School Board Workshop - Apr 08, 2025

001testing testing one two three. ed welcome to today's school board workshop. We're happy to have you join us and thankful for your dedication to our. This board meet work shob is now called to order. Please be reminded of the exit doors that are clearly marked for emergency exiting. While in the board room refrain from obstructing the exit doors, all attendees must occupy a seat with exception of the media. There is an overflow area. Upon activation of the fire alarm, please exit from the room in an orderly fashion and remain outside until the authority that has jurisdiction has deemed the building safe to return. Thanks for your cooperation. I will now introduce fairway elementary to lead us in the "pledge of allegiance" to the flag. please stand for the "pledge of allegiance" I blej a --

002pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under GOD indivisible with liberty and justice for all. you MAY be seated. we are fairway children. Pump pump pump it up. Two, three. [Applause] thank you very much. Board member holness has requested a moment of silence. DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair, I do have a few of them so I'll go with the first. ms. Marilyn patson hankerson, I would like to request a moment of silence in honor of MS. Marilyn hankerson. MS. Hankerson served the students 6 through 12 for decades as the guidance director MS. Patterson hanker-son poured her love and passion to the field. She was not only a friend, a sister and a colleague and a fellow sarar but deeply dedicated

003to the students at dill ard. Please join me to honor the memory of MS. Marilyn patterson hankerson. Thank you. Should I go into the others? Okay, I would like to request a moment of silence in honor of MR. Fred receiptridge the third, who served since 2023, a proud grad you'd, was a dedicated member of dill ard team alses dedicated to the success of the school. He leaves behind his father, senior a retired history teacher at dill ard. He was known for his willingness to lend a helping hand and will be greatly missed. Please join me in a moment of silence to honor the honor of MR. Fred rutridge the third. Thank you. I would like to request a moment of silence in honor of MS. Michele role a dedicated educators a education for 10 years

004and spent 16 impactful years as the beloved 9th grade counselor at piper high school. She touched the lives of countless students and staff earning the respect and admiration. Thz roll will be deeply missed by all bangels. Please join me in a moment of silence to honor her memory. Thank you. Please join me in a moment of silence to honor the memory of MR. Wayne harris aus dedicated professional who served the autism cluster with heart, humility and steadfast for the past three years, unexpected sense of humor, made a lasting impact on students and staff he supported. He leaves behind a daughter and his life partner, robin. And will be deeply missed by all who knew him. Please join me in a moment of silence. Thank you, MADAM Chair. thank you, DR. Holness. As we begin to

005begin the school board workshop we're reminded that our vision is 100 percent proficiency. We begin the vital task of sustaining this achievement. We'll continue to educating all students. Our theme this year is believe, and achieve one broward. Policy 1020 and the board will review the items as presented and advertised by the superintendent. Our first item of discussion is the committee reports. We will now hear from the following committees, so we will start with the broward county association of student councils and student advisor to the board. thank you, MADAM Chair, good morning. Happy APRIL, everybody. I'm here this morning to update you on the work that alana have been doing for the past two weeks and continue to do with the end of school year. We're nearly klaoetion with our speak up sessions with our 34th

006and 35th being completed over the next two weeks. We're excited that we have spoken over to 1,000 students with over 5 -- 75 percent not being leadership student or government students. We have spoken in a large majority to the students that come to school every day to learn and MAY not be as involved as some of their fellow peers and those are the voices that we wanted hear throughout the year and we're super proud of the fact that we've been able to hear from that group of students. So it's been a great experience over the past year. I'd like to congratulate sierra leone to serve as the alternate student advisor. She will be joining us at next month's regular school board meeting and beginning on MAY 13th. We will deeply deeply MISS Alana who is

007graduating this year and wish her well on her next indefers and off going to college. The capitol day was a major success I want to give a big applause for MR. Arna for organizing students to gup to tallahassee. It was a great experience to for students to see firsthand the work that is done at the capitol. Michael gotly is a presenting a bill that students presented to him on a one on one meeting on penalties with written threats to schools. sol thank you to representative gautly who listened to students and bringing that to our committee this morning. In MAY we'll hold our first school board discussion. Students and parents in middle and high school will receive notifications on how students can apply to be part of this sessions. No requirement, beyond the fact that they

008could not have been externally suspend thised semester. We want to hear from a wide array of students and we're looking forward to hear from the students in MAY for discussion. So students and parents stay tuned on how to apply for these sessions. Our final student advisory committee will be held next monday, we'll be doing a year-end with the superintendent what went well and what needs to be improved and ideas that students have have for the future. We're honored to recognize the students that served on this committee this year. As always, if students have any concerns to share or ideas to share, they can reach out at student dot advisor, and we look forward to successful end of the school year and wish students well on upcoming testing in coming months. Thank you, MADAM Chair. thank

009you very much. Next we will have diversity committee. good morning. Good morning, school board members, DR. Superintendent and staff narny for diversity. five remaining for the school year. Common things observed our facility issues and consistency and safety and security issues. Several schools visited, projects are still meeting with the project managers being transient or simply non not responsive. Safety and consistent all schools have blind spots. Several schools have inoperable security cameras and single point entries or inoperable making code drills problematic. A few schools do not have the safe space insignia. A few schools have not had security assessments for this school year. Our meeting on the third, the committee discussed our upcoming report presentation and items that will be included to provide this board that will be beneficial at broward county schools. The diversity chair have

010been called to present a robust report that gives the board a holistic view from a stakeholders perspective. This will emphasis the school commitment to collaborate with stakeholders. We discussed for continue 9 come to a consent, we're going to be coming to a consensus for the upcoming 2025 school year. The committee also discussed h b-51 01 potential bill. The committee is concerned about the impact, it will cut funding for duel enrollment. The district if the district, if this bill passes would ko lose about 33 million, the committee is asking that the board if they have mechanisms in place, if the bill passed, that will not pose an interruption for our students and staff. We ask if the corresponding department please provide the follow-up to our committee. If and when this happens, what do they have in

011place? As stated before, we have five remaining schools to visit. However this MAY not be included in the final report for MAY 20th but the chair will provide the chair summaries by the workshop or school board meeting. I will always end my report this th phrase, the power is the people, not with the power people. I want to enforce the collaboration, this district could not thrive without the volunteers who believe that it takes a village. Thank you. thank you very much. Next is ese advisory council. good morning, jackie lucekin chair of ese advisory. I want to kickoff, MADAM Chair, you mentioned in moving committee report to workshops who will give us later start, the 9:00 o'clock is even earlier than the school board meeting would have been when it gets to committee reports, I don't

012know if that explains the lack of people here. And we have to guess what we'll give the committee reports. Some of us have worked out for ourselves but we should not have to be keeping in taps when a workshop will coming up. I wonder if there MAY be advise for the future. Ese committee last month, we did not have quorum of the 9 schools, two -- had not been appointed, thank you for the final two months of the year. Having not had microphone at our JANUARY and FEBRUARY meetings, this time we had microphones but not a camera set us for us, so we have an audio recording only. But highlight was a video summary of awards that took place in MARCH. These are the annual awards now in the 26th year recognizing students with disability

013and their peer partners. This event is equivalent of our oscars, it celebrates the very best of B.C. Ps, it was heart warming and folks were glad to have it at the -- thanks to DR. Licata and hepburn in getting that venue changed. It was glamous and I so wish that the front row reserved for all nine of you, could have been full. There were three people there, and I know those of you who came had an awesome time. It was really special and I would have loved to have seen all of those seats filled, as it was parents and kids sat in the seats because the place was filled to brimming. Special thank you to coordinator who has lead this now for 26 years. And to diane and her team, they all worked incredibly hard.

014And last year, we had discussion of removal from your cord natured health services, of one on one nurses and aids from some of the district's most fragile kids. i have pushed and pushed for answers on this. I have not had them. DR. Jodie will be coming to the meeting next week hopefully to answer questions. But I'm getting crickets on some emails. When I email you folks, and say can you be asking questions. This was not right. And if you are going away and asking questions and being told yeah, nothing to see here, come back to me. That's that's not the case. I'm still helping students who are still without an aid and told by school, well come in for a meeting in a couple of weeks and we'll give you an update. They need an

015update every day on what is like to have the removed nurses back. It's a papant whwhis not a bully. Whfilea discrimination complaint against at her school and in return the person filed a bullying complaint, that's illegal. I've asked the to see the process by which these kinds of things are even handled. Sxifs told that in order to see any protocols I have to do a public records request, that is not true. This is not a public record that I have to request, MS. Batista and I would like to have that to for our parents to have inside. Every day, my phone is lighting up like a christmas tree with parent inquiries, I'm shoveling as fast as I can. It includes a students overseas that was treated -- so of course we still not had all

016year the, the dignity of being told what is happening with focus for all the ese issues we brought up and it's just crickets for that. And happy awareness autism month. Thank you very much. yes, ma'am. could we give her more time to finish because she had a whole thing in the beginning. sure, two for minutes back on the clock. I'd love that, thank you very much. I wanted to when you say the whole thing, in the beginning, if you did have something specific to hear b.I did have other things, it's important that we recognize and I know I say this so often, but committees are not tasked with simply coming to these meetings and tell you what we voted or formal recommendation. We do those too. And a number of them have gone nowhere but

017it's also important to reflect the work of the chair and all inquiries that are coming to us. So to add to that, the students who has been refused enrollment, we had another case of a parent who was elated to have been given a school choice place for their students in autism, program class and two weeks later just got a phone call out of the blue from bcps, sorry you cannot have that anymore. I wait asked got involved in that as well and the end result is they've got their school choice place back. But again we have not had inside and transparency into what the heck happened here. And that's the theme with every single majority of situations and cases that I would rather spring forward. It's sorted now. Or okay, we'll talk to the parent

018and nothing to see here, and we're not getting that kind of wrap up, that inside, that transparency. Again if you've seen my emails and went away and asked questions for us, come back to me with the answers you're getting, they're still enormous problem wz focus, your ese specialist are out there with an incredibly heavy lift with this system that should be doing it for them. Thank you. thank you. thank you again. Next is human relations committee. good morning, chair vice chair, board, staff, nancy frie, chair human relations committee. After our last MARCH 19th meeting, we were not able to reach quorum so we held a teams meeting which was nice because we got a few more people than otherwise. There is still a couple of board members that need to appoint, so please do so.

019I talked to some of you and for the rest, please, thank you. So the biggest update, as as a result of the advisory recommendation by our committee, we are thrilled to hear about the latest course in the leadership development program for our aspiring and current a Ps and principals, young voices leading change to improve school climate and student achievement. We want to give a special thank you to superintendent deputy fulton who really moved this along. Why is this important? Is that we're not responsive to student voice or individual experiences. This is hurting our attendance and student achievement and engagement. So we asked for a course, we recommended a course to be put forward so we can start fixing the culture from the top down and make sure that our principals and administrator are creating the

020type of culture in our schools to make it a positive experience for every one involved. At the last update, I received the course with jodie washington for review and hopefully we'll go from approval. This is informed from district data and antidotal statemented from our students including feedback that we've received from the human relations committee. It will include, it will include scenario base training taken from feedback from actual students. Exact verbiage was taken from meeting participation. Instruction includes work withing pro social organizations advisors to create feedback plans and after instruction administrations will be given a scenario and ask to device a plan on how to handle that scenario. We're excited to hear how that goes and we cannot wait to hear the group from aspiring and administrator. We invited members to two summits. It's hard to

021get students to attend because it's testing season. These were not exclusively events they were other groups that were attended as well. And the collaboration between the groups was huge. It was very hard to hear that the different groups from your black students union to the all of these groups getting together and brainstorming a way to improve their district. Some of these organizations did not know that other organizations existed so it was a good experience for kids to know what is out there and what is going on with other schools. And they're, we're collecting information from that to inform the guidance that we're going to be giving to the councils for next year. One thing that we're planning on working on to improve. We've already seen a huge amount of growth with our HRCs between this

022year and last year. One thing that we're going to be working on for next year is to give more structure to students feedback and help schools implement their own feedback mechanism. We want to work with the school to help them collect that data more directly so that that can inform what administration is doing so they don't have to filter all the way through us, down to the board down to the district level down to the administration and have more of that collaboration with the staff at the school. And we're also suggesting that schools can consider having many leadership because the summits are always successful that maybe they can make small school wide ones where students can learn about what other organizations they can participate in and have a lot more collaboration among the student body.

023And we also just, at our level, be holding more focus groups and continue to get that student feedback, because student voice is our number one priority in making sure that our students feel included, welcome and safe in our district. Thank you. thank you very much. And next we have the parent community involvement task force. I guess I should turn this on. Good morning, we met last night and we wanted to share that we had another busy month highlights include, we held parent university on MARCH 12th navigating the digital divide. We partnered with the innovative team to provide insides and practical strategies on families having meaningful conversation with children about emerging technologies while ensuring safe and responsible use. We're preparing for our forum scheduled for APRIL 30th this, aims to foster increased engagement and dialogue from

024secondary stakeholders from booster leaders, pta business representatives, districted program representative. my parent group is parents who are not involved. We try to get at least an uninvolved parent and find out what they see as barriers to involvement. Our objective is to identify practices as well as pin point areas needing improvement. We're creating a team of facilitating and note takers to help make a success. Our task force is committed to improvement and finding in innovative way to foster partnership, families and community stakeholders. Our current efforts include research and research from other districts nationally. They're looking for recommendation to strengthen our strategies. This is been successful in the past, I'll just mention this, this is how we found parent university in the first place. District communication or reviews and other areas were communicating practices and public schools

025and intending to highlight and strengthen and address the gaps to improve overall effectiveness. As we've mentioned before, we're still working on our podcast, it's going slower but working to assign this a necessity tool to engage on relevant topics. And our nonprofit forum, we had one as you know, we've already had one this year but we usually do two, so we're planning another one with JUNE. This will help strengthen and remove engagement barriers and ensure a strong start to the upcoming year. We usually try to do it JUNE so that it will give time for people to plan in the coming year. In the plan last night, we request that the broward county public schools, include parent community involvement as a strategic goal and strategically place, students and parents at the top of the organizational chart.

026This is a practice that is done in other districts including palm beach and I brought their chart to show you what we're walking about. And I'll mention that this has been a strategic goal in the past but it does not now, it would send a clear message to the community for your community involvement. And our collective commitment to parent highlighting the critical role that they play in achieving our shared goals. And we thank you for your continued support to empower families and strengthen community partnerships throughout our district. Thank you. thank you, very much. I will, do we have any board members that have questions? Right before DR. Zeman, I want to make one point. In the policy that changed the work, the reports coming to the workshop, it did state that the work, it would

027always be the workshop before the school board meeting. But we, hear what you're saying, so we will send out with a schedule with dates for the rest of the year on when the reports will be given. So. Right, it says the first workshop before the school, first school shop of the mo. Anyway, we'll send out the date so you have the actual daitsz and writing. thank you, to that point. This is an example and instead of folks saying, yeah, we get it. It's kind of like, it's there. We have to keep on checking, our website, several times a day to see when that workshop is going to be. With respect, I get that and thank you. But, I know if it's in the policy, we need, all right, MR. Hail is going to roll his

028eyes, thank you for listening and thank you. sorry. Go ahead, sorry. thank you, we heard some things I think are quite interesting from our diversity chair from observation of security not being followed. I'm curious if you have any advise about what you think we should be doing differently now to make sure that we have the right security protocols in place, particularly the single point of entry. Those are critical security lapses and then the second, kind of follow-up question. Do you get the response from staff that you would expect? thank you, DR. Zeman, when we see it, we try not to say anything, we try to talk to the principal first, and say, this is what we're seeing. I know you guys it's difficult to get staff, there is a lot of schools that MAY have

029one or two security staff. And what I also observe is the laxes, and I hate to say this, but they get real comfortable. And even when the kids are coming n there is this like, you guys have the, what is it the metal detectors? There is a lot of go through, go ahead. Not a lot of checking. And I get it, I get that there is a lot going on and they're short staffed but, the board has put in place several mechanisms to make sure that schools are safe. So it's important that staff follows along. Principals are doing the best that they can with the amount of people that they have. I think one of the other things is there seems to be a very inconsistent way of how one part of a district does

030security versus another part of the district. Some areas are more diligent about securities while others are, a little laxed and I think it goes to the area general of security manager, the ones that wear the black shirts, I think there is, I'm not sure. There are some that are on point with the job and that some that are just get in where you can and figure it out. My recommendation to the board or staff is is there a monthly meeting happening? Or quarterly meeting happening where everybody is consistent with the entire district? Are they all meeting together and sharing notes of what works and what doesn't work based on versus high school, middle school or whatever? There seems to be inconsistent. I do ask the question, do you immediate on a monthly basis. And we're

031we're getting different answers, I'm not sure what is happening at different areas at different times. That's a major issue, there is a lot of consistent, I'm not going to say the areas but you separate the district by three areas, right? There is one area that is really good. While the other two are lacking. thanks so much, chair. I have a little different opinion about your thing. Your visits are announced at in advance and if you show up school and there is not tight security and stickers where they need to be, I think we need to know that. And the staff needs to know that. This is not a school board member stopping by somewhere unannounced and you might see something that is not perfect. And we don't take security on a discreet on a continuous

032scale. There are security rules and they will all be followed and they will be followed all the time. So if a broward school advisory council is visiting a school on an announced visit and sees critical lapses in security, I would like to know about it and this board would like to know about it. And it's important, we have the office of safe schools that comes and inspects. The scores that we got this year are very very good. This board and this county had taken security very seriously and we don't view on a one to 100 school, the rules are pretty clear. The information about regional differences is important information. That would allow us to think a little bit about some kind of broward county schools inspection on top of oss inspection to see if there

033is regional differences in the way that these things are done. But I would not portray what you see as, as something that is okay because of lack of staffing. We don't have a lack of staffing of security people. Are we missing any positions that are secure right now? DR. Hepburn. comparatively speaking, we're over staffed. I get that, but I would encourage any advisory board that sees a security lapse to let us know. To be the eyes and ears of this board, and we should not take it casually. Every parent needs to know that they're going to see their kids at the end of the day after dropping off. I appreciate you sharing that. But those comments can't just happen and then not have some kind of reaction from a responsible board. So I would like

034to follow-up and ask for questions of the superintendent and see where that takes us. Superintendent did you have any comments? absolutely, first I just want to be careful about taking about security in open forum so we don't expose any areas that, you know, to the public or to anybody who has the nefarious intent. And we do understand the ebbs and flows and gaps that we are constantly addressing anan ying to close and d inin ditiononwee working wo chart shifts to close a lot of the gaps as far as operations or people and things like that just to continue to reiterate so we'll see changes as far as as people just to make sure that we're addressing our needs when it comes to securing our schools. I guess then the follow-up MR. Superintendent, how would advisory

035board member, any advisory board report it in a spom way to you. yeah, so we've asked DR. Pierre to contact MR. Lozano so it will be addressed in realtime. just so we can be clear and DR. Zeman, I want to preface and I'm hoping that you're not trying to be, trying to find the right word so it does not come out disrespect I have, I want to make sure that you're not trying to be dismissive. We're making you look bad. thanz what I'm saying. okay. DR. Hepburn, would you like the chair to move forward when there is a security issue, not be part of the report? so, I would say in general, not specifics but as usual with any chair for any team to go, of course talking with the principal because it MAY be

036a school base issue that they MAY not be aware of. But also whether it be security or I know you're talking to chiefs so they fix it in realtime. would you like language what we've witnessed some security issues and say nothing else? for me, these are questions for the board. For me, I prefer specific information directly to the chief. If you see a gap of real safety concern for our students and our staff at our schools. For the board, that would be a question for the board as far as how we want the chair to report out if they see any security concerns how do they message that without exposing things to the public that can't be exposed. I just want to make sure. This is the second time that I've been admonished, and I'm

037good with taking constructive criticism. I just want to make sure of what we should be saying and plus we want to be, we want to provide stakeholders with information also. So if moving forward, you would prefer that we just say, hey, we have some security issues and we've made the district aware about that and if that will be, better, I'll be more than happy to make sure that that happens. I'll differ that to the chair. That portion of it. yeah, I think that would be fine for this discussion. But what I was thinking also, is we each have a chair, I mean a appointee on the committee, will ask but remind them that they should contact us us so making sure to make sure that it is being taking care of. So I don't know

038that should be in writing or if they're just calling us, with but I think you should also be notifying us at the time so we're not hearing about it maybe a month later, right, so that we can. before you go, if I can get DR. Lozano to chime in a bit. thank you, lozano security officer. Any identified did eficiency can be addressed at the time. He's there at these walks. And if he's not, he designates a designee, so if any deficiency that is identified onsite can be addressed realtime. thank you. DR. Zeman. I just want to, suggest that there is information provided to us from an advisory council that is of substantial value to the board and protocols reporting that information, so if there is a specific door open at this time, that would be

039inappropriate for sure. We MAY want to think about at some point on board advisory people to make sure that we want to know that and they're free to send an email, but in a public forum, that kind of information can be more dangerous and more threatening than not. But I appreciate that information. So many meet in schools and it's great to have a direct line to put that together and we need to know it as well. I'm saying something that this board has said for years, that we don't take this lightly. So we want to continue to make sure that we learn everything about it, thank you. thank you. Did you have any other questions on that? no MS. Alhadeff looked like she wanted to say something. Soy wanted hear her thoughts. thank you, I

040would like to say that we don't want to release the vulnerabilities at any of our schools. And to let our chief of safety and security vulnerability what it is we need to make sure that it's followed with fidelity across the district not just in certain areas. And the board has taken this so seriously that we connected the superintendent's evaluation with safety and security. And the other thing I would say that is that anybody can report the florida what's app, see something, say something. We don't want things just swept under the rug, we want to address this vulnerability. MAY I ask MS. Alhadeff a question. go ahead. is that fully integrated in the district and can we the safer watch, can we add that as one of our indicators in terms of safety and security. yes,

041it's fully integrated. And there is the safer watch, see something, say something, where you can report something and that is offered to parents, staff, students, that is different from the panic button but I want today make the difference. State wide app. thank you. Okay, MS. Leonardi? yeah, thank you and I appreciate the feedback around security. in the report, and maybe I didn't hear correctly, I didn't hear any specific schools or buildings mention? no, last one, MS. Alhadeff mentioned, moving forward that the reports would not state the schools. yeah. I just wanted to clarify that, because I thought maybe there was a misunderstanding. The way you delivered the information today seemed general enough, it didn't, you know, reveal any information that would students. suggestion and made it clear moving forward that I didn't want to mention

042any school names but I did feel like I needed to at least include that there are some security issues in that, you know, that we make sure that we and it was consistent is what I mean, it's a consistent thing from all the site visits. I appreciated the feedback because you know, as I witness schools, some of the things, smft issues what I'm seeing especially around pa systems, you know, it's not at every school. Foyer me I appreciated the identification certain issues but like you did, you didn't reveal a school site. And I just wanted to share my experience as a parent and as a school board member visiting schools. I do I do recognize that there are certain schools or certain areas where, standards are not at the lelz of others. So I think

043it's important that we discuss that and we recognize that as a board and i'm glad that our advisories are highlighting that as well because it's a fact of life and it is unacceptable. But I did want to share, as a parent, I was, dropping my child off, picking him up every day at saegle, and if I didn't have my id, I was not allowed in, I had to show my badge, and I felt very comfortable in really great about having my child at seagal. And that's been my experience as a school board visiting schools. One day, I lost my license and I did not have my id and I was not allowed in. And that's the way it should be. And I also think it's important that that is not the experience at every single

044school. So thank you again. Back to the method for collecting feedback, so I think we've heard a few different improvements that have been made around our advisory see as security issue, MR. Larose a is now going to, he has been or will be going forward a part of the visits. I'm wondering, if I'm just a parent or teacher or any staff member and I'm seeing a security issue, what methods do I have for sharing that feedback to immediately address a security issue at a school? DR. Hepburn? right now, just like any other issue aside security, it could be any school, the staff goes to their administration. what if I'm a parent? school administration. okay. Is there any way, so are we just in a larger scale collecting, are we providing the public with anyway to

045provide feedback not just security? yes, just recently we ruled out our customer service initiative which involves a qr code displayed on the schools on their email signature et cetera as I go out and as the team go out, we're looking for those things to make sure the public and whoever visits the school can provide feedback. Some schools have it publicly displayed, and I see that and then you have some schools that is not permanently display. For me, always look for opportunities to take away -- we had the communication team with the print shop, print large, about 11 by 17, our larger thick stock two per school to be prominently displayed in their office. So we'll be going out making sure that they are, so we can get a constant feedback from folks that are visiting

046our schools. It's one thing about the spring usual survey that we send, but for me, constant feedback, day in and day out, is going to help us quicker. if I'm a parent and I'm having trouble reaching a department, is there a way for me to provide feedback? yes. so there is a qr code, it's on our website? yes, and we monitor that information, we look at a monitor, if we're hoping that the numbers get better as we get messages out. The school have sent parents with links. so we're replicating from schools that are doing it well. Same with departments too, we're trying to figure out the best way to push out that information for departments because it's not like a school. Because they're engaged with the schools all the time so we're trying to best

047way. But we do have that accessible for folks to scan and everybody should have it on their email signature too when if a person emails the department, and they respond back, they will see that at the bottom of the signature to provide feedback. awesome, I appreciate that. Thank you and then just two more comments. I think one of the events that was mentioned by our advisories today, was scheduled on a significant religious holiday for some of us. So moving forward, if we can avoid religious holidays for, you know, big district events I would appreciate that. And I think, again I really appreciate all the feedback, I think our advisories are doing great work. Our parent community task force is a great example of getting parents involved and I appreciate you know, the efforts to get

048maybe some uninvolved parents involved. I think that, you know, I would really love for us to be mindful of the way we speak about staff members by name. There is just isn't the same, you know, if staff member is not going to be dais and be able to call any of us out, any member of the community out, and you know, I think in the spirit of collaboration and improvement, you know, it's helpful if we can speak with each other with respect and if there is a specific issue with a staff member, you can come to the board or have a conversation with that individual. I just want to make sure that way we speak about each other is respectful. Thank you. thank you, board member thompson? good morning. I just wanted to, our pierre

049grant here, the report has sparked a lot of conversation. I want to bring up another thing you brought up, which is h b-51 01, this is important, because the cuts that we would lose 33 million dollars is very deep within the bill. So if you're not paying attention, it's easily to MISS. So some of our cuts are a p classes, our duel enrollment and cap and more. And these are programs that students are actively, seeking out. These they love these classes. These are classes that are saving our families money and empowering them to be able to go to college or after programs because they're able to afford it. They're helping students learn important skills. And if we're not highlighting the impact that they could have, we're doing a disservice to the community. It's not enough

050that it's vital that we're telling parents and students that this could happen. And I know, as a district, we know how many people pass these exams or how many people, take the a p classes, but knowing the impact of students in total would be imperative to our mission in letting people know that this is coming down the pipeline. So I think as a follow-up, I would love to hear the amount of students that this could potentially impact if that could become via email. I want to point out to the public that for the next fiscal year, the state is plan to go play 440 million dollars into state vouchers and saying that our 43.5 is too much for our students. The manl or the of -- majority of students still go to public schools and

051if we don't raise an alarm, we're doing a disservice to our community. Again, thank you MS. Pierre-grant for bringing that up and it's imperative that we're all paying attention to what is happening right now. Thank you. thank you, and I'll round it out. Thank you for that board member thompson, what I understood is the legislature because there is other category and they don't know what other means, figured we didn't need it anymore. So I think it is imperative that we flush out what other is and let people know how important that is and maybe the state looks at reporting so they have more details as opposed than scraping it because they dfnt ask enough questions. I would like to chime it on the just do it awards, there was actually a student last night at

052the north scholar banquet that won a scholarship, and one of the accomplishment was just do it award. That was special. I have a couple of questions for DR. Hepburn. The issue that has been brought up a number of times is one on one nurse issue, I don't need you to tell us individually but can you please let the board know, is that issue being addressed and resolved at this time? yes, I'll turn it over to MS. Hollinsworth to give a quick report. yes, that is being reviewed case by case to determine what individual health needs there are. I'll put on record, there were a few MISS Steps that had taken place and we've rectified and reaching out to all of those families to ensure that that is happening and that has been touched in communication

053with what their needs are. thank you so much. Next question, the process that was being asked for? Is, is I know we have policy that is written out, but when we have processes or procedures, are they written? Is it assumed that this is a process? How can we share that? I think and MS. Lucekim, I think, the process for the bullying report? yes, it's specific to the bullying report. It spells out if there is a student that is accused of bullying how that would be addressed to an extetent is in licy. But somebobody n keke a complaint agnst the parent but then it tails off in the policy. And the specific case that has been the issue here, there have been others, but one specific to what I'm talk about, even the paesht themselves has

054not had inside into how they have somehow by some secretive process declared a bully by bcps and sanctioned. It's horrible case it's cruel and very sad. And we have simply asked what is the process by which this even occured, because I want to know that parents can bring up a discrimination, concern, and not have to fear that. And as you hear, I'm sure from staff, as I do, being afraid to speak up. We all get it, and we all see the consequences about what happens when you speak up. And I think being able to have inside and being told, you can't see it, you have to make a public records request, that isn't, that isn't right. And it's not wrong of me to sit here and say so but I feel that sitting here and

055saying so, gets me labeled as a troublemaker. I think you have to think of those things and resolve them. And for anybody to be interested in the issues I brought up today. thank you. If somebody is asking for a public record, it means. it's not a public record. but if somebody is telling to you ask for a public record, there is the assumption that there is something in writing. So that's what I'm asking the superintendent, is that in writing? I'm not specifically knowledgeable about this case. So I have to provide a follow-up about this case and the follow-up we can detail what the process is, if a parent or person who does not work at a school is accused of bullying by school staff. if I MAY, MADAM Chair, I have brought this up. I

056have an email galore to all of you. if we can get you to provide that, you can email to me. I have for three months. Four months. we have a lot of cases, if you can refresh my memory through email and we'll work with the school to figure that out and process and follow-up. and last thing, the comment that the parent community task force about the ork chart. It sounded like the suggestion was to maybe flush that out a little bit and say, parents, student whatever, so maybe while you're working on the work chart to bring forward, you could take some of their advise and look at how you can make that more specific than just broward county community. Okay. Perfect. thank you. MS. Rupert? thank you, and I don't want anybody in this room,

057especially those that are community, there is good trouble and bad trouble but you for standing up for our children, you're good trouble and continue what you do. Thank you for that. yes, thank you all so much for coming. MADAM Chair, I have a question. If folks aren't here but filed a written report, can where the public even see that? I think it would be helpful to poll those who were not here, and if they have not filed a report and ask them if they were aware of this date. I brought up that point. I'm being called out for somebody that rolled their eyes at me. But I've also called out people that did amazing names. If we were not called out names. Somebody can roll their eyes and I don't think that was the right

058thing to do. like we mentioned, in the policy, it does state that it's the first workshop but we're going to do a schedule. I know I did speak to somebody that was aware of the meeting today but chose not to come. And you only have to do a written report if you're not coming to meeting and neither of them had a written report ready. So that is what the policy says, but as you know, we can't, your volunteers, we can make -- you're volunteers, so we can just make suggestions. So MR. Sullivan or MR. Hill can you let us know when the report is submitted where does that report go? when it's submitted, as long as it's three days in advance, we can include tt minutes. the minutes of the workshop? and where would they

059go to find that? we post minutes, but I'll let MR. Hill expand of that. if it's submitted three days in advance, we're able to post online as well as deliver to the board. which was the discussion we had, that if you know that you're not going to come, it would get attached to the item that we're looking at like when you click on there to see the agenda, it would be a blue lighted one, you light it. we have not received any. we have not received any reports to date for people that are not here to give it in-person. So when we send out the schedule, maybe we can make those reminders to let people know, we do want to hear, that's why we're sit ining this forum, I want you to understand that the

060changes that we wanted to make sure, that we do want you to understand where we can have a discussion and this makes more sense than trying to do it at a school board meeting. But the time, I know you addressed the time, unfortunately I don't think we can change that because it's the first item for the workshop and unless we bump the workshop to later, it's once a month. You know, if they can't come, they can send the report but obviously coming gives us the best scenario because we can have a discussion and ask you questions and ask staff questions and look at what it looks like coming to the board as an item if it's going to come later. MADAM Chair, I before you finish, I want to thank the board members that gave

061me input, instructive criticism, I'm appreciative, I want you all to know that and moving forward I will make sure that every board member and committee members will reach out to the board appointees and I will send you all a my summaries for the site visits so you can all can have that. thank you and we'll finish up with MS. a quick question to the point of the meetings being earlier and I apologize for being late myself. I had a work meeting at ended at 830 from my home. Will there be a grace period if somebody like me comes in late and they MISS Their turn. yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And we'll again, we'll send out a schedule of dates, for that and a reminder that if you're not going to come send the report so we

062can put it as an item so that people can look at and maybe ask the superintendent as we're sitting here on other items. Thank you. MS. Alhadeff. thank you, I have a recommendation to the chair that we start our first workshop item and then, go to committee reports so this way it gives them more time to get here, you know, based on the timing. so we did have the discussion about that and we landed on doing it first because sometimes flows over and we want to give the ability to give this as much time as it needs before we move into the other business of the district. So and I think most people don't have young children that are on the chairs. So we can look at it but we had discussed with staff and

063landed on doing it first just for the flow of the workshop. So we can discuss it again. Thank you all again so much. We do really appreciate your time and your dedication to our students. Have a great day. We're going to take a brief minute to spread out a little bit. We scrunched up so we can include the committee shares at the table. So we'll take a five-minute recess so everybody can shift and get a little more space for each other. [Board will resume shortly] and welcome back to the school board workshop. The next item on our agenda is the school board policy 8040, I will now turn it over to staff for a very brief presentation. good morning, thank you, chair, turn it over to MS. Paul and MR. Acabuzzo and they can give

064a quick overview and then we can going to discussion. good afternoon, this is school board policy 8040. good morning, director of planning real estate, specifically the policy is the policy the district utilized to rent outside facilities and also short-term. Rentals, you know by schools, by very very quickly I'm just going to go the rational, and the policy has been renamed to leases of rare property and facilities and event contracts is pretty much introduced and set new rules, standardize their practices. And also been reviewed by outside counsel, and internal office of general counsel and then streamline to ensure leasing and reports follow legal complaints and consistency. Pretty much that's it and then this additional for four new rules that were introduced which is rule number 9, 10, 11 and 12. That's it. Thank you. okay, we

065have one person registered to speak and that's my pierre-grant who was right here. I don't know where she went. ed sorry, thank you, I forgot I had signed up for tha. I just wanted to, I had put in a request for MR. Sasbusco's to see how that goes, I'm in kablgt with somebody who works under him so I'm waiting for that information. But not sure if this specific policy change deals with how that works but if it does, I would appreciate a follow-up on whenever the discussion happens today. Thank you. okay, thank you. Any board members have any questions on policy 8040 changes. DR. Zeman. on rule 9, and I always talk about this h there is very value where people have to review things before it gets out the door. At the same time,

066there is a cost which is it slows thingsgs down before it gets d de. We're inthe ocess of tryiying to acacleleratethgs on vava that are taking longer than they have. I run into a lot of things here that take a lot loaninger -- longer than I would expect. On something like this, if it's possible to get the reviews done in parallel so. If there is four people that need to approve something, and if we can just guarantee that everybody in that process is somebody that absolutely needs to do that or that on the balance of risk and reward that it's important to have them. I cannot tell you how many calls, emails, on something that is waiting for something and when I hear who's desk they're sitting on, one it should not take three weeks

067for that office to review it but more importantly, I'm not sure if they add value if they're 100 percent or that it needs to be done in series rather than in parallel. I'm just going to keep pounding this. Rule 9 is not a big change but to the extent that we can make sure that reviewing are exceptional. And whenever we can if we can do parallel rather than series and do things that we would otherwise not be able to do. And then I have one big comment. I feel a little bit like you and I talk about educator salaries and we don't get it where we want to go. I'm at that point, with our policies being able to read by the public. this one in particular, influences other people outside of the school system

068but when I read through, the policy as parently drafted, it was difficult to read. And I'm going to suggest that we develop, you know, either with an ai tool or editor, somebody besides the expert in the field. Sometimes the person closest to the problem is the problem. That's a tough assumption to make. But I would like to make sure that our policies going forward can be read by the public and understood so that when they participate with it, either as a parent or vendor or any particular role, just a citizen of the broward county that they can understand the steps that we put into our policies. Thanks, chair. thank you. MS. Alhadeff. so what is the timeline from when somebody would like to lease our property to where everything is executed to allow them to

069lease. How much time does it take? so again, through superintendent, the chair, this policy is when the school board is a let's see, renting, not when we hired landlord. So to your question, when we have outside cases, it's typically at a one three or five-year lease and then you have a term. So the term, that's the term, one, three, our five. And in terms of, when they have to lease, it has to be compliant with the term of the agreement. okay, so the you're saying we're leasing property? Yes? yes, this policy. okay, so how much time does it take for the lease. the contracting for the lease. well the contracting in terms of process, we try to do it as expedient as possible, as tenant, we generate the lease and maybe the department or somebody

070in the organization, then we take it to general counsel's office. I know the general counsel's office, I think there is ten business days and outside counsel and hopeful it takes. So it depends bh it goes out, we try to be expedient. DR. Hepburn my question specifically is how much time does the process, from start to finish. 0 to 15 what is your statement from moment engagement to the person that wants to lease the property to completing the contract? I know there is ranges depending on the complexity but? I think we would need to do the research and provide that information to you, it is dependent on the organization and what challenges we MAY have. But, we can provide averages based on the data on that. okay, and we cannot speak to it today? I would

071not want to mislead or give you incorrect information, so I think we need to go back and look at it from a historical perspective. okay, thank you. MS. Bulman? thank you, chair. so I was reviewing this and it took me until the second or third page to figure out to figure out about the school board leasing properties from somebody else instead of us leasing the properties to a third party. So I, I think it's it would be very useful to DR. Zeman's point that we have that very ex mrit in the top sentence about what this is actually covering so when you start reading it, what to look for. And then, I I read this in some other materials that we're going to review this as well. But there is a provision here, I think

072on page 3, paragraph 9, where if you, you get five days to have approval, and if a department, if the people that are identified here don't approve, the request for an event contract, then it's considered approved. Which I don't know how that kind of opens us up to liability. And then it also, provides that you have to have the, event contract, is that assuming that we're having that? I guess, there is a lot of steps, like if the process get approval and then there is an automatic approval if we don't get approval but other requirements for addendums to be signed by the lessor. There just seems to be a lot of steps to happen than if you're just getting automatic approval they probably are not going to happen because you don't necessarily know what is

073going to happen if you're just trying to rent a step place for a theater, it just looks like it needs a little work to cover us better. DR. Hepburn. MR. Acabuzo. so in terms of events like that, it's to enable expedientcy. So pretty much what is lays out is the accepts of what is the original, superintendent office. It goes through that body and that body sends it out to simultaneous', risk management, they typically, the general counsel looks at it and if there is any additional addendum because the contract is for the landlord. So protections have been put in place. So pretty much this specific is to do things like prompts not your typical renting of something. So again, we're trying to work with the schools to making sure. And it's been working well. We've never

074had a problem. If we follow the rules but it's pretty working well. Because all the departments involved, somebody has to make sure that we comply and, you know, there is a form and everybody signs. So I don't know if the general counsel's office has any additional comment. But. : MS. Batista? I don't really have any additional comments. You know, like you said, I think the process has been working well. And expeditiously. any other questions or comments? Anybody else? chair, I wonder if general counsel can speak about the liability. This is a policy that if it says that if not approved in five days, it gets pushed forward. Does that invite us to liability? And if it doesn't? Why do we have that stapp. -- step. I don't think it's what is intended to say in

075the paragraph, but maybe the office can explain how it's implemented on a regular basis. again, I think it's prudence. So if we have intents whereby I know that they require any additional addendum that is not part of the contractors, the landlord template be included as an addendum, so that's one of the key rule of the general counsel's office. Because again we're using the outside template. So that the protection is always there, whereby they require additional language. As an addendum so pretty much that side works. but if I MAY, where it says the referring administrator, that is not referring to the general counsel's office. That's the part that I, was asking what the actual implementation of that language is. the foreign administrator is coming from the original. So if you look at rule, when a principal

076director of administration department, administrator is delegated into the leases and the process calls for rule 9, it then has to go to the office. so either a school, facility director and then it goes. It originates from the organization. it still says chair that the referring administrator can do it, if the department's plural counsel including you don't provide approval. So either those approvals are not value add and we don't need them, because that's what the policy says. Or they are value add and we don't want to allow liability for what lawyers should be looking at. MS. Batista. Well I know that's not the manner in which it is implemented that's why I was asking for some help because I know, that all of the agreements that come through our office and they are approved by the

077general counsel's office. I mean, either we're doing them, I've never had an issue where the agreement just gets signed without review. So I'm not sure if that language there is not being implemented at all or if we always do it within five days and that way there is not a problem. So I'm not sure why that language is specifically there. If I mean. DR. Hepburn. soy want to clarify, if you look the language is very specific. So the foreign has been delegated with authority to enter leases that are no more than three days, right, for outside facilities. And most specifically provided that, the contracts have been approved by the original superintendent's office, the fa sil ilt and that established a process. Then, that refer administer, through the superintendent office pretty much transmits those contracts to

078those entities and those silos and then we review it. The key word is to unable to go things faster not to be locked down. So we have a certain number of days to review them by each different silo. Each different silo we're all signed into some form, right. And that form, I or the department will see that general counsel office we have to sometime to sign and then it goes out and goes back. But the keyword is the general counsel's office ensures that the legal protection is there. And through the process, the same where we've had addendum and we request general counsel says, we don't like the language, they ensure all protections are there. And again we've never had any problems to my knowledge. Generally everything has been working well. board member bulman. I think

079there is a little confusion. First of all, because this is all red lined presumably, this is not in the current policy, this is all added language. So the, the issue that I am concerned about is that it says, so we understand, you want to have a contract, you bring it to the various departments, I don't know that you need to give them to five departments to approve the contract but it says in here, in the added in the bottom of paragraph 9, if the referring administrator does not receive event contract approval from the reviewing district departments within five business days, the referring administrators to proceed agreement. So that is a loophole, I mean, you're trying to expedite the process but that is circumventing all of the, the people that are suppose to review and approve

080it and then it just, it just provides that every one has to, execute an event contract addendum, but I guess the request is whether the administration knows that's a requirement and if that protects us, if that fully protects us, why are we sending it to general council. MS. Batista. I think we need to go back and look at that section and make some changes to it. I think we would agree. okay, we work hand and hand with the general counsel's office to come up with this language but if it's not clear and I agree with DR. Zeman and MS. Bulman that we need to look at it, it's, it's for the outside person it can be difficult to understand, so we appreciate your feedback. okay, thank you. I'll sum up. I agree with DR. Zeman

081and MS. Bulman about it needs to be easier to read in general. It's a lot of seems like, I know they're not legal terms but it's not easy to follow. so if there is a way to make it flow better where we can understand it easier. I also agree with MS. Alhadeff that needs to be some time frames. Because if I want to rent a facility, how long do I need to make sure that I'm approaching with a contract to the district? Do I need a month? Do I need six months? Do I need a week? I need to know that so that I plan that when I'm looking at an making an agreement with an outside company and making sure that they give all the pieces. So I look forward to the follow-up because

082that was the point of the question. If we're going to be using other facilities, what is our timeline so that whoever if it's a, if it's a principal or a drama teacher or whoever, they need to know what the process, how long the process is going to take so they're not saying, well I think it should be done in a week and it actually takes 30 days and then they lose out on being able to have their contract. I know you're going to do a follow-up, I appreciate that. But you need to understand the context of why it is we would like to have a time frame. So when somebody reads this policy, they understand what the expectation is on their part of getting all the pieces to this school board ahead of time. So,

083and this is also very confusing and does it really take all of those steps to get to a, an approval if you're saying, well if nobody looks at it within five days, it just gets approved. What are we can do to make it less amount of time, more consistent, flows easier and that we know, we're giving our employees the right timeline of how they have to do things, I think is what our suggestion is in bringing this back. ?Fm I think paragraph six, kind of addresses that in terms of when it has to come forward to be approved by the board but we can definitely clean up the language, make it simpler and then kind of give you a snap shot of where we are in terms of timeline based on historical information. okay, thank

084you. so chair, just to clarify to the point of MS. Chair's question. When entities want to rent facility it's driven by two things, number one, if it's a new lease, when does that lease desire to be dmensing. If it's an existing lease that needs to be reviewed, what is that date. So internal, we have an agreement, the leasee has to ingive indication in that contract when they want to review. Maybe when the lease isis or, innd to g grerene soso stepthat trie soso 'r're not contracting needs to be renewed, we normally make sure that it's not going to expire so it does permit, we have this thing twelve months out. So every contract if it's five years or three years, we start the process. Making sure before the lease expires, we then bring the item.

085again, as you know, that's a general rule that any contract that has to become affective new or renewed, has to be brought to the board in less than 90 days and that's what MS. Paul is referring to. I didn't have a mental block. Good cover'. So on rule six in this policy and then in our other work for the outside leases, we try to bring the leases no less than 90 days but again it's within the window of when the contract is going to expire. It depends on the outside part and you go back and forth with language. But we'll follow-up to provide average but we're very diligent on everything we do. MR. Zeman? I would like to follow-up on MS. Alhadeff's comment on getting things done. Why do we make contracts on insignificant value.

086We've given the superintendent authority, and those things are all done at the end of the week. There is policies, if he executes them, he puts them out on his friday's report. I wish we had a similar things for contract, something like 50,000, if it's renting adjacent for a three days for a leadership confidencer -- conference or something like. We have to build these things so there is reasonable speed to get things done. I love the fact that you say ten days you've got to get these things going, as a reminder, I feel we're an obstacle to getting things done. We passed rules about construction but I still see tons of change orders, I don't understand why. I think it just takes a lot of our time and it slows down construction. Our kids suffer because

087we have not maybe clarified the amount of authority we want to give to the superintendent on things. But why can't we give the deputy superintendent or MS. Paul the authority to sign contracts to that things get done? MS. Batista? Or DR. Hepburn. I defer to MS. Batista. so there is a policy that we are staff and general counsel's office is working on as we speak to delegate some of those things to the superintendent or the superintendent's designee. would that be appropriate in this policy or omnibus policy? that would be appropriate in the omnibus policy. we're talking about speed, how fast can we get that here? That was a question? we're working on t it's being worked on as we speak, how fast? I think, it has to be advertised, and so yes. I know the

088rules. But the trigger to get started is it gets done in a good draft form. So if we're going to write something to accelerate thing, I hope we can use that principle to get it to us quickly. We have the priority as being very very slow. And sometimes for things that are such in our best interest and it takes months and months and months to say yes to people. i hope that we can get to the board as soon as chair. thank you, MS. Bulman. I'm good. Thank you. okay, anybody else? Thank you so much, do you have any -- do you have all that you need from us? yes. thank you so much. Okay, we need to take a [Board will resume shortly] and welcome back to the school board workshop. The next item

089for discussion is rule development stud end services initiative policy review. I'll now turn it over to staff for a brief presentation. I'll turn it over to MS. Hollinsworth and they're ready for discussion. I have DR. Jodie washington and MS. Marcy to answer any questions. okay, we will go to public comment and first we have deidra ruth, who would like to speak on a couple of policies so we're going to give her six minutes. thank you to the chair. I'm reviewing the policies that you have that you're making adjustments to. And one of the noticed is policy 51 in the student process. In the process the student should be given oral notice on the charges against him including basis of the charges. And b, the student should be given an opportunity to respond. C, it says

090if the determination made that the student should be suspended, the principal should immediately try to contact the guardian or parent by phone. My question to the chair and board, why is contacting the parent not step a? And lower infractions, the parent is contacted, in higher infractions, the parent is contacted. In this case, parents don't have to be contacted. When using legal terms such as charges due process, according to merriam webber dictionary, those are formal, in this policy you're saying this is an informal offense, ten day or less suspension. When a teacher has a formal conference hearing of due process, not only do the teachers have a right to representation or witness, but they are afforded the lack of terminology of charges until probable cause is found. But they don't find probable cause with the teacher

091until that teacher is put in question. Our students are not afforded the same right to address the allegations without probable cause and it's taken thalt administration or reporting person of the school is then in turn automatically right and there is probable cause. By this policy you're not allowing the parent students to have a quasi judicial hearing. The lack of fair representation for dependent students is discriminatory by your own process and procedures. The child is not the child is then teachers get to have sorry, teachers get to have somebody present not only to protect them but to have somebody present with their best interest. there is an inbalance of power if a dependent child cannot have a parent or guardian present for their best interest by this policy. You're not allowing the dependent students in a

092quasi judicial hearing, yet those rights are encouraged to teachers by administration. But students lack this right to not feel intimidation imbalance and power due to your policy. Principals can up one class of infraction that means that that ten-day suspension can go above that, which means a formal infraction, now you've inregulated and interrogated a student and put them in a situation where they can be criminally charged or the offense goes above or beyond what that infraction is. In police work, a person who is alleged can be probable cause and that person can up and leave and refuse to answer questions and if probable cause, they're allowed to get up and leave. Our students are not afforded that. As a matter of fact our students are questioned with a principal and witness. Who is their protecting their

093student right? Who is there representing their student best interest and their mental health and well being and why does a parent not have the right to do that? And why does a student not have a right to remain silent in a feeling of imbalance of power and figures that are now growing students that can sometimes lead to hours of interrogation and it has happened in our district, with no parental guidance. Our children are not allowed any defense only appeals. Our parents are not allowed to give our students any defense on this level only appeals. If you're looking to bridge the gap or parents to be involved in discipline, by this policy, you're keeping them at arm's length by this policy you're not allowing the parent to be present in support of their student and at

094support of the situation at hand at their schools. You are denying that right. Students are young, but there is nothing that tells students that they do not have a right. To representation. That parents don't have a right to their child's well being. This needs to be considered in the interest of the student. And in the interest of the schools if you want to continue to have a joint relationship of building up our children and encouraging better discipline. In students that are ese it is listed that they cannot suspended for more than ten days. Ese students should have right to representation right from the beginning because those students MAY not be at the capacity to be under questioning. thank you so much. MS. Batista, you wanted to address some of the concerns. just very briefly. Due

095process is allowed for both employees and for students in disciplinary situations but the rules that apply to both are completely different. the main case which is goes back to 1975 of gus v lopez which is the case that talks about what is the due process that is given to students. Allows for a very just short procedural due process under the law. Now that does not mean that the board could not give students more process but what is applicable and what is mandated by law, is a, is called a hearing but the hearing means that the student will be, you know look at the charges and have an opportunity to respond and that is done with the principal or administrator at the school. When you're talking about a disciplinary situation with employee, there is due process,

096there is an ability to look at the charges and that opportunity to respond but those come with other cases and other processes, that are applicable to employees which are not applicable to students. thank you. Our next public speaker is jackie lucekin. is it on? How long do I get? I need to mention three policies? Okay. So on policy 5030 on mandatory reporting of child abuse, I think a point I wanted to make with all of these policies and this is an example of one of them is that there is a strong case for having a companying mechanisms in writing for how they're going to be enforced and enacted as we mentioned earlier on a different front. It's one thing having a policy but another not having transparency or inside and guidance into how that policy

097is enforced or how infractions are dealt with and this I think is one of them. I want today mention as well, mandatory reporting training, we've had cases before brought to my attetentn and e adviviso, wewemade a coent last arar and d we did not ge response. Where a child with autism had been tied to a chair. And I said, what happened did you report it? And this person was not aware who to report it to and if they had reported it, where that report had gone. When I said, was it resolved. I said how? They said well the kid was untied. I give that an as example, we need better training for subs so when we're on policy, we need to look at how you're educating every single member of staff on how to enforce

098and enact that policy including independent contractors and vendors coming onsite and parents. We would love to have some feedback on where our recommendation went. I know we had meetings with kelly's services and they filled us on what training they give their subs and we reached the conclusion that there needed to be a more whole effort. Also this, this, policy mentioned abusive mandatory reporting, sorry, there are five administrative find for when the policy is abused. and again I have brought forward to you folks and your attention cases, and I use this because I think it's good to find examples when we talk about mechanisms for enforcement. I have more than one parent with student with diabetes they had a concerns because of the carousel of nurses coming. There were not enough nurses to were trained with

099type 1 diabetes. As we know, you become a nuisance because you're not on the phone making sure that the folks are doing their job. But two parents were reported to dcfs by the nurse under the requirement that we felt was misused and that, you know, parents being reported just by their perception as a way of retaliating and being that parent. They go weeks by investigation by dcfs and kids are terrified that they're going to be taken away from their parents. It cannot be used as a retaliation, how are you enforcing the policy? Not abusing it but following up on the cases when we bring them to you. Training, and retraining, new hires so when people are coming in through the course of a year, there needs to be across, for ensuring folks know how to

100enforce and report. To policy 5100, which is one on suspension and expulsion, we need process. Why? Because again, a common theme that I mentioned and emails and what not, have been the lack of parent meeting, for example parents who MAY get a phone call and bring them back in three days and five days and no paperwork. Regional supervisors are aware of some cases. I brought to their attention which I kindly addressed. But again those mechanisms are not being followed in all cases and there needs to be more over site to ensure that it's enforced. And then on policy 5090 which is the code of student conduct, I would like to ask, I don't know if it's the intention to loop them, and I know you're propose ing doing away with the looping, but those two

101policy would be good to loop if not policy. One has been to dc but I would like to 5090 and 5100 to come to us too. Thank you. thank you. MS. Rupert? thank you. And thank you for staff for putting all this together, it's a lot to follow. I have a suggestion on 5030, at the looks like the fourth line, you'll see from maltreatment, my question would be trauma or maltreatment, was there reason why that was changed? Or? Does the definition give us more umf, to it? Trauma sounds like more what they've been going through. MR. Hepburn. go ahead staff, do you know which part she's addressing? thank you, DR. Hepburn. Director of student services, hi MS. Rupert. I believe, we kept it, you mean in addition to maltreatment to add trauma? yes. so the

102goal is to focus strictly on statute. So the statute focused on abuse, neglect, maltreatment, abandonment, those are the terms that they use. So I don't believe it's a change that we had but that's why it wasn't added or considered. for me it goes back to the evan nasher day. This is what people are going to be reading, will they understand what it means? Maltreatment as compared to trauma? As somebody who is, you know, helped other people when they were in the victim end and the word that keeps coming from their mouth is trauma. So just a thought, I'll wait to hear from my colleagues if they want to do a slash, if that's possible, check with the attorney. Other thing I wanted to do was I think this is 5010, under x, page 4. It

103discusses dating violence and abuse prevention training. And once again, having had help something through the process of that trauma, if the victim wants to report herself, or go somewhere to get immediate help it talks about putting banners and publicize it, I would ask that we add the nancy k kotterman center to this and for people who don't know what that is was, because I did not know what that it was and it really set me back at least two days helping a victim. But once you go to that place, everybody comes to you. So I think that we can better serve our students employee's community if they know a place where they can go and receive, they can have the police go there, you can do a police report from there besinger you've got social

104workers, you've got doctors, they can run blah blao , the whole chabang is there -- . They can one blood test, the whole shahbang. I like for them to have a foot forward in working with through the trauma and getting the services that they need to from the get-go. Those are my two ideas of changing some of the words and helping our students be able to start healing from the very beginning. So I'll, I'll MADAM Chair, I don't know if you just want to take consensus on that. Those are the only ones that I had. MS. Batista, do you want to weigh in? I want to weigh in on the maltreatment versus trauma. So the maltreatment is the word that is used in the statute, and something that is done to the child or a

105person. Trauma would be more of the emotional response to the maltreatment. So that's why I think you probably talking about trauma because they're talking about it from their stand point how they felt or their reaction to the maltreatment, so it would be like the psychological response to the abusive behavior. right. Which obviously happened. I'll wait to hear from my colleagues on that if they want to touch that at all. And the nancy j kotterman, to me that would not be a problem to add to providing awareness and prominently publicizing the provisions of this policy to all. MS. Rupert, you're not asking that to be added to the policy just to the posters available for students? could we add it to the policy? that's what I was going to ask MS. Batista? MS. Batista? I mean,

106again, I think it's going back to, you know, the purpose of the policy is to sort of track the statute, the nancy kotterman center is a way to counsel or respond to the trauma that then the person receives as a result of the maltreatment. okay, well I guess we're take a consensus. Are there any board members that are interested in adding trauma after the mal treated portion of policy 5030? MS. Batista's is saying that we should not be adding trauma, that it's not the state statute. So it really means something different than what is in the policy because, anyway. I'm not going to explain it so MS. Batista is making the recommendation no. Is there anyone ha that wants to condition the discussion. DR. Zeman. I really like MS. Rupert's point, and I understand it

107does not make sense. but there is a lot a of written, a teacher often times will think, oh there is something wrong with that child. But there is so much written about trauma informed observations that a natural reaction of trauma is to act out, try to get attention as a way to really trying to solve a different problem. But I understand it does not fit into this policy but I look forward to a lot more discussions about tha. If we're not going to do that in bro washed schools, -- broward schools, we're going to have more. thank you. And also, on that very same page where I mentioned, I would like to see the nancy j kotterman center, under 11 I think it is, yes, a, the health education curriculum for students, k through 6

108should include a dating violence and instructional staff in according with the developmental level. If that is going to be in there, then, perhaps that is where you can end, you can put that in there. MS. Batista, again what is your recommendation on adding an actual, cause I don't see any other resources that's generic to the curriculum. So would it make sense to add a resource into this policy? well it really, sorry, thank you. So it would be, it's a recourse, it's not really a policy matter, but you know, there isn't any reason not to add it. I mean I would just wonder if the organization goes defunk and something happens, and it's in the policy then it would have to be changed. we change policy all the time. Let my colleagues think about it. It's

109something I feel strongly about. And as an educator, why put up a poster or discuss prevention training for abuse if you're not going to a, look at it as trauma. And b, help them emotionally and physically right off the bat, that's my point. okay, any other -- is there anybody who would like to further discuss adding the nancy j kotterman center into policy for this particular? okay, MS. Thompson. I think I echo MS. Batista's concerns that resources it's bet tore have generic placers because you don't know what is going to happen. And this policy, there is things we can have in practice like having them in poster making sure that there is information on bathroom stalls, I have concerns putting specific agencies into policies because it's just better to have as resource guide or different

110function in my opinion. thank you, MS. Leonardi. yeah, I support it. I'm wondering like a happy medium, it could say such as the nancy j. okay, MS. Alhadeff. so I have two comments. One is, I just have concerns specifically picking why this one, why not eagle's haven? why not somebody else. And can staff speak to what our resources look like that are available for the students like is there a link on every school's website? For parents to access these resources for mental health? DR. Hepburn? staff? good morning, every one. We do have the mental health services web page. I will look to see if it is linked to every school's website, I'm not sure that it is. I we do in every student canvass page a flier, that is one of the first things that

111pops up on how they can access mental health resources. In terms of mentioning one, we do 211 broward, that does refers back. So if a students would be experiencing dating abuse, I would imagine they would refer to an agency like nancy j kotterman, we try to include resources that are at the fingertips of the students. I know that we have it in our district web page. I would say to that, a lot of things to our web page, you have to do like five clicks just to get the resources and that's a problem. We need to put it on our school's website and making it easier, accessible, directly for parents to access those resources. thank you. MS. Bulman. is this are we moving on or still on that topic? Sorry. so I personally, I wouldn't

112see it put in the actual policy but I do think we can direct you as a school board to include it in the things that we're putting out as resources. I have similar concerns, first of all kids are not reading our policy, so writing it in the policy are not going to get what you want which is the information to the student's hands. So if we can agree that we want to add it to the posters or have its own poster in prominent areas where students that might need it, like MS. Thompson had said maybe in the bathroom stalls. But I personally would not want to see that put into the actual policy since we're not listing other things, either. So, anybody else weighing in on that? Okay. Landyn. I didn't even decided if I

113was going to speak, thank you MR. Sullivan. That's true. I do just want to note we've had very very preliminary discussions of creating a student resource hub, not just for mental health resources to alleviate some of the easy to answer questions that our school staff receive where students can find that information. So I think this would be a great resource to add to that and a big thank you to DR. Washington and MS. Winner who actually involves students to create the mental resource flyers to provide feedback. But I think that's a great resource to include on what will be a canvass resource portal. so I don't think there is consensus to add it to a policy. But are we all okay asking them to add them to the resources that they provide, yes, good job.

114DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair. So my comments and questions would be based on policy 5090 code of student conduct, specifically page 60-2016. This is in regards of use of wireless communication devices. So I do have some questions. DR. Hepburn, what is the district and our state definition of instructional time? taff? currtltly the atate does not define instructional time. I will say that and MR. Sullivan can jump in here. There is legislation right now to prohibit the use of cell phone during the day. So they're moving away from the instructional time and moving for the day. We have defined instructional time as the start of school, the first bell to the last bell, that's how we in our policy, based on and direction that you gave last year, was the start of the school day

115to the end and that aligns with the legislation that is moving through tallahassee right now. okay, was that definition of instructional time, used to create the policy as it pertains to cell phone use or did that definition has always been a part of the district's defining of instructional time? I can, sorry. go ahead. I can only speak to the changes that were made in the code of conduct last year in terms if instructional time is defined in some other place, I'm not sure. But the code of conduct the change that occured last year was defining instructional time as from the first bell to the last bell, instructional time did not include passing times and lunch. That was the main change last year. okay, so, prior to last year, there was an existing definition of instructional

116time that was modified last year, is that what I'm understanding it? yes. okay, so we did have regarding our cell phone policy, DR. Hepburn for the sake of the public what was the purpose of restricting cell phone use in schools during instructional time? DR. Hepburn. staff? if I, can summarize the discussion the board had last summer to the best of my ability it was to increase student's engagement in classes and improve their inner personal skills while transitioning from one place to other including lunches by removing their personal devices and allowing them for opportunities to interact with one another during the more unstructural time, so two-fold, increase their attention during the academic day as well as improving their skills. disconnect to reconnect. thank you, john. thank you, john for the comment disconnect to reconnect. Was there

117any research basin indicating not just instructional time but disconnect to reconnect during lunch times that shows that that would be beneficial to students? Not having cell phone use during lunch to disconnect and reconnect, is there any research base that supports that for students, it would be beneficial during lunch as opposed to being counter productive? so we currently have the fau cohort of students that are conducting the study they're in the phase where they're gathering data and working to get participants, that was the question the board asked in OCTOBER or NOVEMBER of last year, and we gave you the one-pager of next steps that we were take to go dive into the research. Last year when the action was taken, by the board, I would, I have not done any own deep dive of research into

118specifically lunch and passing times, I do note there is research to support students restriction of access during their class time. But there is also research to support that using a device can be helpful if used in the right way. So I think what you're looking for you'll find and that's why we wanted to, work with it an outside group to have them dive a little bit deeper into what it all means. okay, so currently, we do not have any conclusive data or research to suggest that restricting during lunch time is necessarily beneficial? We're supposing it is, it appears that our conclusion is subjective at the moment. I am aware there are research to indicate that it is beneficial to restrict the use during instructional time, I think during lunch time is where we're still lacking

119information and research to suggest that that is beneficial to students. And it MAY be based upon our assumption that it is, because we don't have any data to validate such conclusion, is that correct? At the moment. I understand your pending research taking place but we have not had the results of that. So is it fair to say it's an assumption that it could possible benefit students to not use cell phone during time, as john says, to dis wreck -- disconnect to reconnect. Is that fair to say that research MAY lead to that conclusion but not currently so? so I'll, yes I can say that assumption. But I do know there is research out there about the inepness. Like MS. Washington said, if we go out and find research to support either argument, we'll find it,

120right? So I can go out to support either side. So that's why we tag team with fau, to help us with our own research how this is applicable to the district and what are the benefits and what are areas of improvement as we move forward to next year. But as, the first question as far as what is going on in the state, this is being fast tracked through, so we're already in alignment with what is going to come out at the state, most likely is going to come out out of legislation and we already see school districts within the state have pivoted during the school year, across the country have pivoted in the middle of the school year to restrict cell phone use throughout the entire day instead of just through class time. We expect

121that to come out of at that ha -- tallahassee. I understand, I have more questions. How important are our stakeholder in our decision-making as far as anything including the use of cell phone? it's important but it MAY be a moot because the legislature are going to tell us this is what we have to do. if I MAY, sir. It was board driven to change this policy. I understand. Well I just wanted to, I know DR. Zeman had mentioned in the past that it takes approximately 20 minutes or so for students to settle down after cell phone use. But I also believe that it's important that we consider the input of our stakeholders as well and why they gave such input. Right because when I look at the survey regarding cell phone use, parents agreed to

122cell phone restriction. parents however had concerns about restricting cell phone during lunch time. And when we look at the data to which I went back and checked, approximately 50 percent of parents, basically, oppose not for students have access to cell phones during lunch time. 34 percent of parents did not agree. With 50 percent of parents, proposed policy. This represents half of our parents community who have concerns about restricting their children devices during the lunch hour. I believe that when parents collectively show a level of resistantcy for policy. I would like the board to consider access during the first 15 minutes. When I spoke to several parents, there are several concerns. Sometimes a parent needs to get in touch with their children regarding after school arrangement activities. Sometimes a student MAY need to do a quick

123research or study or a study on a topic on a lunch time. Sometimes parents need to do after school arrangements. And in addition students have stressors that create emotional, that has emotional concerns and they need that emotional support to call their guardian during the lunch hour. I believe that if we allow them to use their first 15 minutes of lunch, it will achieve what DR. Zeman mentioned, that it takes 15 minutes for them to settle down. To make any kind of after school arrangement for emotional support. So I'm asking the board, to I believe this will MAY still continue to meet the goal of what we're trying to achieve on restricting cell phones. While at the same time, providing a beneficial opportunity for parents and students to interact for a few minutes before they head

124back to class. So I would like the board to consider having some small time frame during the bining of lunch to have quick access to their gardens. -- guardians. This will be good for their well being. Those are my statements and I hope the board will consider that. thank you. And I'll take a consensus but just to jump in there. I didn't agree with not allowing phones at lunch in the first place, so I don't disagree with you. But they're not enforcing it now, to add 15 minutes, who is going to monitor? We're either making them, not use it or allowing them. Although I appreciate, trying to compromise there, I just don't think that is feasible thing to happen in the schools. Because even the principals will be the first to tell you, listen, I

125don't have the manpower, I'm not watching thet at lunch. I would like to see them remove it, unless state statute makes us. That drives me in sane. That's my personal opinion. anybody else want to weigh in? DR. Zeman? I'm not exactly sure where to start. But let me start with the question that DR. Holness asked. There is substantial evidence that indicate that teenagers brains can while they're trying to be rider to act as full-fledged adults, bare no gain from their most popular uses of technology like cell phones. And they're significant now that it's not correlated with mental health issues, it caused mental health issues. I appreciate the superintendent and DR. Washington attempt to castigate the whole community. But if you talk to 1,000 child psychologist, 99 will say to take cell phones out of school.

126So you can find a study from canada 17 years ago. Second point, the united states federal government gave immunity to social media trying to suck our children's attention on social attention to they can sell their attention to other people. We're in a active lawsuit for destroying our child's minds, so for thinking of destroying. I'll tell you the practice matter and I don't agree with chair hixon at all, is that the cumulative affect of not being distracted of what they want to use their cell phone. The first 15 minutes, let me queue up landyn, if we gave students 15 minutes what would they do for 15 minutes? depends on the students, DR. Zeman. oh come an. I know. as a spokesperson? I will give my comments but it answer your question, I think it depends on

127the student. okay, let's play, like seriously about what we are here to do which is to educate our children. And our policy is not only -- I don't know why this timer is going off. it's the student of broward county that are. Saying your time is up. I'm joking. right, but I mean, this is entirely a joking matter in some sense and student perception and even parent have shifted. When I hear a teacher say I have 40 eye balls watching me. When I see fights down, fights were down, what percentage were fights down? 17 percent, thank you. We had to look that up at the middle nft year because we were talking to the state what legislation they were putting together. This is a policy that has generated huge benefits. It's consistent with what every

128parent knows about their children's developmental needs are harmed by having distractions and the federal government has given social media car blanche to sucka tension out of our children's brain to sell them with soverne immunity for any damages they MAY have caused. We're suing those companies, and then say, you can use 15 minutes. And by the way, they're allowed to call their parents. All they have to do is walk up to their 1300, teachers, they have to say, I have to call my mom, my practice was canceled and they can call their parents. We're going to get it jammed down our throat and it's because it's an affective policy that works. It allows our children's brain to development at the end of the day. The last point, we're hearing from families that at night time, they're

129engagement with their children is different because their children have learned that they don't have to have their phone on for six or seven hours depending on what level of schools they're in. And that is incredibly meaningful and it allows us to do good things. As other people have stated, this is a policy that has replicated by in florida and 19 states, eliminating bell to bell and I think given anytime, I would counter DR. Hixon, there we go, chair hixon, if we're enforcing this in schools, we need to. And if that requires a shift in management structure during free times in lunch, we should do that. As long as keeping off the things they want to do. So appreciate the discussion, though. thank you, MS. Leonardi? yeah, thank you I don't support 15 minutes. I don't

130support removing it altogether for lunch. I think there is a lot of, I mean, I don't think, I know there is a lot of research that supports having cell phone free schools. i can go through some of that but I think to DR. Zeman's point, you know, we started to see a mental health crisis in our youth but also in adults starting around the onsite of, the onset, thank you DR. Hepburn onset of smart phones and you see, new research every day that not just youth attention span attention spans, our attention spans have diminished quite a bit because of the use of smart phones. Teenage girls were giving advertisement for beauty and diet products, after searching things on their phone about, you know feeling insecure and things like that. And that's horrific. But I digress,

131there is two points, one there is research to indicate that having cell phone free schools is healthy for our students. I would really, I would be interested to see new survey information. Because when we first implemented this policy, there was a lot offeedback from stududts, from somemepapares frfromteachehersboth for and ainsnst this policy. Since we implemented the policy, the feedback that I have received has changed in more of a positive direction. As I've done school visits at all levels, elementary level and high, I've gotten different feedback but generally positive. And I would counter, the statement that, you know, we're not en enforcing it during lunch now. That's not true. I think some schools MAY not be and that's something that we need to address. But I've been, I've visited schools during lunch, been in cafeteria in

132the hall -- hallway. And I speak to staff, some feel overwhelmed and some say we've been doing it for years now, and we don't have an issue. But just because we have ran into challenges and obstacles it does not mean that we don't continue to work on that. Again, there is plenty of research that says that having cell phone free schools is healthy. It MAY opinion be popular but I truly believe it's in the best interest of our students. I don't support removing any or changing, the policy in terms of lunch time at all. I do think, we could have conversations and I think that principals should be and administrators should be sharing best practices about how they're enforcing it, and the culture, but again when I've spoken with the principals, a lost feedback has

133-- lot of feedback has been positive. I was at saddleback middle school and the principal said it helped with student discipline, issues. The kids are talking to each other now. You hear stories and you see it in cafeteria, that are children are looking at each other, even when I was teaching five years ago, you would go into the cafeteria and you would see tables of cell phones, you see it in the waiting room at doctor's office. We have a responsibility to do something for the health and safety of our children now. And I think we really need to hold strong on this and I think we need to continue to incorporate and volve our community to figure out how to do it better. But I don't think that allowing this during lunch would be helpful,

134not yeah, allowing cell phone during lunch would be helpful. And you know, one last piece our students are still allowed in case of emergency, they're still allowed to use their cell phone. In case of teachers saying, we need to do a cahoot. If a parent needs to reach a child, they can call the office. I remember when I was in the classroom, regularly happened. I feel strongly about this, thank you. thank you, board member thompson. thank you, chair. And thank you for the suggestion of letting students use their cell phone during lunch. I was not on the board when the cell phone policy passed, I do not have strong feelings as my colleagues. There is mix research. We live in a technological society where it's better to teach boundaries and tools especially for students who

135struggle with anxiety, especially for them who get very overwhelmed to have a tool accessible that they can use, is important. I also think that we as a district by a lot of online products to help with our student health and they cannot access that, why are we spending the money on it? And at the end of the day, I think this is going to be a moot point because the legislature is probably going to pass it. Binge it is imperative for us when we're talking about technology and ai and cell phones that we understand that this is where we are at in the world and let's equip our students to use these tools successfully than just banning things. That's my comments. Also, sorry, when I do school visits, most of the principals I would say

136are not enforcing it at lunch because there is other priorities. And students for the most part, that I have talked to personally, know that they put their cell phone during class but during the holloway or lunch, if they need to do something, then they'll use it. Yeah. Thank you. thank you. MS. Alhadeff. so I don't support adding the 15 minutes on that. I had a question regarding the state law, does the state law speak to anything in regards to lunch time? DR. Hepburn? MR. Sullivan? currently? No. It's during instructional time. So there is a house bill 949, I believe that would mirror our policy but 1296 is the senate version of that bill, it does not include that language, it's almost like a study that the commission would do with districts that currently have the

137policy like we do. So I'm not sure what form is going to ultimately pass tallahassee but current law is instructional time. okay, so I think it's important to let's revisit the conversation after whatever law is passed and then we can have a better conversation regarding this. Because I do think that the enforcement part is important that if we're going to set a policy that we can actually enforce it and it cannot be enforced in one school and not in the other school and one kid getting detention because he went on his cell phone and the other not being able to use his cell phone. That's important to come back to this conversation. But I also think that it's important whatever the best strategies are that schools are using, maybe there is a chess area where

138students are able to play chess and interact with each other. We also have to give students kind of some resources to interact and engage with each other and that just have nothing. And then, also, I would be very interested in understanding how bullying has been reduced because of our cell phone ban, and what those statistics, so I don't know if we're keeping track of that but that's something that I would like to know when we revisit this conversation. Thank you. thank you, board member bulman. thank you, I agree with MS. Alhadeff about revisiting this after the statute passes or doesn't pass. And definitely, agree with the idea of uniform enforcement, because it really is unfair if some people are getting in trouble for having their cell phone and other people are allowed to do it.

139I know this is happening just on a parental basis from school to school. Overall, though, I I support the ban for the reasons that have already been stated. And as a parent and the experiences that I've had. And I always go back to an article or couple of articles that I've read over the past few years which basically describe the people that made all the money, developing all of these apps and all of these social media and you know what their kids are doing? They're going to schools that don't use any of this technology and they're building chicken koops while they're selling it to us. We need to take that into consideration when you're talking about mental health, solving mental health with the thing causing the mental health issue is problematic and we need to

140look at what we're doing for our students to really cope as they're going forward. And, in terms of the, I know there is a lot of concerns with the ability for parents to be contacted during the day. That is, inconvenient. I know that, because sometimes my children don't have their phones for various reasons and I've experienced this. I think that we could, you know, put policies in places in place that better allow access through the schools for the these kind of things where the parents can contact their kids or the kids can contact their parents and kind of avoid the mess that is in the middle. So I, I will wait for the statute to come down from the state. okay, thank you. Landyn. thank you, I'll be quick I don't want to be labor

141the point but I do want to make a few comments by first saying, I absolutely agree with the point on class time. The reference to more eyeballs is paying attention, is 100 percent right, DR. Zeman, and I think we have seen improvement when it comes to class time. I also want to recognize the good intent that the board had in putting forward this policy. It was not just to take away phones but to make a positive impact on our student's education. I will say that I personally believe and I do not have a doctorate, I have not gone to college so I MAY be wrong here. But I'm going to throw this out here, I think that we mistaken to directly correlate a decrease in bullying and fights and increase in academic performance to removal

142of cell phones. I just don't think you can make that correlation without proofing the correlation. There are many other factors and improvements that the district has made this year that could have impacted those percentages. But I don't think it's fair to say that a removal or a alleged removal of cell phones, has caused those data changes. It feels as though and a lot of this, and in this case specifically, I said this in JULY and NOVEMBER and today, it feels like we gave this policy out to schools and students and said, here you go. Reconnect, do all of these moj cal things to make students get to know each other. But we as a district, didn't take all the steps to help schools and students do that. We've compiled activities for schools and try to

143support schools in making this policy a success for students. But I remain concern with the motion that we've seen incredible improvements in data without being able to proof that that is exactly the case. I agree regarding the conversation of the state statute, that this conversation MAY be prema sure. But ultimately, I would say that any board member would look at a school's cafeteria especially in high school and you will see students who even without a cell phone ban being enforced are talking to one other and socializing. But also the students who have a hard time doing that and struggle to be able to reconnect with others. And to me, that is hurts most about this policy. Cause we have left behind that population of students. it's been said that the cell phones have created that

144problem, and the cell phone are not going to fix the problem for the students. So then I ask what are we going to do a as a district and you as a board to help those students. Thank you. thank you, landyn. DR. Zeman on this same topic. absolutely. And, I suspect that while I still view policy incredible advantagous to all of things you mentioned, that because so many things affect mental health and so many things affect academic performance and interest in violence, I don't think you can with any data prove in fact that this happened but when you look at this overtime, the evidence is overwhelming that the policy that we have is in the best interest of our students. I do want to point out that we and I just spent two and a

145half days at an ai conference out in san diego, we're not preparing our kids to function in a world that they will be function n.We have a few classes that use ai to try to use some things. But our children are going to grow into an adult world in which not just cell phones and laptop but ai, meta nal analysis are going to be omnipresent. We also have to ask to landyn's point what are we missing in the whole child development. That's a bert debate. This policy is not worth debating, it works it's got positive feedback on our families and community. and the evidence both quaunt ntitative is overwhelming, but that does not mean that MS. Thompson's point is not less relevant, we're not teaching the positive things in a way of how to use

146these devices. There is certain thing, and landyn made this point, as well that some pieces of the cell phone helps. But we have to have one policy and we have to shoot for the majority of the people who benefit. And we can try to mitigate by teaching other benefits, we can improve the programming and the resources that we do so that there are obvious ways in which connect and all other good things happen in a positive way. I don't think we've got the whole development right in broward county but the one thing that I know, they're going to live in a high-tech world. We don't have that part right now. And that's true in artificial intelligence. The tools that are out there today that will enable people to be more productive, use their brains for

147what only brains can do, have you to understand what real artificial intelligence can do. I look forward to that debate. That's what many school districts are trying to figure out. And I look forward to talk to go landyn and other students to see what else we can do to help the people who have used cell phone to have some kind of positive affect on their life. I know that there are other things, guess what, we had high school before cell phones. And you know, kids, often did well. And we've got and they did well on things that they learned to cope with some of the issues that they have. But I'm worried about the cumulative affect of cell phones with students. Last question, I have chair, is that we have not heard from our superintendent

148on this. And I'll be curious his specific recommendations on what we would do for the policy for next year. I'll let him answer in one second. I just need MS. Rupert to weigh in, you're the deciding votes? okay, ask me which one. the 15-minutes or looking at cell phones. no. that's 5-3, that's a resounding no. No changes to the policy. DR. Hepburn. yes, thank you for the opportunity chair. I want to remind the board that this policy comes back in JUNE, not for discuss but final adoption. At that time, we should definitely know where the legislation is going to lead to. And also in addition, just reminder that we have f a u partnering with us to do research so we'll have robust research to help with the data. And we have principal task forced

149to help identify best practices. As I said last summer, student have had cell phones, since they were zero, not even one yet, many of them, so this is appendage of many of our students, so it is an easy task to transition many of our kids from cell phone to not utilizing this. The ebbs and flows are real. And will get better year after year as one board mentioned, you go to some schools, and a principal say I've been doing this for a long time and that's why they have no hishz. And still some schools that are trying to figure it out. Also I want to give kudos to bef because they've been supporting our schools as well as district two with recreation al equipment, such as games and activities that students can participate in during

150lunch time to give them other things to do than sitting down and talk. For me as a parent as a superintendent, as an educators, I support no cell phone use during school. I also want to remind the board that we'll be going one to one for all of our kids. So every kid will have a device on their person, not something that they're going to leave, they will have their own device. So the conversation will swift once of our kids have one to one devices being able to do the work not on a cell phone but a laptop. Instead of squinting their eyes on a small device. I mentor two weeks, and those are the things that I ask, how do you, I get their frustration with using the laptop or cell phone. I'm pretty

151sure MR. Davis and his team can help us identify what web apps we can communicate to parents where it's not a disruption, it is like a cell phone. So there is more to me wiwith e abity y of going e toonone that willllabableur studen t things differently without the worry of having a cell phone on their hand that could be disruptive and not monitored during the day. That's where I stand and I wanted to update the board on what is to come this summer with the closing of legislation and the device that could alleviate many of the concerns we're discussing right now. Thank you, MS. Bulman, did you have something else? Other policy? You're on my list. so we're moving from the cell phone policy? yes. That was the general consensus. I have a couple

152of questions, it is not pertaining to the consensus, but I want to ask a couple of questions that will take a few seconds. I was not quite finished. Under the wireless communication on page 60, it did indicate that students, when used the popular report that can compromise the safety of student staff sets such as submit a tape online, via 45 florida, send an email to security tapes that those students will not be subjected to disciplinary action. So the question I have is, how is the district making students aware that they can for safety purposes, they can use the cell phone, and will not have to worry about disciplinary consequences if they need to report that something is happening. Is there any action plan in place? Or is there any awareness brought to students that they're

153able to do this without having to face discipline? DR. Hepburn? yes, from my understanding this year and this is just from mia wareness, I don't know if staff has anything different, we have not had any cases from a student that is reported that has faced discipline for using their cell phone for that purpose. We're also, correct me if I'm wrong, that we have to provide training to all students to let them know about especially about fortified florida, they can submit tips about any safety concerns and things like tha. I do know students still use those their phones to send these tips because we receive them. So, I'm not aware of any students that is facing any disciplinary consequences. I understand that, I just want to make sure that we're making students aware that they can

154use the phone in any of these safety circumstances. I would not expect there would be any disciplinary action. But there MAY be some students that MAY be reluctant to do so even in situations where there MAY be safety. Are we bringing awareness to our student body and how are we doing that? So they know they can use their cell phone in in a situation. I'll double and triple check and we'll double down to make sure and communicate that all students understand they can use any electric device for my alerts. and my last question, on page 61, c-6 where it says repeated violations will result in a confiscation of the device. My question who is a responsible for confiscating the device? It has not been clear in the policy. So that way, you know, teachers are

155aware of what the role is, who is responsible for confiscating the phones when there are violations? so technically, the teacher or the person that is addressing the students could be teacher or coach whoever is in front of the student. But we've given guidance to teachers to not put their situation if a phone needs to be confiscated to put it in administration. okay, has this been made known to the leadership of the school district wide? that's been shared with administrationors last year and is this year. okay, board member bulman. thank you. I wanted to go back to 5010, the policy. I read that this is a lot. I know there is a section that requires this policy. I had a couple of questions. One is when we're defining dating violence. And if you look at 2-a,

156what it includes, it includes insults. Is this a statutory resolutions, my concern is that we make it too broad and it then it captures more inner personal relationship issues than what the intention of the statute is when then we're caught up in a immediating more than what we need to be what the intent of the law is. MS. Batista? MS. Washington. sorry, DR. Washington. it's okay, this particular policy, is governed or guided by the state's model policy for teen violence and abuse. So the majority or the bulk of what you see is directly from the state's model policy which we are required to follow by statute. that was my next question if we had a copy of that. So just because the word insult is vague versus sexual sabotage and stalking, that's significant. Insult seems

157to be a minute to main thing happening. that definition that you see in our policy is directly from the state model's policy. okay. okay, just want to be sure. And they require that this is taught in health education. How does that look and practice for us? Does every single stud ept get this education? great question. This is include in our supplemental education. But we also include it in the portion, there is a portion that requires instruction that all students get but we go deeper in teen dating and abuse prevention in the supplemental reproductive, so it's a two-fold, yes everybody gets a basic level of it through the resiliency lessons but deeper through the supplemental curriculum. so in the absence of the supplemental curriculum, the children are not getting the pull education that is intended by

158this particular statute? I would not say that they're not getting the full. The statute intends that we inform them of what teen dating and abuse is in the supplemental we go into deeper recognizing at a deeper level. The supplemental gives them more. I would not say that we're not meeting the intent of the statute. but they would benefit from having more? We can agree on that. we can agree that they would benefit from having more in all of this but there is not enough time in the day. right, but. There is a aspect of the education that they're not getting right now because we're on a? they're not getting the deeper dive. they're not get the deeper dive, we're pending approval. and once we get approval, paerntsds with opt out. Last year overall we had,

159I can't remember but somewhere around 10 to 15 percent opt out rate. that's fair their right to do but for the people not opting out, it would be beneficial to the students since it's a statutory requirement. So I had another, this is a very two-sided very large document to try to go through in a period of time, so just, I'm going to go to one thing, I have a couple of things but we don't have all day. I want to go to page 66 on the red line. which policy, sorry? it's a policy regarding drugs. 5090 sorry. It's the policy with the 200 pages. thank you. 66. I'm look, wait a minute, I'm looking for the one about drug sniffing dogs, okay, that's right. So when I'm reading it, it doesn't make a lot of

160sense. It says, okay, first of all, in paragraph 2, there is the statute here saying like a student locker or other storage MAY be subject to search based upon reasonable suspicion of unauthorized substance which MAY result in a search of a person, anybody suspected MAY be subject to drugs dog and reasonable suspicious of improper, let's see, drug sniffing dogs will not be used to stiff students for alcohol and other prohibited substances. so if I remember correctly, maybe DR. Lozano, there was a new policy not last year but the year before that was introduced with dog sniffing drugs and it's not used to search people but their personal belongings, so that's the differentiating factor. That their belongings, their locker, their vehicle any personal property can be searched however the person themselves cannot be searched by the

161dog. interesting. If you're wearing the backpack, are we distinguishing. so DR. Lozano, again can speak to that better, but when the dog sniffing dog is utilized, the -- . and I really can't find that in here, references to but to a point that was made at the beginning of this portion through the speaker, in the event that somebody is found to be suspected of having some kind of controlled substance which also the definitions are a little odd in there too, but if, is there a procedure for contacting the parents? Having an attorney parent? Because, I think that's very important that people know their rights regardless if their students understand, that there is a right for the dog sniffing rights but if you have any kind of suspicious, the children should be advised immediately that they

162can be represented or call the parents. MS. Batista? so that's not how the case law has come down on the discipline of students. I'm going to say that if the, the discipline is less than or potentially would be less than ten days, the due process diminishes for the students so they don't have a right to have, parent there, they don't have the right to counsel. Again, you know, if it's related to something that where the discipline will be, ten days or less which is, you know, unless there is going to be an expulsion type of a process, then there is different due process, procedural safeguards that are attacked to that. how does that work, just for my own information, cause I don't know. How does that work with the policy that you're not allowed to

163have drugs or whatever in the school? Versus something that can turn into a criminal case, because if you're, being ininterrogated and then that, are they allowed to use that information in a criminal case or is that totally isolated? And not as if it never happened? so I believe that so the process how it works, it depends. It depends on the type of, you know, what is going on at the school at the time and what the how the search sk done, if there is a search being done. But, whatever the student states at the school, it is used after words is my understanding, you know. And that is to find the student in position of contraband that can be used by court of law. and any statements that they make. There is like a liv,

164you don't, once they're in court. right but you've already been questioned. That's where I, and I'm speaking of the kind from not personal experience but, observed experience. So when you have when there is a suspicious if you're searching cars and you have a dog sniffing dogs. The student will have minimum, but if the discipline is going to be ten days or less, you do have, they have to tell you what they're being accused of. You have the opportunity to respond and you have the opportunity to go through that lesson due process is really what they call it, pursuant to lopez, once the student is being processed in a different manner, with the higher, you know, there is, there will be safer or different procedural safeguards that attach once it becomes a criminal offense. okay. and

165so, at that point, you know, whether a statement is allowed in court or what not, I think it will be, you know, up to the court system up to that point to basically say, well this, like you to what you're saying, your student did not his miranda rights read, so this is not going to be admissible in court. This statement is not going to be admissible in court for a criminal prosecution. and I don't know if that's a policy thing, but I would, ideally like to see that the students know what their rights and know to ask for that, because people get taken advantage of all the time and it can really impact your life. It's important that we're protecting the students constitutional rights too I think and weigh the balance of that. So I

166don't know where that fits in, but ideally, I would like to see that. In the policy. So that they know that that's a right that they can ask for. I mean, if it doesn't, if they're told that they have that right if it doesn't apply, if it can potential lea mrie, -- I would like to be called if my child is getting questioned about a potential criminal offense in school. The penaltiedser are part of the process in any discipline even if it's no criminal sanctions, that could potentially come from it. We'll look at it again, I don't think that there is any need, you know, in any of this steps that we're taking for internal discipline of the district to, you know, ask the child or tell the child that they're going to, you know,

167that they need a lawyer or you know, any of those things but we'll look at it again and see if there is any additional information that can be added on to the policy, to make sure that it differentiates between criminal proceedings and the proceedings that occur at school. thank you. thank you and to hat point, I would like to also interject all of us would agree if it was our student, we would want to be contacted. So it seems that parent contact is further in the process. I would agree with board member bulman, it should be one of the first things that happens. And it was pointed out, how about special needs students that maybe aren't really well you would not be taking a statement if they were not verbal because they're nervous because they

168think they're in trouble giving a statement about something else and even if the parent is on the phone, or on a teams call, I think when we're moving into the age of parental rights and all of those things, I wouldn't want somebody speaking with my students, unless I heard what was being said. And it would alleviate a lot of how the students interprets what is happening in the room as opposed to, you know, what really happened in their relaying that information to their parent when they pick them up up. If the parent has the ability at the beginning to be either again on the phone if they can't get there, however, then they're hearing the whole conversation and you're not relying on a student who is anxious, who MAY be scared. Who's nervous, and tell

169the parent it really was not the context and then it blows up into something that really wasn't because that student had a lot of emotion tied to what they heard. I think it helps everybody. okay, go ahead. a point of clarification, in a case of bta, so if we're getting witness statementses is the board, if you get a witness statement, you have to get the person's parent on the phone? How does that interact with like student rights to privacy? And how do we protect students who MAY be gossiped. I hope that made sense. But I don't know how in practice that would work? How do we know that parent is not going to tell the entire community that that is happening and now there is a recording of it? a follow-up question, then is that

170recording of the phone call a part of their student record? And who's record would that student, what record would it go. We really need to think that through and what that looks like in terms of a very complex a process. Bta process. my suggestion a parent should be called, I'm not necessarily, and MS. Bulman can answer in her context. It's just context. If your students has to come down. It should be. Do we record your conversation. Teams, and even teams, those are my suggestions. my concern is more in a criminal capacity. It's a cell phone. told and I don't know need to sit. I just -- tell them don't talk just so there is. thank you, MADAM Chair. You're right, so if there is going to be criminal precautions. Is because there has to be

171an sro. Pertinent rights. so just so they, you're dealing with children, so they don't necessarily let the parents know about this offense. Have representation for a criminal thing not because you broke a rule in school but if you're being caught with drugs, weapons, things like that, that are going to be escalated and referred to the state attorney's office, and these the statements can be useds against you or the evidence that is taken or whatever, if there is just a member nifm or encouragement that the parents are contacted. Since they're minors generally. so I don't know when it's happening realtime how it all, maybe there is some people here that can share more information with you but I can tell you that if once it gets to the point where there is a, contraband or weapon

172or something that is bound, then that the police is involved. Or the sro is involved once that happens, the rights are read and the parents are called and I think you can get more information but what I'm talking about specifically is about, what gus v lopez and that projiny of cases does. I was going to add too, just waiting for MS. Batista to finish is parents are called if students are arrested and read their miranda rights. I know there is very few cases but sometimes there is multiple investigations and arresting officer MAY direct the staff not to call the parent because it's an open investigation. And the staff MAY get rested for impeding an investigation but often times when a student is arrested for whatever the issue MAY be, the parents are called so they

173are well aware and they can come up and as a past principal they've been on a speaker phone talking to their kid and with the officer and all those things too. If DR. Lozano or even, chief wants to add mig. -- add anything. chief, police department, some of is administrator on the school land for discipline and some is on the criminal. Yeah, the student MAY be arrested for bringing that weapon into the school they'll be read their miranda rights and parents will be contacted. Now whether they transport the child to the juvenile center or released with a court date that depends on each circumstance and a little different. I know parents are contacted like I said, it depends if it's going in criminal route or actual charges will be charged or more of a school

174base. So we've had just an example kids bring a little pocket knife, it was left or nothing or did somebody bring a butcher knife in. But they're afforded those parents and parents are notified. and I'll be able to differentiate between the process and discipline, again the threat management process is prevention. And by statute, we do not have to alert parents when we're dealing with a high level threat situation when it involves the safety of our students and staff. We intervene immediately to ensure, we can ensure there is no actual threat. Through the threat assessment process, that's why there is law enforcement as a member of the team and if there is identified through that process, where then it gets turned over to law enforcement because a student had a gun on campus then it would

175folt procedures established by law enforcement. And there are strict timeline requirement for parent contact throughout the florida threat management model where we're required to notify parents of both the target, witnesses and the identified student who is the, student there doing the threat assessment on that is posing the threat. There is clear guidelines on when we must contact the state statute in the florida management model. okay, and I, my real interest here is not in violence, it's more like, contraband and particularly like something that is not the end of the world but would really affect your future like having drugs whatever, just so people are properly represented, that's all. Not by many. and so my question would be is it a problem to move in the policy where parents get contacted in general discipline? I'll look

176back. beyond the state statute but nothing that says we can't do more than what the state statute requires. so I mean I just don't think, so the parent is always called at what stage, the parent is called is the question. And I'm understanding what the board is looking for is for the parent to be called, anytime that there is a discipline situation before the student talks to the administration which is not a realistic expectation. And I mean, that's just, I mean, you know have to address the problem as it happens at the school, the fact that you're going to have now a parent there. You're going to be changing the rules that, I mean as far as I know have been working for the last 50 years. I don't know, in the last month, probably

177have gotten five emails because parents were not part of the conversation. The student got some some kind of trouble, they didn't understand and there is a whole mess. So I would say, there is some concern which is why I'm just asking maybe not every single thing but if a student is going to get suspended or if there is something ---- student report something okay tell me more about tha. Then we go to the student that has been reported about. This is been reported tell me what is happening. They're given an opportunity to give a written or verbal statement. We have students that refuse to say anything, write anything, that refusal is documented as well flt and what is determined in terms of discipline is what the administrator can piece together from witness statement, if the

178accused refuses to give a statement, it's hard to include their voice in the process of determining what infraction has occured. And but once that initial portion of the investigation is completed, and we have a sense of what, code or what rule in the code of conduct has been violated, at that point, that parent is contacted and given an opportunity to talk to the administrator with or without their child. That is when the external suspension notification is issued. That's a process that changed this year, that was part of the train thating rolled out to administrator this year based on conversation from the board last year. I guess that's what I'm sort of asking for, okay. I skipped and I apologize, I didn't see MS. Alhadeff's hand up based on something that DR. Holness said. MS. Alhadeff.

179just to MR. DR. Holness's point about the cell phone being able to report something. I did want staff through the superintendent to speak about the ability on the focus for a student to report something on four to five on the app. go ahead, DR. Washington, you earned that, I want to make sure I say that. every time a student logs on to a computer, the safer watch automatically or fortified florida automatically comes up and it's a tabitha is opened on the computer. They don't have to use the cell phone either to report and when we get to, it's something that automatically pops up when you log in. But they can, if something is happening and they capture it with their cell phone, something is happening in the bathroom and they go and report t they're

180not disciplined for using their cell phone capturing what is happening in the bathroom, they can email it, they can call, they can submit it through and dhaz why we list those avenues in the policy so they know how to exactly report it. But if I'm going to stage a fake fight in the bathroom so I can boost my profile, that is not appropriate and they can be disciplined for tha. That's how we try to differentiate what appropriate use of cell phone is when you're capturing an unsafe situation. Because we do have students to go to the bathroom to record this staged fight and yes, they can be disciplined for that. thank you. thank you, and we'll wrap up this item with DR. Zeman. thanks, chair. And I shared my thoughts on student conduct code for

181cell phones but there is other items on policy on child abuse. On the bottom of the third page, I'm sorry, there is no page numbers here, fourth page, we say 10-a 2, the child consents to the presence. Can a child lelly provide const? MS. Batista. it depends. thanks landyn. So for purposes of this, consent for contractual purposes, no. you're literally asking them would they consent to an interview which is content. maybe agreed to? I think just if I can speak from a school base administrator's lens when this this has happened, a child services investigator comes in to speak to a child, the kid MAY question, I want DR. Washington to stay in the room with me. Or they MAY not request it but maybe there is school counselors and the administrator MAY say, are you

182okay with MS. Bately being in the room. That's what it means. I would prefer agree but I don't think it's a big deal. One that is bigger to me, on 11-a 5, it suggests that school official should get two business cards from a person. Am I right that anybody that has the right to do this is an government authority? Or acting as a part of a government organization? yes, they're government employee in the department of children and families. I feel a lot better as a school board member, if we got a id rather than business cards. I'm not sure that people carry business cards. I'll differ to the staff but something I wanted to call out. On, policy 5-10 on dating violence. Kind of a big question, because this term does not come up in

183my reading very often. How do we define dating violence? DR. Hepburn? staff? so the definition that is included in the policy is how the state defines teen dating and abuse, and that is the policy that is the definition that we have to adopt in our district policy per statute. so by statute, if there is sexual abuse but you're not dating something, is that covered by this policy? DR. Hepburn? DR. Washington? I'm going to have to do a little research. so here's my suggestion, the state statute also talk about dating violence to include dating sexual ob intimate sections. -- intimate relations. It would cover any kind of sexual intimate violence and that's what we want to do. I don't want to get confused about whether or not people are dating or not to kind of say

184that's not something that should happen. so I just want to clarify, the sexual assault and sexual abuse, things like that are covered in the student code of conduct and that's how discipline. The purpose of this policy is to educate students on teen die convenience and abuse and prevention. This is not a disciplinary policy and I think, to differentiate, that, it, if those incidents are occurring, they would be handled under 5090. So my interpretation and maybe MS. Batista knows something different, the district must follow the district policy. I'm not sure that we can change in the model policy but just for the board's knowledge and public's knowledge, they're disciplined under student conduct which is 5090. MS. Batista. so we have several statutes that mandate the district to adopt the policy that is written by the department

185of education. So once we have that, yeah. terrific, I appreciate that. For my benefit and the benefit of anyone else, that pulls this up t would be nice to say that at the beginning of the policy that this was directed by statute and here it is. Because we're basically, looking at this and wondering, what would broward county say about this and but a lot comes out of statute and we have no authority to do that. I would, I'm sorry go ahead? we have several policies like that are based on the model policy and we cannot change it. I'm wondering if we just say that online one and that way people understand we're kind of sharing department of ed policy. I would point out a little bit of inconsistency on page 2, 4 third line. In

186other parts if I read this correctly, I say en kaournld, I would prefer the latter than the former. And I think what we want to say is they should should or encouraged to. MS. Batista. and last one and last one on page 4, 10 a, does state statute require to do this at all grade levels? DR. Hepburn. 7 through 12. so it's broward discretion whether we do elementary schools? DR. Hepburn. DR. Washington? I'm wondering how that fits in with the requirement for us to k-12 teach about sexual abuse exploitation because that is a requirement which we meet through lauren's kids, which is what we have to get approved by department of education and I don't know where the intersection is. But I do want to let everybody that we teach our k through 5 students

187about the prevention of child abuse including sexual abuse through lauren's kids and that is statuetorily required. is that covered in another section, the k through 5 part? I will have to look to see if that's covered in the progression, I'm not sure if it's in the progression policy or another one. thank you so much, chair. okay. Thank you so much. And thank you staff for the presentation. Do you have any everything that you need to move forward? Great. All right. Thank you. Can we take a two-minute we're going to take a two-minute recess. (Meeting in recess). thank you, and welcome back to the broward county school board workshop. The next item is rule development, communication and is legislate I affairs. I will give it to staff and they will give a brief overview. if you

188can explain the policies for board consideration really quick. absolutely, MR. Sul vo n, through the chair, the department is bringing forward four policies for consideration for raol development. There is three policies up for revision and one policy up for repeal. Policy is 1920 which is the stakeholder notification, public notification of stakeholder engagement, that does not introduce any new concepts, it was rewritten by our consultant tos match what the board currently does with all of your -- base klu how to engage your stakeholders. Policy 1940, the only thing that policy does is add in a policy fee. That is a common practice, our neighbor tos the south does do this where they collect an annual fee from our lobbyist. Policy 1950 is being revised to meet current media materials, we no longer do videotapes, and then

1896208 is being repealed as the lang weaning of the policy is also found on other documents, it was a duplicate so we are repealing that policy. With that, MADAM Chair, I turn it bark over to the board for your comments. Er thank you, next we'll go to public comment. first is jackie lescum. hi, good morning. I'm surprised by that statement because to say this is just rewritten by consultants and is it doesn't introduce anything new, it certainly takes some stuff away and I think that's where you're going to have some confusion, certainly as to what the purpose is. I love that it mention ins the intro about enhancing transparency, stimulating effective collaborations, and valuing the wisdom of subject matter experts but then it removes one of those collaborative tools with subject matter experts that is

190part of that transparency. By removing the public engagement loop, I like any proposal that will expand in moths which you can encourage stakeholder engagement but I do not see that removing public engagement loop is going to fix that. In district advisory ese advisory diversity committee, parent involvement task force and so on, you have concentrations of people ready made who are both subject matter experts, a ready made pool, and parents with lived experiences have gone through -- traditionally having been part of giving rich feedback on policy and should continue ob. It can be a construct I -- construct I ever, educative process, so why remove it, it would be one more erosion of that community voice. One suggestion on transparency when you talk about on the agenda, you can make it more community friendly when you're

191talking about stakeholder engagement. There's a whole bunch of policies on today's agenda and each person has to click on them to see what they are and some might be remote and some might be major things. I think identifying o them on the policy could be a good move. The redline has removed more substance than it has added. I'm not clear on what language adds on page 2 where it talks part 4a, stakeholders shall engage with the district with the belief their feedback is ultimately for review and consideration by the school board members. I'm not sure you can mandate what anybody believes and I found that curious wording. Over the end result of it, while removing some cluster is to repeal 1164, not just to retool it to make it more effective, retool is what this

192board attempted to do in 2022 and rejected. I love that opening statement but the rest doesn't bear it out. It doesn't set down a process for how public engagement will roll out, it makes it arbitrary and I think taken cumulatively with cutting minutes to board meetings, the proposed cutting down of advisory committees and language in that proposal wu was with trow hating we're a poor use of staff time and resources, I think it's cumulatively not making for good effect. Thank you. thank you, next is brook bordy. hello. My name is brook, I'm from plantation and I have three minutes, so I'm going to read fast. I'm here today to comment on the proposed wholesale replacement of follow si 1164, my general thoughts center on the situation as a country when we ear lazing our department

193of education, our county is targeted by our state government, as a school district, we're trying to build public trust. I feel this is a misplaced effort given the current climate. I also take issue with the comment this new policy doesn't introduce any new concepts. And that it's simply being dope the align with current practices. I feel this is an admission, not the current policy 1164 is not being abided by. If the current process is to not loop, then we're not following the policy that we have. Another critical timing issue to consider that phase 2 of the superintendent's plan for redefining broward county schools will roll out for the 26-27 school year. Surely that should rely on gathering ideas, recommendations and public sentiment, now seems like a glaringly inopportune time to roll back and up end

194the systems in place to gather stakeholder feedback. Ils also like to remind everyone we have a task force assessing the advisory committee structure. That task force will rely on the current policy 1164 to formulate its recommendations. If this is going through rule making, it's going to be totally revised. Our recommendations from the task force MAY not align with this new policy. Each school board member also received this morning a redline and a matrix regarding policy 1164, that redline was generated during one or more meetings between district staff.The community in the fall of 2023. It's a compromise and work between district staff and the community and putting forward this totally revised and replaced policy ignores the work that was done so I urge you to read that llaborativive reinine. I haveone rere minute. I don'n't have

195time to go line by line but regarding the new policy put forth, I did find that the definitions were legally insufficient, there was a lot of vague language and reliance on unproven moths of public engagement such as survey taking. To summarize, I'm alarmed by the resources, time, money and effort put forth -- put towards the systemic dismantling of long standing successful stakeholder participation structures,, as a parent, I ask that you focus on district achievement, wellness and safety, you not only reject this proposal out right, in the lead up to rule make, you see the redline mitt rising. That you ask staff to comply with 1164 currently written which would include looping these changes through the advisories. Thank you. thank you, and next we have my coal morris. good morning, nicole morris, coral springs, I will

196say also if we hadn't been alerted by advisory leadership that I wouldn't even though this was on the agenda today as it wasn't mentioned as and we're not familiar with 1920, the overhaul of policy 1164 that reduced this policy to a feedback session or a survey. You said you would like to hear from real parents, the advisory and looping meetings is where you get the raw feedback pr the real parents, the loop progress kress is where parents and teachers and principals come together to discuss policy changes that affect their schools. Oftentimes we go into the discussion with one opinion and leave feeling completely different after hearing other perspectives. This is also an opportunity, sometimes the only opportunity for people to have direct conversations with staff. If you change the format to what we have seen

197in the last couple of months, you will do the very thing you are trying to avoid which is only hear from the people who are already driving down here to speak anyways, so looking at the policy 1164, it's not being followed to di dell but you cannot eliminate the sequence of events we have mow that ensures all of the information for the policies coming down get from the most involved to the school level of the parents who only attend their staff and pta meetings, that's how they learn, if you have changed what we've done in the last two months which has not been looping, you have four or fao uf of the same people that are able to come out on a weeknight, at the beginning of the year, we sent our staff agendas for

198the parents to be there at those meetings advising they get the full scope of what's going on. The last two policy reviews seems to be a new way that was not customary of how the looping policy was done, it's worth mentioning again the proposal to repeal this policy was rejected in an 8-1 vote in 2022. I'll say that the last couple of months feels like it's been attack on advisory and parent and community input, it seems week after week, or month after month, we're undoing policies that keep our voices from being heard or giving feedback on policy, so I hope this again will be rejected and we will look at maybe changing some of the items but you can't take out the looping process. Thank you. thank you. You guys presented already, we're going questions.

199I wanted to say something, just generally speaking. 1164, staff has been complying, either the superintendent or board direct a looping process, so the statements that staff hasn't been following that is not accurate. As it relates to looping within the new policy, it has been there same as it is now, so if we're directed by the board or the superintendent, staff is happy to loop, thank you. thank you. Do any board members, DR. Zeman, I just want to ask MS. Batista to do something real quick. So, MS. Batista, can you speak to -- we've heard from public comment that we change things in the last couple of months about how we looped or how we brought policy changes but that was driven from a law that you reminded us of which then caused us to change

200how we did the public input about policy changes, so can you just maybe remind us of what that was and why we did things a little different for these last couple of months? certainly. So, I don't know if MR. Sullivan would like to say something. I wanted to remind everyone, I believe that policy was 1100, not -- I'm sorry, 1020, not 1164. right, yeah. So, it was related to the policy for school board meetings and it' not just on that policy, but our policy, policy which is policy 1000 and I think is being changed, there will be some changes to it coming up in MAY, but that policy has the district do a workshop for every single policy that comes along and that is not a requirement tuned law. Urntd -- urn the -- under

201the law, you would have to could a workshop only when it is requested by the public and that's not what we do, we do what we're doing now, right. So, the only difference is that when we have these types of policy/rule making type workshops which is a different meaning from our regular school board workshops within a schedule workshop like we're having mow, then we have a little bit of different rules where, for example, we can respond to questions that are asked by the public as it relates to policies and the language many the -- in the policy which normally the rule is that we do not go back and forth, right. But that would be the only real difference, other than that, we advertise it different for purposes of the chapter 120, the administrative procedures

202act, but that's the only thing we have done differently and I think we did something in policy 1020 from what I recall, MS. Alhadeff had requested we had like some sort of looping and at that point, I think it was like 5-4, some board wanted looping, some board members didn't, and the compromise was we did this other type of workshop or hearing, you know, where staff was there, the public was able to come and then we were able to have a very robust discussion about the policy language. thank you. Okay, DR. Zeman? thank you so much, chair, I understand in the previous thing that we had authorities for both the superintendent and the board to determine looping and I just want to read it real quick. I had it and then I lost it, sorry.

203Public engagement loop, the superintendent on their own, or when directed by the board shall determine which initiatives or programs require implementation of the public engagement loop. I would prefer the school board do that only and not the superintendent but where is that in the new version of the policy, I want to make sure I make sure I point it out to everybody. it's page 2b. under what number? 3b. thank you so much. and again are we saying there that it's the superintendent or the school board? . Inger correct. my preference would be the school board. Largely because I don't want to put the pressure on the superintendent to kind of represent kind of what the community needs to weigh in on and as representatives of the community, we have a central voice in those things.

204We also appoint people to the advisory boards, we get a lot of thoughts and ideas about what they would like so I throw that out for consideration by my colleagues. Should I go through the others or should we do them one at a time? you can do all of them. second is like with some other ol policies, this could use a good editor. There's places in it where I would want people to understand what we're trying to say here. I don't think that this is telling the board or the superintendent to do anything. I think what this is doing is defining some terms, defining some events and staining we want to hear from people and want to collaborate x want to partner, so I'm not offended by all this but I want to make sure

205that people don't read this as saying, you know, we only want the talk through surveys or we only want to hear data and things like that. I think any wise board wants to hear from lots of parents and lots of constituents and they want real data. That means it's not data that's not gathered by a few select people but sent out as far as possible, you can send it to tens of thousands and people and get better feedback than if you send it to 100 people, better than if you talk to two people. It's how many people do you want to hear from to use these different techniques. So, I would just prefer that we think about it. I do have one recommended word change that's important to me, second paragraph, we talk about enhanced

206decision making, what we're really I think trying to reinforce over again is data informed decision make, what we want is the data from the community, through town halls, through surveys, through phone calls and e-mails, it's so many ways community input could be given, we want the make citifying that is are data informed and these examples are ways in which we expand the data by which we consider the decisions that we have to make. So, my biggest issue, chair, which I think we should try sp figure out if we f we have consent on is do we want the school board to consider looping which I thought was our policy until we had the review this or do we want the superintendent sp the -- and the school board to consider looping? so we'll take a

207consensus on his question. Sure, MRS. Alhadeff? so, on his point, what I would like is for the superintendent to define in his perception what looping is because I've known throughout all years, looping has morphed into different things and I know I even asked for a board member follow-up one year, there is a looping process but I think looping gets modified so if we're going to say or speak to something on looping, I want all of us to be on the same page, what looping is. DR. Hepburn? thanks for the question, so my definition for looping is taking the initiative, whatever the decision that needs to be made to the applicable group that's impacted the most to receive feedback before we make that decision. For instance, we have a new website we're going to be bringing

208on deck many the next month or so, and I directed staff to go talk to the regional advisory groups because I know they have the most parents with students in our system and they're always on our websites, our school websites, our district websites, so the -- a decision that is going to impact the entire district ensuring that we're in front of the applicable group that's going to have the greatest impact on that decision is what looping is to me, o get feedback from them. so, that is a different looping from my understanding of the more thorough and detailed looping through even starting at the school level going through the.Pto's, right, so I guess if we can put that in writing, I don't know if the board has to put on that, but I want us

209all, meaning the board, the community, the committees, everybody to be on the same page so, when we say looping, we all agree that's what's going to happen. so, are we agreeing what that definition is as a board right now, is that the process? I don't know if it has to be more, if you bring something to an agenda item, I think that would probably be better maybe. and on this topic, if you don't mind, MS. Alhadeff, would you and the superintendent say looping is confined to advisory boards or it could also be to an independent group of parents, whoever you think needs to review it soit's not restricted to advisory councils? not from my standpoint, it MAY be a -- it's not confined just to advisory boards, that MAY not be the audience that can

210provide the best feedback for whatever the initiative or the decision that needs to be made at that time. if I could just to continue on the specific point, MS. Alhadeff, you're not confining yourself to decisions by the school board then, you're saying that looping is an activity where you could roll out the final draft of a website to the three regional advisory councils as a way of staffing that and getting feedback. I had always thought that this looping was about an item combining to a school board and the looping would go to specific advisories to get feedback or to ask for a survey which we have done before as a way of looping, so I wonder if if we don't need a staffing kind of verb and then a school board kind of verb which

211is, yeah, but we're about to get this item and we need to hear from the people that we have nominated to these specific committees to come back and give us thing. I think there MAY be two different things, I think what you're describing is a ceo/superintendent role, you don't need our permission to roll out a website. there's certain thing that is come to the board that are going to be impacted but it's a district wide initiative, that MAY never come o the board such as the website, correct, but I know there's other thing that is come to the board that the board MAY want us to loop through specific groups, be it advisory groups or town hall or whatever the case MAY be. yes, sir, so it could be if if we want looping to

212be both of those things, definition here is consistent with what I think would work best. The superintendent could loop a website and we're looking at some big hairy issue we'd love to get some issue onsinger we could say do these three groups, could they look at it and give us so t some idea. If looping could be defined as this general reach out to groups beyond advisory councils, then I don't think that only us should do it, I think certainly the superintendent needs to do that as well. MRS. Rupert? thank you, and just on this point, I didn't want to interrupt you. I think it would be very interesting for us as a board right now to get the language of what looping was in 2010, 2010, a little bit early 20 11, but mostly

2132010 and prior to. That's when I was involved, but we started with advisories, and it's an important -- for me, I have seen the dismantling of public input happen every single year with a great superintendent, not with a great superintendent, but it just happened all those years and you could see it little by lilgt, little, so if this were a vote, I would not be supporting it because I would love that we go back to the system that used to be where there was no back and forth. The public -- it was so different and when I was first elected, there was one thing I never worried about was parental input and the other were our [Inaudible] As a district and how we were all doing, we're back, we came back that way, but the

214point is it needs to be -- I'm sorry, it needs to be -- I think lori just found it now, we need to look at it and see what it was like that was working back then and see what would be good for this time around. I would definitely not mind a segway. ask to that point, I would say I would like the see this come back within that area there where it was about en gagement -- 3b? it goes methods of engagement, a, b, c, d, maybe add an e which includes looping and come back to us with what looping would look like and it would -- not everything is looped as we said, right, specific to the school board, where would we want to see that go, so -- we MAY say dac

215and ese and diversity or whatever, but -- a survey. right, it could be -- yeah, that survey's on there. that's already on there. but specifically looping is not listed in there. it's in there, it's in section 3b. I think nomenclature -- it comes across as being looping. I think it needs to be very clear that because we have something else which is the policy where it's a workshop or a public hearing or whatever you want to call it and that's what I read in the b language here. we're trying to do plain language, ienl not sure what the public knows what looping is but b is looping. so I don't read it as that way, so I would like to see it more defined as my colleagues have just mentioned. I mean, this could be

216interpreted for a variety of different things. It's not just looping and I think it lackeys what it needs to be specific to us to the committees and to the public. and I think there's an opportunity, chair, to decide right now whether we want either pick a new phrase for what that is, to get feedback from specific groups that are defined or keep looping which I'm fine, I think looping, we all have at least a concept of what looping is, we need to define it to a very good input of what is looping, that should be the first sentence I think if you don't mind at least considering this and 3b, looping sh and be specific about it, call it looping because we're used to that but let's define sxit let's say this is why we're

217doing it so that this school board and future school boards and this superintendent and future superintendents have a good guideline for when they would want to do it, for school board niche yat -- initiatives? that's why I say e. it doesn't fit in those groups of meetings, it fits into the standards because it's a way of getting -- I would leave it in 3 become, but I'llll lever toit the authors s leleveitittogethth,, we're nodenini looping anand nonot using the tete. If we wa to create a new term, let do that right now but if we want the keep our term, I think to several people's pointed, let's define what it is so we know what it means. When we sit down and are looking at an issue and we go, these are the people I

218want to hear from, they're on these advisories or we need a survey or w we should go check with these 7 districts if we want to know something, that should all be looping and it should be driven by the school board for our issue and is driven by the superintendent for actions that he's working on. I still think it's a method of engagement and I would like the still see it on an e. We have to agree here and figure out where everybody would like the see that. MS. Thompson wanted to weigh? . no, you got it because now I'm learning there's a different form of looping that's the superintendent looping and what I have spent the last however long I've been here knowing which is looping through all the advisory boards. I think there

219should remain language there's still a process of looping through all the advisory boards. I don't know what you guys did back then but I would be -- it was new and innovative back then. And I had another comment and I think it was on 4b and c, the presentation of stakeholder feedback because when I read that under b, it says that engagement with stakeholders will be documented by staff and either reviewed by senior leadership or incorporated, if not, it goes to the school board. I would like us to have feedback from the stakeholders. I think that leaves out the school board from understanding what the community is talking about but again I think that's in reference, there seems to be two different definitions of feedback gathering/looping. The board should know about it, with the meetings,

220I know we record it and I go back and watch it. If it's coming to a meeting, we get the summary, I think if you guys are going out for other things, we still should be get thing feedback and I feel the school board gets left out of the feedback. in the current 1164 policy, it gives the ability to the superintendent or the board the direct staff to loop a policy which MAY include advisories but doesn't have to. It can include a variety f stakeholders. The new language is basically the same without calling it looping so, the board still has the authority to loop to committees or stakeholders as the superintendent does and to your latter comment, so this doesn't change the normal process, so the community meet hating MS. Batista spoke about, we presented

221all that feedback to the board to react to. This policy, the changes basically mirror that practice, we would incorporate the things that staff thought was appropriate based on that feedback along with providing the feedback we did not incorporate for board consideration. can someone read the old one. I still think -- I know that you think taking looping out made it easier for the public but I think it made it harder. Somewhere -- if you want, we can add it back, I don't think we need to restart the whole policy. That's an easy addition to this current lang wamg and we're happy to include looping. or even add the term also known as looping, so you have both in there because I know looping as an internal term for us, when I talk to people outside

222in the public, we're going to loop that, what do you mean, but I know everybody understands the term stakeholder engagement or stakeholder meeting, they understand what we're saying when we use that term, so you can also use also known as or have both term ins there. Internally we're not going to drop the term looping, we're always going to say looping internally because that's our common nomenclature, we can probably add both. maybe in place where is you have parentheses such as focus groups, discussion groups, town halls, you could add looping into there. You could also a add it down into 3b where it says surveys, meetings, looping, etc., but the word looping needs to be in here because you knew what you wrote and what your intent is but when we're reading it, it's not clear.

223. I would be happy to add it. we can can add it in the definitions portion also. in the definition portion, you're going define what you mean specifically by looping? yes, so -- but from previous discussion, obviously my looping is a little bit different from the board's looping. So we're going to have to define what looping is, in some form, if it's in a small session here, what's the board's definition of looping and what should be some of those action steps. I know what my looping is, sometimes it is advisory groups and sometimes it's not. So, just to make sure we get the right definition in there when we bring it back. and not to overcomplicate it, I think it's a bigger discussion because I think tlas modified looping and then a looping x then

224stakeholder feedback, so I think there needs to be not now but to come back because also we want the community involved too in that process, so I think it's a great -- whether we workshop it or it comes as an agenda item, I think it needs to be clearly defined, thank you. board member bulman? I agree with MS. Alhadeff about that and obviously there's two definitions, we're going to have the superintendent's definition and then our definition. Can we be flexible and have discretion about -- I mean, does that do this already in terp of would we're bringing in in any particular situation? it will be flexible. but we might want to add something that says at the discretion of the board or the superintendent. it's already there. okay. and then just one other little point,

225many 4a, I think that sentence needs to be reworked. Ipg it could say stakeholders should engage with the school district to provide feedback that is going to be reviewed and considered by the school board members. Because it says with the belief, so that -- maybe understanding. even with the understanding, I think it's kind of like, well, we're going to tell you we're going to give you the feedback but we don't know if it will happen, I feel like it's hanging like an old and chad. I'm old enough to remember that. should it include school leaders, the feedback will go to us and not the cabinet or the superintendent?Frjts it depends on who's looping. I guess it should, right. it could say and/or. okay, thank you. I have one quick question before we f I go

226to MRS. Rupert, when you were looking at this, did you use the matrix in all of the feedback that you had gathered from the meetings that you did with -- when it was looped in 2022? no. okay, thank you. MRS. Rupert? that was one of my points. But I think I just have to say this, talking so much about looping is making me a little loopy, I had to say it, we were all thinking it, okay. Imd -- I would still very much like to have the original definition down, the original being 2010 and also a comparison with what was 2022, you know, let's get all the information out there and as someone who's been here and seen a lessening and a definite -- I'll just say it -- tearing apart of our community and

227our parents and the school district and it's not what we expect, not that we want, but what's important is I as a board member am taking responsibility for that, I hold part of the blame because I've been here that long, okay, I hold part of the blame for that, however I was very vocal, aka, speaking my conscience, but the point is let's do a little healing and I think going back, putting this away over there, I'm sorry over there because I love you, but it is not what I want to put my name on, it -- it's not. It's not where I believe to be and what the board needs to be and most importantly our community, so thank you. if I MAY, love you right back, the language is in there, tiets cross out

228section that hasn't been changed since 2007. The new language doesn't restrict the board's ability to loop, the superintendent's ability to loop, it doesn't restrict the public from engaging with us in any sort of way that they're engaging with us now, but again we're happy to follow the will of the board. that's awesome, thank you. And what we need to do is when we're looking at the old policy, maybe make the font a little bit bigger for these people like me that have trouble seeing, but most importantly, having a side by side of all those policies. That's how my brain works, give me three columns, this, that, what we have now and then you might be able to see a pattern in what small decisions happened over those years really wound up being a big thing

229and we're not -- we're really not going to sit still for anymore of that, so thank you. thank you, do you all -- I think we all kind of agreed we want to see this come back with a little more information. Yes? Right? so, my take away from the discussion is to add looping back, define it and then we would bring it back for a vote. yeah, I think -- yes, no? do you think we're going to be able to get there f three different policies side by side and not only us but what about the community we're representing? I just think it's fast. If you guys can do it -- I thought we were asking to add in the definition of looping. okay, but let's make sure what we're asking for -- because when

230we get stuff, we can't complain it wasn't exactly detailed in the ask. so, do we want it to come back at another workshop, is that what you're asking? yes. okay, so what do we think? an alternative to that would be to move it forward because it's got to come back anyway, we still have to vote on it one more time in final forum. we're not looping. sorry, maybe I missed with my sneezing over here. are you asking to loop this policy? I give up here today. Yes. so, MRS. Rupert is asking us to loop the policy through different -- we'd have to direct which committees, right. go back to the committees from 2010 and any new ones that have started over the last five years. I don't think it needs to loop in every single

231committee. I'm trying to get it back to there, but okay. let take a consensus here, DR. Zeman is a no. So, MRS. Rupert is asking to loop it through all the committees and then bring it back at a new workshop. loop what specifically? this policy, the policy -- yes, well, yes. Just 1920, that's the only thing we're on right now. [Inaudible]. I know but this is what we're discussing. So, just this policy 1920. [Inaudible]. no. DR. Hepburn, can DR. Hepburn share the looping process follow-up that I just sent you to the board? yes. because I think that will add some clarity. two minute recess, sure, two minute recess. (Meeting in recess). thank you, welcome back, we're going to finish our consensus here. I believe the question is do we loop this item and then bring

232it back as a workshop, that's what we're trying to get consensus on. DR. Zeman is a no. Board member bulman is a no. MS. Leonardi is a no, I'm a no. I don't know where MS. Thompson is, MRS. Alhadeff? yes. okay. MRS. Rupert? I'm a yes. DR. Holness? yes. okay, and MS. Thompson? yes. so, it's 4-4, so it fails because it's tied. anybody want to change their vote? we're not going to loop this pu we -- but we are going to bring it back. when we present it for final board vote, we'll bring it back. thank you so much. before you do that, did we do 1940? yeah, but that's within the same item. yeah, nobody had any -- the only question that came up was -- on 1940, but this includes other ones. did

233anyone else have anything else on the community policies, all of the different ones? Okay, MRS. Alhadeff, go ahead. yes, thank you, I lost my spot on the presentation, but I did want to bring up because I was going to bring this up at the end tof school board meeting but I saw it was in here, policy 1930. It was referenced. you mean 1940? 1930, banners, it was referenced. Er yes. I was going to the bring this up to my colleagues later. So I don't know if you're getting feedback about the new banner policy and the roll-out of it, but I wanted to ask my colleagues if they were interested in kind of two things, one is brings back the banner policy so there can be more robust conversation with the community and the impact that

234the policy has on our schools and directly on for our students. And then two, giving the current policy for the schools to comply with the new policy on the banners until JANUARY of 2026. MS. Batista, did you want to weigh? On the second request? when 1930 came into being, it did not have a specific timeframe so, when the policy became effective when it was adopted by the board so it has to be rolled out consequently right after that, right. If the board wanted to -- when with -- well, let me back up. So I think what is important to keep in mind that one of the reasons why the policy was changed was because of religious signage that some schools had -- or political signage some schools had. So, I'm pleased to advise and I

235know I've advised the board before, that the case that we had against the district, we prevailed and one of the reasons we prevailed is because the judge said that the board had changed its policy to make it very clear to that religious and political signage was not allowed on school property. So, if we were to bring back the policy, I just want to make sure that that part of it cannot change. So, it would only be to change maybe the timeframe in which there will be conformity with the size and shape of banners themselves, if that's what you're speaking of as oppose today the content. no, I don't want to touch anything you spoke about with the lawsuit and regarding to that. What I wanted to speak about is just -- there is the elimination

236of pictures and so the board didn't get to weigh in on whether they -- well, I guess we did, we didn't really have that conversation as far as pictures and maybe the banners on the outside of the school don't have pictures but the banners maybe inside of the school on the football field can have pictures. There's also -- there's other things like memorial banners, so like for example the erin feiss banner, I was at the football field, that aper should be able to stay as specific memorial banner and not have to confine with this new policy of the banners, so I just think there's some details we missed and that I think if we could bring it back but also to give the schools more ample time to be able to roll out the new

237banners in JANUARY of 2026 to be in compliance with the size or -- yes, obviously everything with the lawsuit, we have to be in compliance with but I think that there is a cycle and there is a financial cost to replace the banners and ultimately this is a fundraiser for the schools and they're using that money to help our students. if I MAY. MR. Sullivan? so, what we tried to do to relieve some of those concerns, we told the schools they can grandfather the current banners until the following school year, but at the will of the board, we could get together perhaps with our principals to see the if we need to make any adjustments to the current policy. I have a question for my colleague. Why JANUARY -- is the contract JANUARY to JANUARY

238or is it AUGUST to AUGUST? Because it should -- I don't mind moving it out but if JANUARY would be in the middle of someone's contract, it would make more sense to bump it out until AUGUST of -- right, or the language could be once the -- because obviously, yeah, there could be timing at multiple times during the year, I don't know what those times are, but their year is up, whether it's in JULY or JANUARY, then they would switch over to the new requirements. MR. Sullivan, is that what's implied now, or is it that everyone has to change in AUGUST? as MS. Batista said, when the board voted on it, it is effective that the board rolled out operationally, we decided to grandfather the banners are currently up until the following school year. To

239your point and MR. Strauss can correct me, its's typically those partnerships are the duration that match with the school year. MR. Strauss, can you tell us so that we have a better direction. MR. Sullivan is correct, it's JULY 1 to JUNE 30, the school year. if we give them additional time, that would need to come back o the board to vote on that. and that's what I'm asking for, additional time. I think at least from district 4, there has been some communication that wasn't clear and also when with -- and I asked for this but I don't think this happened. There needed to be conversations with the ptu's and pta's specifically, and with the principals, because this is one of their biggest fundraisers, so I think that conversation and it's not just the ptu's and

240pta's, you have also boards like for the football team, the baseball team and those conversations never happened. So, we rolled out a policy but we didn't go and really communicate clearly with the people that are being affected by these banners. I have one more question. To the point of the memorial banners, those aren't advertisements, so MS. Batista, would a memorial banner fall under the banner policy because aren't those for people who buy the banners? Do we need to include that? I want to make sure we have all the information. we don't have advertising per se, what we do have pursuant to the new policy is a grateful process in which we say thank you to our supporters, the supporters of that particular school and the way to say thank you is through the banner, so

241the banner is the speech of the district, not the speech of the vendors or businesses. so, where does the memorial banner fall in that? If someone had a banner up, congratulations, inside the school, not on the outside, but op the inside, do we have a policy on all banners or just our grateful banners? right. I believe it would apply to that banner based on section 2, page 1 because it says -- it defines banners as a temporary display of signage on school property. Just to bring us back to where we fwot here. There was a variety of factors of why we had a policy and changed the policy. Now that we have more time, I believe the superintendent will exercise his authority to loop this through principals and pto's, and then we can bring it

242back to the board. And we can move on. perfect, thank you. anybody else want to address anything else under the communication item? I have one quick one, chair, sorry. The funds we collect for lobbyists, are those going to be used in a categorical way or go back through the general fund. through the chair, sorry, I jumped ahead, I believe the intent is to offset the cost of taking our students to tallahassee, currently the board allocates about I believe 20 thousand towards those endeavors and again most large school districts, I know to the south of us, they do charge, so this is -- and most government entities charge lobbyists to register, so that's the intent of the fees would go to those -- to offset the cost of sending our students sisal chases see, currently under

243this proposed fee, we would generate nearly 10 thousand dollars. thank you so much. I've never going to be in favor of categorical funding of our own money. When we fwet money in, we put it in a big pot and make hard decisions about what's a priority to fwet done. If we what we say is owed, lobbying fees can send kids to tallahassee, it ties our hands as general budgeting process, if you want to spend money sending kids to tallahassee, do that but there's no connection between lobbyists and setting them up to learn what lobbyists do in tallahassee. If that's in here. in policy, it's not, it doesn't delineate we would use it in those regards, that was our intention of how to use those funds, it would go to general revenue. okay, so that was

244this the vim on the item but not in the policy itself? correct. thank you, I appreciate that. thank you, anybody else? Alright. You know what to do next? Yefrjts, ma'am, and I believe if you allow for a one minute recess, the next group will be available -- what? okay, it'swe'll have the next group come on over. The next item is policy 1480, student records, confidentiality and family educational rights, I'm going turn it over to staff as soon as they have a moment to come to the table for a brief presentation. Whenever you're ready, you go right ahead. We're ready whenever you are. I'm todd, the risk officer in risk manager, we're here to bring revision tos the students records confidentiality policy x for the first time sips I've been bringing this to the board, this

245is my third time bringing it, there's going to be a procedure that also needs to be board approved due to the contents of the procedure and parents and students' rights, because that procedure involves other departments besides risk management, those other departments are here to answer any questions if you had them. It includes academics and it. I'm not going to read all the revision tos the policy, there are a lot of minor ones I put in that powerpoint. I think I'll start with your questions. yeah, we don't have any public comment so we'll go right to board discussion. Do you have any colleagues who have any questions? Board member thompson? and I don't know if this is -- you're going to elaborate, I have heard from a couple of our non-profit partners that our data sharing

246agreement has really either been stuck and they haven't been able to get the data or they haven't restarted the process and it's hindering their ability to serve our students after -- in after school programs or in mentoring programs. I guess you have -- have you guys heard that on your end? Is there anything in the policy that would fix that issue or the procedure you're proposing? DR. Hepburn? sorry. staff? the contract review process is not a part of this policy but the only way it's a part of it is the contract review process regard thing privacy sections and sharing of data has to be in compliance with ferpa which is in this policy, so I was intbackern't going to talk tabt contract review process in terms of this policy but I'll be glad to answer

247any questions about the privacy review section of the contract review process right now if you would like me to even though it's not part of this policy? You would like me to talk about it, okay. In a nutshell, the contract review process privacy sections align with ferpa x the florida law and as recently as 2022, the florida law has specific elements that they require to be in agreements where data is shared. The main ingredients there or the main element ares the types of records to be disclosed, the purposes of the disclosure. We also added the method of delivery and then not just related to privacy but also related to it security and risk management liability, how those records are safeguarded, so me personally when I get a contract to review, the template part of the

248disclosure section has all of those fill in the blanks. Those fill in the blankets are not a legal issue or a privacy issue per se. The end user department needs to find out in working with the vendor and whatever software or services or programs they're using and give me that data. I always try from my piece of the contractctreview process, again, which is on th pracy sectionsns, is to giveve fa turn-aunund once those elements are in place. Right this minute, I'll be open with you, I'm on friday's e-mails which are not bad, that's two days ago and I usually am all caught up even though I have a large amount of agreements, I could give a fast turn around, the ball in those departments' court, and I think and I'm going to be very open

249because you asked the question, there's a misperception and not just for risk management and privacy but several of the departments that have to review contracts. I MAY not be able to sign off if it's not correct and i won't or if the data -- if the right elements aren't there, but me and others in this propro -- process are not holding up cabs so I don't know if that answers the question. and I'm not trying to imply you are. I'm trying to understand where is the barriers to making sure our students are served in all capacity. if you can provide the board some common examples of what are some barriers to data sharing agreements that on the other end of the vend do, we understand, but maybe there's a common barrier they MAY not fully

250understand. I would be glad to do that. Again, I could only speak for myself and the contracts that come across for my review. Very often I get a contract to review, I got misinformation out of the gate. This happened two weeks ago, three separate departments sent me contracts and again just as a refresher, this has nothing do with this policy where they said there are no records being shared at all. I could have done a quick sign off and we put a blurb saying no records are being shared. In case someone sees anything or something is sent to them in error, it still has to be protected. All these of those contracts, it seemed there were records being shared so I went back and forth with each of those department and is sure enough, in

251all three of the contracts, there were records being shared so sometimes there's a misperception and this policy does address that of the deaf anything of an education record for example if that's the kind of record, so people might have the misperception that an education record only refers to something academics. Sometimes the vendors are not aware that they're asking for education records and they say there's none. This happened with another recent contract where they said there were no records but there were photographs of student and is videos that they wanted to post which counts as a record in the contract, how do you address that, or there were surveys given. There was another contract that keeps coming across my plate. I have my sign-off ready to go but there's always been an issue with it where

252I can't sign off. For example, the vendor said they were being funded by a certain funder but they didn't get the funding yet but they wanted the contract to say that. i couldn't sign off on something that's going to go in the future. There's all of these kind of issues and there's many variables and a lot of the contract clauses are if then scenarios. I enjoy working with all of the staff and having meetings to iron out these issues and I'm telling you, it could be on teams and phone calls, I could even do it by e-mails but if I did it only by e-mails or certain flowcharts and data banks, it's very, very time consuming. So, if you're asking me some of the issues, I'm being very open and direct with you. thank you.

253Youfrjt ear welcome. thank you very much, DR. Zeman? thank you. Is there anything in this policy that exceeds state law, federal regs, department of ed rules? I'm going to say no unless you pull out a certain point. Our policy, I tried to give as much flexibility as possible, for instance, there's a section on disclosures of education records without consent and if you look at the ferpa regs, what they allow, it has all of those allowances, plus others, there's certain items that aren't many the ferpa regulations, for example, they're in ferpa guidance, for instance, if a child isn't dually enrolled in a college and a high schoolser we're allowed to share information back and forth thashs's in the ferpa regs but the ferpa guidance, I have contact with the ferpa office in washington dc, I started

254with year one having that contact and they know our district with all our policies, our procedures, our website and our forms related to privacy, we're always trying to have flexibility. They say that they don't want ferpa to be a burden to districts but let's face it, there's so many requirements between the federal law and the state law. It can get burdensome. There's also a MISS -- misperception that not getting consent is easier, sometimes not getting consent carries with it many conditions that are harder if you get it to consent. To the best of my knowledge in this ever-changing landscape of the laws, this gives us more flexibility. I don't think there's anything that's overly [Inaudible] I wonder if in the policy and I'm not sure how we would do this necessarily but the laws, the

255rules and their guidance between ferpa, things related to pii and things like that can change much faster than this board can approve policy. Is it legal, chair, for us to extend policy to what is in law? Because clearly we have to follow law more than we have to follow our policy, right. We're not going break the law, you would agree? I do. thank you. but do we need to indicate anything like that in our policies where there are more rapid cycles in laws, rules and regs and guidance tan this our ability to make policy, but are we good and told every couple of years to review it? MS. Batista? if something is not in policy, you have to follow the law even.If it is not part of the policy. something for tows think about, when

256laws change, rules change, guidance change for any governmental agency, our policy is no longer germane in those areas in which things come together, just something for us to think about long term. I do believe that MS. Batista does do that, so, -- and she usually sends us the information that the law has changed and so the policy is going to come back to us. did you just tell me to read my e-mail closer? Thank you for doing it so gently, I appreciate that. I wanted to add one thing to your previous point and I agree with you about what you said about the laws. Some of the laws require us to come up with our own ways of carrying out the law. What I'm bringing now, that procedure is one of them. So, if we

257just said we'll follow that law, we wouldn't be in compliance because they're telling us, tell us how you're going to do it. yes, sir, about sharing data agreements, this is going to be an area where we're going to get deluged, every year there's going to be 3 to 4 hundred percent in data agreements, we should think as board how many resources we want to have in those things because we'd also like other people to share their data with us so we can see what the children services council is doing and see what other organizations are doing and what efficacy they get out of -- what's revealed in their data, they can't do that unless we have a good data sharing agreement. There are going more more opportunities to answer some of DR. Holness' and landyn's

258hard questions, does this impact mental health or academics, I would continue to advocate we spend as many resources required to participate in those data sharing agreements because we're going to be the beneficiary of them more than the smaller organize sashesfinger we'll still the big dog on educating kids in broward county we're going learn about which one of those things help and which ones don't, but it's going to explode. Ai is going to put such a huge demand on the data that we have and lots of times these government fireballs that we build around these thing ares inhibiting us from understanding does this policy affect that outcome. And yet the technology's available but because we don't have an agreement or because we draw these crazy lines around government sharing of services, we just can't get to

259the new knowledge we need to get to. I wanted this board to know that demand signal is about to explode and we MAY have to expand the number of people that are available to get those things done quickly. Thanks, chair. thank you. Anybody else? MRS. Bulman? thank you, just a question. In the student code of conduct we were talking about earlier, that also addresses this, or can you explain the differentiation between what we have many the code of conduct ask what this policy is and if we need it in both places? I like the formats of yours better, it's easier to read. I can address this n the code of conduct, there's four privacy notices, use of social security numbers and these are all for students and families w ve separate notices for employees. Social

260security numbers, protection of people rights amendment which deals with survey and is curriculums and parents' right tos see them, hipaa because sometimes records are not only governed by ferpa in our district, they're governed by hipaa if they involve student information and other requirements happen and thep the ferpa notice, so that policy, the code of conduct has the full notices for each of those things, this policy just refers to those notices. In addition, because we're required with this new software procedure that's in this new policy, we're also notifying parents of that in the code of conduct. In addition to those four policies I just spoke about, there's three forms in the code of conduct at the front of it or they go with the policy, I'm not sure if they're approved tat policy stage, they go

261with the code of conduct, that is the media release form which is the opposite communications has a major interest in but I consult with it for the privacy piece and the sharing of information. The ferpa notice which involves opting out of direct information disclosures and then disclosures to military. So, that generally covers the privacy rights that go out in the code of conduct. Does that answer your question? it does, thank you very much. thank you. Anybody else? Alright. I think that's it. Thank you so much. thank you. have a great day. you too. thank you, the next item is rule development policy 8000, approval of facilities' construction contract change orders. I will now turn it over to staff for a very brief presentation. as MS. Paul and her team get situated to come to the

262floor, we will have a real quick brief overview and go straight to discussion. chair, superintendent, we're here to present the policy regarding change orders, it's policy 8000 and it's to reduce the number of change orders that come to the board and to bring the percentage from a 3% to a 5% threshold of the project budget that would be presented to the board. I have here with me ms. hiancoli who is task sipped assigned exec tier director of construction. I don't think we have public comments so when -- we'll move to board discussion. thank you, chair, this is great. This is something the board's asked for, thanks for coming. I would like the propose to my colleagues though slightly different numbers. This is the superintendent of a very, very large school district and we are very,

263very interested in getting work done. And to the extent that these limits represent what MAY have been kind of a useful threshold ten years ago, given the price and complexity of construction, I would just suggest some that are different. The first one I would go up to 25 thousand dollars and I would say, look, up to 25 thousand dollars, the superintendent based on the recommendation only of the director of construction would be able to authorize that and there should be a reporting part of that as well when we've done this before websinger eve said in your weekly reports, just let us know when you do it, if there's a list of six of them tha,'s great. if the superintendent is telling us, I approved six of these, they're under 25 thousand dollars, just for the

264board's awareness, 25 thousand dollars is moving about 6 outlets, so this is a pretty trivial amount of thing. The second rule I would move up from 25 thousand to 100, and I would praoepz to my colleagues we eliminate the provided that it's 3%, I would just take it out. And I would say dollar amount is more important than anything else, whether it's small, medium or large project, we want them done. If the chiefs of operation and is facilities says this is something we have o do, I believe that that authority should be enough for a superintendent to approve change orders between 25 and 100 thousand dollars. Rule 3 I think is fine, you know, for where it is except I don't think 5% is enough. Again, we get constrained with this bureaucracy of like trying

265to tie everybody's hands to get things done so I would love to hear your idea but I think something like 10% would be more appropriate. I don't know to my knowledge, colleagues, have you ever seen a construction project in broward county that didn't cost more than 10% more than we thought it would, almost never. We're going to hit that 10% and I want these dollar amounts to be consistent with our need to get things done. Our students don't get the fa cilities or the upgrade or the air conditioner or the chiller or whatever we're putting in and it seems we're often the obstacle, it takes a month to put together an item, it take as month to get on our schedule kej sh we're creating two month delays for things, and I think we ought

266to ramp up the amount of money, eliminate the 3% total in the middle and try to just modernize I think these numbers so that our superintendent can work with us to make sure we get things done and in all three cases, I have ja us weekly notification in however he'd like to do it. I know he said it before in his friday notes, to me that would show a degree of trust we have in the superintendent, the chief operating and facilities officer and one other change in case you missed it, I don't want the district pmo to be involved in making recommendations. I think that should be the director of construction or you, ma'am, making a government to government recommendation directly to the superintendent, so those are the kinds of ideas I have, I wanted

267to throw them out here in the beginning. They're much closer to industry averages, if you look at how other districts are doing things and how other government agencies are doing things, if you look at nasa or look at the army corps of engineers, they give a lot of authority to the general officer that's out in the field. We have a world class general officer, let's start giving thim authority to start getting things done. thank you, any other -- DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair, I do appreciate some of those suggestions by DR. Zeman. I would however like to get information if it's available readily on how those suggestions as far as increasing these numbers compared to other major school districts that's close by. DR. Hepburn? we'll have to provide a follow-up on those numbers, DR.

268Holness, to talk to our neighbors to the north and the south. it could be other major school districts within the state as well. yes. my second question, DR. Hepburn, is how do you feel that the changes suggested by dr. Zeman will make your job more efficient and expedite processes to get things done, what would be the impact? thank you, you said the key word there, expedite. We want to expedite the process, we don't want to wait on board meetings to approve something to get the work done. That's holding up something that could be done within a matter of weeks or even sometimes days at a school, so we can can get that work done. I totally agree, we need to expedite a lot of our projects have been in a stand-still for a long time

269as MS. Paul has come in and discover and had we're trying to accelerate the work, we're sometimes wait toing get something on a regular school board agenda delays some simple task that could accelerate the work. so, based on the suggestions made here by DR. Zeman, do you see any negative or do you have any added comment on how you believe we should proceed? no, I don't see any negatives unless MS. Paul and MS. Coli have anything to add that they add as a detriment or a negative. no, I don't see a detriment. I think what this does is prevents us from bringing $1,500 change orders to the board and those nominal amounts to the board. I agree with DR. Zeman in terms of providing an update to the board on any of the change orders

270that are under the new authority once it's adopted by the board, provide a weekly update to the superintendent or to the board as well as the superintendent. and then I think during my tenure, we've only provided one update because we've only had one change order that did not exceed that 3% change threshold because I only can remember one update that we sent to the board and I want to say MS. Hixon pointed it out to us tha,'s the one we sent o e board beuse of e thshold of the overall project cost. DR. Hepburn, I know you were in palm beach, do you have any recollection -- I would say the circumstances are different in palm beach. The work under MS. Paul's leadership got done in a very timely manner and oftentimes under budget because

271we can keep working televising's no stoppage and all of those things that we have to worry about which increases time and cost. Because of the link of this bond and the standstill of many of the projects for whatever reason over the past ten years, we're in a different place here than our neighbor tos the north and to the south, so this will help to accelerate some of the work especially some of the minor things that shouldn't be held up so we can keep those things going so we can close out projects faster. so, I'm going to support DR. Zeman's suggestions but I also would like the see -- to see the information on other major districts and how it compare tos DR. Zeman's suggestion and maybe it's even more which would allow us to even

272make suggestions of increasing those numbers but I don't know what they look like, currently DR. Zeman's suggestions are great and I'm going to be supportive of that. Frngt and chair, just so you know, I have that data at some point, soy eel wait until the second round. I'm not sure there's going to be a second round, so if you -- did you want to send them to DR. Hepburn and he can send them to all of us, just like we did the other thing. absolutely. anybody else have any questions on this item? yes, ma'am, I have one follow-up. okay. I would like DR. Hepburn to go one step further, DR. Hepburn, why in palm beach county, what did they do differently when they're doing schools that we have yet to do here in broward county

273that allows them to get done in one year or less? I'll ask MS. Paul since she was the person that facilitated that work, go ahead, MS. Paul. I think the -- I think -- I'm trying to be careful in how I answer this because it's kind of a different situation. I came in, in palm beach at the beginning of a program, I had just completed one in dallas, started one in -- and started one in dallas, so, in terms of preparing for the program to start, even before the vote, we kind of laid the platform and contracts and all the prep work and stuff, so we didn't really burn a lot of time getting started. Kind of the same thing in palm beach. We were very efficient in laying the ground work, laying contracts out,

274and just speed to market, we're in a great bubble in dallas as well as in palm beach so the quicker we got the contracts approved and so forth, we were able to take advantage of o the economic situation. We got real lly great bids, had a lot of competition from our contractors, had a lot of depth and we worked on how we paid them to make sure we paid them on time, made sure that we were decision-oriented, in other words, we made decisions quickly. So, just kind of a different, more aggressive approach, and then the other part too is that we brought the board along with us as we did things. In each district I've been in to make sure we kept the board informed so that made a huge difference. Thafrmgts's wonderful and I

275can't wait how many of those thing we can do quickly in broward. Chair, there was another story I was hoping DR. Hepburn would tell about when they need to build a new school, oftentimes they would move students to -- that's what I was looking for, I love that story but I'm not sure my colleagues -- yeah, I'm on the receiving end of the great work MS. Paul did in palm beach county so we would have a swing site and swing students out of the school and build the new school in short order and it was I think we used that swing site for three new schools, so we built three schools in a matter of two and a half years probably. yeah, we actually built a temporary site next to don estridge, we build verde.

276I know the numbers. verde, blue lake. so, we used the school twice and then we swung two schools through the temporary site and built on a temporary site. and we built the new school on the temporary site. we passed two schools through that and many people said you couldn't do it but the mayor worked with us, donated the land and we had fwraet partners or construction partners to help us do that and so it's really about having that relationship with the community and having that relationship with your vendors and your contractors and the city. So, that -- you know, when we started, it's like it can't be done but, yes, it can, so the things we're doing here and accelerate thing program, finishing it up and getting ready for the defp, we can do it,

277this policy is an example of us trying to become more efficient and to speak in plain language to make sure that everybody understands what we're doing, so with MS. Sonia and the team and just making decisions -- making good decisions quickly. I want to note though that broward county in its 110 history have never built two schools in two and a half years so it's about thinking about new concepts, like swing sites, just for one year so we can completely take over the site and build an entire site or build a new wing to the school and things like that, so you guys are the experts, I look forward to hearing those discussions. If we can build a school in that timeframe, that would be bingeing news. . part of the reason you want to

278take them off the site is so that you done have a construction zone while kids are on the site but more importantly, we're building these schools for 50 years so orientation in palm beach was very important because in many of the communities, access and -- access to the school was somewhat limited so the orientation of the school kind of helped relieve some of that traffic and so it absent easy, we didn't take away from the programs of the school. In other words, by putting them at another location swing site, we didn't do things like putting portables on tennis courts and creating that kind of dynamic. So, this is where it gets really fun, so I thank you for asking that question. thank you for doing it, thanks, chair. thank you, anybody else have questions? So,

279can we have consensus on DR. Zeman's suggestion of changes? Is everybody okay with -- so, it's on the paper that they gave so, DR. Zeman, did you want to give a quick summary of what your -- yes, I already filed it away, so I apologize for the delay. The first would be from up to 25 thousand dollars based on the recommendation of the director of construction only. The second would be 25-100 thousand based on the recommendation of go fo and it's fine to have corp. Staff it for corfo, the same language in one ought to be replicate ined two, if you recommend MS. Paul up to the 100 thousand, they o wo do it and in all three cases, they would have this weekly reporting requirement. The only change on 3 would be from 5

280to 10 percent. So, that changes in the shorts there would be able to happen up to 10% of the total value, so those would be the ways that those would read. And I'm sorry, on the left hand side, there is -- I took it out of the right side, the district's program management organization would not be involved in providing recommendations, they could the to the staffing if they wanted to, the recommendation would come from the director of construction to the superintendent. Corp. Would do the review, sure. ashley? [Inaudible]. That makes sense. Is there still -- do you still want to see the maximum of thousand dollars, so if you look at page 6 of the presentation, it kind of shows that once you get a larger project, that 500 thousand represents about 3% or less

281of the total construction contract -- it would be 10% just straight 10% again, we're building in coral glades the auditorium, right. I think it's like 34 million dollars now, 10% of that is 3.4 million dollars, just in terms of construction, the 10% is more relevant than half a million. A half a million on that project would be 1.5%, you change 1.5 because site conditions are different, right, no, I think the 10 per is more germane regardless of the site. thank you. okay. So, everybody okay with dr. zeman's suggestions? [Inaudible]. okay, MRS. Alhadeff? no. okay. She's not. Everybody, you're okay, DR. Holness? You're a no. DR. Holness? yes. you're a yes, I'm a yes, yes, yes, yes, okay, so we're mostly yes's, so we will -- the suggestion is to move ahead with the suggestions --

282or the direction is to move ahead with suggestions that DR. Zeman proposed. Alright. Thank you so much. Okay, the last item for today is the budget workshop, so I'm going turn it over to staff for a presentation. I think we might need a minute or so, so we'll take a quick recess so that they can get everything prepared. (Meeting in recess). and welcome back to the last item of the school board workshop. DR. Hepburn? yes, I have MS. [Inaudible] And her team, they will go through this presentation since it's our first budget workshop and they'll take questions after the presentation's over. good afternoon, board chair, superintendent, constituents, I'm going to do a brief presentation on the budget. Knowing that we didn't get the housing incentive stuff information that shows our allocation from them websinger ear

283going to be doing a presentation without that data, the next time you see us, we'll have what the house proposed and senate and I might have a one on one with you to show you the change and the ill -- impact. As usual, I'm going to start with the budget, you guys have seen this before, other constituents MAY not have seen the overall budget, the charter school pass through is 2.3 billion dollars, our current beginning fund balance at that time was 199 million. And what was making up that fund balance, 4% is our assigned fund balance, if you look on the right hand side in the unassigned fund balance is at 3%. I know this is detailed report but I want to make sure that everybody understands, always start with the adopted fund balance, on

284the report, it's always, and also our revision if any for FEBRUARY is the month we are currently reporting on, and you could see there in column c is our budget, if we make any changes to the FEBRUARY or any amendments, you will see it in column c. There hasn't been no revision to the budget, we got the state calculation late and those you will see in our next budget calculations, you see column d which is the year to date actual year to date expenditures tof year, we have received 1.6 billion dollars of our revenue and 1. Of our expenditures but we have an overall financial position surplus is 79.1 million. Add that to our beginning fund balance, our financial position as of end of FEBRUARY 28 is 278.2 million. In column e is showing you

285what's left to be collected is 675 and our expenditures is 754 million. So, I always do a fund balance analysis to see where we are for that month. As you could see, for the month end FEBRUARY 28, we have a beginning fund balance of 199, we always put that back in. Our revenue over expenditures, we have a surplus of 79.1 giving us a teb ending fund balance of 278.2 million. This slide is to show you the difference between the month to date which is FEBRUARY 28, 2025 and we just went through that on the previous slide, and what my projection -- because I always have to be looking at to project the fund balance, when you don't see any change in amendment, the amendments impacts the ending fund balance that is proposed in our adopted

286budget, we haven't had any outstanding amendments currently, so to date, our fund balance remains in tact and you will see the breakdown of our fund balance, it matches the same of when we adopted the budget. Also we have other government funds, we have the general fund , special revenue full service and grantees, debt service and capital project funds, internal service funds is not included on here but we have been discussing that. And as you can see, our fund balance for general fund to date is 278.2 million. Special revenue, full service and our grants fund is 43.5 million. Our debt service is at 70.5 million, our capital project fund is 750.8 million. Our total fund ball listens to date aes of FEBRUARY 28 is 1 billion 143 million. Also we also give cash flow, so you

287can know how much cash we currently have in the bank, as you can see, the part between JULY 24 and february 25 is actual. And we -- beginning of JULY 2024, we went out for a tan where we borrowed 270 million websinger paid that money back in JANUARY of 275 million, that's the principal and interest because that's the short term loan for cash flow purposes because we don't -- our revenue is not straight allocated, just our state allocation, our property taxes come in around NOVEMBER and DECEMBER and that's when we get a big assertion of money of our revenue and then we pay back our tan. MARCH 25th and JUNE 25th, hating those months, always project out to see where we're going to end up in the fiscal year, those are our projections. This givers

288gives you another way to look at the cash flow, the original is the blue line, you can see is our original projection when we do our cash flow, the orange is the actual when it came out for that month and then over to the right is in green is our projection to end out the fiscal year. So, this is how our finances come in, the state is in red, we get state allocation every month and it is our revenue coming in. The capital transfer, we transfer based on expenditures we have in the general fund, we do that as expenditures, we spend, we rans fer to cover those expenditures. The black line is our local, you can see as I explained before, we started getting our property taxes in NOVEMBER and DECEMBER, we have a big

289spike in revenue, then they start coming down because it starts tailoring down, because of the big spike we get. Every year it will be the same process, NOVEMBER, DECEMBER and JANUARY, we will have a spike and then go back down. So, I always try to project to the end of the fiscal year, so as you can see, I'm looking at salaries and benefits because I did a lot of things that ve not I have counicated toto e board but t ybe not t toto the blicic, so I do analysis what we built, the adopted budget and our salary and benefits, our total allocation on our adopted budget is 1.9 billion dollars. Actual filled position as of to date was 1 billion 580 million, so they gave us a balance of 321 million. We have supplements

290and referendum we also pay out, we paid 172.5 million base on our filled positions. Also we got other wages like terminal pay, supplements, other things we pay out for the fiscal year and overtime pay. That's 118.1 million, so I have -- I'm having a potential surplus, a vacancy savings throughout the whole fiscal year of 30.6 million. So, I'm starting with that point, that 30 million, then we did an additional capital transfer of 30, I only put 20 million in here because I'm being conservative. Our sub total is 50 million. We did the recurring salaries and negotiation around 46 million, we're going to have to subtract that out, that gives me 4 million surplus. Then we did an eser3 movement, we moved those to those grantees, that freed up that 40.8, so our sub total is

29148.8 million, our fefp, you will see are f a reduction of that of 1.2 million, so I'm projecting to increase the fund balance ending this fiscal year around 47.5 million, okay. So, what you see, the next slide is the impact of all that, so I'm going to go slowly, I start with adopted budget, now you see the 7.2 million in the second column, that is negative, that's also a reduction or a state allocation. The state in our third count reduce ted whole system by 7.2. As you notice under there, 20 million is a transfer from capital for eligible expenditures, 6 million is charter school impact, so that 1.2 is the difference between the 7 and the 6 million, that's our impact. So, that -- the charter school has v to take it, that's why I

292have it in the charter school line, it's showing it's a reduction to our payments out to them. If you notice, our revenue was 2.3, 356 million, 2 billion, 356 million, we had a total -- a positive impact a revenue inmrux of 18.7 million dollars which gives our projected ending revenue of 2 billion 375 million. Now also we did something to expenditures because we got to impact the expenditure side of the house, now I want to pay close attention to 28 million that is showing expenditures, it's showing the opposite because it's reducing our expenditures overall but I want to go to the box below that to show you the impact because we have -- what that's 28.8 million, what makes that up. We have vacancy savings, remember I showed you the slide of 30 million, we

293had, excess movement of 43.8 and then recurring salary from negotiation this fiscal year, gives us a reduction of 28.8 million. That impacts this fund balance. That 6 million you see because charter school is a pass through, we do a pay-out through our purchases service of them, that offsets that 6 million you see at the top. So, overall our expenditure and is purchase service has decreased also, so our expenditures when we adopt the budget is 2 billion 356 million, it went up. It decreased our overall expenditures to 2 billion 328 million which gives us an overall surplus that I showed you before in the previous slide of 47.5 million. Now beginning fund balance is 199 million plus the 47.5 million, we're projecting to end this fiscal year at 246.6 million which is a total fund balance

294of 10.4%, but the part we want to look at is in the box because the state -- we report, we have to live within the 3%, the assigned portion of that would be 34.4 million, the unassigned will be 108.1 million, our total fund balance required by the state would be 6%, that's within your policy because you adopt a policy so you want to at least be at 5%. If we end up the fiscal year, we want to make sure we don't overspend in other capacities, so this will be realized if we stay the course. So, that closed out this fiscal year. If you have any questions, you could ask me after the presentation but I wanted to talk about what's going on for next fiscal year. And what's been going on historically at broward because

295we're all here, we're concerned about broward, right, but when I present, I need to look at historically what's been going on with broward, so I look at the enrollment trends, over the years, the enrollment has been reduced from 2015-16 to -- we have a reduction coming for this fiscal year, see in that little box, the state estimate we're going to lose 8816 students this fiscal year coming up, right. So, that's our overall reduction from 2015-16 to 25-26, right, of 37 thousand 943 fte students. Okay, we're going to take that in, right. Now I have to look at staffing because we have a staffing model. I have to find out have we been reducing our staff along with our enrollment reduction of kids and I did a historical snap shop, I went back to 15-16, to

296up to date, 25-26, it shows based on our staffing historical enrollment, we had 2042 reduction of staff based on those kids being reduced out of the system. Okay. This slide shows the same thing as showing the staffing, the next slide, and then it's showing the enrollment from student decrease. I want to hop in right here, MS. Johnson, just to -- because moving forward, there's some tough decisions that have to be made. Right now the team and I are working on an org chart, there will be some small reductions and then for the upcoming school year, we'll be looking at decision making and looking at current staffing allocation models within the budget and there's going to be a pain point for the district. If you can pop the slide back up, I know you want to

297show me -- yeah. If if you could pop the slide back up, this is out of whack. Our enrollment has steadily declined but our employee base has pretty much stayed the same and we -- our school district as everybody knows is funded by the null of kids that a -- number of kids that attend our school sos we have to make tough decisions as we move forward. We have a hiring freeze for central office right now which we've been trying to hold tight for, position that is reessential for the op races of oufr district. We're going to shift staffing allocations to make sure they make sense, for instance, let's say assistant principals, middle school, every middle school gets three assistant principals, you have middle schools that have 3 thousand kids, you have some middle schools

298that have 3 thousand and they have three, so those do not make sense. It's an abrupt shift for the district. We're going to have discussions with our leadership teams as we create a runway for significant change for not this upcoming school year but the following because it's about messaging and making sure everybody understands the decisions ta need to -- that need to be made but we're utilizing attrition to help with some of this, we're going to have to make a lot of shifts to right size ourselves and along with redefining transportation choice zones, consolidation of schools, all these things that are combined and work collaboratively can get us in the right space to make sure our district is successful as it can be moving forward, so I wanted the board -- there MAY be sum

299grumbling over the summer because there MAY be small incremental shifts, but change is hard for a lot of people and we have to become more efficient and effective at the same time and make sure our district is sustainable and successful in the future, I wanted to bluing that in there while you're going through this. We always have to choose forecast of what's going on in the district, this is the closest ones that shows and portrays the state said overall we're going lose -- our student countess are going drop to 182 thousand 729 students. The impact of that, let's go to the next slide, we're going the lose over 8813 kids, that's the impact, traditional kids from broward. So, charter school is normalizing, they're staying the same but we're losing students and that impact of that

300loss of students equates to around 78.6 million dollars. So, we're going to have to start making cuts. This does not take into account what the state or the senate, whatever comes out of the state for everybody's budget, if we're going to have an increase per pupil, that will cut down some of those costs but we have the state mandated us to do, we have our frs rate, we have health care, those costs are not imbedded in our fefp but that cost is going up, is that amount going to be enough to maintain our district, we're losing 79 so we're going to have to see and we'll have research based on the house and the senate version, what that looks like now, we don't know what proposal is going to come through. As soon as we

301update that, you will get communication from the superintendent and our legislative representative which is john and that's it. Do we have any questions? We'll entertain questions. before we have questions, it is a lot of doom and gloom, we can start figuring out what strategies we're going to implement moving forward but like MS. Johnson said, there's a lot of other cost that is are not capture ined the fpfp that's going up that increases in the budget will automatically be wiped out with increases in frs, increases in health care costs and I see MR. Sullivanser your light is on if you want to add. thank you so superintendent and our cfo, as MS. Johnson said, legislature is meeting now, the session ends the first friday of MAY so it's coming fast and furious, they'll enter budget conference

302with their two proposals as it relates to the budget, in the house's version wesinger get 23% budget per student, the senate is higher, if you factor in the frs increase rate, basically you're start witching ao deficit and that's not contending the projected loss of students and then 5101 which the board is very familiar with, that would cut our x e acceleration funding by 50%, we're still working with our legislators, I don't believe it's going the pass in its current form of 50% but I do ant pate a reduction. I believe the start time bill will pass, that will give the board the ability to start time, it will save us millions of dollars in the process, that's basically the update as it relates to budget tenses for tallahassee. thank you. okay, MRS. Hall deaf? thank

303you to MS. Johnson and your team for this thorough and transparent presentation, my first question is in regards to the sr funds -- esser funds and mental health money. the esser dollars are spent to date but in fiscal year, we're still spending our mental health dollars. . Inger would you be able to send the board much money that is? yes, and in your report, you see the esser amount, the mental health dollars, we'll send you an update report. okay, perfect. The 30 million dollars in vacancy, what is that money equal to how many people? I don't know how to calculate it. [Inaudible]. Around 390. thank you. What's the percentage expected in attrition or the number of people expected with attrition? we're still working on those numbers because we're allocating based on enrollment so we're going

304to be working with the school sites and based on what we see and they see because they're going the take a hit, we don't know where those are, where our vacancies are, we're not sure. we always hover around the 2% vacancy rate which is about 250 to 300 positions, so, that number kind of matches up. okay. And then my last question/comment is a lot of times -- well, in my district, a lot of times the schools might be earmarked for x amount of students but in reality, they end up getting more students but then their resources are with the level -- the lower number of students. If that happens, do they get the resources that they need? so, we do 10 or 11 day count which reflects the number of students at that certain window.

305Then the budget team starts making their shifts along with hr, making share shifts because you have schools that have gained during the summer up to that 10 day count, you have schools that have lost, they were projected to be let's say 2 thousand kids and only 1800 showed up, so we put a freeze on them, we start shifting teachers based on certification to those schools so they can fill their vacancies based on the extra null of school that is came and whatever resources they need to have at that time, but we do do that after the 10 or 11 day count. can you clarify what that means? it's after school starts, yes, because we have to ensure the kids show up because we would project a school based on historical data and some schools, all

306those students projected don't show up and other schools, more students show up, so we'll put a freeze to make chose shift tos make sure all schools are situated with all the teachers they need and the resources they need. yes, I think it's a challenging juggle. it is. you might lose a teacher who then you're going to need but now you're not knowing until up to 10 or 11 days after the school year, it's difficult. it's a difficult balance, yes. thank you. MRS. Rupert? thank you. And I appreciate the thoroughness of the powerpoint we just did. I appreciate that a lot. And it is very trancesparent, so I also appreciate that. Speaking on trance [Pa-eurpbs/] Sparency, I want to thank the superintendent for being very transparent about one of our upcoming org chart positions that's going

307to be happening, if you could maybe mention a little bit about the warehouse staff movement and how positive that's going. yes, so with fentanyl? yes. I'll have MS. Paul talk about how that will save money for the district overall without us purchasing and housing inventory that we MAY not need right then and there. Also -- go ahead, MS. Paul. can I interrupt for one second, I meant the positiveness of the employees in that department, how they're going to -- I don't want them to be stressed out. yes, so the employees of the warehouse will be utilized in ppl and the need for them over therefinger we can accelerate more maintenance purposes and light project ins the district. I know they've been worried, everybody in that area is going to be employed, we need them in

308ppl so we can accelerate our work with that team of folk sos we can continue to do the maintenance. and the next term is an employment term? yes. did she want the say anything? if you want to -- we had MS. Andreu with procurement as well as MR. Dorsett speak to the employees last -- I believe it was last friday and it was a very positive experience, so we'll keep track and see if there are any hiccups in ers of how they're feeling. We don't want them to be afraid of change but this is definitely a great way to keep us focused on the main activities of supporting our schools. okay, thank you so much. That's it, thanks. okay, thank you. Next is board member bulman? I'm sorry, DR. Zeman? thank you so much, chair.

309I hope we swim around these numbers a little bit. This is really a wonderful presentation and as DR. Hepburn pointed out, not a whole lot of good news. We will end the year with a good fund balance of 6%, we only paid 5 million dollars in interest this year which is terrific because our team is so incredibly thoughtful about investing and time hating even though we borrow north of 200 million dollars, paying 5 million dollars interest, through the pacing of dollars is impressive. I'm disappointed about this though, this slide I felt we should all fall out of our chair and I didn't see any chairs flipping around. You cannot run an organization like this. We declined, I'm going to look at the numbers real quick here, MS. Johnson, I think we're down roughly 38 thousand

310students over this period over the last ten years. And we've grown employees by 324 over the same ten years. And the reason we were able to do that is we got a whole bunch of esser and federal ant money thatat lowed us to keep our r staftogeer. The cicisions 've e dede about repurposing, the decisions we made about overhead supported versus supporting and things like that have led us to kind of a point of no return. And I know that we'll tackle this and run after it. We've got a lot of good options but we don't have the same kind of don't fill vacant jobs, don't give people raises, we are dramatically overstaffed for the amount of students we have. We have to come up with some reasonable ratio between students and staff members and

311we're going to have to pull out our budget proposals on how to deal with this, delayer the staff, closing schools, you can say repurposing all you want, I'm over it. I know we have way too many schools for the number of students we have and each of those schools comes with a whole bunch of people so there's a way to responsibly reduce staff over time if we are responsible about the number of schools that we continue to maintain but this is a huge problem because we have for the past three years been working on a model and a strategy where we pay educators very year and sometimes in good ways because of referendum money that kicked in two years ago, but that ref run dumb -- referendum and esser funds, they're done. The state allocation

312per student increase is going to be between 33 and 65 dollars? no, I'm sorry, it's 23. you said it right and I was looking at different number, I was looking at 33 million, between 23 and 65 million dollars, that is a funding decrease for the things we have to buy from fuel to electricity to retirement programs to health care which right now is in a 7 million dollar deficit again. No matter how much money we put into the health care account, we always run a deficit, we're running a 7 million dollar current year deficit many the claims line, I think if I looked at that correctly. Ikz I -- I guess I would like to know, MS. Johnson, if I followed proportional reductions which is what businesses have to do and I lost 38 of

313220 thousand students, how many staff positions would I have come down? So, 38 over 221 thousand and then the basis for staffing positions is just say 26 thousand 500. around 17%, but you want to know the -- what is 17% of 26 thousand 500. I'm sorry to make you do calculations but this is really important. 4.5. 4500. So, to keep our cost structure the same, we would have had to come down 4500 positions.We went up 400. Why is this important? Because there are people in the state of florida that think we should close. And they're writing about it and once they start writing about, legislators start listening to them about it, it's a totally legitimate thing. What argument did they have, broward county mismanages so bad they should have gone down and they grew by

314400. This is like amtrak last year, they lost 1.4 billion dollars and gave their top 50 exec tiers a 200 thousand dollar bonus at the end of the year. The public will not tolerate that. I don't think the public should tolerate, government doesn't know how to deliver. The people will pay until we figure this out will be our educators who will have no raise or will have a negative raise, we'll have to take money back. And that's not right, we're not going to sustain teachers in that model but this is a house on fire kind of moment and there are plenty of people who think we should close and the state could come and take over. I'm not being hyper boll I can, -- hyperbolic, we have to get on this, we have -- today

315is the 8th of APRIL, we have the balance of APRIL, it is APRIL, right, I'm sorry, I've been up, MAY and JUNE, so 80 days or so to figure out what our provisional budget looks like, the proportionate budget projected would have us lose 4500 positions in broward county schools. I would think if we want the break even, it's definitely around 3 thousand students, I mean, staff, and we want to just break even, but 4500 over the years, yes. But I have to look at based on what the state is proposing because I'm looking at the state and senate, the proposal that we're going to have, I'm looking more at those numberers and it will give me more like 3000 students. I think we have to rethink our strategy because it's to pay educators algt bit

316bet and her be tight on overhead, we cut clerical and admin positions by 50%, we're trying to hold the line on health care, we're thinking hard on programs that come up on the operating side so we're trying to be disciplined so we can pay educators better every year. And now that strategy is no longer affordable. We can't just like do some good things in order to find some money to pay our educators. The baseline growth for our educators has got to be zero, do you agree to that, the baseline? correct. if you lose money in your budget, you have to make cuts just to get back to zero, cuts to get to zero, dramatic changes if we want to give pay raises to educators this year I think is the walk away. that's correct. okay.

317I just want to put that in plain english because the public needs the know what their legislators are doing right now, $23 per student increase is a reduction in the money we have to teach your children. And it's not a small one. And it's going to force us to do some things that we've -- we didn't want to do or considered in the past. But we also only have 80 days left. Last year our last workshop, chair, first budget workshop last year? JANUARY. It's APRIL 8. This is kind of -- we got bad news in big number and is we have 80 day tos pull it together. I'm looking forward to the next workshop and my suggestion, chair, every workshop we have from now until the end of JUNE, I hope we're considering ways in

318which we can balance the staff reduction that we have to do, closing of schools, whatever we have to put into the budget because I still am going to fight like hell to dwet educators paid better next year but that means the reductions are going -- there are going to be things that we love and wouldn't want to give up and a number of schools with MAY not want to really do it but if we can send thing tos a school shall have a higher academic proficiency and spend our 750 million dollars in capital that omar has not been telling anybody about, we've been yell about that for years but we have this big backlog of work to get done that we're obligated by ckt contract and we're slow on getting it done, so I hope,

319chair, we can really get after this over the next 80 days because I don't think the public and broward county has any idea of the reductions that they might see at the end of this year and I'm happy to participate in them because I can't tolerate going a whole year without paying teachers more and other educators as well, so as one school board member, I'm willing to make some hard decisions to make our educators continue to be able to almost afford to live here because they still can't afford to live here. We have to figure out a way to keep the best educator wes have and we have some amazing educator that is have done amazing work and I don't want the a district and the growth in our academic scores to be undone because

320we wouldn't make hard decisions about the money which is I think what we have to do. that is correct. alright, thank you. thank you, DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair, so, my comments that I wanted to make, they're very similar to DR. Zeman because I share the same concern regarding slide 14 and looking at the staffing level over a ten year period as opposed to the downward trend in enrollment since and I know that, MS. Johnson, I appreciate your presentation and I know that you provided information here of 2042 in terms of staffing reduction since fiscal year 2020, I believe, but when we look at it from a ten year since your slide here has a ten year window, it's an increase in staffing from 2015 as DR. Zeman mentioned to current, right. So, I

321guess I have a different kind of question in this, in 2015, we had 221 thousand student and is we've increased staffing of approximately 300 plus staffing, so DR. Hepburn, is there -- I mean, I know that it would make sense for the proportional reduction in staffing to match that with the reduction with the enrollment of students but is there any reason why over a ten year period you would suppose that we increase staffing even though student volume is -- or student enrollment is declining over that period of time. For example, I know that there might be one example would be there might be emerging issues of mental health that continues to increase among student and -- students and we have to add more mental health professionals or there might be more program tos the district

322that would require additional staff even though student population is declining, so can you comment on what would attribute to the decline in student population yet the increase in staffing levels? yes, so I can speak to more around the covid era when the federal government gave out esser fubds, just like many other school districts, I think we sustained the number of employees with that money and probably hired additional employees, and as we probably didn't forecast out to say, hey, we need to start looking at attrition, right, really stop hiring and lose employees slowly which would give us probably back to proportional right size based on decline of student population and that didn't happen. So, we also have positions on there from the referendum, security personnel, so take out the 500 or so security personnel that are

323sustained by the referendum, but nonetheless after -- during covid, once we got out of covid, that's the time to say, alright, we're going to stop hiring and have a freeze and lose positions by attrition and up to probably this date, we'll probably be done 1500 or so positions because we always have a 2% vacancy rate. We're always as you will see at the next board meeting, we always have 700 or so people who are resigning or retiring, right, on our -- what is that, h1? I can't remember the name, yeah, h1, and instead of always replacing that, if we would say, hey, let's freeze, let's replace a wartier of those -- a quarter of those individuals, we would be where we want to be. For most districts, the esser funds were the base of that.

324If you didn't have that additional money, you would have to make those tough decisions then and you would only replace a quarter to 50% of the employees you would lose from rez [-eug/] Signation and from retimer there's going to be some strategies we'll implement websinger have to on board our principles to see how we change strategies, some of it is as simple of just changing our schedule throughout the day f you look at our high schools, we have an 8 period day, a and b block, teachers are only teaching five out of 8 periods, that's unusual for many school districts. Orange district is 6 out of 7, for palm beach televising's 6 out of 7, you get more sections out of a teacher, therefore you need less teachers, right now we need more teachers than

325other school districts because they're teaching 5 out of 8 speeder, if we want them to teach an additional period websinger ear paying them an extra period supplement and now they're teaching 6 out of the 8 which still opportunity compare to other school districts so there's strategies we're going to be implementing but we have to have substitution widths all the stakeholders internally so they understand the situation we're in and how we have to change to maximize the funding we do receive that goes to staffing allocations, that MAY go to changing how we do match the schedules and school schedules during the day so there's lot of things we'll have to update and do differently to right size ourselves financially, to meet our financial needs. so, you mentioned -- and I appreciate that, DR. Hepburn. You mentioned

326an example of security staffing that MAY not necessarily have anything -- or doesn't correlate with student reduction, right. correct, because the referendum was specific for security and mental health and certain service sos the taxpayer says, yes, I'll vote to that to pay for these additional things. so, are there any other situations you can think of that the staffing besides the security, that staffing would increase regardless of student reduction? probably mental health service providers that were paid for out of the referendum. If if you take out that, we're probably down, you can say probably about 6, 7 hundred, take out 6, 7 hundred people, proportionately, we're still over. in your best estimate, how much are we overstaffed)Inger probably about 2 thousand plus people. okay. Alright, thank you. thank you. MRS. Leonardi? thank you. Some of my

327questions were already answered. i was going to ask about what the staffing reduction should have looked like, I was going to ask about -- so, how much we are overstaffed, but I'm curious -- I guess I have a few big questions. Are we -- how are we going to approach this? Are we going to have a series of workshops? I think that the way we talk about this has to be very sensitive and precise, like I don't -- I fear that in this conversation because of some comments that have been made, people are going to go out and say, like, broward schools is laying off 2 thousand people which is not what I'm hearing from you. no. but ipg -- I think people can take sound bytes and run with those and based from some

328of the comments from some of my colleagues, so I want to know how are we going about having these conversations. How do you plan on looking at how to address the overstaffing? yes, great question, so first strategy is with our central office staff, we'll put a freeze on central office staff, there's no hiring going on so we can absorb vacancies, but the second phase is looking at our budget, not so much about people but things. Reducing the things, the services and the goods that we're buying or not renewing them because they MAY not have the roi or the impact that we intend and we need to get out of routine of buying thing that is are duplicating -- we have plenty of people that can do the things that we're purchasing goods for. And then

329so -- also depending on attrition as we move forward, cashing in our vacancies and things like that. At the beginning of the school year, but the summer we'll be working with principals and really having them internalize and understand the situation that we're in and start building a road map of how we tackle this throughout the year where we won't be filling vacancies, where we will have to look at how we're building our schedules, where we will have to make a decision about how many periods during the day and how does that look and working with btu because it's also a btu issue as well. There's a lot of moving parts happening during the summer and during the fall so we can really create a runway to right size ourselves by the end of the next

330school year or this upcoming school year, so we're not abruptly laying off 2 thousand people, that's definitely not the case, so I want the public or the media to use -- we are not laying off 2 thousand people, just public and media, so we're doing some things internally just to make sure we're in a good financial situation moving forward into the next school year and then we're working with our school leaders and our stakeholders the move forward in a better situation because there are some decisions that have to be made and we're going to empower people who are ultimately impacted by those decisions to be at the table to help us move forward so we can have a high level of ownership throughout the system, not just with cabinet. It doesn't work like that because

331you guys have been getting -- you're going the get poen calls but you will get tons of phone call ifs we do it that way. It's not an APRIL to JULY situation, it's an APRIL to APRIL strategy. got it. So, what I would be interested in seeing and I don't know if that can be provided in a follow-up or if this needs to be another -- like a workshop setting, but I would be interested in seeing the numbers around where the overstaffing is because I think a lot of people have this understanding that it MAY not be in teachers or if this is goik to impact our education professionals, what that's going to do to our student teacher ratio, the different tactics you were talk about with central office staff, not looking at renewing things

332but using our staff to do those services, looking at attrition, I would really like to see the numbers -- estimated numbers attached with those things so we can get a sense of -- or a better understanding of what the picture is here. I do appreciate the idea of teachers who want to -- to have more periods because this is something I reached out to you from the beginning of the year, I was hear framing some teachers they wanted the extra period, I was one of them, would depended on the extra period, I think that's a great strategy. I think for me, it would be very important as we enter the period in which the org chart is going to be voted on, I don't think I could support adding to the org chart and then

333laying teach and he iser people who work in our schools off. That's a red line for me. it's a red line for usus too,o, yes.S. D I I just nteded to mment bebecause I thinki that for me it's important to temper some of the comments that were made earlier. And you've kind of spoken to this. we have -- we are overstaffed but there were positions that were added for a variety of reasons that were out of our control, covid and the federal money we got allowed us to hire more people to address the specific learning needs of our students. We have many more security personnel in our schools rightfully so. We have more mental health professionals, still not enough, so while some of those additions -- those additions I think are necessary and continue to

334be necessary, so again, while we MAY be overstaffed in some ways, there are good reasons for why there were more people hired throughout the last ten years. I don't disagree with that. Security, mental health personnel and then the voters supported that through the referendum, that's going to be added and sustained so we can provide a follow-up. It won't be right away because we're thinking through this and my team and I, we have our marching orders about how we're going to tackle the immediate concern and how we're going the create our runway for the school strict and leadership when we go through the summer, fall and early spring. thank you, having that accurate information, these were necessary additions that were made, this is what we need to look at to reduce on, this is how we're

335going to do it, through this percentage, through attrition, this percentage through whatever, because it MAY be easy to say we need to remove or lay off thousands of people but these are people's livelihoods as you well know and I would argue that the vast majority have a direct impact on students in one way or another. So, I think the way we talk about this has to be very thoughtful because it is a very complicated situation. agreed, agreed. thank you. okay, thank you. I've run out of people on the list, right, no one else? I have a couple of questions myself and we will be done for today. So, one of my questions was similar to MRS. Leonardi's, and it was about staff. So, it would be great if we could have a follow-up on where

336those -- the position -- there wr there's a higher number of people, like, is that people that are directly impacting students, so teachers, teachers assistants, paraprofessionals or is that clerical, is it staff and central office, maybe people in budgeting, not that they don't impact students in some way but not as directly, so it would be really interesting to see what those numbers look like just in general so that we can get a better vision of where the most number of staff is. It would be interesting to see administrative versus school based because, you know, we know school based has a direct impact on students and, again, not saying everybody doesn't have some impact but we want to make sure we're protecting the direct impact. before I MAY, before I lose my thought, for instance, one

337impact with overstaffing has to do with conversations with btu because we -- as a district, we have chosen a strategy of having 8 periods and teachers are teaching instructionally five of those periods and then the study hall which is not an instructional period is a period and then they have two planning periods. In most school districts, you would have six instructional periods and whatever else the rest is, so you're getting an additional section to teach, right, so we can provide the follow-up in the same vain that follow-up is going to say these are things that have to be discussed. that's fine, I just would like to know the numbers where we are now so that when we have a discussion, we know before we start, are most of the -- I think it would be

338a different discussion if most of them are in the school based positions or if most of the numbers that we have are more administrative, so that I really just want us to be better prepared as we move forward in the discussion because it will make it look different. right. my other question which seems kind of out there but the budget isn't really detailed here, it's more high level, so where are we in the payment to the charter schools, where would we see that in this budget and when is our last payment? I think we have two more payments, right? the charter school payments are in purchase of service, right, in the budget, in the object toad code, we pay that in JULY, that payment went out in JULY of each year. we've only done one

339so far? correct, we have two more left. thank you. And the last question I have is about the ida money, so it was a question that came to us in an e-mail sp we tend to have the discussion at the end of every year because there's a large amount of roll-over money which there should not be, so it could be a follow-up if you don't know the answer but my question is how much of the ida money have we spent so far and are we projecting a roll-over, if so, how much? well, that's part of my strategy to look at those budgets and move eligible expenditures to those budgets if they have not spent, carry over is not a given, we're not trying to have carry over in those capacities because we want to spend

340today's money on today's kids, so is that's a policy I live by and we just don't have carry over money sitting by that we want to roll over every year, that means we're not using our budget to the ultimate and I'm trying to utilize all our dollars that we receive, things combining through. that's a great answer. and I have to thank my staff, jeff, whit thee, shane, my staff upstairs too, I do require a lot of work out of them and they're doing a lot to produce these documents that I need to present here. I just wanted to thank them. we appreciate it, we did have a roll-over and it was quite embarrassing to have that roll-over and that's kind of why I asked the question. So, if you could just give us a follow-up

341on where we stand with that now so that we know when we come to JULY or I guess JUNE 30, that that's as close to zero as possible because we're giving the students the services that they're supposed to be getting out of that, and I'll just end with a statement DR. Zeman made earl ye, I think we all agree, we want to continue each year to give our staff, all of our staff raises, right. We know that we have -- we like to at least keep up with inflation and so I hope as the budget comes forward and we start looking at what the bumgt's going to look like next year that that's kept in mind as we move forward. It's great to see we'll have a 6% balance in fund balance but we only

342by policy said 5, the state only requires 3, I know that we want to save for a rainy day but I think our employees will tell you it's pouring, so if we could take the additional that's in the fund balance and make sure we're putting that into a place where we can ensure we're giving our employees the highest salary increase that we can, it's not a new conversation, you know, we have it every time we talk, I just wanted to say that out loud. I think we all agree that we want to be fiscally responsible but not in such a way that it makes us have a big pot of money and not our employees have what they need to be able to survive in broward county, so thank you so much for that. Thank

343you for the presentation. And for all the hard work all of your stf does, we appreciate it so much, so thank you. At this time, do any of my colleagues have anything to bring to the board or student success to share? MS. Thompson? I'll be quick, I wanted to give a shout out to flanigan high school's row guard, they placed fifth in the nation in ohio, in their student performance, our champion and is number one in the state of florida so we're proud of them and ending on a high note. thank you, anybody else? I have a couple. That was one of them, so I'll cross that off my list. First I want to say happy assistant prince a pal week, it's -- we're celebrating this year our -- this week, our assistant principals, so

344thank you for your dedication and your commitment to our students. Also a shout out to coral springs high school, they celebrated their 50th anniversary birthday, whatever you want to call it, it's really breasting, they opened their time capsule and when they were reading a letter, one of the students left in the names of the musical groups that were at that time, it had the students in the audience cracking up, so -- it's funny because I remember most of them. And then park side elementary celebrated their 25th anniversary and finally con grafp laix tos all the scholar athlete that is were celebrated and awarded scholarships last night at the banquet, a shout out, the south scholar athlete banquet is this coming monday, so the 14th, and I know that they really appreciate seeing board members there

345and if you can join us, I think that it would be really greatly appreciated, thank you so much. Anybody else? Alright. The scheduled order of business for this school board workshop of the school board of broward county, florida, has been completed, seeing no obligation, I now adjourn the meeting and remember next week, we have our APRIL regular school board meeting. Thank you so much. Have a great day.