Superintendent's Workshop 12 p.m. 2-2-26

001wish to welcome you to the superintendent's workshop being held in the Joe N Idollet Jr. TEC. I ask out of respect to everyone, please silence all electronic devices at this time. And also, if you have any material you wish to share with a board member, please give that to our executive assistant, Mrs. Mo. She's over there. Uh we will take a break every two hours if needed. All right. At this point, I'd like to turn it over to the superintendent >> to recognize. >> Thank you, Madame Chair. Uh, first, we had a very cold but successful start of the school day. Uh, heaters were on, buses were able to run on time. So, it is a regular but cold school day. Um, so very very thankful for the teams that worked this weekend and went

002to work a little bit extra uh early this morning to make sure uh power is up and in and buildings were were hot and warm and welcoming. Uh there's a lot of work to do in our school system. Um but in terms of making sure we come in hot for that number one spot, uh we are well on the way to ensure that that happens. Um work to be done, but we have a clearly defined path on how to get there. Uh we do have a number of presentations for the board um in order to present and receive feedback prior to coming to the board for approval. Prior to doing that, we have to give away our our white hat. We did not do it in January because it was such a quick return and

003I want the white hat recipient to have enough time to wear it across the school system uh from one meeting to to the next. And as I say, every month in starting to do this, uh, I just really and honestly created a a problem for myself because each and every single month, every single one of these individuals, uh, go above and beyond to, uh, be a recipient of the white hat. Uh, so, as hard as it is, this month's recipient has pretty much had a different job in the school system uh, for the entire time that she's been here. Every year under the reorg, she just walks in and says, "Okay, what's my job now?" Um, and this year she took on a a new role when helping us tell our story, helping us capture

004uh who we are as a school system, who we are as people. Uh, and some of the success that we've had this year, some of the relationships that we've been able to build, some of the trust that I know we have been able to establish uh has been under her leadership in telling our story and letting people get to know who we are and how we support this school system. Uh, so Dr. Cara Shaft, you come get your white hat. >> Don't dare put it on her head. I I >> feel like I should crown. The crown is passing. There you go. >> Oh, it looks good on you. >> She's like, >> looks a little big. >> We do have a a number of presentations. Um, Dr. Jacobs will kick us off followed by

005uh Miss Christa Foley meeting into Mr. Green. >> Good afternoon board members. This first item is just a review of midyear entitlement grants um each summer as well as around this time of year either in January or February. You will see the midyear entitlement grants come through. This is for three programs and just a request for approval for to accept those grant awards totaling approximately $358,000. >> Awesome. >> Good afternoon through the chair. So my first item is just a review of the new arrival and departure times. As you know, in the fall, a survey went out to parents and or parents and staff. And I just wanted to report out the numbers. We had 143 responses from family and 567 from staff in the fall. We just sent out another um survey that will

006close this Friday unless we see a need to keep it open. We already have 619 family responses and 266 responses. So on the screen, we have changed, you know, five minutes here, 10 minutes there, but what you see on the screen is a 15minute shift for high school. a 10-minute shift for middle and a 10-minute shift for elementary. So, that is what is part of the survey and we look forward to hearing back with the final responses from all of our stakeholders. Okay. Uh the next item I have is the ever driven >> Can I ask a question about that? Sorry. Are you going to put out another survey? Is that how you're going to get the information from stakeholders? >> It's it's out right now. Okay. >> We put it out last week and

007it has been open for >> It's not here. So, >> okay. We put it out last week and it's been open and it closes this Friday. >> Okay. Thank you. >> It and it has the times that are shown. >> Okay. So, my next item is the Everdriven. Everdriven is a contract company that we use for specialized transportation. Uh specifically, this is asking for increased spending authority to 60,000 to cover specialized transportation for students that have IEP uh written specific in case our buses might not be able to go down that road or turn around on that road. So that's that item. And then the next item and last item is a addendum to the AMN and we have brought this forward before. This is a company that we use for contract services. Last time

008it was for speech um I'm sorry for school psychologist. This time it is continuation of the school psychologist and speech pathologist and this will take us through the end of the year. >> Question Mr. >> Dyer two questions. I mean one hire psychologist is it the pay grade is it what is is it I mean what do we need to do to hire versus to outsource >> so it is due to we are having trouble recruiting school psychologists we are looking at not only the job description but the pay striker obviously we're in the time of negotiation so we're looking at all those things but specifically the school psychologist we are having trouble hiring the speech pathologist not the case it is a FMLA coverage. >> So, so we will always outsource or we're going

009to try to adjust things so we can hire. >> We are going to try to adjust things as a per per DM in the salary schedule moving forward. >> Okay. And one other question on the one before the the the private transportation is for one student, correct? >> At this time. Okay. >> One question. >> Yes. Miss Chrysafoy, how are speech pathologists uh on average, how many schools do they work with or they just go when assigned to a certain student? >> It depends on the case load for the individual school. So some schools have one depending on the case load. There are I think one or two that are split between two schools to for coverage purposes. So it's a case load allocation just like all other allocation models. >> Thank you. >> Mr.

010Rosary, what's the grade level of the student? elementary. You don't have to say the >> I'm not sure of the grade level, but it is an elementary school. >> Just wondering what the plan is long term. Are we going to continue? >> We are looking at quotes for We're looking at quotes. That's all. Um for >> a van. Yes. With a lift. >> Okay. Thank you. >> And and the IEP does cover that. >> Correct. >> Yeah. Um I if I may uh at a some time ago uh with regard to conversation about dual enrollment and maybe having some transportation for our students to go from the high schools to the actual campus IRSC Mueller campus um they would be responsible it was a suggestion on my part that they would be responsible for getting

011home but from our school to that campus to take classes um I suggested small vans small rather than the you know we only have buses we don't have passenger vans um and in I mean obviously our our budget is tight right now but at the time my thought was to have these passion pass passenger vans also available in case you had smaller uh sports teams that needed to go locally and they didn't have to rent a van to get to wherever they needed to be. Um maybe we should look into if that's at all possible securing or purchasing um at least one for you know in this case it would be used as transportation for this one particular student and then if there are any smaller uh sports teams that could use the passenger van

012of whatever it was. I think it was Sebastian River. Might have been last year or two years ago that they had a gosh, I can't even remember. >> Small athletic. >> It was so small. Yeah, it was super small and they were relying on parents to bring students >> what was it? Bowling. >> Yes, >> bowling. Yeah. So, just food for thought. Um that might >> be less cost effective. I mean, more cost effective than um going the route that we're currently going. >> We will definitely look into that. >> Just just an FYI, that's why I had to get a CDL when I was a coach because they had me drive the little bus, the shorty we called it, and then they made me drive a full bus because they said the shorties there

013was some hazard about it. So, we need to look into that. I know 15 passenger vans are out. Um, but maybe looking into something else that does because there was a code that they said it's no longer in the code to drive the shorties, >> which I missed. All right, >> the first item actually item E and F go together. And as you were at the Jimmy Graves, you saw that wonderful piece of property. Well, when we built it, we dug trenches on our property that was donated to us. We put in pipes and water and sewer and stuff and now the city of Vero Beach is providing those utilities to us. We need to just with any real estate transaction, we need to deed some of that easement to them so they can get

014to it and access it and then we'll turn those utilities over to them so that they manage the power coming into our building so that whatever section those utilities are, this is a deed so that they can have access, service them, we're responsible for the utilities for the first year if the pipe broke or the wire and after that then they take over and maintain them. So the first two items um is a bill of sale for the utilities to make sure hey we put it in now you take it over and the second one is for the deed on the property you can access it in this easement. Madam chair if uh point of order if you wouldn't mind I'm going to skip G because that's a presentation that I will do and go

015straight to H and I. Item H and I are very similar. We have two different companies that have won bids with us for low voltage and electrical stuff. These are the phone lines, security camera lines, data, all those lines, as well as our single and three-phase motors that run things on our compressors and air conditioner units and whatnot. Um, they both were awarded a three-year contract that is up. They both agreed to the terms and conditions to extend to the first one of two-year renewals. So, they've agreed to those. So, we'll be bringing that forward at a uh future meeting. Item H is actually a presentation and an update on the health insurance fund. And madame chair, if you wouldn't mind as they pull the presentation up. Um those of you that know me know

016my first job in the district was a third grade teacher at Fels Elementary. So, this is a lot of information. I would like to um approach the screen, present from there. And uh >> I know you brought your pointer. brought the pointer. >> Will change the view. >> This has got to come off. Sorry. >> You got it. >> Get rid of that. >> Anytime. >> You need a microphone. Y >> I will steal my microphone to use it here. I have one. Perfect. Thank you. You're gonna make my hands full where I can't even use my notes. So, uh, just kick me a little bit if I need to move over, Mr. Dire. So, today we're going to give an update on the health insurance fund and just a little bit of a history.

017We haven't really talked about the health insurance fund probably in a 10-year period. So, prior back in 2016, there were some similar things happening and the fund went negative and had to rightsize it and we wrote some policies and stuff to address that. We'll talk about some of that today. And then we've gone along and the climate has changed. The landscape in healthc care in general has changed uh more exponentially than linear over time. So today we're going to do just an update of the fund so we understand it some basics of the program. We'll talk about HITEV the health insurance advisory task force that's just an advisory group that meets every month goes through all the numbers and digests it looks for trends and then makes recommendations. I serve as a non- voting member

018on that, but they make recommendations to myself and the superintendent for things that we could possibly bring forward to the board if we needed to modify or change something. We're going to talk about fully insured versus self-insured. We'll look at revenue. We'll look at expenses. We're going to look at some historical and predicted trends. So, before we go in, I just have to thank my staff and AON actual services. There's been a lot of people doing a lot a lot of research and work over the past week and two weeks to get a long-term um trend analysis so we can really see where we've been and where we're going. We'll look at medical RX. We'll talk about safe harbor. We'll look at um premium and plan design change options and then action plans and next

019steps. And I'm assuming that's so as we do with all of them. There's just a few um acronyms when we get into plans. things such as FAM for family or CH for children, SP for spouse, E is employee and sometimes we'll see employee only. E E er for the employer express scripts. The the really confusing one is PY. Most of the time that's prior year, but it also could mean plan year. And we'll talk about our plan year. It's different than a fiscal year or a budget year or a calendar year for that matter. So, just a few basics of our program. We're self-insured, and we're going to spend some time talking about what that means versus fully insured. Our PY or plan year is October 1st through September 30th. So, this past October actually

020started the new plan year for this year. So, if we do changes at the beginning of the plan year, they take effect in October and then November, we start seeing the revenue come in from that. um or expenses going out. Since we're self-insured, we have to use providers to do some things for us. We use Florida Blue to um do our medical claims and insurance billing. We use Express Scripts for our prescription coverage. our um consultant for actuarial actually it's a long list of services that they provide or AON that's an international company that um really consults around risk managing and managing risk and we have an an on-site employee health center which we leverage proactive as a vendor to manage that for us just to be sure um hi-te is one of those things

021that meet every month they meet and they go through numbers And there are members from IRCA, from C.WA, from non-bargaining, from district staff, from retirees. It's a cross-section. It's in your uh policy that we have it. It's an advisory board to say, "Hey, we've been meeting. We've been looking at it." AON comes and uh serves as our consultant during those meetings and meets with us once a month. They'll have one in person and three or four on the screen from actuarial to prescription to medical to make sure we go through um many of the members on that team have been doing it since longer than 10 years since the first time. So people from transportation and people from um finance all sit on that advisory board, but their purpose is to meet regularly, review that

022and then make recommendations to the superintendent or designate to make sure that the fund is solvent and provides the best care we can to our employees. So what is the difference between a fully insured and a self-insured plan? And here's the best way I can explain it. With a fully insured plan, you're going to pay a vendor, an insurance company to manage all that stuff for you. And they're going to build a profit in and they're going to say, "What's my risk?" And they're going to build in for that risk. They're going to design a plan to you, hand it to you, and say, "Here's your rates and here's your plan." And you're going to say, "Okay, that insurance company assumes that risk, but they design the plans. If the claims come in lower one

023month, they're going to keep that. They don't pass that back in rebates to you. that's the risk that they take. But if the claims are higher, they've got stop-loss insurance to um protect them as well. And they handle all the administration versus self-insured. Many many districts in the state are self-insured. Many governmental agencies actually I was reading a statistic that 67% of governmental agencies are self-insured. You design the plans for the people that are in your organization that best meet their needs. So we to do that we have to collect a revenue to pay for expenses directly and then we have to contract with people to do things we don't have the expertise to do. We assume the risk that if there's high claims we'll have to pay those and we use something called stop-loss

024insurance that we'll talk about to protect us from really really high claims. And then we design plans that meet the needs of employees and we have three different plan designs currently. And then we leverage thirdparty vendors. We leverage those vendors to process when you go to the hospital and you file an insurance claim. We leverage Florida Blue to do that. And we bid those out. AON helps us bid them out every We have a cycle of when we bid out to get the best pricing from United or Sigma or Florida Blue, whoever can give us the best pricing. In doing that, we have stop-loss insurance. So once a claim hits $250,000, they're going to kick in and pay what's over that to keep um you know, a cancer claim could be a multi-million dollar claim

025and could wipe a fund out in overnight a couple high claims. So we use stop-loss insurance which has a premium to it and when people pay in their bills for health insurance, they're paying for that premium to protect the fund. We use a consultant AON to provide all of our actuary. We'll talk about 112. That's a statute that governs. 1112.08 is a statute that governs selfinsured plans for governmental agencies. Um they help us do those filings. There's a there's a four-page document of the services that they provide. Um and they do that through a reimbursement program from each of those vendors. So vision, they get a certain percentage that they share with us and they'll get a rebate. So we don't pay them directly per se. They have negotiated rebates with these vendors that they

026work on and say, "If you're going to do dental with us or vision with us, here's that percentage in that rebate." And then we offer an on-site health center managed by Proactive. So, we pay them directly, but they hire the doctor, the nurses, they hire, they fire, they manage, they do the stuff. We just pay them directly to do that. Okay? And we'll talk a little bit more about some of those as we go in depth. So again in simple terms we have to raise revenue to create a fund. The employee premiums every two weeks on their check go into that fund and the district's contribution every two weeks go into that fund. That's the revenue. That's how we collect the pot of money to be able to pay the expenses that we have. So

027for example, this is uh what we call our low plan. And when we're talking about high, medium, and low, we're talking about not only cost, but we'll say the richness of the plan. So if you want low out of pockets, maybe only a $1,000 deductible versus $5,000, you're going to buy that benefit. So the more rich plan offers more benefits, costs more. This is our low plan and we are responsible for offering a plan to our employees under AC that offers our employee a single employee as a benefit the ability to purchase a plan that can't be more than 9% of the lowest average salary of whatever position in the district. So, you take a position and it's $30,000 a year, take 10%, you can only pay $3,000 a year for the health insurance. I'm

028using round numbers, 10%. So, that first plan, this is our low plan. The premium to do that plan to pay Florida Blue and to get those prescriptions and to have all those benefits cost the district $925 a month out of that pot of revenue. Okay? So, we need to collect that money. And on that plan, there's about 446 members of our employees that are on that plan. So, it's over a quarter of our employees are on that first plan. The district um contributes $885 a month as an employee benefit. It's not a health insurance benefit. It's not a family benefit. It's a benefit to an employee for working here. Um you always talk about salary and benefits. This is a benefit of working here. So when you multiply that out times 12, that's $10,620, which

029is not taxed like your payroll. Like if you got salary, that extra $10,000 you'd be taxed on it. This is a non- taxed benefit to offset your health care cost. So a current plan would leave the employee um a cost of $40 a month. So, if you take that 925 times the $450 people on it and that and you multiply all of those out, all of our plans bring in the $23 million that makes up our fund. And we'll look at that in a minute. That's our revenue coming in. You'll notice that the district monthly contribution from the board is the same no matter what plan you pick. It's not a plan benefit, it's an employee benefit. So even if you choose to cover your spouse, the contribution is towards the employee. If you if

030you choose you need a family plan, the board contribution is still the same. It's contribution to that employee for working here. So then we have to take that revenue, that pot of money, and pay directly for those medical expenses. We're not fully insured. We don't have a company doing that for us. We have to pay those bills. when we somebody goes to the doctor, somebody sees a specialist, somebody has chemotherapy, somebody goes to our employee health center, and then in all those third-party people, there's administrative costs to Express Scripts and to Florida Blue that we have to pay, and those all add up to our expenses. And it's a very um at a high level, it's a simple formula. Revenue has to match expenses. If revenue is higher than expenses, you have a little savings

031and you build what's called a fund balance. you're collecting more dollars than you're spending. If and then you use that fund balance for an unexpected cost or expense. If you are collecting less than your expenses, then you start burning the fund balance down. So I don't expect you actually um well I had a picture of a graph there. Is there a chart there? Pie chart. So in the budget book, I'll show you real quick. Thank you. Um, in the budget book, you remember we passed a $420 million and it had a chart. It had a pie chart that broke those down, right, into funds. So, I want to be very clear. $420 million budget has individual funds and around that is our general fund. That's the core. That's our operating fund. Let's use extended day

032as an example. Extended day is an enterprise fund. We have to charge people money to provide a service of providing before and after care so they can get their child to work to school and still go to work. And then we have to pay the people that monitor them and that provide activities. If the cost of those people go up salary benefits, we have to raise additional revenue. But in the middle of the year, I shouldn't say in the middle of the year, every day of the year, we don't adjust somebody's rate. We don't say expenses went up this month. Let's raise your pay $25 today, you're going to pay $24 tomorrow, you're going to pay $27. We set a budget. We set a rate and we monitor it. That fund could end positive or

033negative. Our general fund is required to cover those negatives. So you'll know there's a state statute that says you have to have a 3% general fund. And after the last health insurance and the great recession, actually when we were here, this board took a action to say we're not going to because if we're at 3%, it's kind of too late. and you have a board policy that says you have a 5% general fund balance meaning un you know unspent dollars unencumbered dollars compared to revenue. Okay, so that fund and then you have food service. Same thing. Food service collects money from parents and from the federal government as a reimbursement to buy food, sell it, and that they might go positive or negative on any given day or month of the year. We don't adjust

034people's food service rate on a daily rate. It's 69 cent today. It's 89 cent tomorrow. It's 49 cent. If they land in the negative, if our expenses, inflation, we have uh product costs go up at the end of the year. If they're negative, the general fund does an inter fund transfer to cover and we readjust the rates or the expenditures to pay that back in the next year or to balance the fund. So the general fund is what's liable for all the others, but within the funds, they can go positive or negative. It's and we're on an acrruel accounting method, not a cash method. So you won't see that in in real time. It's not like I hand cash and then my bank is empty. It's the bills are coming in 60 to 90 days

035and we're doing projections and and acrewing what those u balances are going to be. Statute 112.08 governs governs governmental selfinsured plans. And what it says very simple, it's very brief. It's about two sentences. It says that the governmental agency to be self-insured will have to pay any valid claim older than 60 days. What does that mean? And and how does that become safe harbor? The word safe harbor is a general term we all use on any fund balance to say if you're getting out of a storm, you go in somewhere that's safe, right? A safe harbor. Fund balances are your safe harbor. It's a place to make sure you have a a cushion to handle unexpected expenses in the health insurance fund. So, just like the extended day in the food service, the health insurance

036fund collects premiums and pays bills. And we set that at the beginning of the year or you can set it at the midyear. You can do beginning or midyear premium increases. But on a day-to-day basis, we don't tell someone, "Hey, we had a lot more people go to the doctor yesterday. We need to collect more money tomorrow." And your health insurance rate out of your paycheck go up and down every day. We don't do that. We budget, we plan, we set a rate, we monitor, and then we correct or course correct as we go along. When you do your 112 filing to the state, it's a large packet. AON helps us do that. When you send it in, they're going to reply back, um, you don't have 60 days of claims in your fund balance.

037And when you read an auditor general, they've interpreted that statute. They've implemented it as having two months of claims in your bank account, if you will, in the health fund. And the statute actually says tied to your general fund. You will make sure that if that health fund goes negative, you'll pull it from the g, you'll do just like we do with food service until you raise the revenue to balance that out. Okay. So, two two months of claims currently, we're going to look at some history. Currently, right now, our claims are about $2.3 million a month. So, two months would be 4.6. Tomorrow, that number will change. The the the amount of safe harbor is a point in time. You have to what what day is it? What's our claims that we have out

038there? So, it's not a hardcoded number that stays the same. So, we just talked about it. Collect more than you spend. We have a fund balance. But if the expenditures start going above the revenue, then you start drawing down that fund balance and then you have to course correct. And if you draw down more than the fund balance or have a negative fund balance, the general fund we there's not a pot of money over here and a pot of money over here. The general fund is the pot of money and we shift interfund transfers, but from an accounting standpoint, we keep them separate so we can see how the funds are doing. Okay. So, let's look at some trends of where we've been this chart. And it and I don't expect you to um understand

039all of these and all of these, but I want you to look at the trend. Look at the squiggly line up and down. And just know these are month by month and it skips every month just because you can't fit it from 17 January of 2017 and we just got the latest data for December. Uh well actually that's through 111 of 2025. The blue are medical trends and what this says is in a 12 month rolling average is the trend higher or lower than the 12 month before. So when you're looking here at zero this blue dot that 12-month rolling average is the same as the 12-month rolling average before. premiums and expenses are going along. When you see a blue dot here, let's see, find one. Here was one. Negative 15% that means the

040rolling 12 month average in the prior 12 months was 15% lower than the 12 months before. So you can see a trend and say medical claims are trending lower than the year before. uh orange are your prescriptions and gray is the total. So as you look at this chart, you look at trends over time. Just prior to this, the fund was $5 million negative. And over a two-year period, um employees rates went up, board contract. I mean, there was a lot of things that happened and we had to write to the state to rightsize it. and the fund got rightsized. You can kind of see that through here through 17 and 18 for a couple years and then you'll see trends up and then trends down. And when I show you the contributions, you'll kind

041of see that this averaged out over time because the board contribution around $453 here, went up to $540 and stayed that way for a while. And then if you start putting things on the map like COVID, uh, you know, you're coming over here in 20 and you're drawing a lineup and then we're not going to the doctor, we're not in session, things are happening and the metal. This does not mean it's the exact cost. It means the costs were 15 to 20% lower than the year before on a 12-month average. And then you see and I think we were probably closed from what March through the summer came back the next year in like a phased approach and then you'll see a shift in the medical. Now medical and prescription together are expensive but bar

042none medical expenses are more than prescription expenses. So when you have medical expenses that are 40% above the year before that's huge. And then you'll see it come down and then you'll follow prescriptions and you pro you can go research lots of things GLP drugs way over here but they kind of you know the really hit the market in sales here. So you'll see some prescription cost but then you'll see medical and you'll see how quickly within a month or two months time those claims are down. And then here you'll see a dramatic drop. And in a minute I'll compare another chart. During that time the fund balance grew to $7.8 million. The safe harbor was about 4.3 at the time and HIT was looking at that saying okay now we've collected too much premiums

043maybe. However we have a I don't want to call it a policy. It's not a policy. We have a an acting um way of work within high-tech to have two times safe harbor. It's like having 5% instead of 3% fund balance because if you're at it, you're already eating away when it starts going down. So two times safe harbor would be around $9 million. We were bumping that and considering what's called a premium holiday. We've done that in the past where if we start collecting revenue and the expenses are going down then we need to give some money back to the people that are putting it in the fund and maybe in March no one would have to pay a medical premium. Back then it was probably a million million and a half a month.

044So that would draw a million of the fund balance down if we did that. Does that make sense? And after reviewing it we said no we're not quite at two times safe harbor. Let's hold tight. Let's see how the trend goes. And this dramatic decrease in the 12-month average of cost compared to the 12 allowed the fund to put close to $8 million in that fund balance. And we're going to look at some revenue charts in a minute. And then you'll see an dramatic exponential and very short time. We're talking about a month and two-month period here. Not a year, not 10 years. We're talking about a month and two months and then a leveling off. And when I go to the next chart, you'll see on 10 of 24, we did a 6.8% increase

045to the fund here, which if that would have leveled off, that was anticipated to match revenue to expenditures. And then that year keeps going. And what happens from here to here? It spikes up to an all-time high of 50% higher 12-mon trend than the year before. And when you look at the time frames, you're talking months here, not years from January of 20. So we're talking just last January, February, March, April, coming in to this plan year, which was 10 October of 25 when we did an 18 12% increase to make up for what the trend was showing. Okay. So, the reason I put this slide directly behind it is you can kind of if you took all those squigglies and averaged them out in 2016, the board contribution was $453 per employee per month.

046Good. That's that's on the health plan. And it went up to 5.40. And for one, two, three, for all those years that premium stayed the same. And most of these years, the percent increase of the board and employees have stayed the same. And we'll talk about how a percent increase on the board contribution is much much higher than a percent increase on the employee contribution because the board contributes currently about 67% of the revenue to the plan. And we'll talk about that. But then you can see that even though that high spike and that low spike averaged out, you can see how that's kind of followed that trend over time with the 8.85. And what's important to keep in mind that amount started last October. So the revenue for that has only been coming in

047since November December. And that's the latest data we have to share with you. November, December, and now we're still collect, you know, reconciling January that just ended. So if we take and annualize those premiums that 8.85 a month or way back that 453 a month or that 540 a month and we multiply it by the number of people in 2017 that that was actually 5.40 40 a month per employee times 12 times the number of employees which back here there were probably close to 1,900 people on the plan that generated from the board's contribution $10.2 million of revenue. The employee contribution, whichever plan they picked, generated 8.3 million. And at that point, the board's contribution was around 55% of the total premiums coming in. The premiums coming in at the time were up $18.5 million.

048And you can kind of follow, remember, it stayed level for a long time. And then those board contributions started going up until this is a projected number still. We are in the middle of the year. We don't have final numbers. It's based on I think November's uh membership of how many people we have. But there's an interesting trend because I know I pay rates. We all pay rates. I know employees rates have gone up 2% 4% 6.8 though. So why would this line be flat? There's less people on the plan. So currently sitting here is about 1,600 right now and the prediction for next October we always have a plan change is around 1520 1520 members on the plan and some of those are retirees as well pre65 and post65. So there's about 1390 actual

049active working employees contributing in the plan. So even though the individual cost might be a 2% raise or a there was no raise in a lot of these. So if there was no raise oh we had more people that year maybe more employees. So you can look at that trend but the board contribution has grown exponentially. So currently today um actually this is the most accurate this is I don't want to say it's not accurate but it's projection $21 million fund at the end of last year with the board contributing 13.4 million and the collections from employees at 7.7 million and that now the board is at 64% of the premium. So, if we were to do a 10% increase, for example, that would be $879,000 here, it'd be 1.5 million here because the board

050is contributing the largest share. So, percentages to people sound there. It's hard to talk percentages when the numbers aren't the same. So, when when somebody says, "I got a 10% on my health insurance," that surely doesn't equal a 3 or 4% in a raise. Cuz if you're on that $40 plan and you got a 10% raise, that's $4 time 12. But if you got a 3% raise on a $40,000 salary, that's $1,200. So, it's hard to talk percentages. A 10% increase for the board employees sounds like we're equal and both are doing the same amount of contribution. But a 10% would be 879. A 10% here would be almost uh 1.6 million just because of the variation. So we raised rates last October 18 and a half. Why are we here talking about this? Because

051trends happen all the time. Claims happen. Things happen. people get procedures and as we've gotten new data from October and we've monitored the plan and we're already looking forward to next October, what will we need to bring into the plan to pay the expenses? And AON has run those numbers, our actuarial numbers, and they've said the plan needs to grow from 24.5 million to 31.6 million. That's a 30% increase to the pot of money overall. They are expecting based on everything we have that our expenses will be 31.6 million. They're using two years of data and they use the most previous year at a 70% waiting. It waits the most. So again, it's a trend. Here's what I'll liken it to. We do projections for students every year since 1973 when the FEFP started and

052the state got really, really good at it. Right? They have our data and they know the progression of our kindergarteners to first grade, first grade to second grade. They know it down to the level of the codes of the student. 254, 255. And they run those math formulas, not knowing anything about our kids or our community. They run a math formula and tell us you're going to go to 16,000, 16, 500, 17,000. They had those predictions down to a science until something came along that broke their model. Well, because it was exponential. The growth in family empowerment scholarships was not linear. It wasn't something they had in their history. Go back to 19 or 21. We're talking about family McKay scholarships of 99 kids. We had 99 kids on Family McKay scholarships for several years

053in a row. And then the numbers went to 151,600 20 this year 22 33 students and projected for next year 2,600. So in a fiveyear period, that's an exponential growth. So their projections are wrong. Let me give you an example. We were at 138 and they told us we were going to go to 134. And what does that mean? They're going to fund us a whole lot less money, but we didn't come in at 134. We came in at 13627. Because we know what we're doing here. We are developing programs to attract kids. We're redesigning our educ. They don't put that in their math formula. They don't know what's happening here. Martin County is down 500 FTE or 300. St. Lucy's down 500. We are up 250 FTE from the budget to October based on

054the numbers. 82 of that 81.5 is family empowerment. The other 150 is us. 150 at 10,000 bucks a kid. That's a million half dollars. But they could not predict that our actuarials can only use the data they have in the past to predict future performance. They can't predict for cancer um diagnosis last month. They can't predict um an end of life patient going three years, two years, 5 years. I mean this is sensitive sensitive stuff, but we're talking about the reality of the expenses in the claim. And why couldn't somebody tell us it was going to be 30%. Now remember, we're starting to get predictions for next October. This is a long process when you're doing prediction. You can't just pull those numbers out on October 1st. You've been reading the numbers, running actuarials, you

055know, doing that stuff. So their trends can only use the data they have. People will ask me, well, are their trends correct? Are their predictions wrecked? And I would say they are absolutely 100% correct to the math formula they used and the data that went in it. But is it correct to what happened to humans after that? They can't predict that. They can't predict it. So that is what um based on the trends that is what the fund will need to generate $31.6 million to be solvent. That's not addressing the fund balance at all. that is matching revenue to expenses. So now let's take a look at the fund balance here. So the blue line is the fund balance and remember I was saying it's around $7 million. The orange line are expenses medical and

056RX expenses medical and prescription. The dotted orange line is just a regret. It's a linear regression model to say what's that trend. It's a trend line. Simple. And the blue line is or the uh green line is revenue premiums collected. Revenue. So when the expenses went down, what happened to the fund balance? Went up. When the expenses went up, what happened to the fund balance? Went down. Expenses go down, fund balance goes up. Expenses go down a lot. Fund balance goes up a lot. Make sense? until we get here. Expenses go down, fund balance, and here we're sitting. We are now a year and a half ago. Not 10 years ago. We are a year and a half ago, 2024, July, and the expenses dramatic increase. If you look at the average, you're talking 1.2

057million to 3.6 and that had an equivalent draw down on the fund balance. Do we go on that particular day and raise all the rates accordingly? No. Because what happens right after that a drop with the monor and that drop levels off. And now we're in October, not this past October, but the octo October before of 2024. And if you watch this green line, if you can see it, there's a bump in revenue right there. The green line goes like that because on 10124, based on these trends, we implemented a 6.8% increase to match the revenue to expenditures and we're we're close. Even expenditures comes back down. It's close. We're right there. But the trend is not the actual that we're monitoring monthtomonth is saying okay but the trend is not. We go down, we

058put a little bit extra in the fund balance, and then all of a sudden it starts going up and up. And now the trend, notice, $1.5 million a month times 12, $18 million up to $2.5 million a month on the trend. That's a million dollar a month more in expenses on the train, which is $12 million. So, at this point, it starts drawing down that fund balance that we had at $7.8 million. We're using it instead of every day your rate's going to go up. We're going to adjust your rate. No, we're going to use that fund balance that we had, that safe harbor. Now, when we get here, we're going below zero. So at this point, remember that general fund is there. So part of our commitment to the state is that general fund

059protects everything. We're going to be using general funds to pay that deficit. That's how that 112 works. If you go negative, if you go positive, you build up a fund balance and you could do an inter fund transfer and pay it back like we do with food service. And now if you look here in 101 of 25, what do you see? Another jump in revenue and it's larger. We did an 18 12% increase because that's what the trends were telling us we needed to do. And if you look at an expense level, we came close, but the trend is not going down or leveling off. We've been monitoring the data now since this, which this was last October. Last October. That revenue doesn't start hitting until November. So, we're talking November and December. We're coming

060out back after a break monitoring saying, uh, uh, you know, it's a great prediction based on the math formula, but it's not what's happening to humans in Indian River County. So, what's happening to humans is a different trend than the math formula. We need to we need to really dig in and start making. So that revenue has only been collected for November and December and now January, which we don't have all that balance. And currently today, we have a negative fund balance. We have a $235,000 negative fund balance in the health fund. Doesn't, you know, bills are coming in and we're paying. Doesn't mean there's no money to pay the bills. It means when bills come in the next time, we're going to get revenue next month. We're going to bring in all those premiums

061and that'll jump it up and then we're going to spend it. And then so it fluctuates on a day-to-day basis. We're not getting any revenue today because a paycheck didn't go out. So the the fund balance will decrease decrease and then we'll get a million dollars of rebates for prescriptions and then it'll go up to a positive fund balance. What we have to project is what's it going to be on June 30th when we do our AFR when we finalize out. And currently that projected fund balance is projected if all the trends stay the same to be negative $1.7 million in the health fund. So why is this happening so quickly? Well, we have I want to be very very careful because I you know I don't want to uh compromise individual people's healthcare. So

062I'm going to speak in generalities, but we have had lymphas, leukemias, liver transplants, heart trans. We've had and there's drug therapies and there's new drug therapies that weren't there before to treat some of these um conditions that have higher medical costs than ever. You read any pull up any article on health and you'll see the inflation rate that's happening on all those costs on prescription and on medical trends. Um, so that cost from October which was going to is not leveling off. It's not following the experience curve. It's continuing to increase. So the health insurance fund you saw went from 23 million to 30. It needs to bring in an additional $1.7 million of revenue next year. That's from next October to the following September. >> 7.1 Thank you. 7.1 million to get to that

06330 million. And that would match revenue to expenditures. But the general fund next year, you would want to put your safe harbor in a place where the general fund is the cushion but not the source. So to do that, you would need to put back 4.6 million. You don't have to do that overnight. You have to submit to the state a plan every year of how you're going to do it, right? And the plan has to say you're going to raise rates, you're going to change the plan, you're going to be actuarily sound to be able to provide that level of funding. And it's just a direct correlation. I believe the projections for medical are about 3.9 million, prescriptions are about 2.1 million, and the rest is smaller stuff to provide the clinic. You know,

064people get raises. See, you got to have a little 8% increase for this particular thing or you got to have an increase in the small stuff. The big big stuff are medical and prescription costs and claims. That's the largest largest portion of anything that's going up. So, as we talked about before, that monthly contribution is an employee benefit, not to the family plan or the spouse plan or the child. It's an employee benefit for working here. If you look at um those benefits annualized to these three are exactly our size. Martin Citrus and Charlotte and St. Lucy is nearby. So we have a nearby larger school district and three very similar sizes. So in Martin County, the board's contribution a month times 12 is $6,500 for that employee. In Citrus County, it's 7200. In Charlotte,

065it's 7,300. In St. Lucy, it's 7600. In Indian River County, that contribution is $10,620. So for every employee we hire, no matter what position, if it's in the federal fund, if it's in the food service fund, if it's in the health fund, any employee we hire, we have to budget and have $10,620 per employee of non- tax. It's not income. So it's um we could take that we could match 6,500 of Martin and have $4,000 to put in additional raises. It's one way or another. But this gives the employee a tax incentive because it's not income. It's offsetting medical bills, which makes that 10,600 or that $4,000 difference more valuable than 4,000 because you're not paying income tax on, if that makes sense. So, in looking at all of that, um, on the left are

066our current three plans. at a high level, the various deductibles, the various co-pays that's are existing. And if you look and and I've looked at many many other plans, you'll pull up districts and their deductibles are 11,500 on some of those families or even 15,500. But if you look back at the chart of that long period and a 7.8 8 million fund balance, we were able to provide rich plans for a long period of time at those rates. But as you've seen, the medical and prescription costs are growing exponentially. So you can do one of two things. You can raise a premium to collect the money or you can design the plan differently that generates dollars. Design plan generates less dollars than premiums. Okay? So, for example, on the right and it says scenario 8,

067and I left that on there, and it doesn't have a lot of context to you, unless you've been in hightech the last few months back and forth with running multiple scenarios. No, this doesn't generate enough money. This doesn't generate money. Look through this ortho, look through this, look through that, what it would be if we upped this, what if we up that? And after eight scenarios, the plans on the right are what Hi-Tech has recommended this last month in January when they met that the plan design changes for next year would increase the co-pays. So now we're talking I'm going to pull out my third grade pointer that we used. Individual deductibles going up $500 depending on the plan you're on. individual 3,00 to 3500 2,000. So a $500 deductible increase on individuals and a

068$1,500 family from 3,000 to 45 6 to 75 and 9 to 105. So everything on the right in yellow is a change from our current plan. If it's in white, it's not a change. >> That's twice a month, right? >> Well, this is just your deductible for the year. Deductible. This is your deductible for the year. Good. Um the co the the uh out of max out of pockets going up $500. $500. And then the family max out of pocket going up a,000 a,000 and more than a,000 on this plan. As you go down, you'll see primary care office visits up five or $5. Specialist visits up $15. urgent care up 25 or 10 depending on the and again we've run these numbers eight different times to say what if we did that how many

069people would shift over here and then put it back. There's there's designs that say when you make these changes you'll get a certain amount of revenue out and you'll get a certain amount of people that'll stay on the plan. And then one of the things that the the bigger changes are down here in the formulary and specialty individual month and your mail away like your three months. And you'll see that some of those are double or two and a half times higher. So that is collecting extra revenue for non for formulary brand things. Oh, Zimb, wagi, humor, all those brand things will now collect more revenue to offset their expense in the plan. So all of these plan changes are estimated to generate 565,000 over the October to September 30th. Now if you remember we

070needed to collect 7.1 million to match revenue and expenditures. That plan design scenario 8 which started at only 100,300 that generates $565,000. the premiums. So, just be very I I want to be very very clear. We're not talking about board or people or anything. We're talking about the premium, the amount of money that plan costs us to have. Currently, that plan costs us 920. We're going to collect $925 to pay for that plan. 446. Okay, that's right. 446 employee only, not covering spouse, children, family on that plan. That premium is going up $36 a month. That premium is going up $36 a month. A 30% increase, but again, it's hard to say um percentages on those. When you come down to an employee covering a spouse, we have 42 of our active members on that,

071that premium is going to be up to 2042 or $554 more a month to collect the premium to cover that particular plan. And the spouse's claims employee, not a spouse, but just children on the plan. This is spouse, no children. This is children, no spouse, is going up $531. and an employee and a family is going up to 2361 or a $700 $77 a month increase in the premium to generate enough revenue to pay for the expenses in the fund. This is the middle plan. So again, you're paying more money for the plan to get richer benefits, less deductibles, less co-pays, less out-of- pockets. People make those decisions based on how they use the plan, how their children use the plan, who they're covering. The current monthly premiums are on the left. These are these

072are what Highte has made a recommendation that they would need to be to get to $31 million at the end of the day in the plan instead of $23 million. So accordingly, employee only. So remember the 446 number, we have about 1391 plan members that are active employees. So 446 now we're at 660. So half of the employees on our plan are on that $36 increase or this $154 increase when you look at the numbers. And then smaller numbers as we do but a larger impact. >> That says the middle plan, right? >> Yes. >> And the last one. >> Then the last one is the high plan. >> No, the one before. >> Oh, that was the low plan. Did I mislabel it? >> Okay. >> Low plan. >> So the low plan is

07336. The middle plan then if they choose that >> is 154. If you're employee only and remember that's our obligation is to under 112 is to apply employee only plan. >> Um and the board contribution is for the employee benefits. So 446 are going up the 36 bucks if they stay on that plan. 222 are going up the 154. Now, of course, if you're one of these 92 and you're covering a family and you want your co-pays and deductibles to be a set amount, then it's going up $912 a month. The plan at this point, this is the plan. It's not the board or a person. It's the plan. And then there's the high plan. So the high plan, there's another 187. So 2 48 we're talking 900 of the 1300 people on the plan

074are going up 36 125 or 285 and then people who cover other people 956 923 or 1154 if they stay on that plan. >> Bruce question these plans are from the ACA the Obamacare guidelines. There's not been a change now. Still the is that what we're >> So we have to meet certain things like that certain that employeeonly plan on the low plan that meets the OA requirement of having a plan that is no greater than 9% of the lowest salaried person that's a full-time salaried person in the employee. >> But it also specifies what the plan must carry. Yes. >> Which is different. And if you're redesigning plans, there may be things I understand that now you don't have to have all the >> the pieces. And then one other quick point, you keep

075saying the board contribution. I think that sounds good. It sounds like there's a separate pot of money out there that's discretionary from the board. It is the district operating budget. That budget can go for health care. It can go for salary. It goes for academic materials. It goes for operations of the buildings. So, it's it's it's the same one that we get from the local and state taxes is our revenue. It's the same budget. >> And so, I'm going to rename it the general fund contribution. >> Thank you. >> It is the general fund contribution, >> right, >> to that. It's the amount the board approves or has to, but it's the general fund contribution to all of these funds. >> But we approve every expense. >> That's right. You approve every expenses in the

076>> budget different than anything else than a salary increase. >> You you're absolutely and that's why I want to make the comparison to the fund might be negative but the general fund's responsible. We have to make those decisions. Food service we've rightsized it and that general fund is where those contributions they for salary. >> If you pay more here you have to do less somewhere else because our revenue totally for the district is not increasing. >> Right. And a lot of times we'll get it the budget will increase. Well, the budget might increase because for example, if the health insurance fund goes from 21 to $30 million next year, when you look at our budget, it will look $7 million bigger. The budget will be $7 million bigger because the budget is going to budget

07730.1 million for health insurance, not 23. Revenue for the general fund didn't increase, but we're collecting more money into the health insurance fund. If extended day gets a whole lot more people in and raise their fund by a million dollars, the budget will go up a million dollars. That's not general fund dollars. Food service, Mr. O'Keefe has done an outstanding job of increasing participation. He's going to increase the revenue coming in and the budget for food service. Not any additional general funds, but the budget will look bigger. >> Those funds, if that makes sense. The general fund budget is now when you look at it from a state level and you take out all of the funding, family empowerment and all the way down, you're talking about $24 million state funding and the rest local.

078So you take that 165 million, take off 25 million for charter, 25 million for family empowerment. Yes, that is the general fund. So what's happening right now that we saw October, we saw November, December not trending the way that the the math formula said. We have lots of things going on. We're looking at all different types of models. We have people coming in to look at the models, fully insured model. So you can go pull another plans district and look at a fully insured model and say they have better plans and it's cheaper. Their plans are based on their rates. Let me use an example. our stop-loss insurance that to be able to cap our expense at $250 per person and 275 aggregate. And what that means is if Chair Baronborg had $300,000 worth of

079claims individually, they would say $250 that extra 50,000 would go towards the aggregate. It's like an individual and family. Once we got to the 250 per person, 275 overall, they kick in that plan to do that because we had eight high claims the prior year over 250 and 27 high claims over 125,000. We bided out to six stop-loss vendors. Five of them refused to bid. Only one vendor would bid based on our claims in our district, not the people in Charlotte or Citrus or Martin. Based on the experiences of the health care costs of our employees, that's how they priced the plan. We've already engaged in that fully insured and anecdotal sometimes is not the best, but I'll use it. Their exact reaction was that is going to be very, very, very expensive based on

080your claims. >> Yeah. Fully insured plans are good in the first year. >> Yeah. >> And after that is the actual history. So you would see with a fully insured plan, if we had 31 million that we needed in expenses, it' be 31 million plus their profit. >> So you know, it works the first year and after that is really what happens. >> And on top of it, that first year is called a buyout. People buy out people's plans. They buy you out of self-insured. They don't. And they say they're going to bring you that first year low cost, not low, >> right? but not the full cost. And then after the second year, they're going to hand you a plan and say, "Here's the new cost." Unless you don't have any experiences, unless your

081medical and prescription just doesn't materialize, they're going to say, "Hey, we're good." But they're going to plan for their profit and their risk built in. We're looking at reference base where you contract directly with a doctor. You don't go through insurance. We're looking at level funded. Level funded is like fully insured, but there's a provision to provide you a rebate if there is savings. Again, they're going to build their profit in. We're evaluating insurance cares. I just want to make it very clear. This is not we're going to go bid out Florida Blue on our billing and save $7.1 million. That's not what this is about. It's not about a bidding. We bid our stuff out every year to get the lowest prices. This is about the actual cost of the medical and prescription claims

082coming in. We're looking at every return on investment of every service that's in that plan so that we can develop a plan that might eliminate some of those things that aren't needed or required anymore and might not be providing a return on investment. And we're also, you probably many of you schoolboard members have heard of Fleet, the Florida Educator Health Trust. It's not a consortium like we have for Scrimp with Scrimp on our property casualty and workers comp. We have a true consortium was established years ago and there's a risk sharing pool. That's not what that is. But there's a lot of benefit to it, especially stoploss. They can bid that out. Our stop loss is locked in till the summer and then we're going to look at whether that's a benefit or not. So

083in the short term based on all these things that are happening, we're just now entering into negotiations. We started last week. We're u with IRCA. We have CWA coming up next week. So we're starting to negotiate salary and benefits and everything else that's in the contracts. So that work is starting and we're in an information. This is this is the most current information I can provide you through December 31st coming back and putting it together in the absolute quickest time we can give you every bit of information because if we didn't look at those trends for November and December and they dropped and the trends went down and we said hey these rates are going to go up that would not be a good thing to do right we want to be basing it on

084the actual human experiences that are happening so plan modifications. I want to just take a minute to explain something. We are projected if nothing changes and the claims stay like they are on the projection to have a 1.7 negative fund balance on June 30th. What AON has told us and what Hi-Tech has reviewed is that if you were to do a midyear, remember October to September is our plan year different than fiscal. So midyear is April 1. So why is in the world is anybody talking about April 1st in the middle of a April Fool's. Wow. Um why is anybody talking about April 1st? It doesn't correlate with anything except our health insurance midyear. That would be a midyear plan time to make an adjustment. We do open enrollment once a year in August. Sign

085you up for October. Well, we can do a midyear plan adjustment called a life event where we change plans or premiums to collect the revenue. those plan changes that we looked at and those premiums that were presented, the premiums will generate about $560,000 $567,000 a month. So, April, May, and June is $1.7 million. So if we were to put those premiums, no matter who paid for it, if you paid for all, if the employees paid for all, if we didn't matter who paid for it, if we collected that amount of premiums from April, May, and June, the fund would end zero and the general fund would not be shifted over to cover it. Does that make sense? Mhm. >> Then on July 1st, because our plan year is October, July, August, and September would be

086another three months of $567,000 of premiums, that would put $1.7 million back into the fund towards the $4.6 million safe harbor. You'd have 1.7. The plan design changes are about 565 or 600,000. That would then add another 600,000. So at the end of the year, you'd end about a little over two 2.1 or 2.2 and you would show the state we're halfway back to safe harbor. Probably take a two-year plan to get back to safe harbor and we would have matched revenue with expenses. So what we're looking at doing and we're in negotiations, but one of the things and we'll discuss today, one of the things that we're looking to do, it's a short timeline. This has happened October, November, December, two months. We're here in February talking about it. And these this will imp

087impact people's lives is to try to offset that April 1st date and not have that premium fall on employees on April 1st. But is there a way to shift that to July 1st to give people more time to plan? The increase has to come at some point, but when it comes is the determination of how we can offset it. So, we're looking at an investment on the behalf of of employees to try to get through this fiscal year and then have those rates change. And I believe now I'll go sit down. I just as as we turn around um and we'd be more than happy to answer any questions or or receive any feedback that you might have, but if you were to look back to that last slide based on how fast this is

088happening, when you're looking at the projections and and the eb and flow of information, um in in my mind, our our goal is to protect our employees absolutely the best we can. Um I think the board should be proud of the quality of support or services that we're providing through our plans, the richness of the plans, uh and the investment we collectively had. So if you were to go back and look at the significant increase that we have invested in terms of healthcare, uh it's over the last four or five years. Um and it was the strategy, it was actually being uh in service of our employees. Uh the world has changed. Uh we need to respond to that. I will not bring a recommendation uh that immediately impacts our employees. So I am committed

089to saying we are going to have to tighten our belts even harder than we've already uh tightened them. Uh review how we spend each and every single nickel through now to the end of the year to provide that offset of $1.7 million. So the function and service and contributions of our employees does not change uh for the remainder of this school year and then go into negotiations uh with our employees to align their compensation for the upcoming school year, their raises uh to this increase. As an example, uh we have already negotiated and agreed upon a increase for our teachers um who are highly effective and effective which in the amount of >> 1,500 for highly effective annual and 1125 for effective annual. >> So one of the things that we did in last year's

090negotiation is say hey you earned that money this year at based on your outcomes or your evaluation. We want to give it to you this year. So aligning those two things helps offset uh the impact. Is it great? No. But it does it afford the opportunity to receive additional compensation aligned to an additional deduction in terms of services. It also allows us five months to go out and meet with employees to review. they can hear this presentation a little abbreviated um from Bruce or myself and and then engage with our teams the change or shift in services that they're currently receiving. I have the highest plan looking at everything considered I'll go to the medium and low uh that in addition to my additional compensation uh this is the impact to me. We will do

091the same thing with CWA. We'll do the same thing um with our our non-bargaining members. So when we walk into the new fiscal year, uh we've done everything in our power uh to offset what is required in terms of right sizing the fund balance and moving towards a a better position while at the same time doing what we've always done uh work handinand with our employees uh to resolve what is a everchanging shifting reality for our employees. >> So with that >> I saw Mr. Dyer's hand go up. So, Mr. Dyer, >> yeah, I I just wanted to say to start off, Bruce, I I've looked at these type of presentations for probably 25 years for corporate, having been faced with many of the same uh decisions that the school board is being faced with.

092And I just would like to say that is probably the best most understandable presentation of health insurance I have ever seen. Uh I think that you did just a phenomenal job >> third grade teacher >> of providing the analysis and the presentation. I think it was absolutely terrific and I've never seen one better. >> So that's to start with. Secondly, I I think that we do have to do something probably with the plan design when we get to it. I heard what Dr. Moore said. He's already cut $7 million. We've now cut from consolidating schools at probably another three or four million dollars. >> 2.6 >> two in year one will get >> two in year one. So uh I mean we are we are doing all we can uh to uh find money and

093I'm glad that we're putting putting that towards keeping it the way we can through the end of the year. I would like to say that I think that this brings up another big point and that is our revenue that we get from the state and from the local government is the thing that is fixed. I think it points out further how underpaid our teachers are. Forget the health insurance for a minute. I look at it kind of total. I mean even though we're fifth in the state, the state is 50th in the United States. So, we are totally underpaid and I think that we need to do something to try to do more revenue. We've got an A district. We have a a district that is accountable to student results. We have a district that

094is innovating. And I think that we need to do something to get more revenue, meaning probably another uh millage request to be able to pay our teachers adequately because this is a never is going to be never ending. Health insurance until they basically change what we have to cover is never going away. And I think that it's uh something that we need to do. We've got a district that is on fire, that is innovating, that's doing great things. We need to pay our people correctly. And this just points out how badly Florida and uh even though we're doing better than the state as a whole, I mean, it's great. We're we're ranked fifth, but we're fifth in the state. So, uh at least we're keeping up w with that. We're we're trying to pay our

095teachers as fairly as we can, but we need to do something to increase the revenue so we can treat people right and so we can innovate. So that's my point. >> Doc Johns, >> I would concur with uh Mr. Dyer, Mr. Green, that was wonderful. I reviewed the PowerPoint several times this weekend and I made a few comments. Uh Dr. Moore, saying that you and Mr. green will go out to the schools is so uh impactful because people are starting to hear this and I think it's important that we talk to them. I'm glad you're involving IRCA and CWA because you know we are self-insured. It's our people taking care of our people. We have to do our best. I've done all the research with self-insured and fully insured and the differences, but self-insured is

09610 to 15% less um for the that's the rising cost of fully insured all the time, right? After a year, then they'll start taking the profits and it costs more. Um again, just working together with our employees is important. And what Mr. Dyer just said, I didn't have that on one of my notes, but it's so powerful. We're at the bottom of the totem pole for per pupil expenditure and um as Dr. Pasca said when we look at our um our numbers they're going lower. I mean we're they're going lower because we have lower students because of family empowerment. Now I've said a hundred times I'm for for school choice but this affects us in many many ways and we're seeing that effect here in insurance and I know I sat I was not on

097the high committee but when I came back to the district after I was in Gainesville uh I went to a few of their meetings and they're very conservative. They are really looking at how we can work together so that it doesn't cost us a lot. Um, when you look at what the board is contributing compared to other districts around us, I think we're doing a pretty good job. But again, that's not a separate that's not a se it's coming from that general fund. So, it's not like we have extra money here or extra money there. Um, I'm glad our FTE is up a little bit. Hopefully, it stays that way, you know, and we can get that 1.5 million, but that's just a drop in the bucket for what we have to do. Uh, the

098stop gap for high claims. Um obviously we can continue to look at that but when we look at um if someone said I want to compare it to other districts you really can't compare because it's based on actual medical expenses. Is that correct Mr. Green? >> Yes. >> Okay. I read when I took the notes from the PowerPoint I wanted to make sure I didn't get them wrong. Um, but I I just think again with what we're doing in this county, uh, we have to look at, uh, what we can do to get more money. You know, the state again is not giving us per people expenditure like we would want, but we have to look see what we can do and continue to do the best that we can do because you know what?

099We have to keep our teachers. We have to keep our keep our support staff. they are the ones that are doing this great work with the district team and I want to make sure that we keep them. Um trying to think I had a couple other things. I just think when we prioritize our employees, all employees, our our instructional staff, our support staff, our district staff, it will make a difference. But at the same time, they have to understand what's going on. And that's very very important. in this detailed detailed PowerPoint. I shared it with uh my husband and my daughter. I'm thinking this is where you understand what truly is going on. We have so much money and this is how we can spend it and if we have to take from this area

100then this other area will suffer. So let's just make sure we get the information out there. This this was a great presentation and then continue to see what we can do as a board to help this community. just to respond and I'll I'll respond to everybody and let let Bruce uh correct >> what I say. We are a people's first organization. Um >> and that is the number one ingredient in terms of this district's success, >> right? >> Um when you look at the from year to year, this year's increase in uh our investment in insurance in salaries is is $7.2 2 million in in comparison to the previous budget. That that is correct. Um there there I mean show me what you fund or show me what what you're what you're putting your money

101towards and I'll show you what's important. Um that is a clear a a clear indication of that. Um and this is hard and complex. It is hard and complex in the way that uh we increased 18% based on the projection. Hey, give us this letter literally 3 months ago and saying, "Hey, this plan is solid." Um, and then a month later, oo, wait a minute, two months later, no, we're going to have to shift and make a a modification or change. This is the opportunity to destroy culture. Uh, this is the opportunity, if not leveraged and managed in in a straightforward, transparent way uh to take the success that we are on path to have for our community and chip away at it, break away at it. And I know that's no one's intention. So

102working through this is hard and complex. Um but just like we did with the innovation uh this team um we will be you know sitting in the conversations with the dialogue about these are the options that we have both short-term and in short term as well as long term and I think long term there's a number of things that we can look at and deepen our understanding. uh folks who are on um these committees um they know this work better than I almost said better than AON because they're in the room. >> They do. Correct. >> But it it it is it is a problem that we're solving to take care of our people. >> Absolutely. >> And if our people didn't have uh these tragic life events happen to them, uh we wouldn't be

103in this situation. But you know what? They're part of the family, so we got to figure it out. Just one question before I go, Miss Berbber. Um, and it went up so quickly, you know, AON thought we'd be okay for a while. It went up so quickly because of medical costs and prescription costs basically. >> Absolutely. Expenses. >> Thank you, >> Dr. Costa. >> Yeah, thank you for that excellent presentation. Um, I hope the uh the community gets to watch that and gets a better understanding, our employees as well. Um I I think from from my perspective um the presentation really kind of is underlined by two major things and that's uh the rising cost in general for health care um not just in the last 5 10 years but over the last 10 20

10430 years health care costs used to be a small percentage of a family's budget and now it is uh one of the largest expenses. Um so just a commentary on the ballooning um hyperbolic increases in uh health care costs per family and uh household um to really what is a completely unsustainable level in America. Um as well as the increased amount of uh people who are sicker now than they used to be. Um, in the last five years, I've seen a significant change um, in my patient population, whereas I used to rarely make a diagnosis of a new cancer. Now I do it almost every week. Um, the and younger individuals, you know, people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s are coming in with advanced colon cancer uh, regularly. Um, pancreatic cancer, lymphoma, leukemia, we're

105finding it uh, on a weekly basis. Um there's been a very big change in the health of Americans across the country. It's not something I'm just experiencing. It's something uh providers across the state I talked to are experiencing that people are sicker. Um they're being diagnosed with cancer at a much higher rate. Um so something has changed the last five years um in this country. Um addition in the patient population, not just in the insurance cost and the health care costs themselves. Um clearly those factors as well as other factors including weakening of the dollar, significant weakening of the dollar um far outpacing uh rising in salaries is uh creating a system uh where most Americans cannot afford health care and a mortgage and their their basic food budget. Um the average working American simply

106can't afford these things. The economy has become um uncserviceable for most Americans in its current state over especially over the last 5 years. It's continuing to get worse. Um meanwhile, we obviously have politicians saying the economy is doing great. Um it's a great economy. Um while most people are suffering every month and don't know how to pay their bills. Um so I you know obviously we have a big problem and it's not unique to us. There's nothing unique in this county that we're facing. Um, and we've done a good job at trying to uh fix this and we've, you know, the slide that you showed with our contribution to the employment's healthcare I think was very telling. Um, we have always tried to offset these costs to the best of our ability and we've gone

107above and beyond that. uh compared to other counties, we're paying a significant uh share of that health care cost uh more so than anyone else in the in the region. Um but ultimately, I think the solution is going to have to be raising uh premiums and changing the plans as as you've discussed as a potential plan. Um I don't think we can offset the costs from the district uh in any real significant way. Um and continuing to do that would ultimately pull too much funds uh away from scholastics, education, um salaries, etc. Um so I don't think that's really a workable solution. And I I also don't think raising taxes is in any way a solution as well, raising the millage rate. Um because we are once again taking more money away from all these

108people who already cannot pay their bills. you know, they they already suffer and are unable to pay their bills. Um, so the idea that we would take more money away from them to somehow make this community better would simply not work. Um, I I think a big thing that we need to do across the state is reduce waste. Um, and I think we have a lot of waste in this county. Uh, we're doing a good job about trying to reduce our waste. Um, we are only one part of the county. Um, and I bring back the 13 or some million dollars that were spent uh completely wastefully on garbage cans at the county level that nobody asked for, nobody wanted. Uh, that $13 million could have done a lot of good for a lot of

109people. Um, instead a few uh very shortsighted people wasted a massive amount of money um that the taxpayers could have used or could have been put to actual good use. Um, so reducing waste in the county is going to be extremely important longitudinally. Um, additionally, you know, I think trying to make our district healthier is something we should focus on. Obviously, um, most of our employees spend a large amount of their time at the schools, at the district, trying to find ways to make our population healthier. I I know we like to do a lot of fun things. Um but every event doesn't need a bowl of candy. You know, every event doesn't need a bunch of unhealthy things. We shouldn't reward people with things that are going to make them unhealthy. Um especially name

110brand candies. As we just discovered, uh Casey DeSantz and Department of Florida just did a massive uh review of what's actually in this candy. and it's full of poison and toxins that cause cancer and other health problems. And uh you know beyond just the sugar, there's contaminants in there that don't belong there. And you know, the the idea that we're um you know, we can probably do a lot to make ourselves healthier from a top- down perspective. And I think that's something that obviously will provide no benefit today. Um but down the line longitudinally could help the district just trying to be healthier. Uh focusing on health. um exercise for the employees, things of that nature, wellness. Um but I appreciate the presentation and all that you're doing to uh try to solve this issue.

111>> Mario. >> Okay. Um I definitely do not think that we should raise taxes for sure. Uh raising the millage rates, I don't think that's a fix. Um we thank you for the presentation first and foremost and uh for explaining um each slide there. My cons I have several questions. Um when was the last time that we renegotiated our health uh plans or with potential health providers? So I can't answer every single one because we have a list of contracts and they're some are on three years, some are on five years, some are on one year. We're doing it on a constant basis. So dental providers or like >> just the health, not the dental or vision, just Florida Blue Cross versus its competitors. So um when you say like just the health again there

112are other components that come into health that we use like we negotiated our employee clinic which is on health away from care here to proactive. So all those are on a cycle I want to say blue cross I I don't I don't want to answer that without getting the exact answer. >> So it's okay >> it's okay. I think it's if it hasn't been within the last year, I think we should go out for >> uh renegotiating our providers. I think that would be >> What was that? >> Yeah, the bidding. Yes, exactly. So, I I think it would be smart for us to It's time obviously we're in this discussion. Um, if we're going to look at some of our options, I think since it hasn't been very recent, we should probably go out

113and start uh uh requesting bids for um other options of health providers if not Florida Blue Cross, Sigma, United Healthcare, whatever those other options would be for us to be able to not just bring the same old status quo to our employees, but also to be able to say, "Okay, here are other providers and what other providers might um offer and then compare those costs because we might get the same services for less using a different provider and I'm totally okay with that." And that's the biggest issue for me. I don't obviously Okay, I'm sorry. >> No, I'm just saying if on slide 25 the second bullet is evaluate other insurance carriers for potential savings. So, we are going into that process right now. >> Yeah, I I think it's important for us to be

114able to do that. Also, uh if we haven't renegotiated our prescription contracts, I think we need to also do that if we can probably do them at the same time. Uh because we might be able to save a lot more money with our prescription contracts. Fortunately, um, prescriptions is one of the areas where we were able to get into a consortium early on. We're only one of four governmental agencies left in there. It's private, so we do get really really good rebates and pricing on our prescription plan, and we're grandfathered into that consortium still, but we do we do bid it out and price it on its cycle, >> on its cycle. But maybe in considering the situation that we're in, get ahead of the game. don't wait for the cycle and maybe do those

115kind of um simultaneously and then see if we can look at some other uh feasible options that way. Uh I'm of course I'm just talking about you know health and uh >> prescription >> and prescription in in that in those two areas. Okay. Then the other thing is uh other question are we getting the rebates that we're entitled to on prescription costs? Are we getting those uh right away? Is there a lag in time that we get those rebates? You know, how often is the turnaround for the prescription rebates? >> So, and um and I can share that we review those on a monthto month. So, there'll be two months where we get no rebates and then we'll get like a million dollar rebates. So, Jim Higgins in our finance department is on that like

116a bulldog. I mean, he is on that every single day. And when you I walk by his office, he'll say every day I say, "Did we get rebates today? Did we get rebates today?" So we push that as fast as we can, but there is a lag between when we get them. And that was my example of the fund balance. Today might be -200. We get a $ 1.5 million rebate tomorrow. That's different. But yes, we monitor those daily. >> Okay. Um, the next thing that I was going to ask is, um, have we taken a look at any fraud, uh, claims, fraud, fraudulent claims that may have happened? I mean, considering there are a high number of claims that came in um, have we had some kind of audit into that? >> We're we're

117actually engaging in an audit that doesn't cost us anything. And we've done this in the past. It had been about five years. So, we're do we're actually already engaged with a vendor who will go through and look at every one of those claims and then if there's something wrong, they'll go to Florida Blue. They'll go to whatever and change those rebates. So, we are in the middle of that type of audit now of all the claims. >> Good. I think we I think that's important as well. Uh because in 2018, Jimmy Petronis found $1.4 $4 million in an acupuncturist here in Indian River County who was um submitting some pretty fraudulent claims to Florida Blue Cross Blue Shield. Um and it it it was dire. So if we >> we've no pun. >> Yeah. No,

118no, we've uh we've engaged with a company called Fin Health who specializes in that. Um, and we're in the middle of that process now >> because it might I mean that I think um if we can do all these things at the same time. >> Thank you. I'm glad that you're shaking your head. Yes. If we can do all these things at the same time, I tip my hat off to you because it's a it's a big um hall. Uh but I think that it is important if at the end of all of this we can not raise insurance premiums. That would be the the ultimate goal. I mean that's really my focus is I do not want to hurt employees any more than they're already hurting. Um and some of the recommended changes in

119premiums up $1,100 a month. That's just crazy. Um but anyway, so some of these questions came to mind. So, I'm glad that we're on it. Um, and you've already answered that we can pull from other budget items or budget lines. So, back in 20, I don't know, a couple years ago when we had that emergency for the football field, uh, Mr. Bass was here, um, the football field was flooded and we needed to find monies to replace the field. We didn't have $2 million, but somehow or another, there was a, you know, a deep dive into um some capital projects that had more saved in what than what was previously budgeted. And we found $2 million to replace to begin the replacement of the football field. We need to do that. uh we need to

120be able to take a deep dive into any other areas within our budget that we have overbudgeted. And at this point, because we're so late in the school year, uh we might be able to find as much as possible um to replenish the fund balance, the insurance fund balance as much as possible without dipping into any of the other areas. um if that's at all possible that will alleviate some of these premium hikes or recommended pre premium hikes on employees >> and so we could do that. >> Yeah. So and absolutely um Dr. Moore can speak. He comes in the conference room frequently and he'll see us around the table daily going through that. So that um and we did that on our innovation. That's how we're redesigning our middle schools through cost savings on

121projects. when a light falls at Verb Chase and we can fix it. Just to be clear, those are capital dollars. Capital dollars have a restriction on what you can use for general fund expenditures. You can pay for the maintenance workers that maintain our buildings and you can pay for property casualty insurance, which we do. So, our $285,000 premium for property casualty, well, we pay for that out of capital, but you cannot pay for general fund or health insurance out of the capital fund or the food service or the federal or the extended day or the so the general fund is the only fund that can go um interransfer with the health insurance fund. >> Yeah. No, I understand. But there was a recent uh law that passed that allowed for some uh and I'm not

122well verssed in it. So um but I believe that there was some leverage for some of the capital projects that you might be able to >> Yeah. Bus drivers was added a few years ago and now besides um property casualty, they're working on other insurance premiums, not health insurance premiums, but other premiums, workers comp that you could cover. I believe Senator Simons, and I've not seen if it's died, has a bill currently working its way that would allow some more additional flexibility on capital dollars to be used for general expenses. That is not passed. >> What I can tell you, and when we go through the budget cycle, you see, we are leveraging absolutely every penny of capital towards general that we possibly can. We're trans, we have a we budgeted transfer of 12.5 million

123dollars of capital to general every year um to help fund that. Okay. So, >> but to your point, we are going through every single line to try to offset as long as we can in that general fund. >> Okay. Um, so I, um, let me come down here. So, my con, I have another concern with regard to retirees. Now, I know that retirees are 100 they pay 100% of their premiums. the board, the school district doesn't pay into their health coverage. But my concern is they see these increases, they're going to pull out and that will give us even less participation, membership participation, um raising our rates again for our current employees, not retirees. >> So just remembering there's a expense that goes with a revenue. And so some plan members expense balances out the

124revenue we get. So when you're looking at pre65 or 65 if someone and and I don't know their situation. >> Yeah. >> Somebody could be completely healthy and choosing to pay that premium. I doubt it. Um then if they came off the plan then the expenses would go away as well and all the claims that they might have for whatever they're using of our services. So, um, versus if, uh, a young person with no claims were to drop, that's pure revenue. Maybe they're not using a lot of expenses. So, um, when we did look at the high claims, um, there wasn't a lot of retirees on that particular year in the high claims, but just claims in general over $25,000 are definitely expending, but their expense would go away as well as their revenue. It's

125two sides of it, not just the revenue. So you're not seeing that as a potential issue. >> They they certainly might drop the plan and the >> but then the expenses would drop down >> the expan the expenses of uh maintaining I will tell you we have retiree representation on high-te former administrator in the district and it's on record. I mean, he evaluated when he left and he says, "I pay the plan and I will continue on the plan because when my wife and I went out to look in the market and we looked at Medicare and we looked at Medicaid, I will pay that premium to go to Dr. Manise at that clinic because I use it all the time and it's worth that benefit." That was his quote at Hight, but that's a

126decision each retiree will have to make. >> Okay. And then, um, Dr. Moore, you mentioned something about effective and highly effective, um, teacher salary, uh, uh, pay. Um, were you referring to the A money? >> No, you were referring to just the highly effective. You made a comment. Maybe you can clarify to give a rate that you want to give a raise to offset the premiums. I, if I understood that correctly, I would not support that. I don't want to give teachers a raise and then have them use that raise to pay for insurance premium increases. >> We've already negotiated. That's the performance pay. So it's already negotiated. So they're already >> performance pay. Yes. Performance >> pay separate and apart from >> Yes. But if you're going to if you have the opportunity to

127give them what they deserve as as soon as you can. So we're not shifting anything we've already agreed to and align it to a possible increase in health insurance. In a lot of cases that additional compensation will offset um the increase in insurance. So it's it's >> Yeah, but I don't I don't know if we should think of it that way. I mean, the their the performance pay is their performance pay. They deserve that >> 100%. >> So we're talking about their performance pay as an offset of insurance that we shouldn't do that. They're two totally different things because what it sounds like is that you're using the in the increase or the performance pay to pay for insurance or to think of it as that would cover the insurance increases. That's what it sounds

128like to me. >> Oh, what what it should sound like and I'll give you another example. Okay, >> CWA, we negotiate a a contract with them. Uh our contract sunsets at this particular year, >> right? >> Uh we need to get that contract done as soon as possible. uh so we can begin to increase their compensation on July 1, whatever that they deserve. Typically what would happen, you would negotiate your salary and sometimes you would get a retro check uh because we went into October, november, uh we have to get it done. So the additional compensation that they would receive uh is more money in their pocket so they can make the best decision on what they want to do. >> Yeah. So, I've heard from many um teachers who have uh and and employees

129who have serious concerns that their increases last year went straight to uh insurance increases. So, they didn't actually see an increase in their salary. In many cases, they saw a decrease because the insurance increases last year were surpassed, you know, the what what they would receive coming home, you know, in salary, whatever it was. it it it they didn't see the increase essentially in their salary. Um so what's on paper doesn't actually reflect what they're coming home with. Um and that's time and time and again. You ask anyone and they'll tell you the same thing. I even had a teacher tell me the other day they're $3,000 less take-home this year than they were last year. Uh so that is a concern for me. We talk about teacher salary being very important and that we

130want to increase teacher salary but here we are also increasing insurance which is not in our control. I mean, we can't help but have these numbers the way that they are, but this is a very serious situation here. And what I don't want to do is to compromise teacher salary compromise >> when we have this issue of health insurance. Um, and I and and there might be some This is why I'm asking for us to go out and start bidding again. This is why I'm asking us to go out and start renegotiating our prescriptions. Sometimes we get a lower cost. Even with our current plan, if Blue Cross Blue Shields knows that we're out bidding with other people, sometimes they'll come back and they'll say, "Okay, we know that you're bidding. We don't want to

131lose your business. Let's let's renegotiate the current costs on the plans that we have now. If that would benefit us, then why not, right?" So, I just don't want I don't want us to do that. I want us to be able to look at those two things separately. Um, have we considered I know we talked about at some point the FL I may misquote this. The Florida um >> fleet >> the what? >> Fleet. >> No, I don't know if it was >> Florida Educator Health Insurance Trust. >> Was it that one? Was it with FADS? >> Yeah. So, can you talk a little bit about that again? >> Yeah. So, I think that's on slide 27 as well. Um I'll I'll make an analogy to again to our risk pool. We are in a

132consortium with seven districts for risk sharing called scrimp and that is a risk sharing pool. They bid out our property casualty at the Lloyds of London based on all of our memberships. That's a consortium. Fleet is a health trust. So what they do, their model is they would um you would pay a per member per month price. Our current price to join fleet if we were to join and get all their services would equate to about $425,000 a year in premium costs to them. They then would do a lot of the things AON is currently doing. They would provide us actuarial services. They would provide us with those predictions. they wouldn't provide on-site. Currently, AON receives their funding through those vendor contracts when they and that's around on the health insurance two $2 a member.

133So, it's around $36,000 a year on health insurance. It's around $285,000 total the cost re uh rebates that AON gets. The one true benefit of fleet is in the stop-loss. If you remember, I said we bid out stop-loss this past year to six vendors. Five vendors looked at our claims and refused to bid. They said, "We we won't make money on your product. We are not going to bid." Thankfully, our current vendor did bid. There was an increase in the cost um to provide it. Fleet can help after 2 years in the pool. We have a stop-loss contract till June 30th with a current vendor. Once you join fleet, then after two years of your own risk, you can get into a stop-loss pool. That's where some savings are actually um very attractive. That two

134years down the road, our stop-loss rate that was a $840,000 went to a million is projected to be 1.2 million. That might be cheaper because fleet can bid that out in a consortium, but there's a $425,000 now cost to join them and we're already in a stop-loss contract. So, we're working through that and determining when the best timing is to to join that if um trust, if you will. >> Okay. In the meantime, then um I really I've been talking with some board members and uh from around the state and they are really interested because a lot of people are having issues with insurance increases. They're really interested as well um in the idea of um some kind of consortium within school districts. So maybe even the school we can start maybe even with the

135school districts on the Treasure Coast. There are several board members on the treasure coast who are interested in that. Um if not maybe other board members I mean other districts around the state whomever might be interested because the more membership we have within the pool the less uh premiums would be on um on the actual membership and we know this the state department um their membership only pays $50 a month. It's it's it's dirt cheap. I mean, granted, they have close to 100,000 employees. Um, but it's a good example of how you have more membership. Our premiums will be less. Um, and if we had more districts involved, we wouldn't have to be self-insured. We can go fully insured, let the insurance company handle whatever we would handle if we were self-insured, obviously. Um and

136um in that case our what has affected us in terms of our claims might not seem as drastic to some of the providers who might be interested. We wouldn't get dropped or anything like that. Uh because there were more people in other districts who do not have as many claims could pick up, you know, some of that slack. So in that case, it might even out. But I am certainly um interested if we can at least engage in conversation about that. You know, some kind of consortium or co-op, insurance co-op or something like that. Um uh any ideas on that? >> I've hosted several meetings with um St. Lucy, Martin, Indian River, ourselves. St. Lucy and Martin are currently fully insured. To do that, they would need to move to a self-insured model like >>

137No, they're fully. Why don't we move to fully and join >> to join fleet or to do those things you have to be self-insured to do that. So they would for St. Lucy or Martin to join fleet they would need to go to self or to join a different cons they would need to go self-insured and then we would have to have someone establish >> be the fiduciary rates. It's uh it's complicated to create a consortium. It's done. Scrimp has done it but um that would so they are self fully insured. We are self-insured. They would have to shift if they wanted. >> No, we would have to shift to them and not pay attention to fleet and not go the fleet route. >> Um, yes. >> Can we look into it? >> We I

138have been looking into it and meeting with them. Um, you know, at this time there's not I don't have anybody saying, "Hey, we want to step up and be the fiduciary and go through that work." But, um, I I'm constant contact with them. >> Okay. because I think that I honestly think that that I mean I I don't even know I mean some people are against it but even if we were to join in with our county employees >> um I don't know what's happening over there but again the idea is to build the membership so that the premiums are as low as possible. Um, >> is county self self-insured? >> I do not know. >> That's a interesting point. >> Yeah. I mean, county sheriff at at the very least and the school district

139here in Indian River. You have >> Yeah. >> Never know. I've even talked about actually opening up uh or suggesting the clinic be extended to county employees so that again even that's less and opening up another location on the on the north side of I'm sorry on the south side of campus. So, we had one south and one Well, ours is middle, but um rather than just have one clinic. St. Lucy County does that. They have multiple clinics around St. Lucy and it it just works. Okay. Um, so another suggestion that I have is really to doge our budget. I know that Dr. Pusca brought this up quite a while ago, not that long ago, but it seems like there might be this might be a good opportunity for us to uh declare a moratorum

140on non- essential spending so that we can um find these monies any other monies anywhere else obviously um and conduct an emergency forensic audit of the insurance fund um just to prevent this from happening again. I don't want to put a band-aid on an issue. Um we can kind of fix the symptom, but we need to see go down to the root of the issue and and maybe not get to this place again. One of the slides that you have up here shows that we're at a zero negative um fund balance when we are legally responsible for keeping a $3.4 million fund balance there. So I understand that you're saying that cashwise we have the $3.4 4 million. But what it what we're you know in the transaction of coming and going and paying and

141waiting for bills to come in and sending out those checks. This is what the actual is. But I don't want to put up a zero fund balance to the public, which is what was on that slide, and make it seem as if we're literally at zero cash. and and and that seems to be >> and and just for the public, that fund balance that we're talking about is specifically just in the one health insurance fund. It's not our it's not our general fund. >> Not general. >> No, I know I'm talking health insurance fund. Just the health insurance fund that was presented here was at zero or and you said that it's at -200. >> No, you said right now it's negative 20 >> 35,000. But two days ago, you pre on January 28th, you

142presented to Hightef that we were at $598,000. >> What's that? >> So again, those fund balances change when those rebates come in and we get $2 million of rebates. That would >> So they So when people ask me, it's daytoday. That's why I go by June 30th. That ends the books. That's what that's our target and we have to get there. But on a day-to-day basis, yes, the fund balance changes based on when we get our payroll checks from everybody. The fund that we get revenue that goes into the fund and we account for it. >> Yeah. No, this one is definitely better. 200 and something negative versus 598 negative. I mean, this is definitely the better number. Um, but nonetheless, we it's not that we those are that's not the actual right now. We're

143just waiting for those transactions to happen. Um, and if those transactions happened right now, then we would definitely be negative2 >> 35 >> $35,000, which we don't want. 235,000, right? Okay. Which we don't want. So, I think, you know, um, uh, an audit of our insurance fund is really important for us. Um, and this is not pointing fingers or anything like that. This is about the board members being responsible for our for knowing what's in our uh fund budget. Insurance fund. Of course, I'm just saying insurance fund. I'm not saying general fund. >> Um, because you know this is this is serious stuff. The o the other thing Go ahead, David. >> Well, I I was going to say we do know that's what this whole process is about. They look at it monthly. Uh

144I think we do know what's in the fund and there's several ways to cure it. Change the plan, lower the benefits offered on the plan, >> raise the premiums or put more out of the general budget and we can fix the plan. So we want to put it out of the general budget. What do we want to give up? Or what do we have? I mean I know we just consolidated schools. So you've got that amount of money that you were probably use planning to use for something. So, we ought to we haven't seen next year's budget obviously yet. So, we'll take that money and put it towards this. I mean, it's there's three or four things that you can do. It it's it's a it's a memo fund that does have a state qualification

145to it. And yes, we either have to have it at that fund or show that we're working towards it, but it's, you know, there's it's it's more revenue. You got to reduce the plan cost or you've got to raise the revenue or you've got to contribute more from the general fund at the expense of something else. All three are viable options and I think we can do some combination of all three. >> Well, I don't disagree with you there. That's why I've recommended that we go out to bid for some other, you know, Yeah. Um, but we have a dip in our um there's a dip in the fund balance going back to 2024. Um, and we've kind of been told that it's getting lower and lower, but we've never really taken strong action like

146we're looking to take right now. And I think that should have there should have been a red flag somewhere at least a year ago saying hey this was the year prior uh you know and looking forward we may have a very serious problem we haven't had that conversation we've had the hearing >> we raised two years ago we raised the rate 6.8 A which met the actuarial statement which should have balanced it and this that past October we raised it 18.5% which should have met the actuarial to be sound based on the data that we had but >> and and but according to this slide um even back in uh June of 2025 we were going below $3 million >> June of 2025 and then in October of 25 recent recently after that that 18.5%

147took $2.6 million of general fund budget to the fund. So when we raised uh the general funds budget uh contribution from 747 to85 >> that added $2.6 million of revenue to the fund and then employees also went up 18.5. >> Yeah. But we don't see that here in that chart >> because those are not coming in until this November and December that revenue start. So that was an indicator we needed to do something, >> right? That's my point is that if we saw my point is that if we saw that we were going below 3.4 million then it should have come to the board that hey we're now >> well we did we we came to the board and approved that 18 and >> 3.4 Yeah, but we weren't told we were less than our

148>> um >> you we were very close to safe harbor at that point. Um, and that's why we recommend that an 18 and a half percent increase, which ju but that revenue didn't come in until this past November is the first time you're realizing October's revenue. So in August, right after that, we did an open enrollment with brand new premiums. They selected all their premiums and that went into effect October and then we have November, December to see. And unfortunately, that new revenue, which you saw the green line go up quite a bit, didn't match the increase in expenses that are actually happening. >> Well, I'm glad that we are not um raising the rates now. Um because we already promised everyone that they would have these rates for an entire year. Um and I

149would not be in support of raising them midyear, mid cycle. That's not fair. That's not right. um then they wouldn't trust us when we say in October we're not going to raise them again. Uh but then come October, who's to say that we won't come again and say, "Oh, well, you know, we know we said that, but there's another situation that we need to." So, I I'm just I'm glad that we're not considering that right now. Um and that we're just going to let the cycle play itself out. Um, there's another uh thing that let me see if I can get there. Uh, there's another question that I had with regard to stoploss. Let me ask um is stoploss is there a cap at the stop-loss insurance that we have? Do they ever say, you

150know, if you use a certain, like you said, we had $2.4 million. Um, we're averaging 2.4 million a month in claims over the last three months. I think I got that number correctly. Um, if that's the case, do we ever does stop loss ever get to a cap? >> So, stop losses for high claims, not for all your claims. So, let's say you had, for example, we just looked at our claims at 25,000 and more, a very low threshold, kind of low. We have 70 medical claims at $25,000 or more and they total 3.8 million. We have 29 prescription claims at 25,000 and they total 1.8 million. So, four and two, that's $6 million of claims nowhere near stop-loss, >> right? It's the volume of the middle claims as well, not so on the stop

151loss, what it does is it caps you at 250. Caps you at 250. So you're not getting multi-million dollar claims, but your $40,000 claim, $40,000 claim here, $55,000. Those claims do not have anything to do with stop-loss. >> Okay. So I didn't know, is there a bidding process with stop-loss as well? Oh, I think you mentioned that. >> That's what I was saying. We put it out to bid every year. We put it out this last year to six vendors and five vendors looked at our experience and refused to bid >> and only one came back. >> Our current provider stuck with us and we had a rate increase. We went from $840,000 a year to a million dollar a year and increase um in the plan and part of that was factored into the

15218.5% increase that we did. But that increase of $200,000, just to be clear, that increase of $250,000 is about a 1% impact to the plan. 4.2 million in medical, 3 those are um so bidding out Blue Cross Blue Shield, for example. We're definitely we are bidding all those vendors and it came to me our Blue Cross Blue Shield we just negotiated recently is in 27 when that contract is up. But just to be clear, that doesn't solve a $7 million problem. That's a piece of it. So bidding everyone out might save us $60,000 here, which is good. Um, but it's the actual cost of the claims after you pay all the deductible. So when you have that many just at 25,000, there's no stop-loss to affect it. It's just claims. >> Okay. So I have

153some examples. Um, and of course these are just examples of what it might be like for a person, a a support staff person on a salary of $31,929. This I've taken from our um salary schedule. Um, so just pull the number 31 uh9. if they were on that salary and then they chose the low family plan um at $17,700 a year, that means that their salary would actually well take home or what what would be left would be $14,229 of a $31,000 close to $32,000 salary, not including taxes or the required um retirement um you know 3% that they have to put in for retirement uh FRS, vision, dental, life insurance, all those extra stuff, all the other things not including any of those other things. That salary or that take-home would be $1,800 and

154uh $1,185 a month. No one could live on that. No one can live on that. A support staff of uh let's say a data specialist data specialist makes $39,200 a month. I mean a year annual on the low family plan of $17,700 a month. Um I mean a year, sorry. Their take-home or their salary thereafter would be 21,500. Again, not counting taxes and retirement and, you know, all the other things, you're talking about $1,791 a month. >> So, what's the solution? >> People Well, I'm not there yet. >> Okay, good. >> People People can't live on that. Um, and this is only with the increases. I'm just talking about the increases. I'm not talking about what we're currently doing. I'm talking about the increases. >> So, can I ask one question though? This is a

155specific insurance plan. Is this like Yes. Which one is it? >> The f the low family plan. >> So, is this the um >> the increase the proposed increase low family plan? >> So, the low family plan. >> Okay. >> The low family plan is $17,700 a year for the low family plan that's being recommended. an executive assistant to the school board uh $48,500. There's a little change there. Low family plan 17,700. The salary would be $21,900. >> Not a specific person. Could we >> No, I'm not. I'm talking titles. >> Take home would be >> There's only one person in that position. >> But you're blowing it up. I'm not blowing anybody up. I'm talking about specific titles. The take-home would be $1,830. teachers. Teachers starting at $48,583,000 a year on the low family

156plan of $17,700 would take home would wind up 30 thou. That would be a $30,000 $30,883 a year or 2500 $2573 a month. Just the increase on that low family plan alone. I don't even know where you can find rent for $2,500 a month nowadays. Maybe $2,300 a month. I'm not saying that we don't need to talk about an increase because clearly we do in premiums. I just think that the increases here are obscene. I think they are way too high for people to go from June of having a particular salary and then July having up to $1,100 increase a month >> if they're on that high plan. So again, these are very very guesstimate. No taxes involved, none of the other, you know, no frrills, none of the other stuff. Um so uh Mr.

157Dyer is not here but my request for the solution would be that we exhaust every single thing in our power everything. every single line, budget, everything. Which is why I'm calling for a moratorum so that we can see where else can we get because if these claims are just an anomaly, which God willing they will be, they are um then eventually, you know, our our the fund will kind of level out again. Um and and that's the hope and the prayer. I'd like to end with saying that a few years ago uh Mrs. Baronborg and I were uh board members then. I don't know if uh Dr. Jones was. There was a uh recommendation by Hightef that our insurance premiums be raised something crazy. Um I'm just going to throw out some numbers because it

158literally was a lot. It was let's say we were at 5% they wanted us to go to like 15%. It was just whatever it was. And the board recognized that Highte is just a recommending agency or a recommending organization. They just make recommendations. The final decision is up to the board. And the board at the time said, "No, that's too much. We're not going to impose that on our employees when we don't really know what the trend will be moving forward." even though you're looking at the past trend, we decided to settle somewhere in the middle. And I'm glad we did because our rates didn't go up. You know, we I it might have been one of those days that one of those time periods that we were um kind of uh linear and it

159was a good decision on our part and I'm glad that we did that. I'm glad we didn't raise it as high as the recommended was. I want to remind people hightef is made up of our own people with the exception of two retirees which would have been SDIRC and AON there. It's our own people making their own recommendation to ourselves. So we're talking about Hi-Tech as if Hi-Tech was another organization. And I want the community to understand it's not another organization. It's our own people meeting to talk about our health insurance stuff and then making a recommendation back to us. So there there isn't like a happy pill here. Um, but I do hope that we are very very conservative at best and re-evaluating these recommendations that are up here because I think these will

160put people at a level of poverty that they've never seen before. Families will not be able to sustain single family, single parent households. Every family, never mind single, every family. This is this these are astronomical at a time in our um in our you know at a time when monies are very very uh when inflation is high and all the other costs are high. This is tough. It's a tough situation. I'm sorry that we are in this situation. Um, but I really want us to exhaust every single bit of options that there are for us to be able to evaluate before we take that next step to make any recommendations for July. >> Are you done? >> Thank you. Yes. >> Okay. Uh, a couple of things just kind of since I just came back

161from Tallahassee, there are some kind of positives moving around and one of them is the governor's priority is to give 1.56 billion for teachers this year, which is a 200 million increase. However, they've got to agree, the Senate and the House have to agree, but there are two um bills going through, one on the Senate side, one on the House side, very positive, calling it the Save Our Teachers Act um to increase salaries. Um, my suggestion would be things like what you just discussed with exact salaries of a group of people. Um, give that to give that to representatives and senators because they need to hear the exact costs that are happening to people trying to work in this district and trying to do a good thing. And if they see specifics, that's what they

162want because when they're fighting for a bill, especially if you give it to the bill sponsor, um they're going to give up they're going to give out specifics and if you give them a really good one, they're going to take it and run with it. Um because they want that to be able to move their bills. So that's kind of a a nice thing that's happening. Uh a couple things you mentioned one quarter of our employees are on the low plan and then later on you said that most of our employees are on the low plan. So, which is it? >> So, there's employee only. The vast majority of our employees are on one of the three employeeonly plans, high, mid, or low. A quarter, more than a quarter are on the low employee only.

163And I I I do understand the the impact. And as you know, the health insurance that we're required is for an employee only. If you have a family plan, they could choose you can choose a if your husband works at NASA or your wife works at CVS or whatever, they can choose other if that plan is not the best suited, they do have options for some of those other plans on the family plans because those are the most expensive going up of any of them. Those are the largest or what we will whenever we do this enrollment people will have an opportunity to change to go drift down a plan. Um and as well we'll open up the opportunity for people to look at other things they might have on their check like there are

164a lot we call them cafeteria plans. There are other options like the identity theft. Maybe you want to drop that or some other uh of those smaller plans that they might have been able to pick with the plan they were on to give them the opportunity to offset some of those costs. But yes, when you get into a family plan where there's two individual incomes coming in or a choice of plans, those are where the highest rates certainly are coming in. >> Right. And I'm glad you mentioned that because um when you look at the low plan and how many people are on it, one of the decisions I had made years ago when I was on plan was um I had a middle plan and then I moved to a low plan to save

165money because the costs went up. That's what I did. And then um we put my husband worked was self-employed so we used my salary basically covered the insurance. There wasn't much left after that. And this has been going on for years for teachers. Um then of course when he worked for the state I went on his plan because it's so much better of course more people better plan options. Uh we did look into this with the county, the city and the sheriff a couple years ago um when Miss Zork was on the the board and uh it just seemed like they weren't interested in doing that. I don't know. It's something maybe we can reach out again and doing but I don't think they're interested. They they had a lot of reasons why. Um, so

166that's something that, you know, when I found out about Fleet, a couple of whatever it was and I brought it to your attention, um, Fleet had a different plan last year. This year, they've included a prescription plan. So, it's >> maybe we need to re Yeah, we need to revisit it and see if that's a possibility, too. >> Um, >> my concern is that, okay, let's say teachers get an increase. That's great. And in the bills, it's the school administrators getting an increase, too. That's great. But then how about our CWA people? You know, they're the ones that most of their salary is going towards these plans if they're on them. So that's that's a real concern. You mentioned um the safe harbor for insurance plans, Florida statute 112.08. Is that just for insurance? Right.

167It's not doesn't talk about general plan, general fund. That is for governmental agencies who are self-insured, specifically the health insurance, not what there's a 641 642 statute that covers workers comps um consortiums, but the 112.0 it is specifically around fully uh self-insured health insurance. >> Okay. And then um going back to fleet, so you mentioned that you have to be in it two years before you can get on the stop loss, right? So what do you do the first year? or you gamble. >> Um, no. You just pay a stoploss rate equivalent to your experiences and claims. They don't you're not in the pool to benefit from the large volume. You know, they're you're on your own risk for two years and whatever the rate is, the rate is. And then after two years of

168your claim experiences, when you get in the pool, then that gives them time to bid it out. So you're just not getting the risk sharing for the first two years. >> So can they deny you if they see that your risks were a lot higher than everybody else? >> Um so the the good thing about Fleet, they're not deny they they're their goal is to provide the most economical health insurance to school districts. The trust the board of trustees for Fleet are the 67 school districts as they join superintendent. So it's not a I mean it's a nonprofit to be established, but it's uh it's a different type of nonprofit. It's governed by the people who that it's going to benefit the most. >> So in other words, they can't deny us. >> They wouldn't

169deny us, but you would pay the rates equivalent to your experiences for the first two years and then you get the risk sharing benefit. That's what I'm asking. They wouldn't deny you the risk sharing. Okay. But can I ask you can I follow up with that real quick? >> Can I finish? I need to finish please. You spoke for >> That's okay. >> 40 five minutes. >> That's okay. >> So more than that actually. um the CWA cost on that. So, do they separate fleet from like is it your total employees or is it just teachers and administrators or is we can be just like our self- insurance where we go in as >> total pool not by any group. >> Okay. Because I've heard other areas do it differently like that. Okay. That's what

170I wanted to know. Miss Rosario, >> uh, it was just a followup on that comment from regarding the denial of, uh, I forgot the question actually. >> It was the denial >> DOP law. So if we were on our own for two years under Fleet, like the question is then in the third year when you get in the cost sharing, could fleet said, "Hey, you're too expensive. We're not putting you in the pool." So we would deny you to get in the cost sharing. >> I remember the question. Uh it was a comparison. Uh you said something about a comparison with um the claims with the history of our claims that you we would just pay based on the comparison. >> So the first two years in fleet you don't realize a savings of being

171in the pool the large pool of stop loss thousands of lives across the state of Florida. The first two years you're on your own risk. So your premium's going to be based on your actual claims just like they are now for two years. Then you get the benefit. And so in the third year that's where you could really see a cost savings. >> So within those first two years though I think that was my question is do they compare is it based on the comparison of just Indian River County or are they comparing the with the entire group >> just Indian River County for two years. >> Got it. >> Okay. So going back to fleet again, um how many districts are in it right now? >> So that changes day. I mean the last

172time I looked which was sometime last week on their website there were 15 districts. The vast majority of them small like a Hardy, Hendry, Bay, you see a lot of those there. Um Breard has joined. I heard Pulk has joined. I didn't see them on their website. So some larger districts. Um, >> and I know more there's more talk right now about it because of we're in that cycle. Um, and they're really pushing I will say at FSBA events. Yeah. >> Um, join fleet joint. >> We're having them come in and present to high-tech and >> look at all those plans. >> Yeah, we definitely need to look into it a little more. Um, question, how many of our employees don't take the insurance? What's the percentage? So we h daytoday it changes depending but

173we have roughly 1930 1940 employees and there's 136181 on our health insurance plan. So >> 600 650. >> So percentage wise, see because if we're we put in all this money for insurance, right? What's their benefit? >> So that was kind of my example. um when we're talking about a Martin County putting 6,500 into health insurance and the extra $4,000 into a raise for everyone so that someone who chooses their husband or wife's family plan at a different work location has that $4,000 of revenue as salary increase to make those choices where it's a really really strong benefit to the people on our plan to get 10,620 towards it. But the people who aren't on the plan aren't getting that employee benefit. >> They used to get, hold on one second. They used to get

174like 450 or something. >> It was$453 and then it was 5.40 for a long time and then it went up 67. It's 8.85 a month right now. >> No, I'm talking about the people not on the plan. They used to get >> $40 a month charge Snider. It's uh >> that's for flex, right? >> Yeah. And so again, the thought process when that was done, that benefit is to people who pick our insurance. So we have enough people who pick insurance to have a pool so that it's lower. You want to incentivize people to be on the plan. If you incentivize people to leave the plan, then you have a bigger problem for the people left on the plan. >> I agree, Mr. So you're saying we spend, let me understand this, $10,000, $10,600 per

175person in the plan or per total employees. >> So general fund contribution to an employee for health insurance is $885 per month per employee, which is 10,620 a year. >> Employees are calculated by those in the plan or all employees to get that number. Um, well, the number is just the number of people on the plan. They get that benefit. >> So 8.85 times the 1600 people that are in the plan plus their families or whatever that is is about what you're contributing. >> Um, so it's only per employee. So if I cover my family, the 885 doesn't change. So right now we have about 1391 or 92 active, not retirees. there are retirees in that 1,600 number. So if we were to um for example when it went from 747 to85 last year the

17618.58$8.85 minus 747 it went up $138 per employee times 12 times the 1392 members on the plan. Okay, >> so that's 2.4 million. Now it actually was 2.6 million back then. and there were more on the plan. So the general fund contribution increased 2.6 million last October as additional revenue for those 1390 people on the plan. That was the contribution. >> So basically, if I'm reading into that versus Martin and the rest, it seems like that you're on the right path with premiums for those that are in the plan or choose that type of plan and try to do more in salary for everybody else. I mean, maybe the fact that we have been more generous in benefits by 10,600 versus >> whatever it is, 30 o over $3,000 a person that could have gone

177to maybe $2,000 a person in the system as a salary increase. So, you know, I I guess you have to look at them both together to try to understand it. >> And the question is, it doesn't look like that you're getting I'm sorry. and the tax benefit if it's in the >> well there is a tax benefit but I'm not I'm not so sure that that that is uh the perception of the tax benefit is worth the what you're what you may be losing in in salary. I mean my general experience with benefits is you never get credit for them no matter what you do >> and uh so you're probably better off just to do it in salary and then let people decide. So, I I have one other thing I wanted to say.

178Um, >> you know, we don't have a sales tax that we bring in, right? But just so everyone knows, Martin and St. Lucy have a 0.05 sales tax that they get for their school districts. Now, I believe it goes towards capital, but and teacher salary. I believe there's some in there for bus drivers or buses. No, it's capital and buses. Um, but just to note that we don't do that. They do. Um, not that I like to raise taxes, but at some point something's going to give here and we got to we got to figure out how to do this. Yes. Just a few comments after listening to everyone. I've been here about 40 years and I think that all board members would say no one wants to raise a premium ever. Wouldn't that be

179wonderful? >> And we've had some moderate changes and this one obviously is more than moderate. And I think the team has really looked at a deep dive. I heard the superintendent say basically spending unnecessary spending is now cut off so we can make it till that July instead of doing it in April. So we're doing that and I think I heard Mr. Green say that right now we do have an audit looking at any kind of fraud with insurance. So we're doing that. Um I'll continue to go back to the per pupil expenditures. Uh I think all all of us would say we don't want to raise taxes or anything but maybe we could get the state to help us a little bit more. and I think we're about 46 in the nation. Um, as

180far as retirees, I know them well. Uh, most of them will stay on the health insurance to 65, but then you have some even with Medicare that will come back to this health insurance and it'd be nice to talk to them. Um, and I'll speak from personal experience. They'll say social security went up. No, it didn't because Medicare B went up. So, the same kind of thing is happening for all levels. We're we're in trouble as far as health insurance. Like Dr. Pusca said the the prices just keep going up. But when I look back at what we have to do and and we'll look at all um areas um I've looked at self-insured and fully insured. I I still look at the self-insured as a better deal, but maybe I can learn the lesson.

181But as a board member, it is our responsibil responsibility to keep this district solvent. The only place we can go is a general fund. And if we take from there then something else is going to be hurting. So we got to really really look at this because we have said in policy we want to keep that at 5%. We want to make sure our students, our teachers, our support staff, district staff, all everyone is okay. So um I think that we're doing what we need to do as far as a deep dive and doing our best to help those that we can. >> So I want to also hold on. I want to also um I'm meant to say this. I agree with moving it from April to well July 1st. Um it's only fair.

182Um I I I think that's part of the panic that we're hearing immediately is oh my gosh, you're doing this and I haven't budgeted for it in my own family. So I I don't think we can do that. Mr. Rosario, >> um a question about fleet. A couple questions about fleet and then um something else that I I thought about um fleet like Revard or any of these other uh districts have do we know what the cost savings is for their members? Has there been a cost savings? Is it worth it for them? I mean clearly they chose that as an option for a reason. >> Um it's very very new. Districts are just now coming on. So it's hard I don't have that data. I have anecdotal data from people outside the district that

183some of the districts realized savings right away because they might not be in the consortium prescription drug PO group we are and they're paying high premiums for prescriptions so they were able to save them. When you compare to what we're in, our prescription costs are already much lower than that. And then there are other districts who are saying, and again this is anecdotal from CFOs and other people I talked to saying, "Oh, it wasn't exactly what we thought. It's going to take a couple years to get to that savings." So I don't have >> but it was it's not more. >> It's brand new as far as they're coming on. So it's going to so and they won't even get the stop-loss savings for two years. So >> some of that stuff is going to

184take longer to see realize the savings and understand it. >> Okay. And then the next question is with regard to fleet um do all of the do do the fleet uh group I don't even know what they're called is is the fleet group of membership do they receive one option for provider or do they receive multiple like if you go to the state website the state offers blue cross boo shield um sigma actually I think they offer three blue cross Shield Sigma and United Healthcare. >> So I think this is the important differentiation that I tried to make earlier. When you go into a consortium, you're going to pick a plan. If you're five districts in there, you're going to pick a plan for the five districts. Fleet, you still are self-insured. You still design

185your own plans. You still pick your own vendors, >> but they are going to take over some of AON's work and they will provide actuarial services. They will provide consulting and then the stoploss is the pool where you might be able to provide the savings. >> I understand. So we would still be responsible for selecting our own provider for our own membership >> and they >> even though we are involved in this fleet. >> Yes. And instead of AON putting out to the world a bid for us or Brown and Brown, whoever we used to use, Fleet would put out a bid for prescription or medical costs and select someone that we would pay. >> Okay, that makes sense. >> That doesn't Mr. Dyer, >> I'm sorry. That that doesn't sound like a big enough

186savings because you said it's only $285,000 plus whatever the difference is in in stop loss. I mean, the only way that you make this thing work is if you get more people in the plan. So the idea is for everybody to pick the same plan that works in the state or in your area and that's how you get the savings by spreading spreading the uh risk over a larger pool. You're not going the only thing you're getting is you got $285,000 worth of savings from AON that maybe you can get. That's not big enough. That that's not the way to do it. So the thing there might be more there might be more to it that we don't really know. There might be >> not huge. The huge part is in is in the >>

187claims >> the the claims and the people themselves that are in the plan to design a plan that works where you spread ris risk over a bigger pool. So the districts that have found savings are districts and this is difficult to say um might not have monitored their plans as closely as we do a monthtomonth and they did they were paying overpriced on certain things and fleet helped them bid out and get lower bidded prices. That's what I'm so it helped them in year one bid out some lower prices but overall it's not a risk sharing pool for medical. That's the biggest >> now. Maybe there's some new coming on the prescription that I got to hear, but I stop losses the pool currently. >> So, Dr. Moore, um, when is it exactly that the

188board has to vote on this >> because you're going to be presenting it to schools and those numbers, we might get another month or two of numbers. So, when are you asking us to to vote on this? >> So, we are in negotiations. We've already had one session with IRCA. We circle back with CWA the following week. Um our goal is is to figure this out and bring a recommendation in in February so we can begin um to have this shift. A lot of the conversations that we had today uh regarding the structures or systems that we have in place to ensure that we are maximizing uh every single dollar in this system. We we we continue to do that. the investment that I'm I'm asking the board to contribute of $1.7 million inside of

189this year uh within your general fund. That's significant and it's going to require the partnership of every single individual who has the ability to spend money to make that a a reality. But we'll make it we'll make it a a reality. But I don't want to underscore that there's some secret pot of money just sitting around where we can bail folks out. um it is going to hurt uh in terms of our spending behaviors that we're going to have to modify to make this a reality. sitting with your employees face to face in good faith in speaking through the reality the having a deep understanding of how this impacts us as a group of individuals regarding how we ensure ourselves and then sitting individually person by person to help them figure it out. That's what

190we're invested in doing. So I I know nobody wants to increase it. I I I don't either. I do not want to shift anything, but I want to make a commitment to the people who work here uh that we're going to do best in by them. And we are at a situation uh any increase that we make will be offset. There's only one way for me to do it. Reduce services to kids. whether it's district support. I'm gonna cut I'm gonna come back here like I come every single year and there's going to be less people who work in this building. I can start to rent parking spaces here. Uh or or because we've gotten rid of so many people to the tune of $7 million and >> seven and a half in five years.

191But I'm not done. I'm not done. We build capacity. We invest in our teachers. Uh we need less people to build capacity because that capacity is there every single year. We cut five assistant principles. We're going to have less principles next year. We're going to have less assistant principles uh next year. Uh as the consolidation, which was huge, but the intent of that consolidation was to maximize compensation. The intent of that that consolidation was to maximize resources for kids. Um so as we shift to this reality, I want to continue to protect that. I want to continue to protect that. So we want to as we go into the upcoming school years, we want to continue to look at how we are going to provide as much compensation for our employees as possible. We yes,

192we are going to go in and negotiate additional compensation as best we can. why every other surrounding county is going to be reducing and and cutting and thrashing and slashing. What is what is so different in Indian River County that we've been following and been fiscally responsible from day one from day one. And the oversight on this plan, uh you're right, it it's it's our folks. They're the ones doing it and they are experts and they are critical and they are advocates for their bodies that they represent. And do they want to increase premiums? Yep. But every single one of them uh understands the the reality of that that's taking place. So >> So I guess the answer to my question was February. >> Yes. In the that is the goal. The end of February

193that that that is the goal. >> Okay. Thank you. Board members, does anyone need to take a break before the next presentation? No. No, I have another question. >> Can you ask him when we are >> I can we just close this off? I mean, >> yes. >> No, no, no. I have another question about this topic. So, I can come back and ask another qu after the break. I can ask my question. >> Sure. >> Or do you want me to ask it now? >> I'd rather you ask it now. So, come back. Yeah. >> Um, so that you said in February you were going to bring us an item. I just want to be clear what that item was. Is that item for us to vote on the offset only or are you

194also going to bring us the increases? Because Mr. Green said that he's working on quite a few action steps that I'm not sure those will get done in two weeks >> and that includes bidding and renegotiating and uh evaluating other insurance carriers and reviewing you know all these other things. >> So good good question. >> Thank you. >> The impact of the shifts and what's going to get us through October would be the action. A number of the conversations you all had today. So that would include the increases in premium >> in >> but he hasn't done any bidding. >> No to get us to October where we're looking at different options, different plans. That's a whole different body of work. The item that I would bring would bring us to a conclusion come October

195and there's a whole other shifts and changes and modifications that would need to take place from moving forward from October. What about if you were to I mean just to talk about that October plan um what about taking the 1600 employees not negotiating an increase why are you smiling because you know taking the 1600 employees uh and dividing or dividing the 3.4 million into the 1,600 employees who are receiving health insurance. I mean, that would be like $2,100ish per person for the next eight months. Uh, or maybe not. >> I I may have done the math wrong, but have we considered just that because that would be way less than some of these insurance increases or the premium increases? >> This is where it'd be better to allow Bruce to answer than than me. Um,

196>> I mean, you don't have to answer now. I I the initial response is the overwhelming majority of of employees are just employing themselves as an employee. Everything else >> I'm just talking about those that are receiving health insurance too, >> right? But the cost covers everyone who's insured, which is 1600 people. >> That's exactly what I'm talking about. >> How would you do that? So, >> I mean, just think about it because if there might be another way and then you can give Bruce enough time to actually go for bidding. >> I mean, that might be what? >> Yeah, >> just throwing it out. I'm not saying that we need to enter into a whole new discussion about it, but another option might be >> back. Go ahead. >> There I think the the

197root of the conversation is there's no amount of uh bidding, negotiating, or shopping that's going to get us anywhere near what we need. that might take a small percentage off of the total cost, but it it does not solve the problem whatsoever. So, we need to move on from that conversation. >> Thank you. Let's take a a break. We'll take 10 minutes. Dr. Shaffy will present the first and I'll ask uh Dr. McMahon to come to the table to be ready for the second which is a followup from the previous board uh workshop. Uh just some additional information uh regarding our AI AI work. Go ahead. >> Thank you Dr. Moore. Madame Chair, we have uh the previous policy for 7250 attached to this item, commemoration of school facilities. We have the current policy and

198we have a revised policy for your discussion. The 2013 policy, the main difference is community involvement through a name selection team. Then the policy was updated in 2023 and introduced the requirement uh for a community forum before a workg group can be formed. And then the uh revised version with the help of Miss Envol emphasizes a lot of the pieces that we have been working through recognizing commemoration and shifting that name to renaming and then some of the feedback that was discussed at the previous workg group to make sure that as we move through innovation and program redesign the day-to-day responsibilities of the recommendation rests with Dr. more through the community that that recommendation is serving with the final authority being the board. There is also a section um after collaborating with Miss Envol with

199the duration of the name that was added. It's the final section at the end. So the revised policy is to bring clarity and to stand the test of the unanimous approval for our operational efficiency initiative. So um Miss Envol if I didn't miss anything. Okay. And we also clarified, if I may, we also clarified that we're talking about schools and district facilities because it wasn't really clear to me. It it always said school facilities, but you have district this is a district facility, not here where we are. It's not a school facility. So, we want to make sure we captured both of those. >> And thank you. This was my request and and only because um it had a lot of gray to it and it's kind of changed depending on what facility or renaming

200thing is coming at us. So it would be nice to have um a cleanup. So I appreciate your work on this board members. Anyone have a comment on it? My question is how does this uh fit in with naming such as the uh FPL bright spot uh field if we've get people uh from the outside that are willing to contribute to something? I mean is that is that talked about in this policy? We we we did not have um because to me that's more of a marketing thing like a like enter into an agreement for the naming rights, right? >> Yeah. For naming rights or that type of thing. So perhaps we if we adopt this today, then we need to come back and think about how we would do a more efficient or the

201ability to uh do naming rights and decide did the board decide where and how we would do that. And you know, I suggested we take a look at some way some other people are doing it at some point too. >> Right. I mean, you bring up a good point. um the playground name and naming ceremony of all that. We didn't vote on that except for the Jimmy Graves complex. >> So um I'm fine with it, but the question is do we need to make sure it's in a policy somewhere that it says the board needs to approve it or not? >> Yeah. And I think that it also ought to facilitate the fact that we could name some uh have somebody that philanthropist that wants to uh name a classroom or something like that to

202get the right scientific electron microscopes and all the things that we need to have a first class lab. I mean maybe there's ways that we can do that. So I would just suggest that we have uh that ability as a board to uh to designate which things that we think may be uh needed where we need outside funding that we can't do with our own district funds that we ought to solicit somebody to help us with it. I mean, I sat at the other night in Sebastian at that uh teacher's uh night of stars or whatever it was called, and as I sat in the seat, I went down to the floor. It looks like we need to replace every seat in that auditorium. >> I mean, there's probably a lot of things around here

203that we can't do in normal capital that we should be doing uh to create uh you know, part of our new trend, you know, worldclass performing arts. uh you know and I'm sure there's people that would support that in the community. So we ought to at least look at ways that we could could involve that into our policy. Maybe it's a amendment or a separate policy and this one's fine for the just revising the way that we do it. But uh that my only point >> Miss Miss Enville, can you speak to that? I mean will this policy allow us to do a quick naming like that? >> So I I think we can add a language in it's kind of in there but not really. I think we could add language in there. Essentially,

204if you're having like a philanthropic organization to donate and you want you're gonna the school board is going to approve that probably approve that agreement perhaps. Um I don't I think >> what about an individual that that wants to contribute? I mean, we have some people that may want to do STEM programs >> uh and do a big deal in STEM. Why not? >> Yep. So, it's just >> something I think we need to discuss at some point. >> Yeah, you weren't on the board the last time we discussed this, but there were some concerns in the past about an individual just all of a sudden wanting to name something in a school and it getting done without the school board even knowing and then a plaque shows up. >> The school board should approve

205everyone. >> Yeah. So, that's why we're asking Well, I'm asking for it. >> Anybody else want to weigh in on this topic? Miss Rosario? Um, we had in our in our trying to find it in the older version of this policy. Um, language that said there were certain guidelines for renaming a facility. Here it is. Um, the exceptional circumstance which may result in a school or facility being named after Sorry. >> Um, the exceptional circumstances which may result in a school or facility being named after an individual uh will include a finding made by the board with a supermajority vote that the individual was or is an outstanding civic, educational, or philanthropic leader of local, state, or national repute. For exceptional circumstances, as determined by the board, the name of the school or facility may

206be changed by a supermajority of the vote. Um, it is the board's policy that a supermajority finding exceptional circumstances to exist. A school may be named after an individual deceased for a minimum of three years and exceptional circumstances. again, supermajority vote. Um, may name a facility within a school, a facility within a school after an individual deceased or living. All of that is just basically saying we did have it in the older version. I don't see it in the newer version and maybe Miss Enville something along these lines. >> I think that's too restrictive from my point of view. >> 100% I agree. But um you know >> maybe kind of crafting something that would >> So I as Amy's going to respond. I think that is a good start, but it minimizes us for

207other donations on on a much smaller or even larger scale. Uh because somebody may want to give $50,000. like we're having conversations around renovating classrooms. This classroom brought to you by so and so uh which funds the tech in the classroom, funds the experience the student has. Um that's where we need a level of clarity. If someone said you know what does it cost to give a world class of classroom of the future cost $75,000 um in exchange for brought to you by this this classroom is that's the level of clarity. And I think when we go to Ad Henderson, uh, you'll see that theory of action throughout the entire school. >> When are we going, by the way, >> where Dorian's going to ask for dates, uh, before you all leave today. >> Okay,

208>> good. Anything? Oh, Dr. Jones. >> Um, thank you, Miss Enville. I like this version. I think maybe we could add something that we're talking about with Mr. Dyer said. you know, public education is now in the world of private public partnerships and we've got to honor that because those kind of things can come up where people want to donate. Like you said, I think the museum had 100 million donations. So, um if we add it to this maybe or or um just take a look at it, but what it says in the end is the superintendent will recommend and the board will decide. It still will all come to us through the superintendent. So, I like that part and I like that it's cleaned up. um community engagement. You know, if we're looking at

209schools, I don't think you will be building new schools, but we maybe renovate and whatever happens like when Abasel moves to Glendale and so forth. It should be the people involved with that school, the principal, the PTA, the sack, you know, somebody who's not even involved in the but in the community wants, you know, we need to listen to the people where this really means a lot. I told you my kids Glendel Gators are still waiting to see what's going to happen when Bassel moves there. Be good. >> But it's those kind of things in alumni that you know contact me and say, "Okay, what is this going to be? How is it still going to be tied into the community?" Um, and exceptional circumstances. We are in exceptional times with all the moves that

210we're making. I don't need people having this, this, this, and this before it comes here. >> Right. the exceptional circumstance you can recommend to us and the board will vote. So just keep that in mind you know keep that in mind on who are we doing this for you know who really means something to this school like when Abaso moves they're not Moasso anymore so again we need to hear from Abasso so keep that in mind keeping the people who have a real interest in it and then it comes to you and you recommend to us >> perfect >> yes Mr. D. >> Yeah, it I mean I I don't want my comment to kind of mess up the the changes. So, as far as I'm concerned, we can vote on this policy, but we

211may need to come back and amend it or add to it or vote on it again coming up. So it I mean this is fine with me but I just think that that uh upon doing our research we may come out with a with some other suggestions maybe a different policy maybe uh you know what >> maybe like a marketing policy or >> or whatever. Yeah, that type of thing. >> Or she said she might be able to write something into this one before we vote on it. >> Might be able to add it >> because this workshop where we discuss it they can make changes. So I I I think I staff and myself will circle back with with Amy to see if we can't tweak or modify this this policy as we're discussing.

212>> Um I mean we have schools that are you know they want to innovate and some of that innovation begins with changes and shifts and and things that ultimately would require this policy to stay the same. But I've asked them to kind of hold uh until we get this worked out. So, we want to move as fast as we can. Um, but not so fast that we're having to go back in other months to fix things. So, we want to get it right with this policy. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Another one. Um the workg group process uh it says that the workg group shall include representatives and may include uh shall be made up of representatives and may include uh school principal, district employees, community members, parents, students, school advisory council representatives,

213and student leadership organizations. I would just recommend that we not say may include and shall include. I don't want to come to a situation where we have no students that show up or no parents, you know, and because the policy says May, we don't want it. We don't we definitely want them involved. >> We wanted the flexibility because if you're renaming, for example, something in this building or support services, they're not going to have a sack or a PTA. So we transportation I mean there's lots of there are many ancillary facilities that will not be comprised of that. I understand that. But when it comes down to it, 6 months from now, six years from now, someone will pull this up and at a school building, they'll say, "Well, we didn't we didn't need parents.

214We didn't need." So, a policy needs to have some longevity >> um to and and include the language of what the intent is. And our intent is to include parents and students. So maybe we can say something along the lines of um um when dealing with school facilities, the language is shall uh when dealing with district facilities, it's may I I'd rather keep it flexible because it's coming to the board and the board can say did you have students involved? Did you have parents involved? And then we can make our decision there. And that gives them a little bit more freedom to be able to do that because you can't force people to go to a meeting at night. You can invite them, you can ask them, but you can't force them. >> But there's

215there's no way of saying that they this is going to be at night. You need community involvement. You can't have that opportunity. >> That's my opinion and I'm giving it. So my opinion counts, too, >> Mr. D. I would I would agree with that. I think that when you get it too, you know, shall uh is just it just is is too too restrictive. I mean, I think the board is the ultimate decision. The board has the has the ability to answer the questions. The board has the ability to approve or not approve >> and to direct that uh it be looked at again if we're not happy with the way it was done. So, I think that being flexible is in my opinion best. >> I agree. I just I don't want the restriction

216on there. That's the main thing for that for me. I agree with how it's written now. >> All right. Thank you. And uh close us out. Dr. McMahon is here for a uh repeat performance um regarding AI. >> Thank you very Thank you. >> There we go. >> So, these are the uh members. I do want to take a moment just to pause and thank uh the members. Uh as you can see and you look, I included their titles. Um we all know them. We all know what they do. But I did this just for the perspective that this was not a accountability and research task force. This was not a CNI task force. This is uh a a cross collaborative uh effort at um looking at AI and how can we embrace it? How

217can we put up um you know some some safety nets if you will and some guidance to both our uh staff members as well as our families uh who are a our main constituent uh with it. So uh first off so thank you for these members uh if they are listening appreciate uh the work. So when we started we started with these as our objectives. We needed to um you guys have heard the saying building the plane while you flying it. Uh we actually I think were in the design stages not even building. So we were designing a plane and building it all while flying it. And so we were looking at current emerging AI tools and practice and education. We wanted some kind of framework uh that as departments were embracing technologies that may

218have had AI both or in part or fully AI tool that they had a framework in order to uh to judge its usefulness um as well as the um benefit to our students. Uh we wanted to develop recommendations guidelines for that responsible effective integration. We also wanted to uh come to some alignment between apartments. Uh we had some tools already in place. So we wanted to make sure that everyone had a common language and they were looking at this in the same way. Um and then obviously providing coordination of support for those district efforts and then uh ongoing to monitor the progress of AI initiatives. So this is our main uh list of objectives. We started with core values and recommendations. Uh we wanted to and I have this in paper form. I also have

219this broken down smaller. So if you'd like to read it off paper, I can get you a sheet. If not, >> yes, >> I will zoom in. >> Thank you. >> So the next few slides are just zooming in on um what you are now reading. So the core values we felt it was important for us uh before we started getting into the nitty-gritty this AI tool that AI tool we wanted to approach it from a 10,000 foot view and say these are some of the items some of the core values we wanted to be known by so that as we are evaluating these AI tools as we are dedicating taxpayer payer resources to benefit students we wanted these to be at the forefront of our discussion and so uh we went through an iter

220iterative process with the task force using AI but also using human oversight. So we would list out uh core values that we personally felt important. We would push those into AI and have them summarize it. We would then evaluate that output uh for what we felt was important and we would go back and forth with the AI. And this is kind of where we ended. Uh the last step was to uh just to to make it um categorized by our strategic plan uh pillar. So this first pillar connected by community has three core values. Protect with integrity. Um I think the last time I was here that was definitely a uh a priority of the board. Um and as I said the core values did reflect a lot of the statements that you guys made.

221So this first one student safety, privacy and dignity are non-negotiable. So we are going to safeguard information, transparency, care and accountability. How this plays out is there are a lot of tools that may have AI integrated within it. It may not even be the main thrust of what that tool is. It's just every vendor out there knows AI is a buzzword. And so when they're selling us a product, they love to say this has AI built into it. Well, we also need to make sure that that data that's being sent to them is not housed on a server that could then be exposed. So this protect with integrity is is first and foremost. Um and it is something that as we evaluate tools we do need to be uh mindful of act ethically. I know

222it goes without statement but when AI is a new tool we wanted to make sure that that also was at the forefront of our core values. And then finally to build trust through transparency um clear communication open evaluation shared accountability sure our community understands and trusts how AI is used. So I don't mind taking questions during it or we can wait till afterwards. So I'll leave that to you. Um I can go to the next pillar or pause for questions. We'll leave that to you. >> No, we'll just after because we can take notes. >> Sure. So the second one fueled by innovation. We wanted AI as a core value to innovate with purpose, not just to grab a tool because it says it's AI, not just to it's the new shiny thing out there.

223We needed to make sure that we understood that at the end of the day, we're about educating kids. And if we can find tools that help us to do that more efficiently or effectively then great. But it's not necessarily we we aren't an AI industry just to come up with a tool because it's AI. Uh we also want to accelerate what matters. Uh something that Dr. Moore has has certainly brought to this district is this wired to learn fast. We need not just to teach kids but we need to do it efficiently and effectively. And so we know that AI can help with those regards. And so we wanted to make sure that that it is uh that when we do look at these AI tools, it's accelerating that primary purpose to teach and educate

224our kids. And then the third pillar is driven by leadership. Um to empower growth in our leaders uh is important. AI can certainly do that. I know it has benefited my own professional experience. uh but we want to foster that ongoing future focused learning. Uh we are an educational facility. We preach teaching to our kids. We need to also embrace it ourselves. And so this uh core value is certainly looking at growing our um stakeholder groups whether they be students on up to staff members. Uh and then finally keep humans at the center. This is another one that that was brought up last time I was here talking about AI. Uh human oversight is massive when it comes to AI. Uh the the news articles are littered with stories of whether it's an attorney submitting

225a brief to a judge with totally done in AI, never looked at it. There's cases that are made up by the AI. Uh hallucinations is what the industry calls it. Um and so it's it's vital that humans are at the center of every decision we make. Um I think it's been clear both from Dr. more cabinet um even verbalized by you as as board uh members um we're not going to replace teachers and so when it comes to teaching we have humans at the center of that experience um but AI is a tool and so much like uh being a former math teacher remember when graphing calculators were a big thing and and there were a lot of teachers who felt like graphing calculators or calculators in general were going to be you know ruin

226educ education and when we embrace as a math educator the fact that calculators are a tool then we have a proper placement for that tool within our educational uh systems and so AI is that it is a tool to make us more efficient and more effective but it is not to replace us. All right, questions. Board members, Miss Rosario. >> Um, thank you for the presentation. Uh, how do you how are we I I see here, uh, for the AI task force recommendations, number two, um, says define clear governance and responsibility uh, and responsible use. How are we defining it? How are we building, you know, the language to actually define what AI is? Because I think there's a there's clearly a difference between AI as a systemsbased function and AI literacy. Like there's a

227lot of components elements that are under the AI umbrella. So, how are you developing those definitions? >> Absolutely. Great question. Um, and if it's okay, I went through the core values but not the recommendations. That's the other side. So I don't mind answering questions on the core values and then going over the recommendations or >> do you want to just go over the recommendations? Okay. >> Probably best. I'm sorry. Is that okay? Because I might answer a little bit of that but also with some of the other questions as we go through. >> Okay. >> So once we had the core values, we looked at broad recommendations. These are not um specific actionable items. They were more from the task force. These are broad buckets of items that we needed, we felt we needed as

228a task force to push the district towards. Um, so the first one is establishing a district-wide approach to AI learning. This is professional learning. We wanted it not to be responsive to the tool, but to have more of a of a broad overarching uh approach to professional learning. Um, the second one is to to define clear governance, responsible use expectations, which Mr. Sorry, I believe is is you know your your question you just asked is exactly why this is on here. Um we need to define AI. Uh we need to help uh all of our constituents know when we say AI that is a a broad term and so we want to provide some clarity. language matters and so having some um you know some some whether they are policies uh or just a little

229bit broader um I don't want to say rules but but definitely some governance um involved here it's important it's vital third is to build a coherent sustainable AI ecosystem uh again um one of the things that we pride ourselves are our data uh ecosystem where we have one place where we can get our data. Uh, currently that's through PowerBI. We wanted a similar approach when it comes to AI. Instead of utilizing 58 different tools, could we embrace these into a single coherent sustainable ecosystem that we can build off of? Um, the next one forth is leveraging AI to strengthen continuous improvement and efficiency. Uh, one of the um the the the benefits of this district is the the people that we have. We have some extremely talented educators, some talented problem solvers, and we want

230to be able to leverage AI to capture some of that problem solving and to be able to push that out systemically um throughout the system. Then the last to cultivate a culture of innovation with responsibility. Um this is it goes along with the core values. So the idea is that it's it's a cultural shift to use AI to innovate, but we wanted to do that with responsibility instead of just going off and grabbing every AI tool out there to have a more thoughtful approach to it to make sure that the tools that we're we're we're obtaining are actually solving problems that we want to solve rather than just, oh, that's a neat new toy. Let's go play with it type thing. Then the last one's ensuring ensure long-term readiness through strategic investment. Um I am

231glad I didn't follow the health insurance uh conversation with this one, but um the idea is that where where we put our money, where we put our human capital is where we go as a district. And so to prioritize AI readiness through that um is the last recommendation. And I will say, can I go through one more slide and I will answer that question. So these are just some broad next steps. one um we our task force right now the next meeting is is fleshing this out we wanted actionable recommendation so much of I think Mr. Rosario where you were going with your question. Um that's where this next step is going to be uh answered. We as a task force uh would like to have and we already have a a rough draft of

232this some immediate actions. These are things that we we feel are things that need to be pushed out as soon as possible. Uh the second bucket is within the next school year. And the third would be long-term targets. Uh these are things that um as a task force we know are important. We want to articulate and capture uh who knows a year from now, two years from now, what the AI will be able to do. And so these are just things that we can uh place um and then we're going to take those recommendations to cabinet to be tasked out specifically. Um one part of it and it kind of goes along with the the immediate next steps, but guidance for leadership, schoolbased staff, teachers, parents, and students. Um that is definitely something that is

233on our immediate horizon. Um it's important. Uh we need to make sure that all of our stakeholder groups understand um how to interact with AI in a safe environment that promotes learning. Uh and then finally we are currently in the midst of building a AI dashboard to revolutionize our current data ecosystem um embedding some AI within that. So with that, so to get into specifics of what that looks like, um I can tell you that I I that will be a a collaboration um to get to the the specifics. I'm not sure that you're asking for like specific language per se. Uh yeah because I mean if we are creating a well let's just go back a little bit in uh at the FSBA uh conference when you presented on AI and what the district

234is doing you stated that we already had uh an AI task force. Um, so I believe if I remember correctly, you did say that there were that that was already defined. Um, but h but now let me back up before you answer the question. How long has this AI task force been working? >> Um, it was part of our strategic plan that you the Ignite 2027. So this past fall. So we've met probably >> eight times. >> Okay. So it's just fairly new. It's not like it's been Okay. So you're just getting up and and and and going on this. Okay. Um so the task for will the task force make recommendations to the board? >> No, ma'am. >> No. >> Uh we are making recommendations to the superintendent and cabinet and leaving it to

235>> okay >> to make those recommendations. >> And then um is the task force has the task force already looked at our current policy? um not as a matter of um >> not to the eye of how can we alter it or edit it. It was in our information gathering one of those first few meetings is what what policies are out there. Um last thing we wanted to do is have a core value that was in violation of the current policies. >> Yeah. So we do have a policy that has that. Um what our current policy does not have is a really good clear definition of AI which I think that uh you know with the task force I think that would be a great recommendation through the superintendent to be able to say we've

236come up with that and then obviously we have some you know generic definitions out there you can pull up frameworks from different places um I know the state uh is work the state department of education is working Florida state department of education is working on um these kinds of definitions and creating frameworks to be able to recommend for all districts. Um so we can probably come up with something there. But I I just think that in order for in my opinion to be able to create all the things that you want to create here, you know, all the recommendations and meet these expectations. Um we've got to know what it is and be able to define it. And I think that would help our policy strengthen our current policy um with a good clear definition

237of what that is. So that then you know all the other recommendations um in in classroom use and then obviously you know training and professional development all those other things would just kind of follow. Um and how often do you guys meet? Do you all meet? >> Because of the nature of the staff members you could imagine finding a time. So it's about twice a month was our initial cadence uh with the hope of going more towards a monthly or if not quarterly once we have the work um kind of done but knowing we needed to develop the core values recommendations the initial meeting cadence was a little bit more frequent than probably we'd like. Some of them ended up having to cancel because of some something or another. >> Sure. Well, I think it's

238it's it's certainly a great beginning. Um uh I think every school district um and every organization should have an AI task force with the way things are. I've already shared how I feel about um AI. I think AI is fantastic, but I also think that there could be some very very dangerous things in it. Um um or made available to students that I certainly want to be able to um create safeguards so kids are not exposed. Um definitely chat bots. I am not in favor of chat bots at all. Um, and I don't know how systematically we can create some of those. I don't even know what they would be called like uh the the the online guards or something while they're in our school. Um, I don't know if they would be keywords or

239I don't even know, but if they're using any one of our devices, can we stop that? Um >> I do think that it's important to note that um while AI is a relatively new phenomenon, um there are it's still technology and so to your point the the uh technological tools we have to guard safety are still there and are still able to stand guard using your analogy. >> Thank you. And then my last question is about the AI dashboard. When you referred to building on the AI dashboard, were you referring to PowerBI or is there another dashboard that you're working? >> We're taking some of our AI dashboards in and more of a web-based interface outside of PowerBI. PowerBI has some limitations and it is a cost initiative. Uh trying to save the district money.

240>> Okay. Did were you involved? Did you see at all the um AI I don't even I don't think you may have but there was a presentation a workshop at FSBA um on Google notebook. >> No, I I was not at that, but I do know what you're referring to. >> I think that's great. I love it. Um, and >> there's a number of tools out there that we've been looking at. And um, so when we have vendors who come in and offer the district a service, a curriculum, they usually have their dashboards they would love for us to um, incorporate >> and rarely do we even want to see them because we want to bring that data into our own data ecosystem. So we're asking them questions about exporting. Um, and so one of

241the things that we're finding with these AI tools is there's some phenomenal things out there, but it's just a small piece and it sits over here and it sits over there. And so, um, we are certainly asking questions and and taking those calls and taking those meetings to learn what they're doing and either to take that and learn ourselves and how do we develop it ourselves um or, you know, maybe it is a vendor that comes on board with us and and we do partner with. Yeah, I think it's great. I mean, I I have I have an access I can certainly, you know, show show you how it it works. Um, but it's really a notebook. Um, and then you create, you can upload anything. You can upload videos, you can upload PDFs, you

242can upload into it, even websites, and then you can ask it like you would like a chat GPT any prompt or question. You can select certain documents so it's not all of them that they're looking at. they're only looking at, you know, one or two of them. And then to the right, there are these options where you can further create a a flyer, a a PowerPoint presentation, a video segment. They even create an entire uh podcast and a podcast where you can actually interact with the computer that's reading it back to you live, which is crazy. It's mind-blowing to me. And we're not talking like three minute segments. We're talking like 15 minutes that it creates. It's just beyond like you can. But the thing is also within this notebook you can title these notebooks

243anything that you want and and you can always go back to that particular notebook. Um I found though that that notebook Google notebook is not as they don't have as many um internet options I guess you know wide world web you know access accessibility. Uh there are some things that it's limited to which might actually benefit us security-wise. So I'm I'm not so sure but I'm just throwing that out there because um I'd be happy to share it if you haven't already seen it. >> Yeah. No, we have and we've we've been exploring that as well. So, appreciate the uh the tip. >> Okay. >> Any other comments, Dr. Brasa? >> Yeah, thank you for the um the update. I appreciate the work you guys are doing. I just have a few things I want

244to bring up. Um so one thing I think I would like to see is on the teacher side recommendations to run um students work that's produced through an AI checker just to have that as the standard um for every teacher on pretty much any written project um so that that work is continuously being checked uh to see if there's AI components in it um so that these kids aren't getting cheated out of a real education because that's it a it's another step of work for the teacher. They're probably going to need to be instructed that you kind of have to do this. It's the standard and it's not ad hoc. Um, another thing I wanted to bring up is uh, you know, when you give kids homework for years, what they've been doing is plugging

245the question into Google. Now they have more advanced tools. Um, I think we need to shift, I guess, maybe the weight of what homework is worth and include more in-class testing, like even three to five question pop quizzes. get a beat on where these kids are um and what they understand rather than sending home this work that more than likely most of them are probably just cheating and going online and getting the answers and it's it's really busy work to them and they're probably not learning. Um just a consideration for that. Um and then another you know tool that is already I'm already seeing it used uh are the glasses um like the glasses that are now integrated with AI. So you can you can sit in a lecture uh you can watch 20, 30,

24645 minutes of lecture. It's watching and you can have it summarize and create notes and an outline for you. I mean, it's a really good tool if used properly. So, I mean, kids are going to be bringing in probably these in the future um potentially using them. I think that's a tool that could be used well. It's something we may have to regulate and be involved with, but um realistically, that's something we'll probably see in the classroom is kids trying to use AI to help them learn and take notes more efficiently. They're paying attention. They're not sitting there writing stuff down. Um and they walk away with an outline um and good notes. So >> it's amazing what they'll do to get out of a >> a little bit of work. The amount of work

247they put into getting out of a little bit of work. >> It's fairly impressive what the glasses can do with um limited chalkboard discussion. It can turn it into a whole lecture for you. But >> um those were the main things uh I was interested in. Um, and you already kind of addressed one concern I had was standardizing the tools that our teachers and students are going to be using, having them in a hub. It sounds like you're way ahead on that. Okay. >> Anyone else? >> Doc Dr. Johns. >> Um, thank you, Dr. McMahon. I'd like a couple points. Really? Well, people remain the drivers. AI is a tool and human is at the center. Um also the guidance for leadership at schoolbased staff, teachers, students and parents because parents still have questions and

248how their kids are using it. Are they doing it properly? So I think any help we could give maybe through Zoom meetings or some something like that and responsible growth. We just can't do the short term. These things look good now blah blah blah you know all these fancy things coming out. So really look at the responsible growth and obviously uh professional development for our teachers. Now last time we talked about uh our AI policy. I think we might have jumped the gun on that one last year. We talked about AI being fluid. Chair Baronborg mentioned that and having guiding principles. So maybe we need to take a look at that and even get some information from the task force because um I think the guiding principles are some standards that we need to keep

249because everything is going to be fluid every year on what we do, what we change, what we govern and so forth. So, uh, just just to think about that maybe with the task force, but um, good job. Thank you, >> Mr. D. >> You good? Um, thank you for coming and doing this and right away. I mean, I asked last workshop, so I appreciate that. Um, and it's because, you know, I've been hearing from the task force at the state level, the DOE, um, FSBA, they're all talking about making sure we have policies in place. And I agree that's I looked at the policy and I said, you know, I think it's time for us to revisit it. Um, be a little bit more broad because of all the changing that can happen, but also

250asking you to come and present every year so that we get an update at least um to know what's what we're doing in the school so we don't hear from a parent as a as a frustration and then we find out later that you guys added something we didn't know about. So that's all. Okay. Now the floor is mine. Okay. So some good things happened this week up in Tallahassee. Um actually this happened with um the Department of Education. So he's bringing up um the rule that just came out from the DOE on Thursday night at midnight. Um this was interpreted by Joe McGee who is the U attorney that is also the legislative liaison force for FSBA. He's kind of a new hire there. But what's very promising is that's not it. It's the

251other one. It's Yeah. Is that it? The email. Yes, that's it. If you can go scroll down. There are two things I want to bring to your attention on this. One is um Well, you're going way too fast. Can you go back up to the top, please? Okay. So, one big one. Thank you. All right. On the next page, slowly, please. And I think it's See, okay, it's in here. I'm just going to tell you what it is and we'll send this to you. um they the um schools of hope operators that have sent out I don't know how many 300 and some applications can only send out five with this new rule making and if they want to add a sixth one they have to remove one of them. So, they're only allowed to

252send out five. There are what, five or six on the There are five on the um board's approval. Um the DOE's approval. And so, that means 25 applications for the whole state. That's a big view. >> Um the other thing is they're going to have to pay and it's down at the bottom. Can you go to 6C? There's a lot in here that they um cleaned up, which is great. Um but they realized that the school districts were going to have to pay for everything. >> Yeah. So they said >> so uh 6C. He's going so fast I can't. >> Okay, we're almost there. There. Yep, there it is. There we go. They added a mutual management plan. Okay. And basically what this says is we have to agree to services how much they're going

253to cost, how much they're going to pay. So they we enter into a a management plan with the um collocation and the other thing they put in there somewhere is that this the classrooms have to be um next to each other. They can't be all over the building which means in our case we'd have to move our classrooms in other spaces to make space for them but it also means they wouldn't be in between all of our kids. Um so those are some really good things in the rulemaking. I'll send this to you so you have it. Uh, this is going to be voted on on February 20th at the um DOE's next meeting. If you'd like me to go, I'd be happy to go because it's in Key West. All right. A little different

254weather than Tallahassee. So, Tallahassee was very cold, but um I felt I got the most accomplished this year I've ever had. And usually I come back crying or angry. This year I came back hopeful. And it's because of the conversations um they're starting to understand that oh wait a minute you know 75% of the kids in the state of Florida get um educated by public schools and so 75% of parents out there are starting to say wait a minute you got to draw the line you got to do some accountability um so can we put up that other the PowerPoint Chris so I had several um quick meetings um repres O he chairs um an education committee and um Rep. Blanco and he's on that committee as well and Rep. Gant came to our FSBA

255day in the legislature spoke. I got to pull them aside and talk to them really quickly afterwards. They are three very pro-education um representatives. Thank you. Um and Rizzo got bless his heart. um he got so emotional twice during one of the committees because of a a student that presented and it was it was really impressive. Um so he'd be a great one to speak to if you ever need to speak to somebody. He's um got a lot of power as far as a committee person, but he's also got a big heart for education and kids. Um I did meet with um Rep. Trabolsia. I went up there on Monday, started to make my rounds with the AIDS and she was in and said, "Oh, come back and talk to me." So, we had a

256great conversation about her big bill, which I'm going to show you in a minute. It's an omnibus bill. It's big. Um, but it's got some good things in there. There are a couple things that are a little concerning, but there, you know, good things like the attendance. Um, re met with uh Representative Bracket. Um, of course, he's positive about our schools in our school district. Uh, Senator Mayfield was in, she spoke to me. um uh Senator Ga, uh Gates, um got to take a picture with him and he's the one that brought forward 318. 318 is the bill that was passed unanimously on the Senate floor the first day that said um that there needs to be some accountability to the all these um scholarships. Um, so nothing has happened in the House so far,

257but I'm getting I got the feeling from a couple of the committee chairs that um something is going to happen. So, we'll see what's going to happen there. They're getting way too many phone calls and emails and they'll tell you that. So, that's a good thing. And they're hearing from parents, so that's a really good thing. uh went to two committees and um we got recognized on the Senate floor which is nice because on my way to Senator Gro's office I got called to the floor so I couldn't meet with her. Um but it was successful because of um some of the bills that are moving. Usually a good bill we're all excited about it and then we watch and it doesn't really move. So um this is the presentation that was given to us

258on the day in the legislature and basically what they did is they took um this legislative platform and Joe went through the platform and he said okay this bill goes with this one this one goes with this one. So these are the things that are moving that we're kind of looking at. This is one that's for charter schools that have to um have the same safety guidelines which is interesting. We'll see what happens with that one. Um, and then here are the key requirements of that bill. I kind of want to move through. This is the one that um I believe rep Rep. Rizzo was very u moved by. Um, a student went up and told his story and it was very moving. So, it was great. Um, this is about Well, no, sorry, it

259wasn't this one. was about um cameras in the ESSE classrooms and that one had uh a lot of interesting things. I think that was the one. Um but that one we need to to watch. Um and this is the one that moved him as well. Individual uh education plans and kind of cleaning things up. This is the schools of hope. um that is probably not going to move and it doesn't need to because of the rule making from the DOE. When the DOE votes on this on February 20th, then that will become the rule that we follow. So, we don't have to worry about those going through. Um and that one is about educational facilities for the kids at Hope. That's all been cleaned up in the rule. This one is the enforcement of school

260attendance 1181 1120. Um it's you'll see attendance in several bills this year. So they are hearing that attendance is an issue. Um in other words, they're going to give us more flexibility on being able to contact parents who um their kids are are absent more than a couple of days. It used to be you had to wait 10 days, right? >> And now it's looking like five or um or your choice. >> That was in one of our legislative priorities from this board. Right. >> It is. And they're listening. Um, so I'm seeing it everywhere. It's all over the place along with VPK funding. Um, one thing that is interesting that FSBA brought up that hasn't been brought up, but I mentioned it to a couple of reps that were very interested is um, compulsory

261kindergarten. We're talking about VPK all the time, but then I know as a principal, I had kids coming to me that had never been in a classroom. And that's really tough when they're coming, especially midy year and they're showing up in first grade and they've never been in a classroom at all. So, um that's probably you're you're going to see a lot of early childhood um bills that are going through or being attached. The omnibus bill has um BPK in it. This is the one I was talking about, Senate Bill 318. It does not have a companion bill yet in the House. So, this one is the one that's asking for um the scholarship program to be renamed to the hope program and um having some making sure that there's a categorical for it so

262that we can find out track the money basically. So, people aren't using it to go to Disney or whatever. Um but that again doesn't have a companion yet. Uh this is the omnibus bill I was talking about. It's 50 pages long. So, that's tough to read through all that. At least it came out of the beginning of session and not on the last day like that last one we we had two pages. >> Um this one is moving. It's got some interesting things in it. One good thing is the uh VPK is very strong on her list. This is Trabolsy's bill and uh attendance. So I believe those those two we will see some definite differences with. Um these are the provisions. Uh the baby Olivia bill video kept coming up. I haven't seen it

263yet. Um, but they say watch that video because that's what a lot of this has in it. Um, that they watched the video and that's what made them put in the fetal development instruction. So, lots of things in here. Oh, big one is commissioner can remove materials and ban publishers for up to five years. >> That's a big one I saw in there. And um I don't think the others I mean little things the educator certificate um they're going to be able to expand it a little bit more so that it doesn't take so long to get teacher certified and get into classrooms. Um that those are two amendments that have already happened. You'll probably see more amendments with this. Um that one on the top is really interesting. It prohibits charter schools from dismissing

264students based on academic performance while they're under a an improvement plan. In other words, if they put them on an improvement plan and the parents working with the school to get the kid, you know, back to where they need to be, they can all of a sudden say, "Nope, you got to go back to public school." So, that's kind of a win. >> Interesting. >> And then law enforcement campus access. Okay. So, that one is interesting. Um, there was a school in St. Lucy County that did not allow a K-9 unit to come through and sniff. Um, and the reason why they didn't allow it is because they were testing at the time. So, they asked them, could you come back in another time? And that went from that to now um we have to

265require uh policies for um cooperation with law enforcement. And one of the things that lit up a couple of the um committees on that amendment was they were worried about ICE coming into schools. So um that you'll see some changes with because there was a lot of discussion on that. Um then the summer bridge threshold changes from 10th to 25th percentile for BPK. A couple monitoring things that they're going to be expanding um if it passes if it passes. So lab school admissions things like that. That is a big huge bill. This is still the same bill. So, lots of things added to this bill. I'll send you the PowerPoint so everybody has it. Uh, interestingly enough, um, the FHSAA. Um, there's there's another bill that I believe um, Senator Simon presented on athletics that

266everybody wants input on. So, look at that bill because they want input from the districts. But, I was told something before I walked up there that I didn't know is possible. And I brought it up to a rep and they were shocked by it. Um, and I was a little surprised by it too that a student can play a sport on one of our teams, then they can transfer to another school's sports team, but stay in our school and just go back and forth for another sport. In other words, they can they can play football for us, they can play basketball for somebody else, and they can play track and field for somebody else, and they still can stay in our school the entire year. They >> Yeah. But school choice, they were they said

267that the intent of school choice was you choose your school and all the other things you want to do with it. We get that like homeschoolers can can play on teams and things, but this is a little more than school choice. This is this is picking and choosing and changing all the time. Um didn't like something a coach said, quit, went to another school to play basketball, but stays at the same school. And that's to me that's, you know, that's crazy. So, um, yeah, I brought it up to two reps in a senator. So, hopefully we might see some a little bit of change on that. All right. So, these are the states of the platform items of FSBA. Um, green is it's already kind of um moving in a good direction, we think. Uh,

268yellow is um we're hoping it's moving a direction and red is killed. It never had a bill. >> And then um white is something that we won't hear those two until the b the budgets are finalized. So the budget making process is starting already. The Senate um is meeting to do their budgeting. The House is meeting to do their budgeting. You won't see all that happen and finalized until the very end. What happens is the subcommittees um get their budgets, they work them out, and then they send them up to the committees, and then the committees work them out, and then they send them up to leadership. But if they don't agree, then it just gets shifted up for the next one to decide. So, it gets really interesting towards the end of session when

269it when that happens. So, that's my report from Tallahassee. Um things are moving, I think, in a better direction for public schools than I've ever seen in the last I don't know, a couple years. Um, but they also know that it's a tight budget year, very tight. So, they got to be careful with that scholarship money because I think they had budgeted so much money for scholarship and then it exploded and it became so much more >> accountability >> that they're having a hard time with that budget. So, that's it. >> Mr. Berber, I just want to thank you for all of that information. I want to thank our community, our teachers, our people. I mean, emailing and calling your representatives will make a difference when those calls go in. We all had issues with

270schools of hope, you know, and they're at least looking at that. And I could talk an hour about the FHSAA bill, but I will not. >> Yep. You're right. The they said they've gotten so many calls about schools of hope and last year about the CTE programs. Remember, they were going to either cut them or do something to them. >> And the parents Yeah. and the parents mobilized and that makes the biggest difference. Parents and community members calling and and sending letters makes the biggest difference. >> I want to add one thing, Dr. Moore, about our two high schools. And again, I've been at the state level. We are very very fortunate that the vast majority are loyal to their high schools. Doesn't happen very often. No, but it is happening here >> with the

271students moving around and going to school and Yeah. >> All right. Unless anybody has an objection. >> Yes. You have an objection >> to to call the meeting. I I had another comment on >> Oh, sure. If I could. >> I I I thought today was actually uh a very good workshop. I think we got a lot of uh discussion out especially on the uh uh the uh health care and what we're needing to do with our insurance programs. Really a thorough understanding. So I really appreciate everything that you've done. I I have maybe two points about the workshop. You know the the the workshop to me as I've sat through this now for the last 13 14 months. it is really the only time a board under sunshine has a chance to really talk

272things out and to really have a real discussion on it. So I think it's it's kind of sacrosen in a lot of ways. I I think it really is good that we can really listen uh and hear. This is done without public discussion just for that reason. uh there's plenty of time uh to hear on any topic at a board meeting uh from the public, but this is supposed to be between us to try to really understand and to dig deep like we did today into the health insurance thing. I must say that I got emails last night at around I don't know sometime last night when I went on regarding discussions that I think uh were had or postings that were made to public media and then follow up and clean up on emails

273clean up on aisle six. Uh I I I think that it really poisons the well and I don't think it's a good thing. This is the second time this has happened and I don't think that we as a board should really do that. I think it really undermines the board itself and the way that we process and do work. I think it undermines the superintendent and his staff and the work that they've done. If we listen as we listen to the facts today, a lot of the concerns that were raised, he had already solved. He said, "We're not going to cut pass a cost increase on till April. we were just getting what our consultants had told us that the options were. So I I I really think that we ought to figure out how

274we can work together better as a board in the way that it's intended under the sunshine law and think that that is good. And then there's another one probably less important but important nonetheless. It's now we've been at it for four hours. Uh, I think in the regular board when we're on the DAS, we're supposedly limited by policy to eight minutes on a topic before you pass on pass it on and let everybody have a chance to talk and then you can get back in queue and talk all the all you want. We'll keep going around, but it's limited to eight minutes and I just think that there's uh probably we need to adopt that for our workshops too. I think it would make them more efficient and make sure that everybody has a chance

275to participate. Those are my points and you can ring the gavl. >> All right. Thank you. I adjourn this meeting at 401. >> Thank you.