001school board meeting. welcome to today the's regular school board meeting. We are happy to have jou join us, we're thankful for your tile and dedication to our district. This regular meet of the broward county school board is called to order. This is to create a safe and productive environment for all participants. Be reminded the exit tooters are clearly marked for emergency exiting. While in the board room, refrain from obstructing the exit doors. All attendees must occupy a seat with the exception of media. Once it has reached its capacity, you will be designate today an overflow area. Upon activation of the fire alarm, continue to exit the building and remain outside until the authority that has jurisdiction has deemed the building safe to return. Thank you for your cooperation. I will now introduce sam piper elementary
002to lead us in the pledge of allegiance to the flag. please stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge 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. please be seated. I believe in myself and the ability to do my best at all times. I will listen, I will see, I will speak, I will feel, I will think, I will reason, I will read and I will write. I will do all these things with one purpose in mind, to do my best and not to waste this day, for this day will come one more. thank you. the colors are presented today by south broward high school jaoup yor rotc, the color guard is under the
003command of sergeant major montgomery, it is represented by sam piper elementary under the principal of principal le chance. Thank you, you MAY be seated. Board member rupert has requested a moment of silence and she isn't here yet, I'm going the read it for her. MRS. Rupert is requesting a moment of silence for gee tyranny jackson a13 year o el student from margate middle school. Here's what his teacher wrote about him, in loving memory of gee tyranny jackson, he was a compassionate young man with a heart of fwoeld, gee tyranny greeted everyone with a warm hug and a signature hand shake that became a cherished ra dishing in our school community. Jianni embodied a spartan, his loving personality left a lasting impression of everyone he met, he was a bright and dedicated student who worked tirelessly
004to make his teachers proud, he showed remarkable resilience advocating for himself, persevering through himself and encouraging his classmate tos to the same. He was a gifted athlete with a passion for basketball, his three point shot were a remarkable sight and his competitive spirit was matched for the joy of the game. He lived each day with enthuse -- enthusiasm and kindness, his preps was a gift to our school and his memory will continue to inspire us. Board member leonardi has also requested a moment of silence, MS. Leonardi? thank you. Let us observe a moment of silence to hop noer the mem ray o f susan cooper who dedicated over 23 year of faithful service to this district. Throughout her career, MS. Cooper worked in various departments, spending the majority of her time and the employee and
005labor relations department. Her dedication, professionalism and kindness left a lasting impact on all who had the privilege of working with her. MAY her legacy of service and compassion continue to inspire us all. Thank you. T superintendent released add revised agenda with certain changes for this meeting and published it on the school district's website. The chair finds pursuant the to section 120.525 florida statutes, good cause xis and revises the agenda, MAY I have a motion sp a second to close the agenda. moved by DR. Zeman -- MADAM Chair, I have an item I would like to add to the agenda. I move the addition to discussing the next steps for misbatista's replacement to the agenda. second. I've added that to the end of the meeting. I would like it to be added as an agenda item.
006second. okay. What if I don't want to accept it? Okay. I'm not going to accept the agenda item as I have already added it as we have it planned already to add it to the agenda at the end of the meeting. So, we are going to add it already to the agenda. okay o, well, I think that -- I understand it's added but my item would also come with backup and information that I believe that would help my colleagues within the discussion. If you have it already prepared, that would be great. thank you. okay, thank you. So, DR. Zeman moved to close the agenda, do I have a second? second. MRS. Leonardi has seconded it. All in favor of cosigning the agenda, say aye. aye. those opposed, say no. no. one opposition. The agenda is
007now closed. MAY the chair have a motion and a second to approve the minutes for the following meetings, SEPTEMBER 3, 2025, special meeting, def.P, SEPTEMBER 9, 2025, special meeting, safr, SEPTEMBER 9, 2025, public hearing, budget, SEPTEMBER 16, 2025, special meeting, expulsions. so moved. second. moved by DR. Zeman seconded by MS. Leonardi. Any discussion on the minutes? All in favor of approving the minutes as listed, say aye. aye. those opposed, say no. The minutes are approved ewe nan nosily. As you prepare to begin our regular school board meet x weinger are reminded our vision is 100% proficiency for all our students, as an a rated school district, our vital task is to asylums taun this achievement. We will continue educating all students to reach their highest potential. Our theme is believer, empower, achieve one broward. Board
008members, before we move to the jep da, I wanted to mention I will be addressing the general counsel's transition plan at the end of today's board meeting. The chief of staff and communications officer polled the board of any swren da item they wish o to address in advance of the meeting. The following consent items have been identified for discussion. H2, h3, b1, b2, b3, o3 and o4. At this time, MAY the chair have a motion and a second to pass the consent items that have not been pulled for discussion which include h1, a1, a-2, a3, a4, f1, j1, o1 and o2. so moved. second. 's been moved by DR. Zeman, seconded by MS. Leonard di. Any registered speakers on the item that have not been pulled for discussion? no, ma'am. Er all in favor of
009approving the consent agenda items that have not been pulled for discussion, say aye. aye. those opposed, say no, motionbacker karis. Do any of my colleagues have any remarks on the approved consent items? I have something for h1. On h1, I just would like to congratulate the retirees, so we have four administrative retirees, 38 instructional retirees and 20 non-instructional, and there are a few that I personally would like to congratulate, ruth masters is retiring, she's worked a long time in transportation, lisa cook is a teacher al hollywood hills high school, paul magna is a teacher at cooper city high school and troy wheeten was an instructional facilitator who worked with driver's ed, I would like to thank them all for their service to their district. Okay. The chair would like to take a moment to recognize
010new staff appointment, we would like to congratulate each of you for your career advancement with broward county public schools. We value you and your families. If we could give the appointees a roupd of -- round of applause. [Applause]. DR. Hepburn, can you please share a few remarks and introduce the new leaders? yes, thank you, MADAM Chair, I want to say welcome to the bcbs team, for those who are new, congratulations and for those who are moving up the ladder, I want to introduce a couple of directors and principal and some acting principals stepping into some roles to assist us, first introduction is john white, director of procurement and warehouse services, mark magli, exec tier director of audits, saemone cla ra, student and fleet services, hooray erer -- hoer hey soabacker osa, mimi johnson, acting principal
011of mera lake elementary school, if you guys want to come up and give a brief intro and so we can hear you speak. Brief. drment hepburn, board members, I'm john wesley white, I'm pleased to be joining you as the new director of procurement, my vision so move the department from a transactional focus to one of a strategic partner to help you achieve your operational goals and objectives. Thank you. [Applause]. good morn, I'm mark magli, I would like to thank the board and DR. Hepburn for accepting me back into this role in the audit department, a department that's got lots of challenge and is working together, I hope to reinforce some of the things the district and the department are trying to accomplish, this is an exciting time. I was here before and I'm coming back
012and there's a reason I'm coming back, this district has so much to offer, has great people and I'm happy to see a lot of familiar faces and I look forward to meet witching the rest of the people I haven't yet. It's a good opportunity for all of us and a good match, so thank you. this one? Hi, my name is si moan powers, DR. Hepburn said be brief, so I started my tenure here as a student clerk when I was 18 years old and I'm a product of broward county, I cannot wait to work collaboratively with all our departments and improve and enhance our transportation services so I look forward to working with all of you, thank you. [Applause]. good morning to the board, DR. Hepburn and the esteemed members of the leadership cabinet, it
013gives me great honor to serve the charles drew elementary in the beautiful city of pompano beach, charles drew is truly a gem in our community with its rich history, legacy and pride. As the new appointed principal, my goal is to continue to build upon the strong foundation laid by the incredible leaders who came before me like MS. Flowers and DR. Daniels, their excel tlens in the community has paved the way for the success we celebrate to date. At charles drew, we are committed to providing enriched experiences for our students, empowering our teachers and supporting our staff so that every child can reach their full potential. Thank you once again for the opportunity to serve. I am deeply honored to be part of the eli innovation zone, go tiger, and look forward to continuing the tradition
014of excellence that defines our schools and our community. goods morning, it's an incredible honor to stand before u today as the nenew prprinpaasas presess bay hihigh school. Thisschohool that a proud tradition of excellence, not only in academics but in spirit and community, I'm here to listen and grow alongside everyone that is on campus, we are to create a sief, inspiring environment where every student has the opportunity to thrive, together we'll build on strengths of the school with confidence and unity. To the superintendent and the board members, I'm grateful for the trust you've placed in me and I promise to serve with integrity, passion and heartfinger let make this chapter and cypress bay story the best one yet. thank you, everyone. [Applause]. good morning, chair, members of the school board, superintendent and cabinet members, thank you
015for this opportunity to serve as the acting principal of mera lake elementary, it is an honor lead a dedicated team of educators and support the student, families and community members we serve. Your trust and guidance inspire me to continue to foster a culture of excellence, one that every child has the opportunity to thrive. I am deeply grateful for your confidence and your ongoing support. Again, thank you for this extraordinary opportunity to serve. [Applause]. thank you. And welcome. At this tile, we will now recess this regular school board meeting for a board photo with the new staff appointments, if you will just come up on the steps right up here and we will take a picture. (Meeting in recess). thank you, this regular school board meeting is now reconvened. This is the time of the agenda
016-- we're early for that. We're going to go back to here. Superintendent's report. alright. Thank you, MADAM Chair. Good morning, also vice chair board members and member of the bcps mam fi will and the public that's present. I'm proud to begin my report with exciting news, broward county public schools has been recognizeesed by the florida department of education as a high performing school district. This designation is awarded to districts that meets the state's highest standards of proposer and accountability including an a grade for at least two consecutive years, having no district operated schools rated f, and receiving no material weaknesses or non-compliance findings in the annual financial audit. This recognition reflect it is hard work and dead kayoing of our teachers, staff, administrators, students and families and it reaffirms our shared commitment to the excellence,
017operational effectiveness and community partnerships. I'm about to introduce our knew canine teams. the canines aren't here, we're ahead of schedule. MADAM Chair, to you mind going to the consent items. alright, I'll save the canine teams for later. yes. yes, they are, yes. alright, we'll come back to that then. I don't know if our organization -- I think our organizations are here. ao im, chair, you haven't passed the single letter items that were not -- you skipped ones that were not pulled. no, I did -- we voted on them. yes, so now we're on the ones that were uled. I know, but seeing we have some of our union groups here, do we want to go to that part? we can, we usually to it at 10. well, they're here so we won't make them wait.
018so, broward county, we'll go to the updates from our different -- our various groups, so broward county council ptasptsas's, the report from them, so they have a new PRESIDENT, they're also -- bernie camp is now the new PRESIDENT Of the broward county council of pta's, so very excited to have him back. He's the first male elected PRESIDENT Of the council, so that's very exciting. And he is looking por ward to working with everyone in the district, so that's the update from them. We have employee groups. I see MR. Reynolds from fope, if you would like to come on down. good morning, MADAM Chair, vice chair, board members and superintendent, I don't know if -- aim -- am I on? Okay. i'm dan ronald, the PRESIDENT Of federation of public employees, we represent all of your
019non-instructional unmanagerial personnel who keep the system running behind the scenes. Ill like to report that as you know in 2023, the legislature sought to bankrupt us by taking away our payroll deduction for dues, so we lost 80% of our revenue in JULY 1 of 23. We have rebuilt the membership to bring us back to solvency. The second year they passed the bill saying we now had o have annual recertification elections which are expensive both to us and you, and all the other employers we represent, so I'm proud to announce that we have successfully won all three of our recertification e leaks at all three contracts here with broward county. And there were some that were predicting our demise. To those, I would advise you to change your sources of information. We won each of the
020three elections were won overwhelmingly, we are moving ahead with negotiations with all three units meeting next week. We do have some really tough issues in front of us and we'll be trying to get satisfactory agreement from all parties. as you know, the the insurance issue is a very perilous one this year, so, we will be fighting that issue at the bargaining table understanding the overall budget. The other thing I wanted to talk about is I was going to be here later to speak on an item that we had concerns about. Let me just say that a mark of great leadership is to change course when I have new information and I want to thank DR. Hepburn for hearing our concerns and others and moving ahead with that issue. So, thanks, everybody, I look forward to
021getting our negotiations done. thank you so much. Next we have -- I think we have btu in the house. so, anna fusco, broward teachers union PRESIDENT, speaking on behalf of broward's teacher's union, I'll piggyback off of dan reynolds, we had three out of our four elections and all three have won, two won with no's and one was with our teachers, a little -- about 100 no's, we won 99%, 100% for our recertification, everybody wants a union, it's what our ground work is is. So, I'm going to puddle jump into our mou vote which was also 98%. A little over 9200 voted and a small margin, about 100 said yes. So, that shows you that over thousand of our educators said no to taking away the early release day. I'm going to puddle jump into some
022of the reasons why. Early release date does not take away from instructional time. They work harder on those early release days o to do the instruction because they condense to make sure all of the subject matter is met along with electives and specials and to fwet into student's lunch and so forth. Then the teachers use that time to get their grades done and get their report cards done and to get that player planning, then they get the next day when kh was yesterday which was a planning day and a professional development day which the mass majority of it was used.Er data chats and meetings they could have put on e-mails so they want to continue to take away from teachers to effectively and professionally plan to get that curriculum to their students so I'm asking
023you guy tos have a conversation with the superintendent, to have a conversation with the group sitting here to take off some of the mandates so that teachers can plan. i'm going to puddle jump into the walk through, you've gotten e-mails from our teachers. The walk through are enormously impacting their wellbeing. I know they need mentors and coaches and feedback, I had a very intense conversation with the superintendent. We get the intent but the intent is gross. It's not being done with the intent that he has the vision for. And then I talked to some teachers yesterday that they're staining when they come through, don't let them see you ting but almost 90% of their week is testing, so I'm asking you to have more fruitful conversations of what's happening and I'm going to go into
024negotiations. I want you to come back with a raise offer. Chair, I know you ao e given them a direction to move to find the money, where are we on that? Because all they want to move for is what they're going to do to implode on the insurance. When you work to have some full plans of where our teachers and our esp's and where our support staff are not getting hurt, I have a teach were a brain injury that's learning how to walk and talk from getting hit in the head. i have a teacher got her teeth kicked out, so when workman's comp is failing them, they need their insurance to take care of them. It's the benefit they need that doesn't need to be on the backs of the employees. You guys came in
025with a smack on us with the child plan and the family plan. We've got one dependent $1,300, family two or more, $2,300, our premier hmo, one dependent, $1,500, our family, $2,600, our premier choice which is the lowest one, our one dependent, $996, our family of two, $1,800, our child basic plan, one child, $874, two, $1,748, three or more, $2,600, our enhanced, one child, $1,464, two, $2,900, three or more, 43 had$0.00 -- $4,300, do you guys realize what you voted on. When it comes to take care of our people, I stand with them. We said don't do this, how did you let this happen sm you should be embarrassed and ashamed that you can still not figure out how to budget your wanting to not beat up on your employees. You're beating up on them 75
026way tos to sunday to brag about an a district which I'm so thrilled our department of education noticed it because of the hard work of your educators and your support staff. When we walk through schools is they're looking great because of the custodians and they're feeding our children on the buses. I hate to keeping up here thinking I'm a negative nelly. Answer your e-mails. I see we have bef. [Inaudible] absolutely, as we know, I normally go before her, so this is a bet more -- I will say that broward teachers union as everybody knows on the dais and in the community is a huge supporter of our students and is our faculty, so, just a few quick highlights, we have our upcoming sports hall of fame on thursday. And then we also have our 5k
027on the 25th in hollywood, it will be a great event. I know I've been talking about a few grants we've within getting them and one of them I'm going to share a little bit about, we were just recently awarded in conjunction with broward county public schools a 2.9 million dollar grant over three year from the department of education, it's going to be an amazing grant, U.S. History grant, you'll hear it called the hero grant so we're all aware. We will also be bringing in a few other grants from JULY 1 to today, a little bit over 6.7 million dollars so far in grants that have come through the foundation to help and support broward county public schools. Those are not grants that otherwise could have been had through the district itself but they needed a
028501 c-3 and that's us, we were able to partner with the grants team which has been amazing. And then guy and his group has been amazing, lisa and her group have been amazing as well. So I wanted to throw that out there, we're continuing to move forward, many of you have reached out to me about a few other ideas and grants we're trying to get, I wanted o/o touch a bit on that today, if anybody else has any thought or ideas op grants, I'm working with trey and it and a few others, so please reach out. This is independent of everything we do on a daily basis, but I wanted to make sure we were intentional about talking about the great work has the team does here at bcps on the grant side and on
029the staff side so we're really excited about that and when the press release comes out, everybody will get it. So, we continue to bring these dollars in to make sure it's affecting our staff, being an a district isn't enough, continuing to be the a district is a standard we set for ourselves so I wanted to say thank you, I appreciate it. thank you for what you do for our district. Do we have any other employee union or groups? Okay. Great. Then I think we're going to go back to the superintendent's report. alright, thank you, MADAM Chair. I'll pick up where I left off, as our ongoing effort tos introduce safety, thank tos a generous donation from the make our schools safe organization, these canines will assist us, thank you, MS. Alhadeff, and make our safe
030schools organization, thank you, yes, they are beautiful too. Before y'all go on, let me finish, these exceptional canines will detect firearms, ammunition, bomb cans and explosive materials providing additionon l ler ofof prottion to keep o our cacampus securere and safe. Nine handler bryan pelato and canine alyssa. She is trained in gup and ammunition detection to identify distinct scent, pelato brings commitment to student safety working alongside alyssa to ensure our schools remain safe and secure learning environments. I'll also introduce canine handler michael le f le joy and canine nitros, specializes in bomb and explosive material detection trained to identify both traditional and improvise explosive devices, they have undergone explosive training to respond swiftly and effectively to any potential threats. Alyssa and nitro share a special bond, they are brother and sister, strengthening the trust and coordination
031between these two team ares remarkable, to to make this initiative more meaningful, we held a naming contest for our bomb detecting canine, they participated showcasing tremendous creativity in school spirit websinger ear proud to announce the pompano beach high school moss club submitted the winning name, canine nitro, they have continued to train weakly with law enforcement agencies ensuring their readiness remains at the highest level. We want to welcome our canines to the school district and thanking our partners for making this possible. These new safety investments reflect who we are as a districtfinger one that leads with excellence, innovation and care for every khiel wae.Z continue to work, I would like to end tonight's report by celebrating all the wonderful things across the bcps, before we roll the tape, I have to o take a look at
032the dogs too, hold on. Swron, can e f we do a quick picture. They are so beautiful. Yes, quick picture. (Taking photograph). [Applause]. alright, so last month has also ban busy month for our district, becon, roll the tape. (Playing video). and before I close out my report, a huge shout-out to frida boyle, 56 years of dedicated service x passion and commitment to our students here at bcps, yes, it looks amazing, that's my report, MADAM Chair. excellent, thank you so much and thank you for the treat of the canines and thank you to save our schools, make our schools safe for donating the dogs and the handlers, it adds to the safety of our district, so -- plus they're really cute. So, thank you. Okay, we're going to go to consent items that have been pulled,
033we'll start with that and at 10:00, we'll go back to our public speakers because we don't want to MISS Anybody. Okay. Sorry. So, can I have a motion and a second to discuss -- to bring to the floor item h2. It's been moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Thompson. Any public comment on h2? we have no public comment on any of these items, MADAM Chair. so, MR. Cervera? thank you, chair. I want to address an individual that's on this chart that I have some real concerns about. This is an individual who apparently has a propensity for fighting our students and this recently came to light because the individual was arrested rightfully so. I don't know if he's still in jail, if not, I hope he is, but I'm extremely concerned about the this for
034a couple of reasons. The gentleman's name is jamire clark, in his most recent role, he was a volunteer football coach that got upset about a social media post and decided to fight several students over it. Now, if that wasn't bad enough, come to find out that this was not the first time this gentleman had been engaging in such conduct. In fact, apparently he was previously employed at monarch high school in coconut creek where he had been previously accused of a separate incident regarding the fighting of students. So, what I'm very concerned about and what I think the public needs to be able to hear from this district is how does this individual go from fighting students at monarch high school and then he is allowed to continue or is placed or I don't know what
035the exact circumstances are, but this most recent incident was at blanche ely high school which is a different high school. I'm concerned this individual was able to travel between schools and conduct in this reckless conduct against our students. This is a terrible incident, a terrible set of circumstances. This is national news. I pulled up a store fri the new york post this morning in which this gentleman was referenced and mentioned. This puts the district in an extremely poor light and quite frankly, I'm pissed off about it. I would like to know how this gentleman was able to to go from monarch to ely high school and commit the same type of offense on a different group of students. DR. Hepburn? thank you for the question, MR. Cervera, I'll ask DR. Lozano to provide details. chief
036human resources officer, as a district, sir, we share your concerns. No district staff or employees were aware of the video incident that happened at monarch high school until after the situation at ely occurred. So, as part of our budget allocation last year, we reduced the the number of monitors by 104 in our budget and we did that through attrition, so we were still working on that process as this was a newer employee. As vacancies became available, our probationary or newest employees were moved to locations to handle that reduction of staff, so his move to -- it was crest haven elementary, not ely, he was coaching at ely, was part of that reallocation and was done prior to anybody being aware of this video. The same result of termination would have happened the minute we received
037that video had we received it on the day that it occurred. so, for the public's sake, DR. Lozano, I want to make sure we're clear, the fighting incident that happened at stranahan, it is your position that the district was not aware of that before this individual was moved to another school, that only came to light after his arrest for the second fight at ely? correct. okay. yeah, I know if everybody understands, he meant monarch. what did I say? stranahan. not to talk poorly about stranahan, I think that's important. it is. because when you read these stories in the press, I had a lot of concerned parents that reached out to me and immediately the first place they went to, this is some sort of conspiracy, they're trying to shove this under the rug and move
038this guy around. So, I think it's important that the public hear our position. I'm a little concerned it didn't come to light earlier, that the video was -- I don't know the circumstances of the video, if it was turned over to us, if it was published on social media, I don't know the entire circumstances around it. Certainly and to close here, this gentleman should be fired immediately, terminated immediately which is I believe what's on for today. correct. he should also face the full extent of the law which I hope our prosecutors ask state attorneys in broward county bring the appropriate charges and that he faces justice on this. thank you, it turns out we have a public comment for h2, so if sharon pedis would like to come to the podium. good morning, and thank
039you for giving me the opportunity to speak today. I've come before you with humility and respect to address a recent incident that has understandably been raising concern. I wanted to begin by acknowledging that I made a comment that was unintentional and in hindsight poorly chosen. I deeply regret that it caused discomfort to anyone, please know that I have never directed at any individual nor was I meant as a threat. This that is simply not who I am and not how I conduct myself. Throughout my career, I have always strived to be a person of integrity, professionalism and respect. I have never posed a threat to anyone in my workplace, I have never been involved in any discipline action. If I was truly considered a danger, I believe I would not have been reassigned to another
040location to continue working alongside colleagues. I spent over 40 years in the workforce and for the past 11.5 years, I've had the privilege of serving the school board as an accounting specialist 2 and at that time, I've worked diligently, ensured capital payments are accurate, in compliance and timely. I take great pride in my quality of my work a trust that has been placed in me. I've submitted ten years of performance evaluation that reflects a consistent record of excellence and proofing and no history of discipline issues. Mission to my professional responsibility, I have faced personal history challenge, I mean health challenges. I was diagnosed with pull [Pho-pb/]Monary fibrosis in 2016, rheumatoid arthritis in 2023. Despite these conditions, I have never let them interfere with my duties. I have continued to meet every expectation being met by
041my supervisor and I have maintained the high standard in my work. I have always treated my colleagues with respect and kindness. I've never had a conflict with any or another employee. I've always believed in fostering positive and professional work environment. I hope my record speaks for itself. One dedication, reliable and respect. Today I ask the board to consider the full context of this situation, my longstanding service of the history of my exemplary conducts, I am committed to learn from this experience and continuing to serve with the same level of professionalism and care that I've always strived to uphold. thank you so much. thank you. DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair. And thank you, MS. Petis, for speaking on your behalf. DR. Hepburn, I have a few concerns and the concern is with MS. Sharon pedis.
042So, I normally meet with staff to get an understanding and this particular employee was one of the three or four that I had questions about, but I continue o have lingering questions in my mind regarding this particular employee. The others were clarified. So, a few questions, DR. Hepburn, has this employee had any prior corrective action since the 11 years she's been with broward county schools? thanks for the question, DR. Holness, I will turn it over to DR. Lozano? no, sir. and she's been here since 2014? yes. okay, so, how long has this employee been an employee of the current department to which there is a concern? DR. Lozano? 11 months. ma'am, we don't go back and forth, so thank you. you're welcome. okay. MADAM Chair, did you want the employee to sit down? yes, you
043can go ahead and have a seat. okay, thank you. alright. Is there any record now or is there any record rather in the past that suggested this employee is a threat to others? DR. Hepburn? DR. Lozano? MR. Azzarito? no, there is not. okay. So, DR. Hepburn, is there any sort of anger management option for employees who are experiencing stress that MAY cause them to behave out of the norm. Is there any sort of employee counseling, that type of option for us to be able to consider when employees behave in a manner that is out of the norm but is mot within their prior character or their prior history of behavior? DR. Hepburn? DR. Lozano? we have the employee assist answer program, I'm not sure if it's anger management, we'll have to check. MR. Azzarito, can
044you describe the employee assistance program, what is involved with that? that would be best for DR. Augburn to describe that, I'm not entirely familiar with the process. is she here? she's not here. The rest of the team can speak, it's more about mental health, stress, those type of issues when it comes to eap services that people are referred to. okay, drflt hepburn, if an employee is experiencing undue stress for whatever is happening in their live and is we all have our fafa share of differenent thgsgshappening in our live whatisis ishehe opti for those employees to get help from this district? there's concern about mental health issues, stress issues, they are referred to eap services. It is voluntary most of the time, but I do think we have some involuntary options too. okay, was this employee
045in any -- at any time including currently referred to eap services? go ahead, MR. Azzarito? no, she was not. This incident is a one-time incident that occurred so the magnitude of the incident is why the recommendation of termination is here. so, I read the incident and I look at the history of this employee and it appears to me there was some sort of an outburst with some exchanges. It probably was not the right choice of words, so as a board, I believe we must exercise sort of kaugcaution that we are not reacting overly harshly o employees. we must in my opinion exercise the wisdom to discern a credible threat versus an unfavorable spur of the moment outburst by an employee. It's important whatever consequence we provide to our employees, that it's reflective of understanding and
046wisdom. People do have bad days, people have bad situations and people make poor choices. Those poor choices in my opinion doesn't lend itself to bring the axe down on something and call it for a day after service of 11 days with no issue, no prior problems. Ipg there -- I think there are better ways to resolve it, and DR. Hepburn, I think this employee could do well with counseling. Obviously her actions reflect a poor choice. Her history does not reflect in my opinion what is perceived to be a threat. I think this employee should be given an opportunity to get some counseling, certainly get suspended for some days and if there is some issue of functionality within that specific department, maybe this employee could fit somewhere else but I just think termination is harsh option.
047As I said, everyone has bad days, everyone has issues, it was a poor choice but when we do impact one person, we are impacting a series of other individuals who depend on that person. And I think the punishment is harsh and we should consider a number of days of suspension as well as some counseling, that's just my opinion regarding this case. So, I cannot vote for termination. I don't think it matches what I see. thank you. MRS. Rupert? first of all, I wanted to discuss MR. Clark. He's got the court ordered termination, correct? correct. okay. And then the the background that my colleague talked about is alarming. I don't know where I zone 2 is, can you date me on where that is? DR. Lozano? . where is I zone 2? right here. it's important
048that I know where and you'll find out in like 30 seconds. that's assigned to the director la rosa to I zones, that's how they assign their security staff by zones. Er I want to know where that covers. central. okay. The reason I ask that is obviously the question was how does this persist to to go from one school to the other. And my point being is that it's not just the board that needs to be aware of this. It's also the local school and the community there as well as the area directors because if you have someone that has multiple times done this, then there's enough talk going around for the information to get to the north area director and they should take responsibility. So, I don't know what that looks like, that's not in
049any f my pay grade but I highly subjecting when we talk this and what happened, to make sure it doesn't happen again. We obviously need another check point, I would think the area director should be involved in this so this never happens again. So, just another check point for us to not have this happen ever again. That's my thought. thank you. He's combining -- coming back, DR. Zeman? this is a long agenda today, we're going to rip through it. I was wondering, MR. Superintendent, if we can share a paragraph or two about the offense for MS. Pedis. We don't have that information available in the public documents that were released for this meeting but there are other things and I feel like in cases like this because this is a balance can and we have
050to in some sense think about parity of consequences, MR. Holness, how other people have been treated that have done this in the past have been treated, I think it's a fair thing to bring up. I think it's important for the public to understand more than what MS. Pedis said about what happened, can I get a paragraph or two about the incident itself and what our professional services group found about what happened at work with this particular employee? DR. Hepburn? thank you for the question, MS. Perente? heather perente, director of professional practices, this is an incident of the an employee to include bullying and harassment. It also included gross insubordination, failure to adhere to directives and failure from retaliating and/or taking any action to interfere with a bullying investigation. On AUGUST 12, there was an employee
051in the office that was filing bullying and harassing against another staff member. This employee approached the that staff member on someone else and in a loud harsh town called them a snitch saying they would no longer speak to them because they would snitch on the supervisor, this employee persisted in voicing their hostile comment and is later admitted to another staff member they did call the employee a snitch and say snitches get stitches. On AUGUST 18, they were notified of -- on AUGUST 18, they were notified of a bullying klaint being notified against them and instructed not the retaliate against anyone involved, immediately following that meeting, they left that office and walked back to the desk, saw has co-worker coming down the hall and began to engage again in intimidating confrontation making a loud and provocative
052comment so now I'm a bully, snitches get stapes. When the supervisor try today intervene because it was going on and others were hearing, testify noted as a high raid, this employee reacted to the supervisor by calling them a racist and telling them to leave. Later they told another staff member they were leaving for the day, they were setting another [Inaudible] When the employee attended a due process meeting, they asked what was meant by that, they said that means you're going to get it. We conferred with jodie washington bho stated it was clear there was harassment, even a concern about workplace violence and insubordination, violence. I think it's important for the board members and public to be aware of just a name on the a table, I appreciate you sharing that. I feel that there are
053clear rules that this board has set. We don't even have to write them down, they're so clear that if you injury one of our students, you're going to get any kind of potential offense that we can, that you MAY not injury a student at broward county schools. The challenge I think we have is that, you know, there are employees that have long histories of doing great things and then they have a bad day. I recognize with you -- we're all better than our worst day but this is more than an incident of one statement, MR. Superintendent, did all of this happen on one day or did this happen over multiple days? DR. Hepburn? MS. Perente?Frjt heather perente, these were to incidents, AUGUST 12 was the first incident where the employee approached the one who filed
054bullying and harassment on someone else, they approached that employee and made the first set of statements and it was AUGUST 18 when this particular employee was spoken to about a bullying and harassment claim against them, that's when they were given the direction not to discuss it and immediately they walked out and made those comments to the employee. I'm not a psychologist, I have dealt with anger management issues before. Oftentimes they are single incident tenses of boiling over, it play be related to stress, medical conditions, you know, life is a lot more complicated than we allow in our white collared environment to enter into the work space so often. It's not so acceptable or understandable when these things happen over multiple days. Oftentimes people spike once and do this, so I want to note for the
055record, this is multiple days, this is physical violence against a colleague, this is also threatening violence against somebody who's trying to report bullying which is something we want employees to be able to come in and report and allow it to be investigated. We don't tolerate bullying. We don't tolerate physical violence against it. I appreciate the work that's been done by this. MR. Superintendent, is there something between a long term suspension and anger management that would fit -- aisle say it that way, there stl a punishment that is between a ten day suspension or I'm just guess ago number, DR. Holness, but I'm just wondering if there isn't something wean the termination that's recommend today the board today and I'm going to say, DR. Holness, a ten day suspension and required mandatory anger management which is
056required from every eap program in the united states, so I'm confident we have that here, is there anything between ten days and mandatory eap and termination? DR. Lozano? we can add a last chance agreement to that. so, an alternate in the middle would be ten day suspension, mandatory anger management and last chance, that last chance would be basically if you raise your voice, if you threaten, if you don't take a bullying complaint, the history of things and say any of those things happen again, I guess you would still have to come to the board, the recommendation back to the board would be to terminate immediately, correct? correct. great, thank you so much, chair. MRS. Thompson? thank you, chair, DR. Zeman stole my question just getting more details, but also I just want -- we have
057a zero tolerance for bullying at our schools, we should have a zero tolerance for bullying at our workplaces and I want the board to truly reflect if we do not take this seriously, how the employees in that office are going to feel, the comments made towards them, that we are saying basically it's a slap on the wrist and I'm not comfortable with that and I would like to go forward with the recommended action. Thank you. thank you, okay, we'll finish up with DR. Holness. thank you, MADAM Chair. Again, I would mention that -- and I appreciate the comments from the employee, she did seem to admit to her poor choices. Again, she's been with the district for quite some time and she's asking for a chance, it's a one-timer -- one-time error on her part,
058and DR. Zeman, I certainly appreciate your suggestion, possible suggestion as far as somewhere between termination and, you know, ten day suspension as well as some sort of counseling option. I think that would send a clear message as well as the suggestion by DR. Lozano that no further incident occur. I think this would show -- I tone think that would be a slap on the wrist. i think this would clearly indicate that we are serious as a board in terms of any bullying. I just think that unfortunately and stieps -- sometimes it happen tos the best of us, you have a bad situation going on and you make poor choices. I think giving this person an opportunity to prove themselves I think would be responsible on our part, so I would like to make a motion
059to separate the item can and for the superintendent to review it and revise it and bring it back. second. is there public comment on the motion? good morning, DR. Natalie lynch-walsh, plantation florida, I absolutely support the motion. I have zero faith in any process related to anti-bullying in this district having fidelity and also speaking from experience, having sat on the facilities task force since 2011, this district does nothing to diffuse situations, it takes a very passive aggressive approach to management and allows things to fester and boil over instead of caressing them when there's a chance to do so proactively. So, I totally support giving this employee another chance by separating this out. I don't think they should be terminated because you cannot be certain of anything that's in any report from this district against an
060employee or volunteer for that matter. And they should have been proactive ask sipped ler to the ebbingersinger ap. thank you, board member comment? MRS. Bulman? thank you, chair. Based on the fact there were threats made to people in the department of the employee at hand, if we were to intervene and do as DR. Holness has suggested, would the employee be going back to the same department where she was threatening employees that were making bullying complaints? DR. Hepburn? against a third party? yes, that's correct. okay. So, I mean, I think to MS. Thompson's point, this gets a little bit murky for us because you're sending someone back to the same department where they were threatening an employee. I think we do need to think about what does that -- what message does that send to all
061the rest of the people that are working in that department and the victim. thank you. MADAM Chair? DR. Zeman, okay, MS. Thompson? I have a question for the superintendent. If a student were to make similar comments dwards another student, what actions would we take? DR. Hepburn? I'll ask one of the regional tos chime in, MR. Strauss or DR. Tumor? if a student is is found to be -- is jodie here. good morning, everyone, joad tee washington, director of school, cultural and student support. Students who are found to be bully ares put in a student intervention program. how long are outside of their home school sm for a minimum if -- the if they're elementary school sage, a min number of a quarter, 6-12, iet assist minimum of a semester the, have to work their way
062through the level system. They vao to have a good attendance record, positive behavior while they're there and maintain good grades. thank you, DR. Washington, so if we do this, we are punishing our students more harshly than full grown consults. I'm incredibly uncomfortable about the message we are potentially sending to our staff and their safety. Thank you. . Inger DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair. So, DR. Hepburn, is there -- in terms if this item should go through.Er you to review, revise and bring back, is there an option where for a specific period of time or indefinitely, that this employee could have a lateral shift that would align with the employee's scope of experience? DR. Hepburn? thanks for the question, I can't make a guarantee on lateral shifts. Number one, we're down-sizing depending on attrition, number
063two, the skill set that is needed in different departments often limit us in what where we can place people, that's the difficulties in that part of the situation that I can't make a guarantee here on the dais about a lateral shift for the employee. okay, thank you, MADAM Chair. I have a quick question, if we were to postpone this to take it off the list, where would the employee can -- is the employee still at her job or has she been -- where is she right now? the employee is reassigned at this time. where is she reassigned to? we'll fwet that to you, she's not in that department as of now. if we were to let it come back to us, she would not be in the same department, she would stay wherever she's reassigned
064for right now? correct. thank you. Okay. All those in favor of DR. Holness' motion, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. no. let's do a roll call. roll call on the motion, school board members alhadeff? no. bulman? no. cervera? no. hixon? yes. holness? yes. leonardi? no. rupert? no. is that a no? Thompson? no. zeman? yes. the motion fails 6-3. okay, back to the original item of h2, all those in favor of h2, say aye. MADAM Chair? MR. Cervera wanted to clarify something. I want to just brfly ift back to my cmentnts earlie I aprentntly used the wrwrong surname for the gentleman I was speaking about, just for clarity of the record, jamire clark was the individual that I was speaking about who had the two fighting incidences most recently at ely high school which led
065to his arrest, I guess I used the wrong surname. thank you for clarifying that, all nose in favor of h2, say aye. no. those opposed, say no. Motion passes with one dissenting vote. We are going to go to public comment. This is the time -- hold on. Sorry. This is the tile of the agenda where we have split the general public speakers to incorporate a morning session. Each registered speaker is is reminded to present their agenda can comments in accordance with policy 1020, our first public speaker is DR. Natalie lynch-walsh. good morning again, DR. Nataliefishmonger walsh, plantation, florida. First there's no water in the water fountain out there again, so I MAY not be able to speak later which I'm sure will make some people happy, we need water out there, it's not the first
066time. And when you add things, could you please make sure -- I don't know how you're going o do this, you're in the using granicus, I brought this up before. Granicus has other modules that can leverage technology and that is not happening here, so when things are added morning of like when you yank two, three of the items I was going to speak on, the only way I find that out is by accident often, so like oo5, where tech armies disappeared for today's discussion, that and I'm happy to see that the piggyback item impacting fope is done, but you need to use technology so people can get an alert, something. Anyway, I want to reiterate district wide strategic planning and I'm here to give you a brief update on the rebut l because that's going
067well, I heard some transition plan for the general counsel and I see scott travis has tweeted tout memo, wise decision. Strategic district -- district wide is it a taoej I can planning includes self-examination, maybe your general counsel did that and made some difficult choices. But she's not the only one that needs to do that. Rebuttal update, ask just for the new people, that started with someone circumventing the very rules you were just all talking about and then because the cover up is worse than the crime around here, many, many people involved in the cover up, but I've learned some new things this week that I wanted to to share with you. One, florida statute 120.52 rule making has a laundry list of things that can invalidate your rules, so we're goik to be talking abschool
068board meetings and rules of order o, then ironically rule making is next week but you want to look at 8, a-f because if any of those apply to your rules, you could have invalid rules. Then related to the rebuttal I'm writing on this bogus bullying complaint, defamation by implication is when something that is technically true contains statements that make it misleading, so for example, if your superintendent sends someone a letter and says an investigation concluded on AUGUST 29 that found your conduct violated but they know that that investigation was totally false -- thank you. defamation by implication. thank you, the next public speaker is trudy jermanovich, I don't see her. Next is delvin king. good morning, board. On MAY 31, my school rented out blanche ely high school gymnasium to host our high school graduation
069ceremony. Culture mcnab had mauled and damaged our decorations nrord to host the basketball tourn ament on that same day. The tournament took place without any school board employees there, school person nem, police or custodial staff present creating a safety and liability concern for broward county public schools. Security footage reportedly showers that mcnab gave his keys to his son for him to open blanche ely high school, open the school and prepare for the event, an action that proposes major security policy violations. When I raised concerns, the principal, MR. Williams, stated that culture mcnab had an ongoing lease agreement for these tournaments and that the events were lyed in facilitron, after further review and public records, it became clear that no such approved lease existed and none of these tournaments were in facilitron. After further investigation, it
070was revealed that there were multiple school board employees that was in on this job to defraud broward county schools, there were more schools used, blanche ely, coral springs, coral glades, hollywood skills, deerfield high. It is my belief this ongoing misuse of public schools facilities can be seen, he couldn't conduct this alone. Evidence points that his sister, rachel daly who works nr the office of facility planning and real estate, she helped him out showing what facilities were available, showing him what he had to do. If you can look at the video, you can see that people have been paying the basketball coach, paying the school administrators, undermining the school board of broward county and collecting money. There has been over laugh a million dollars made using these facilities without the permission of the school bender of
071broward county, without proper liability insurance. And again, MR. Superintendent, you know what's going on, you're blocking the investigation, MR. Williams, the basketball coach and everybody else involved needs to be removed immediately and you know this. You removed MR. Smith but you refused to remove the principal. I'm not going to let this go, they've been stealing from the sdrik, when you meet about facilitron, you better find out what's going on, there's a vid wroe, there's body cam footage where people have said on the body cam, I paid coach mcnab to rent this facility, why can't I use it today, you can't use it because I rented it out and I went through facilitron, it's time MR. Superintendent you hold people accountable because I'm going hold you accountable for the actions and the things you to and
072I'm tire of you covering up for our school. We need new leadership. Thank you so much. thank you. Next public speaker is barbara stelz. so, the public -- the item I wanted to comment on was withdrawn from the agenda and I just saw that, so do I speak or do I not speak? it's up to you. okay. Then I will speak. My name is barbara stelz, a fort lauderdale resident, 33308 and I'm sponging on item 0016, py25163, I'm an employee of granger industrial supply, we understand the board's role is to ratify decisions recommended to it but I wanted to express our deep concern that our proposal for the broward county school stock room and related zone locations did not receive full and fair consideration beer recommendation was made. During the process of completing our recommendations,
073we were given two goals, to deliver cost savings and to protect the jobs of the stock room employees and associated staff. We believe our proposal delivers greater cost savings than the competing option, fulfills the goal of zero head count elimination and aligns directly with the goals we were given by staff to reduce inventory expense and increase proclivity. Our proposal was developed as an initial proposal with the understanding that we would enter into good faith negotiations that would result in an ideal and state for all parties. we developed it in order to protect sro, save taxpayer dollars and ensure quality savings for students and staff. To our knowledge, granger has been the primary vendor used by the stock room for years, additionally we are the primary vendor for the state of florida. As a resident, property
074owner and taxpayer of broward county, moving forward with the competing proposal, without fully evaluating ours would in my view would be fiscally inconsistent with the sdrigt's commitment to transparency and continuous improvement, not to mention sound financial management. We respectfully ask the board before ratifying this decision to request a comprehensive review of all proposals including ours so that the district and the community can be confident the best possible option is being chosen. I have come prepared with copy of our initial proposal and happy to provide those upon request today or in the future. Thank you for your tomb and your continued commitment to our schools and community. thank you, very quickly in our policy it says before somebody speaks, are you a registered lobbyist with the district? new york -- no, I'm not. thank you. okay.
075I think that concludes our public speakers for this morning. . Er I've been doing government contract for a few meetings, I think that's a lobbyist, if somebody comes here on behalf of a company and says that we want to do business with you, that I think is the quintessential definition of lobbying. Er my question was is she a registered lobbyist, they're supposed to identify themselves as a registered lobbyist. maybe we have a gap in our policy that if someone comes here and lobbies us, they should register as a lobbyist. So how do we enforce that, chair or counsel. that was my question ago a second ago to MS. Batista. the policy says that the person is supposed to identify themselves as a lobbyist, not necessarily a registered lobbyist, so, as you mentioned, DR. Zeman, yes,
076the presentation sounded like a lobbying attempt. clearly, right. But aren't lobbyists supposed to register now with broward county before they lolly f by us? yes, that is correct. So, there isn't any repercussion to not necessarily registering in the policy, there's no -- other than the desire for the board that the board has stated in the policy that a lobbyist remg ster, there is no penalty for not rej searing. is there a fee for registering to lobby broward county schools? yes. okay, it's just something we MAY, chair, in the future do some work on and if someone's literally coming here to sell us their company which is great, we want to learn about companies and what their capabilities are, that's good for the staff and for us to know about, but maybe we can put that
077in the parking lot for future work and figure out a way in which we can encourage people to do the right thing or even incentivize them to do the right thing in the future. DR. Zeman, it's policy which is going to come up later in this board meeting. So, just as a note, you MAY want to bring that discussion up. not only will I bring it up, I will type it out ahead of time, you ready? perfect. Thank you so much, can I have a hosing and a second to bring h3 to the floor? so moved. it's been moved by DR. Zeman, seconded by mrs. bulman, any public comment on h3? Okay. DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair. So, DR. Hepburn, just a few questions, and I know that we have a b item coming
078up as far as reviewing supplemental pays. So, we are spending over 60 million dollars yearly on supplements, is that correct? DR. Hepburn? go ahead, DR. Lozano? not for the supplements you see on h3. but in general, we are? DR. Hepburn? go ahead, DR. Lozano? we have currently spent approximately 30 million on supplements on staff for athlete I can coaches, being the sac chair at schools, that's what these supplements are, so currently the district has spent approximately 30 million on these supplements. Our cfo can talk about other supplements we pay out, as far as this item, it was specific to staff taking on additional activities and roles. I understand, so DR. Hepburn, the review of supplement payments that's coming up in b2, those supplements are obviously different from the ones here? DR. Hepburn? go ahead, if
079you can talk about -- DR. Hepburn has tasked a work group. We have divided all supplements into different buckets and categories and we're doing a comprehensive review of all supplements that we distributed in this district. so, the supplements that would be under review in the upcoming item would be inclusive of the supplements that are here as well? yes, sir. so, MADAM Chair, I'll have more questions when we get to b2. thank you. MR. Cervera? thank you, chair. For the sake of the public, what percentage of this 24 million dollars that the this board is being asked to vote upon now, what percentage of this supplemental pay is going to our teachers directly? thanks for the question. Approximately 86% of the supplements are going to teachers, so roughly about 22.6 million. so, 22 out of the
08024 are going to teachers? correct. thank you. I have a question. Also on supplemental pay positions, there are in this list of supplements, there are 7 people that are getting the special olympics supplement which I applaud greatly, but I do believe there was a criteria for that supplement, it was for competitive special olympics, they would get half or if they did the first year season and then the other half the other season, and looking at that list, there's only one school that participates in competitive special olympics. The other ones do the day activity and I don't think it fishes -- fits the criteria for the supplement, so could you address that. we will look into those 7 individuals and follow up accordingly. okay. and provide a follow-up. yes, the if we could just be consistent
081with what the criteria is for the supplement. There's a big difference between competitive coach which was what that money's for than someone who hosts a day special olympics at the school, they're very different things, so I believe that the supplement was for the competitive coaches. thank you for that input. alright, thank you. Anybody else on h3? All those in favor of h3, say aye. any opposed, say no. Item passes unanimously. The next item is b1, can can I have a motion and a second on b1? So moo unfed. . Inger it's been moved by DR. Zeman, seconded by MS. Rupert. Any -- no public comment. dr. Zeman? chair, thank you so much. I really just -- I mean, there's some really fabulous training available to senior leaders in broward county including some of the topic
082that our chair attended. I just wanted to ask you to share some more information about what was presented and particularly how it pertains to us so that if there's anything you heard about besides this amazing report that you submitted, it's full of great content, but is there some summary of things that we should learn about the way we either do negotiations with unions or the way that we develop policies that we would benefit from knowing? thank you for the question. And it was a great training and just to give it a plug, if you want to be a board certified -- a certified board member, these are ours that are required to be able to get that certification. The big push was the distinguishing factors between what the superintendent is supposed to do and what
083you as board members are supposed to do and how it's really important not to cross over those lines in terms of governance and policy-making, specifically it was interesting, there were different activities, here's the issue, how would you write a policy on it, so there were interactive things along those lines. Bottom line is that you needed to have open communication with your superintendent ask have faith that your superintendent is doing the work and not try to cross that line and in bargaining, it was also very interesting and timely. The idea that you need to bargain in good faith, that you need to be honest, that you should be open and that the discussions -- if you make a decision, you should be open with what that decision is. Again, the board shouldn't be negotiating with the
084unions, that there is a bargaining team that does that. We as a board dw if them direction and we need to have faith they do that, that we should not be trying o do something behind the scenes with employees or union officers of that nature, but to let the teams do the work that they're supposed to be doing. So, that was the general gist of it. if I could in response, it sounds like a lot of things broward county school board is doing or maybe not best practices but they're in general alignment with what fsba recommends on both of these topics, is that fair to say? yes, there were a cup ofl pieces and I was going to talk to the superintendent about the policy and being able to easily find policy which we do
085a lot that other districts don't do to make sure that we're aligned, that we have a mission statement, that they have all these different pieces so I was happy when we did our activities to find what I was supposed to find in the scavenger hunt. if I could ask the general counsel, are there instances in our policies, MS. Batista, where we tiptoe up against the line of the difference between our superintendent ceo's authority on operations and execution and our statutory requirements on setting policies, establishing budgets, approving contracts and the luke that the 23 enumerated statutory requirements this school board has, are we perfect in that regard, are we near perfect? When we review policies as we're doing today, I think it's obviously an opportunity to make some improvements on little things like lobbyists and things
086like that, but in general, are we perfect, are we near perfect or just okay? I'm glad you're free and clear now to tell us your full opinion, although I regret the reasass why that's the case. I'i'wondndering how do we rarate interm our -- we have pages of policies, 256 I think policies which seems like a lot of policies to me, but they're there and are we perfect, near perfect or just okay? as you just said, there are a lot of policies, so for me to make that statement as to all of the policies, in a general way, I feel you're better than okay, as far as the policies are concerned, I think the more challenging issues are when board members bring the the items, where that's tiptoeing right against what the role of the superintendent
087is. terrific. Last question of the superintendent, how do you feel about our engagement with you? We don't get to talk about this. This is something that we could potentially vote on so we're not really intent, specifically we shouldn't talk about it outside of this meeting, how do we do with you respecting your rights as the ceo, superintendent on all the things you have to do because your responsibilities are everything that's not assigned to us, so we have 23 thins -- things that a law says you do and you have to do everything else. I think you're the most influential human being in the welfare of broward county without a doubt, mow do we do about not crossing that line. I think we do fairly well. I think this journey is a learning process for all
088and we -- I think all the board knows I don't have a problem pushing back when the line is being crossed and providing information about -- distinguishing the what versus the how, especially learning some things from our recent training from fsba, I think we have a great collaborative art ner ship that's very purposeful and aligned with student needs and district needs. When the line is getting a little gray, I speak up and I let individuals know, like, this is what we're already doing, this is what I'm tasking my team to do, relationships are it is a growing process for all of us, we strive for perfect but it's hard to get there, it's an ongoing process for all of us. thank you for this huge and valuable report from the training, it's a model for
089the rest of us to go up and do these things to try to meet, but there's a lot of things for us to learn even when an individual goes up and does their training so I appreciate the time. I want to mention something that was a big push too, was to not put procedures in policy. That is very important because procedure is the superintendent's lane, ours is just to say what the policy is that we want to have followed so that was important. Okay, great. All those in favor of item b1, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. Motion carries you unanimously. Can I have a motion and a second on item b2? It's been moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Leonardi. Let's see, MRS. Bulman? thank you, chair. Thank you for bringing this.
090I think this is a very necessary endeavor for us. The reason I pulled this was just to ask and to see what our colleagues think about accelerating the timeline since we're currently in the process of negotiateinging raises or salaries. It seems to me the faster we can have this analysis back to us, the better, and I would suggest maybe a DECEMBER meeting deadline instead of MAY. I'll just tell you the reason I put the MAY is because MAY is when they have to know like their new job descriptions and all that because this will not just change the supplements but there are job descriptions that will have to be changed and brought back to us along with it, so that's why I did the MAY, just so that I give you context to that. Yes,
091DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair, so I have a couple of comments of my own and then I also want to speak on board member bulman's suggestion. So, if we actually bring this back at an earlier date and I understand, chair, what you are saying, I think the goal of this item is to try to expedite the process so we can spend less money it appears. So, DR. Hepburn, if this is brought earlier, would we realize saveings within this year as opposed to the upcoming 26-27? no, you won't realize any savings this year, this is savings for the following year, as we just did, passing the motion for the previous item, we're paying supplements for the majority of folks for the entire year, but for some athletic coaches, they start getting supplements per the seasons
092they're coaching. this wouldn't be realized savings if the most part until school year 26-27. okay, so regarding supplements, if this is brought back earlier and there are significant number of supplements that could be discontinued because maybe it's in a job description somewhere, we are not allowed to stop in the middle of the year for those supplements and realize savings? yeah, let me have DR. Lozano chime in on that part. that would depend on the specific supplements. Some of them are in our collective bargaining agreements that we would have to go back and negotiate out. Other ones MAY -- maybe the possibility, if it was split first part of the year, fall, second part of the year, spring, that person wouldn't perform that task in the spring if we brought it back prior to that. So,
093there are some supplements we could have those conversations around but others are -- most of the supplements on this list are part of our collective bargaining agreements. okay, so DR. Hepburn, the supplements that are not part of the collect I ever bargaining unit, could those be looked at earlier and be brought back to you us? go ahead, DR. Lozano? Wefrjts ear comfortable with coming back with a presentation in DECEMBER if that's the will of the board. okay, so, I understand that maybe coming back with the supplement positions that are in the collective bargaining unit can happen at the end of the year, DR. Hepburn, because we can't change anything with those. But so as not to have, you know, excessive -- I don't know what work is involved in bringing this back, would it be
094doable to bring back those positions that are not in the collective bargaining unit as far as what we will be able to not continue with because it's in the job description of one of the employees or that is unnecessary? Is that something doable? Would that require a lot of staff time to bring has back to us say DECEMBER or NOVEMBER? DR. Hepburn? go ahead, DR. Lozano, I know the work group that already embark on a task. we can come back with that type of information to allow the board to see the categories of the different supplements and look at what are the ones under collective bargaining, what are the ones that are not and what each supplement is for, so you could begin to make some educated decisions as a board in how to move
095forward. okay, so MADAM Chair, in order have this done at an earlier date, do we need to make a motion as far as the supplemental position that is are not in the collective bargaining unit that we as a board could look at earlier to determine whether or not we would continue with them? can you repeat that, I'm sorry. okay, so, the supplemental positions that are not in the collective bargaining unit that can be looked at in an earlier date as opposed to the end of the year, do I need to make a motion to bring that -- for the superintendent to bring that back in DECEMBER, so we can start to look at positions we could possibly not continue to save money in this current year? MS. Batista, do you think we need -- I'm
096sorry, can you repeat the question, DR. Holness. okay. Alright. MS. Batista, I'm trying to make a motion, I don't know.If it's necessary, the item we have is for the superintendent to review supplemental positions ins general. Some of them are in the collective bargaining unit and sofm them are not. What we're trying to do to follow up on board member bulman's comment, bring those that can come back early that are not in the collective bargaining unit for the superintendent to present those to us in DECEMBER and the ones that are in the collective bargaining unit to present at a later date? yes, you would need a motion to amend this item. so, I would like to make a motion to a amend the current item that the supplemental positions that are not in the collective bargaining
097unit come back to us in DECEMBER and the one that is are in the collective bargaining unit can be in MAY of 2026. second. Er any public comment on the motion? Okay, any board member motion? I'm fine with it. MRS. Bulman?Frjts thank you, DR. Holness. So, the MAY date, I'm also wondering if that could be accelerated as well so we have enough time to digest it and discuss it before we have to make decisions because that time period gets really busy and we -- it would I think be to our benefit to have the time to really look at it and have good discussions about what we're going to do prior to MAY because MAY is when we should have the decisions made already. correct me if I'm wrong, we're going bring it all in
098DECEMBER, correct, bargaining units and those that are not in bargaining units? we can I think -- DECEMBER will be nice in DECEMBER if if we can do an informative session so you can see each category what supplements are in each category and then we can look for even FEBRUARY, MARCH to come with a drill-down of specifics so you can see it's comprehensive so we want to make sure we provide you quality and not just in DECEMBER, so if we can do an informative session in DECEMBER to really give you a full explanation of our supplements, I think that will empower you to look towards the spring to make some quality decisions. MADAM Chair? DR. Holness? so, I think the intent of the motion is not just information but action. So we're not looking just to
099get information, we're looking for the superintendent to present action. with job descriptions. correct. So, if we have positions that are not in the collective bargaining unit has we can sunset, that's what we're trying to do. So, I think that's the reason for separating both. In term of those that are in the collective bargaining unit, we look at those earlier than MAY, maybe APRIL or whatever the superintendent's team is doable in order to make that happen for the upcoming school year. Those that we can sunset before the second mentioner starts, we want the timeline that's required to get that done in terms of bringing it to the bore, the board voting on some action to sunset those position that is are not in the collective bargaining unit that are supplemental from say JANUARY onwards to the
100end of the year, so I think that's what we're stringing to accomplish. -- trying to accomplish. go ahead, DR. Lozano? we have 8 different category of supplements that total 212 million dollars, in our academic operational, we have 4 million dollars, in our benefits to staff, we have million dollars, in our contractual supplements, we have 24 million dollars, in our extra periods websinger have 20 million dollars, in our overtime, we have 21 million dollars, in our referendum, we have 139 million dollars, in our secondary positions, we have 43 million dollars, and in our state funding, we have 18 million dollars. So, this work group is breaking down all these a categories of how we spend everything to bring to this board. So, what I think I'm hearing is the board would like us to look at
101the academic operational ones that are not in collective bargaining and come with that decision. Like I said, this is a very comprehensive project. DR. Hepburn has tasked us with o bring the board all this information. okay, so MADAM Chair, the motion then is to bring to the board information and suggested action on the supplemental positions that are not collective bargaining by DECEMBER. I understand. and just to explain the motion that we as a board can take action based on the superintendent's information to sunset particular lotions that are not deemed necessary or that are in the job sdrition of employees. let's vote on DR. Holness' and if you want to make a supplemental to change the other date, you can do that. we are voting on the motion that was seconded by -- that was made
102by DR. Holness and seconded by MR. Cervera for bringing back the supplements in DECEMBER. All those if favor, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no, motion carries. MRS. Bulman, did you want to make another motion?Frjts well, based on timeline, DR. Hepburn, can you can you give me some guidance here. We're going to talk about this probably a lot, so earlier we have the conversation, we workshop it and have a vote earlier than MAY would be ideal. go ahead, DR. Lossanzano, if you can address the timeline for the rest. I think you said FEBRUARY or MARCH. are we looking for a FEBRUARY/march timeline? yeah. FEBRUARY, can we do FEBRUARY? if that's the will of the board, we'll make that happen. okay. I move that we adjust the date from MAY to FEBRUARY, 2026. second. it's been
103moved by MRS. Bulman, seconded by MS. Tofrn son to change the deadline to FEBRUARY 2026 instead of MAY. Any public comment? DR. Zeman? thank you so much, I like this a lot. I'm going to make a motion subsequent that's going to limit the scope of this work, there are some monies that are included in the word supplement in our budget that are probably not what the board was looking ats and there are some for which you can recommend all day long to make reductions to the supplement that comes with a referendum. That money's going out. That's taxpayer money that they gave us to pay people a supplement and by law, we will not fail to spend that. So, I'm going to talk about that next, I want o to say it now because I can
104support getting early because I think we're going give you some scope changes that will allow us to work on things if for which there's savings. Referendum supplements is not one of those for example, we'll get into that next, thank you. thank you, the original motion wasn't to bring back all supplements anyway, it was to the ones that would have overlapping, so that's why they kind of started what they did and they've already separated them out. They would only bring back us the only thing that fit into what this is. Okay. Anybody else on MRS. Bulman's motion? All those in favor, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. Motion carries unanimously. DR. Zeman?Frjts thank you so much. There were 8 categories of supplements that our esteemed cabinet member brought up. Some of those are things like
105academic supplements where we bargain them for what we would pay if we pay it. It isn't a mandatory to pay it, but if you have a baseball coach, you give them $1,500 for example, right, so what we bargained with DR. Holness' discussion earlier is is not the fact that every high school must have a baseball team and must pay a coach, it seems in broward all of our baseball teams have a coach, but there are other options to pay supplements and all they guarantee in the cba, if you have that and you wanted to have it, you're going to pay had much to cover that, so cutting the supplement amount doesn't necessarily realize any savings. So it's just important to realize that. The second is the fold of money is interesting on supplementals because we
106use the word supplemental to talk about referendum, academic and all the other six category of supplementals we heard about and not all of those would generate savings and some of them are statutory requirements. So, I just hope that the item which I love we're doing this and I want to make one small change to see if we can do it better is really for those supplements for which if they are reduced, we would collect savings, is that fair, chair? yes. do we need to be clear about that the way this is written, counsel, because it is written to say direct the superintendent to conduct a review of supplemental payments. Should I, never mind, I'm going make a motion right now to codify what I just said which is those supplement payments for which savings --
107for which potential savings can be razed. Er second. Er fshlgt all those if favor, say aye. aye. any opposes, say no. motion carries. chair, I want to do one more thing that might require more discussion. I don't think these drills work very well the if we say go find us some money, I think they work a lot better when we say this is how much money we want you to find. I would prefer to have a target given that this is your ie em, I defer to you. I like numbers like 15% or so because it's hard enough to find 15% but it's also drk we could dial it back if there's some things on that 15%, many of these lists have not been reviewed for a long time. They have been around and we
108just kind of repeat them. I find them to be too small in general. But I'm happy to hear from staff if they think this is another area. In a year in which we lost 90 million dollars due to decreased enrollment, everything should be on the table, so if there are some supplements with don't need anymore, if some we could trim without having an impact on student outcome, I'm ready to listen to that. Would you be willing to make a motion on a target of what kind of expectations you want to see back for those things where we can realize savings. I purposely didn't put it on there, we don't know, I would be nabbing up a number. I don't want o do that. -- making up a number. This is just a push to here's
109a place where you can start to find it. I would rather not say we couldn't do a second motion after we get the review back to see what's there but I ju didn't have e engh ininformion to put dodollar amountto becausi I don't know. I'm just worried if we don't do a goal, not a minimum but just a goal number that it's going to inhibit the staff from doing the right kind of work, I'll just make that motion. I move that at the end of after the words optimize resource allocation to demonstrate a 15% reduction in those supplementals by MAY 2026. sl a second? -- is there a second? let's say 15% or more. yes, sir, minimum 15%. Is that fair? Thank you. it's been moved by DR. Zeman, seconded by MRS. Leonardi. Any public
110comment? Board member comment? MRS. Alhadeff? yes, I just dish aoem trying o to understand the drekts direction this item is going to. I'm perplexed here. Yes, I get to eliminate duplicate responsibilities and possible savings but I always thought the direction that we wanted to go as a board was to increase the amount of money that's being paid towards supplements. so, these are different kinds of supplements. Ill give an example, there is an a office manager at the school and the office manager gets payroll, they get supplement for doing a payroll but it's in the job description, and I'm not picking on anyone, I'm giving you an easy one. There are a lot of jobs where it is or should be in the job description but it's not, so they're getting a supplement. Those are the
111supplements this item is addressing, so that we're not duplicating -- because we're already paying they to do the job, it's in the job description but they're also getting a supplement so that's very specific to what the supplements for this item are. okay. But I just wanted to also say that, that savings needs to then go back into supplements to increase the supplement, the amount of money for the supplements. or to give employees raises which was the whole point to try to find the extra money. MR. Cervera, you pulled this item. satisfied. Er MADAM Chair? yes. one last thing from me, MADAM Chair. maybe it's so obvious that -- all those in favor of DR. Seezeman's motion, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. And that motion was to find at least 15% or more savings.
112Okay. thank you, MADAM Chair, DR. Hepburn, I would like if you could bring back to the board data on what the five or six larger districts in florida are paying out for supplements. The different categories of supplements so we can have a comparative with broward. we'll gather as much information as available. thank you, all those in favor of item b2 as amended, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. The motion carries unanimously. Okay, the next item -- we have an 11:00. We have five more minutes. Can I have a motion and a second to bring item b3 to the floor. it's been moved by MS. Leonardi, seconded by MS. Thompson. MRS. Bulman? thank you, chair, and again, thank you for bringing this item. I have basically the same concern just with the timeline that implementation
113of AUGUST, I would like to I guess see this planned much earlier than AUGUST 2026 to know what we're doing so we have ample time to discuss it. I think we've also talked about -- it would also go along with how we're streamlining our magnet programs and everything else, so I would just like to the hear from my colleagues or DR. Hepburn when we could reasonably start talking about this. yes, so great question. My interpretation of the item is to implement the plan in AUGUST 2026 at the start of the school year. Both the striden innovation team x the transportation team are already collaborating for this item, as far as anything we do with magnet is going to impact transportation, so we're looking at strategies for cost savings, and all of that. I will lean
114into DR. Wanza and MS. Paul to find out as far as the collaboration between your two decisions, what is a safe timeline to bring the discussion back to the board that's going to impact transportation and also our magnets? Because I know you guys are already collaborating already on this. good morning, I will start and certainly rely on my colleague, MS. Paul, to support any comments that I give. Valerie wanza, chief strat yi and innovation officer. So, a part of our conversation with the board will be coming DECEMBER for the redefining our schools update and we lay out the scenarios that are discussed with the community over the next couple of community meetings. Part of the conversation will be as we look at how proposals MAY come in JANUARY for the board to vote on, we're
115going to have a segment of the presentation around potential cost reductions in transportation due to options that we're going to explore, so I would say in the DECEMBER redefining our schools workshop, we can have a lot of information for board to consider and then I rely on MS. Paul to fill in -- because obviously we start -- we provide the information but then it's her staff that then has to go through all of the route planning and the determining routes and things of that nature, but I can say comfortably we're about 75% there as it relates to magnets and what it would look like but we've been collaborating very much with the team in transportation services. so, one of the the things that we brought to the board in the last transportation workshop was the
116hub concept and the nova complex and trying to reduce the number of buses has go into the nova come -- come mrek, we're ready to move forward on that plan, so the next thing is obviously the magnet programs and we have to make sure that changing the routes tuz not create a situation where students are not getting to school on time and so we -- as I said before, we've been working with strategy and innovation to find out what the outcome will be for rete fining and based on that, that's how we execute. So, we are working very intensely on this and you have some of the information that we provided in the previous presentation on the high dollar routes we run and the number of students on the bus and our object the tif
117-- objective is to retaous the time the students get on the bus and to improve the ability for the student tos get to their classrooms on time. It's a work in progress, I will work in concert as i said before, my team will work in concert with the strategy and innovation office. so, DECEMBER? so, I would say DECEMBER/january. So, we'll have information in DECEMBER, have additional information in JANUARY, but we'll definitely be ready to vote on redefining, probably an additional discussion on transportation also in JANUARY. okay. so you want to make a motion? I would like to move to amend the executive summary to say that the plan will be provided to us no later than JANUARY, 2026. so moved. second. it's been moved by MRS. Bulman, seconded by DR. Zeman. Any public comment on
118the motion? Board member discussion? All those in favor, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. Motion carries minus MR. Cervera who's not on the dais. Okay. MRS. Thompson? MS. Thompson? thank you, chair, I agree with moving the timeline up. I think if it's going to be incorporated into the redefining, it needs to be marked for a longer amount of time because I do think transportation is a more complex issue. And also I have concerns about the hub model because I have seen had in other districts that parents can still have their original pick-up time, there's a different hub to make that happen because one of the cons is that parents are now going to be responsible for picking up, dropping off, if you're in pines and your new hub location is in davie, that could
119be 20, 25 minutes, that could make it nearly impossible for some of the parents to get their kids to this hub and I think there are more efficient ways to execute a hub model that would still be financially responsible and I would like to look at other models that would keep the original bus pick-ups and maybe grow additional hubs. Superintendent sullivan? not today. Chief paul? Do you have anything to add to the discussion? so, we are looking at, you know, alternatives but it defeats the hub concept if we remain the same pick-up location. One of the things -- if that makes any sense. One of things we're looking at is the number of kids we have at each location and doing it in concert with security to make sure that we don't overload a particular
120place or a particular stop and so forth, so we are working through all those scenarios and we have the right people at the table. We'll present that outcome in JANUARY as discussed previously, but we are looking at all of that. I don't think it necessarily defeats the purpose to keep the kids pick-ups the same, so I would like an exploration into different concepts of hub models. Thank you. okay, all those in favor of item b3, say aye. aye. as amended. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously minus MR. Cervera. Okay, we have an 11:00 time certain, so we are going to move to that. Can I have a motion -- chair, before we go to that, can we confirm the guests that we intended to be here have arrived. Good, thank you so much. yes. Can I
121have a motion and a second on item aa1? so moved. second. it's been moved by MRS. Rupert, second by MS. Alhadeff, any public xhen on aa1? no public comment. okay, board member -- I do believe bl weiner MAY want to share some remarks. I thought so. good morning, everyone. Craig and barbara wean e our comments will be less than the three minutes. I just want to make a couple of brief comments. First of all, that the museum really represents the story of humanity, not simply the story of what happened to the jewish people during the holocaust. It was a story of humanity, there are millions of other that is were murdered in addition to the jews while the jews were the number one target, clearly, there were millions of other of various races and minority
122groups that were murdered as well. What's important for us to have happen and for everyone to understand is that while it's very important for our students to leave school one day knowing math and algebra and chemistry and all of these things, we also want them to leave school as better people. We also want them to leave school as more caring people, more compassionate people, more accepting people, more tolerant people. Not so judge mental people. That's what we hope our students will come out of school with one day. You know, roughly 70 million people were murdered during holocaust or died during holocaust, the period of the second part of the second world war. Every one of us sit ining this room, think about this, had those people been allowed to live, how many would they be
123today? Maybe 300 million, 400 million people. If that were the case, what more could we have had in sciences, in technology, what about medical science? Maybe all of us, maybe our parents, maybe our grandparents could have lived to be 120, maybe we could have had cures for cancer by now, so you can see how destructive hate and intolerance and bigotry, racism and anti-semitism, prejudice, how damaging these things are to our society. And let's just hope that this education will continue forever because quite frankly, there is no better tool to teach against hate, against bullying, against prejudice than holocaust education. So, this was our entire mission in making this donation to the broward county school system. We know and we hope that it will continue forever and we're just delighted and honored to be a partner
124with you on this mission. Thank you very much. [Applause]. yes, thank you. [Applause]. thank you, MRS. Bulman? thank you. Thank you to the weaners for this donation. I don't think there is much more that can have an impact and the importance of how people conduct themselves and see the world than having holocaust education, so this is a fantastic opportunity for our students and so I really thank you for that. This will be a generational gift that will keep on giving so we really appreciate that. And I want to thank our legal department for all of the work they've put into this. This is four parties to the contract, lots of moving parts, lots of considerations. I know they worked very hard and diligently on making this a rea alt, so reality, I wanted to commented
125your efforts on this and thank you for this, our students are going to benefit from this for a long time. and I accept the thanks on behalf of mia moore and kathleen jackson would worked tirelessly on this agreement. thank you, yes, and I was going to also thanking the legal department. I know we had a number of calls and also the weaners for the very generous donation. It says in our executive summary and I think it's important, this gives the students an opportunity to interact with authentic artifacts from the holocaust that allows our students to deepen their understanding of the ramifications of prejudice, racism, anti-semitism and stereotyping from a historical perspective while also providing the opportunity for an examination of what it means to be a responsible and respectful person, encounselor mourning acceptance of a
126diversity and a mraour ra s I can society, so we thank you immensely, this is going to be such a great opportunity for our students for a long time to come and thank you to MS. Batista and the team and nova southeastern as well for being part of this great opportunity. MS. MRS. Leonardi? thank you, just very briefly, I want to also thank the craig and margaret barbara weiner holocaust muse >> MS. Siemers: -- museum and foundation dpr this contribution. I think many of us were directly touched by that event which was a mass tragedy on a massive scale that is hard to comprehend. In the classroom, I think many of our students now don't have that direct line to history that we did and so I really can't emphasize enough the importance of holocaust
127education as MR. Weiner talked about in educating our students about these horrific atrocities and what we need to do to prevent such events from happening again, so this is a wonderful opportunity for our students to learn but for us as a society to continue to educate against hatred, thank you. thank you. All those in favor of item aa1 -- MRS. Alhadeff? yes, thank you. Thank you to craig and barbara weiner for this donation, and I do have a question in regards to our students, specifically is it going to be at the high school level that will be able to go on this field trip to the museum? DR. Hepburn? thank you for the question, I'll have DR. Washington give you specifics. good afternoon, it doesn'tbacker currently is for our students in grade 8-12. Er and
128how is it going to be communicated to the schools that they can go on this field trip? we've been facilitating field trips to the museum for ten years or over ten years, so we'll use the same communication channels we have been using. And again, just for more clarification, grades 8-12 in alignment with the florida standards for holocaust education, we'll continue to communicate with all schools the availability of the field trip. and can you -- DR. Hepburn report back to us what schools take this opportunity to make available this opportunity to go to museum? yes, we'll provide some progress monitoring on that. Also while I have the mic., MR. Weiner, MS. Weiner, thanks for the donation. I don't know if any of the board members had the opportunity to visit the muse MS. Siemers: -- museum
129but it is worth the time and effort to go to nova southeastern university and go see the museum. It is intuitive with the ai, I can't describe the screen where you can talk to holocaust survivors also and very intuitive interaction, we'll call them hol -- hollow grams because it's like on a tv screen, I know student ares going to the take advantage it, to to continue to illiberal about the atrocities of humanity is important so we don't repeat it again. Thank you. and I wasn't done. I'm sorry, MS. Alhadeff, my apologies. again, thank you so much for the dough neigh, it means so much to fami and again what drhepbn n said, that history never peatats itself again. Thank you. thank you, DR. Zeman ?Frjts thank you so much, I want to join the chorus.
130It's been nice to get to know craig and barbara and their family. Since you made this donation, I have received multiple phone calls from other people who would like to make donations of a dollar kind and it's one of those things that's contagious, so not only are you donating something that you've put together over a very long time that's going to influence hundreds of thousands of kids going forward, there are other people who have other collections or other people who have other content that they want to share either related to this or not, so you started a little bit of -- you've provided some momentum to the community to start thinking about donating to broward county public schools because we're a good steward of collections and a good steward of your finance and is we
131work hard to make the community a better place but your donation has done that directly and it's done it indirectly in term of other people to see,..Craig and barbara weiner can donate something, so can I, and somebody else will say, if they can do it, so can I. Thank you for your toe nation and your kind sx ns your lifetime dedication to helping other people. Chair, I have one last point. I don't know what your plan is, I would love to take a picture with the weaners after that. that would be my plan, after we vote. All those in favor of item aa1, say aye. in f aye. any oppose, say no. Motion carries ewe nan nows -- unanimously. We will take a short recess so we can take a picture. (Taking photograph). (Meeting in
132recess). thank you and welcome back. Next item is item o3, can I have a motion and a second. so moved. second. ice been moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Alhadeff, we have a public comment on o3. felicia schumann. she's coming. good morning, MADAM Chair, DR. Hepburn and esteemed board members. My name is felicia schumann from coconut creek, florida. i rise today to speak on item 0-3, itb-fy23-176, construction services, minor project. This amendment proposes a significant financial increase from 12 million to over 21 million and it stands the contract term from 36 to 48 months. Before this board votes yes, I respectfully request a a closure review of the following discrepancies and gaps in documentation. Budget expansion without scope breakdown, the amendment adds nearly 9.8 million in just 12 months. That's over 80% of the
133original three year contract yet there is no breakdown of which schools are affected, what types of hvc -- hvac projects are prepared, vendor can't increase without performance metrics. Each vendor cap is being raised from 200 thousand to 350 thousand, that's a 75% increase per vendor totaling 600 thousand across four vendors but there is no public record of how much each vendor has already been paid, what work was completed, what the timelines and quality benchmarks were met, lack of return on investment documentation. There is no measurable outcome listed. No cost benefit analysis, no -- reduces down time or enhances student safety. Procurement prance plainer si, the vendor was selected through a competitive process but the amendment does not include a summary of the original bid criteria or justification for why these four vendors remain the best
134fit. Any evacuation of alternative options or cost comparisons, contract structure clarity, the amendment has 12 months. thank you. thank you for your time and your continued service to our community. MR. Cervera? thank you, chair, in reviewing the proposals, I also have some concerns as to what the scope of the work is concerned, how the money is being expended and by which specific vendors. I also have a question regarding a specific vendor. Blizzard air conditioning company, this is one of the companies that's listed that's seeking renewal and within our information packet, an evaluation was provided. In fact, it's entitled supplier product evaluation form from our procurement department. In reviewing this, I would suggest that blizzard didn't get a great review. In fact, it was -- I would say mediocre at best. Specifically in section 1 of
135the review entitled supplier evaluation, there's five categories that can be chosen, poor, fair, good, very good or excellent. They were given all fairs and when asked how satisfied the district was with this particular supplier remarked somewhat satisfied which is the second lowest ranking you can get on that particular category and evaluation sheet. If this evaluation was given to me as a professional, I probably would not expect to have a job going forward. I'm wondering what the issue is with blizzard and in light of this, what I would call a poor review is the district finding it necessary to engaming with these folks. DR. Fulton? MS. Andreu? exec tier direct the tor of procurement logistic operations. A lot was stated, so I'll try to summarize the most salient points. Board member cervera, although you MAY have
136received or assumed -- seen that particular review, you will see of the awarded vendors, we're primarily using two and the one you mentioned has not received purchase orders or received payment for these particular services. So, we did not feel that it was necessary to terminate their contract, however, they're not being utilized. Additionally, I just wanted to comment on the spending. So, this amendment is not asking for additional spend authority today as well. I want to go back for a second. Perhaps you have solved my concern, but in looking at the proposed amendments that were provided to this board, there is a first amendment to the agreement for blizzard air conditioning company. Is it your position that we are in fact not renewing with blizzard? no, sir. We are renewing, however we have not been utilizing
137their services, so we still have -- this is a pool of vendors for -- to be specific in the pool, and then they are utilized based on need and, again, services in the past, experiences in the past, so we quote lots of times I don't see MR. Dorsett here right now. Sometimes a quote will be asked for all four of the vendors and then we utilize the quote that is most cost effective and so as you see the only two of the four have received payments, although we are recommending all four be renewed, only two of the four are receiving payments. Additionally, two are also certified with the edoc office and two said if we did not renew, they would probably if we went out with a new bid, they would probably increase their prices
138by around 5% so, we're signing a contract to renew with them but we're not actually utilizing them? we can, we'll have the ability to utilize them if we so need and so choose. but if they're a sub par company to be generous based op this review, why would we want to opt to renew with them in the first place? That's the question, I'm looking at these e value -- evaluations, they basically got a 2 out of 5. If you were to be evaluated as a professional or I were to be evaluated, we probably wouldn't be striving for 2's. I understand we MAY not have utilized them a lot in the past, in my mind, if you have a company that's getting 2's out of 5's, we're not utilizing them anyway, why are we getting through
139the with this contract, why don't we get somebody who's good at what they do in the h >> hearing -- hvac or ac work and get these blizzards out of here that are not performing well, why are we continuing to deal with them? That's maybe a rhetorical question, but in my mind, you know, if I had a large commercial property that was being serviced by an hvac company, I wouldn't want the company that was scoring a 2 out of a 5, that's just me. these are subjective so I don't feel comfortable speaking poorly about the vendor. Again, we have the ability the use them if we so choose and so need. Er we already spoke poor about them because who filled out the evaluation? it was one employee. who's speaking on behalf of the district,
140right. MADAM Chair, I would like to propose a moex. I mover that we bifurcate or -- let me think here. I would move that we bifurcate or remove blizzard from the agenda item, vote on the remaining two. I would like some further information from the superintendent or procurement as to why they think we should continue any business moving forward with blizzard. there is a point of order, I would like to ask our general counsel if that is something legally our school board can do. MS. Batista? yes, the board can remove one of the vendors from the proposalal. Which I I bebelieve that's th motion, right? to remove blizzard from o3. I don't want to hold up the voting on that contract because I realize there's other vendors, I'm concerned about this particular one. any public
141comment on the motion. second fm board member comment, DR. Zeman? thank you so much, chair, the reason I asked that question is board members better think really hard about knowing more than our procurement department and getting involved in the decisions that they make. It is a perilous step for this board to turn to the professionals who do this for a livening and who are obligated to the oath of their job to do hinges that are fair, honest and & n the best interest of the school board. To remove somebody because of a single evaluation is epitome of what a a school board should not be doing. I get that somebody, one person if I heard correctly, right, MR. Cervera, one person filled out this form? are you asking me? you made the motion. You heard
142the same thing I heard, they said one person filled out this evaluation, and I'm telling you, what role does the school board have in getting involved in the way procurement selects people for contract awards. I could see if you wanted to postpone this whole item for a month and do some homework and bring it back and maybe do more individual assessments of these people, more over, this is one of four vendors that MAY or MAY not be used. This is someone on the list, if they're not qualified for an individual job they're going to bid on, they're not going to be selected so I'm forced here as a board of choosing between the staff who did a work on assessing this to continue it I think for one more year and to have additional flexibility
143to get the work on that we pound on them about and I'm going to vote on the side of the staff, I would consider postponement on any item like this if we want to know more but I would tread lightly as an elected official of getting involved in the procurement intricacies of the organizations to which we serve. Thank you. any other board comments? MR. Cervera? I want to make sure my motion was clear. My request was to remove blizzard from the vote today in order for the staff to provide additional information as to why they think they were a viable candidate for the -- serve this community, MADAM General counsel, as a stringing board member, do I have the ability to ask or at least make a motion that they be removed for purposes of
144today's vote to have my staff do further inquiry and find out if in fact blizzard is a viable xaep in light of this evaluation, and I don't care how many filled it out, it was presented to me on behalf of the district and it's not a good evaluation and I don't want to do business with people bho give poor evaluations, I think we should strive higher than that. MADAM General counsel, do I have the ability like an item like this via motion be removed so I can gain further information from my procurement department as to wlorn we should renew with them? MADAM Chair? MS. Batista? yes, you do. thank you for the clarification, and again, the motion is to remove them for purposes of voting today so we can can go forward with the other
145vendors and instructs staff to give further information, further details, further information about blizzard so this board can make a decision later on as to whether or not it wants to engage them. MADAM Chair? DR. Holness? thank you. So, DR. Fulton, I would like to get some answers. Regarding the process, there are four vendors. were there many more than four and four vendors were narrowed town to where we are? I'll have MS. Andreu come up and speak to that process. through the chair, this is a renewal, this went out I believe three years ago, so I would have to go back and look into how many applied original when the original itb was submitted. Frj I would assume the companies chosen would be considered the top four companies from those who applied? that is correct. okay.
146And blizzard would be one of those four as far as scoring in the top? that is correct. is there a reason we have chosen four as opposed to 10, 20, 8, 6? again, I would have to go back to 2022 and see the original specifications and see if there were only four and the group decided -- the evaluation group decided to go with all four because all four met the criteria, that would be my assumption but I don't want the make an assumption without looking at the record from 2022. so, blizzard could not have been here if they did not meet the criteria established, correct? correct. and MS. Andreu, we're using two out of the four companies, but we could have emerging work that we could utilize more than 2, correct? that is correct. and
147what challenge would the district face if in fact we're singing two and we only have a limited pool to choose from, let's say we only had two. What are some of the potential challenges a district will have if we start to narrow down the list of available vendors for a particular type of work? again, we could see price increases because there would be less competition in the event that ppo had a lot of work. We might not be able to meet all of the needs of the schools in the district offices. and could it also be possible that even companies that we're utilizing could run into different concerns that we MAY no longer can use them, that we have to now rely on those we're not using? absolutely. We are seeing companies that are having
148to close their doors because of these economic times we're in. so, it is in our best interest then to -- even though we're not using particular vendors and they're within our accepted pool or approved pool, that they're there for all of the things that could happen to which we MAY need to utilize them without disrupting our district? absolutely. That is why the superintendent is recommending this. okay. So, DR. Zeman, I concur. I think we have to be careful with how we are stepping into certain roles, legally or not, because it sets a precedent to which we MAY not want to venture into. So I am going to support what's here because I think it's important to have adequate number of vendors to choose from even if we're not currently using them and I trust that
149the department has done their due diligence to bring forth these vendors. Thank you. thank you. MRS. Rupert? yes, thank you, MR. Cervera asked the questions I was going to, so I support the motion, so thank you. thank you. All those in favor of the motion, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. no. can we do a roll call. roll call on the motion to remove the vendor, board member bulman? no. cervera? yes. hixon? no. holness? I'm sorry, no. leonardi? no. rupert? yes. thompson? yes. zeman? no. alhadeff? yes. motion fails 5-4. okay, back to the original item, MRS. Alhadeff? yes, so my question is in regards to the ac companies, how are they documenting the change of the filters at the schools and are they using an ipad to go to the schools to document that
150information and what program are they using? DR. Fulton? thank you, MS. Paul? so, good afternoon, everyone. Our work order system maximo is the way we document all of our work orders and the work that we do on campuses. We do have some ipads but as you know we're doing a reboot of maximo, so yes, we will have ipads in the field. I don't know the exact number we have right now. If MR. Dorsett is in the audience, we can probably speak to that in more detail. and then my question regarding the filters, so would we be able to look at a specific school, like heron heights elementary school and see for the last three years how often their ac filters have been changed? to my knowledge, yes, we do have that documentation. We do a
151pretty good job of changing filters on a routine basis, so all of that information is archived many maximo. perfect, I will get a board member follow-up then. all those in favor of item o3, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no no. motion carries with one -- two dissenting votes. Next item is o4, can can I have a motion and a second? second. Er it's been moved by DR. Zeman, seconded by MS. Leonardi, no public comment. MRS. Alhadeff? thank you, so in regards to this item and having some conversations with schools, it does seem to be that the schools are using the navigate 360 software and the rethink ed shoft ware and I understand there is -- it seems like different needs, even though they're staining that this is duplicative, however, I think that there is
152a need for both of them and so I would like to see -- I wouldn't like to see the navigate 360 terminated, I think that we should keep both of them, it's a low amount of money and if there is more research done at the school level to say one is not really even being used, then come back to the board with data and information to support that but at this point in time, I do see a need for both of these and in the navigate specific in regards to behavior management and so in some of our schools that they are using this software with some of our most needed students that need to work through the program, so I would be voting this down, thank you. DR. Zeman? thanks, chair, thanks, MS. Alhadeff. You
153know, 40 thousand people used this last year, it's not a trivial -- I'm all about the data. So, you know, I believe that we're in a financial situation where we have to look everywhere to find duplication. What I have learned through this process is the staff mas er mas nations is very challenging, do we have duplication or not, and then you have specific situation, software a against software b, I love that the staff superintendent looked hard as students, at teachers and administrators, I think we need to figure out a better way to do this in the future, we have to be very mindful about what we can do to MR. Cervera's point, there are tremendous opportunities to have vendors come in, share new capabilities, what they're developing next and like that, I just think we
154have some homework on the board or maybe we have to ask DR. Hepburn to come back and talk more about the process so that the evidence is presented in a very clear fashion for us for which we can make a decision these software support different people, one is behavioral model ask one is a class I can curriculum model. I love what the staff did given the processes we have not established yet, but I think, chair, we need to think hard at a future workshop about if what we're going to do is to compete today's transportation system against a different one, if we're going to compete hvac endorses against OTHERser and make down selects in order to save money, what is the evidence the board needs to make sure those decisions are what's really good for
155the community. In this case, there is some overlap between these software tools but not perfect x the staff was trying to do what DR. Hepburn has pressed them to do which is save money for the district. What's highlighted for me, we need to look algt bit -- chair, are you familiar with the federal a76 process? I am not. ice the way the federal government competes vendors against vendors after you have awarded contracts and you can have a government team, several endorses, several other governments all come in and present like, hey, this is how I can deliver this service and it's a way of making it really clear to the public and real to a governing board like us that everybody had a chance to propose from some point going forward. This one was very challenging,
156this was hard, we're in the middle of two contracts, staff is trying to do the right thing. I'm interested in learning more from my colleague abwhat they think about it but in the end, chair, I think if we can come up with an equivalent in broward county of the f e federal a76 so we get in the habit of uning these difficult decisions, we'll be doing the community and this board a big favor. It's only in the interest of fairness that the government and vendors, multiple, can get together and make present taigas about how they would skin the cat. In that, we can find out who has the greatest capabilities at the best price. Thank you, chair. okay. Thank you, anybody else, DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair. DR. Hepburn, this item is brought to
157us based on duplicity, it's been challenged to some degree that navigate 360 MAY be performing some task that MAY not necessarily overlap with rethink, so can you expound on this so I can better understand so I can make a better informed decision in my voting. Er DR. Hepburn? I'm going the ask DR. Washington to come up. I also want to ask general counsel, we're reck ming termination of an agreement, what can and cannot be discussed here because it's a termination. not only is it a termination but it's a termination from no cause, so as long as the comments that are made are not related to the company itself or the program as far as how well it did or how it didn't do well or what -- whatnot, I think they're appropriate. I believe that
158when we looked at this contract from a legal perspective, the representation that was made was that the funds were not available to continue with the program. So, you know, that there MAY be other -- like you said, duplicate services or vendor or software that would be able to do what this service is doing. so, MADAM Chair, DR. Hepburn, if I MAY, so MS. Batista, the question being presented is not to negate the -- I guess the efficiency or the function of this company, but simply to question the duplicity of the functions of it. So, I would imagine it falls within the same no clause because we're not criticizing the company in any way, we're just determining if those functions are already being done through other programs. And so I as a board member need o
159-- to fully understand what is the duplicity here and the overlap, then what is it that navigate 360 is doing that we are not capable of doing through rethink or any other program. So, I can be sure I'm supporting it or not supporting it based on information. go ahead, DR. Washington? good afternoon, again, so the programs are substantial similar in the topics they discuss, if a student were to get in trouble and with assigned a lesson through suite 360, for mistreatment of peers, a lesson they would likely be sipped would be respecting self and others, those same types of topics are available through rethink. And so that is the life skills and wellness topics that are available through rethink ed address the behaviors that we assign suite 360 lessons to teach the students when they
160do something wrong. okay, so DR. Hepburn, I hear that part in terms of what the overlap is. So, what is available for navigate 360 that is not available through rethink. That's what I'm interested to hear. go ahead, DR. Washington. so, the programs operate in different ways. I wouldn't say there's something that's not available. They just operate in different ways. So, suite 360 is more of a restorative justice curriculum where they present the topic of respecting self and others for example, and then they work through a process where they ask the student to then go back and right their wrong, they go back and apoll yiez and -- ologize d d admit whatathey've dodone wrwrg g in at n n th restorate justice process, thatat is not ununique in curriculum, that is in classic behavioral management
161you would do regardless of whether that's imbedded in a lesson, we looked at it from a content perspective to see what was being duplicated because we can do the restorative justice or restorative practices piece of it regardless of what program is used. okay, so DR. Washington, you say if this board should vote to terminate navigate 360, that rethink ed would achieve to a great degree, hopefully 100%, the intent of what that program was meant to do through rethink ed? I am confident that rethink ed using the lessons and the topics that are available that we e can achieve the same results. Er my question, DR. Hepburn, did we have rethink ed before we had navigate 360? DR. Washington, if you guys are aware, I'm not sure. if I remember right, I was doing my research
162on both, I think they came in both around the same time, that was around the covid school closures, ri think came in for the purposes of mental health instruction, the suite 360 came in for the behavior modification management portion of it, I believe they came in around the same time. I'm sorry, since they came in at the same time, at that time websinger did not realize the dupe police daosh duplicity of these programs when we decided to get them? DR. Washing ton, you can be frank. so, neither DR. Schapiro or I were in our positions during that time, so decisions were made by administrator that is are no longer with the district, so I don't know what was presented at that time to know whether they were -- they realized that there was duplicity in
163them. At time they served two different purposes, in my time with the division last year, we really looked at the alignment of the programs we were putting in front of schools and that is where we really dove deep as a division and recognized where things were duplicative. MADAM Chair, thank you. thank you, MS. Thompson? thank you, chair, I would like to say we keep asking staff to come back with redundancies and cost saving measures and this is one of them, then it seems to me there's typically push-back about it and similar to what DR. Zeman said about the hvac company or procurement process, I think we need to trust our staff on this judgment. Thank you. thank you. I was going to say something similar. Every time there's -- we go away from a software,
164there's a school or a number of schools or a a teacher that reaches out and I appreciate that because you get not complaisant, you get used to the software and you like what you like but we have asked for the staff to find where there are duplicates and to pick the one that's best for the district, so I do appreciate you brought this forward, thank you. DR. Zeman? chair, I just want to ask the general counsel, from what you have heard today in this discussion, are you confident that this is a legal contract that's being cancelled for no cause? yes, from what I have heard, it sounds like it would be a termination without cause under the contract. thank you. MR. Cervera? a quick follow-up to that, to general counsel, this proposed termination, does it
165expose us as a district to any specific liability many the event we vote now to terminate this or are we term mating within the bounds of what the agreement allows for? the board is terminating within the bounds of the agreement. perfect, thank you. okay. All those in favor of item 04, say aye? aye. any opposed, say no. alhadeff, no. and I believe DR. Zeman was a no. A motion carries with two dissenting votes. Okay, we have a noon special time certain, can I have a motion and a second on item cc 2? so moved. it's been moved by MS. Leonardi, seconded by MRS. Rupert. Any public comment on cc 2? yes, we have one registered speaker, aaron goal. . Inger did you skip the part where we validate the double letter pull items? I haven't,
166I'll go back to that, we just had time certain. I need to the add one agenda item back, for the record. can I tell you now? yes. oo3. I added that already. I'm in good company. good afternoon, I am here to speak in support of this item. It has been incredible to watch the community come together in support of the sports academy. The intention has always been that it would be across the feeder pattern at sunrise and fort lauderdale high. What's really special, the enthusiasm does transcend that whole feeder pattern. Beyond that, the neighborhoods around these schools are very, very excited and invested in this. So, these are exactly the kinds of programs, these innovative community driven programers -- programs that will attract students and families and be sulbacker successful. I think it only makes
167sense these matching funds benefit the entire feeder pattern to ensure this program can and will be successful. And so I ask that the board approve this today so that we can get going on this work and have this incredible program ready to go by next school year. Thank you. thank you. Any other public comments? Okay, MRS. Leonardi? thank you. I'm sorry gosling ahead, DR. Lynch-walsh. briefly, think about if enrollment surges at bennett because bennett is the place that was losing students because half of the campus needs to be replaced. Half the campus, so we are backing into long range planning which is the complete opposite of how this should be getting done, we keep piecemeal, if bennett's enrollment surges, that will be more money that is not part of the long range plan because you
168don't have one of those. thank you, MRS. Leonardi? thank you, and I want to thank the superintendent and staff for coming back to us with the specific scope of work as promised. I think it's a pretty straightforward ask to spread the money around the entire feeder pattern to support the sports academy that we agreed on. I just am very excited to see this happen and I appreciate the urgency with which this needs to happen, thank you. thank you, DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair. Once again, I thank the city of fort lauderdale for working in the concerted manner with the school board, school district. And I know we had voted on the 1.7 million for sunrise middle school and we're going to -- this item is o spread -- to spread this across ben n
169elt and ford lauderdale high. Should we move forward with item, the 1.7 million dollars that will spread across bennett and fort lauderdale, dead we assess the needs at bennett and fort lauderdale and did we determine how this money will be divided? I know MR. Sullivan or MR. Hill pass out a document na outlined the scope in a total amount. okay, I just saw it here. Alright, so yeah, I am supportive of this item and I appreciate again the gesture of the city of fort lauderdale and hopefully other cities will want to come along. thank you. MR. Cervera? thank you, chair, when this was initially brought in front of the board some months ago at this time, I remember a large contingent of folks coming in, students, parents, coaches all came in encouraging their support for
170the 1.7 million that was going to match what the city of fort lauderdale had promised them on a bond project from years and years ago that they apparently hadn't gotten off the ground yet. My only concern and for sake of transparency, and I raised the last time this item was brought before this board, those kids that came in and spoke to us and were trying to rally the troops so to speak made a lot of comments about items they thought they were going to get. In the locker room, a gym replacement and I remember thinking to myself, and I'm pretty sure I mentioned this on the record that the items that a lo of these kids and a lot of these speakers were speaking about were not actually listed on the "to do list" that
171was provided to us in the information package. As I look here as what is being provided to sunrise middle school which was in fairness the bulk of the kids who came and spoke were from sunrise, these items once again do not fully reflect a lot of the things that these kids thought they were getting. In addition, we are now taking that 1.7 million dollars and we're divvying up against two other schools, bennett elementary school and fort lauderdale high school. So, I think it's important for everybody in the community to know that when the initial ask was made for the 1.7 for the school, I think a lot of people were under the impression it was all going to sunrise and that they were getting certain things that apparently now they're not getting and not only
172are they not getting the ie steps they had talked about and brought up when they came to podium, there are additional schools that are going to be using portions of the 1.7 million dollars. So, that being said, I'm not suggesting at this point since the money has already been voted on, I'm not suggesting theses a bad thing that there's going to be softball fields reconditioned at ford lauderdale high school or there's going to be synthetic turf at wen n et elementary school or that posts are going to be put up in the field, I think it's important that the public be made aware of some comments that were made and a lot of things that people were under the impression of when this was proposed that were not being delivered by the 1.7. Thank you.
173thank you, DR. Zeman? thank you so much, chair, thank you for everybody that's worked on this. You know, this item originally brought by MS. Leonardi is a real model for broward county and I pray that bennett elementary school has a surge in enrollment and we have to build them a new classroom. Ipg that's exactly what we're wanting but I also want to take a mip nut and thank DR. Hepburn for the way the analysis was done here, the identification of an opportunity to dramatically improve a program, DR. Hepburn, across three schools that it reflects the values of the people that live in the boundary area, this is more than just closing schools, it's about repurposing, this is an opportunity to do something well, point number one. Point number two is it's ironic in a way
174because today is 300 days from AUGUST 10 of 2026 and so I want to remind everybody that can hear my voice that that is a heroic deadline and our money runs out on AUGUST 10 on 2026, so we have 300 days left to build two synthetic turf fields, the new floor at sunrise, I know aecom is the program manager, owner esr ep for fort lauderdale parks and rec and our school board. There's a city commissioner named john herps, we go over this construction plan to make sure we're staying on target to I'm committed we're going to pull this off in 300 days but I want the community to know we need your support. There's going to be construction equipment there, lay downs and inconveniences on the tennis courses and things like that but we need
175to get things done like this. If we're going to repurpose some schools to make them better and draw people back, bennett is a dramatically underenrolled school, they ought to be full. Bennett used to be a full school with neighborhood kids going there and very highly rated. Sunrise used to be a packed school and it still has 300 or 400 seats left over, I'm anxious it has a dregt effect, i want to remind everybody days is not a long time o dwet all of this stuff done and I'm anxious to get progress at those monthly meetings when we hold them. Thank you, chair. thank you, MRS. Leonardi? thank you, and I wanted to share the list and I hope that this list can be shared publicly, I don't know if on the agenda, but I wanted
176to correct the narrative with some facts and thep share what's on this list, so for sunrise middle school, we have a knee wall, replacement for flooring, an indoor basketball court which is something the community asked for, a chilled watt r fountain which was on the original list or part of the original discussion several weeks or months ago, when we had -- when the item first came before us, paving, sod, trees and landscaping, and a chilled water fountain additionally. For bennett elementary, a synthetic turf soccer field, rebound boards and corner posses, storage facility and a lit pavilion, all necessary things to support a sports academy. And for fort lauderdale high school, softball field, reconditioned and restoration fixed, pedestrian gates to baseball and football fields. My colleague MAY remember that many of the community members who came
177out to speak when the item was originally before us was not just from sunrise middle school, they were from bennett and sunrise, and today we heard from a representative from sunrise high school -- from sunrise middle school who is an active parent and active community member at sunrise advocating for this to be spread among three schools. DR. Hepburn, was this item placed on a public agenda that was noticed publicly? yes. okay, thank you. I imagine if you ask MS. Goal or MS. Verdic bho's in the audience, that the members would came out to speak that they are aware that this is on the swren da, I believe they would say yes. Many people tid not show up today because they felt this is a no-brainer, we would spread the wealth among three schools and I
178think if we go back to the discussion that happened when the item was originally before us, the community members who came and spoke, they didn't come and speak saying this is what's going to happen for our school, they were informing us of the needs of their schools which happens almost every school board meeting that we have, we hear from people who talk about the needs of their schools, whether they're facilities, curriculum, programming, staffing, that's how this works. We have public meetings, people come tell us what we need and we try to deliver what we can. I'm grateful for the work staff has done and I'm grateful to my colleagues who have supported this and I'm looking forward to seeing this come to fruition next year. Fwen, if we -- again, if we think about why
179we're here, we're here to do good things for kids and this is good for kids and I'm excited about this. Thank you. thank you. MR. Cervera? thank you, chair. At this point, as I've stated earlier, the money has been a allocated, it's been apportioned and from what I'm seeing on this list, these are good things. I want kids to have synthetic turf fields, I want kids to have softball fields reconditioning and being brought up to speed. I certainly want gates around the baseball diamond and football fields for security and safety reasons. I'm not opposed to any of those. What concerned me and it was august 19, 2025, I just checked the packet. What concerned me is when you have members of the community who one by one come and speak to this board and they
180are under the impression for example, and I remember this because I remember thinking in my head that this is a repeat request that we're getting, a repeat statement we're getting regarding the locker rooms and how bad the locker rooms were and I remember listening to these kids thinking that if they're here today advocating for the student locker room, someone is telling them they're get ago new locker room, a new locker room was not in the cards for this 1.7 million dollars so, my only concern is that we as a board are managing expectations properly and when we have people and constituents and parents and teachers come out and speak their mind which I always encourage them to do in all aspects of everything, I want them to be on the same level playing field, no
181pun intended, as we are, right. I don't want them to think that if the board votes yes for this 1.7 million dollars, they're getting this new locker room that I heard multiple kids talk about, so that is my concern. You can't have a carrot dangling in front of somebody on a board vote for somebody when that was never a suggestion, for the record, i'm goipg to support this and I'm glad these things are getting camber going to get the replacements and they're going to get the additions they need, but I would encourage this board to exercise the utmost transparency as we all should as sitting board members when folks of community come in and had they have expectations for abc and we're really only going to deliver def. That's my only concern, but I am
182supporting the motion, MADAM Chair. thank you. All those in favor of item cc 2, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. Motion carries unanimously. Next item is dd1, can I have a motion and a second? so moved. it's been moved by DR. Zeman, seconded by MS. Rupert, any public comment on dd1? MR. Hill? yes, we have one public speaker, can kimberlee mulhorn. I don't see her in the audience anymore. Alright, it looks like I'm the only one that pulled it. And I appreciate the response to DR. Zeman's question, so itit did address some of the ncerns t I justwant poinout that 52% of 152 applicants of 100 applicable samples where the final parent notification was not documented is just not acceptable. 52%, the parent didn't receive any kind of notification for there being a threat
183assessment with their student and that -- I know that we're working on it and there were some things and it does say it's an improvement from quarter 1 and quarter 2 report, with you 52% is still not acceptable, so I just wanted to say that out loud, there's a couple of them, also 76%, when the date -- when a copy of the final ssmp was provided to the student of concerns a parent and guardian was not document ined the system. The documentation to the parents is really important, so the -- I know they are improve and had I know we switched to a system and we're talking about something backwards but these are bingeing numbers for something that seems easy enough to be able to do, you're sending documentation to a parent to let them
184know something is going on. Then the other thing which isn't a bingeing number but to me is a huge problem is that although only 5 of 95 samples where they were supposed to check their possessions wasn't witching done, five is still too many. If they're supposed to be checking someone's possessions, there's a reason for that, and so that should be zero, there should never be a time when someone has been identified that their possessions need to be checked on a daily basis, that that's not happening, and you only know if it's happening if it' documented, so those are just things that really jumped o out to me that I had a huge issue and then the last one, 65%, the documentation was not maintained for all actions identified, so again, I know this is documentation
185but how do we know that they're following through if it's not documented and I know that -- I hope when we see the next audit for the threat management, I think we changed the name now, threat assessment management, that we don't see numbers like this again because it's just -- it's frustrating and we are the model, right, for the state, we're supposed to be the model and these are things to me that are not acceptable. So I wanted to say that out loud. MRS. Alhadeff? thank you. And I concur with you, MS. Hixon. It only takes one weapon, one gun to get into our schools. Every bag that is supposed to be checked with a safety plan needs to be checked. There is no room for error at all. So, my next question is to
186MR. Rhodes in regards to our charter schools and our auditing of their behavioral threat management. Can you speak to that and what is being done to audit our charter schools. I am still following up on the original request to find out how that got put into that direction. I don't have abanswer that I feel confident that it's sufficient as of yet but I'll follow up with you hopefully by the time we have our next meeting. okay, so to my colleagues, this is a big issue and we need to stay on this with MR. Rhodes to make sure that our charter schools are being audited for their behavioral threat management. We are responsible for the safety at the charter schools. Even though they have their own board and even we don't dictate specifically what safety measures
187they implement in their charter schools but we are responsible, so we need to make sure that those charter schools are being audited. thank you, all those in favor of -- I'm sorry, DR. Zeman. I'm sorry, but this is like a look it up and answer question. Are we auditing charter schools or not? no. chair, are we responsible for auditing charter schools? DR. Hepburn? from my understanding, yes, we're responsible for safety and security of their campuses too. anybody on this board okay with not ensuring the security and safety of 50 thousand student that is go to our charter schools? Okay, can we do something to fix that like now? MR. Rhodes? yeah, we know that each of these charter schools have their own independent boards and they have their own independent teams and they report the
188information that they receive and that they uncover back to our district and to the staff in our district and if there's anything in that that's supposed to rise to the level we would need to look at, we've been under the working model that that information will be brought to us and that we would then undertake that responsibility. What I don't understand and this goes to the fact that this program started prior to me being employed back here at the district is how we got here. that's a conversation that I had with MS. Alhadeff the other day. I've been wringing to try to retrace those steps on how we landed here. When I have that information in 100% verifiable, that's when I intend to bring that information forward. In the meanwhile, there is a behavioral threat
189management team at each of these charter schools and that they have the responsible to report that information back to the district. so, chair, we do a lot of things with charter schools, we do professional development, professional learning, we have school psychologists, we have therapy ists, we have just -- they're not independent organizations necessarily, we have a lot of overlap between them. If our responsibility is to report to any external authority or to conduct an audit, I would like to get started on that now. I mean, I'm interested in the story about how we got here kind of, not really, what I'm interested is are we doing the job that we're legally required to do. DR. Wanza, do we get the threat assessment information from the charter schools since charter is under you? so, chief gregory
190will have to answer that. okay, chief gregory? yeah, good go ahead chief, or even DR. Lozano. good afternoon, michael gregory, chief safety security officer. We do provide that oversight for the school based threat management teams, we provide the same services and oversight that we do for the regular district based schools you might say, there's no gap there as far as the information received, the threats that are assessed, the interventions, the ssmp's, the same processes we do for district based schools are curved for the charter schools, it's a matter of working out logistics for them to be audited by the district's audit office. That's the only part that needs to be worked out. thank you so much, chief. I think, chair f we have ap obligation to oversee them, here's the problem we have with our
191community. We have that same obligation for our public schools, traditional public schools and we audit them. We have the same responsibility for charter schools, we don't audit them. Really? Like the safety and security of those 50 thousand students that are resident esof broward county are less important? i think this needs to be fixed. MR. Rhodes, what hinders your department from at the same time that you're auditing the district, doing the charter at the same time? if you'll recall, when we were having the discussions about the scope of the oig, the oig had carved out charter schools from their investigative responsibilities or authority as well and that's because charter schools all each pay for their own investigations or in this case audits and that part has not been flushed out between the district and the charter
192schools to a point from me at least at this point today to have an understanding of how that would look and work and if we were to engage to do an audit in a charter school, would we first engagebacker gauge for them to pay, what amount would they pay televising's no budget for the district for audits to be done at charter schools. If we want to have that conversation, I think we should have a workshop on that as soon as possible so to DR. Zeman's point, get to this answer now and figure out what it is we're going to go with that. MRS. Alhadeff?Frjts i move to direct MR. Rhodes to bring back a a plan to audit the charter schools. second. for the behavioral threat management. second. any public comment on the motion? DR.
193Natalie lynch-walsh, plantation, florida, as long as the plan would be he would tell you how much it would potentially cost which is outside of his control seeing as he just said there's no budget for it. That would seem reasonable. I didn't realize that charter schools wouldn't get budgeted. I mean, audited, but they have had their hands full just with regular schools in case you hadn't noticed with these behavioral threat. Ever since sm, you voted to to bring it in house which wh the former chief auditor has been here, that's been a huge workload in itself, support that so long as it's understood that the cossets are not -- and it should not take away from things he's already doing either, so that would be additional, additional budget to the audit department. Thank you. any board
194member -- I would add to that -- can we give it a deadline date, at the next workshop or at a workshop -- [Inaudible] I would like to see it be brought forward at the next school board meeting. okay. which is -- NOVEMBER 12. so you want to add that to your -- yup. okay. Any discussion, MS. Thompson? I just think it deserves to be at a workshop so the board can talk about it since that's what we've been talking about, those meetings are for us to have comments and since this is the first time we're evaluating it, I think the more appropriate space is a workshop, but it also seems to be more complicated than just, okay, we're going to go audit them. It seems like the charter schools according to what MR. Rhodes'
195answer have to agree to it, they MAY be having separate audits happening under their purview. I think this is a much more complication and I'm not comfortable for it to come to a voting meeting, it should come to a workshop. I would like to make a substitute motion to just add to a workshop instead of a school board meeting. second. okay. Any comment on the -- yes, DR. Natalie lynch-walsh, plantation, florida, that is an excellent idea because you are going to have a ton to talk about and that way it won't lengthen a regular meeting. It should absolutely come to a workshop first. Er MS. Thompson, did you want to give it a deadline, like a date? just the next workshop is fine which I think is the 4th. so, the next workshop is next
196week, I believe we have hours of schedule for that workshop, or NOVEMBER 4, right now we have 6 hours scheduled. I'm fine with NOVEMBER 4. okay. MRS. Alhadeff?Frjts I would just suggest to MR. Rhodes that you get all these questions answered before the workshop and work out all the logistics with the charter schools on how to execute this. I do believe that we need to have a accepts -- sense of urgency to have the charter schools audited for their behavioral threat management. I'm okay with workshopping it, after that, let's move on it and move forward. okay, MRS. Leonardi? that was going to be my question, is this something we will then have to vote on? Okay. I guess if it has money attached to it. they would have to change the audit plan. you could
197potentially bring it to the NOVEMBER meeting after the workshop if the board wanted to. perfect, okay. Anybody else, all those in favor of MS. Thompson's substitute motion, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. So, I think that was it. All those if favor of item dd1 as amended, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. Motion carries minus MR. Cervera. The nester item is dd2, can I have a motion and a second? it's been moved by MRS. Hall deaf, seconded by DR. Zeman. Any public comment? felicia schumann. good afternoon again. MADAM Chair, DR. Hepburn and esteemed board leaders, I am speaking on dd2, rfp-fy22-013, external independent financial auditing services additional spending authority. They already contracted them to provide independent auditing service which are required by florida statute 218-39 to ensure transparency,
198accountability and compliance. In NOVEMBER, 2024, [Inaudible] Llp acquired certain assets and personals from msl meaning msl could no longer perform the audits to maintain continuity. The contract was transferred to forbes under the same term s and obligations. When the board approved this transfer in SEPTEMBER 2025, a paperwork error added an in addition mall 250 thousand dollars needed for the final year of audit services fy2026, importantly the forbes marzars can't complete the audit, it was bunted within the chief auditor's assistant allocation so new funding is required. Spending authority can ensure the district continues to receive these audit services without interruption, maintain appliance with state law and uphold accountability and transparency in our financial operations flt the funds would go directly to forbes, in short, this action corrects the previous oversight and ensures that district remain fully
199compliant, transparent and financially responsible. I strongly recommend approval of this additional 250 thousand dollars, thank you. thank you, DR. Zeman ?Frjts thank thank you so much, chair. This item fundamentally makes great sense and we need to make sure we have the funding. My concern with this, chair, though is that we have a roll-over that happens with the office of chief auditor and there's an opportunity to kind of align those funds that go from one year to the next. Remember when we had the roll of over for mental health. We put our foot down and said let's not do that. I would like to ask the superintendent what is your view on rolling over money from one year to the next. DR. Hepburn? typically we don't roll over, we absorb costs but at the will of
200the board, we can accommodate. from a fiscal spending per spekt I ever when the state gives you money and you tell them you need more, you need to educate the kids and provide a safety and security and it and all that, if they don't spen the money to give you, it's hard for you to say you want another bond or see the if they work with us to lobby the federal government to give us more money, rolling over money is a defactor -- defact -- de facto idea of getting money, so I think you and I agree to that. The office of the chief auditor well before the current chief auditor got into the habit of rolling funds over. Do you know how much money the chief auditor's office rolled over from 24-25 to this
201year, 25-26? DR. Hepburn? a question for MR. Rhodes. I done have the numbers in front of me. I had the documentation yesterday in the cabinet meeting, I apologize for not bringing that today, but there's more to that, if you would be happy to hear that, I would be happy to share that with you. The contract that we're talking about on item dd2 is a contract that was approved for the first three years with two one-year renewals, each year had a fixed amount of 250 thousand dollars, 210 for the audit of the financial statements of the district and 40 thousand to perform an annual single audit. That number doesn't change throughout the course of time. The concept that DR. Zeman is bringing up is -- it's slightly conflating two concepts, one is the contract for our
202external operational auditors versus the financial auditors that are required per statute. Let me explain that the auditors who are responsible for auditioning per statute for our financial statements, they generally even though they have a contract from goes from let's say DECEMBER 1 to NOVEMBER 30, they don't start their work until sometime in JUNE, JULY. We had a situation last year where we got the spend authority which is what today is about, today is not about asking for additional funding, it's about spend authority. We got that in SEPTEMBER at the SEPTEMBER 10th meeting at the time we had intended to renew the contract of msl, that's the point in time that we started to learn that they were going to be selling off some of their assets. That created a problem that took about 8-9 months
203to review between purchasing and the legal department before we fwot to the point where we put together the special selection committee that's required per statute that MRS. Hixon chaired, we got the problem resolved quickly, we got the contract approved on SEPTEMBER 16, the spending authority to get us through the end of the NOVEMBER 2026 date was not added into that, that's why today is there to correct that issue and so the idea is with regard to the operational audit contract ta's also three years with two one-year renewals, we have a situation that we can have auditors working under that contract, they start a project let's say in AUGUST or SEPTEMBER tha, project goes and fwets completed to the audit committee, transmitted o the board sometime in let's say february or MARCH. They now have the
204resources and the bandwidth to take on another project. We work out the scope of a project, the cost of the proj, we get the -- enter into an engagement letter with them pursuant to the purchase order we have. They start working on the project, the project isn't completed by JUNE 30, there's a natural roll-over, between contract and the purchase order, we have two contractual reququirents that wewe p them m for the rkrk tt they'v've dodone d ththat they comple t the wowork ty'veve started for u to be abltoto have the audit pl completed. So, the idea is it's not a matter of rolling over for convenience, it's a matter of rolling over because sometimes these audits are not strictly wiped up and cleaned up by JUNE 30 of a given year. A wife audit plan
205year. So, the idea here is that, yes, this is at the will of the board, if there's money that's owed, when a purchase order gets shut down on JUNE 30, there's going to be a requirement for us to be able to stay in compliance with the agreement that we've made with the auditors that they get the full amount that they were entitled to for the full amount of work they pried for us. However the board wants to work that out, I'm amenable to that, I want to make sure you understand the full story. I'm not sure what to say on thisfinger there is no conflated of issues, this item asked for spend authority and it's a reminder to me as a board member that we have roll-over in the office of chief auditor's office and
206I would like to learn more about it. So, I'm happy to approve or provide my support to this particular item but I would like to make a motion to ask our chief financial officer -- excuse me, the superintendent, if he want tos work with the chief financial officer to provide some information back to the board at our next workshop, sir, to just explore the size tof roll over and whether or not that it gives us an opportunity to use this year's funds to start paying for this year's audits. you want this as a workshop item or a memo to the board? this concept of roll over is very important and we need to find resources everywhere we can. Whether it was mental health or office of chief auditor or overtime pay or transportation, we're looking
207around to try to find funds to pay our people better. Everywhere there's roll over, we need the look and see if in fact those funds can be used in the most efficient way for the purposes of broward county schools. When you roll over fun, you didn't spend them in the year before for which they were budgeted. Our practice has been to allow people to take the funds that weren't executes in one year and just spend them the next year, I don't think that's fiscally appropriate. What I'm asking is you bring some more information back in general on roll over fund for the off of the chief auditor as a way for us to understand more about this and whether or not we can tibetan betan -- tighten up our spending policies to be more efficient
208with government. if you can tell me what the timeline looks like for next week's workshop. I'm thinking NOVEMBER 4. It's not urgent, it's really important. We flexed to understand this idea and this item is one case of it but there's some with much more significant amounts of money and we have to make sure we're spending this money wisely. we could just do both items NOVEMBER 4 since it's all having to do with the chief auditor. okay, we'll work with the chief auditor to make sure we fwet all the information for the bumgt for the past couple of years. and it's really information from your chief financial officer about the concept of roll over and what the options the school board has related to that. I second the motion. Er it's been move and had seconded,
209any public comment on the motion? natalie lynch-walsh, just to be clear, this is not just roll over for the office of the chief auditor but for -- in general. Because when it's just the chief auditor who did an excellent job explaining how unlike a lot of contracts, they don't end nice and neat like a lot of say academic contracts end at the end of the school year, and then you have to renew them for the next school year, whereas his, it's more floating, so what I thought I heard at the beginning of this was that it was for all -- it applied across the board to the entire district which would be a great exercise along with trying to understand things like how does oo5 happen where you had like the opposite problem where people
210were spending money that they didn't have, so if you're looking at roll over across the district, totally in support of that. If we're just targeting the chief auditor, not in support of that at all. thank you, any board member comment on the item? I actually agree. If we're going to look at roll over because roll over is the issue, I think we should look at all of the roll over money and see what that looks like, so I would like to make an amendment. it was implicit in my motion already, chair, the idea of take a cay case but we want the general concept of roll over as well. it started off and then it kind of changed, okay, so the motion is to do all roll over. Er the motion is to take one
211case wauz it's a reasonable size we can stare a at it and understand the concept and then get roll over for all. DR. Hepburn, do you understand? I think so, let me repeat it back, take one specific case, ie, the chief auditor's office, understanding the impact of roll over, the rules and regulations, the practices, past and present, and then a discussion about overall roll over, the concept on it. We don't roll over money, maybe a past practice, we stopped that from last year's budget into this year's budget, just for some of the things that DR. Zeman spoke about. For myself and definitely our cfo, if wow don't spend the money and you roll it over, you're telling the people who are providing the funding that you didn't initially need that amount that you were funded
212in the beginning. So it's just our concept that we've had a hard line on moving into this current budget year. thank you, all those in favor of the motion, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. Motion carries unanimously without MRS. Leonardi and MRS. Bulman. Great, I just realized I forget to do all of the up pulled items, this would be the part of the meeting where we will consider all of the open agenda items, the following items have been identified for discussion, ee1, ff1, gg1, jj1, 3, 6, 10, 15, oo1, 3, 6, 8, 13 with a memo to vote down, 14, 15, also with a a memo to vote down, and 18 and then pp1, 2, 3, 5 and r-r 1. At this time, MAY the chair have a a motion sxa second to pass
213the open ie steps that have not been pulled for discussion? moved. we have to read them. Which include hh3, cc 1, jj1, jj4, jj5, jj7, 8, 9, jj11, 12, 13, 14, oo2, 4, 9, 10, 11, 12, 17, pp4 and ss1. It's been moved by MRS. Rupert. Seconded by MS. Thompson. Are there any registered speakers on the items that were not pulled for discussion? MADAM Chair, I want to clarify, did you say jj1 for the ie steps not pulled? I did not, I read it, and the ones that are going to be pulled. if we have two registered speakers, hh3, we have natalie lynch-walsh, pp4, we have DR. Delvin king. natalie lynch-walsh, plantation, florida, on hh3, iped to remind everyone, since you were just giving out deadline and is timelines to the chief auditor that on
214the pba agreement websinger have yet to see amendment that works in the officers bill of rights into the pba agreement. The superintendent was directed to look at all things related to complaints and investigations in a prior meeting but there was no timeline given, no deadline and so it remains an open item and this should be a no-brainer given what it led to. This was a very significant omission in the pba agreement that has led to enduring nonsense and should be the next amendment. They have no problem bringing an amendment for salaries and I believe staff -- I know staff is stringing to write procedures but there is no reference even though the pba manages to have references in other agreements with other entities, there is nothing about discipline, complaints, investigations or the office of bill
215of rights in this dpraoement and -- agreement and that needs to change, sooner rather than later when my rebuttal is is done and it's on a long laundry list of things you guys need to fix, thank you. that concludes our speakers. I don't see MR. King, thank you. MS. Rupert? [Inaudible]. Sorry, I'm always very uncomfortable when the public takes the time to come down and speak with us and because we have in our policy that we do not go back and forth with the commune members, there's never a really good time to talk about this, so when we bring the policy this afternoon, we need to talk about that to make sure they're getting their appropriate time and answers. This morning, we had a member of the public who came to us to air his
216experience with facilitron and his high school and there was no communication back to him, so that he could understand what we are doing about this. So I wanted to give DR. Superintendent the opportunity to share what he legally can can share so we know that we're not ignoring it as a board, it is going to be handled via the superintendent and other organizations, so DR. Hepburn? yes, so I'm going pass it on to DR. Lozano, it is an open investigation going on and I'll turn it over to DR. Lozano to speak on any limited information we can provide. there is an ongoing criminal investigation that that vining brought us his concerns websinger immediately opened an investigation that's currently under way and active right now. . Er thank you, let's see. All those in favor of
217approving the open agenda items that have not been pulled for discussion, say aye. all those opposed, say no. The motion -- all those agenda items are approved ewe nan -- unanimously. I'm sorry, minus DR. Holness, mr. Cervera and DR. Zeman. It's still unanimous, still minus those people. Ee1, is there any public comment on ee1? yes, we have kimberlee mulhorn. okay. good afternoon, I just didn't know where I could speak at, but this seems to be the right place as far as security is concerned. We have a lot of security issues that need to be addressed. We've met with the proper protocol, we went through the superintendent, the area superintendent, we spoke to the area managers and yet still we have issues at our school. My question to the superintendent is what exactly has to happen?
218Do we have to lose a child in order for you to make the proper moves that need to be made? We don't wan to lose children. And I know that many of you think that, you know, hey, if children leave, it's okay, but if we don't have children in those seaters, we don't have a school. And some of you MAY think that's okay, but we're not okay with losing our school. We will fight for blanche ely and we're making sure we have the leadership we need there. No disrespect for the current leadership, but we've come to you concerning things and it continues to happen over and over again. We have taken actually a hiatus for the past six months but still, we get phone calls every single day, so I just wanted to just make
219that known that although we haven't been here doesn't mean we don't know what's going on. And I think it's unfair to the staff, I think it's unfair to the children that we continue to be the target of mishandling of our children. Thank you. thank you, any other public comment? no, MADAM Chair. DR. Hepburn, would you like to respond? yes, thank you, MS. Mulhorn, I would encourage you to send any concerns that you have to me specifically in writing and also the board so we're aware of the concerns that you're discussing. I know you can't get into ke tail in three minutes, I would encourage you to send it to me in writing and copy the entire board, thank you. thank you, I had a question on the item. So, it talks about electronic access, so
220my question is have we implemented electronic access at any schools instead of keys as of yet sm I know we do have that in other facilities but have we started to o do that at schools yet? michael gregory, school security officer, we do have access control measures at the single point of entry areas of the school in certain front facing areas, issue is to exbacker expand it further and basically we're talking about the access card readers, that's the access control. I know early on years a we talked about that instead of keys at schools because then if you had somebody leave, it would just make it easier than trying to rekey a whole district for schools, so is that the intent of moving forward? yes, that is the intent moving forward along with this guideline,
221that initiative is rather expensive, the card system t computer server is running the wire, it's more expensive than a key websinger are utilizing the grant funding with us identifying it as a challenge in this ssra report will allows us to place it as a need in our school hardening grant, that's the goal and the purpose there. okay, thank you so much. MRS. Hall defer? thank -- alhadeff? thank you, one of the things I would recommend is that we look into how we're going the use ai technology and specifically the ai technology with our camera system. Whether it's something that we might not be able to execute right now because of the lack of funding but I do encourage DR. Hepburn that staff looks at school safety.Gov for different types of grants to implement ai technology
222and cameras thank you. we note that is a priority of ours and we're doing a pilot with a faou schools now, and I will be happy to present that in a closeted door I guess next semester. great, thank you so much. All those in favor of ee1, say aye. any opposed z say no. Motion carries unanimously minus MRS. Bulman. The next item is ff1, can I have a motion and a second? it's been moved by DR. Zeman, seconded by MRS. Rupert, any public comment? no public comments. I would like to pull this every single time, I want to say thank you and congratulations tos the district. This month's total is 14 million 436, 4550 dollars, it was a huge grant for mental health, congratulations tos the district and thank you to the grantees department for
223all your hard work on these things. All those in favor of ff1, say aye. any opposed, say no. Motion carries unanimously, minus MRS. Rupert and MRS. Bulman. The next item is gg1, can I have a motion and a second? it's been moved by MS. Leonardi, seconded by DR. Zeman, any public comment? . Inger mo comment. DR. Zeman? these are difficult for everybody to look at, sometimes in the absence of being involved in the negotiations, 1.6 million is enough to get public interest. I just want to make sure the public understands that with you're running a multibillion dollar construction program, there are going to be times when construction companies and the government team have good, honest debates and they have to determined what shared responsibility is for this. I just want to make sure everybody in
224the community understands this is a good settlement, this is something that makes sense for broward county schools, we know it's a lot of money, but it's going allow us to continue to build amazing facilities in broward county schools. Thanks, chair. thank you. All those in favor of gg1, say aye. any opposed, say no. Motion carries unanimously minus MRS. Alhadeff, MRS. Bulman and MRS. Rupert. Next item is jj1, can I have a motion and a second? It's been moved by MS. Leonardi, seconded by DR. Zeman, any public comment? no comment. DR. Zeman? thank you, chair, I just note in my little prep sessions I do on this that I think bear middle school is one of the schools under consideration for repurposing, is that correct? DR. Hepburn? yes, that's correct. and I thought it might make
225sense as board for tows think about that a little bit. Do we need to think through either at a workshop or otherwise some options about what we do with schools that are still being considered for repurposing but haven't been decided yet? There are options like we keep doing maintenance and construction and wrapping up certain project, there's decisions of why spend money on a school that we might -- it's certainly in the running to be repurposed in some appreciable way. I j u don't want to have the questioners from the public that come in and say, wait a minute, bear, that's's on your listitit well, it's o on list toto consnsider repurping, itit hasn't been dedecidewhwh the fifinal tctcome for that is goining to be. I just feel like regardless of the volume of repurposing schools
226that we do this year, we're going to have this broad issue of repurposing schools for the next several years at least and I wonder what do we need to do to make sure we're doing the right thing for our schools for significant maintenance and construction if they're under consideration for being repurposed. you wanted to just say that or -- I wonder if we need the talk abit or if we're going the pass these without talking about it. What would we like to do as a board? MR. Cervera? thank you, chair, I had this on my list for another agenda item, I guess I must have missed this one, for bear middle school, and to echo what DR. Zeman said, we're voting on potential resourcing of -- excuse me, reallocating resources to schools that are on
227our redefining list and none of us know yet what' going to happen with those. So I'm wondering if perhaps all of the these change orders that are on jj this afternoon should perhaps be paused or set aside until the redefining vote or decision is ultimately made by this board. I could see a lot of confusion if we were to allocate certain resources to schools and then perhaps they are combined or closed or whatever is going to happen to these schools when this board makes the ut mat decision but to commit the resources to these school that is are still up in the air I think is a little problematic and I think if the decision is going to be made in DECEMBER or JANUARY, what is the harm of potentially holding a off on this
228until those decisions are made. So, why don't we do this, I'm going to make a motion to -- this is jj1, correct, on jj1, to remover the vote for purposes of today and direct the superintendent to bring this back after the redefining decision is made. is there a second? Okay, so the motion fails. I have a question for the superintendent and I guess for MS. Paul. A lot of times, these change orders come to us after the change has already been done. Do you know if that's true of jj1? MS. Paul? jj1 at this point is 98% complete, so, you know, we're attempting to close it out. And the notice to proceed on this project was in 2022, so, in terms of whether this work has already been done, I'll have mike mcintyre from aecom
229speak to this. We are contractually obligated to do this work, it's already in progress, it's about to be closed out and it will be problematic not to finish the work. okay, MR. Mcintyre? good afternoon, mike mcintyre, aecom, through the chair, I do not believe this work has been completed as of yet. The bigger issue is if the work is not done, we cannot get final inspections and approvals for the fire alarm system which means the building is not usable because it will not have a functional fire alarm system. thank you. DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair, and DR. Zeman, I do share some of your concern moving forward as far as what we are closing, what we're repurposing and so on and so forth which facilities or property we're planning to have partnership with cities
230and so on and so forth, so what I would prefer to do is to -- because we have items coming up, for example, we have a painting item where we're -- I think it's 10 million dollar item to paint schools, so I would like for the superintendent to use his discretion in terms of aligning what we're doing in our day-to-day operation with the redefining process that we prioritize and using had discretion to did determine what needs to be done, especially for the schools we're closing, what is necessary to be done immediately as opposed to what can wait until after phase 2 is completes. -- completed. I would prefer to leave that in the andover the superintendent to use his discretion to determine how we prioritize as we move forward with any sort of change order
231or any other upgrades to schools especially for schools that we'll be closing. DR. Hepburn? I condition -- concur. DR. See? -- zeman. thank you, DR. Holness, I like that approach, I would like to offer one way for the board to stay aware of that, is that we consider any project that's being done on a school that has been identified by the superintendent for reconsideration, repurposing to expressly make a statement in the item that, yes, this makes sense even though it's on the repurposing list. I think the community deserves that, so that there's like this resolution of the conflict, here's a school that either is identified for closing or might and here's what we're doing with that school and it makes sense, for example, when MR. Mak tire said -- mcintyre said we can't use this,
232but I would prefer that to come through in our summary, I would like the to allow the superintendent's discretion on these things but we note it in the summary description of each item that comes before the board. you're making a a motion? . Inger that was a motion, sorry. second. I probably didn't do it in a great way, I haven't had lunch yet. any public comment on the motion? yes, natalie lynch-walsh, plantation, florida. Yes, thank you for the motion because I was having a coronary and all kinds of things over here. That stopover action would have been appropriate when aecom first started when kathleen, shelley and I had a discussion about a wish that I would pump the break brakes but the they wiped the board o proceed even though we saw this coming back
233in DECEMBER of 2020. nobody wanted to stop the smart program, had to get it done, just like with jj1, there are real kids and real adults in these schools and you can't just stop some of these change orders, it's too late, we're five years almost behind schedule and I'll be speaking to jj6 which has an extra wrinkle, but yes, it should explain what is absolutely necessary and needs to be done regardless of what you end up doing, that would help in transparency and at least then you would know people were thinking, thank you. Rjs any board member discussion on the motion? All those in favor of the motion, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. Motion passes minus MRS. Alhadeff and MS. Thompson. DR. Holness, did you have something else you wanted to add for
234jj1, okay, all those in favor of jj1 as amended, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. Motion carries without MRS. Alhadeff and without MRS. Thompson. The next item is jj3, can I have a motion and a second. It's been moved by DR. Zeman, seconded by MS. Leonardi, public comment?Frjts we have one registered speaker, felicia schumann. good afternoon, MADAM Chair, DR. Hepburn and esteemed board leaders, my recommendation today is that while we approved the time extension request requested for jj-3, we did not is eye the final payment until an itemized breakdown, when contractors request large missal amounts like the 275 thousand 181 dollars 28 cents change order being requested for this project, the board and the public deserve full transparency on where every dollar is going. This includes the exact material, labor and details attached to
235this amount. This isn't about the land progress, this is about protecting our smart bond money and making sure we can stretch these funds to support other schools that also need infrastructure improvements fm we know miramar high needs this work completed but it is equally we manage it responsibly and ensure every expenditure is justified. The same level of accountability should also apply to any other schools with similar high value construction projects moving forward. So, that's where consistent and fair across the district. By approving this time extension but withholding the final payment until an iet mazed list is provided, it will be how we handle construction projects, let's make sure every large project we fund, we can stand behind it to protect our students, our schools and our taxpayers because in addition to this, this company has
236got almost almost 14 million dollars in three and a half years, so thank you. MR. Cervera? the ie steps that were presented to the board in regards to this specific project, it looks like the ask is for 275 thousand dollars to install 152 fire alarm device and is smoke detectors, some strobes, things of that nature along with the installation of those particular items, I did some quick math and there's 152 additional devices that are being installed. So, inclusive of the labor are the 275 thousand dollars, that comes out to roughly $1,800 per device. I'm just wonder, mad dal chair, is that a goaded deal? Rjs DR. Hepburn? MS. Paul? MR. Mcintyre, can you speak to this? good afternoon, mike mc intyre, vice-PRESIDENT At aecom, through the chair, this estimate had a full vetting through atkins,
237the number includes the devices as well as wiring and conduit so that the system will function and it's not just smoke detector, it's heat detectors and strobes, so on average, 200 thousand dollars is typical for smaller projects so in the range of over a thousand per unit when you're averaging out is a reasonably good number. Some of those devices would be more expensive than others, smokes would be cheaper than heats, both would be cheaper than strobes. So, overall for 152 devices, wiring conduit and basically hooking the system up to operate is a fairly reasonable number. MADAM Chair, is all new wiring required with this specific project? I assume there had to be smoke detectors and strobes and pulsation and all that in place, is it necessary to have a completely new rewiring job for these
238new devices to work? MR. Mcintyre? yes, these are being installed because they did not previously exist, so these are not replacements, this is an entirely new system. so, of the 152 devices which include fire alarms, smoke detectors, and speaker strobes, all of these are brand new, and obviously would require new wiring because they didn't exist. correct. it's your professional opinion that $1,800 a pop if you will, between the wiring and the install, I understand it's included in there, you think that's fair market value for a project like this? the review that was done by the change order team as well as the estimate that was reviewed and the pricing that was reviewed by atkins who does it outside of our group all determined that it was a reasonable price and the scope was in line
239with the required work. okay, I appreciate the comments, thank you. thank you. I pulled this item because it was a large number, so we have only a few -- we om have four consultant errors and emissions which is great but they total all together almost 500 thousand dollars, the miramar and the eagle point for consultant errors, and there were smaller numbers for the consultant omissions, so I just -- I always like to put that out there so we know that it's less numbers but the value went up again, we were doing really well, this month, not so great, so thank you. MRS. Bulman? just a question just for my own personal information. If it's a consultant error, is there any repercussion for that? I've asked that question a number of times. There's a certain acceptable
240percentage, we're well below the per sencentage but I would still like the point it out. We were doing over 2, 3 million when I first started in the consultant error and omissions and I believe the bond committee points it out every time they do a report but I think acceptable is 7% and we're like 2 or something along those lines. okay, thank you. anybody else? Okay, all those in favor of item jj3, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. Motion passes without MRS. Alhadeff or MS. Thompson. Next item is jj6, can can I have a motion and a second? It's been moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Leonardi, any public comment. you have one registered speaker, DR. Natalie lynch-walsh. natalie lynch-walsh, plantation florida, any time it's stranahan, that get my attention, the backup for
241this item, the con tin tense ji si used directly form, it says this form is use for unforeseen condition, maybe I'm confused as to what an unforeseen condition is, when you go from an original architectural design to a re-use to be faster only that's not happening, and then you have aecom trying to replace the -- they wanted to replace the walkways leading to the new cafeteria but one of your former people who was in charge, last name, bayz descoped it is the story I heard x I'm reading the backup and they tried to break down the wooden walkways and then put alum dk aluminum ones, imagine how is that unforeseen. Obviously this has to be fixed but this joins the list of stranahan snafus to give to them, this is mismanagement or something because the
242walk -- and walkways is a bigger problem, but that is the history of this, so it is not unforeseen, and then it also mentioned drainage. Why is drainage unforeseen, they had to get drainage permits when they did the the re-use, back then, we were making the project as small as we humanly could so they wouldn't have to get the other type of drainage permits so nothing about this board item that claims to be unforeseen was unforeseen and I'm not sure why it's being presented that way because it is a series of cock ups that started at the front end with the re-use and everybody trying to step over a dollar to pick up the penny with poor stranahan as usual. And walkways continues to be a problem because the other set of walkways you're going
243to see coming to the board is the ones with all the utilities running up and down main street where if you just replaced the building because those walkways are also wood and rotting, the problem has to be fixed and, yes, you just spent 20 plus million on a cafeteria so nobody's going to be shutting down stranahan but somebody needs to be held accountable for how this project was managed and this is t just another example. Er thank you. thank you, any other public comment? no, ma'am. MS. Leonardi? thank you. Kind of somewhat related to this contingency, there is a gigantic hole in the ground at stranahan that sometimes collects water and acquires things for said body of water, so I'm wondering if we approve this contingency, I know it's for walkways and everything, but I
244would like to know the status of filling that hole at stranahan high school. DR. Hepburn? MS. Paul? MR. Mcintyre, can you address that, please. good afternoon, mike mcintyre, aecom, the hole in question is the leftovers from a demolition of a subbasement in essence. Contractor claim they did not own the work, we believed they owned the work per contract and they have been directed to backfill properly. They refused so we put them on notice.We will move forward with the bonding company or use their money to backfill. okay. Thank you for that. I'm glad that we are trying to address that in an expeditious manner. I'm wondering, so, what is the timeline for recourse? When can stranahan high school to expect that to be backfilled? MR. Mcintyre? through the chair, the contractor has I believe three more
245days to formally respond. If they do not respond, then we will move forward. okay. So, if we move forward, when can we expect there to be a resolution? it could take a couple of weeks to get the proper amount of clean fill in, place it, grade it properly and bring it back up to its proper grade level. okay. If we do not approve this contingency, how would that impact the backfilling? this change order that we're speaking to now is not associated with basically the pondndthat's'seen createted. That's a a sepate issue, it's a separate coraractual issu this change order does not speak to this issue. This speaks to work that needs to be done after abatement was done on covered walkway ask the covering needs to be replaced. . Inger got it. I guess I'm wondering,
246I feel a certain way about paying someone more money, I get that it's unrelated, it's for a different contractual issue. When they have not done what they were supposed to do by contract to begin with on a separate matter. if we do not approve this change order, then that covered walkway will not be replaced. The risk in this case, the contractor is not getting full recovery for this change order, because it's unforeseen, they had some contractual responsibilities if r the walkway, they are not getting their mark-ups they would normally get per contract. The contractor will take care of the pounding issue one way or the other. It will not be out of district money. got it, thank you. And just so I'm clear, could we expect this to be done -- by this, I mean
247the backfilling, could we expect that to be done by the end of this calendar year? yes. okay, thank you. thank you. All those in favor of jj6, say aye. any opposed, say no. Motion carries unanimously. The next item is jj10, can I have a motion and a second. Moved by DR. Zeman, seconded by MS. Thompson, any public comment? no comment. DR. Zeman? thank you so much, chair. I think we're on jj10, is that correct? yes. thank you so much. This is markham and there's sol of us that always are moved by this and for those of us that have walked markham, how can you not? This looks like somebody backed up a very large backhoe and wiped up all the good buildings and left a bunch of portables, the cafeteria is undersized, every once in
248a while when I was to get someone to understand what we're dealing with in terms of some past decisions we made, I remind them we have an elementary school that can't prepare measles, they have to be shipped into the school from a local high school. we have made a commitment to the community in pompano we will finish had school by the start of school year 27 and I'm going the keep this kind of front and center as we move forward. So, is this -- to me, this looks like great progress. Are we still on track for the beginning of 2027. I'm getting a thumbs up from MS. Paul, that means yes. . Inger the reason it's 27, there's a rebuild of the whole campus basically going on sxit's been delayed and delayed and then debated
249some more and then delayed, going back, you know, a lot more than any member of the current leadership team, but it is a school with 600 kids that deserve completion and they deserve us to live up to their commitment we've made with this leadership team. I'm glad we are, thank you very much. thank you. All those in favor of item jj10, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. Motion carries unanimously minus MRS. Alhadeff. Jj15, can is I have a motion and a second? Moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Thompson, any public comment? yes, MADAM Chair, we have one public speaker, don musol. I'm here on behalf of the city of coral springser I would like to express our strong support for item jj15, the continued partnership between broward county public schools and a city
250to host the all county honor music concert series. This annual concert series allows broward county public school students to showcase their incredible musical talents to the public, their families and their peers. The city of coral springs deeply values this partnership and the opportunity it provides to celebrate excellence and education and the arts. We encourage your full support with a yes to vote on this item to ensure these meaningful experiences continue for students across broward county. Thank you for your continued commitment to the arts and to our students' success. Thank you. thank you. DR. Zeman? thank you so much, chair. Coral springs and a number of other cities have always been big advocates for broward county schools. I have attended this honor series in the past, it's fabulous, absolutely amazing what our young musicians can do,
251it's a lot of fun, I want to make sure I put this in the right category. Is this the same rate, 17 thousand dollars, that would have been charged to us if we were not a school district, is there a discount to the point which I would like to say a special thank you to the city of coral springs or is this full price we're paying for this auditorium? . Er DR. Hepburn? I am not sure and I don't see MR. Akagbuso, I don't know if MS. Paul has any of that information? I think we would have to do a board follow-up on that. I would like to make sure we pay right respects to the city of coral springs. [Inaudible], applied learning supervisor, music and performing arts. This is not only a discount, this
252is really, really discounted. In past years, I think we looked back five or six years, it was 20 thousand dollars. We came to them and we said, hey, we're in a tight spot, can you help us out and absolutely they helped us out, so this is a discounted rate, so we're happy that we have this with them. I appreciate that very much. And if the superintendent would like a suggestion which I don't like to do very often, it might be nice to note that coral springs has been a great partner in that by talking to their city manager. Thank you. thank you, I also just say thank you. I've been every year to one of the concerts and it's such an amazing event. The students go one day, they have -- they're from all over
253the county, they have a teacher they've never had before and they play, like they have been together forever, it's beautiful. So, thank you, MR. Luke house for always organizing and thank you to coral springs for the great partnership. Thank you so much. All those in favor of jj -- I'm sorry, MS. Alhadeff? yes, I would also like the say thank you to the city of coral springs for the partnership. all those in favor of jj15, say aye. any opposed, say no. Motion carries unanimously. Next item is oo1, can I have a motion and a second? so moved. it's been moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Thompson? any public comment? no comment. I need to know more about this, this seems odd to me that broward county contracts with somebody to advocate for a specific
254vendor for free but we get a kickback. I don't like deals like that. i'm going to be out there on a limb and say the if we are advocating for someone to sign up and take a class and it's $100 and we get $3 back, I want them to pay 97 dollars and not get the money, I don't want to put my logo on some vendor's web page to give us some sort of kickback like this is some normal business practice. If we believe this is the best for our community, I don't want broward county schools advocating for them, that's my view on this. Chair, are we -- did we assess people in this space of the market and assess ed to go as a vendor we believe is best in practice? DR. Hepburn? I'm
255going the ask DR. Fulton to provide some details. thank you, I'm also going to ask DR. Tumor to weighing in as well. so, good evening, board, [Inaudible] Tumor, superintendent, yes, there are no other companies, xet tier companies doing this in partnership with other schools. The only other institution in our area that does is broward community college but this is for our adult students and it's for lifelong learning, so this is what ed to go does and how they service their community. Er I'm not going to support this. I do not like selling our logo. I don't like collecting a little tiny piece of money that kind of insinuates that this is a normal business practice. I think we are a government agency, if we want to look at something and tell people it's great, I
256don't need the vendor to pay us to do that because it seems like they're paying us to advocate for them in a way that I just don't think passes muster with me. Thank you, chair. thank you. Any other comments? All nose in favor of oo1, say aye. any opposed, say no. no. two dissenting votes. DR. Zeman and MS. Alhadeff, motion carries. The next item is oo5, can I have a motion and a second. chair, are you skipping oo3? I'm sorry, it's because it's not on the paper, sorry, can I have a motion and a second on oo3. It's been moved by DR. Zeman, seconded by MS. Rupert. Any.Public comment? one registered speaker, felicia superman. good afternoon, I just want to briefly speak about this sieps software, it says it's just for k-5 and it's pretty
257expensive. The proposed cost of it is 1 million 780 dollars, one million 780 thousand 583 dollars and 85 cents is a significant investment for a program that will only serve grades k-5, for that amount, we could be exploring others, that's just my opinion. Thank you. thank you, MRS. Rupert? thank you. Our committees are a vital part of our districts, specific acumen and experience that each of our members contain and their views are welcome information for this board to see the whole picture before a vote. The same dwoez for our employees, they are the professionals or working with our students or at facilities and can see firsthand what contracts, what software, etc., actually are are working and those that don't. Oo3, teachers prefer generation general yus, kind of similar to the bill, the science guy, this
258approach is more engaging for our students, they prefer that instead of progress learning and the format itself is an easier one for the kids to follow along. I appreciate the survey, I do, a loot of time was spent on that but I would like the know if the survey asks them about just progress learning or also asked about generation genius or was there a space for them to write in what they would prefer. Spending a a million 7 is a lot and we should be making sure that the product is great and preferred by teachers and students. DR. Hepburn? DR. Cohen? good morning, or it's good afternoon, DR. Continue, chief academic officer, so we annually provide a survey to teachers on the current software that the district has adopted or our schools have purchased. I
259do not believe we've questioned or surveyed them on generation genius but what I will tell you is regarding progress learning, we've done a lot of data analysis around this ef canskas and I we've attributed to a significant improvement in our science scores. It's also aligned to the state standards, the fifth grade science standards, I can't tell you about generation genius, we have done a lot of school interviewsser surveys with teachers aligning progress to that specific one. We know progress learning is in multiple large districts in florida. it's state approved, it's one of our supplemental material, it also is tightly aligned to the fifth grade science assessment. One of the things we also liked about progress learning is it's teemed to I-ready, it creates a learning path for them so they could equally prepare themselves for
260those standards and benchmark, it is hoover the only assess pts k-5 that has ain assessment that builds upon each grade level so the teachers or students are not catching up to the students which are up to fifth grade which has been part of our issue, science only gets assessed in fifth grade because that's what the state provides, we know grades 3-4 has science assessed standards that have to be taught with fidelity in order for it to get to fifth grade, so progress learning does exactly that. It prepares the students from k-5 to make sure they get science instruction and we are able to see if science instruction is being taught with fidelity across the grade level sos one teacher, one grade level is not being held accountable for the assessment. thank you, I do know
261the older grades, 3-5, when I heard from elementary school teach necessaries the past week, they are seeing 3-5 definitely has that hatchability, however, for the first grade teachers and the second grade teachers, their students attention span is not as well acclimated to get into that particular program for the program testing and according to the teachers at I-ready and discovery and also the generation genius, they attune themselves better to the younger classes, so that -- just a heads up because I understand that what the state is requiring and when they're going to have that test but if we're able to firm up the younger grades and give them a better foundation, I think we'd be moving in a good direction but I do wan to make sure we're listening to our teacher who are the experts
262in the class rao l, so thank you. I praoernt it and I'll listen to that. thank you so much. DR. Zeman? thanks, and I appreciate school member rupert's comments. I have some similar ones. First though, chair, when did we adopt the new science program? DR. Hepburn? DR. Cone? progress learning, we're a year into it, this is the second year of district wide purchase. when twe -- we did the district wide project assignment, was there no district option for that? mo, because it's the adopted cores, with all adopted cores, they have formative assessments that come along with the adoptive core, our math, our ela have many assessments built into it, yes, that one does too. I think this is expensive. I'm not a fan of more assessments. I am a fan of helping teachers identify what
263instruction to follow through, I like the link tie ready, I don't like assessments, particularly kindergarten, first grade, second grade. We already in my upon assess kids way too often, it takes way too much of the instructional year, we have them for 180 days, we do all other kinds of assignments all yearlong. I will submit a question formally to add up how many broward does, how many assessment tests are there, I think it's a lot. There's a recent school district in florida, they have 113 assessments over the 13 years, that's a lot of time. Chair, aren't there quizzes and tests and other ways to assess whether or not k-2 students are keeping up with the science curriculum standards? DR. Help p urn? DR. Cone? yes, there are, they're through performance matters which is what the progress
264learning is doing, so, again, I'm going to liken progress learning to I-ready, what I-ready does, it provides a diagnose I diagnostic in the bining and a learning path, then students get o the take the assessments but I want to clarify one thing as it relate tos progress learn, k-2 do not take assessment ins science for the progress learn, it is meant to make sure they get enriched, they get access to and they are able to differentiate within that science instructional box, so they do not get assessed like third, fourth and fifth grade. terrific. The other question I have, what evidence do we have that this works? I'm almost done, sorry, I know you're dying to talk, DR. Cone, I'm dinging to hear your wisdom on this. Saying that students improve 5% from one year to
265the next is very consistent with what we fwot in ela, a little less what we got in math last year. How do we know this is part of the recipe that is driving that improvement in science proficiency? DR. Hepburn, if I MAY? yes, go ahead, DR. Cone. we do thorough research on all supplemental resources. When we come to the board or when I come to board to speak about the academic initiative ins the supplemental materials, that's going to be one of them, our adopted core is our to1 instruction, our math is progress learning, our data over the past years so we're going into year two of this piece, if you look at our science data, our science data from last year to this year, we went from 45 when we didn't have progress learning, the
266percentage, the district in 2023 to 57%, as a district, that's a big gap. If you break it by region who are all using this program, they all went up increment it will tally by 4-5% points in science, we're attributing that to not only the science curriculum which is supplemental and we just adopted discovery this year, so we don't have the data to that, we do not the last adopted core, we were behind three to four years in its adoption. We had to fill in a lot of gaps with supplemental materials to fill in and make sure those standards were aligned. Progress learning filled in those gaps and we have the date the to support it. was progress learning implemented at the the beginning of the year for which you're citing data absolutely. I note MR.
267Superintendent that there's a tremendous uptick in assignments in fourth and fifth grade and not a lot of use saj -- in grade one, there were 3500 assignments completed with this software, either that indicates that k-2 doesn't need a whole lot of he cacause they'rgettttg it o or wewe're getting rigoro ststandards t therere has been a huge use in the grades of 3-5. I'm leery when these items come up again many the future, I'll spend more time ahead of time, we have a lot of assessments and when we do an adoption in a whole area, I hope we can get the whole kit rather than doing an adoption and buying other capabilities, I appreciate the time. Thank you, chair. could I expand on that for a little bit? So, there is a reason why we see
268science instruction not being taught k-2 with di dell. It's because of the number of minutes in the day. When you have classrooms in schools where students based on fast pm data in math in ela who are behind, teachers are choosing to take or remove some of that science time for a double dose in ela, a double dose in math tha,'s where that lower quartile in ela and math, so they're making conscious decisions to say I'm going to plugging where science would be taught, I'm going to plug in an additional math or ela, we're intersecting and integrating math and ela where appropriate science standards could be plugged in. So, progress learning helps us to see where gaps exist, where there' a preponderance of students who are not meeting standards where preachers have to choose one or
269the other, we're trying to make sure they know when they're choosing one or the other, here's a compromise to integrate it into it tha,'s a discussion we just had at our boy meeting with the regional supe that is in our group. I appreciate that conversation, and chair, I'm always struck by the conversation about instructional hours and instruction instructional quality, two of those things matter a lot and I hope we keep them front and center when we ear talking about academics in our school board meetings. thank you, anybody else on oo3? Okay, all those in favor of oo3, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. no. motion carries with one dissenting vote. The next item is oo5, can I have a motion -- MADAM Chair, I believe that item was withdrawn from the agenda. oh. that
270was withdrawn. it would be nice if as DR. Zeman said, if you could give us what was withdrawn at the last minute because it's confusing. you need the list. the next item is oo6, can aif motion and a second. et's been moved by MS. Rupert e seconded by DR. Zeman. Any public comment?Frjts I skipped ahead, no public comment. MR. Cervera? chair, MAY I speak last? okay, DR. Holness? okay, MADAM Chair, for this item in terms of painting, I just wanted to also mention to DR. Hepburn as we proceed to do this, that the redefining process is align witched the priority of what gets painted first and so on and so forth, I wanted to make that comment. thank you, DR. Zeman. thank you, chair. I have a question about the prioritization of painting and I
271just note that this board has spent, I don't know, dozens and dozens of hours talking about fte growth and I hear a lot from the community that they drive by similar schools and it just doesn't look like a place they want to stop and take a tour. Is there a way to combine those two and make sure the prioritization we have for these funds would be to in some selective way find some schools that suffer from what they look like from the outside and our schools we'd like to add fte, could we prioritize those schools as part of our plan to win back enrollment? DR. Hepburn? go ahead, MS. Paul and her team will go over the prioritization for the schedule. MR. Dorsett, if you can address those issues. . good afternoon, mark dorsett, physical
272plan and operations. We can prioritize some of the site ifs you like if that's the will of the board. What we did, we took a certain criteria to determine the schedule that you see in front of you. So, it's based on age, current condition, you know, a gamete of criteria so that's the list we came up with but if it needs to be reprioritized, we can sit down and figure that out. ipg there's a lot of ways to prioritize things, focusing on gyms and auditoriums, I'm sorry, go ahead. well, you have some interior painting and then you have some exterior painting and it's how we decided -- the interior is prioritized for the interior work and the so forth for the exterior so, it's not a combination between interior and exterior for both lists of
273painting projects. terrific, I'm just trying -- I'm not trying to change dramatically the list, I'm introducing a new priority that ought to be considered in conjunction with the other ones you have done that just says we're really in deficit in a number of schools from the way they look to people not wanting to go in and visit them. And to the extent we can identify some schools that are underenrolled that have kind of a real problem with the way they present and it's not just painting, it's three levels of fencing, it's lack of landscaping, it's very little attention to where people drive by the school. So, we have schools where the busy street you drive by and all you see is chillers and drainage areas and that has an impact on people looking at that.
274when you drive past a charter school, it doesn't happen. They're really conscious of the ways their schools look, I want to o adopt some of those principals when we make prioritization like this so we can do everything we can to win back enrollment. will do. okay. MR. Cervera? Or MRS. Alhadeff. thank you. So, I don't want to change the list because the schools on that list have been wait ago long time on that -- for the schools, but as far as painting, I do have a question in regards to, you know, when you paint a school, you're thinking not to do it in piecemeal, like I'm going to paint the inside this year and 8 years later, I'm going to paint the outside, five years later, the gymnasium's going to be painted. If the school
275is going to be painted, the whole thing should be painted, inside, outside, whatever needs to be painted and done completely instead of piecemealing it. So, my question is are we piecemealing it, or are we trying to do this completely? DR. Hepburn? go ahead, MS. Paul. so, as you know, we've had extensive conversations about painting across the district. Our intent is to improve the curb appeal, improve the way the facility looks, so this is our attempt to do that in an organized manner. Your question is are we painting the whole building at every school that's on list. The real answer is probably not because it's a function of money but we're going to paint the ones that have not been touched in a very long time and we're going to assess it as we go out.
276So, if it needs painting, yes, we're going to paint it, but again we have limited funds so this is our really first real attempt to create a a painting program on a schedule. So, I definitely appreciate your feedback and your input and all those e-mails that you sent when you pass by a building, we get those and we definitely consider them, we take care of them as we can, but this is trying to put us on a systemic program throughout. So, we will definitely consider that but again, you know, we don't have the funding at this point to paint everything we need to paint. You know, we'll start with the worst ones and work our way down. and to DR. Zeman's point with the private school, I know I was at a private school and
277I saw just a regular maintenance guy who's walking around with a buck because they need to make sure every little piece of that school was painted and it looks beautiful, so I would love to see the paint job to be done entirely when we're going at a school, I understand the cost is an issue. I think that's something that needs to be brought back to the board so we could prioritize our budget. Thank you. MR. Cervera? thank you, chair. So I want to give a kudos on this one because when I had opened this executive summary and all of the attachments, there was a breakdown with numbers and a spec and a target date and additional information regarding the project. So, I felt a lot better reviewing something and having a full understanding about you
278how this 10 million dollars is going to be spent because of the these exhibits. I wish that we can get stuff like this a lot more with these multimillion dollar contracts that we're constantly being asked to vote upon. I certainly appreciate the transparency from the staff, it made it a lot easier to digest and understand and to explain. i would also note on these evaluations, the supplier product evaluation forms. Unlike the last agenda item when I referenced these, it looks like all of these vendors scored 4's and 5's on their evaluation so I'm encouraged to see the district is deciding to do business with these folks who are cringing scoring 4's out of 5's on their evaluation, so I appreciate the transparency, I appreciate the calculations and the numbers and I I think our constituents
279appreciate the transparency as well. Er all those in favor of oo f, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. Motion carries unanimously. Oo8, can I have a motion and a second? It's been moved by DR. Zeman, seconded by MS. Thompson, any public comment? no comments. MR. Cervera? all those if favor of oo8, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. no. motion carries with one dissenting vote, MS. Alhadeff. Oo13. It's been moved by DR. Zeman, sebd by MS. Rupert, any public comment? no public comment. I pulled this to remind everybody it is a memo to vote now. All those in favor of oo13, say aye. Great job. All those opposed, say no. no. motion fails unanimously. 0014, it's been moved by DR. Zeman, seconded by MS. Thompson. Any public comment? no. MRS. Bulman?Frjt thank you to
280procurement for the board follow-up, we got the numbers which support that this is -- we're definitely getting the best pricing based on the pricing that other schools are based on, that makes the decision a lot easier, thank you for that. I noticed there was a little typo so I wanted to make a motion to -- I was going to mention that, thank you for pointing it out. I would like to move to correct the items requested, the recommended action to approve additional spending authority of -- to amend it from 580 thousand to 550 thousand. I think it's -- I'm sorry, the agenda has it wrong. yes. okay, gotcha, so to -- I thought we were saving money. To amend the agenda from 550 thousand to 580 thousand to reflect what it says in the summary.
281I have a quick question to MS. Jactue adams, I believe it's wrong on the ak khel agenda and not on the item, do we have to make a motion for that, many the past, we have not. I don't think that it would hurt to go ahead and motion it because the executive summary needs to be corrected. The executive summary contains the recommended action that you all are voting on, so if that is incorrect -- I think that's correct, it's just what's written on the agenda. Like when you see this paper, it's written wrong in here but it's right on all the items. so, that would be -- so it's correct on the recommended action within the executive summary but it's wrong on the summary agenda. Then that does not need a motion. If you do
282move it, that's not going to be any harm. I've seen that has happened before and that's created some confusion because sometime a person is looking at the executive summary as opposed to the summary itself, so as long as you mention to go ahead and make a correction, that will be fine. okay. So, DR. Hepburn, if you can make that correction. yes, we can make that correction. okay, perfect. I withdraw my most -- motion. okay, anything else, MRS. Bulman, was that it? that was it. chair, I believe it's in the sheet of the paper that you had signed, that's why we were trying to make the motion to change that sheet. I think it goes beyond the executive summary. so, you have to be specific about it because that wasn't what the motion was for. I
283was confused because -- I don't think it's you. it's probably us. where is it? just to clarify, the -- what we call the cover page which the chair after the meeting signed off on, that is incorrect within the requested action. so, what are r we calling this? cover page. Er I move to amend the requested action cover page to additional spending authority of 580 thousand. it's been moved and seconded, any public comment? Board member comment? All those in favor, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. Motion carries. MR. Cervera? thank you, chair. I am like board member bulman also appreciative of the follow-up that was given. I know we had this discussion at a recent workshop. while I think this is an astronomical amount of money to pay for the services, if that's what market
284dictates, it is what it is, so I am appreciative of the breakdown that was provided and I also am very satisfied to see that the supplier product evaluation form has was given in the packet indicates that this particular provider has ranked in the very good category, so four out of five, so kudos to them and I'm glad the district continues to do business with people who score well on their evaluations. Thank you. thank you. All hose in favor of item oo14, say aye. aye. Er any opposed, say no. Er the motion carries yaoup unanimously. item oo15. It's been moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Rupert, any public comment. I see kimberly remg steed but I don't see her in the office. and I pull it to vote downing but MRS. Rupert, also, did you
285want to speak on it? I don't need to, I wanted it withdrawn, so thank you. okay. So, again, this is a memo to vote down. All those in favor of the item, say aye. aye. all those opposed, say no. no. motion fails ewe nan nosily. Oo18, can I have a motion and a second? It's been moved by DR. Zeman, seconded by MS. Thompson, any public comment? no, ma'am. MR. Cervera? thank you, chair. So, just as a couple of minutes ago, I was providing kudos on the painting and restoration breakdowns, I stumbled across oo18 in my preparation for today's meeting on the flooring materials and no such breakdown exists in this one. So, we're being asked to approve 6 million dollars without a breakdown as to how exactly this money is being spent, the specific schools,
286when I would request or would like to see ob things like this, chair, MS. Paul was very accommodating last go around with her landscaping and maintenance service agreement that was also a high ticket item. I brought up some concerns I had with the amounts of money where it was being spent, who was spending it, how it was being used and the lieg. MS. Paul came one a fantastic solution in creating a website in order to provide more transparency to the public and to our constituents as to how those monies were being spent. In this particular item, I don't see anything like that, I would like to see where the money is being spent as far as the flooring is concerned. We're only on this one, chair, being given a basically a pricing spreadsheet as to
287the product cost but I don't know which vendor is using what, I don't know wra wr the money is going. I would like more information on that and to see if we can get additional information sent out to the public so they understand where the 6 million dollars is going. DR. Hepburn? MS. Paul? the 6 million dollars is going towards our work orders we have in our system for flooring repairs, laminate, carpet and so forth tha,'s part of our work order maintenance program. In addition, it also supports the defp, so we have projects that are in the depf, the capital program that this 6 million dollars support, so I would have to give you a list of all the work orders in the system that requires flooring replacement as well as a schedule for the
288defp over the next five years. This is for not five years but for 22 months I believe, so, you know, we have issues that we don't plan that we have to respond to, so the 6 million dollars goes towards that. you had mentioned work orders. do we have an idea one way or the other what percentage of the 6 million is going to be used to adrez the work orders as opposed to holding this money for a rainy day? it is -- we would have to pull that report for work orders throughout the strict and interms of holdingngthis for a rarainy dada we will spend d every dime of it because we have major flooring issues across the district, so we can provide you with the big ticket items as well as the work orders
289that schools consistently put in. We are running a city here, so the number of buildings we have, this is definitely the million is more than -- is not sufficient but this is what our ask is. understand, and I think for members of the general public who want to know where their taxpayer dollars are going, I would like to see you what you offered up with the landscaping agreements that we approved of 11 million, you did a good job of offering a breakdown where all those funds were going, I would like to see something similar if possible in regards to this contract as well. DR. Zeman? thanks, chair. I know that there's a law that allows us to piggyback on a lot of stuff and there are 14 thousand squaol districts in the U.S. And 200
290thousand local and county governments bh you put them all together. I'm just always suspicious of things like commodities like flooring is, something that's bought by millions of buy and he iser is provided by thousands of providers that we can't find the time to compete wherever possible. How were these -- this is a piggyback, we did not compete this, we found someone else's contract, how did we pick this contract to piggyback op and how did we pick these vendors? DR. Hepburn? MS. Paul? so, I asked the same question, so thank you for that question. Apparently there's been a history of having contractors especially in flooring that have not been reliable or the quality of service and so the district over time has used this piggyback to improve the level of service and the quality of service
291to the district. So, I'll let MR. Dorsett take it after there for the rest of the explanation, but the piggyback is already as you know, already negotiated, we're not having to spend money to put out an rfq, because of the past history, that's why they've gn over the past few years with this piggyback, bl dorsett, if you can provide additional context. the reason why we went to this pigging gay back, back in 2012, we were trg a trem douse amount of problems with the local flooring contract. Some of the products they were using was substandard, we had a myriad of issues with local participation. We wanted to involve more of the manufacturers, so we can maintain that warranty, that lifetime warranty or however long the warranty is and those manufacturers have local vendors that they
292work for, so, you would have like a mannington or a shaw or something like that and you would have a local vendor who works with mannington and they provide the services for us, and then we will capitalize on the backing of the strength of the size of the company. is there an amount of time between observing poor performance and executing another 6 million dollar contract that is sufficiently long that you would like to go out and get a competitive process going, 13 years is a long time, you're talking when we had problems with local vendors, now 13 years later, we're still singing that experience to piggyback and again piggybacks are useful if they are researched and analyzed and they offer a great value to broward county schools. In general though, you get better pricing and
293better service and better quality if you go out and compete and let 100 people figure out how can they guarantee the quality and the warranties and things like that rather than just doing this. In my own experience, 13 years is probably a little too long to continue to be reacting to insufficient performance from 2012 and below, but I just -- maybe -- I'm just trying to find a way so that the board can always feel confident that non-competitive awards, while legal for school districts to do are really in the best interest of the school board and I'm just not satisfy we're at that point yet. If we're having excellence performance from these folks but they MAY not be the low price. So, I just put this in the not quite resolved bucket because this process,
294we continue to do a gross has jolter of our contracting without competing and competition is in general a very good thing for government agencies. thank you. i pulled the item because I have a question. So, this is for the ppo, the request is for the ppo budget but my question is do schools have to pay ppo when the flooring is repaired? DR. Hepburn? MS. Paul? no, that's a maintenance issue, so one of the things that DR. Zeman, the answer is no, but one of the things that DR. Zeman brought up was we're just not relining on the situations that happen back in 2012, part of the experience with flooring is we need to make sure that we purchase the right products to put on the floors and so forth by going through these major manufacturers
295the way we are, we have that guarantee that we get the right information, we use the right product on it and they back up their product. We were not given that with local vendors, so we leverage the expertise of these major manufacturers. I understand what you're saying, you would like to do rfq's and so forth as do I, but sometimes piggybacks makes sense sense and this is one of those times. And then another question you brought up is I would work with MS. Andreu to see the number of piggybacks we use on my side of the house and give you a reference point and so we would not be making those assumptions we use more piggybacks than we do rfq's, so that's something id love to do a board follow-up if you would want that.
296and I mean, I'm not the ppo expert, but I can tell you with walking with principals and leaders, one of the issues too that I think is the issue of the past 2012 and before is the stock of whatever companies were used in the past, if you walk some of our schools, the linoleum tiles that oftentimes have to be repaired because of the whatever manufacturer, whatever businesses we used in 2012, they don't have that tha in stock anymore, so the larger manufacturers manufacture and keep our floors consistent with the same type of linoleum tile f you walk some of our schools, why is this random tile on the floor versus what was put down in the beginning. just to my concern about non-xet tier bidding, we could have done an rfq and limited it to
297manufacturers of flooring and those people would have bid and we have been more comfortable with a competitive process limit today the people you want. there are many more besides mannington ask shaw and we don't have any confidence that beear getting the best price, they kharmg us whatever they want to charge us, I understand why we did it, I'm expressing that we need more to be confident of what we're doing in fact makes sense. back to my question. So, I appreciate the answer that they don't have to reimburse ppo but that's not what I have been told when I go to the schools and it seems like it's kind of double jeopardy. If a school needs -- I'm going to use an example because it happened at one of the schools, carpeting in the band room,
298because the carpet is molded, they had a a flood and had to replace it, they were told they had to cover the cost of the labor, so we are not requiring that. if it's a maintenance issue, then that's covered under ppo under our capital program. If it's a preference where they just want to put new carpet because they want new carpet, then that's a project, a new project, they would be responsible for that. okay. Thank you for the clarification. All these in favor of item oo18, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. Motion carries unanimously, minus MS. Thompson. The next item is pp1, can I have a motion and a second. Moved by DR. Zeman, second by DR. Holness. Any public comment on pp1? yes, we have two registered speaker, DR. Natalie lynch-walsh and jackie
299lescom. okay. good afternoon, DR. Natalie lynch-walsh, plantation, florida. I'm glad I asked for an update on my request for a public -- whether this was a public hearing or not because I literally got the response, so I guess we won't have answers. I did send two e-mails in advance of this meeting with my concerns, I of course did not get a response. The first is on the follow-up log, it was put under workshops and as you know because we've been sitting in a regular school board meeting all day, not a workshop, there are many times and I provided examples when you might direct the superintendent to do something, so my request was to move it under general rules so it's clear that the follow-up log is for any time you've asked for something, requested information
300at a workshop, at a public hearing, at a regular meeting and that they have a way of tracking it and the verbiage that they use kind of calls into question whether they understood or maybe they understood what DR. Zeman was asking for but pretending not to understand so that they bring him, I don't know, progress monitoring on students as opposed to the actual status of the item at hand. I don't know and the way it's worded, GOD only knows what you'll get, that was one issue. Putting the follow-up log under general rules and maybe having DR. Zeman with's usually very articulate but that day they basically took exactly what you said and threw it into the policy and it doesn't make sense. They added stuff to it, so it doesn't come across well. And I'm
301going say this again about volunteers. Volunteers are not random members of the public that roll up off of the avenue and come in here. There's a whole volunteer protection act that's a state statute and that's on top of the public, so there is a section -- a, I appreciate that they -- the committee reports was pulled out but it doesn't go far enough to make it clear to everybody that if a volunteer, an advisory chair or designee comes many here and during the quarterly meet witching the school board and yes, I'm in favor of continuing monthly, nobody said they wanted it quarterly, if you want to have them participate electronically, that would be a huge help, that's not what I heard. With the chairs, they could be sitting in a quarterly meet, jackie might speak
302to additional ie steps, I h is telically would speak to facilities and audit related items. That is within the scope of our responsibilities as chair, so it needs to be a separate section. And then I'm going the have to share a response to someone named pretty man, you can give the superintendent guidelines and should and especially if you refer back o the definitions in 120.52, number a-f, you don't want whole brown procedures but there's nothing stopping you from having protection, and 9a5, personal insults MAY be related to board business. thank you. MRS. Lescom. good afternoon, jackie lescom. I urge you to vote no on the draft, here's why, on page 18, there's language that would change the cadence to advisory and board reports to monthly to quarterly, that resulted from board discussion when this was
303workshopped last month which a couple of you suggested that advisory chairs expressed a desire to this and cutting reports would be helpful to us. Firstly, if those board members who stated that were trying to look out for our interest, thank you, but there had not been discussion about that with us. I have yet to find an advisory chair that they want it to reduce today a quarterly opportunity and we would find it helpful. It would achieve the opposite. We need the ability to be heard on the issues we bring forward, not just formal recommendations which you have the opportunity to pursue or not. The community feedback concerns finding themes, topics and thoughts, parent and community involvement is not something you should be seeking to reduce, it is part of what we exist to do. It
304is part of what scaffolds the continuous improvement of our school system. If you do not want us to report monthly, rewith ready to assist them on how to submit my report in writing or virtually which are already copses in poll -- policy. I can connect the adopts which has come through, whereas the board has discussed before where the monthly advisory results should be mandatory and decided they should, I gather there has maybe been new and separate singings since then in which it MAY avenging suggested the board should consider making our reports monday tear only quarterly. If this is what has occurred and it's being translated to this proposal now to remove monthly reporting all together, that might explain it, I don't know. But for me, as chair of ese advisory, it's a no to this
305proposal. I've spoken with the chairs of district advisory north and south area advisories, I gather central is also against it too, gifted, technology advisory, I believe the parent community involvement task force, facilities tas, force, the human relations committee. I knower one of those did have a proposal, they wanted to have it looked like for making monthly reporting optional. I'm not speak tog that today. Things we do want to see, for the time that's allocated to our advisory reports to be consistent on the agenda, for us to be able to see that board members are listening when we're speaking and for there to be a mechanism through which advisory and committee recommendations and concerns can get response from the board. Thank you. thank you, that concludes our public speakers. I think we have one more. Mary
306furdic. sorry, I came flinging in. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. I just wanted to talk about the reporting. I am here in many capacities, one on the superintendent's task force, we soused the important of having that opportunity for committees to be able to talk monthly and convey to you something in a timely manner if it was necessary, so love the new format but the quarterly is probably a long time between reports and having the opportunity monthly would be I think a better way to have -- ensure you're getting community input in a timely manner. I've done this for a long time, for 35 years, there's always been an agenda item on your meeting agenda for monthly meetings once a month for committees to give reports. And that doesn't mean every committee comes up
307and givers a report. If they have something and some committees obviously like drk -- dac is going to have more frequent report and is it's there if you need to. I think that has worked in conjunction with the new form. I would encourage you, however you change your policy to make sure you're allowing for committees to come to you once a month and make that -- and if they don't have something to say, okay, but many of your committees, I know I'm just going to point to jackie, I know she has a lot of stuff that's timely and you need to hear in a a timely way, so I would encourage you o do that. Some committees meets the night before your meeting where you get this report, if we had to have something in
308sooner than that or whatever you would be having more of a time delay. Wot tom line is your committees are important to you because they bring you information, just ensure that the opportunity to present that information to you occurs in a regular and timely manner, and thank you, and I feel the same way personally, thanks. thank you, I think that's it for public comment. I don't normally go first but I'm going to go first because I have two motions for this. I would like the make a motion to change the quarterly meetings back to motherly on page 14. second. it's been mover and had seconded, any public comment on the motion? yes, I forget to mention one thing which is pertinent to that, the district advisory passed a motion unanimously also calling for the monthly
309reporting to be preserved and that motion originally came up from central area. I did want to highlight again what -- I heard at least one chair say they would not want monthly reporting to be mandatory but I believe you've had that conversation before, so I won't speak to that, iped to flag it, thank you. thank you. Any board member discussion on the motion? just point to the page number? it's page 14. Jt on the red line or on the final. I think on the red line, let me find it. Paimg 14 -- page 14, I'm on the red line. so, a, it was committee -- present committee reports at the first school board workshop, it said monthly and now it says quarterly, so I would like to change quarterly back to monthly. That was the
310motion. MS. Leonardi? Page 13, not 14, sorry. would that make the monthly report go back to making the monthly reporting mandatory then? so, I would just say I don't know, we had this discussion and said they're volunteers, nothing is ever han -- mandatory, if they come to meeting, they have the opportunity to give the report, if they're not there, they can send it in writing but there's nonthinking we can do to holdldthem acuntable,e, so I dodot think wewe ever calllled itmamandatory in ththe rst t place. We had a long discussion about that if I'm not mistaken. as the policy is written before us without this motion, would committees be able to still submit their reports to us, like submit written reports to us monthly? yes. None of that changes. okay, so if we were to
311pass the policy without this motion as is, we could still get monthly reports from the committees in a written form rather than a verbal form? yeah, I don't think it's written that way in the policy, but sure. okay. I am respectfully opposed to the motion. I think when I made had suggestion originally and when the majority of my colleagues agreed, I did so in the vain of trying to work smarter, not harder, and despite what we are hearing now, we did repeatedly hear from our volunteers that it was onerous to show up every month. I think the policy as it stands allows for a more thoughtful and a smarter way of working, we have our quarterly workshop widths the student and is the they are productive. I believe that the committee chairs and our appointees
312to the committees have a lot of access to bring issues to the superintendent and to board members. I know that my appointees submit monthly reports to me. I would imagine and I guess I would ask if the superintendent's office is in communication with the committee chairs on a monthly basis MR. Sullivan? the question, I'm sorry. is the superintendent's office in monthly communication with the committee chairs? Do they correspond with the committee chairs on a monthly basis? I don't know that I would say monthly but it's continuously. He does meet with several of them individually, quite often. when issues are brought via committee reports every month, are those issues new issues that the superintendent is hearing about for the first time? it depends on the issue, sometimes yes, sometimes no. I can speak for the superintendent,
313he prefers that when issues arise, they are brought to his attention immediately and not in some kind of cadence of meetings. that's my uning as well. And I can speak from personal experience when -- my appointees to different committees certainly reach out to me as issues arise as well. You know, I have a feeling this is not going to -- this policy is not going the pass as is today, but I do want us to think about, again, working smarter, not harder, and being more strategic with our time. Thank you. . Inger is this on the motion, MR. Cervera? thank you, chair, I support the motion. I think it should be monthly and I think an incredible amount of work goes into what our volunteers do. And this is something that they do because they're
314passionate about it. This is obviously something they're not doing for a paycheck, they're staining time out of their days and time away from their families o do these, and having those monthly reports reported back to us is extremely valuable. I pay attention to those things, I listen to them, I take notes on them. I try to take suggestions when I get them. It gives our hardworking volunteers a voice and from what I understand, it is not a mandate, so if there is a committee that doesn't want to do it every month, they don't have to. I think the majority of them want to. And I think if they want to do it, we should provide that outlet. And to handcuff those folks who want to give us information under the guise if it's too much
315information, there's no such thing as too much information, there's really not. You choose what you want to do with the information, if you want to use it, great, if you want to look at the e-mail, that's your prerogative too. But the reality is I'm a huge fan of getting as much information as I possibly can especially from our hardworking volunteers that comprise these committee and is take time out of their day with something they're passionate about and share it with us, so I appreciate the responses I got on this. I appreciate the feedback, I've heard you, I've gotten a lot of e-mails on this, I certainly have heard you and I'm in favor, chair, of the motion, in my mine, there's no such thing as too much information, there's really not. Thank you. MS. Thompson?
316thank you, chair, and thank you for making this motion. I pointed out at the workshop, I thought this would happen because when it was discussed, none of our committee chairs were here and I just don't think that was the right way to go about it. I do think it's incredibly valuable to have our committee chairs come up and speak not only for our information but also for the public's information. If you watch the commenting on our facebook lives, people respond to things the the chairs are saying, it's a way to get more information out and I do feel that it's our responsibility as board members to make sure that our community is aware of the situations happening and that we are listening and we are taking action on what they say. So, I'm in favor
317of the motion, thank you, chair. thank you. All those if favor of the motion, say aye. aye. all those opposed, say no. no. can we do a roll call. roll call on the motion, school board members cervera? yes. hixon? yes. holness? yes. leonardi? . Inger no. rupert? yes. thompson? yes. zeman? no. alhadeff? yes. bulman? yes. motion passes 7-2. thank you. I have one more motion. So I move to on the first page under general rules, letter h, so it's on page 2 of 16 on the red line, it say ifs the school board chair is absen t vice chair will commence the meet organize a workshop, if both the clair and vice chair are absen, the vice chair will select a chair by majority vote of the school boated members so I move to change
318that last part to say after our absent, then the the most recent past chair will preside over the meeting. second. Er it's been moved and seconded, any public xhen on the motion? Board member discussion? And aisle tell you the reason, in order to have to have a vote, in order to get another chair, that takes a lot of time if there is a past chair that's able to step in when both the chair and vice chair aren't here. It is what we did in prakt for a long time, it just wasn't in policy, so that's why I'm making the motion. Any discussion? Okay. All those in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. "any opposed, say no. no. motion passes with one dissenting vote. alright, DR. Holness? MADAM Chair, we're still on the pp1. I'm
319sorry, pp1, correct. Sorry about that. Okay. MADAM Chair, let me see, is there anyone else who needs to the speak, I have to get my notes together here. I can go to the next person. MRS. Rupert. it was just accomplished. perfect. MADAM Chair, I'm good, yeah. okay. And MRS. Leonardi? thank you, I was hoping to get some clarity, on page 8 of the redlined document, number 1, it says a speaker -- a single speaker MAY not exceed 12 minutes no total per meeting in workshop not sinewing their general public speaking comment. This is the piece I want clarity on, if any motion is spruced, the speaker is allowed one additional minute to speak on that motion. So, I guess my question is what is the one additional minute, is that one minute on the motion,
320is that one additional minute added to the 12 minutes? I was going to say MS. Batista could jump in, I believe the way it's worded, it doesn't count towards the 12 minutes. As it's currently written. that was the discussion that we had also, he have 12 minutes for public comment but they get that one minute for any motion that's made extra. that's added to the 12 minutes, so they're doing -- but they get three minutes for the motion? they get three minutes for the item. If there's additional motions -- they get one minute of total speaking time for the motion? each motion. okay, and we've been giving people just win minute -- one minute to speak on each motion? I guess can we add some more clarifying language to that to say that speaking on
321the motions don't count towards the 12 minutes, do we need to add that? I just feel like it's very unclear. MS. Batista? yes, so the way that is written right now, it definitely could be interpreted as that one minute is an additional minute added to the 12 total minutes. So, it's up to the board whether you would like to include that minute as part of the total 12 or make it an additional time to the speakers' time, whenever way the board would like to go, I think more language would be appropriate. would that be an extra sentence added saying that minute does not count towards the time limit or it does? correct. okay. I'm sorry, maybe just in parenthesis, it does say an additional minute which means more than the 12, but to clarify, maybe
322in parenthesis, not included in the 12 minutes. if I MAY, there's another solution too, in the next sentence, we say time spent delivering committee reports and responding to motions will not count towards the 12 might be nuts. time spent delivering motion, comment and is committee reports does not count towards the 12 minute total. I can't believe you and I had the same thought, I feel great. so, imd like to make a motion to add time spent delivering committee reports and commenting on motions does not count towards the 12 minute total. second. Er any public comment on the motion? natalie lynch-walsh, plantation, florida, as beneficiary of that anything minute today which I have been using strategically all day long and thank you for picking apart this section because I didn't realize public speaking was separate for
323the 12 minute which I was doing the 12 which is why I had 9 extra minutes, I support this motion to clarify because I do think people get confused about the additional minute. thank you. Any other board member comment? All those in favor of the motion, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. no. was that two dissenting votes? I'm ready to get your attention. one dissenting vote. Okay, DR. Zeman? thank you, ip to go back to a quick one on the lobbyist, on the redline version under g, I'm sorry, let me make my toerp friends happy here, okay, that's weird. Yeah, 4g on the redline version, page 12, we talk about you identify yourself as name, city and if they're a lobbyist, if they fail to do so, the chair requests they do that. It
324seems to me on the end of that, we can add if a speaker lobbies the school board without having registered with the school board of broward county, the chair shall end the speaker's time. If somebody stands up and says I'm allen zeman and I ask you to use my paint company, if there somebody's a registered lobbyist, they can talk about how great they are, they are not able to interfere in cones of silence, if they're fot a registered lobbyist, they shouldn't have the privilege to come and speak. You pay to be a registered lobbyist, why do we not enforce that when they walk through the doors and say, hey, I'm here to sell you my paint company, I can this is the only place we can say you're not on the list of registered lobbyists
325and we need to end your time and move on to the next speaker. . Er MS. Batista, can you give us if that's -- because people can come and talk about whatever they want to, so how does that fall? right, so I do have a concern that I really would like to research further because to [Inaudible] The speech aof a person and mandate or burden the speech I'm going say it that way, by mandating for them to pay a fee, I just have some concerns with that. You know, without doing further research on it. the changes that we've made so far, do they represent significant changes? yes. Er we're in a period we're not going to approve this finally, we're going to have to bring it back one more time. that is correct. I'm wondering
326if that point if we change this lobbyist would have to stop speaking if they weren't registered, if you found a way to do that, would that also be a substantial change to the policy? yes. I don't want to get to the permanent -- are we? Right, but what would happen is if that is legal to muzzle someone at that point, take away their first amendment rights and go through that whole legal thing which I respect, it's a really good process to go through, then we'd still have o come back in another month after that, we have changes we've done now that are substantial, we have to fining bring it back for a final vote, if we don't have substantial changes, we can approve the new school board policy 1020. Is there a way, chair, that
327the general counsel MAY advise us to provide a process modification that would allow us to know whether non-registered lobbyists are addressing us at least? MS. Batista? my preference would be that they don't speak. There's fee for registering for all the fees we have to track for keeping track of registered lob b byists but it seems laughable that they could not register and we had one speaker today stalk talking at a spefng vendor product and she's not a registered lobbyist. Instead of saying they can't speak, what if we said in the same similar language that at the end, we invite them to be become a ren steed lobbyist. There hougt to be some way to close this circle. right, and I know in policy 1940, that's the policy that talks about the lobbying and registration and
328all of that. If you can repeat what you just said. if a speaker lobbies a school board without having register witched the school board of broward county, the chair shall end the speaker's time. And I understand there's some really good legal debate about whether that violates their rights to come and talk to us, I don't want to overstep that, today if I made that motion and say the chair shall identify at the end of their time that they are not registered as a lobbyist and are required o do so. That doesn't stop them from speaking but it does give them a reminder, like, look, you broke our rules, you came and lobbied and you haven't registered to lobby and paid your fee. It's a comment on top of them and still allowing them to speak.
329You would find no vai lacing f of the first amendment or o r other laws or statutes or regular slayings. mao ifr on page 12, g of the violations, if they haven't register witched the school board of broward kounbacker counted, the chafer will remind them to register as a lobbyist at the end of their time. second. Er it's been moved and seconded, any public comment on the motion? mrs. Alhadeff? I have a question in regards to paperwork they're filling out before, on that paperwork, are they say they're a lobbyist? I believe so, MR. Hill, you can clarify? through the chair, anyone who is registered, they go and fill out a firm, they f it does state they are lobbyists as well as who is the principal in which it represents. t -- is it require
330today fill that out? yes. once they fill that out, they pay the fee and we add them to the school district's -- no, that's not what I mean. You're a speaker, you come to this meeting, the paperwork you're filling out, out there. I thought you meant the registration form for the lobbyist. E yes, it is on the speakers card to identify if you are a lobbyist. so, maybe -- is that optional? it state ifs you are a lobbyist, yes, you have to fill out the rest of it, so yes. maybe it could be a circle I'm a lobbyist or not a lobbyist because they can skip that. And thep we would know before -- like the chair would know because she gets the list, right. as long as they would put it on the --
331because I don't get the card, I get a typed list thathey -- yeyes,you u are cocoect,t, if we ke I it mandorory on the form, would have a better track o onon the they are lobbyists or not, not aloug them to skip that. required information, and I would say give that information to the chair and maybe she can even announce it so I don't know if that's necessary, DR. Zeman, what you're saying. that process you just described would enable the chair at the end to say I couldn't stop you from speaking but you obviously lobbied and you ear not a registered lobbyist, our rules are that you register as a lobbyist. We don't have any enforcement mechanism to stop them from lobbying us because they have first amendment rights to come talk to us, so
332it still needs the motion, it will give ler or any chair any information to say that at the end. can you repeat your motion just one more time. page 12, redline, g, if a speaker lobbies the school board without having registered with the school board of growthbacker broward tountd county, the chair shall remind them of the requirement to register as a lobbyist at the end of their speaking time. it was seconded. Okay, MS. Leonardi?Frjts thank you, I guess I think this is a problem that is larger than adding this provision into this policy. I think it's a conversation that's come up a few times in my tile on this board of who is a lobbyist, what happens if someone who's not registered as a lobbyist is lobbying a school board member for something, and I
333think there will continue to be confusion whether or not this motion pass and is I don't know if that's a conversation we have to have with legal at a workshop or something, but I don't feel that even if this motion passes that we will have more clarity or there will be fewer issues with this particular situation moving forward. I don't know if my colleagues are interested in kind of trying to clean that up in the future. Has's where I am, thank you. okay, MR. Cervera? thank you, chair. Is there any portion of the florida statutes that would prevent an individual for coming in front of a governmental -- any governmental agency and lobbying them for whatever reason without identifying yourself as a lobbyist or bingeing preregistered as a lobbyist? I'm going to use an extreme
334example. I can't practice dentistry, right, without having a license and doing whatever I have to to with the state, so I can't go open an office and practice dentistry, can someone come in here and effectively be a lobbyist without meeting any type of registration requirement or does anything like that exist under the statute? MS. Batista? I'm not aware of any such ro -- provision. I do know when there is a governmental entity such as a school board, and as long as the requirements placed upon the lobbyists are content neutral in the sense that you're not mandating a particular lobbyist for a particular register allowing thel to register and not others, it applies to all lobbyists, that is constitutional, you are required to register, disclose who your client is and whatever xen says or activities you
335have. Anyway, tla's the answer to that question. I wanted to just comment as to what MRS. Leonardi shared. There are provisions and I don't know what the issue or the confusion MAY be as it relates to lobbyists other than, you know, perhaps you cannot -- because of the shielding of their speech or potentially targeting their specific viewpoints, I don't know that you can tell them not to speak, but as far as like when they come and speak to board members, there is a rimer that the -- requirement that the board member and the lobbyist both fill out a form and that's pursuant to our policy. can I clarify where my confusion was. Like, for instance, if I own a pencil company and I go to MS. Hixon and I'm not a school board member, I
336go to MS. Hixon and say, you should hire my pencil company, I want you to meet with staff and connect me with them so I can do business with the school district, so I can sell pencils ask I can make money by selling my pencils. Does that make -- am I lobbying MS. Hixon? Yes. If I'm not a members register ed lobbyist, what happens then? there are no ramifications in the policy if you do not register or pay the fee. . Er what if MS. Hixon does not disclose -- I'm making all sorts of accusations, what if she dun disclose she met with me for my pencil selling business? then that board member would be in violation of their own policy. and then what's the ramification of that? potentially if something comes to light, there
337could be censure from the other board members for not abiding by the policies and by your resolution. okay, because I mean I think like I'm hearing from people saying that, you know, principals of their own firm aren't considered lobbyists. I think there's general confusion around this and MS. Hixon I'm sure follows all her policies the best. I give that example because I'm hearing from people and this is something that continues to come up is a point of confusion, it doesn't really seem like we have any ramifications for any of this. I kind of wonder what's the point then. MS. Batista? so, the point would be that that's what the board has decided they wanted to have in their policies and if you want further ramifications, then perhaps we could think along those lines. I mean,
338right now as I said, I don't remember there being any in the policy itself that would hold them accountable, hold the lobbyists accountable or the board member accountable other than what I just mentioned. MRS. Alhadeff? thank you, so I'm okay with DR. Zeman's motion. I do think though DR. Hepburn, it's more of an operational type of matter in the sense of if the whole process and with staff, with filling out the form, the lobby, whether they're lobbyists, maybe the next step is there's a qr code to how to become a lobbyist and how to pay that fee. I think there's just lack of communication of the process but I don't think -- that is not something we need to solve within this policy, I believe we allowed DR. Hepburn to solve that. good idea as
339in governance, he tell you not to put procedures in your policy. and that just kind of reinforces why this motion might make sense, all we're doing is reminding people and in many cases, we'll be informing people for the first time, they MAY not know we have a policy about that. If you want to do business here and you're a vendor, to read through 1700 pages of policy and know what to do if you're a vendor, you know how to sell and market and all of that, you MAY not know that mie ya im dade tountbacker county, palm beach and broward have a policy. We just remind people when they're done talking, that was lobbying and you're supposed to be a a registered lobbyist. okay, all those in favor of the motion, >> MR. Szalay: aye.
340any opposed, say no. chair, if I could keep going, I have one more motion. motion passes ewe man mousey. Go a ahead. thank you. I'm sorry, let me make sure, appendix a is part of the formal policy, is that correct? DR. Fulton or MS. Batista? appendix a is the verbal report order of specification. yes. so, in appendix a which guides this and it kind of get tos some concerns I heard about monthly reports is that there's things on here like number 7, committee meetings, special guests and presentations, interests of concern, number 8, that I don't view nearly as important as the other things. If you stand up and say your mitt name and chair and the date and how many people were there, at least to say.If they had quorum or not, synopsis is xwraet,
341if -- great, if you've been on a site visit, i'm not sure the te tail aof a site visit is important, maybe a summary of them, and 8 seems like more information I'm generally interested in. If somebody went to the advise commission and, that's for the con springing assumption of the advisory, not of the school board. If a chair has interests of areas of concerns, okay, but se essential, 9 is we actually took a vote, made an official recommendation, now you got my attention. I'm going to listen to every word you say because somebody made a motion at your meeting to go to those guys to the school board and I need for them to listen to this thing that's really important. I view 7 and 8 as things came take up time, could be
342put into a written report but I'm not -- we have time for public comment, if somebody has a personal interest or concern, they can come during public comment and say that, I think advisory committees are representing their committees, and I think 7 and 8 in general I wouldn't find valuable in a report. I just want to open that up for discussion. If anybody else would like to share their thoughts, that's great. I can end with a motion if the discussion goes in any direction. I want to state the obvious as I guess I often do, I don't think anyone's following that thing anyway, so I don't know that it makes sense to change it. I mean, if they have things that are pertinent to those two things, it's fine so leave it there but no
343one is using that guide to give us reports anyway. I appreciate that. I think some are, you know, I mean, this is our guidance to them about what to come talk to us about. I'll leave that alone for now, but we had a good conversation when they were here last about what matters to a school board in a report and I think that was good. The official recommendations where they have a lotion and a vote and say tell those jerks up there on the tie yas they don't know about this and they need to know about it, that captures our attention, but I'll leave this one alone. Thank you, chair. thank you, I have one more motion for this, sorry I didn't make it before. On page 3 aof the redline, the first paragraph that's
344in red, it's about the log, the superintendent is going to do, I would like to make a motion to remove that sentence from the types of meetings define and had move it to general rules as an I, so under h, and to change -- to add within 48 hours of the school board workshop or school board meeting. So, the superintendent shall maintain a follow-up list of board members' questions, progress monitoring and requests and share the list with a date for follow-up response within 48 hours of the school board workshop and/or school board meeting since it's not just specific to workshops, I think it should go under general rules as its own item under h. could you point out where you're reading from again, chair. page 3 on the redline, there's a whole red paragraph ,
345the last sentence starts the superintendent. I just need one more minute, I thought I was on the redline, I was not, I'm back, thank you, ma'am. so, take that whole last sentence, add the word and school board meeting and take that sentence and make it I on page 2 underneath the had beeninger, so it would be moved to general rules as opposed to types of meetings defined. chair, are you proposing a change and a movement? correct, so in addition, instead -- the point really is to make -- I think we should have a follow-up log, not just from the workshop but for meetings, we're asking for things sitting here on the dais, it's a way to keep us informed of what we asked, if we are getting follow-up. So, I'm asking to add and school
346board workshop to the sentence and then to move the entire sentence to page 2 under h and make it an I. second. chair, could you read the whole thing when you're done then, please. sure, it would go under general rules, under h, so it would become its I, it would read the superintendent has shall has maintain a follow-up list of board members questions and requests and share the list with a date for follow-up response within 48 hours of the school board workshop and school board meeting. could I offer just an or school board meetings. that's fine. thank you, ma'am. so, a second. Any public comment? natalie lynch-walsh, plantation, florida, MADAM Chair, thank you very much for the motion. it captures all the different types of meetings moving it to general rules. The sentence needs some
347wordsmithing, since this has to come back, perhaps staff can reword it in a way that doesn't lump progress monitoring with questions and requests because it's really progress monitoring on the questions and requests. Basically a status report and actually a the chief auditor does one for the audit committee, maybe he can forward it to DR. Hepburn in terms of format, ice basic format, here's the request or question and here's the status and you keep a running log and I believe when you initially directed the follow-up log, you mentioned that there should be a timeline, like is it going to be 90 tai day, 60 day, just like when you had follow-up items today, a time certain for it. thank you, any board discussion? All those in favor -- chair, I'm sorry, are we voting on my
348motion? I'm sorry. at some point, I would love to. Er I'm sorry, I thought we did vote on your motion. Yes, did we vote on the lobbyist motion? did it pass? yes. I thought I did. I'm trying, listen, aoem jet lagged, I'm doing my best here. maybe I'm more jet lagged than you. Thank you. all those in favor of the motion -- I'm sorry, go ahead,. yes, to your motion regarding board member follow-up, there was an squ from strict advisory by pay way of a formal motion last month that asked in addition to some other stuff, we recommend that board member follow-ups and their responses should be published on a public facing portal this is because any member of the public MAY bring up something, members of staff MAY have it followed up by a
349board member and you get the responses but out here we don't. So, that was an added ask that I thought you might like to consider as part of this. Thank you. thank you. All those in favor of the motion, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. Motion carries unanimously without MRS. Alhadeff. Alright. Yes? I do have a question, where are our follow-up, I know during the meeting agendas, they're posted on the actual agendas, but the follow-ups we're getting after, ones we get sent via e-mail, do nose get put back on the agenda post meeting. Where do they live? go ahead, MR. Hill. thank you, deputy superintendent, through the chair, so if the follow-up comes during the meeting, then when it's spaded to it, it's included with the minutes of the meeting. so, then to MRS.
350Lescom's point, how they would get the follow-up, so it would have to be a public records request. the minutes are scalable on the district's website, the same page you view the meetings on is also a link there that says minutes, they can click the meeting dates and the minutes will pop up. if we get a follow-up, they're still attached to the minutes. correct, also within the same web page where the meeting agendas are, there is another tab that says documents and they basically click on the particular item and all of the documents that were posted after the meeting can can also be placed inside of that section as well, it's on two places on the same page. on the same page where you would find the meeting agenda. I'm trying to see. when you go
351to the website and it says meeting agenda, the documents is where all of our follow-ups live. if you scroll down, it has the past meetings, over to the right, you can click there and see all of the executed actions and inside of that drop down will be the executed documents such as the follow-up responses. thank you, I didn't know that. Thank you. yes. thank you, and just as a side note also because I spoke to the superintendent about this, I believe they're working on an electronic program that will have the questions we have, it will have the follow-up that will drop the response right into the same space so everything is in one place, so we can ask whether that can be public, so I know it's for us, like a dashboard sort of. We'll
352ask if we can do that. Okay. All those in favor of item pp1 as amended, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. Moeg passes ewe man nosily minus MRS. Alhadeff. As a note, remember because there was substantial changes, it will come back to us in the next school board meeting for a vote. So, the changes will be in there. Okay. Next item is pp2, can I have a motion and a second. so moved. . Er it's been moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Rupert, any public comment on pp2? no comments. MR. Cervera? thank you, chair. I will be voting no on this policy and this has come up in workshop befofore, thth is my first t I think fifici portrtunity to bring this up at a regugular school board meeting. Section 4, subsection e4
353discriminate -- discriminate ons the basis of religion on this policy as drafted. Supreme court, various federal courts have repeatedly confirmed that governments MAY not discriminate against a speech of organizations holding their religious viewpoint, religious speech is protected through the free speech clause of the constitution. Recently a U.S. Supreme court decision entitled trinity lutheran coach of colombia versus colma, when a state denies a an otherwise generally available benefit solely on the count of [Inaudible] It violates it is the free exercise clause of the constitution. A kh urmg the court went on to note has the right the participate in a government benefit program without having to the disenvow its religious character, deny ago church that right will allow secular -- while allowing secular groups to access the benefit inevitably deters or discourages the exercise of first
354amendment rights. When a government does not speak for itself, it MAY naot exclude speech based on relimbing yours viewpoint, as doing so constitutes impermissible viewpoint discrimination. In our case, the district does not endorse a church or other house of worship by treating it equally with other community sponsors. Our churches, our temples, our synagogues, our mosques, our places of would wo r ship have a right to become a community sponsor within our district's partners and education sponsorship program without giving up their religious identity or beliefs. And my concern is the current policy as written specifically targets legitimate religious organizations from participating in this particular program. I think this is unconstitutional, I'll say it again, I think this is opening up the district to potential liability and lawsuits and I want to be on record with my
355position that I am against this specific portion of the policy. thank you. Any other board member comment? MS. Rupert? ke we ask counsel to give us a little insight into that. MS. Batista? certainly. As we discussed at the workshop, this policy came under scrutiny from a lawsuit that was filed by MR. Stevens in court. During that lawsuit, one of the things that came the light was that there were banners at the schools with relimbing yours, that represented religious entities. We have changed the policy as a result of that case and as a result of the mec case which is the case from palm beach where now the banners are no longer the speech of the different entities that are represented in those banners. They are rather the speech of the school board. So, as MR.
356Cervera just mentioned in that particular opinion, it says when the government is not speaking for itself. So, in this case and pursuant to our new policy, the district which is a governmental entity is speaking for itself. We are thanking our partners in education and other entities and through that process, we still have to have separation of state and religion and therefore that is the reason that specifically religious entities are expressly excluded from the policy. MRS. Rupert? so, bringing it down to common language here. A synagogue that donated $5 huber for a barbecue for one of their open houses let's just say. We would not be able to say the name of the synagogue on our sponsor stuff as we're thanking them? as the policy reads right now, that is correct, and that is the representation
357that the board made to the court when the court dismissed the case against the district. We said this is how we're changing the policy, we're changing it to make it similar or very closely aligned to the policy in palm beach and the mec case which is an 11 circuit case, the court dismissed the case that MR. Stevens brought against the district. okay, thank you for that. thank you. All those in favor of item pp2, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. no. motion carries with one dissenting vote and MS. Thompson and MRS. Alhadeff are not present on the dais. Next item is prk p3, can i have a motion and a second? it's been moved by MRS. Leonardi, seconded by DR. Zeman, any public comment? no comments. okay, DR. Holness? . Er thank you, MADAM
358Chair, so, DR. Fulton, should this policy pass today as it is written in and as it pertains to cell phone usage and so on, when will this be effective? sorry, thank you, as soon as it's passed, we're ready to begin all the communications as soon as we get the final direction from the board. okay, so today's tuesday. If it passes today, tomorrow, students can use their phones? we will begin communicating that, exactly. Er thank you. you're welcome. MRS. Leonardi, she got off the dais. MS. Thompson? thank you, chair. I had questions about attendance and I brought it up to staff, but there is reference to policy 5040 and current ri our attendance policy is 5.5, I was wondering if we need to make that correction or my understanding is 5040 is what the policy will
359be called. DR. Hepburn? staff? good afternoon, so, when the policy was revised, the attendance policy was also in revision. I believe hopefully MR. Till can confirm that the new policy number for the attendance policy will be 5040, it is currently 5.5. does that answer your -- so, I guess for MS. Batista, is there any harm if the policy says a future policy or should we -- should we say attendance policy, I don't want this to coming back any time soon, if it's not a problem. MADAM Chair? . so, my recommendation is that you have the number of the policy that currently exists in this policy, when the policy changes, that the number be changed to align to the new policy number. That would not be a substantive change, it's a technical change because it's the
360same policy, you're just changing the know men khai nomenclature to identify that policy. I would like to make a motion to change the word policy 5040 to policy 5.5. second. any public comment on the motion? Board member comment on the motion? All those in favor of the motion, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. Motion passes unanimously minus MRS. Rupert, MR. Cervera and MRS. Leonardi. Did you have more? I am trying to decide if I want to -- okay, so not top changed now, but just I talked to staff and it's okay how it's written currently, there is an error where it says it should be calendar days and not school days are a marking period. I'm trying to find where it is in that. Through the superintendent to staff, could you explain why that's
361okay. DR. Hepburn? staff? so, the current reference to attendance policy in 5090 speaks to a certain number of absences within -- it should say 30 calendar days and it says 30 school days, 30 calendar days is what is written in statute, and statute is going to supersede policy, we can make this change when we bring the policy back in the spring. that's correct. thank you. thank you for that clarification, and I would really love to see this policy be a more extended length of life. That's not what I want to call it, but a longer term so we're not -- our code of conduct doesn't really need to change every single year and I know staff has talked about making it more extended term of service. lasting document. thank you, so I think that would
362really benefit not only our time management since this has come back over three times but also I think just for our students to get an understanding of what the code of conduct is without changes and I am just very excited to vote yes on this and give our students cell phones at lunch. thank you. I have a quick question. Is it necessary that this be one policy? Is it possible to break it down into different pieces and maybe it's an a and a b, so that the whole thing doesn't have to continue to come back and just those pieces that maybe need to be updated, do that because this is such a comprehensive for lack of a better word policy and mitoses a lot. Is there a way to chunk it as a teacher term,
363right, to xhun -- chunk it so it's more digestible. MS. Batista I guess? no. okay. Alright. It just seemed like a fair question. Any other board member discussion? DR. Zeman? thank you, chair. Nice try, MS. Thompson, we're not going to avoid the inevitable discussion. we're going to talk about cell phones at lunch because we need to. There's few things that I feel like we have to talk about and make sure we're doing the right thing and there's some new information that I think is relevant to this as we bring it forward to the final vote. Chair, this is a change to our policy. How many votes do we need out of 9, do we need a majority vote to accept this change? yes. thank you. So, there's some wonderful things to talk about and I'm
364going to highlight some new information and not kind of go back through everybody else's long discussions we had when this came up a as a draft. We know this is not a strict policy. Our students are not consigned to put their devices in bags and they're not locked throughout the day, they keep it as the superintendent recommended over a year ago, they keep them in airplane mode which allows them to be pulled out quickly for safety and security issue, you can't cyber bullying and you can pt shame kids if you don't have a cell phone. This affects our female students more than male students, they're more susceptible to these maladies than our male students. In order to learn more about this, I wrote to the chair of the msd commission, the current chair of pinellas
365county, and I asked what he thought about it and he wrote back an e-mail which I would like share with my colleagues about his response to -- chair, can I pass this out? yes. thank you. This is a response that I wrote to him on monday of this week, was that yesterday, my lord, yesterday, and I just asked him the question on the bottom of this page and you can see his response on the top, I'll give you algt bit of time to read this, it's an important assessment of what cell phones do to safety and security. Thank you very much, I'll keep going, chair, we talked about the need about better relationship with ai, ethical decisions they have to make that is different from a world of a few years ago, it's critically important,
366we're not where we need to be yet. Our kids are addicted to cell phone and is I don't believe personally allowing people 30 more minutes of the drug of their choice is a good idea. I want to share with our fau report shared, 74 per of our students and educators said they should not be using cell phones during the school day, 55.9% wanted stricter rules. On student safety and mental health, they support the strongest impact of phones is on bullying and they see a negative effect on student mental health and self-esteem. I know we care about students, it's clear, I think we just have a difference of opinion about what impact this has over a short period of time on our high school students, I have been on the minority view of this but I
367still want to make this case in case someone stieds to change their mind today and I think the sek piece of new information that's really come opening is opening -- compel, we need to listen to our superintendent, DR. Hepburn, through the chair, do you think changing the policy that we had in place for past 14 months on balance is a good idea? my stance has not changed on this issue. So, it remains the shame, I sup or the the current policy as is. terrific. Tr. Hepburn, do you feel like you're on fence about this or do you feel strongly about this opinion? again, my stance hasn't changed. could you share with us what your stance is in terms of the magnitude of your feelings. I don't want to express a lot of emotions but it
368hasn't changed. I feel like, yes, the kurn policy is what I support. terrific. And could you tell us again in just a brief comment, why do you feel this way, why do you feel like the current policy, bell to bell, no cell phone use is better for our district. this is part of the policy that the students and I firmly disagree about. I feel like having it from bell to bell throughout the day is best and to further codify that, every time I meet with the business community as I had a meeting about two weeks ago with some of our aviation folk, as we talk about program and all of that, the one thing that they also talk about at every business entity is our students soft skills, that they are socially inept in some
369sort, they don't know how to collaborate and communicate with each other, so it resonates over and over every time I talk to the business community. And not the mention all the social ills that segway into our schools with social media use during free time at school also. I know our principals MAY disagree with me also, just for logistics purposes, but I know they also deal with the secondary issues of cell phone use in schools. terrific. Chair, do you know what the federal law is section 230 related to social media use? I do not. section 230 of the federal law says social media companies will never be held liable for addicting our children, it's an insane law, our obligation is to keep them away from these addictions and make sure they're in the safest and secure
370environment they can be. I'm glad I'm shared in this opinion with our leader, our superintendent, you know, that while there's many good arguments to make on both sides of this issue, on balance, why we would tempt fate, why woe f would we take risks we just don't need to where the benefits are there but they are not overwhelming. Khai, I'm going the move on page 22 of the redline version, we strike the change during the assigned lufrmg period or, so the resulting sentence on number 2 of page 21, high school students MAY not use their wireless communication device during the school day except when expressly directed by a teacher solely for emg occasional purposes. second. it's been moved and seconded. Any.Public comment? board member comment? All those in favor of the motion? I'm sorry, MS.
371Leonardi? [Inaudible] I'm sorry, you said page 22. Can you clarify your proposed motion again, please. I'm just demonstrating my e numerously, it's page 21. can you repeat the bhoel thing.G. it's a chchange on the redline versnfinger sesee th rds s during their sisigned lunch period or, we would strike that on number 2 on page 2, the net effect is we would keep the current policy of bell to bell for elementary, middle which are restricted now by statute and continue that to high school. MRS. Leonardi? thank you, and I know that we've litigated this at length but I feel so strongly about the impact of this on student wellbeing and I would feel irresponsible if I didn't speak up about this again. You know, several months ago, DR. Zeman suggested we read a prolific writer, professor,
372jonathan height, and I did, I read his book anxious generation, and he makes several key recommendations for schools to address in part the mental health crisis among our youth, one is to implement bell to bell bans on cell phone use in our schools and two is to increase unstructured play in our schools and lunch is one of the few opportunities in the school day for our high school students to have unstructured social interaction with each other. And again I highly recommend anxious generation to my colleagues to read because it has some really interesting recommend dais also on expansion of recess and things like that. So, it's hard for me to ignore recommendations that are backed up by data both nationally and in our school districts. I think I've spoken to principals in district 3 and
373even just last week, I was having a conversation with a middle school principal who talked about how the ban on cell phones during the school day has reduced fighters many his school, it's reduced bullying. He talked about how he watches kids walk out of school and they're not on their phones. They're talking to each other and looking up and looking out into the world. And I think -- I know he's a middle school principal, I think these thins, this has been a long term issue, a long term habit we all have to break and I see the positive progress we're mainlining -- making with our kids and it would be devastate tog reduce or take away the opportunity these kids have to interact with each other without the restrictions of a phone. One piece of
374the conversation that we have not talked about is the expansion and ewe bribing bribing -- ewe bribing witty of ai and I read some troubling statistics, this is a much bigger conversation and I'm not scared of ai and I'm less concerned about the idea of students using ai to cheat, I am more concerned about the mental health piece, there are study that is are coming out that show three out of fourteens have used ark I for companionship, and I would suspect there are a lot of adults doing that too. I read yesterday a study that one in five high school students has had a sexual interaction with an ai chat bot . And again, these technologies are designed to be addictive. So, it is not the fault of our students, this is not a flaw
375of our students, it is not a flaw of us, many of us have to do things to stop ourselves from being on our phones all the time. But we are competing for the attention of children and it is not a level playing field. So, again, I support the motion I think that is what does right by kids on so many levels. i would like to see us do more as district in terms of reducing screen time and increasing social bra x and unstructured play with our kids and I think we need to move forward in that direction as well but again I could not, not speak up on this policy one more time, so thank you, DR. Zeman, for making the motion and I really hope we can can think about this intentionally for the
376health and wellness of our children. And I do -- I want to say one more thing, several months ago, one of our student advisors asked us, what do we do to decompress, and honestly, I put my phone away and I go outside with my kids and I look at the sunshine and the plants and listen to my children scream in my face and it's wonderful and beautiful and I would not want to rob our children of experiences like that because it is not -- it is just not a level playing field with the phones. So, thank you again, DR. Zeman, for making this motion. thank you, MS. Thompson? thank you, chair. I'm obviously not going to be voting for this motion. I really have issue with people characterizing our students as zombies or that they
377can't pay attention or that business communities complain about how they're acting. Our students especially our high school students are the next leaders of our generation. They have advocated for the possibility of having this at lunch, they have given us reasons after reasons to do this. Their parents would like them to have this opportunity, principals would like them to have this opportunity. How long is our lunch period? DR. Hepburn? on average, between 25 minutes and 30 minutes. and from the student per -- per spekt I ever, how long does it take you to get lunch? about 7 minutes when you get in the cafeteria. the majority of your time, you are probably not on your phone but we are giving the students the opportunity to check on their jobs, to check on family obligations, to check
378out for a moment which is fine. As the only mental health professional, it frustrates me that we're using this as a clutch. I have also read the anxious generation and he does talk about active play outside, that's not happening many the 20 minutes of lunch. I believe that we need the listen to our student voices, I believe that we need to listen to our community that overwhelmingly wants our student tos have this. We're not forcing them to have it, we are giving them that option. And it has been discussed time after time after time after time and continually our students are asking us to please listen to them. We talk about how we value students coming to us once a quarter because we want their input, we want their leadership and then they advocate to
379us and we say no. We don't care what you're saying, you don't know what's best for you. Obviously I feel very strongly about this. I believe that our students have the right to be listened to and that's what I'm ending on, thank you. thank you, MRS. Rupert? hard act to follow from my last two colleagues. I have been a no on cell phones from day one. My entire family was crushed when my daughter was cyber bullied, broward was the leader and we changed that policy here and in the state, it became the very first law for that. And it was the mental health and wellness aspect of it and it is insidious, it is painful, it is very hard for students to separate an anonymous person to somebody they know, all they are getting is
380pain from that aspect. Taking it away at lunch, I'm telling you, elementary, middle schools, middle schools especially, they're interacting, there's joy. They stay together when they walk out of there and there's conversation, not boisterous but actual conversation and they're working on those soft skills the superintendent has mentioned. I can tell you on scholarship committees, these kids are great on paper, when they come in for the ber views, -- interviewing, it is a different situation, even when we warn them and say really, you want to know all these answer tos these questions and they still have a part where they e ear missing a beat or two, so I'm not going to try to talk my colleagues into anything, I just have a responsibility as an adult human being and having been through what my family
381has been through, trust me, I wish we never had that information for my daugt tore access, she would be a different person. Thank you. DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair, so, thank you, board member thompson, for your feedback as I believe the only mental health professional here on this board and for you to be supporting this, I am certainly grateful for your input. It's important that we are not dismissive to the input of our parents and our students. We did send out a survey. The survey supports this. Excessive use of cell phones is problematic. However limited use of cell phone during lunchtime which probably will be about 15-20 minutes at most can also be beneficial. There's arguments on both sides and mitoses just as substantive on both sides to say if I's damaging during lufrnl
382time or beneficial. There are potential benefits as well as drawbacks if you look at it both ways. Now, I for one believe that using drel -- cell phones during lunch can provide a mental break, it can allow students to connect with pairn, especially student bhos are having issued, to have access to that support system. It can increase their productivity where they can do research, work on their homework, so I am supportive of this and I am also very appreciative of the input of our students and I see our two student advisors here who I believe also support this and also our parents, you know, and I don't see in my opinion any convincing research to suggest that using it during lunchtime is any greater degree of negative consequence as opposed to not using it so
383I'm going to respect the input of our parents and is our students and while I do and i'll say it for the record that I do strongly believe that excessive use can be damaging but limited use during lunchtime can be beneficial and I'm going the continue to support it. thank you, MRS. Alhadeff? thank you, I have one question, I know the answer, but MS. Batista, does florida state law determine whether you can use your cell phone during lunch or not use it during lufrnl? MS. Batista? yes, MRS. Alhadeff, florida law does state that except for high school students, students are not to use cell phones during lunch. no high school students during instructional time but they can use it during lunch. correct, only high school students can use it during lunchtime. state law allows high
384school to use their cell phones during lunch, thank you. MRS. Bulman? thanks, chair. Glad to be talking about this again. Just a couple of things, I mean, I think we can all agree , this is a very fraught topic and it's not just because of cell phones at lunch, it's it is entire way the society is going, it is the pervasiveness of cell phones, ai, the scariness of it, the reports of it. i would invite us as we continue down the road of supporting certain initiatives and other things that we are consistent, so I don't know that we can celebrate ai and then be super dismissive and critical of other technologies, that just doesn't make any sense to me. And it's also very contradictory for us to provide education online and on a screen all
385day and then say, no, the screens are bad. I think they are bad, don't get me wrong, but it's been frustrating for me for the duration of my children's emg kaition that this is the direction that we're going, and other -- in other news, I have read recently that kids who have been admitted to top universities like princeton are having trouble in their freshman english classes because they can't read a whole book, so if we're really going to look at this, we have to look at it holistically and to MS. Leonardi's point, nature book read, very good to unwind, we have to teach this, I think it's a parent to parent thing, whatever we can do as a society and as a school strict, we need to look at on a wider level. So, my
386main issue with the cell phone policy right now is that it's not enforced, so it's hard to sit here and say you can't have your cell phone at lunch when people are using their cell phones during the day, it's a fact, I know this to be true, so I'm supporting the lunch because I think it's a small carve out, that's with the caveat which I said months ago when we had this originally, that we are making a concerted effort that the cell phone policy's actually enforced for the rest of the day. I think that if we work on having the cell phone policy enforced except for lunch, we aoelt be much further ahead where we are now where it's enforced at lunch. those have been my comments from day one, and you know, I don't
387like to have a policy that I know we can't enforce, part of the reason why I I'm sitting here, because I was a teacher many the classroom thinking what the hell were they thinking. I just don't -- I know that there's just no way, we don't have the bandwidth to be able to enforce it, so I also won't be supporting the motion. MR. Cervera? I hate to be the only one that doesn't speak on this very important issue in case the fine citizens of broward county thinking what cervera thinks, here it goes. i am in support of a bell to bell band of cell phones in our high schools and for a very simplistic reason, I'm not going the give you the mental health aspect of this, it's been talked about at length. When this
388initially was brought before this board at various workshops and I think we had a meeting on it as well, I received phone calls, e-mails, people would stop me and talk to me about this and the biggest thing that really stuck with me on the cell phones was what was happening after the lunch period was over, get thing kids back into class and getting them to refocus on the class. I spoke to a lot of teachers, I spoke to a lot of edge ucators and I was told that process usually takes anywhere from 3-7 minutes to get the kids to refocus after lunch. The they are wife the cell phones at lunch, they're walking with the cell phone in hand, they want to watch the last 30 seconds of the tiktok clip or whatever it was
389that they were looking and it's not only the person on the cell it is also johnny watching over the shoulder to see what's going on, on tiktok as well. It takes away from the instructional time and the curriculum from the students in the class rails. This was a big reason I was against cell phone and is in favor of the bell to bell ban, my opinion remains the same and I will be supporting the motion. I'm still going to be in favor of it. okay. DR. Zeman? I want to clear up this thing and I know we want to land this plane, but our state law about high school use as you MAY not use them during instruction, it does not say you cannot use them during lunchtime, that true, chair? MS. Batista? that's cek.
390I want to be clear about that. Second is for those that don't want -- that want to enable to have these devices during lunchtime because it's difficult to enforce or you think using cell phones now under the current policy which the policy says I can use the cell phone, you just have to ask a teacher. If this goes through as people have spoken today and we allow for lunchtime use, what you get in general with public policy is you get a rule and then you get some degree of people violating that rule, sometimes they get costs, sometimes they don't, when you allow them to use more, you get more even beyond that, so this is bigger than allowing 75 thousand students to use it for 15 minutes or 7 minutes or 35 minutes, this means
391we'll have more cell phone use and more distractions for the period after the lunch period, we just have to be honest abwhat this does and it goes against two experts we have vested great respect in for safety and security in one case and for education in another. And I just wanted to make sure we're clear about the record, thank you, chair. thank you. All those in favor of the -- aisle remind you, the motion is to change the way the policy is presented to us today back to not allowing cell phones at lunch. All those in favor of the motion say yea. aye. all those opposed sexier no. Er frngt no. Er school board member hixon? o'er holness? no. leonardi? yes. rupert? yes. thompson? no. see hanh pa? yes. hall deaf? no. bulman? no. cervera?
392yes. 4-5, it fails. thank you. Back to the item, MR. Cervera, did you have anything additional you wanted to -- [Inaudible] you did raise your hand and ask me to add you. [Inaudible] okay. , back itemem pp3all osose in favor the item, say ay aye. those oppose, say no. no. I'm going to guess it's the same as it was. So the motion passes 5-4. could we do a roll call, chair. I think iet tes same one, but we can do it. roll call on the item. School board members holness? yes. leonardi? no. withdrew pert? no. thompson? yes. zeman? no. alhadeff? yes. bulman? yes. cervera? no. chair hixon? yes. it passes 5-4, same vote. okay, thank you. next item is pp5, can I have a motion and a second. it's been moved by DR. Zeman, second
393by MS. Rupert, any public comment? no, ma'am. DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair. Let me just pull it up really quick here. Okay. So, MADAM Chair, for this particular item, under f and give me just one second, my computer went dead. Okay, the redlined version under f, MADAM Chair, I just have a few questions. So, DR. Hepburn, the redline version of this, does that reflect a change from the clean version or this is -- well, I guess I'll ask my question another way. Renewal of existing contracts where the superintendent can automatically renew certain contracts, has this been in place before? DR. Hepburn? can you provide some detail on this. I don't think there's a change. Go ahead. absolutely, [Inaudible], director enterprise management office, there is no change in the sense that this provision matches perfectly
394with existing policy 3800. okay, so this provision was in existence before, correct. correct. Er as far as item f, okay. alright, under grk, emergency purchase of commodities or contractual services, I'm sorry, under r. are you asking the same question. there's a different question. It's the same but also different, so under r, with data processing agreements, where the superintendent can basically execute data processing agreements on the school board's behalf, has this been in place before? DR. Hepburn? go ahead. my understanding is that this does not currently mirror existing policy, meaning it's not a replication of existing policy, it's part of the proposed expansion of superintendent delegated authority. okay, so this is now giving the superintendent basically the option of executing data processing agreements that MAY have some degree of risk without coming to the board? yes,
395though the language itself and I can defer to my colleagues in the office of general counsel that the language itself of the provision is intended to limit such risk. okay. But it does have some risk, correct, where date a ta is being provided to third party without this coming to the board and giving the superintendent the option to be able to do that? yes, with one caveat, you will see in I believe it's the fourth sentence, this delegated authority is granted in recognition of the need for flexibility and timeliness in technology implementation where it day dais accompanying the normal school board approval process could hinder innovation and responsiveness, that I understand to mean the risk associated with the delay would likely be greater than the risk associated with the contract itself. okay. But I guess
396my concern is -- and while I'm happy with our superintendent, my concern -- and I'm sure this policy will go beyond the current superintendent is that we're giving the superintendent the latitude to be able to execute data processing agreements that -- to share limited data with third party vendors without coming to the board. I'm a little bit uncomfortable with that because I would like as a board member if there is any data sharing, that the board is aware of this. I guess I have another question, MS. Batista, if in the event there is some kind of data breach or something that is negatively consequential and we approve this today to allow the superintendent to execute data processing agreements without coming to the board and there is some breach of data or there's some negative consequence
397as a result of something that remotely could happen, is the board liable? MS. Batista? the liability that the board or wouldn't have is not based on this provision. So, in other words, just because you are delegating the authority of the -- to the superintendent to sign off on certain data processing agreements does not increase the liability of the board. I also wanted to point out that in this section, the school board attorney's offices will continue to review the agreements and also the delegated authority is not extending any further than what is already stated in policy 3800, so the limit is not increased, it's just this type of agreement is being allowed to be executed by the superintendent. so, when you said the limit does not increase, you're making reference to a dollar figure? correct, the
398same dollar figure that is in policy 3800 which the board currently has that policy in place for many years now. okay, so my concern is not so much being within the dollar amount but in terms of the sharing of data with third party vendors without the board having any input. and I also have MR. Victora on the line, I don't know if he has anything to add regarding this policy. actually, I did. With -- when you look at [Inaudible] My computer just went black, I got it back, with you look at the last line, last two lines on page of 7, it indicates every one of these agreements that the superintendent would be executing, not only do they have to be approved, there's a form and legal content by our office, but then they must
399also receive approval from information security and assurance did department and the risk management department which includes the privacy officer. So, all of the reviews that any contract, if it were going to the board would have from the people who are charged with responsibility of having contract provisions that protect those as best we can, those folks are online and mandatory reviewers of any contract under this clause that the superintendent will execute. okay, so MS. Batista, I am aware there are quality checks through legal counsel and so on and so forth. I would prefer that these kind of agreements come to the board. And I would want to possibly make a motion but I want to hear the feedback from the rest of the board. DR. Zeman? first I need to ask about redline, to the general
400counsel, is this a redline document? MS. Batista? this is a new document, so that's why everything is in red. but I've heard conversations that says, yes, we have this policy l how can this be a red line and we already have this policy in place? MAY I respond? please. yes. The concept xh wh this policy was drafted and let me say about the genesis of it a bit. We have been hearing through our office during contract reviews over and over from various departments, we would like to have a particular type of contract where it didn't have to go for board approval. The idea was, alright, the points where we're hearing from the administration, this is basically their wish list for extended contract authority. We put all of those wishes in this policy along with a
401one stop location to find them, we put the provisions where there was already delegated authority where you could look at this policy, you could see the ones newborn in the policy and see reference to the section numbers of prior existing delegation for contract authority. That's why some that were here before and some bland new. the ones that were here before under a normal redline document that lawyers are familiar with using, it would be in black ink so member of the public could think there's not some magic change, tiets same as it's been, why don't we get redline verses -- versions of the policy, chair. why don't you get redline versions. there are parses of this policy that your staff has told us exists already but it shows up in red which our general counsel can
402tell us a redline is only stuff that isn't in our current policy which show up add red, otherwise it shows up as black indicate tog the public and to us that it's already in place. I think they are referring to previous policy, it MAY not be verbatim in this particular policy but it refers to an existing policy. if I'm correct in that. that's hence why the text is all red because the entire text is new, but there are references to previous policies. so, the parts in this policy that already existed, I don't know to what extent they were changed from the previous policy and that included here that would merit for those provisions to completely be redlined. I mean, I assume that even if that were the case, there would be at least some portions
403that would be in regular black font. or a reference that says, this came from policy 3800 or this came from memo written and approved by the school board 17 years ago, something, but this is very confusing to the board and it's -- people will see this and not think kindly about our behavior today because they'll think this is a brand new policy from soup to nuts and it is not, there are pieces in this provision that already are. I want to make sure going forward, if people want to give us a redline document bs it follows the protocols. That's not a motion, that's the process needs to be honest. DR. Hepburn? go ahead, MR. Sullivan? 3820 is a brand any policy. okay. I understand what you're saying. do you want to go nr tl ?
404I'm not disagreeing. Er why did you bring it up? it ao assist brand new policy so redline or not redline televising's no existing 3820, it refers to 3800 which is a separate policy that is in existence. So in terms of how we do a redline document, it's consistent with that but I understand your point of why it's confusing. it's not confusing, it's -- yes, it's confusing but it does not follow the definition of a redline document, it doesn't say that is the policy noum the same, it says is the content in current policy. That goes in black so that the public and I know what's there now versus what's new, it's a big fundament difference, you're asking elected leaders to vote on something with you you're not showing them what's already there and what's new.
405Can we follow the legal redline definition of all documents we see before the this board, chair. DR. Hepburn? yes. thank you. on page 3, letter e, I'm going to make a motion. I love giving the superintendent authority, I do not feel confident allow hating to be delegated to other people. In e, the purchase of commodities and contractual services, line -- I apologize, thank you, page 3, letter e, I'm sorry. Line 3, it says the superintendent or his predetermined designees, I just think the public doesn't buy that. I don't buy it. I -- we hire the superintendent, if he executes contracts that we don't like, we have recourse. If a digging knee does it, we have no recourse. So, I just am going the make a motion to strike the words or his/her predetermined sdig designees.
406second. any public comment on the motion? Board member comment on the motion? MRS. Bulman? I would like to friendly amend to extend that throughout the policy. thank you very much. where it occurs. not just on e, page 3, but anywhere where it say as predetermined designee that it be the superintendent only, thank you. okay, all those -- concur. all those in favor of the motion, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. Moex carries ewe man nosily without MS. Thompson. I have two more, chair. I'll be quick. Last paimg we have a discussion of data processing agreement, one of the things that we do in good order is called a data shrining agreement, would that be covered under this section called data processing agreement? DR. Hepburn? go ahead. Er I would have to defer to my
407colleagues in legal on that piece based on the legal definition based on processing versus sharing. Er imd like to defer to MR. Vignoa. if you can hold a second, I missed the question because I was cross checking policy 3800 and caressing the superintendent's delegated authority to delegate the superintendent and his or her predetermined designees so that was not new in this policy, it's already an existing policy, if we're looking to remove the determined designees, you will probably want policy 3800 to come back before the board so you can harmonize that. What was the question that I missed when I was researching? the question was does data processing mean the same thing as data sharing? that I couldn't tell you, that's not a legal term, that's a technical term and I would suggest that you go
408to your it people, in the absence of a specific defined term, terms or given their ordinary meaning, in this case, this is a term really for it data tech people and what the ordinary meaning would be in their industry you would want to seek from that. and I do see it does say data share ining the body of that paragraph. It says this delegated authority is -- where did I go? And similar initiatives are required, limited data sharing with third party vendors. right, what I'm specifically referencing is a separate document called the data sharing agreement that broward county enters into with united nations, with world bank, with state of florida, and what we say is we will share our student data usually with a vendor that wants to did a pilot examine, an assessment of
409whether something worked in a certain way. They are very special agreements but I guess what I would like to see is if our cio could tell us whether or not he thinks that a data sharing agreement is the same as a data processing agreement. MR. Davis? trey davis, chief information officer. There's a difference. There is some overlap in cases but if we look at data processing fouler, it could ip conclude stormg, the handling of data, the input extraction of data, so think about it from a handling standpoint with regards to data sharing, especially in the sense of an external party, right, the data processing could occur in order to produce the necessary data to provide or to share so they can work hand in hand essentially, but there is a dist ins. -- dist ins.
410would this agreement add data shrining agreements? if it currently includes it. does this agreement cover data sharing agreements? based on the five people on the team that commented, I would say no. thank you, and I don't think they should,.It was in there, I would ask for it to be taken out. That's long term agreements that ought to come before the board to get agreement. The second motion I would like the make, chair, at the end, and maybe it's even throughout, but I'm sorry if i missed it throughout, there's a report that would be made to the school board, just look at the last sentence on redline page 7, subsequent to its excuse execution of e super, suequent toto anan execution n thperirintendent, a r ofof suchinin thisca data prprocessing agreement shall be submitted to the
411school board, I would like throughout this document to recommend within 48 hours if the superintendent thinks that -- that's a reasonable amount of time. yes, tla's a reasonable amount of time, we do that currently with some of our jj items, yeah. so the motion is throughout the document wherever there is a report of something that smob submitted to the school board, after that, it should end up within 48 hours. is there a second? it's been moved and seconded. MAY I make a suggestion prior to the movement. 48 hours, would you want to make it two business days because you MAY have an intervening weekend or school district [Inaudible]. he saves the day again, I'll amend my motion and say that throughout the document, it include whenever there is a report to the school bore, it
412includes two business days. I condition occur. any board comment on the motion? All those in favor, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. Motion passes ewe man mousey. last question that I have, chair, we've run into washings where we have a contract with a vendor, either a third party like, I'm sorry, -- there's an independent assessment group that often will come many to do an education assessment. It's like a very well known third party that comes in and independently looks at the data and fw ifs, hey, this software really did get that effect. We had that with -- west ed, thank you, ws ed offer today come in and do an assessment, we had tlaoez 3 thousand kids on headsets, we wanted to know that they worked, west ed said we'll do it for free,
413and they say you can't do that because it's not in the contract, I get that. I hated to give up west ed's free service, but does this document, chair, maybe to the superintendent, does this open up any kind of authorities the superintendent would have to say yeah, it's not in the contract but it's also not prohibited by the prohibit and yes we can do that third party validation. MS. Batista? no, that's not in there. Fshltion terrific. I would like this board to consider giving you that authority because I don't think the west ed offer was a unique thing, I think that the fau or university of miami or maybe the world's greatest university, florida state university might come down here and say, to do that, are there other people that would like to discuss this,
414aisle find a place to make that motion if there are. MS. Batista? I need a little bit of clarification as to who would be donating those services, if it's a company that is already doing business with the school board and has other contracts with the school board and now, you know, I just have some concerns if there is a solicitation that is made and someone wants to gift something that was not part of that solicitation, that is prohibited, that they cannot provide it, pursuant to the -- let's if it's an rfq or an rfp, you would not baibl to -- it would have to be a separate agreement like a donation agreement or something of that sort, so I'm not really -- i guess I'm not sure -- and I'm fine to add a general
415counsel review to make sure it meets all the legal standards of it, but a place like west ed is a non-profit funded by people who wants good analysis done on education matters, a a university of miami or a research one institute MAY want to come in and do it as well. All of those I think could be reviewed by your office to see if they met the standards with what we want to do business with, any other standards you would like to adopt, but I don't like to give out free assessments, I hate it when we can't get an assessment by an innovation we've done by an independent contract because it's not in the contract. Sometimes we can do things many a contract because we do stuff all time in a contract. Nobody told me
416I had a contract to show up here, right. So is this the right policy, chair, to put something like that in? MS. Batista, DR. Hepburn? Would wants to the tackle that one. ipg he MAY have further information related to what I just said, MR. Vicnola. as I'm understanding what services there are here, it's striking me this might be on page 6, subsection q as in queens, donation cabs, because -- and this is one of the new elements of this contract policy. That that allows the superintendent to execute contracts necessary for the donation of any goods or service. It sounds like these are services being donated and that would since you wouldn't have o go to a board meeting to receive this donation, that was part of the reason this clause was put in there, so
417we don't end up missing opportunities that are time sensitive where someone's trying to give us something, to I'm wondering if subsection q might be able to carry the load for this subject matter. thank you, as always, bob, MR. Vik knoll la, thank you so much, I withdraw this concern, I thought this fit into it, when I was reading q, I was thinking an extent donation and not thinking so much about reviewing an innovation that was helping us come up with an assessment. That's all I have ir have, chair,, thank you. MS. Leonardi? thank you. you know, we over the years receive communication from the mror da department of education, the U.S. department of education and I would like for the district to have the opportunity to be a little bit more nimble in response so
418I would like to make a motion that this policy include a provision authorizing the superintendent to terminate contracts without prior board approval when such termination is required by a directive or order from the U.S. Department of education or the florida department of education. The superintendent has notify the board of any such action through a written memorandum. second. any public comment on the motion? Board member comment on the motion? MR. Cervera? I have some concerns with this. We MAY get things from the can doe, both federally and state. And while I'm a big advocate for following the law and tolling directives tr those institutions, when we are talking about terminating contracts that affect this district specifically I'm hesitate with all due respect to the superintendent and his tale to not have that fully vetted by legal
419and this board making a decision I'm not suggesting we ignore doe directives from the federal doe and from the state doe, my only concern is what if it's a generic letter from the doe regarding some institution or some company that we're dealing with and we take a look at that contract and deeply imbedded in that contract is liquidated damages provision that subjects the district to millions of dollars in penalties and potential liability in the face of an -- in an earlier illegal termination under the agreement. So, I'm a little hesitant to have a decision like that being made by the superintendent and his team, I think that needs to be fully vetted by legal and that should be brought to the board. In no way, shape or form am I suggesting to ignore the decision
420from the state doe, I feel like a decision like that that could subject this district to severe liability of a binding contract we have with somebody should be fully vetted by legal and should be a decision made by this board. I was oppose the motion. one factor that comes to my mind, calling for legal to review one of these sizing swa etion iss our termination for convenience clause in most of our contracts is upon 30 days notice of the sben to termination, the way this usually triggers, we have an item on your board agenda, like we had one today, you would authorize the superintendent to notify the vendor that we are terminating the contract in 30 days, the board meeting today, the superintendent delivers the day notice tomorrow and then at the end of 30
421days, then we have an effective termination. So, part of avenging that go through legal is to make sure that we're doing it correctly with the proper notice so we don't have a vendor claiming we have a failed attempt to terminate the contract. MRS. Leonardi? I suppose my understanding of this motion if I need to amend it, I will, would be that the superintendent would of course vet and go through legal. I think that woo have westbound could have been the superintendent's intention as well, I'm happy to amend the motion to include after a review with legal, so I will go ahead and do that. So, my new motion would read as follows, I move that policy 3820 include a provision authorizing the superintendent to terminate contracts without prior board approval but after a full legal
422review, once that determination is required by order of the U.S. Dment of education or florida department of education, the superintendent shall notify the board of any such action through a written memorandum and I assume that such memorandum could serve as a day notice. Thank you. second. any board member discussion? MR. Cervera? I have the same concerns and here's why, thank you for the amendment, again, if there is such a set of circumstances in which a contract needs to be terminated and there doesn't have the convenience clause in it that most of our contracts have admittedly, if for some weird set of circumstances a contract doesn't have that, I don't feel comfortable with the superintendent making decisions with decisions to terminate something without the board coming back and listening to all the potential legal ramifications. The
423last thing I would like the happen to this district is the superintendent makes a decision to terminate a contract because of a letter he got from doe, we get a big fat lawsuit and we're in the prodress and all that stuff and my constituent, the good citizeness of broward county want to know why the board as governing authority didn't have a say in what -- in this ultimate decision to terminate a contract that has resulted in a big lawsuit we're facing. So while I paoesht the -- all the good work the the superintendent's office and his team does and certainly the good work our legal team does, I think we owe it to our constituents to make that decision collectively as a board as to whether or not to terminate a contract especially when we
424could be facing the contract, there could be again early termination penalty, a liquidated damages provision, something that could subject us to liabilityfinger I aoenl not comfortable allowing the superintendent to make that determination, with all due respect to the superintendent. MRS. Bulman? so, I'm just reading between the lawsfinger we had a fact pattern that came before us that this was in issue, in this particular case, my understanding because we have been provided with the information soy dao appreciate the board has been kept abreast, we had time to tell the doe that were weren't going forward with a certain contract. I think the nimbleness here is because of the timeline that is are being set and when wez ear going to dpet that back in front of the board. Sometimes it's an impossibility if we're getting an
425arbitrary deadline and then we have to comply but our next board meeting isn't for another two weeks so I guess for MS. Leonardi's motion, I would like to -- call for a substitute motion? I don't remember all of the details of the original motion off the top of my head, but I think -- can I say something real quick? yes. and I'm not trying to -- if you want to make a substitute motion, that's fine, but I wanted to clarify that for the recent example that you are speaking of, will coming to the board at the NOVEMBER meeting so that the board delegates to the superintendent the ability to notify that particular vendor and gives the vendor 30 days for convenience clause of the contract, so that's the way that that is playing out, so
426even though the response did have to go out within five days, -- the termination doesn't have to happen technically. superintendent, can I add to that? . Inger go ahead, MR. Sullivan. the only reason why we haven't been notified by the office of ocr whether our response was within their parameters is because the government shut down, so we're not sure if our response about our action was acceptable. Just to mention that. so, I don't know where we're at with that. The only thing I would say to this motion is that if anything is being done, I would like the communication with the board to be as strong as it was in this particular situation. I think it was -- if I could jump in, DR. Zeman's motion was every single item that was on there within
427two business days, the superintendent would report to the board, so I think if it followers that motion, it would have to do that. you can rest those feet. great job, though. DR. Hepburn, the only other -- or MADAM Chair, the only other -- just thing that I could offer would be to maybe include in the motion that MRS. Leonardi presented something along the lines of if the -- if the contract is without -- it ma a provision for without cause but if there is -- if it is only for cause that it be present today the board under those circumstances. do you want me to amend my motion again? So, I move that policy 3820 include a provision authorizing the superintendent to terminate contracts without cause -- that contain -- that contain termination without cause
428-- clause without prior board approval when such termination is required by relive or order from the U.S. Department of education or the florida department of education after a full legal review, the superintendent shall notify the board of any such action through a written mem rand -- mem wrand memorandum within two business days. okay, DR. Zeman? thanks. Either to the maker of the motion or to the chair, are there any instants where the florida department of ed asks us to cancel a contract in the way we couldn't do it at the next school board meeting or at a school board meeting. DR. Hepburn? go ahead, MR. Sullivan. so, I will phone a friend of general counsel. It depends on the correspondence, so in the recent example, they gave us five days although it wasn't clear if
429it was calendar or business days, they agreed it was business days and not calendar day, if we had five business days, I believe the board would have the ability to call a special school board meeting within that timeframe, we don't know if every instance would include that timeline of five days. The recent case, it would allow for a special school board meeting. if wi could use that as a good case study for this motion, they asked us to respond about what we were going to do, not cancel the contract. right. if I recall correctly, the letter never spoke about contracts, it spoke about our relationship with an organization which in this case was through a contract. I'm -- I like our authority to approve contracts and I would loo toik retain our authority to cancel
430contracts, I just don't see any instances, I also don't want to insinuate to any other legislative body we're going to follow something outside of law. And so if a U.S. Or a florida department of ed tells us to do something, we have to do it. Sometimes it's in conflict with the law and figure out how to deal with that which I think the board is uniquely capable of doing, I don't know if there iss any need for this but I also like the ability to cancel contracts here at the board because we're also the only authority that can approve a contract. all those if favor of the motion, say aye. aye. those opposed, say no. no. can we do a roll call. school board members holness? yes. leonardi? yes. rupert? yes. thompson? yes. zeman? no.
431alhadeff? no. bulman? no. cervera? no. hixon? yes. motion passes 5-4. okay. All those in favor of item -- MADAM Chair, are we voting on the entire item? yes. remember I wanted you to come back to me. go ahead. Er I still do have I would say an uncomfortable -- I think there's an uncomfort degree of risk, even though minimal, for all which is data processing agreements, the word limited, limited datatasharing g with third d pay y vendors evev thouou in isis case opinn, limited in this case is relative and subject to staff interpretation. I am still uncomfortable with data processing agreements not come tog the board that require limited data sharing with third party vendors, so just for the record, I'm goipg to make a a motion to remove r, so data processing agreements can
432come to the board for approval. . Inger is there a second on the motion? Any public comment? Board member comment? All those if favor of the motion, say aye. aye. all those opposed, say no. No. Roll call? [Inaudible]. roll call on the motion, school board members leonardi? yes. rupert? Thompson? yes. zeman? yes. hall deaf? no. bulman? yes. cervera? [Inaudible]. hixon? no. holness? yes. 6-3, it passes. okay. Is that it, DR. Holness? Okay, now back to the whole item. Okay. just bringing it back around. and to our counsel's point, the policy 3800 has some of the same language, I do think we have to clean that up and we're going to clean up 3800, the numbering could be improved significantly, Because just because there's this bold -- it's hard to reference it when you're looking at
433it okay, thank you. and then MADAM Chair, before you guys vote, just know these changes I believe do constitute sub city nant changes so we'll flexed to present it at the NOVEMBER 12 meeting. thank you, all those in favor of item prk p5 as amend, say aye. aye. Er any posed, say no no. motion passes with one dissenting vote. This is the time of the agenda when school board member will hear from our evening speakers and we have one, mariah rabideau, come on down. good afternoon, chair, superintendent and members of the board, my name is mariah rabideau. I am a parent, member of the pta and band boosters and speaking on behalf of students and families at [Inaudible] Middle school, we have something truly rare, tiets only school in broward county that's been an a
434school since it open 2626 years ago which is a legacy that we are celebrating, behind that proud headline is something we need to talk about, the state of the facilities. The facilities in general across the school are in unacceptable condition. The columns throughout the campus have visible crack x not cosmetic wear but signs of structural deterioration that raise real safety concerns. Inside the bathrooms, tiles are cracked, broken, they're not just dirty, the dryers are rusted or broken or both. Many faucets barely work or don't stay on, there's in air conditioning, just open air stalls with visible gaps that leave students feel exposed. On a goaded day, its feels like a disgusting highway rest stop but not on a highway because the florida highway maintains their restrooms better than this. This is not a reflection top
435custodial staffer, they've been given the best with what tle ear doing, this is a lack of board support, attention and investment over 20 years and it's showing. I recently filed a public records request to understand the scope of repair and is maintenance over the years and the response was astonishing. They do not have records to their recollection of maintenance at the school, bathrooms, no records, no documentation, no trail of accountability for facilities that hundreds of children use every single day. This isn't about comfort, it's about dignity, health and safety. We would never accept this standard in a public building where adults work like the one we're all standing in, so why is it acceptable where our children learn. I want to acknowledge the hard work that's gone into improving many campuses across the county but
436this sends the wrong message about what we value. I would like the end with an invitation, not a complaint, I invite each of you to come visit, take a few minute, experience the student facilities for yourselves, no cameras new york city walk through prep, just a genuine visit. If it feels dignified, say so. If it doesn't, please make this a priority. Our students deserve facilities that match their excellence. Thank you for your time. thank you for coming to speak to us today. the last item on the agenda is r-r 1, can I have a motion and a second. moved. it's been moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Rupert, any public comment? no comment. MRS. Alhadeff? Okay, MRS. Bulman? thank you, chair. I just would like to give a shout out to que sta trace,
437they killed it at the cross country meet yesterday, won the team award. okay, so to r-r 1, so this is a resolution to recognize america's safe schools week which is from OCTOBER 19 to the 25th and it came to my attention from a -- the manager of safety at south broward that we did not have this resolution and so I'm bringing it forward, that's MR. Waters, he's our campus security manager, so I'm bringing it forward to recognize and thank the district safety, security and emergency preparedness team and campus monitors, safe school officers, school resource officers and all of our other safety personnel but I'm going pass it on to my colleague who is the expert in this and has demonstrated such dedication and progress and also that wonderful dog demonstration this morning. Thank you. thank
438you. Thank you so much for bringing this forward. Excellent. I just have one modification that I would like to change in the third to last paragraph where it speaks to whereas the board recognizes the effective prevention strategies including safety drill, mental health support, anti-bullying initiative, character education and I would like the replace the word social, emotional learning with student wellness to help build a culture of safety and respect across all schools. Third to last paragraph. Is there a second? second. any public comment on the motion? Board member discussion on the motion? All those if favor of the motion, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. The motion passes ewe nan nowsnosily. I would like to be a co-sponsor on the resolution. okay. was that it? yeah. MS. Thompson? I just wanted to echo my colleagues'
439sentiments on the resolution and thank MS. Bulman for bringing it to us, that's it. thank you, I would also like to thank you for bringing it forward, I think it's important to highlight that, so thank you. All those in favor? MADAM Chair? yes. I think it would be amazing if the entire board would co-sponsor this resolution. I would love to do that as well. okay. thanks, guys. . Inger we'll all be on the resolution. then we can ask MR. Cervera to -- I'm sure he'll be fine. okay, yes, we're going to volunteer him. All those in favor, say aye. Er any oppose, say no. motion passes unanimously. As I mentioned before, I wanted to bring something up at the end, so I would like to make a motion to reopen the agenda to discuss the
440general counsel's transition plan. Is there a second? second. all those in favor of opening the agenda westbound reopening the agenda, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. Motion passes you ewe man mousey. I would like to make a motion to close the agenda. second. it's been moved and seconded to close the agenda. All those in favor, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. Motion carries. As you are now aware, our general counsel has submitted her resignation effective JANUARY 9, to move swiftly and maintain stability within the the office of the general counsel, I move that the board initiate an internal recruitment process and direct staff to post the position publicly this week and I also move -- that's one motion, I have a second one, that an item be placed on next week's board workshop
441agenda to allow further direction raring the transition plan. second. public comment? Board member discussion? MS. Leonardi? thank you, and first none of us have had really the opportunity to publicly respond to the letter of resignation, I just want to first start off by thanking MS. Be taste ta for her decades of service to this district. [Applause]. She has -- before leading this office, she has dedicated her life to serving students if broward county public schools so thank you for that, and thank you for leading us through some very tumultuous times at broward county public schools and you've handled it with grace, so thank you. To MS. Hixon's motion, so when you say an internal search process, do you mean like we have our staff do a search like a national -- like they advertise a
442position, can you -- I would like to have some more clarity. sure, and I have an alternate motion if you wanted to spend money and I think it's a direction -- we'll -- we really have to have a discussion about it, I know when we did superintendent searches, what we heard from the board is they don't like using aun outside firm because they picked who they brought to us, so if our hr was to put out an ad, then we would be able to see all of the resumes that come many, decide who we wanted to interview and then it wouldn't cost us -- well, we're going to find out the difference in cost, we wouldn't be paying an outside firm. So, I think it's a good way to get something out right away and
443then if we find that doesn't work, it still gives us time to look for a firm if we needed to, but this would get an ad out by the end of the week and then we could move swiftly on what we want to do moving forward. I still think it needs to come to a workshop. I know MRS. Alhadeff has some information she also wanted to share, so at the board workshop, it would give us a good amount of time to be able to discuss what we wanted to do moving forward. got it, so, I have another -- I have some other comments or questions, but when we talk about bringing it to a workshop, what are we look to discuss at a workshop, and when would that workshop be? it would be next week,
444the next workshop, and we could make parameters around what we wanted. okay, so but we're looking to advertise the position by the end of this week and do a workshop on the parameters -- help me -- yeah. DR. Lozano? good afternoon, chief human resources officer, so we would -- best bracket would be to do the workshop, then the board would talk about considerations like the job description, are you leaving it the same, talk about the need or not need for an interim general counsel, what will that look like. As this process goes forward, again, talk through internal or external so, there are different things about how you want to interview screening, interview rounds so we would have a workshop to discuss all those options and the board would direct us in which direction you would
445want to go. okay. And we have a master board training next week ask then two workshop items, so we would just -- three. So, I'm fine with doing that. i would just hope we all understand we're going to be here for a long time that day. I would also be open to hashing that out today but I don't know if all of us are prepared to do that. I came to this meeting prepared to fauk about either in support of doing an internal search process like what you're subjecting, if we decide that that has been insufficient, I would like us to do something different than what we've done in the past with the superintendent search and I'm right there with many of my colleagues in that I don't think when we've hired an individual search
446firm that the results were acceptable. I would be open to doing a contingency search, so, you know, having the position out there and then having multiple search firms compete for the business basically and whoever delivers us the person that we hire would get paid. We haven't done that since I've been on the board, I know we talked about it in years past, so if we it shall if our internal search process does not yield results that we like, I would really like us to do a contingency search. I'm concerned about the timeline though, so how long would we expect the job posting to be open? like, when would be the end date for our internal search process? DR. Lozano? we've worked out a tentative timeline, so it would probably take two weeks for the planning
447and develop our search strategy. The board would determine how long you want to run the ad for, three week, four weeks, a month, so we would determine how long to run the ad, it would take us a week for screening, and then another week for initial interviews. Another week to look at final candidates, do the background checks, references, full vetting, florida bar review, etc., another week for final interview, then we'd enter contract negotiations and then we'd present the contract for approval at the board and then we would move into onboarding, so we're probably looking at a 14 week process on average from start to finish. so in that scenario, we would probably have to have an interim, correct? correct. because, yeah. Okay. Walk me back a little bit. So, what's the timeline for you --
448from like start to you guys telling us here are the candidates who are qualified who applied. When would that -- MRS. Leonardi, we have to vote to extend the meeting, so we are at time, so I would like to make a motion to extend st meeting for an hour, so we don't have to keep voting on it. Hopefully it won't take that long. All those in favor of extending the meeting for an hour, say aye. aye. any oppose, say no. Thank you so much, continue, I'm sorry. so, again, it would be determined on the job description, if you leave it the same, it's going to speed up the process. If we make revisions to the job description, that would have to come to the board for approval before we could befwin the process. okay, I
449think that's a very important piece for us to consider because we would be discussing that at next week's workshop whether or not we'd want to change the job description, so so then if we were to change the job -- if we waited until OCTOBER 21 to decide if we're changing the job description, whether is the soonest we could vote on changing that job description? NOVEMBER 12? So, we couldn't do like a special? you could. so, it would be NOVEMBER 4th would be the -- I guess the point I'm trying to make is I'm a little bit concerned about waiting to do a workshop and I'm a little bit concerned about the timeline. If we decide that the internal search process is insufficient, we're like probably into DECEMBER at that point and then we're starting all
450over. So I'm looking for fordward to hearing from my colleagues about this, I'm just a little concerned. . Er DR. Zeman? I would like to make a substitute motion where we decide today what to do with the hope we hire a great general counsel to come before JANUARY 9, 13 weeks is fwraet, it exceeds what your contract required, MS. Batista, thank you for giving us a little bit more time. I would like to make some decisions today and this is kind of the zeman plan. We say CHAIRMAN, you're in charge of hiring us a general counsel, you have 30 thousand dollars of discretionary spending if in fact the internal search first doesn't work, you have our authority to authorize the chief of human resources to execute an incentive contract, not just with one search term,
451with multiple search terms whoever finds the successful candidate. Your goal is to find us a great general counsel many the most reasonable time possible and we as members of this board prefer to go fast with your wisdom and guidance leading this effort. The reason I would ask the chair to do it?A the general counsel works for us and I think you should be assisted by our chief of human resources who can help you with the process but I feel like we have to have a person responsible for the process because at the end of the day, you're going to bring us back some qualified people, we'll down select, you will bring people back to interview, we'll participate in that interview and moving quickly. To MS. Leonardi's point, with all due spect, DR. Lozano, this committee
452this anandelay y ththatand workshop brdrd, is, I don'n't thk can do tha anwe have ththe authority to vest in the chair the running of the process with your support and I would argue very, very strongly that the job description of a general counsel in every large district is carbon copy. They all have to be part of the bar, they all do risk management and legal counsel and do supervised counsel, supervised staff, it's -- I doubt there's word differences between miami-dade and the largest 81 districts in the united states, so I think what we have is sufficient as a job description, we're not going to -- I don't think we're going to find the definition of a general counsel for a school board is well defined and I feel like we have the opportunity to ask
453you in your 11th month of service to take all the experiences you've had working with us and drive the process for us home. And I would tliek give you the authority to have up to 30 thousand dollars to spend the if in fact the using internal services doesn't generate the candidates you like and say, hey, we're running out of time, let's open up an incentive search, we could get candidates in 30 day and is do final reviews in early DECEMBER and we have a hope of getting a human being here that's fully qualified in JANUARY. So, that's a very long description of my motion, but that's the motion I would distill sb a few sentences if people would like to discuss that further. I just want to get this going. is there a second on
454the substitute motion? second. okay. So, board discussion, MS. Thompson? thank you. so, to the maker of the motion, I guess, if the chair's running it but we potentially will have a new chair on OCTOBER 18, 19, it just transitions? absolutely. The chair is the title of our -- is the -- they have the ability to represent us but again I'm not saying that the chair would have any more than one vote in the decision of the general counsel, it's just this idea of having nine people run a committee to do a process just doesn't make any sense. We need to pick somebody na's a representative of our board, that's what we do with our chair there, it would transition to a new chair if we have a new chair, they would pick that process up
455and run it. A person can make digs, a pesh can get to a point where either it's working or not working with internal reresource and is then go with an incentive contract. We really as a board don't have a lot to talk about for the process, we have a lot to talk about once we get candidates so I would prefer to have our elected letter who's the chair now and roll over to another chair if that happens in NOVEMBER to pick up and run this as a single point of contact for the school board. and the superintendent, is 30 thousand dollars -- I don't know what the cost is for this. so, again, you're looking at about 20-25% of the salary of the individual you're hiring, so you're looking at more than 50 thousand, 6
456tho thousand dollar range for this type of position. I'm happy to authorize to amend my motion and authorize up to 25% of the initial salary. If that what the market requires to get a bunch -- I love the idea of multiple firms trying to find a good candidate and place them and I think there's a very likely chance we're going to get a candidate through our internal processes, there's people already calling and talking about how awesome it is to work in broward county. those are my questions, thank you. MRS. Hall deaf? sdsh alhadeff? thank you. First I would like to start that I asked if the chair or vice chair brought this item forward as an agenda item and I was told no. So I wanted to bring this item forward with backup information so
457that we could more aggressively move forward today. I was denied by dinging it to the agenda and then the agenda gets opened back up and gets put on the agenda, so just a little frustrated with that process. So, we have what's called the school board's legal services committee, would's on it? right now on that committee is board member bulman, board men leonardi, superintendent hepburn and general counsel batista and we have one vacant position from when board member fam resigned. so MR. Cervera I would assume would take that position. So, I would -- what I believe and what has been done in the past and was done by board member donna quaron in 2021 was to give the school board's legal services committee the ability to review applications and that's I think the way that we
458should if we're going to go down that process have the legal service committee meet and review the applications and then bring something forward to us as a board. I think the biggest question right now is we're not talking about is the financial impacts of what it's going to cost, comparing if our staff does it or we do this search, so does staff have that answer? MS. Batista is remembering that process was for the interim, not the actual general counsel, so if you could address that also. that is correct. But that committee is available if the board chooses to use that as an option. good afternoon, susan naukbacker [Inaudible], exec tier director of talent management, cost would depen on what you want to spend, if you want to do an internal seiner, we can do some
459national wide reach out there through some networking and other organization, we could do paid advertise, things along that line. I'm guesstimating at about 5 thousand, maybe depending on how far you want to to reach using social media and everything out there get thing word out televising's several different networking opportunities out there. We could certainly spend those tlars on doing an internal search and doing it internally versus going out to an outside company which exactly as DR. Lozano told you will cost 25% of what that salary will be, it will take time to find the company, we MAY work with purchasing to determine if we can go into contract with them, we would have to go through all that process before we can reach out and use somebody, that would also delay perhaps you getting through
460the process quickly because we have to find time to find a company to do the search. but we've done this dance, so we have I'm sure a list of the companies and if we're going to do what MS. Leonardi spoke about, being competitive about it, there is spg that I do want to bring to the board's attention in the job description is we do require this person to have the educational law certification which there is -- MS. Batista could speak to it, isn't there less than 75 people if the whole state of florida ta has this certification? yes, that is correct, about 75 individuals, lawyers have that certification but I don't believe that's a requirement. Of the minimum qualifications. . Er we looked it up yesterday and it's not part of the actual minimum requirements.
461It's a preference because I had the same question. they removed it? yes, it says that or they had to have practiced some kind of educational bar which according to MS. Ba taste ta in our discussion yesterday, I didn't just pull this out of the air was that you could practice contract law or you could practice all kinds of different things in an educational setting and it would fulfill that. My concern was throwing a wide enough net. Er we're going to limit the pool. yes, according to MS. Batista, the job description we have now would not limit that can staff speak to -- I guess we're still on the motion with DR. Zeman, I'm against that but I'm for the legal services committee. okay, so -- superintendent, if I MAY. DR. Lozano is passing out the
462job description, minimum qualifications, the third says experience with education and/or school law. so, let's vote on DR. Zeman's motion first and then if it doesn't pass, MRS. Alhadeff can -- DR. Zeman's motion which was to allow the chair to run the process and bring everything back to the board regardless of who is in the position. All those in favor of DR. Zeman's motion, say aye. aye. those opposed, say no. no. so, the motion fails. Do you have everybody who voted? I'm going to have to do roll call for the record because I don't have everyone. I know it failed. I think it was only two people that said yes. there was three. sorry. if you said yes, can you raise your han. DR. Zeman, raise your hand. okay, we got it. okay. So, MRS. Hall
463-- al has defer? -- alhadeff. I move to allow the school woeeder's legal services committee will review all application and is make a recommendation to the school board for consideration of general counsel. second. any public comment? I have a question on that though because it doesn't address -- are we going to leave it to start with our hr putting out an ad and collecting resumes or -- can that be a separate motion? Because I would like to discuss what MS. Leonardi talked about more. well, because if it's -- the only reason I'm asking is because I believe if it's a firm, the firm is going to shuffle out, that's the whole reason you hire the firm, it will shuffle out who they bring to you, it would change what happens at that committee, I think
464we have to commit one way or the other first. well then let's talk about what MS. Leonardi was discussing. we're going to hold off on that discussion right now. so, we brought this up I think when we were doing the last superintendent search, several of us suggested doing a contingent search or a contingency seiner, we put it o there, we're looking for a new general counsel, firms compete, whatever firm delivers us the person that we hire is the one that gets paid and I know this is common in other fields, I don't know like the minute DEd sdsh details of that, that's one avenue that I think would be really interesting to pursue because it's -- we've done the internal search before, we've done hiring the one search firm before. I think this gives people
465an opportunity to compete and really deliver us some great results. And I think we have an amazing hr staff. One of my questions was going to be to them, like, would they be calling candidates trying to recruit people specifically or rewith doing paid advertisements and publishing things on our website? DR. Lozano? if we did it internally websinger would certainly reach out to our networks through other school district in addition to doing paid advertising, social media on all of the different job boards that would attract candidates in that field. . Inger I have to be honest, I don't know for a position like this, paid advertisements and social media will deliver us excellent results that we're looking for. I think for a position like this, it really is like word of mouth, people connecting with their
466networks trying to bring someone in which is again why I'm interested in the idea of a contingency search. I have some additional questions about the legal services committee generally and also like the timeline, so I don't know if now is the right time to address those questions or if you want to address the decisions of the contingency search. I have a question on that in particular and a question for MS. Batista. Have we ever done, I'm going to call it head hundred, it's basically head hunters, so, what would that look like in purchasing, have we done that before? Because I don't know if that would extend the amount of time that we would be able to put out something. I mean, I love the idea, we have talked about it and I think it's motivating
467for people the bring good candidates that way but government is very slow in a lot of things, so this I don't think we've ever done it that way. How would we do that? we did utilize when we did the superintendent search, we have used outside companies to help us with that seining. If the cost is under 50 thousand, then the superintendent can sign off on that agreement but if the cost is going to exceed that amount, then we would have to go through the purchasing. but we wouldn't know what the cost was until someone found the right -- that's what I'm saying. we have a general idea bah we know what the salary is, they would know the salary of that percentage they're going to charge, they're going the charge 20-30%f your general counsel is
468making 225, that's going to be anywhere 40 thousand dollars and up, you have wiggle room there. how would -- but depending on the company, if you're going to want to use several companies, they'll bring a list of candidate tos you, let's say you get three companies, each one brings you five candidates,, we're still going to have to vet the candidate and is figure out how you want to whittle down the company's list which is doable, we have to make sure that company is agreeable to say you're only going to get paid or receive fees for your services if we select your candidate. that's what I guess I'm asking. I think we all would like to know, what's the probability of -- we've never done that before, we've only gone with one company. other organizations do
469do that, just because we have never done it before doesn't mean it can't be done, it's an argument for doing it. and I don't disagree, I just want -- if we decide to do that, we need to know what the path is forward and does it extend the timeline, does it shorten the timeline. well, it would definitely extend it from putting out something today or at the end of the week, we have a list of companies that specialize in providing candidates in this field so we have found some list of companies that do that. We would have to reach out to them to see who's interested. okay, thank you. And MS. Batista, as a side note, you've been in this business a long time. Do you have a list of friends that you might share
470that might be interested in the position? well, I mean, I'm not sure that I have a list of friends that would be interested in the position but I have a list of friends that MAY be interested. I do belong to the florida school board attorneys association and tlas conference that will be taking place on NOVEMBER 6 and 7 which I'm planning to attend, and there the people who attend that conference will be the general counsels from all the other districts in the state along with associated general counsels from those different school districts, so eng that's a very good place to advertise and share that information. If I MAY just suggest to MRS. Alhadeff's point that before the pool of applicants goes to the committee, to the legal services committee, I think it would be valuable
471to have hr just look and make sure that they meet the minimum qualifications so you don't get a pile of 150 resumes when really only 10 or 15 even meet the minimum qualifications, so that's just a suggestion. okay. So, MRS. Leonardi, did you want to finish asking your questions. yeah, for the -- because MRS. Alhadeff brought it up, for the legal sss committee, because we have one vacancy, does that district board member just automatically get add today the legal services committee or do we need to do an item to fill the vacancy? E swr to do an item to fill the vacancy, okay. And then I do think and MRS. Hall deaf brought this up, over the years when we've been doing a search for the general counsel position, we did some thing widths the
472job description that I would be interested in revisiting, so that bringers me to the question of like if we can schedule some special -- if my colleagues would be amenable to scheduling some special school board meetings for the next few weeks in order to baibltd to get the business of the vacancy, or updating the job description if everyone want tos do that. Just to be able to keep things moving forward. so, we could add MR. Sullivan, could we add a special school board meeting next week at 8:00 because I think our training starts at 9:00, yes. yes, the training starts at 9:00, you can do a special as early as you like. I would be -- I don't know how my colleagues feel about that. Listen, I know it's going to be a lot, but
473this is serious business that we have to do. I agree, and MRS. Alhadeff is always here early. So, everybody okay with -- we could do 8:30 if you want, but it will cut into -- it never takes the 15 minutes they say it takes so I think we would have to give it at least an hour. So, 8:00. sorry, that would be to revise the job description or to entertain motions to revise it? as well as fill thing vacancy on the legal services committee. terrific, so I just would ask my colleagues if you have change tos the job description, bring them, okay. Don't start reading it at 8:30, thank you. yes. so, 8:00? if that's the will of the board. I can't make 8:00, I can make 8:30. well, 8:30 went give us enough time.
474How about 8:15? 8:00, yes, you come when you get here. okay, I'm going to object. I'm sorry, I have a standing medical appointment and it pends and I can get here at 8:30 and I don't want to be eliminated from the discussion of this board for the first time in three years. okay. We'll l do 8:3030but erybody betttter talk fast okay. So, 8:30, special meeting. can I make a suggestion? okay. can we move the fsba training to another day? And then allow that time period to focus on this? MR. Sullivan? I canants speak for the trainer, ill have to ask, I'm sure we can reschedule it but without asking her directly, I would have to check. . Er let's check in the process websinger eel stay f say we'll do a special school board meeting
475at 8:30. if she's able to reschedule, we will commence the special school board meeting at 9:00 until 1:00. how's that. MADAM Chair. have you sat in a school board meeting with us? then we can hatch out some of the other issues we're stringing trying -- trying to hash out. well, hold on. we're clinging. I -- calling. Er does the training have to be done by the end of the calendar year because nen do we have time to reschedule it? we have to find out when carol could come. is there a time that we have to have that training sdoen by? Because then there might not be a time to reschedule it is my question. well, we can let MR. Sullivan find that answer out. Does it relate directly to -- yes. Is there any cost
476to rescheduling, additional k s? -- cost. we'll find that ou. just to be clear for next week for our special school board meeting, we would be voting op the job description, we would be voting on filling the legal services committee vacancy and then we would perhaps be sousing the other parts of this transition that we would need to discuss, correct? Those are my questions, thank you. okay. MRS. Alhadeff? I have a comment that my colleagues could think about, we can discuss it next week, but super majority vote, we did lose a candidate because -- or someone we were going to hire because the board didn't agree with super majority vote and so I am not asking to weigh in on it now but just to think about that. yeah, that was for the contract for
477the legal counsel, that was why we lost the one person. Okay. So I'm trying -- we've moved around a lot, I made a motion, then there was a substitute motion because we never voted on that motion, so there was DR. Zeman's motion which failed, right. So, MRS. Alhadeff's motion is on hold because we are stringing to finish, trying to keep track here. Trying to finish the questions. So, are you ready to make your motion, MRS. Alhadeff? and I do have a response whenever you want it, MADAM Chair. now would be great. MS. Cook says that selecting a general counsel is testify gently crucial so she understands, there is no cost and we can reschedule as long as we reschedule within the next 6-8 months. perfect. thank you. Alright. Great question then. Okay. I don't really
478want to force to do the contingency search unless, I mean, I can make a motion, we can vote on it and see if that's what we want to do. Alright, I'll just make the motion. I move to -- for the broward county school district to -- I move for the school board's legal services committee so they're going the review all applications given by the external search contingency search. is there a second? second. any public comment on the motion? Board member comment on the motion? DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair, so, when the legal services counsel review the application, I just want to get clarity, are they going the bring back to the board a certain number of qualified applicants that they're recommending or what happens next? I guess that would be up to us. I
479don't know that we would want to give a number, what if there's only three people that apply. they wouldn't make recommendations to the school board but they will also share all of the information with the recommendations like the resumes, their letter, all the information, they'll share a that with the school board. I guess what I'm trying to understand, the legal services council, they're going the make recommendations to the school board. Are they going to recommend one candidate from everyone they receive or are they going to -- what are we expecting? it will be hopefully five, six, hopefully our staff vets it out before they even go to make sure they meet the standards, the minimum qualifications, and then I would hope they would be providing basically all of them that meet the minimum qualifications, but
480they're vetting it out and the superintendent even though he's part of the legal service committee, he would not be participating in that part of it. MADAM Chair. what about to what you just said board member alhadeff, what about general counsel batista? no. so, when we say legal services committee, we're alining about the three board members that serve on that committee? correct. and it's a sunshine meeting and minutes will be taken at the meeting. DR. Holness? the legal services council have three board members that will be deciding on which applicants to bring forth to us. I don't have -- well, I do sort of, it seems as if there is a limited number of individuals on the legal services council, is there any other -- in addition to legal services council that could be involved, any
481other particular group that could be involved in that ro kress in addition to the legal services council? the motion right now is just for legal council tha,'s their whole purpose is to discuss legal issues. okay. Alright. MS. Thompson? I guess I'm just confused in general. So, are we saying that we're going to do an internal search, the internal people are going to give it to this legal services council which is made up of three, so then we are spending up around 50-60 thousand dollars for people these people to give us applicants and then you guys are reviewing them? there's been a back and forth and I would like a very timeline of what's happening because two people shook their head no with very different ideas. Er MS. Alhadeff's motion was to use an external firm
482which means that companies would bring us people but our hr still has to vet them. They would vet them to make sure they meet the minimum qualification, then it would go to the legal council, legal services council -- committee. why couldn't the firm that we're spending a a ton of money on vet them and make sure they fit the minimum qual pi occasions? they do, but then our legal -- I mean, it's our employee, our hr has to always vet them. can I speak to some of that, in the past when we've done searches, the search firms bring us the list and we whittle down the list to things we are looking for, so I guess the question really is to you trust the legal services committee to do that, to whittle down that list
483to help have a more refined conversation down the line. If you don't, then just vote no on the motion. so, that's not way aoem confused about. I'm confused more about how we're getting applicants bs not about the legal services component about it, it's either are we using our internal people to recruit applicants and then that goes to you guys or we're using the contingency. the motion is to use an outside -- thank you. yes. okay, any other questions? Go ahead. to MS. Batista. When we're talking about -- and maybe hr too, when we ear talking about using the outside firm, are -- I have two questions, one is what do you anticipate the pool of applicants being because they have to be florida attorneys, it can't be like a superintendent because that's different skill set,
484you have to be familiar with florida law, and then to be particularly in the practice of the very many different arenas in which you have experience, how many qualified applicants do you think there are in the state of florida or that are florida licensed. I'm wondering when we're looking at the pool if we're going to gate lot of people with an external firm that we wouldn't net sailor get -- necessarily get us goipg to our hr. so, I'm not sure how many people would be applying for the job, even with a firm involved. As I mentionesed before x there are approximately 75 individuals to 75 lawyers in the state of florida that hold the certification in education law and I'm not sure how many of those will be interested in applying for the job. Obviously
485you don't need that as qualification, you need to have experience with either education or school law. Education law being broader, it could be at a university or just in an area that touches upon what a school district does, so I wouldn't really know how to answer your questions as far as how many people would be applying for the job. I guess the other question, I support using an outside firm if it's going to be fruitful, if we're going to end up with the same applicants because it's a much smaller pool that we would have for a national search for a superintendent, I don't know if that's what we wan to do. Then I guess the second part is if we have to go through procurement to do our contract for the external -- for the
486head hunter, would it behoove us to start an internal search and then get it moving and then kind of sew where we're at, at that point if we put it together. if I'm not mistaken, I think we had three applicants the last time. I think there was three if I remember correctly. It was not a very large number. right, because it's an insane qualification, you have to have like management, attorneys, you have to know all different pareses areas -- areas of the law, it's a lot, you know, take a lot of grief. I guess the other question I have for hr would be if you were -- if I can be so -- can I talk? If you were going to lead this initiative to the point that someone made before, I don't think advertising
487on the website is going to be particularly helpful. This would have to be a situation where you're making calls and trying to find somebody. Is that something you guys have the capacity to do? no, absolutely, we would reach out to the 67 counties, there MAY be somebody that's willing to grow and go into the counsel position, we did do ta in 21, we got around ten candidates for that time the last time we had a position open, so there are -- and there are different professional organize sashes we can reach out to in the state of florida we would reach out to as well. It would be reaching out to vining ins the state we've worked with and getting the word out. yeah, I just -- I'm -- in most situations, I would be say
488go ahead with the external firm but in this particular situation, I could be totally wrong, it seems like there's a very small pool of applicants here. so, I agree with doing the internal search, that's why I made that original motion for similar reasons that you said, but I do agree with the committee part, so we'll vote on this motion and if it doesn't pass, we can make a separate motion. MRS. Leonardi? yeah, just real quick, so we keep saying like search firm, it would be multiple firms competing which is not something we've done before, we have done an internal search before, so I want us to be clear eyed about that. And in theory, we could widen the pool of applicants by changing the job description. So, that's a conversation I look forward to having
489next week, so I just want everyone to consider that as well. Thank you. thank you. And I'll get to MS. Thompson. DR. Lozano, for next week, can you possibly research what using a contingency would look like and what that process might be so that you could better answer those questions for us? absolutely. great, thank you. MS. Thompson? I guess that'd my question, do we have to decide this right now since we now have four hours on tuesday to discuss this? I think we could make some decisions like to launch the announcement but if we don't want to do that because we're going to come back and redo the job description swre, to wait until next week. Er it sounds like there might be interest in discussing the job description, there's some interest in pursuing both
490internal and a contingency plan. I think we don't have enough information and trying to force it. let's pick it up next week. tla's fine. MR. Cervera? I don't want to talk about the process because we are going to discuss that next week for four hours from what I've been hearing so I'll reserve my time for that. I want to say however to MS. Batista, first and foremost, thank you for everything that you have done for this board and I'm not sure if it's retirement or a slow down, if it's retirement, con garage dk congratulations, if it's a lesser all, congratulations for the less stress you'll have to absorb. Being a general counsel for any big corporation or a big company is a tough job and it takes a lot of insight, it takes a lot
491of knowledge and it takes a lot of courage to sit up here on the dais and field random legal questions from every single direction by both lawyers and non-lawyers, and be ready on the spot, be johnny on the spot all the time. And I know I have only been up here for six months, but I can certainly assert that in my time, I've been very appreciative of the work that you have done for the counsel you have given us as a board, for your willingness to write us nose memos and explain concepts and even with you and I don't agree on things, I still very much value your legal insight and your legal input and again I want to thank you and congratulate you on your legal career which I believe has soaped almost 32
492years, so that's very commendable. I don't think MS. Thompson was alive when you started practicing law, so we certainly appreciate and wish you well moving forward, whatever that next step might be. MS. Alhadeff? I'm going to remove my motion but I would like to make another motion, I move to add adam cervera on the legal services committee. is there a second to the motion? second. okay. Before we move forward, MR. Cervera, would that be something yo you would be tlog do. I graciously accept your proposed nomination. we also nominate other people? sure. I would like the make a motion the add another attorney on our board, MRS. Bulman. It's you and me. no, we changed it at the beginning. I appreciate that. you dropped off. Okay. you don't even though -- never mind. okay, all
493those in favor of adding MR. Ver ver -- cervera to the legal services committee, say aye. aye. any opposed, say no. Motion carries unanimously. One less thing to do next week. So, very good. sorry, just for one last thing for next week, if my colleagues agree,.Staff would bring the bring the different options we could consider for the search, a contingency and an internal, if my colleagues agree, this that would be great. yes. MRS. Alhadeff? if they would please have the financials very specific in the backup, thank you. then a timeline, what it would look like with all of the different -- I know you briefly read it out, maybe if you could put that as the -- in like a backup so we could look at it beforehand. through the superintendent, you want I want
494to be clear that we'll probably not be posted until friday because they're going the need time to put that all together. Frngt okay. I would also like to thank MS. Batista, I know that we have almost daily conversations and I have always appreciated, we MAY not agree often but I appreciate that you listen and explain and, you know, you're always looking out for the best interest of the board and I think we're very lucky to have had you, so thank you very much and we wish you all the best as you move forward. [Applause]. And, you know, family always has to come first. At this time, do any of my colleagues have any updates -- I do. aim reserving my comments for MS. Batista for when she's leaving. that's fine. That's right, at this time,
495do any of my colleagues have any update or student successes to bring forth to the superintendent for consnseratatio MS. Onardi?? I I wawaeded to thank k staff fofor thr nenew updated executive summary. It's very detailed, it anticipates a lot of the board questions so thank you, DR. Hepburn and staff, for giving us more and more information has we flexed to make good votes. Thank you. MRS. Alhadeff? to that point, so maybe I missed it, I don't see on the executive summary the letter and number and it's something I've been asking for, for a really long time. on the executive summary. it's done. I've been told it's going to be done for a long time. well, it will be on the log now that you've asked. it will be done. MR. Cervera? chair, con garage gratulations
496to cypress bay high high school, lightening has struck twice, both boys and girls swimming and diving took home first place in the broward county athletic association swiming and diving champbacker championships that took place on saturday at plantation aquatic complex, the girls team edged out fort lauderdale high school, and for the sek year in a row I might add, the same time, the host, st. Thomas was third with 340 point, sigh pres bay has won the girls title in 2024, 2024, and 2022, so congratulations on the swimming accomplishment. the scheduled order of business for this regular school board meeting of the school board of broward county, nror ta has been dieted. Seeing no obligation, I now adjourn the meeting. Thank you, have a great night and we will see you all next week.