee on on having foresight and recognizing future growth because i'm very appreciative that in all three maps that is recognized for district seven because as i have said numerous times from the dyess district seven is going to be our next big boom area i believe so i love that we've got some room to grow there for district seven and all three plans i am also very thankful that the committee that communities were really they really tried to keep communities together and i'm i'm very thankful with for the lockhart community being put back together i think that's going to be
122so beneficial for that community that is you know really having some big boost there getting some development you know trying to get build that community up so i think that's a great move i really am i could do either 16 or 19. i like i really would have liked to have kept winter garden oakland together i think that those two communities are very intertwined but it makes sense to me that that line that line would have to be there my other in 16 that it was yeah so what i was going to say is i like in 19 i like that those two communities are put together but what i don't like about 19 is the evans community being split three ways that is one of my biggest concerns just because i think that it
123really does help a school to have a to have a common identity with a board member that they parents community members they can go to with issues or concerns or suggestions and you know and for that it helps to have a board member that's really engaged and i think with it being between three board members that's just more difficult so because of that i think that my preference would be 16 as well thank you all right thank you vice chair remember casper dental thank you madam chair i would like to take a chance or take a minute to thank woody for coming back and spending all that time behind the scenes and in front of the committee and guiding everybody through i don't think it was by chance that the committee operated so smoothly i
124think your guidance made a big difference and i appreciate that it's good to see you back in in chambers here and to the committee members thank you so much for your late nights there was like a tuesday night and then a wednesday night i was going to try to make it and i couldn't make it to all only about just one and i thought about your schedules and how you're able to clear them and how difficult that must be when you have kids at home or other responsibilities so thank you for your time and the seriousness that you took or that you displayed in deliberating about these maps so i appreciate it very much and then to the people who went and followed and came to the meetings and you're not on the committee thank
125you very much for your participation i know that our schools we prepare people for college and careers but obviously we also prepare for civic involvement and this process of redistricting and reapportionment is really boring a lot of people don't understand the significance of it and i especially appreciate the students for your time because your time is valuable as well but your participation in this is to be commended because this is fundamental to how our government operates and your participation in it will have an impact so you don't have to be able to vote to make a difference you're making a difference now so thank you for that and then for julian your involvement was already pointed out how impressive your role was and julian is also a graduate of the future leaders united program and
126he recently graduated from morehouse so he's a morehouse man so thank you for your continued involvement and mentorship as well now for my thoughts on which map i have to lend my support for map 16. and for so many reasons i was coming up with all my pros and cons for all the different maps i was following along as when you had the first seven i studied those and then you didn't get any of those and i'm like oh all that work so i can imagine how you guys felt but map 16 has an even distribution of population among the different districts it's the most of those three maps it's the most evenly distributed and it also maintains a majority minority seat for hispanic member and african american member that's also important to me and
127then the guides or the principles of the redistricting that you had to follow or the contiguity contiguity how they fit together and the compactness and the smooth lines i think those are important not just to making maps but to help constituents and residents know who their representatives are when you have so many jigsaw pieces of these maps people don't know who the representatives are and it's their neighbor may have someone totally different so this was important that you were able to smooth those lines out i know in district six there was like a big chunk taken out looks like someone bit it and now you guys smooth that out and that makes it easier for people to say oh yeah i know who my representative is i'm on the west side of 436 i'm in
128district 6 easy and that makes them have a greater access to the representatives so that's important so thank you for that and 16 does that and very important map 16 gives relief to doc to district four with the six high schools down to four it is if you were to compare map 16 with the current maps that were elected in you'll see that it is the least disruptive there's the least amount of changes out of the three maps the population of the maps takes into account the growth rates as mentioned before of the different districts allowing for more room to grow on the east and west side and district six were pretty much built out so district or map 16 has one of the highest populations right now but we expect to have the other
129ones even out more later and map 16 doesn't lose boone for dis for district three they don't lose boone that's like you know it's it's like a it's an essential part of district three and for winter park to add to district six i understand you don't want to lose all the relationships and what you've built up but my i know we've shared winter park district member gallow and we'll continue to share it will still you still have a large chunk of it so i'll still see you at the events i'm sure but it's also winter park is where my kids went to high school and it's it kind of makes sense to kind of take that sorry take it on and you know add it to my portfolio of high schools but map 16 also
130preserves evans high school in district six and i see the number map 18 and 19 as a lot more radical as far as their changes and movement of high schools so i fully support max 16 and thank the committee for your work and coming up with one that works so well across so many districts thank you thank you all right member gold so i will tell you my favorite map is 19 if i was living in a bubble but i'm not and i think when we go down the not only the legal checklist but the checklist that is in the absolute best interest of our student base and the voter base 16 is probably it is the best choice and i was playing with numbers because we have all of the background and all of
131that you know if we move this one school here because that might not be as neat as that but you all did absolutely incredible incredible work and when i look at this it really checks the boxes it checks the boxes not only in keeping natural communities the most together it checks the boxes in an equitable equitable approach to the voter bases it checks the box of making sure that we maintain representation of a strong black in his hispanic community it really does a great job it solves some real problems i we all have had some weird crossovers in our district but linda and i shared these outlier schools and i always felt like we were not doing them in justice except for the fact that we partnered so well if if we were different kinds
132of board members in these seats we may not have served those communities as well and you have to plan for that too right because not everything is always harmony and kumbaya on boards and so you have to try to plan for that too it also really takes into account well we have to use the numbers at the current census there's 40 000 more home more people coming just to horizon west just to horizon west that doesn't include the rest of 545 and parts of 535 that are still getting multi-family housing so this gives us some breathing room we're going to see the same kind of explosion on on the east side we're going to see lake nona fill out so it really while you couldn't have that be the deciding factor i think you did
133absolutely the best job you could and presented us with something and i know there's a couple more speakers but i have heard consistently down the road row and i thought i would try to tweak it but when i really sit and look at it and look at the numbers 16 is absolutely the best so i would make a motion that we approve map 16. all right we have a motion by member gould we have a second by member covert and we do have two more board members i do want to remind the board we also have four policies still ahead of us i was kind of feeling like we were about at the end of the meeting and then i remembered we have a full agenda ahead of us so let me let me go
134to member gallow before we call the question remember thank you madam chair and i i was remiss when i spoke earlier because joey cadle and tom beard were my representatives on the committee and joey was the vice chair she's the former a school board member that held district one so i just wanted to thank them for their time and their commitment for all their hard work and for saying yes when i asked them to be on the committee and again we appreciate the entire committee i sat in two meetings and the numbers alone were giving me a headache i had to leave and so i appreciate all the hard work and all the time and effort that you put into that because it was a lot it was a lot that you had to consider
135and then you'd consider this and then something else would would come up and you'd have to consider that so i just wanted to offer my thank you because i was remiss in saying it earlier so thank you thank you member gala remember lopez yeah i just want to say thank you for not dividing lake nona high school area lake nona is growing and that was awesome when i saw that so and also for not dividing colonial high school area either so thank you so much for that thank you all right before we before i call the question let me just check with member felder it would be wonderful if there was unanimous support i wanted to make sure you had a chance to look at those numbers i did i was just telling sharing with
136karen how i how emphatic i was when i went into that the meeting at jones and i just said you know some things but after listening to the other the rest of your board members and then looking at the map again i can live with that thank you i can live with it so yeah thank you yeah yeah as proud as i am of the reapportionment advisory committee i'm equally proud of this board so all in favor please say aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously can i just get clarification that this includes the pr the approval of the resolution as well you could do a second motion and vote if you'd like but the resolution i drafted for you it's on the agenda it is it has blanks in it because i didn't know what
137you were going to do but but next step for us is to add the fill in the blanks for the resolution with committee proposal 16 and to create tables specifically the ones that you had were a conglomeration of the different proposals but to create tables specifically for committee for the for committee proposal 16. all right we have that promotion and a motion by member i want to say vice chair gold now i'm now i'm confused a second remember caster dental all in favor please say hi aye opposed motion carries unanimously awesome great work great great work to the committee wow awesome job your district looks like a gun okay melissa i'm sorry our districts are very similar like we have the largest geographical district and if you look at the make up the difference no
138we have four more policies now we can get through this fast great job okay all right let's all right 3.02 request approval of revised board policy gcqf suspension and dismissal dismissal of professional staff dr jenkins you're recognized thank you madam chair we have four policies gcqf was brought to cabinet on november 1st notification to cta on october 27th published on october 31st rule development workshop on november 16th and now is ready for your final approval thank you we have no public comments is there a motion from a board member second okay okay motion was from member gallow and the second was from member caster dental all in favor please say aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously dr jenkins you're recognized thank you madam chair policy gdqd suspension and dismissal of support staff was brought to
139cabinet on november 1st notification of cta on october 27th published on october 31st rule development workshop on november 16th and brought to you for final approval tonight all right is there a we have no public speakers on this either is there a motion motion by vice chair is there a second second member caster dental all in favor please say aye aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously dr jenkins you recognize madam chair the next policy is policy ia student progression plan brought to cabinet on november 1st notification to cta on october 27th published on october 31st rural development workshop on november 16th and brought before you tonight for final approval thank you and we have no public comments is there a motion yes motion by member lopez second second wow second by the loudest seconder which
140and partly because member caster dental already got two all all in favor of the motion please say aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously yes we're getting punchy but that's okay as long as we're agreeing it's good dr jenkins you're recognized finally we have policy iham fondly called i ham that is our local school wellness policy brought to cabinet on november 1st notification to cta on october 27th published on october 31st and rural development workshop on november 16th it is brought to the board tonight for final approval thank you we have no public comment is there a motion dental i'm going to give that one to lopez is there a second second no thank you seconded by member caster dental this job is getting difficult all in favor please say aye opposed motion carries unanimously we
141motion for we need a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved motion by member gallow second by member coburn all in favor please say aye and it was a tie it was her turn all in favor please say aye aye aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously dr jenkins oh for my report well remember i'm sorry miss emval do you have a report okay dr jenkins for your report only two items to mention the board is so delighted over getting past that reapportionment map so i want to be brief number one i am delighted to share with you those who have not seen it in the orlando business journal hero heroes for heroes heroes for community impact member pam ghoul is featured on cover in case you hadn't seen it these 12 central floridians are
142making a difference in health care workforce training transportation and affordable housing of course remember google is for health care she's in the back on the picture on the cover but i'll have you know she is the first actual article hero highlighted inside inside you didn't see it we're extremely we're extremely proud congratulations to member ghoul secondly just wanted to tell you i am i tell you i love this job but what invigorates me so much is working with some of our young people and our my superintendent student advisory council just so sharp they just blow me away when they talk about what is the issue they want to take up this year as you know in the past we've had different things taken up like sportsmanship and social media safety and doing inappropriate things against
143the code of conduct this group is and i want to thank chief of staff dr william for and some of the pr team for working so closely with them this team has a heart of compassion and similar intuition that the board has expressed because their campaign this year you'll be hearing more about it in weeks to come but they are going to work on mental health and wellness of our students these are juniors and seniors in high school and we come before them and talk about the different projects that have been done previously by my superintendent student advisory councils and just give them some examples and when they deliberated and this is online because we haven't brought them together in person they are online deliberating and discussing i'm so proud and so pleased to tell
144you the issue that they want to take up similar to the board's heart is around mental health because they see the same thing that the board has recognized in fact our surgeon general has said it's at a national crisis level mental health of our young people after having gone through this pandemic and so when i saw the topic that they had come down to after the last deliberation i couldn't wait to share with you they have similar intuition and hearts of compassion about their fellow students and they are going to be focusing their campaign around mental health so pleased to announce that madam chair that is my report thank you dr jenkins and what is best about that is that they will be far more effective than anything all the rest of us can do
145combined so pretty cool pretty cool okay any report no we don't have any reports from board members any issues that need to come up from board members before and dr castro daniel you recognize yes thank you madam chair i wanted to bring up or follow up with some comments from that were made earlier and lots of emails that had been sent to me and other conversations that i've had with teachers and librarians and i would like to recommend that we reconsider pulling the book from the library shelves that we did originally while it continues to go through the process that we have in our policy i just worry that it sets a precedent that we don't necessarily want to start so i just would like to maybe reconsider that and possibly return the book to
146the shelf while it goes through the process we have okay let me i'm gonna i was about to turn to the superintendent but we have member felder remember gallo member bird or is this on the same issue okay member gallow on this issue remember bird okay and yours is okay let's hear from member gould and then we'll go to dr jenkins as well thank you member caster dental you know had we not pulled it and then put it through the process i would agree i don't think we should give the community any whiplash and we should let it go through the process and then in in hopes that it's the right resolution at the end but i feel like since the action was taken because of the excerpt that was read that night and it
147all kind of was shocking in out of context that we need to just follow it through and see it through the end and then let the process take care of it as hopefully we will do in the future and member gala thank you madam chair so my thoughts on this because i and i've shared this with the community so i don't think anything that i'm gonna say is gonna be shocking i read the book as i know that you did as well and i think several members did and in context with the book the picture was appropriate for the storyline the issue is that for those kids that just look in the picture and they're not taking it in the context of the book they're just seeing a picture and they're seeing a picture that
148could be inappropriate so i understand member castor dental's stance on this i think that we need to be diligent before we remove any any library book from from the shelf and make sure that we've done due diligence and that it's gone through the correct process i know that we're bringing i think in january i already saw that we'll be reviewing that policy so that we can kind of tighten it up and make sure that we're following it appropriately i did have issues with with that picture and it broke my heart because i read the opt ad i read from the arthur and i really felt like the author was being victimized twice but the picture was still a picture that taken out of context could be inappropriate in our high schools and on our shelves
149i would recommend and i want to be vocal because i know that when we discussed our communication we and i'll speak just for me i support the lgbtq community i had a hard time earlier listen listening to some of the comments from from from the people quite frankly it hurt my heart and it makes me sad because all students are our students and we support them all and i want to be clear about that and if we could you know make sure that we make a intentional effort to put more books so that our lgbtq students have more resources because we've removed one i totally support that i just want the lgbt community to know that we support them and while we may have taken this one book off the shelf because we deemed a
150few pictures two pictures to be inappropriate maybe for a ninth grader to share we need to then replace it with more books but i just wanted to be very clear that they have our that community has our support and we will stand up for them and and we will fight for them so i just wanted to make that statement thank you very much remember gallo i concur with everything you just said and it hurt my heart to to hear those comments and to have there be any confusion about how strongly this board has supported our lgbtq plus community and let me go to vice chair bird i have a subject it was not on the subject but i'll go ahead and comment on it i totally 100 agree with what member gala just said it
151this i read the book as well my adult 18 year old daughter read the book and we you know she also felt that it was not appropriate for high school shelves she could understand the concern and when i had the same concerns remember gallo though that this the message of the book is an important message it's an important book for parents going through this there are so many kids going through this and so many parents that don't know how to handle it that book is a good book for that purpose by the same note though those pictures that are in the book and in some of the texts there was actually quite a bit of the text that i think is just it could not be in school shelves i don't i mean there just
152can't and i but i agree totally that we need to maybe if we re the policy needs to be followed first of all next time everything needs to be done the right way but also that if we take something out because of that reason then we need to put more resources to help these kids because as remember castor dental why the sigh madam chair oh i don't know because i'm just i'm just trying to figure out where we're going land the plane as well okay okay no oh no it wasn't like i'm saying because i'm talking okay okay no i'm sorry i'm kidding i'm kidding thank you i'm fine i'm kidding i appreciate my colleagues comments and i agree with member gallo that we should be investing in even more resources for lgbtq youth in
153our libraries there are since i've read the book in question i have learned of many more that are aimed at the same students or other students who would benefit from reading about other people's experiences and i read the book and i can tell you as an ally i learned a lot from that book about how compassionate i need to be and how others need to be and the struggle that many of our students are enduring right now and i think it's an important book but my my real problem is with the precedent that it took that i mean that it's setting that the board is the one that recommended that it be removed from the shelves after not a book that we decided to bring up and look at but that someone else who went
154around the normal policy and created a disruption created a reaction and i don't want to encourage that kind of behavior again when there is a book that they don't like and i think our reaction reinforces it so that's why i'm asking for it to be returned to the shelves or at least allow our students who would normally check the book out to have access because i don't think the person who checked it out was checking it out because they thought it would be a handy resource they were doing it for other purposes and i think we need to look at how genuine some of these issues are that are brought to us thank you remember caster dental i agree with you i don't think that it was stumbled upon i think that there's pretty clear
155evidence in the social media arena that's not how that book came and i and i understand your concern about rewarding that approach i do want to clarify the board did not direct anybody to take that off my words were i hope it's off the shelves tomorrow morning and that didn't mean i had the authority to remove it permanently or to remove it period it was what i hoped and it was not completely removed i think but the deputy superintendent read it and the determination was it was not appropriate material to be on the shelves i'll turn to dr jenkins in a minute it didn't follow the process in the terms of what a citizen should do in terms of bringing it forward it's one of the reasons that i started this afternoon's comments about the
156fact that if anyone has any books that they want to bring to our attention there's a right way to do it and this is the way to do it and this isn't the forum because i like you i was cognizant of that we this is just not the way we're going to do business here in orange county public schools moving forward i think it's important that we take a look at our policy because i do have concerns that we may end up with very very different opinions from one school to the next in terms of what's appropriate and i don't i don't have a clear idea of how we're going to frame any kind of criteria or standards but i do think that you shouldn't have a situation where one school approves a book and
15719 other high schools turn it down i just think that doesn't really make a lot of sense so i think we have a lot of work to do i respect your opinion on this i value remember gould's opinion on this too the whiplash i think they're both very valid to be honest with you dr jenkins your thoughts on this at this point i can land this plane so that would be good so i appreciate all of your comments remember castor dental and i have spoken about this previously just a couple of things to bring to your attention because i want if anyone is actually still listening at this point i want to clarify a couple of things there were four copies of the book in three of our 22 three out of our 22 high
158schools so it was not largely circulated not largely present folet who is the distributor actually in their description mentioned the word adult level and mature content which probably would have flagged it for some of those who make the purchases of the books so the notion of consistency and review is something that we have to consider you do have two policies that we're trying to get in the first quarter of next year we have got to get your b policies finished that is important so that is up in queue first but of the there were four out of the three books and here is where dr vazquez and i discussed and landed on an administrative decision it was this notion of disruption of the educational setting four copies three schools public spectacle media frenzy over that
159public spectacle if we thought it was going to be disruptive not only sexually explicit in some instances but also probably going to be disruptive to the school setting that administrative decision was made to hold it off the shelf until we could have some discussion now let's talk about the actual process that book was not brought through the process it was made a public spectacle here and we put a stop to it before my high school students got into quite an excitement over that particular book we put a stop to it hit hit pause on that typically the complaint goes to the school the school has a committee if they don't like the outcome there we have another book that's going through this process they don't like the outcome there then they come to the district
160committee for review if they don't like the outcome there then they can appeal to the school board that is your current policy and your current policy as the chair just mentioned you would have to do that in each school because one school could actually decide that it's not appropriate and the other 21 high schools could still have it on the shelf so we've got some work to do on our policy our deputy general counsel has certainly been researching it so that you're clear there is statutory language some people present one side of the story there is supreme court language on the other side of the argument as well when it comes to the ability of the board to have some control over content in libraries that being said we will have a work session i
161think we this is one of those work sessions we want to start early enough so that so that you are fresh and have the stamina to go through quite a lengthy discussion as we work session this topic and then eventually try to bring it to rural development for community input as well madam chair thank you dr jenkins and i also i just want to echo that and i said this very clearly but maybe not everybody was listening the concern that i had had nothing to do with the overall content it was simply whether it was too sexually explicit and if it had been a book about a man and a woman or two teenagers of the opposite sex i would have had exactly the same issue i think the supreme court decision as i understand
162it in in reviewing it was that if we were basing it on religious opinions or or personal biases or values that would be one thing and not permissible but if it has to do with age-appropriate sexually explicit pornography vulgarity that is a grounds for not allowing a book to be in a public li in a public high school or public school library so i do want to be very very clear i hope that i have built a record in my actions of being extremely supportive of our gay and lesbian and transvestite students and it distresses me that there would be any question about it because i don't want our children feeling for one minute that every single one of them isn't welcomed and loved and safe and cherished right here in orange county public schools
163and that's why those comments by some members of the public i just could not not respond so thank you all thank you for just again i'm always so proud of this board and our compassion and respect for our children member felder yes thank you chair i just want to mention the event that i hosted on last evening and to let you know the district know those of you that are still listening how much i appreciate the parents and community coming out to carver how much i appreciate the support of the district dr williams was there and scott and shirey babinski and our members of the ocps police staff they were there in full gear and just there and i appreciate the opportunity that this district afforded me to have that time meeting which will be
164one of many and it gave me an opportunity as a school board member to seriously hear hear from teachers from community members parents real concerns that they had and so i would like to invite i don't know this is my first year on the board but invite other board members challenge you to to do a town hall meeting do that allow members of your constituency to come and just kind of hear out you might have to be as elaborate as mine because mine was comes from an incident an alleged incident that occurred but to give us an opportunity to just hear from our constituency and to hear from the some of the teachers and administrations from the schools that we represent i was happy about the turnout and i engaged members of the city city
165commissioners were there because it was really for them i was just hosting the meeting but i just wanted to mention that and to just to say how happy i was to have that meeting and have people come out and i know you have seen it on the news but anyway i wanted to mention it thank you remember gallo thank you thank you madam chair so and i have i've sent an email to dr jenkins regarding regarding this issue but i just wanted to bring it to the attention of the board because the only time that we get to have a conversation is at the diocese we can't have it any other time and i think we have we have an issue with our media specialist and i think it's being highlighted not for the work
166they do they do they do a great job but so much of their time is spent on the computers and taking care of the computers and the fines and the way that we do the fines i think that we have some serious issues that need need to be looking into i've spoken to several media specialists who tell me they spend anywhere from 50 to 80 percent of their time taking in computers and there's no centralized location and with as computers age out they have more problems in the processes that are put into place kind of follow the child and not really the device it's it's kind of it's it's complicated and i think it needs to be reviewed i've even asked the superintendent to do an audit into into the processes and i'm sure you
167all are getting you're getting emails on the fines on computers you're hearing i'm not the only one getting those emails but i think that we need to be cognizant of of that issue and we do need to do a deeper dive into the into the issues that's affecting our schools we need to look at the amount of time in the burden that we're placing on our media specialist with all of these tech issues that they have to that take place and we need to i mean they're there to make sure that i mean they're evaluated on how they teach in in the content of their library and it's a great resource for students and we need to make sure that we preserve that resource especially now more than ever and that the majority of their
168time is not spent taking care of the computers especially with the fines because there's like if you have a device a child we can wave fines for certain things but because we put in a ticket it stays with the kids so the next time they turn even if that fine was waived if a student turns in a device then they're they're fined at a higher rate because it's considered the second time even though the first time it was waived so i think we just have some issues and i just want to make sure that we're aware of it and the need to kind of look into those issues moving forward and maybe look at the processes we have in place and make sure that they're consistent across the district that's the other thing i'm hearing
169is that it's not really consistent and then that the money comes out of the principal's budget so at the end of the year if there's fines the principal has to the money has to come out the principal's budget and this is just what i'm hearing so i'm not i'm not i'm not putting it out there as fact i'm i'm just putting out there as this is what i'm hearing and the need for us to review those processes to find out what's going on because if the if the money's coming out of the principal's budget and then later on the student pays for that fine is the principal reimbursed for what came out of their budget what happens to those dollars so there's just i just wanted to bring it to the board of attention the
170need for us to possibly workshop it review it whatever we need to do to see if we can streamline the process for our media specialists because everybody's working hard out there and they're they're struggling right now as well excuse me dr jenkins thank you madam chair as i indicated to member gallow we would rather have more accurate information and actually fact check some of that we'll get a report to the board in your next board update and then see where we need to go from there okay that would be great yeah i had heard of a couple things but nothing anywhere near as comprehensive as as that vice chair thank you i have a policy that i think we need to bring up for revision and that is our magnet policy jfbd specifically 4b where
171it states that to be eligible to apply for a magnet the parent has to live in orange county which on the surface makes a lot of sense except for two groups and that is our ocps staff transfers and our mckinney-vento students who may possibly be attending one of our schools that is their home-based school but maybe temporarily living out of county i think there needs to be a clause in that policy that allows students to if they are already established ocps students meaning they have been in our district if they want to apply to a magnet we should allow them that opportunity regardless of if let's say their parents a teacher and they happen to live outside of the district so i'd like to bring that up for revision and then finally i just want
172to wish my apopka blue daughters good luck saturday for their state championship football game at one o'clock on saturday in fort lauderdale i just want to share with everyone you know they've made the playoffs every year since 2000. this is their sixth this is their sixth title game and they have four state titles so let's make it five on saturday and it's in fort lauderdale so i know everyone can't go but you can certainly it will be on spectrum sports so tune in and watch it all right and remember gold to close us out so i want to close this out with birthday wishes for member felder my fellow december baby so her birthday is next week and i wish her much joy and happy holidays to everybody wonderful wonderful all right with that this
173meeting is now adjourned we see each other i yes we have another you