Superintendent's Workshop 1 p.m. 6-22-2021

00122nd 2021 this is the superintendent's workshop um i'd like to call the meeting to order it is 1pm and the purpose of today's workshop is to go through several items i see his presentations and at this time i'll turn it over to dr moore thank you madam chair we do have a number of items as you just stated i will introduce them by the cabinet member in which they are presenting first up is mr fagan who will be presenting three items for us which is a overview of the upcoming budget um item number b which is review of quotes for finance that's actually the laptop purchases the board has been briefed on and then item number c is a review of the agreement for rutledge yesenia um and then we will go to mr meyer

002following that that'll turn over to mr fagan thank you sue to the chair uh yes mike's on be good so first presentation is to kind of give the board a briefing of where we are financially where we've been through the year and a little hint as to where we're going to go next year first thing we want to talk about is the fix rating in march of 201 fitch reviewed our bond ratings and removed us from a negative outlook to a stable outlook this was a monumental task some of the reasons that they cited as to why they increased it from stable to negative i mean from negative to stable was one the receipt of the cares funding from the count from the state also a million dollars from the county we also had an

003increase in our pure pupil uh allocation from the state they also the approval of the critical millage by the voters for the next four years the pending announcement of an additional 12 million dollars of s or 2 money coming in and a very low overall long-term liability burden again a very positive outlook for the district next thing was going to go over is the financials to give you an update as to where we are financially by fund first off i want to thank mrs kim coltman behind me she is her major task every month to produce these financials and the detail that you see today with explanations and a very thorough analysis to begin with first off we have a strong cash balance of approximately 100 million dollars uh we're currently in the review we

004do anticipate not having to attend this year but um i always hold that in reserve because uh i can't predict the future next one is general fund we're currently at 90 percent of collection rate we've collected 2.9 million more than the prior year our net position is approximately 20 million dollars and by the end of the year we hope to be and plan to be at about four million dollars higher than our ending fund balance in the prior year which would put us right about 20 million as compared to 16 million this is an increase that ending fund balance from about 11 percent to approximately 13 might go a little bit higher once we get through cleaning up year in as you remember also the voters did approve the critical millage as we refer to

005as the dom 2021 is the last year of the prior approval so when they approved in august they approved the next four years which starts 21-22 and goes through 24-25 the primarily purpose of this allocation from the voters is a high quality education for all students retaining of high quality instructors mental health and also creation of technology-rich classrooms debt service all of our debt will be paid off in approximately 10 years 61 million in the next five years 44 million in five years after that we will have the charter schools paid off for our litigation from them we owe them approximately four hundred thousand that would be paid off in january of twenty two capital fund very good position there collected over thirty two million dollars ninety percent of our budget remember we get most

006of that money in the beginning of the year net position is good as an 18 million dollars as of today we expect to end in a positive position and also remember part of that ending fund balance are your impact fees year to date we've collected 23 million in impact fees spent about 15 we have a balance of 8. that balance of 8 will be building some additional classrooms at sebastian river middle school next slide is a little review of the other programs which is food service collected about 73 of their funding year-to-date position is positive about 412. if you remember at the end of last year they ran a little negative because of covid had a negative ending fund balance general fund loan them money to have their ending fund balance be zero we never

007want to show a negative ending fund balance they have repaid that money back to the district and looks like they're probably in the year in the black with approximately 600 000 ending fund balance a very good feat and hats off to the food service team special revenue this is your federal money this is your ida funds your title 1 funds your carl perkins funds and of course your esra funds very good positive here remember they don't carry a fund balance whatever you get you spend and it rolls to the next year and we'll talk a little bit more about the essar in just a couple of minutes insurance fund collected 20 million dollars 82 percent of the budget currently in a positive position of 1.9 million fund balance is approximately 8.4 million which is about

0085 million more than what we need for safe harbor and that was always all anticipated because of the covet projected ending fund balance is going to be probably about 9 million uh there was a three percent increase in the health care rates for this year there is pending discussions that in order to bring that fund balance down there could be discussions of a what we call a premium holiday for one month during the year nobody has to pay premiums and that will bring it down slightly extended day is also very positive collected's 83 73 percent of their budget have a net position about 30 000 and they'll probably end the year with a fund balance of approximately a million dollars all in all still about 310 million dollar budget moving into next year's budget through

009the state fefp funding our fte slightly increased by 313 this was primarily because as of last year's covid the actual fte we reported was a little light but we were able to convince the doe that most of our students will come back and we'll be back up to about 17 4 17 hundred which is approximately where we were in the prior year the basic allocation increased slightly had a little bit of discretionary funding uh the negative hit to the district was the change in categorical funding for class size this is where they reduced the funding for pre-k to three down 24 percent increase secondary by six percent don't really have an explanation as to why we've asked we haven't been given any guidance but they just simply reduced the funding and that hit to us

010was a reduction in funding of approximately 1.3 but we got a little pickup in some other areas so overall it's a net decrease of about 400 000. we'll be able to cover that with the additional money from esser and also the good positive ending fund balance at the end of the year so really no major deficit to us one of the things we will be doing this year is working with principals and division staff training them on their budgets we'll be holding sessions throughout the year we're going to start with the beginning principles first get them up to speed and then we'll go to some more experienced principals as well budget process as you know we begin this process early started in usually march or april in order to prepare for next year one of

011the things we did do was modify the staff allocation model not a whole lot of changes but some and some of them are very positive for the elementaries we didn't change the class size ratio we kept them all the same but they did keep the same thing they had in the prior year they got all their school elementary school counselors were not changed their third grade interventions were retained their k2 reading coaches were chained with the same and title one if they were title one school they were required also to buy another math and reading coach if their funding did allow it in order to make sure they get full support there we did add a counselor to the elementary level as well as the secondary this is more of a district-wide school counselor to

012assist the schools at a little bit more of a global level we're working with pam uh we did increase a couple of teacher assistants from ida we had some esau teachers we also increased the self-care age for the pre-k there's a couple schools that needed some assistance so we went ahead and implemented that we've added them for next year and we also have a slight reserve for them already established that once if their enrollment increases we'll already have it in the budget to give them some more additional support that'll help with that process of once they hit a certain number the allocation will already be there secondary schools slight change in the ratio for the secondary we retained all the regular positions counselors and etc we did add another council at the secondary level this

013would be more of a district-wide counselor we also added um we also moved to the eighth period day so same thing we did last year we modified the ratio but we held back some funding into positions in case some of the principals in the schools couldn't quite make it work so a period day we did the same thing we held positions back to a system during this transition so far we've given out approximately 16 positions uh there was no change in what we call the discretionary fundings per the school so whenever a school has x number of students they get x number of dollars for discretionary funding it's all based on their fte there was no change in that funding i think overall district-wide it was a ten thousand dollar difference simply because of a

014change in the fte the new initiatives of course will be implemented throughout the year we updated average salaries for the 47 0005. remember health insurance had a slight increase of three percent that's about half a million dollars district wide 300 000 for this district and about 200 000 for employees frs went up slightly by one percent we'll finish out the year and prepare any financial statements um also the cost savings never ends in a meeting the other day we're looking at care here and some options for short-term disability looking to reduce those rates and those costs of the district and employees by about 20 percent district cost initiative district cost differential this came up in a couple of meetings a while back i thought we'd take a minute and let me re-explain um what this

015is it's really not a cpi or cost of living index it is a way it's a comparable wage analysis they compare our wages in our district to other wages in other districts for comparable jobs there's approximately 484 jobs that they do in this analysis that compare our positions to other counties throughout the state of florida the purpose is to get a relative cost of what it costs to hire a plumber here as it does to hire a plumber somewhere else and what is that difference if it costs more in miami-dade or collier county the dcd will be above one if it costs less then it is less than one the interesting animal is this is that when they do the calculation collier county is the highest with a 1.0512 hamilton county is the lowest at

016a less than 1.9223 when they redistribute these funds it's approximately 123 million dollars so if we got a dollar we got less than one then we only got 90 cent they take that other 10 cents and they apply it to some of the district well they only don't only apply the 123 but they also had the chip in nine million dollars to make the fund balance from the state for us our dis our decrease was approximately eight thousand dollars so no major hit for us as comparison to some surrounding counties okeechobee was a 0.9799 brevard is a 0.98 osceola is a 0.98 we're a 0.99 st lucie is a 1.00 martin is a 1.0173 but case in point for martin that allowed them to pick up 1.5 million dollars if we had the same dcd

017as martin we would have picked up 1.4 million historically our dcd has ranged between a low of 0.99 and 1516 to a high of 1.0022 in 1920. so it's never been significantly high but never been below 0.99 in the fefp calculation there's another calculation that is done to compensate districts it's called the 0.748 discretionary local millage effort compression this is where if you are less than the district average for this compression ratio they will give you compensation they will say you didn't meet the average for this calculation and they will add to your funding source however it's interesting that some of the districts who picked up a lot of funding on the dcd did not pick up money on the discretion some of the counties who lost on the dcd made up for it on

018the compression so palm beach picked up 40 million on dcd nothing on the compression date up 24 nothing on the compression broward picked up 22 didn't pick up anything on the compression for us we didn't pick up anything on the compression only lost eight on the dcd so we're not in this in this calculation too well biggest losers poke lost 16 million because of the dcd okay but they gained 33 million from the compression so they're ahead marion lost 11 through the dcd but picked up nine on the compression volusia lost nine and gained nine lost four so there's been talk of changing the dcd modifying it changing it it's based on a three-year average um one of the reasons they don't put teachers i forgot to say that there are no teachers within the

019positions within the dcd it all excludes all teaching positions one of the reasons they do that is because they don't want any strong union to have a high influence on that dcd factor so if you have a union that has a strong district has a strong union and they inflate those salaries the dcd will go up the dc goes up then you get more than 1.0 on your basical allocation so they eliminate that doesn't necessarily account for other unions that may bury strong in other districts once you impact one of these calculations there's a factor you'll probably also in fact another what those others are you don't know until the legislature starts looking at the calculation next uh discussion we want to go over lightly was escrow funding right now there's three yes or fundings

020we call them estro one two and three for lack of better for us the district will get 3.4 million or did get 3.4 million for estral one ester 2 is about 13. ester 3 is about 30. they're all very similar as far as allowable expenditures esther one we got 3.3 we've expended 3.1 so everything they said we could spend it on we have we spent 94 percent of it 1.7 was for counselors 800 000 for technology charter schools got a piece of 800 500 000 few indirect costs in custodial supplies but most of that money we've already captured from the state yes for two approximately 13 million we get 11.6 charter schools get about two this one still is in formation uh there's four major parts it's 465 000 is allocated to locate unaccountable students

021we've located our unaccountable there's 12 of them now we've got to figure out what the state wants us to do with it we have to do what we can to find them once we find them we send some information to the state that hopefully we can say okay we have found them they have relocated they moved to another state moved to another country or we found them they just enrolled late then the hope is that we can redirect that 465 to something else that we don't have to give it back to the state we don't know yet uh 2.3 million is for learning losses focus of that we're probably going to use that to help buy the teacher textbook adoption soften the blow there a little bit for technology and then they have something called

022a lump sum advance and that's exactly what it says in the statute of some advantage doesn't really say what you can't or can't spend it on it's basically assumed you can spend it on for anything that's allowable services of which we're going to primarily focus this on instructional materials and computer laptops and a few other items of that amount they advanced us six million dollars we've already drawn down 5.2 of it 85 of it we try and draw down as much as they will allow us at any point in time as fast as we can before they we want revert it somewhere else or number two is just get that money in our bank fast and then build up our fund balance for a general fund um sr1 i forgot to mention expires of 9

023september 22 estuary 2 will expire september of 23 so we have plenty of time to spend the money sr3 will expire in september of 24. this is the most newest one there's some information but not a lot it's about 30 million based on our preliminary calculations 26 for us 4 for charters allowable expenditures are very similar to every all the other essers learning losses purchasing technology mental health services improving outdoor quality and basically anything and everything necessary to maintain school operations still waiting on some information on this and this has not been forthcoming we had a few other grants too that are out there in the works uh one of them is florida department of health we got advised that they had 4.2 million that was designated for schools so we reached out to them

024they have submitted the grant we haven't heard back yet so we're in a holding pattern the things we put in that grant were counselors psychologists pp e some health assistants and also the night misting for next year if you also recall we probably got a million dollars in from the county that was toward december of last year they hadn't spent all their money and they had to do some quick maneuvering so we went knocking on the door and said we have some expenditures can you help us out mr jason brown was very kind and we were able to put together a reimbursement sheet basically that consisted of other health assistance through this year 2021 bought a bunch of misting machines extra hours for cleaning pp and e and also some subs for some teachers um

025the balance is a co-mixture of some what we call gears money and money from the government and also various other grants covered things for like additions to the cte program some additional sanitation and cleaning rapid credentialing for tctc high quality reading step into kindergarten various other items of not quite as much money most of this money has been spent through this year [Music] touch a little bit on the five-year plan the numbers here and everything is a conversation to talk about where the five-year plan is as of today not the five-year plan that you will be presented probably between now and september which will bring your new year together any changes in the projects this really just kind of give you a overview big view of all your money where does it go how do

026we spend it anything that's lacking and et cetera just at a very high level this these are five-year numbers so approximately 200 million dollars in revenue you got to pay your debt first just like you have to pay your mortgage payment then transfers the general to cover maintenance and property insurance which is allowed by statute buy some portable affordable leasings which will go away once we build the addition school buses whenever we buy those technology at 11 million dollars for five years about two million dollars a year and leaves the balance of about 80 million so really that's what goes back into your schools that's what goes back to maintain your schools that is approximately two percent of your asset value you have about 700 million dollars of buildings based on current replacement costs it

027means you're spending two percent to maintain those that equates to 12 million dollars a year industry average is somewhere between four and eight that's not just to maintain but also to enhance and improve if you've got a classroom that's six seminar square feet that really doesn't fit today's educational requirements also the technology of the wake way we teach today you don't quite have that that structure um other schools oh sorry projects currently today this is where the bulk of the five year planning money goes heating and air conditioning is very important in the state of florida so about 20 million goes there maintenance on your schools windows doors etc building envelopes roofing plumbing security i would total about 80 million dollars in some global pictures um marquee signs i'm happy to announce that through nick

028uh we have nine schools that will have marquis signs installed before the end of the year that'll be the last ones all your other schools already have electronic marquee science so that'll take care of that also we don't see it up there but it is in the works we are working on the playground initiative through mr michaels we started off with about three hundred thousand dollars a year we've doubled it to six hundred thousand dollars a year we went from three schools i mean still we went from two schools to three schools a year five-year expenditure was probably about three million dollars this will include inclusive playgrounds resurfacing the protective ground and adding shade energy costing also another thanks to mr bob michaels um average 23 percent reduction in savings and energy costs since 2012-13

029this is primarily attributed to upgrading our ac chillers automated building system controls monitoring maintenance the use of electricity and ac and also upgrading our chillers maintenance program through train ac this is a good thing because florida power and light is trying to impose an increase next year for the next five years next year's estimated increase is somewhere between five and 14 percent depending on what the public service commission agrees to it has not been agreed to yet it's still in discussion over the next five years they want to increase at 18 some of the big reasons they want to increase it one is they want to expand and build a brand new natural gas facility they want to expand the use of solar powers and batteries they also want to re-furnish their infrastructure to avoid

030outages during the storms and just replace older equipment public commission has not approved that yet it is still on the docket for approval sometime later this year final slide is just to mention the board the next final steps we have remember july 20th you'll approve the trim ads that basically puts us in compliance with department of revenue so that we can impose our millage rates 23rd they'll be posted in the newspaper 27th is when you come back and approve those tentative millage rates intended to budget and then the ninth will come back and approve the final budget and final military and that concludes my little presentation any questions board members anybody have a question from mr fagan mr rosario go ahead thank you mr fagan um sitting with you is always uh an opportunity for

031learning for me in particular um but i i do have a few questions one can you um allow the board uh publicly um a a brief explanation as to what our process is going to be between now and the time of our proving of our budget for next year what does that look like how will you explain the budget to us and if you can take this opportunity to let the public know as well yes ma'am through the chair what will occur is we're currently almost done with what i call the backroom operations of preparing to budget we've got the final numbers in based on the final conference from the state we're finalizing the year-end which will therefore determine your role forward for next year the budgets for schools and divisions have been pretty much

032done we're just putting the final touches in there as far as on the payroll side all your salary increases for next year based on any any agreements have been taken care of are now on the payroll side we will come to the 20th and at the 20th there will be a presentation as to that tentative budget what does it look like are you increasing millage are you decreasing will you have an actual budget increase as they call it there will be the discussion line by line by each of the revenue sources by schools and by divisions what does their budget look like be at a high level as far as what the budget impact and down to each of the individual funds at the 20th is when you approve the trim which is in essence

033of proven the tentative budget then we you're approving the trim ads then we'll um go posting and then on the 20th we go through the process of actually following the script as identif as approving all the millage's rates and all the budgets to meet trend requirements so the 20th is really the discussion on the budget the 27th this is more of a formality of adopting a per trial then we'll take that budget and we'll finalize the year determine all our final numbers and then in september we'll do another presentation very similar to that but your numbers are going to be more final in july you just closed out the year you're not done yet your millage rates won't change you don't have to go back to the public and change your advertisements but your numbers

034will move because you'll have final year in numbers then we'll come to september we'll set that in stone and you'll prove those final millage rates you really don't change the rates you just re-adopt them but your budget will slightly change okay thank you for that um also the premium holiday uh months a month who determines that and when are we going to find out like how does that actually affect through the board that'll be an item that will discuss at high tef and then we'll bring the recommendation to the board that basically says we're carrying a very high level fund balance we don't want to use that fund balance to pay premium increases we say okay i won't i need three percent to maintain my revenue stream to meet my claims expenditures you want to

035keep those even if claims have been low instead of reducing premiums rates you simply re you simply take a premium holiday which basically nobody pays that day and that money reverts back to your parking pocket and also reverse back to the district pocket but we'll come to the board with a formal presentation as to what where and why we want to do that but you're you just said by the day is it going to be a discussion by the day or by the month uh let me rephrase that there will be a discussion with hi-tef and then we'll come to the board to say we're looking to do a premium holiday maybe december or january okay interesting i don't think i've ever heard about that heard of that it's been discussed but nothing nothing formal

036yet so we want to wait to see how the year ends okay and then my last question is about the marquis i'm so glad that we're finally going to get these marques up and running it is i mean we have some schools i've mentioned on numerous occasions that just have these really really awful arkeys to be marquise to be honest with you and it's just an eyesore um so but you said by the end of this year but is that this 21 or 22. my understanding through this summer this summer we're going to have nine new marquis oh my gosh this is like celebration do we have like ribbon cutting ceremonies for them no it's probably just a silly question that's a good thing good that's a good thing all right thank you for that

037i appreciate that hold on any anyone else sure okay dr chef um yeah not not a huge amount because for just so the public knows we've had many conversations about these before so many of our questions have been answered and addressed in in several prior meetings so um i'm just gonna go through a couple things on the fitch rating which has been moved from negative to stable do you recall offhand uh how long we were sitting at negative and what it was before that through the chair the ratings were the same but they had moved us from stable to negative i don't have that exact date here with me but your rating stayed the same they just said your outlook we're going to move you from stable to a negative so the rating actually didn't

038change and can you say a little bit about the impact of that for us and our financial stability and ability to move forward in financial decision making the when you go from a stable you start might go from stable to negative or negatively stable negative to stable when you go to negative stable it increases and improves your overall financial position within the community if you ever want to go borrow money if you add a negative you can still borrow money because we're still investment grade but you'll pay a little bit more because you've got that rating outlook from that bonding agency once you go to stable then you make all the lenders feel a whole lot more comfortable and it's a little bit easier to price your bonds and also attract more investors so for

039example in the past occasionally we've had to go out for tans in that in that moment this would if we were to ever have to do that again this would improve our ability to get a tan at a better rate if we were ever to have to do that is that true do the chair yes ma'am thank you um a couple other things uh so i i just want to um because the premium holiday which i think is a great idea because one of the things i want to um also just so that people are aware because there's often confusion about our fund balance and so while we well it is board policy to maintain that at five percent sometimes um over time it's higher than that to allow for unforeseen expenses sometimes that comes

040up in negotiations and other places as well why are we not spending down that money and so one of the things so i just want to clarify that that money is one time only money and we never would want to commit that to recurring expenses which is why a premium holiday like this gives some money back in teacher and staff pockets without making it a recurring expense and i'm assuming that's the logic behind it to the chair there's an excellent example um and so when we are because on the one hand we want money in that like anybody wants reserve money in their bank account for unforeseen emergencies but we also don't want to be carrying too much in there when we could be using it on um things that we need in the district

041through the chariots mountain there's a fine line between carrying too much fund balance and spending your fund balance one time and now you have a funding cliff i'd rather much rather be in a position of saying well yes we didn't spend 20 million dollars but all the bills have been paid and we're going to see about spending that on one-time items not reoccurring items that the suit may deem as appropriate for the schools to spend it on reoccurring means at some point in time in the future you're going to have a funding cliff and now you're going to have to make budget cuts because once that money goes away you don't get it back do you have any idea what the cost of that premium holiday would be to the district approximately a million dollars

042the savings we wouldn't pay a million dollars in premiums that month right so so a million dollars would affect be a transfer back to employees yes of that fund balance and what is it common so while we um so policy says we have to maintain a five percent balance legally we have to maintain a three percent violence what is standard industry industry practice or school district practice for a running fund balance all right through the chair let me clarify one point you have insurance fund balance and you have general fund balance general fund they're separate let me clarify general funds so on the fund balance for insurance fund it's based on safe harbor got to have three months of claims premiums that's taken care of we're okay the j on the fund balance side it

043all depends on the county you're in some counties will run as much of the 30 percent ending fund balance to down to less than three percent in which case the state comes knocking it all depends upon basically the initiatives that are put in that year sometimes districts will front load initiative for the entire say a three-year period but they're only going to spend a third of it in the first year well that money is going to roll at the end of the year and make it look like you've got an artificial ending fund balance when really you don't if you fund it at the thirds then maybe that'll maybe change the way your presentation is at the end of the year but statute by state law is you've got to have five percent budgeted and

044you have to end above three percent for us we have a budgeted five percent requirement but the gauntlet runs all through the district all through the state of florida do you have any sense of what we typically carry we well we used to carry 20 23 million and now we're down to about 11 to 12 so we're carrying right about 10 to 11 thank you uh i assume that when on the 20th we see and and i i i know that before which share publicly will have a lot of interaction about this but that when the final the the tentative budget is shared on the 20th that we will also see specifically how that's aligned to the strategic plan in each individual either line item or category to the chair yes ma'am and i assume

045that before that we'll have opportunity to engage and comment and reflect on that jerry yes mail i don't know if this is necessarily a good idea but i'm going to put it out there as a possibility because obviously other than these settings board members can't talk to each other and i'm wondering if it may or may not be productive to have something where board members can actually engage on that together in addition to our one-on-one we don't have to decide that now i'm just putting it out as a possibility that we may want to consider talking about and just to give a level of assurance when we will also be having the strategic plan conversation which drives the budget so when we look at the priorities first strategic plan what we accomplished where we need

046to modify and setting goals for the upcoming school year that gives direction in terms of where we're going to fill in the the whole space and our priorities aligned to the strategic plan so i think that conversation will take place with the strategic plan being the driving force and when are we having that conversation next time we come together excellent thank you um yeah uh the dcd which i'm intrigued by um as you know because we had conversations about this i'm intrigued by and and i know you put together some data on this i'm intrigued by that some districts i i understand the logic of some districts um get more money back than they send up some less as an idea of equalizing resources across the state totally understand that what i don't quite understand

047is how and using martin as an example right comparable district in many ways right comparable comparable student size comparable employee all of that and and i get and you said it's not based on cost of living it's based on cost of good of of services wages wages in the district um can you say a little more i don't know if you can explain this well or if it bears explaining but while we're losing 8 000 which is not is not a crisis by any means but they're getting 1.5 million right almost 1.6 million osceola which is a much larger district is getting almost 14 million how is it that we don't come out ahead in this and is this something in the future that we can either advocate for or we it would be a

048legislative or other priority for us because while we're not coming out significantly behind in terms of actual dollars we do come out behind other districts um and i would love us not to the um through the chair to talk about martin martin's last three year averages have been 0.1.02 so that tells me that based upon the jobs that they're looking at it cost two percent more to hire them in martin county than it does here so to to get you grounded on why we're at basically 100 or 0.99 so the job over there in martin cost one percent or two percent more than to hire the same guy here that's why they get the more we don't to another county it actually costs less baker county is .96 so they're saying even cost you know

049for ten dollars it only cost him nine dollars and sixty cents but in martin county cost him eleven dollars to hire the same individual that's driving your your price level index got it so so to put it in in its simplest terms for us to hire the services that we need in the district they say it costs us less and they give that district another you know whatever one five or six million dollars because it will that money will go directly into providing the services that the district needs in order um to support the buildings the teachers that whatever are the other resources now i did speak to mr dewey he's the gentleman who prof who prepares this for the state and there are some improvements that could be made into this to to smooth

050this out uh me and him talked about some some of them they have not yet been presented to listen to in order to make this more comparable and to make it more equitable across but then if you impact date negatively and impact us positively then you'll have that front right so it's it's it's it's a tough decision yeah thank you but that that's that's helpful to understand how the process works um last question the 80 million uh the uh wherever that was capital fund base for leftover for facilities yes that 80 million we had talks recently about the master plan right the overall master plan and the need to closely examine the state of our facilities in our buildings is there any rel this 80 million supports what we are already planned to do how

051does it relate with that with the master planning moving forward if at all through the chair the master plan basically outlined what they call a facility condition index and this basically goes in and looks at the facility condition not the functional use of it not the educational use of it simply the functional use the windows work the ac works the computers have electricity the roof doesn't leak and the windows don't leak based overall for our district we had a very low fci which meant that what would the facility condition index which meant that bob and his team has done a very good job of maintaining our facilities but he's maintaining what's there we're not doing a whole lot of improvements like the next biggest improvement is the classroom edition at sebastian river middle school replace

052portables there's a couple other cafeteria plans but as far as going in and remodeling a whole school to bring it up to maybe a different standard for innovation and teaching that's not in the plan because most of your funds that you have left are to maintain that low fci make sure everybody's safe make sure all your fire alarms work your sprinkler system's working and your doors are locked you're improving in our access control system so you don't have a lot left over to make those kind of enhancements but your condition of your schools are in very good shape the master plan confirmed that but the master plan said if you want to make any major renovations or improvements instructions and systems and innovations and teaching you you might need a little bit more of an

053investment yeah okay got it thank you that's it hey dr jones you're micro we gone in 10 years i know we had a good negotiation with ircea we're working now with cwa i hope that continues as we know c cwa personnel they really never left us during the cove and made sure our schools were okay always going to look at extended day and one million dollars but i believe what we're doing there mr meyer shared earlier about maybe some of those teachers getting raises or teacher assistance and really looking at the strategic plan and how that can help us with these students an extended day mr vegan what's your biggest concern when esser funding is gone through the chair case in point this year we had a slight dip in fefp funding if the state

054had not done that and basically cut us 5 million then we would have had to use extra funding to balance that hole which meant we would have depended on the following year what did the state do effort is if esther funding lasts two or three or four years then we're saying okay we have a safety net we can maintain but i don't get to do any of the new stuff that we really need to do at the schools i don't get to build up that fund balance to slowly bleed that off of the next five or six years to help fund instruction adoption and the refresh of all the computers at the schools it's been it's been several years most of our laptops were students except for the chromebooks bought last year were somewhere between

055five and seven years of age normal refresh cycle is either three to five without that influence infusion of cash we would still probably be behind that eight ball a little bit something would have happened to give on the capital plan to fund that and now your fci might slowly creep up you might not do some preventative maintenance that you need to do you might have some chillers go go down because you won't have that kaplan fusion with this i feel more comfortable that we'll be able to get to most of those items and this dependent on the economy and the florida's and religion as what they give us the next two to three years okay i like the fact that you're bringing principles back into the budget question uh at the end of the year

056if they have anything in discretionary does it roll over into their budget through the chair no matter okay so they have to spend it do the chair yes ma'am i love the fact that when you look at the sam model and it doesn't fit or it doesn't work we look at it for example with vpk self-care and i think that's a good thing to always take a look at it 465 000 to find students if we didn't use that money to find students for esser could we use it in a different area through the chair we're we've already i've already sent communication to doe asking that same question we've identified it we have to report in september where they are but then the language gets kind of lacked so i don't i don't know yet

057they haven't released that rfa yet as to what we have to do with the funds hopefully we can retract that and use it elsewhere and just one last statement um we've talked a little bit individually about our lot in south county is that going to be involved when we talk about the budget and what we do with it and so forth the lot the oslo land for sale is a topic for discussion yes ma'am okay thank you mr barefoot would you like to ask any questions no thanks i'm good you got all mine answered one-on-ones okay thank you um there were most of my questions were asked so i appreciate that i want to go back to the tan one second because you know how i feel about the tan um the bond rating thank

058you from going to negative to stable not only does it allow us to i believe the comment was made instead of a tan or i'm sorry because of that bond rating we could go for a tan but because of that bond rating we could also take out a loan because instead of a tan is that correct do the chair yes ma'am so that's an option board members instead of a tan just throwing out there um the food service great job extended day awesome i'm glad to see all those positives instead of negative especially in a year like we've had this year pre-k numbers you said something about pre-k and if those numbers go up we have money in reserve what exactly were you referring to through the chair the pre-k really didn't have a sam

059model that said based on your number of students you have and their exceptionality how many do you need in order to support the the team and so toward the middle of last year there became a need that there was too many students and not enough staff so we went and we looked at it we added some in order to equalize that out and then we looked at the model and said where are you going to think you're going to be next year same thing with sam where are you going to be at ft well if i grow here a b and c i'm probably going to need another staff member so we said okay let's put that in the model but we're going to reserve it once you hit that level of fte in those

060in those classes then it's already been budgeted and all we have to do is release the funds and staff the position it's just a contingency fund very similar to the period 12 position uh the eight a period day positions we have it in the budget so we don't have to go looking for the funds just once the need is determined by the soup and other cabinet members it's already there all we do is release the position right um i i guess i don't know if that's changed or different or because i was in a different county but i know in my my school when i was a principal of the pre-k classrooms and i had four of them we had a number it was 22 or 25 to 2. is that not changed uh through

061the chair i have to get that back to you but the main reason these positions were added were esc pre-k okay so esc is different because of the ieps absolutely okay what the iep drives personally correct that's what these editions were for not for the normal so this is this is esc pre-k not um vpk correct thank you for that clarification that answers my question thank you sorry next item all right thank you mr fegen which is a just absolutely out outstanding work and sharing that our strategic plan is fun and we're able to do the things that we're able to do uh in your next time sir next item is for contracts we've discussed this a couple of times but they are on the agenda for tonight we have three items for purchase of

062laptops the first one is to purchase approximately 5 000 laptops for our senior grade levels 9 through 12. it's approximately 380 dollars per unit if you remember we bought middle school laptops last year starting the refresh cycle this is part of an ongoing program in order to build the capital plan to put money away every year so that when we get ready to spend three million dollars on laptops we've got over half of it or more than half of it already put away in a holding account and then the following year you just had the app have to add the difference this basically puts the district on a five year refresh cycle for student laptops we did middle we're going to do high school and the next level will be elementary next item we also

063have with our teachers they have a lot of outdated units this is a phrase to bring them up to speed of approximately 1200 units about 1.2 million dollars their cost is a little bit more it's approximately a thousand dollars per unit same scenario a lot of the units were five to seven years old antiquated were not mobile now we're going to give them laptops to make a more mobile move within the classroom final item was the purchase of dell purchase network storage solutions we have a lot of servers out in the schools to provide services to the schools they were getting old and antiquated end of life this is uh to bring them up to speed approximately three hundred thousand dollars any questions board members i i do have one um with chrome books i

064know that chromebooks have issues with zoom there have been some things that have come up over the last year we've been able to see that because of everything happening on zoom do we have problems with it with teams because i think that's what we would have to use right no problems with teams okay thank you that's my question mr barefoot are you good any questions you're good okay moving on uh next item is the cons the lobbyist agreement with rutledge uh it's approximately seven thousand dollars a year we just want to bring it to the board's attention that this is an evergreen contract it renews automatically at the july of every year um they were at one point in time mixing in associates and in february of 2017 there was an assignment to the contract

065over to rutledge we've been using their services since then since then my involvement with them they're they have been very good about pushing out information answering questions mr jim hamilton is on their team he has been with the districts in the state of florida a long time knows a lot of history has a lot of contacts at the state anytime we have any questions regarding funding or fefp he's a good source to kind of go back into that history he can tell us a lot of things from the past that you can't find too much of from my perspective you know we've used them very well and they've been very uh supportive in our questions and responses and just to build on that we've been able to really build a strong relationship over the last

066i would say six months when we first looked at this being very intentional on receiving the information from them to help drive our agenda and we're looking forward to continue to build that relationship to drive a a true legislative package moving forward uh yes dr ship go ahead so some some people will recall that when this came to us a little bit ago there was some concern that we had contracted with a group that we were not aware we had contracted with that reports were not reaching the board that they may have been reaching mr fagan and that there was a history during which um some things had shifted in our relationship with religious anion at that time um i was not overly in favor of continuing that contract i was irritated by the fact

067that it seemed like we were paying for a service that we as board members who should have been receiving that information were not that said um since then now that we are and and so not only are we now receiving the information and i agree with you it's been helpful and it's been supportive um at fsba a couple of weeks ago i had a chance to spend some time with i'm going to kill her last name jessica jen help me yeah okay jessica janiece i can't say her last name i'm sorry jessica if you're watching this um but i had a chance to i know she's not i had a chance um to spend some time with her and and to actually ask some of those questions to directly say why was this happening how

068was it happening what is the history of it and i got a far better understanding than i previously had about some of the history of events um and what happens as to why we were not receiving that information that said in the time i got to spend with her and the information we're now receiving my faith is restored i know that um mr bass who's nodding had encouraged us um he had worked with them previously and encouraged us to keep that relationship um and i have to say at that time i i was not in support of that um since then i would say they've won back my trust i think the reports are helpful i learned a lot from jessica when i was able to speak with her one-on-one i understood the relationship better

069and i would say that now i'm in support of it so that's my two cents anyone else no um yeah i do i agree with you i was very concerned um because when a superintendent asks them to stop um communicating with the board and the contract is with the board then my question i guess to them is why did they stop that do you want to know the answer because i asked that question i would like to know that sure the answer that i got um was that information that was legally and contractually being provided to the district and to this board was being shared outside of the board in ways um that were not part of that contract and we're not permissible and i don't want to say more so they just stopped sending

070it so no it was just not being sent directly to board members it was still being sent okay so at that so so i didn't have this conversation with jessica but but we will recall that we went through a lot of changes in our finance department and so information that had been going to the previous finance department we're not quite sure you know where when how all of that happened much of it was before our time and then in the beginning of our time here um the information i believe went to finance which i think there was a long period when there was a gap and it may have reached the superintendent but there was not a whole lot of clarity there were reasons why it had stopped coming from the board board member previous

071board members had been sharing that information um in ways that shouldn't have been happening um with outside groups who were not privy to the information that we had contracted to receive so that was why some of that had happened and had stopped coming to the board um once those board members were no longer here once we had reconstructed the finance department we had a new superintendent we have a new cfo those relationships redeveloped and re-emerged to the point where we now have and are getting the information that we should okay and i'm glad to hear what your your comments too it's not just you know us getting in updates as to what's happening up in tallahassee but also helpful for you for financial reasons so i appreciate that all right moving on i'll now turn

072it over to mr meyer mr thank you dr moore i have a few items not that many uh of either contracts or agreements that i will go over and we can stop after each one to answer any questions for the board the first of which is lexia learning lexi learning is an online literacy support that we will use to provide intensive reading intervention to students in grades k through 8. we were granted through the the cares an opportunity to procure this and pilot this in a number of our districts this year and the teachers and administrators reported tremendous success uh it did make it to the approved approved list of intensive interventions from the state so we're bringing that to utilize in all of our elementary and middle schools next year and so that is

073the item questions there great all right move on to renaissance my on as you may recall during the pandemic we were given an opportunity from a number of vendors to pilot things for free one of which was my on reader it does pair with the accelerator reader and that enabled our students to check out books essentially online or just read through a number of titles and it was the usage was through the roof of course right we were away from schools students weren't able to come in and check out physical books but they were able to continue reading while they were at home and so we made the recommendation to uh procure this in the past school year the the 2020-2021 school year and because we understood that we'd have a number of students staying

074home through the pandemic uh what we actually found was that even the students that were in brick and mortar were using this at a tremendous rate it wasn't just the students that were on transitional and virtual but it was being used by all of our students and at such a high usage the the the teachers and coaches asked us if we would renew that and so we've placed that in the budget and are requesting to approve that again for another school year there are some some things we do want to continue to build on with this we want to be more intentional in the books that we're recommending the students to read because it will enable us to you know track their progress and make sure they're reading the right sort of titles that align

075with the standards and the commissioner's book list um but yeah it was great great success this past year and recommend bringing that back again for another year questions about milan okay all right uh the third item is with the early or assuming the environmental learning center you know unfortunately last year we were not able to get back to a place where we were able to resume field trips but next year we anticipate that that is going to be corrected i'm moving into a better sense of normalcy so we do want to plan for our students to be able to resume attending that field trip at the environmental learning center to get a hands-on experience with the wonderful things that go on in the indian river lagoon we did make sure that you know the students

076that may not have had this opportunity we think that you know onesies and tunesies maybe but for the most part all of our students will be able to say that they were able to have this experience because it is for two years i mean by two years i mean two grade levels right so we're capturing two grade levels at a time so while a portion of our kids were not able to make make it through it uh the year that was uh partially interrupted and no one was able to go this year given the fact that we're doing two grade levels uh we're confident that 99 points on the percent of the students will be able to look back on their elementary experience in any river county and we'll be able to remember this wonderful

077opportunity so that is the item all right uh the next two are agreements with the early um excuse me the early learning coalition the first of which is with our voluntary pre-k program that was aforementioned to assure that the district has all their t's cross and eyes dotted to be reimbursed from the early learning coalition for our provision of services for voluntary pre-k at our sites it's a you know standard template that comes from the state office of early learning that each provider whether public or private enters into with their respective local early learning coalition on a standard item that you would see each year so there's not too much special i knew about this one it's a procedural item and then the the next is the um contract with the extended day with early

078learning coalition there there are opportunities through the early learning coalition for our extended day program to offer a reduced fee for students whose families qualify financially that enables us to subsidize that cost as aforementioned we're doing some things to reduce costs to multiple different families with our extended day program given the budget surplus but this is certainly an item that we want to continue to draw down those funds from the early learning coalition because it does enable us to provide a better rate for many of our families and then finally the extended day program given the surplus is able to make donations back to their respective schools tremendous tremendous work by that team this year and you know making the extended day programs themselves more academically oriented uh which was you know something that we

079we have been looking to do for a number of years but even with that uh there is an opportunity here to donate funds back to the respective schools that will enable the principals to target academic support in other areas and enrichment and other areas that will support the students at this respective school sites so that is the item as a donated donation from the extended day to our elementary schools hey any comments or questions board members just thank you on the extended day and helping out giving money back to schools and making sure we're using our time there thank you thank you i mean the credit goes to the team they've done a tremendous job i mean just like everyone else in the entire district their hearts went into this supporting the kids throughout the

080pandemic and they deserve a lot of credit also i wanted to say thank you for making sure that all the kids got to go to the elc i know that was a big cost um but i think in the past when board members have asked for things and and later on a couple months later we either forget about her or forget to keep nagging you about it it's nice to have you put it down and actually do it and not and nag us about it so i appreciate that very much thank you once again the credit goes this to ms basura and other folks i did a great job of looking into that and and if you've not been on that field trip i would suggest it really is educational for you just very appreciative

081of mr meyer and his team as you all know the uh the summer time and a district office for qriket instruction is the absolute busiest time for us more now so than ever as as it relates to our curriculum adoption but as you can see um mr meyer continue along with his team to to develop professional developments a plethora of development going on over the course of the summer all top quality in terms of summer programming happening without a hitch try to spend every monday starting in a school with kids so the volume of work is absolutely tremendous but the quality of work is even better so very proud of with everything that's going on in cni continuing to deliver on our strategic plan and the initiatives identified within so thank you mr meyer and

082team uh as he continues to say it's all about the team uh and now we transition to mrs dampier [Music] good afternoon through the chair i have seven contracts on the board agenda tonight the first one is the renewal of the three-year hosting agreement with power schools this assessment is our data management system that we use to house all of our assessment data we also do our scoring and creating and delivering of our unit assessments in this platform so we're very pleased to have that being renewed tonight ms stampier can you tell us the former name for powerschool the three i know every year um it was um unifi uh before that it was performance matters so they've had somebody had asked me why are we changing from unifying we didn't we we have not

083it's the same platform they just keep changing i guess names but this is where all of our teachers do their data data meetings and our principles they use this platform quite a bit to make data-driven decisions for our students the next item i have on the agenda we have three contracts that are our renewals we have severus uh ingenuity and florida franchise virtual contract this will be an option for sdrs sdirc teachers to continue a virtual platf platform through indian river virtual school if enrollment supports this need at this time we we do not have uh the need at this time but of course we have a couple of more uh months to go uh this these platforms provides a 180-day comprehensive full-time or part-time program for our students for and for our teachers to

084to um log on to are there any questions about that what are your numbers right now and what numbers do you need to get to currently we have zero um for this particular that would follow up under this uh particular franchise we have 58 students who are in our regular ir virtual option that we have which would be full-time we have zero part-time but that's not unusual those are well within the numbers that we've had in the past but we thought we would have more parents choosing the option to have students access this platform and right now we have zero okay thank you as of monday and we have to provide three platforms correct yes we do we have to offer the three platforms and the parents choose and select and we want to make

085sure that they they have those options so those three platforms were um savas ingenuity and florida franchise then we have the next three contracts which are external teachers that we've been using in the past which is our renewal of k-12 stride and florida virtual vip virtual contract as well as the edge annuity vip virtual contract and again this program will allow our students to access the teachers from this contract as well as access the curriculum from this contract as well and it's 180 day comprehensive full-time program are there any questions okay i have one more item on the agenda and that is the entitlement grants currently we have 10 entitlement grants we're very excited about this and we've awarded we are awarded in the amount of 11 million six hundred and forty eight thousand six

086hundred and seventy two dollars and thirty one cents uh out of these uh ten contracts seven are from the curriculum and instruction department which consists of our title grants we have title 1 part a which is improving the academic achievement of the disadvantage we all know that that's in our title 1 schools title 1 part c is the migrant children's grant we have title 2 part a which is our pd grant which is supporting effective instruction then we have title three which is our supplementary instructional support for our e-l-l-s learners we have title four which is fairly new a couple years ago we got that for supporting student support and academic enrichment we have the carl perkins grant and then we have the computer science grant from cni the last three grants are from my

087office and it is the ida grant which we're very excited about to continue that and then we have the ida grant for pre-k which we renew every year as well as the mental health assistance allocation and again most of the grants are used to fund salaries as well as resources and services to improve student achievement are there any questions okay thank you miss damp year the next item on on the agenda belongs to me it is the safe red school plan as you know uh board member behrenborg brought an item several months ago to bring a plan on june 22nd which is today's workshop regarding our safer school plan prior meetings allowed us to move to a mass optional environment two board meetings ago so what this document is is basically the first reading i'll

088continue to update it is not up for approve approval tonight just review during today's workshop some of the highlights in this document ensures that we're transitioning back to the normal brick and mortar uh experience as ms stampier said we have about 83 kids in our virtual environment right now i think we have had a very successful transition back to brick and mortar we were anticipating as i've mentioned at previous board meetings expanding our virtual programming even allocating a principle and a system principle if needed right now that need is not there our parents and our students are trusting us back in our brick and mortar experience so it's very very encouraging for us uh also the so we'll have the regular brick and mortar experience as well as the virtual model where ms holden is

089doing some absolutely great work we will continue to have the face covering optional policy in all areas of the school right now in summer school we included the the bus as a mass requirement we will move to a masking option being optional there as well at the beginning of the school year we will include training attention on around ensuring any individual in our campuses are not mask shaming or understanding if a child wears to or not to wear a mask that we we are being very uh appropriate of the decision that those parents are are making we will continue back at a volunteer mentor program will be open to their campuses field trips will continue uh face-to-face uh orientations will take place so this is just the aligning of our safer at school plan we

090will continue to do the cleaning in the evening as mr fagan mentioned in his presentation uh the water bottles the the systems that we put in will remain there um so we have a a nice transition so very very proud of the transition that we've made moving into our summer school we did that relatively quickly but it has been extremely successful as a community we continue to march down the level of concern as it relates to the cdc so the only thing that would necessarily be pending here would be the latest information as it relates to quarantine even in quarantines over this our summer programming which as you know has three times as many students as in previous years we've only had two to date so we're seeing a very steady implementation of summer school

091we're very encouraged that we're going to be able to open school in a very safe and effective way based on this plan so as i said not up for approval but i wanted to have the board provide feedback if needed in this first reading board members anyone like to ask a question or make a comment and yes thank you i just wanted to say thank you for this originally the discussion was to make to have buses as you mentioned um where students would wear the masks throughout the summer but i'm very glad that we are not going to enforce that on the buses and and this is a step in the right direction so thank you thank you mr barefoot are you good um two things that i wanted to point out the return of

092visitors it's really been a loss not to have so many volunteers on our campus this past year and i know we've we will see that when we see scores coming back but i welcome the fact that we're going to be able to have all that support back again so that's wonderful the other thing that i don't see in here and i'm glad i don't see it in here is anything that has to do with vaccinations and so we have not made a statement about that but would you like to make a statement about that so any i think of the health department in terms of vaccinations and providing the opportunity um for us i think they were very amenable to providing opportunities for our faculty in in terms of students is that something a family

093or parents would like to make that decision there's no lines no waiting in order to receive those vaccinations right but we're not going to require a vaccination so we're not going to mention that we're not going to talk about whether or not kids have a vaccination card or not i want to make that very clear that that's not going to happen correct thank you just one comment thank you again for adding in there about mask shaming because i want to make sure our students staff administrators everyone if they choose to wear a mask that's a choice and we need to support that absolutely all right our next item is a update on the education foundation early in january we brought an item to create policy which should initiate uh the creation of our own foundation

094shortly after that i had the opportunity to meet with uh the ed foundation currently in indian river county and mr herring who is here today we had a really good conversation about the systems and support that are available through the current ed foundation and as i was researching the creation of our own foundation in the complexity of what would need to be in place the manpower that would need to be in place uh the level of liability that we would need to cover in meeting with mr herron i saw opportunities for us to maximize partnerships we have probably one of the most aggressive strategic plans that i think any system has ever created as you know this board approved a strategic plan that puts us in the top 10 rankings even in the midst of

095a pandemic so we approve that strategic plan in the midst of a pandemic and the data that we have available to us right now which is only third grade and we'll speak and more about this this evening says that this district is setting itself apart in terms of academic outcomes based on this aggressive strategic plan and we all should be proud but mr herring offered his services and in looking at how do we take the foundation that currently exists identify what are the needs based on this this board's priorities aligned to our strategic plan define those priorities and allow the ed foundation to continue some of the great fundraising and initiatives and programs that they're currently doing but at the same time be strategic to support our um our strategic plan and i tasked ms

096cindy emerson to say please work with mr uh heron see what are the possibilities so we've had a number of fruitful conversations on how we would leverage this partnership ensuring that we can continue to fund or supplement use supplemental funds to really build some of the things that we want some of the initiatives that mr fagan just just mentioned in terms of building innovative classrooms there are opportunities for partnership this board drives the priorities defined within our strategic plan and the ed foundation can be the partner that ensures that we continue to fund those unique initiatives because we all know the state of florida is not going to fund public education the way we would need it to be funded and through partnerships i believe we can do some powerful work i asked mr um

097heron and miss emerson to quickly review what we're envisioning here for our board we go to the board i'm very excited to be here today to talk through some of the initiatives that mr heron and i have worked very closely on i don't know if when he took over the role as executive director of the ed foundation he knew he would be spending so much time working with the district aligning the strategic plan to initiatives and pillars but it has been such a joy to work with mr herron and the board of the ed foundation and they have been nothing but genuine and sincere in their intentions to support the school district and our strategic plan and guiding principles so i just want to walk you through very quickly with mr herron where we see

098this going and share the excitement with the community as we continue to strengthen the relationship so we have our school board working stronger together with our community partnerships and in ways that are really aligning proactively what our district goals are to what the needs of our system is and so with the ed foundation they currently have eight members of their board they're looking to expand and diversify their board even further and then as you can see on the on the bottom there we have mr herron showing his support for the school district of indian river county and our initiatives and guiding principles we've spent a lot of time together really making sure that the guiding principles drive the work of the ed foundation and the funding what i want you to know is that the

099ed foundation has over 30 years of support and non-profit for the school district and they have been open whether it's with the high impact grants or our science fair in wanting our support and wanting our feedback in the programs that they're doing in fact we saw a 33 percent increase this year in high impact grants i had the pleasure of sitting with the committee and helping them determine which of the projects that were presented really aligned to the school district the school's choice theme and the intention of the principles at each school which was unique that that has not happened in the past from my understanding and really helped in making sure that the projects that should be prioritized were and so with these guiding principles we are looking with a unified mission to bring

100the big ideas to positively impact our students lives really focusing in on innovation development equity access and support and so with these guiding pillars we will see that we can continue to move forward but do it in a way that is proactive constantly meeting together with the joint committee with the ed foundation to ensure that what we're doing and what our purpose is with the district aligns and so what we'll see is a pillar of innovation where the trademarks of the ed foundation are not lost in this and that was something that doug and i both agreed were important to hold value to what was currently taking place with the ed foundation but to then add in areas where we can really get philanthropic support that are guided to what our needs are as a

101district so as you can see the high impact grants the science and engineering fair they will continue to be supported through the ed foundation under the pillar of innovation with the guiding principle of engaging in innovative practices to optimize outcomes when we look at development we're really looking in at staff development and facility development so this allows us to get continued support as we continue to progress and bring innovation to the district to ensure that our staff development also aligns with that and our facilities continue to improve and grow as a result of school choice themes and the innovative practices principles are bringing in the pillar of equity will allow us to continue focusing in on step into kindergarten we know that that is a big priority of the school district and the ed foundation

102has always been a huge support of that and providing technology equity across our district for students under the pillar of access this will allow us to continue with some of the trademark programs that the ed foundation is known for whether it's sneaker exchange or the vision to reading program but also give opportunities if students want to participate in extracurricular activities or athletic programming that not having equipment would never be a barrier this will allow us to have funding put aside to support all students with all access to programs as well as enrichment experiences one of the things that doug and i had talked about in pretty good length was ensuring if students want to participate in field trips that that you know the income of a family should never determine whether a student can participate

103this will allow us to raise funds through the ed foundation to support all students for the pillar of support this would allow us to continue with the ed foundation adopt a class and fund a project program and add on the aim advocacy program this is a initiative that is under the student services program we worked with dr packard and we really hope to be able to have some financial assistance for our mentors to ensure that as they're working with students one-on-one those students get access to anything that they need that might help them to find the success that we know that they can have and then finally it all goes back to our district strategic plan and now i'm going to turn the mic over to executive director doug herron who by the way is

104a former educator and principal himself and so he really does understand the need that we have in our district and the support that we need thank you cindy uh and i will ask you in advance uh to forgive me if i miss out on protocol i'm supposed to say to the board right so or to the chair uh so forgive me in advance if i get excited and miss some of that protocol i am excited to to be here today and i'm very excited that we're moving in this direction our foundation with the school district when i took over and i don't want to repeat a story that probably everyone has heard when i took over in march of 2020 i can i can usually just say that date and everybody understands but a week

105you know a week after taking over i was told to start working at home i really didn't know why since i was the only one in the office at the time but for a period of time i worked from home and one thing i i in a in addition to that if i'm quite honest when i took over there was there was quite a bit of turnover uh at the at the education foundation most of the board members in addition to obviously the executive director of 16 years moving in another direction most of the board that had any kind of organizational knowledge had resigned as well so it was a big learning curve not only for me but for my board as well we were down to five board members so since then we have

106expanded and we're looking to expand more to not only make our board larger but to diversify it and provide opportunities for every segment of the population in indian river county but i did notice early on that the relationship with the district seemed to be strained and i think it's fair to say there was probably some culpability on the part of both i believe dr moore had only started his position maybe five or six months prior to my arrival so it was new new things two months okay two so yeah just a couple of months so new things were happening in the school district uh and and i will say looking back now good new things in the school district were happening and new things were happening with us as well and you know add in

107a year of not being able to really see anybody in person and meet anyone it hampered our fundraising efforts it hampered almost every aspect of our operation but it was my goal from the start to re-establish this relationship with the district having some some knowledge of education foundations from my years at schools i knew that although we're an independent operating foundation our primary goal is to support the school district in the county in which we operate and i didn't feel like that was happening at the level that it should and cindy's mentioned a couple of things that that i vowed to do early on we increased we were able to increase the funding for our high impact grants and but and i'm very proud of that but i'm equally proud of the fact that i

108involved cindy in that process which was involving the district before that didn't happen and not all of the projects that were funded were necessarily meeting the needs of the school district in a way that they could so i felt like this year the projects met the needs they matched the strategic plan as dr moore mentioned and referred to uh so we're looking over time uh admittedly our capacity at this point in time we're trying to build our capacity i believe we're going to we've fitted in the programs that we're currently offering to the district into these pillars where we think they best fit and our next goal is to not only strengthen these programs and make sure they're meeting these kids but as we add programs and services working very closely with the district to

109ensure that they're meeting the needs of the the students and meeting the needs of the strategic plan i believe the strategic plan is well written and if we meet the needs of the strategic plan we're going to be meeting the needs of of students so i appreciate this opportunity to to to speak to you briefly and also to begin some deeper work with us with the school district uh and and changed the way that we've done some of the programs in the past that they're better they're good programs but i think they can better meet the needs of students in indian river county and that's our goal thank you mr heron and miss emerson i think when i first initially be started to meet with doug i may scare them a little bit because the

110the potential that i see in terms of this partnership and taking the time to grow it is very very exciting to me having this partnership in place really does allow us as a school system to focus in on the main thing keeping the main thing the main thing which is student achievement while the same time maximizing through this relationship opportunities to enhance the support and services that we provide to our students so ms emerson will remain involved in this work we will continue to bring information to the board regarding the opportunities that we're engaging in to fund uh to raise funds and how we're you know making modifications or changes i will continue to bring to the board opportunities to look at the priorities that we would be endorsing through the edu for the education

111foundation and ensuring that we are focusing on the things desired by the board uh before we going forward but this is the the concept that we have worked together over the last several months very excited to bring it to the board and be happy to answer any questions you may have okay before i i know there are probably several people um mr zario you've spoken first a couple of times so um mr barefoot is there anything that you wanted to ask first you need your volume on mr barefoot is that us or him how's that there you go perfect um you know obviously i spoke with mr heron and actually his board way back when i can't i can't remember several months ago and the model that i've always focused on that really works well

112in indian river county thus far is the one that has been employed at the hospital for many years and it's very focused on very specific projects so that donors view those projects as as you would make an investment with a known outcome that's expected they're not programs which i always viewed and maybe i'm being over simplistic here as as the purview of the educational foundation but rather thinking in terms of singularly focused very specific projects most of which are capital but some of which could be endowing certain types of activities and or positions and as we all know we're fortunate enough to live in a very generous philanthropic community but i would tell you that outside of the indirect support that comes from let's say quail valley charities or johns island foundation or other similar

113type activities i'm not aware of any of the major philanthropists in the in the community that actually give money directly to the educational foundation so part of the rollout of this new focus has got to be on in creating call them ambassadors or expanding the board of the educational foundation to include some of these folks that have been very active and supportive on these kinds of singularly focused projects and as long as as we as this evolves over the next few months we keep in mind that there's a lot of interest in supporting public education in the county that was not there a year ago and we've got to take advantage of that and i think selecting board members and or an advisory board and or individuals in some of these communities that can be

114a liaison or a facilitator connecting the projects that the district identifies that are going to be facilitated through the ed foundation is critical to this thing working so this is a good start we didn't need to confuse the community with creating yet another foundation while there's plenty of 501 c 3s in the in the county uh sometimes i almost think there's too many because the missions of some get confused with the missions of others but so i look i personally look forward to contributing in in one way or another to perhaps identify some people that could be uh recruited call it whether it's for the board and or for whatever type of of project related committees that are established uh going forward great thank you dr jones did you have anything i just want to

115thank you both for meeting together and bringing it all together with our strategic plan what we need and impact grants and i look forward to seeing uh what this vision will be with the district and ed foundation thank you mr rosario thank you um dr moore can you please send us the um big ideas pamphlet that was shared it wasn't in the um backup information um and i think that would have helped us i suppose if we had that in front of us have more questions if we had any so that conversation cannot be had at this moment even though we were prepped in advance quite a while ago mr heron thank you so much for being here thank you so much for the work that you do uh about two and a half years

116ago i brought to the board um in an item to uh begin the discussion of creating a foundation here at the district level um just recently um i think in december we discussed it again and at that point we decided that we were going to move forward with creating one of our own here at the district the interesting part is that the education foundation was never a part of the discussion not and at any time did anyone say we already have a good relationship with um the education foundation even though we know that you have always been or rather the foundation has always been a partner um to some of the uh things that we do you know here in the district um so my my question um is not so much about the pillars

117or the big ideas um that mrs emerson has worked really really hard at creating um my question is with regard because one of the reasons why we discussed and why we initially thought it would be so important for us to have a foundation of our own is that we would pretty much have um somewhat of unfeathered autonomy to make some decisions if there were a need for something that was not tied to taxpayer funding we can in-house say yes we're going to approve that or you know have this application process for example a student recently unfortunately lost both parents he uh his mom was an employee of ours and and this young man really deserved some well-needed scholarship for college it was a i believe that if we had our own foundation in-house we would

118be able to say you know let's go ahead if we had the money let's go ahead and approve through our process and our protocols of x amount of money for found for scholarship for this particular student where would that kind of partnership with the education foundation fall if it were a part or separate from these pillars and these big ideas that are being proffered to us how would we be able to work with you on individual things that may happen that might arise and and maybe in part because i'm unsure of how that works maybe it's not a part of what you all do but please help me understand if you do what would that look like well i will say that even though it may not have been a part of what has happened

119in the past in the relationship between the district and the ed foundation the sky really is the limit uh as far as the services that we could provide for the district if i'm understanding you correctly you're speaking with regards to some sort of emergency situation where x number of dollars maybe may need to be diverted from uh one program to another program i would tell you that even though i was telling cindy earlier i had my first opportunity a couple of weeks ago to meet with the consortium of florida education foundations which was the first time in a year and a half that we've had a face-to-face meeting and i met with a lot of the other executive directors in florida about 50 percent of the foundations are direct support organizations which is what the

120school district was exploring earlier and about 50 percent are our independent 501 c 3 non-profits like the ed foundation here in indian river county regardless of what type of foundation it is a certain amount of independence has to be there between the the school board and the foundation whether it's a direct support organization or an independent foundation and and dollars and monies are also often earmarked for particular programs so you know even for a direct support organization it might be difficult at times to say oh we have an emergency where a student needs a scholarship let's make it happen you would need to have funding available either in your general fund or specifically for uh for scholarships so the way we may be able to help you i will i will tell you we provided

121a sixty thousand dollar gift to the school district at the beginning of the uh pandemic for for laptops so that was an emergency uh appropriation that our board met quickly and approved from our general funding so those types of things i don't see a problem with those types of things happening either mr barefoot's very right i agree with him 100 percent that we need to improve our fundraising abilities and lessen what we're unless in the programs that we're running one of the things that i've already accomplished is we're slowly turning over the implementation of the science fair to the school district for years it was a program ran by the foundation i don't really think that's the most beneficial way to run it we didn't really have the expertise the school district the science coaches

122the science staff in the school district knows what to do with the science fair and uh so we've turned much more this this year unfortunately we had to have a virtual affair but we're returning to a face-to-face fair in the in the year ahead and they're going to be running that program we're going to focus on funding the program so i don't i don't really see a problem and i hope i'm answering your question with those types of emergency situations so to speak if monies are needed the the ed foundation we want to meet the needs of students bottom line so and that differs for every student there may be a an individual student that that a need is truly there and we'll do everything within our power to meet that need it might be

123something we can meet immediately it might be something we need to work on but by reestablishing this relationship i think we're going to be able to work on those types of things together and not separately like has been done for the past several years perfect thank you so much yeah okay dr schiff do you have anything just two very quick things um can you clarify for me what the phrase investing in collaborative cultures means you wrote that okay so what it means is making sure that we are putting the time effort and energy into getting together so that we're being proactive rather than reactive to the needs of the district so those collaborative cultures are really between the ed foundation and the school district and making sure that that is a priority so you were

124talking about a culture of collaboration not collaboration among in between varying cultures okay can you be specific on where that is because i wrote a very lengthy document believe it's in pillar five it may be in pillar four i don't have the document okay in front of me and it doesn't have page numbers so i couldn't get paid okay so let me go directly to that okay so for what which pillar did you see oh this is our guiding principle as a school district this is one of our guiding principles so what is in orange is part of the guiding principles of the school district so that is in in an effort to really focus in on access in our community investing in collaborative cultures that promote the growth of all okay so probably better

125as a future conversation when i actually have the document in front of me because i read that several times and i was unclear what it meant in the context of that document we can have that conversation all the time that sounds good um just a real quick thing there's a typo on pillar five it says um integrity instead of integrity i will figure thank you i appreciate that and um just to piggyback off of what mrs rosario had asked there is a line that the ed foundation of indian river county may convene stakeholders and community members in order to advocate on behalf of the needs of the school district of indian river county at any time so mrs rosaro did you have another question yeah mr um dr moore this isn't coming to us tonight

126to approve this is just a presentation now correct okay are we going to when you give the um presentation and and i suppose solicit feedback from school board members on the strategic plan is this going to be a part of that discussion so what we will do and as a great question board member rosario we will finalize the strategic plan and as we go through that process we will solicit information from board members regarding the actual priorities what we've done now is identify what we we think are some good priorities i'm sure there'll be some modification changes to some of those and that's what we'll bring to the board to approval the initiatives that will be a priority for the board and that would be coming prior to the approval of the strategic plan or

127with the approval of the strategic plan yeah because the board haven't actually we have not gotten together to decide what that would be right no and that's right i think we've had individual meetings regarding the the concept what ms emerson uh and mr herring have done is look at some some pretty good guesses the best way of saying it one of the complexities of a school board is you all have to be together so having this conversation together in in concept circling back uh individually and then bringing back the the item for final uh discussion and approval uh allows the ed foundation basically to go to work uh and partnering with us to begin to raise funds that is instruction thank you for that and just so that the public knows we've had conversation about

128it one on one and mrs emerson has been in the room but collectively as a board we have not yet gotten to that stage so it's important for us to be able i i work best when i hear feedback from fellow board members their ideas their input in in a project such as this moving forward so um thank you for that clarification um okay and um mrs rosario's correct that she did bring this forward as an item for us to create a um ed foundation uh of our own because um it was unclear as to what the ed foundation was doing it kind of felt separate but i did question that back then because i was on an ed foundation in st lucie county and i remember saying that that i was on the board

129down there the reason why i remember saying that is because i remember saying they were very different in how they behaved down there than up here down there we actually have and the reason why i was on the board is because i was this i was a principal at the time and so there were two principals on that committee on that board and we sat for two years on the board and i think that liaison was really good to have that because you had the insight of two principles and what was happening on the campuses right then so i thought it was a really good way that they they had that also um the concern i had was first of all thank you for relating everything to the strategic plan that's awesome one concern i

130i didn't see it in here i heard emergencies mr rosario brought up but how about like a large project such as the new property that we have across from vero beach high school and what to do with that property would that be something that the ed foundation would be able to partner with us on when i talked about increasing our capacity earlier that's the types of things that we want to work toward and mr barefoot was right at his assertion that we need to get better and focus more on attracting different philanthropists in the in the community outside of the normal grant funders which are the ones we've been working with for the past several years so that's our goal uh and and yes there's nothing that that prevents us from working on capital projects

131we just never have in the past got it and if you're looking at expanding your um board members just think about that about yes we are on there we are okay thank you um and thank you for coming today we appreciate it thank you for mr herring and team um we're going to do some absolutely great work so we are just getting warmed up in this particular item um our our next item this is mrs uh mrs bearberg and dr morphin i just offer one more comment sure um in conversations um in conversations with the community foundation mr barefoot mr barefoot i'm sorry would you mind adjusting your view because all we see are your nostrils and your mouth can we see like a full face frontal yeah thank you appreciate it well you guys

132are lucky awful picky um at any rate uh in in in conversations with the community foundation and i know uh in the past there i'm sure there's some coordination between the two the community foundation and jeff peckering in particular is is is involved in a lot of the the project related philanthropy in the county in the area and and a lot of the donor advice funds work through the community foundation so when you talk about focusing on some of the philanthropists that have supported all sorts of different projects in the county uh coordination with the community foundation is going to turn also out to be key because it's it's the museum it's riverside theater it's the hospital these are the kind these are the organizations that have received over the years tremendous support and the

133community foundation's very much a part of that a partnership between philanthropists and i'm sure that that's gonna that's gonna have to be expanded uh with the educational foundation going forward as well okay thank you mr barefoot dr moore all right our next item is a relatively complex item is listed as curriculum instruction update i put that on the agenda anticipating an update being provided to our board regarding our k5 adoption um as you know we placed a placeholder on the agenda for this evening to approve uh a curriculum pending the outcome of our hearing that took place last friday so what i'd like to do at this time is ask mr meyer to provide an update regarding um you know a brief history of of where we were what we've done and currently where we

134sit as a district i'll remind the board this is a a hard and complex conversation it is uh it is difficult to have it is a very very important decision that this board will will ultimately make this evening but i'm looking forward to engaging in this dialogue uh with all the compassion and grace that we need to ensure that we make the right decision for our community for that i'll turn it over to mr meyer through the chair thank you dr moore so i'll be uh pretty brief in going back back back in time but i do want to go back to the beginning of this which was january 2019 when governor desantis issued the executive order uh to eliminate common core in our schools he gave the department of education a very um aggressive

135timeline that he wanted them to uh to meet in order to do this and so you know less than i think 15 months later the department of education established a new set of standards that was approved in april 2020 by the state board of education a set of standards that was developed by florida professionals florida educators experts in the field you know to make sure the common core was completely removed and from there after that approval in april 2020 in september the department of education released their uh call for bids they released a very specific set of criteria that the instructional materials needed to meet in order to implement these new standards there were additional statutory provisions that that had to be included in that a couple years before governor sanders took office there was

136a change to florida statutes that required k-5 materials beginning 2021 included in the core the science of reading which is that explicit systematic approaches to teaching phonemic awareness and decoding skills so on and so forth so those had to be built into these instructional materials as well in october we began to see which companies uh we're going to bid on that and we're going to give products to the department of education and we knew that here in indian river county if we were going to be prepared for the state to release their list which is in statute required to be released on april 1st that we needed to begin our review concurrently to the state's review not knowing what they would ultimately do but we knew that we needed to look at the prospective materials

137as well so from october through march the school district followed our internal procedures we requested all of the of the potential vendors the sample products we pushed those out to the schools committees were formed committees met and the committees had a recommendation that i brought to the board in march which our first recommendation was was amplify on i believe it was the 30th the department made it on time i think it was march 30th that they released their list of approved products there was four products that made that list and amplify was not on that list so we reconvened the committee and selected an alternate product which was hmh per florida statute and per board policy there's a number of steps that we have to go through you know when selecting any product and that's

138that open notice public hearing for anyone to give comment upon the product there's the item where you vote to adopt there's a 30-day petition window and we've accomplished all of this we did receive a number of petitions to hmh um i remind the board that um at that last the last item the board took action on it was to approve the procurement of or excuse me to approve the adoption of amplify pending fldoe approval or hmh pending you know the petitions we had the petition hearing on friday our board policy does give the hearing officer 14 days to approve or release his final order we did receive that last night which upheld the opportunity for the board to take action on adopting hmh and i think that that's a kind of a concise you know

139rundown of where we're at amplify is still not on the fldoe approved list there's talk and there's that they may be still continuing their appeal and it may be being finalized but we we at this juncture today uh the the fact the matter is is that they still are not an approved curriculum that meets the criteria um that the department of education set forth and that hmh is on the approved list and has survived i guess i use the term survived it it you know went through that process um where the petitioners were able to state objections uh in statute um and those were not found to be upheld by the hearing officer so we have an item tonight before the board to discuss our next steps and that's kind of recount there dr moore

140is there anything else you'd like me to add of where we're at i i think that summarizes the reality in which we currently stand so we have a curriculum for k-5 that's been fully vetted on the state's list approved by their experts to be approved we went through the the process to allow the petitioners to state concerns those concerns have been [Music] dealt with or remedied through the hearing officers findings so in terms of the stated concerns this board has every level of comfort that they can in fact adopt hmh without those concerns actually being a valid concern our first initial selection was amplifying as mr meyer stated amplify was the selection that we went with prior to knowing that it was not on the state's list currently amplify is still working with the state

141in order to i know i'm repeating some of the things that mr meyer said to have it approved on the state list we went through the state adoption process we are quickly approaching the absolute date in which we need to order materials train teachers create pacing guides to be ready for the opening of schools that date is is quickly approaching every item that i've brought to this board has always said uh if amplify is to get approved then we go with the first choice i do not think i would bring a recommendation to this board that is not on the state's approved list a item that's being approved by the experts identified by the department of education not being on the list is a concern the experts at this state also not having it on

142being able to get it on the list whatever the process they're going through so we do have amplify as our first list item but it is not approved by our state board i know there have been questions by board members can we just adopt amplify and i think our community has had similar questions is concerned we went through the state's process regarding this application or how to procure those documents looking at those curriculums that were on that particular list in order to secure amplify outside of that process we would have to do a separate bid process and i'm going to ask our school board attorney just to accurately state uh what i just summarized it a little bit more effectively thank you mrs biernborg um and board members dr moore is correct there there are

143as as you have heard and discussed over time through this process there are two ways for a school board to adopt curriculum there is a process to adopt off the state list and there is also the ability of a school board to adopt its own process and not adopt off the state list essentially do your own procurement have your own committees review everything and have your own certifications that the um instructional materials meet the standards that have been adopted by the state board of education so dr moore is absolutely correct there are two ways to do it at this point um this school board this district went through the process to adopt off the state list and so that's kind of the the playground that we're in at the moment um you can absolutely change

144your process all it takes is time and if you have the time then you can absolutely change your process thank you so so with that uh just feedback or commentary from the board we may have to update the the item as it stands tonight was a placeholder um just in listening to your feedback my initial recommendation is that we approve the product that has been fully vetted and on the state list which is hmh and with that i'll turn it over to the board for any discussion you may have yeah before i ask and i know we all want to speak to this one obviously because it's such an important topic but because you asked our attorney to talk about that process i know that process has gone on with another district highlands is it

145possible to piggyback off of hyland's procurement contract and that's a question that we would have to explore in the general procurement world as long as the bid put forth by highlands allows for other local governments to piggyback off that bid and the vendor has approved that process then the general procurement answer is yes we can piggyback but there are a lot of prior questions that we need to explore what did they bid uh what did the vendors then propose was it's the same as what was proposed to the state that's been rejected or was there a different product being proposed in highlands the procurement process needs to be explored but the general procurement question of can we piggyback as long as the process allows for it yes but we need to answer those prior questions

146just anticipating that particular question being asked mr bass and myself did speak to their um assistant superintendent for instruction as well as the superintendent they followed the same uh state bid process that we followed so um with that suzanne does that change anything oh so they didn't do a local procurement process they okay then they don't have a procurement that we can piggyback off right if they had done the same way that our our policy states because i went through the school board policy with um with our attorney this week and and i asked um is there another way to do this you know and we have to go through it takes 30 days and then you have to go through the whole vetting you have to get a committee together and they have to

147be of certain people and then you have to do it takes a year so i said is there any way to do it without a year and she said this this is the way to do it if you can piggyback so i did find out that there were other two other counties that were looking at amplify one being lake and one being highlands lake counties decided to go with a different company so highlands did go with amplify or they are going to go with amplify i guess but they don't have a policy in their board policies that says that they have to do it the way our board policy says so we can't piggyback but to change our policy would take 30 days and then another policy hearing a year lake county i don't remember

148i don't it wasn't one i recognized i'm sorry so i'm sorry so you said lake went with another and um highlands is now in the process of um adopting amplify because at the elementary level same situation that we're in instead of hmh both of them i believe so and and um that's what i was was told so i asked the superintendent if he knew and they called down there um they don't have the policy though that we have in place so what is the actual difference what is the wording difference between their policy and ours i'll defer to suzanna i have no idea what the highlands policy is yeah so then how do you know that it's different mrs barrenburg no what what i'm saying is i asked if we could piggyback in other words

149if they did the procedure the way our policy states could we piggyback on it because that piggyback allows you to do it without having to go through the whole procedure yeah but the piggyback is just in terms of purchase i see suzanne shaking her head a piggyback would be in terms of a purchase so if they have let's say secured a they were given a quote or a bid from amplify um and the contract that they would go through and of course suzanne i'm looking at you because i'm trying to see if i'm on the right right on the right track here if if if that county went through the process of saying i'm not going to go with hmh we want to go with with amplify they go through the process of securing a

150contract with them this is how much it would cost it would be that bid that we would piggyback off of correct suzanne but what we just heard from dr moore what the highland school district staff have just indicated that they did not do at a local bid process it sounds to me like what they've done is just pick somebody outside of any statutory process that's allowed for instructional adoption so even if they did that i mean it's still outside of the pro i don't understand what am i doing i i can only comment on the conversation that i had i knew in order to for us to piggyback i understand those requirements if it was a a separate procurement process that they did locally with defined criteria uh not knowing what that criteria was the

151obvious question to ask is did you follow the state adoption process the answer to that question was yes they went through the exact same process they did amplify not on the list they're going to select amplify anyway my next question was do you have a board policy that permits you or doesn't allow you to to do that based on your procurement process her answer was no so i i think we're just missing it sounds like we're missing pieces of information not that maybe we just don't know what what it is for them i think the the straightforward way is we have policies in place to protect us can't comment on another district's uh policy i think we were exploring a possibility to use that as a piggyback to not have to wait our defined amount

152of time through our policy so we can have the materials in time based on that initial research and the fact that they did not do a a separate bid process that's not an option but we've already approved amplify haven't we we've already gone through the um through the chair we we went through the process to adopt uh pending the fldoe approval so that that process is contingent upon the fldoe adding a product to their list so as mr aggressor said that that that is how we were approaching it and it is still a contingent approval because it has not met the criteria set forth by the state uh board of education for the the criteria needed in that bid right the um the science of reading the content limitations the actual standards that are there

153that was what we were and that's that's why most districts do that right i mean if i know that i am tasked to bring a recommendation to the board of the highest quality that's going to meet legislative intent that's going to meet the governor's intent that's going to meet the state board of education's intent then you you want it you would have to draw your you know local item i don't see how it wouldn't match the state's item so you know we went with the state's bid specs because we knew that should the state board of education review those approved those that we would be uh in the clear and defensible in selecting a product that is meeting all the rest of the legislative intent so but it's contingent right so um you know we

154we didn't find anything inappropriate there our our teachers you know and committee members found it to be uh you know of high quality but there is something which were we have not been told as to what exactly is the hold up we have not been told which criteria it has failed to meet but clearly there is something that they're going through their litigation slash appeal process to try to rectify to clear that up to get on the list so because we already approved amplify and we already did the 30 day we did that just to clarify we did that initially so that we wouldn't be stuck waiting another 30 days we wanted to be sure in case amplify was approved by the doe that we can just move forward with amplify correct mr meyer correct

155it's made it through that process so any day that that happens yeah so mrs berenberg right now we don't have to wait another 30 days if we decide to go with amplify we can we do we do and and the reason because i thought the same way you did and this is why i brought this up at the very beginning because he brought that comment up about about that um we do have to wait the 30 days unfortunately this was another i was trying to do whatever i could to try to help this with amplify he knows how many phone calls i made in the last 24 hours but i will tell you that um i was hoping this was a possibility the problem is there's two problems with it one we have a policy

156that says we can't do it the way we thought we could i thought by voting on amplifying putting that forward and going through the bid process like we did that that would work but we have a policy and it's policy 2520 if you want to look at it that says says that if we choose to pick something that's not on the approval list that we have to set up a whole new other way to look at the books again we have to set it all up again and do the whole thing all over again that's the problem as we have that in policy the second thing is and i understand why the superintendent is saying this there's a reason why books are approved or not approved on the state level um having been on that

157team and been through that process i understand how hard it is for for books to be approved and they are fighting the approval uh usually i'll speak last since i have the gavel tonight but i'm going to tell you a couple maybe this will help with some of your comments a couple of the calls i made this week it's very important they get on the approval process for one thing they get approved so i called amplify um and spoke to a senior account executive uh several times i've spoken to the chancellor of education i've spoken to kathy seeds who's responsible for this adoption process at the state level she's the one who now they're all referring me to everybody if you call the chancellor's office or the commissioner's office or the governor's office they're all

158asking you to call kathy seeds i've spoken to her a couple of times in the last week i've also spoken to aaron grahl who has made calls on our behalf as well for amplify the concern is that the the amplify has been told what they have to fix that they have stated to us that they've made those fixes they've sent it to the state the state is pending their second process of whether or not they'll be appealed or not i'm i found out that there is a meeting on that on friday they did i asked if they could have made the meeting before today and the answer was no that the doe had it set for friday so friday they have a meeting that um will state whether or not they have made their appeal

159and so that's the information i wanted you all to have that information before you made your comments mrs rosario do you want to keep speaking or can yes please because i didn't say what i originally wanted to say i was actually asking questions to your original comments what i originally wanted to say is that um i appreciate the the update and the feedback from the superintendent and mr meyer i have not yet had a chance to read the hearing officer's recommendation i have not yet had a chance to fully complete the audio listening to all of the public comments from friday i just received the audio i believe yesterday morning um and um i would like some more information i have not um looked at this policy 2520 that you are talking about i'd like

160to be able to be um to know what i'm saying right what's the difference in the written in in this other counties written policy versus ours um why it's not the same uh piggybacking talking about so basically i haven't i'm not um equipped enough at this time to make a well educated decision on these matters um because this is not a board discussion i would just ask the board and the superintendents put together maybe a special meeting for us to gather together so that we can collect all of this information and have a well thought out discussion um specifically regarding this process obviously i don't believe that tonight is is the opportune time to make a decision on this okay dr schiff i'm not going to belabor at the moment we've all been paying really

161close attention to how this process has been going so i don't need to editorialize on any of that at the moment i will say though i am not comfortable adopting a curriculum that is not approved by the state i am not comfortable for this district adopting anything um that has not been fully and completely vetted that is not approved by the state that if the as we know the district has reviewed it the board of ed has reviewed it the department of ed has reviewed it the commissioner has reviewed it the governor has not pulled it um there is to my mind nothing for me that um if amplify were approved great i'm happy to go with that and if it's approved by friday terrific i'm happy to go with that because i don't think

162there i think that amplify would be a equally not more but equally worthwhile curriculum for this district i don't think it's better i don't think it's i think it is sufficiently vetted i am concerned that the people who are charged with this responsibility which mrs barrenborg says she has sat through many times found issue with this curriculum such that they wouldn't put it on a state-approved list um i do not consider myself more expert than those people i don't i don't and i don't consider the community more expert than those people do they have an opinion do they have a voice am i sympathetic am i compassionate to that voice absolutely but do i think they know more than the people who have trained their entire careers to do this work no i really don't

163i it does not mean that their their voices don't matter but it does not persuade me to not approve a curriculum that has been thoroughly vetted thoroughly reviewed at many different levels of government and this district to say that that's insufficient for me it's not it's sufficient for me i'm okay with it so if as mrs barenborg says this decision might be made on friday and if that doesn't substantially put us back to the point where it puts teachers in a precarious position where they do not have the time they need to properly train and become familiar with these materials okay i'll meet friday afternoon i'll meet monday or i have to look at my schedule obviously but beyond that i'm not willing to delay i'm not willing to delay because of the position that

164it puts this district and our teachers in and i'm i'm i think our first um the level of review these curricula have already received is adequate and i am not willing to put our teachers in that position where they have to scramble to keep up and i am particularly worried about the level of scrutiny that teachers are under at the moment and the potential harm that does to teachers in our district and our students that i'm really worried about and i would like to quell that conversation um as much and as thoroughly by this board in this district as we can uh thank you dr ship just an fyi just so you know i did ask what the drop dead date is drop dead date is the date that the school book depository can actually

165get the books to us so and anticipating that question as well and meeting with mrs basura and mr meyer july 6 is that that that is the the absolute drop dead date that is the date where order needs to be processed at the depository so we can receive the items we can distribute the items but more importantly um conduct the amount of training that needs to be done this was this was my work for for seven straight years in miami um and it started absolutely in in march so we are creating brand new pacing guides those tools the work that mrs pasura is doing have the opportunity to review those you know she's taking what i did in seven years and completing it over over one summer it's absolutely amazing work but it is complex

166hard work creating a one-stop shop for teachers to plan the lessons is very very very hard to do so we need absolutely every minute of time so we can ensure that we're providing the appropriate pacing guides and resources to our teachers to do this work right and that doesn't include the professional development and we well as an assurance to this board which you've spoken about prior we just don't outsource professional development we're going to make sure this professional development regardless of who the vendor is is tailored to the needs of this board in this community so we will look at and create that professional development together to ensure that it does cover the content that we want our children to be exposed to and is being done in a way to ensure that it is

167quality instruction being provided so we can hit the outcomes that we've defined for ourselves okay doctor all that to say july 6th july 6. dr moore or mr meyer how many do you know how many districts have chosen hmh there are a total of 47 districts across the state who are using hmh curriculums 14 of those districts are using the k-5 curriculum that's my my latest understanding so the other the remainders would be their their secondary uh products and i don't have the breakdown of those particular items approximately um how many districts do you know have not selected yet the um i can just speak of the one district which is actually my biggest board meeting tonight so i think it is was it uh highlands sorry sorry sorry uh highlands and and us are

168the la are the to the best of my knowledge the last two that i know in speaking at the conference that we were just at every single just every single superintendent that i spoke to i did not speak to every single stupid uh superintendent we called that delete that um had uh had already secured their their materials okay um one thing i have been looking at and it's been great work by curriculum instruction our 612 the the language arts and math for the curriculum mapping and the planning and working within the block schedule and a lot of work has been done there and uh after talking to ms spacer and a couple other people we haven't even started on the k5 because we do not have the series yet so when i did science at

169the district here and then i was on a couple adoptions as a teacher first of all this work has been going on for nine months since october of last year i can't remember but usually and we backed up the calendar i remember with ms esplin too okay this is where we need to be and if we have petitions this is where we need to be and this is when we need to order or we don't get these books in time now you said july 6 was the absolute deadline when would we receive them the the it we would have them in time to be in our schools the week prior so the second off the top of my head is when on august 2nd is when tv that's when teachers return return so we would

170want them the week prior to that we want to afford teachers as many of us were teachers want to have those materials in their hands um so we that would be the week before they're at school site so if teachers wanted to come in and get them that's late that that is but that is just the beginning of getting that let alone the training we have not started the training until we get the books we can begin the training so we have reignite we can begin the training in the end of the of the summer months which is the overview uh the pacing guides we feel comfortable with either company each have made significant commitments to come in and kind of front load a great that's if the board approves it correct okay also i

171did read everything from the hearing officer and so forth and correct me if i'm wrong mr meyer dr moore was there any issue with any benchmark language arts benchmark k-5 to the chair no there was nothing was found to be in opposition to the new standards or to not accurately portray those and most of the petitioners again i wasn't there but they were concerned about supplemental material critical race theory i mean let's just put this on the table here that's the main issue that's the main issue getting emails i'm sure we get all the same emails or some different ones but i said it in the last meeting and many teachers have talked with me they they can it's all they can do to teach this okay so we're teaching students we're not teaching benchmarks

172and these benchmarks are clear and what we need to do as far as our students for um the testing as we go into the new year with the new benchmarks and if we do not get this ordered and again what a wonderful world of amplify had been on the adoption list wonderful world we'd be going through it but i just think also that when you talk to teachers and what they want to do and what they want to do to get going to prepare for this i've been through this getting a new curriculum it's a lot of work but we need to get going and i have to echo what dr schiff said if this is not a state adopted we had that concern from the very very beginning uh then i'm not comfortable so

173um that's all i have to say for now gonna ask um have a look just keep real quick okay i was gonna say can mr barefoot speak this is a super quick thing that's relevant to it um assuming material so materials would presumably be received by the week before school correct uh two weeks prior to school two weeks prior there are no delivery delays there's no hurricane there's no that sounds to me cutting it extremely tight and presuming a perfect world presuming that everything goes according to schedule that's the date we'd have them correct through the chair um with unforeseen circumstances that would be drastically outside of our control the book depository knows the volume that we have which is the hmh product they're ready to ship amplify uh would be shipping directly to us

174they have those products ready to go depending upon the approval from the the state department of education whatever that outcome would be so getting them in into us into the schools um minus the you know some of the scenarios in which you just you know sustained outside of our control we feel comfortable that we would be able to to get them get them in there in the hands of teachers yeah i think we're we're is this tight let's let's hear from i agree with many of the comments that have been made i too am uncomfortable approving something that has not been approved by the by the department of education [Music] these people in tallahassee that group that review board spent a lot of time and effort this is what they do our review group representing

175the schools that they represented and having received input from a number a number of teachers that would have to teach this curriculum to have them choose amplify first and hmh second sort of tells the story i guess if i were to propose a motion i don't know what the drop dead date is is it january 6th is it you know the fourth of july seems like a celebratory uh date but there's no reason that we could not approve a motion that that we will go with amplify if they're approved by whatever that date is and if it has not been approved by the state board of education then we will go with hmh and just pick the date um keep your keep our fingers crossed that amplify is approved uh whether it's friday or next

176week i think that uh we're running out of time though because with the fourth of july weekend coming up i'm not sure uh it basically got about maybe five six seven working days but i don't think we're really from my perspective have a choice but to go with with uh the first choice that's been approved if it's amplified by that drop dead date great if it's not we go with hmh okay thank you um a couple of concerns that were brought up that i have um seen and heard have been concerning the full words and the introductions in the books could we have those be either avoided in our pacing guides or not included in our professional developments i'll defer to mr meyer to give that answer although i do know the answer and also

177touch on the critical race theory that dr jones mentioned yeah absolutely to the chair um you know what how we use and how we implement uh the use of these instructional materials that's our decision right how much time we spend in each chapter how much time we spend on each section how many you know which resources we choose to do that is absolutely a district-led decision and certainly something that we can control you know those those few comments at the beginning of each of the teachers manuals did cause a lot of concern whereas the bulk of the material when you set you know all of the k through five material for 180 school days on a table like we did last week you realize that the the program guide is you know two pages of

178that and so certainly i think the focus should be on what is actually uh presented to the students and how that's being used and you know of no one wants critical race theory the the state board of education adopted the rule that says no critical race theory they gave us a definition that i'm looking at now in their rule of what the state board of education considers to be critical race theory meaning the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice but that racism is embedded in american society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons that is not in any passage or any activity in the hmhk35 materials that's not there that is not there and and had that been there i believe that would have fallen

179into the description and some of the other statutes about um stereotyping and bias and some of those natures that you know we would have had an opportunity to petition or our reviewers would have caught that i think that that's exactly why we haven't seen it pulled from the state list right because if if that was in the hmh k5 materials it would have been pulled but but that's not that when you look at those stories none of the stories none of the none of the texts none of what the students are going to have says that by any means so you know i feel very confident by you know moving with an approved product it still meets the the criteria of this rule but keep in mind if the if the commissioner feels differently or

180wants to uh require publishers to amend their instructional materials that are on their list i've i've told the board a couple times there is that statute where the commissioner can direct the publisher to correct uh any incorrect items that they find so you know there's there's con that's why we want to go with that rule we are definitely going to uphold and implement this uh state board rule we will not have any critical race theory uh in our classrooms uh be taught by our teachers and i'm confident that that does not exist as written by the state board of education and the hmhk5 uh instructional materials okay and so because of that i believe it's i'm still sorry it's still my turn all right um and because of that and because we are expecting a

181lot of people to come and comment tonight i don't believe this should be a consent item i believe it should be moved to action um i understand mr barefoot's desire to say that we should stay to date and put things forward because it is hard for you all to get back together again it is hard for us to keep going back and forth on this it is hard for the district to be in in wonderment as to what this board is going to do and we have to we have to act so um you know i i agree with you um mr barefoot that i want to be able to say amplify if they make their appeal um that was your first choice that is the one i think that um i have been working

182very hard on all my phone calls and to different people to try to make happen uh and for some reason i will hopefully find out something after friday but um i agree that we at least need to make sure that we have a book that is on the approved list and we have it by the drop down drop dead date anybody else thank you sorry go ahead yeah i am since you're you you mr meyer mentioned and obviously we're not i i'm assuming that all of you had a chance to completely vet the policy to completely listen to all of the public comments from friday and to read all of the um hearing officer's recommendations because like i said i have not had a chance to do that assuming that every board member is prepared

183to have this conversation is unfair um but still i'm going to um talk about uh talk to you something that mr meyer mentioned with regard to the state rule and hmh so this is i sent this to mr to dr moore it's a video of hmh um talking about culturally responsive education culturally responsive teaching it's just a few seconds in the middle of this um conversation um and i want you to hear her name is mrs fulfulker folker flucker f-l-u-c-k-e-r that's her last name um listen to hmh hmhs admission is this concept of culturally responsive education or teaching is really i think one part of sort of a larger whole student approach or puzzle if you will um so so student success isn't just about the cultural responsive uh education component there are um the

184influence from you know administrators and teachers etc what's happening in the home uh right a student's own uh you know motivation and how do you get the the best uh the best out of them there is uh this other sort of academic uh concept called uh critical wellness which is about sort of the pedagogy the critical you know race theory and then and then student wellness and if you kind of get those three pieces right at the center you've got a an idea or a better a better student outcome i think there's a lot of work all right this is on their website directly i'll be free to give everybody the direct link um this is actually admitting that they're using critical race theory within their curriculum and in their the curriculum uh pedagogy or

185in their explanation of kind of capturing what is in their definition culturally responsive teaching so the concerns since we're not going to have a board discussion on this and this is going to be it the concerns are that there is the admission that violates the rule so whether we've seen it in the pages thus far um how do we we're not there is no um there's nothing in writing that will prevent them from adding these items to the future addendums we haven't seen their online versions we haven't seen their take home if there is anything to take home there are addendums and there are edits to curriculum throughout the years they don't just create it one time and then that's it so moving forward board members i think that's something to take into consideration i

186don't think that the community is it's not just what's on the the preface or the the first few pages of of the teacher's guide it's a complete ideology it is a public commitment that hmh has made to this within their curriculum mrs rosario would you quote the source in the name again absolutely thank you it is uh quick conversations culturally responsive teaching okay go ahead and where did you derive this from hmh's direct website at hmhco.com hmhco.com okay and if you can't find it right away you can look for ife quick conversations on culturally responsible okay hold on one second mr meyer would like to um speak to that through the chair uh um we can take a look at that that's the board's discretion but the the way the bid specs are written we

187evaluate the material that's presented to us and those comments are not within the material that's presented to us that we would be procuring to use in our classrooms so hmh is a gigantic multinational company they have lots of different divisions lots of different products they produce this specific bid for the florida department of education was for the the specific components of k-5 ela instruction the hmh into reading florida that is what was reviewed by our team that's what was reviewed by the department of education and those that that is not a component of the product that we would be implementing within our classrooms um one other thing can i ask a quick question the attorney because i want to get some clarification if you don't mind um why weren't board members um at the hearing

188because we were encouraged not to be there we were told not to be there yes absolutely and i sent every board member the same email recommending that you not attend the public hearing that was being conducted by the hearing officer and the purpose of that is that the process or the board policy that was put in place is in steps and i would equate it we've never done an instructional material adoption process which involved a public hearing with a hearing officer so just to equate it to you to some other processes that you may have been involved in over the years as a board member to a student discipline hearing which also involves an impartial hearing officer or to an employee discipline or termination hearing which from time to time will also involve a hearing

189officer and the steps are basically once the board has determined that it needs to follow this process that you then appoint your hearing officer your hearing officer will intake the evidence will intake testimony will intake any documentation or other information and make a recommendation to the school board the hearing officer will decide okay that's relevant we'll hear all of the information about that but there may be a piece of information that the hearing officer determines that's not relevant to our standard of what we're looking at so we won't consider that piece of information although someone may be allowed to to talk about it during the hearing and once the hearing officer in takes all of the relevant evidence testimony any of that information they come up with a recommendation to the board and that recommendation

190is then what's presented to the school board for you to then make a final determination you can review the information you can talk amongst yourselves at your board meeting you can look at other information if you feel it's relevant but the steps are make a determination that you need to have an evidentiary hearing in this particular circumstance just like your student discipline just like your employee discipline or termination there's an impartial hearing officer that conducts the hearing and i make the same recommendation then if it's a student discipline hearing board members should not be attending that wait for the recommendation to come to you if it's an employee discipline or termination hearing you don't attend these hearings with the hearing officer wait for that recommendation to come to you so it was my same recommendation

191with regard to this allow the hearing officer who's been appointed to do their work to intake the information prepare that written recommendation and then review your information and make your decision from there so um while we have never done an instructional material adoption hearing before i'll be the first to say it was the first one here we have done student discipline employee discipline termination matters in the past and it's the same basic administrative process where the hearing officer does their work no board member involvement at that level you receive that written recommendation and then you come back in as board members and make your final decision so that was why i made the recommendation it came from me and i understand there may be comments out in the public that you were somehow shirking your

192responsibilities that is not correct each of you have done a lot of work on this so you're not shirking your responsibilities you're following the standard administrative process when we have a hearing officer kind of in the middle in taking evidentiary information so that's thank you dr jones thank you mr meyer for that clarification on uh critical race theory and that we don't have it um in our our benchmarks one thing when i was looking at the curriculum maps for language arts and math and um correct me if i'm wrong mr meyer it was said clearly that the state gives us the benchmarks then we develop the curricular areas for to support that benchmark so we're basically as a team um curriculum instruction and our coaches and so forth developing the curriculum support for the benchmarks

193to be taught correct that's correct okay and i think that is i really want the public to understand that we're not grabbing from other areas we're not looking at oh this person's doing this or that we're developing the curricular area which is a lot of work for each benchmark and excluding the things we need to exclude thank you anyone else have a comment yeah i appreciate i think mr barefoot's recommendation um i'm fine with moving it to action i think mr barefoot's recommendation to amend the motion um with the included dates to approve what we currently have approved if by a particular date amplify is improved we can give direction to the superintendent to go forward with that um but i i do not think we should delay any further i think it's a disservice

194to our teachers and our district to be honest agree anyone else i do understand um because i've i've and we're going to hear from the public tonight but i have been listening to other concerns and and the website and the forwards and the the tentacles um and this is a hard decision it really is but i also know that the decision is exactly what mr meyer said which could you repeat exactly what our decision needs to be centered on the chair i'm not sure which part you want me to reiterate but i think that it's to make sure that we are you know i guess for me at least is upholding the governor's directive that we eliminate common core and that we implement the best standards at the timeline uh established by the florida legislature

195to ensure that you know we are as a as a board as a district doing things as directed by law and by law we are required to teach this set of standards with uh a set of core and structural materials that meet the science of reading and these are the four choices that we have and our committee has selected one on that list and we need time to get that to our classroom so we can train on it and make sure that our students are are successful and what can we do to ensure that these other components of what might come through is a tentacle or another concern or something in a fire or something in a online resource how are we going to ensure that that's not going to be crt in our schools

196i mean i think that there's going to be a lot of work for that holistically right not just in ela not just in k through 5 but across the district clearly with the state board's directive to make sure that this doesn't occur we're going gonna have to do a lot of training to make sure that any any uh materials that are out there that people may want to try to bring in because that's something that teachers like to do they like to find other things uh that they're not um of that nature right i mean that's our obligation now to make sure that that's not in our classrooms and one that we intend uh to uphold not just for this particular adoption uh but for for all i mean any material that we may have

197but i do think there's maybe some miscommunication misinterpretation of what this means i go back to the state board's rule that's given us a definition um that doesn't say social emotional learning right trying to take social emotional learning and saying well that's critical race theory that's not what the state board of education said in their definition um and and so yeah we we have work to do with that and i do think that you know there's other legislation that has yet to come to fruition that that is very important part of this process also um you know if or when the parental bill of rights is is past we want to engage our parents we want to have a process so that if people feel like this is in our classrooms that we we make

198sure we have that dialogue and we we we know that it isn't so i mean that's work that we know we have ahead of us not just for this for everything else but again but looking at this definition looking at what we are not supposed to do i i have every confidence that hmh still um the product once again i miss rosario's comments are valid uh there's i guess if that's somewhere uh in the hmh sphere that's one thing but it's certainly not in the hmh into reading florida package right i mean and that i guess was maybe one of the things that last friday we the petitioners spent 95 percent of the time talking about things that had nothing to do with the actual and structural materials that are going to be put in

199use in our k5 classes so yes go ahead dr jones let's say amplify gets approved today tomorrow whatever are we 100 sure there's absolutely absolutely no issue with amplify the chair i i would not feel confident speaking for the rest of the community members i think that some of the community members if they were to i mean the same type of concerns i would i'm not going to speak on their behalf but i would assume that there's probably a strong likelihood that many of these community members if they had to do the old pepsi taste test challenge and looked at all these things that they would find similar concerns in each of the products but i go back to the bid specs and that was the case that i presented on friday was that the

200state the state with their ela bid specs required multicultural advocacy there's many things that are within those bid specs that i think that that are why the publishers are doing what they're doing i don't necessarily believe that they were all doing this uh independently i think they're trying to meet the intent of the department of education's uh criteria thank you miss uh dr schiff sorry out of curiosity dr moore i know you're relatively new to the district so this this is either a mr meyer question from his broader experience or it might be a miss dan pierre question just letting you know up front pay attention to the best of my understanding aspects of social emotional learning have been integrated throughout our curriculum for many many years now elementary teachers are told and i'm going

201to paraphrase this badly because i'm not an elementary teacher to teach to the whole child to teach to the social emotional well-being and capacity of the whole child and that has been a consistent element of our curriculum long before we ever started talking about hmh this curriculum adoption new new standards or critical race theory am i correct in that and if you have some timeline for when which you may not this is you may not have that off the top of your head for when this started becoming a thing in the curriculum which i believe may be a decade are certain aspects that were required especially when we had the stoneman douglas um three i would say two and a half years ago there are requirements that we are to infuse certain curriculum dealing with

202social emotional human trafficking and all of that it's part of the instructional process that is handed out from the state and mr uh myers will attest to that we have to submit that how we're teaching it when we're teaching it all of that we have to submit in july of every year has that changed mr myers so so it is only recent that that a connection has been put forward that this is somehow about teaching critical race theory when in fact it has been the work of our and districts across the state at the very least since 2018 but to the best of our knowledge since considerably before that particularly for young children is that true yes thank you it's been a requirement since 2000 i think 2018 2019. okay mrs rosario yeah i've been

203saying for a long time social emotional learning is not critical race theory i've said it over and over again however there are it seems to be not here in this district in other places it seems to be morphing even before my eyes where i'll pick up an educational pamphlet educational institutions everywhere um publishers are changing and adding some of these elements of critical race theory into social emotional learning and it's just it's it's really saddening it's really very sad so we have not had that here in this district social emotional learning in this district has not been shown to have anything to do with critical race theory we have been um we have been i suppose we've adopted it we have it within our instructional materials as well um our focus for a very very

204long time i certainly don't want it to morph and i know that dr moore and i have had many conversations i don't want it to morph as the social industry out there or whomever out there is morphing and mixing um some ideology with some things that are really really critical to the wellness and and foundation of children with that said i wanted to um uh talk to you a point that mrs that dr jones mentioned and that and it just totally skipped my mind right now you meant you had a question um to dr to mr meyer oh my gosh i'm sorry if anyone hasn't selected a book yet it'll come to me okay see it was really addressing something that she just asked you and i i just wanted to it just skipped my

205mind it'll come to me i apologize where's the quick replay what did you just answer her about the standard i mean they developed the benchmarks and we do the correct or was it about the our implementation of you the use of the material yeah i think i think part of it was whether um the community members would see the same things and amplify that's what it was okay yeah yeah okay you got it okay so um in the in the research that i have done um dr jones on amplify what i have found like many other publishers is that you're going to find critical culturally responsive teaching and the elements that seem and appear to mimic critical race theory within culturally responsive teaching it seems like many of the publishers have adopted that um i

206don't even know what it is strategy theory whatever it is because we haven't even defined what it is here in this district culturally responsive teaching so on that front you'll see part of culturally responsive teaching within some of the amplify um i suppose their their their curriculum what you don't see is the blatant outward um public commitment to some of the to all of the things that are within the rule that the doe has put forward so i don't know if that would help you at all with response to um what you asked mr meyer thank you um i have been following along with the adoption committee and i guess the main reason i ask that question is you know again everybody be happy if we have amplify and then all of a sudden other

207things come up because there might be a little bit here a little bit there and and we may have to deal with that but i'm just going to go back to what our students and teachers need and we need to get moving on this if there's a drop dead date that can be brought up tonight but we've got to be moving on this otherwise we are doing a total disservice to our students and teachers with these new benchmarks and like i say we're all hoping that this year is somewhat of a normal year or a really normal year and i don't want to put our kids behind that's the bottom line for me and i've said it before we're not teaching critical race theory mr meyer has talked about what it says and um we've

208got to move forward that's our responsibility um seems like we've exhausted our conversation now but i will say that um it is important that we have a similar conversation tonight i think that the community deserves that they deserve to hear the whys and the questions and the wonderings and i think that's important that's why it needs to be moved to action so could we have that item then reworded moved to action to the chair i'll summarize the the information regarding the the drop dead date and move it to action and if that doesn't accurately capture the will of the board then we can modify it then somebody then a board member can modify it yeah orders of the day i'm i'm sorry can you just repeat that you're going to modify you're going to move

209it to action i will move it to action and from there we can create a um someone can make a motion regarding what the vote would be comparable to or in line with what mr barefoot suggests yeah exactly okay so that i just want to as we move on to the next item i'm going to set up a little tease for this evening because we may have a few people watching the florida department of education just officially released third grade scores we have been waiting for the foot to drop regarding the coat where y'all were going all right i remember that date there what did i say the foot the other foot to drop regarding the impact of the coveted slide um and the state of florida uh went down four percentage points in third

210grade reading the state of florida the state of florida went from i don't have it in front of me but it went down 10 10 50 54 58 to 54. only 10 districts in the state of florida maintained or improved the school district of indian river county was one of those districts who maintained at 60 percent uh moving to a six percentage points above the state african american students improved three percentage points so we are continuing uh to see that and we are a district we don't have percents for every single district but we tested 99 of our students and if that doesn't speak to the caliber of our educators in our classrooms in the midst of a pandemic i don't know what does those are significantly different results across the entire state of florida

211regardless of the models in which students enrolled this district got it significantly better than the overwhelming majority of districts only 10 out of 67 maintained or improved we've hit that mark we've we will improve seven eight nine ten uh rankings in terms of third grade performance and that is significant in the midst of a pandemic so we should be proud of that uh and we'll talk a little bit more about that this evening but now that it was officially no longer embargoed i wanted to talk about it because i've been waiting a week um the next item on the agenda is the school board protocols i want to thank uh miss rosario dr schiff for collecting the notes editing the notes uh nancy epplin myself suzanne we put them together and then sent them back

212to you i don't know if you want to take the time to review this is absolutely your item to to discuss but i just wanted to put it back on the agenda uh for you to have that time thank you um yes dr schiff go ahead and i made the suggestion um that as this is not particularly urgent for today thank you we're almost at four o'clock and we have a long meeting ahead of us tonight that we table this for another discussion i'm fine with that i totally do i think this is an item for school board discussion anyway i i think we're mixing i'm finding a mix of items on the superintendent's uh presentations that shouldn't be there we should have had this on a board discussion item as a board discussion dr

213moore you added it right no through chair i added and i said i would add it at the last meeting because it was a a board priority and i think sometimes just waiting to have a a discussion we don't meet again until uh late july and then the the next meeting is also the first day of school so we're we're technically canceling that meeting so just to continue to have it and then working through board members to to make sure items are being done in a timely manner manner i i obviously do not mind giving up some of my my time to ensure the board has the proper discussion regarding things that are timely i agree to table it i think we've got a good start on our format and gone through about six or

214seven of these and maybe we could just kind of look at these in our time and see if we want to add anything or or delete okay mr barefoot are you fine with tabling that yeah i think that's a good idea okay sounds good next item is uh the parent barrel rights right i asked to put this on there and again this is a mix of our items and and dr moore's however this is very timely um the parents bill of rights i had um invited representative growl to come tonight so that we could actually hear from her exactly what the bill is because there have been some different interpretations of what it is and i wanted us to be able to question her and ask her exactly what the bill entails for the school

215districts to do that bill has not been signed by the governor and he has until next wednesday to sign it so we just felt like it wasn't an item that we needed to discuss right now because it hasn't been signed into law so i am bringing that back in july absolutely okay our final item is mr bass and we've discussed the salary handbook uh individually so he'll quickly review um the salary handbook thank you dr moore through the chair um yeah we a couple of weeks ago board briefings went over with the salary schedule with you just so um everybody's on the same page some people in the district maybe new to the district refer to it as a salary book but it is the same document and a couple of highlights one of the

216things that we wanted to do was to put it in a much easier to read format than it had been previously dr sue and staff worked tirelessly to get that in that format which you have presented before you the only real considerable changes in this document in regards to the format is we remove the um the calendars off of it because we want this to be a salary schedule book we did not want it to be include other things we want it to be singular um you know individuals can go to the website under the payroll section and get those calendars i don't know why we were ever including it in this to start with and then secondly we adjusted the teacher salary schedule steps to reflect the 47.5 changes that were made through negotiations

217and this will be on the board for approval tonight or on the agenda for approval tonight okay board members any comments or questions no man no mr barefoot that exhaustion agenda that is all uh-huh all right well uh unless anyone has anything else i believe we will adjourn the meeting this workshop is adjourned at 3 57. you