Regular School Board Meeting Part II - Feb 10, 2026

001we will return -- . we are now back to our regularly school board meeting. DR. Zeman informed me that he no longer needs to pull jefrl jj items. But we do have one that MS. Rupert also pulled. So can I get a motion can a second on jj2? so moved, and I can move j2 through 6. MS. Rupert pulled jj2. MADAM Chair. yes, MS. Rupert. my question were answered too. so I get a motion and a second to move jj2 through jj6 to the floor. second. moved by DR. Zeman, seconded by MS. Rupert. Any public comment? no speakers. board member discussion on any of those jj items? All in favor of jj2 through 6, say aye. aye. all opposed say no. Items pass unanimously. Can I get a motion and a second on jj7? so

002moved. moved by DR. Zeman seconded by MS. Hixon. Pbl comment on jj7? no ma'am. board member comment, MS. Bulman? thank you, chair I pulled this just to recognize, MR. Dorset, thank you for this item, this for the renovation at Mcarthur high school, when they did the planning, they did not plan for the furniture. Thank you alright, any other board member discussion on jj7? All in favor of jj7, say aye. aye. all opposed, say no. Items pashes unanimously. Could I get a motion and a second on item cc 1. . Er so moved. second. Er moved by DR. Semaan, seconded by MS. Hixon. Public comment on item cc 1? yes, one registered speaker, PRESIDENT Anna fusco. Rjs anna noose koe, broward teachers union PRESIDENT. I ask you move to accept this, MS. Daniels is an amazing

003teacher, she's been there for 29 plus years and false allegations do map and that's totally proven and I'm asking -- okay, you have quorum. I'm asking you to approve this item and please mo uf forward. no other speakers. Er boeshd member discussion on cc 1, I have MS. Bulman. thank you, chair. Yes, I fully support the recommendation and I pulled this item, one, this is a teacher in my district and we've spoken about this a little bit but I think the employee groups are working with our hr to make better guidelines for when we're making decisions about how we're disciplining employees and so -- and we've had kind of a similar fact pattern came up a few weeks ago and it was dealt with in a a totally different way, so I want to commend

004our hr department for taking that direction with steps with our employee groups so continuing those discussions and being made to keep our students safe but making sure our employees are being treated properly and that we're not falsely accusing people of things, so thank you very much. thank you, MR. Cervera? thank you, chair. I am in favor of this, obviously I'm in supportive of the motion and the proposed final order and I think it's important to point out in this case that due process worked, right. You had an individual that -- a teacher that was -- had some allegations that were lodged against her, she went through the due process proceeding and it was adjudicated by the administrative law judge, judge angelwood that she had in fact not committed any allegations and I want to commend

005the judge, the order was very thorough and substantive. I spent the weekend reading it and I was thankful for the finagling were in there as well for the explanation, so I am obviously in support of this and I do think again it's important to point out the fact that this due process, process if you will does work d d this is a shshining exame of thth,, so I'very much in support of the motion, thank you. any other board discussion? All in favor of cc 1, say aye. all opposed, say no. Items passes unanimously. ki get a motion ask a second for ork -- oo1. moved and seconded for oo1. MS. Bulman, discussion? thank you, chair. I continue to support these efforts we're making to green our schools and reduce energy costs. I had one question

006because I believe we're doing -- it looks like we are agreeing to do 100 schools and rolling that out 25 a year. So, my question was if we are able to complete the -- if we can complete the retrofitting on 25 schools, will we have that capacity to increase that number in a one year period so we could hasten the process of -- because we'll then be hastening the new mexicoinger efficiency? yes. If you can provide any information on if we can speed up the process and add additional schools or if not, what are the barriers. alison winashenski, our barrier ares financial at this point. It iss a -- it is a loan to upfront the cost of the repairs or the modifications so we can talk more with capital budget if that's an interest

007of the board. That was the parameters we were given was the 20 schools a year. okay, I don't know if the board would like to discuss that because I guess we would want to see what the savings is versus the costs for the loan and that would kind of be the math we're doing, right. Does anyone have those numbers? the savings for the 20 schools that we're doing is about 1.4 million on average over the 15 year period and I think we're pretty close to that break even point as far as the loan is going and if capital budget -- well, ie van, -- ivan, do you want to speak? I'm the treasurer for the district. Usually what happens in this case when the savings gets greater, as it matures even longer, so the whole

008loan will basically be neutral, in other words, the interest that we pay on it and the savings of the energy will be equal. based on the numbers we have right now, if we increased the number of schools that we were retrofitting over a period of time, would that increase our savings or would that increase our costs? theoretically, it would be offset, it would be the same. okay. it will be the co-s -- costs and the savings wipe it out. so, we would have to seek further larger loans to be able to execute that? MS. Bulman, jci is also in the audience if you want to hear from them. they're ready to speak here. good afternoon, board, my name is john ridley with johnson controls, we've been the contractor from MAY 2020, the fourth phase is

009currently almost completed and this is for the fifth phase. In terms of your question about the savings, as the number of schools and impact increases, the savings also increase and the goal with this program is for -- in addition to modernizing the schools and doing the thing that is have been received within your district is the savings offsets the costs of the construction and the loan and the interest. And so that has been happening throughout the first four phases, not only has it met the costs and offset it, we've exceeded the savings guarantee that we guaranteed contractually within our contract for these first four phases so we have all the proof point and is data we measure and verify that guarantees are happening each year and we are projecting for this phase that's on the

010agenda oo1 right now to save the district approximately 1.2 million dollars per year each year going forward throughout the term of the contract. yeah, and I appreciate that, I think you guys are doing a great job on this. I was wondering if there was any benefit to increasing the number of schools that we're addressing in a shorter period of time versus waiting and doing it over the schedule that we have set up right now. for some con t x, the last phase this board approved was the phase 4 was in JULY of 2024, so about 20 months ago, with this passage today, we're working with the great staff here to look at the next phase to come back and firm to you within the next 4-6 months, so instead of waiting 20 months, we could

011have another 20 schools for consideration within the next 4-6 months. To the answer your question, yes, we're trying to make this accelerated for the benefit of the district. thank you so much. you're welcome. thank you, MR. Cervera? MS. Bulman beat me to the punch, thank you. MS. Rupert? I'm okay. I'm absolutely supportive of this, looking forward to it. I did have a question except you could send it to me in a memo, the second part of it I believe was talking about compact trash, it being added to six schools. Just when you have a minute, it would be nice to know which schools are getting that of the 20 because it mentioned it. In a follow up would be great, though. mtz rupert, she has the answer right now if you don't mind. cool. alison,

012director of environmental health and safety, the six schools are addicts, crescent school, falcon cove middle, lakeside and lauderhill 6-12. nice, okay, I look forward to visiting them sometime, thank you so much. also if I MAY, chair, our staff -- this is supposed to go jointly with r-r 1. correct. can we pass this and then go to r-r 1 or do we also need to bring r-r 1 to the table? one and then the other is fine. okay. DR. Semaan? thank you so much, two questions. How did we get in the business of this amazing contract with light and trash compacting at the same time? are you asking how we added trash compactors to the program? . Inger yes. alison, director of environmental health and safety. Environmental sxh elt safety was already doing trash compactors as

013part of the defp. We were doing two or three a year as part of that and we were seeing savings associated with that because we were reducing the number of pick-ups for the the refuse and as a way to just keep that process moving and moving it along a little faster. We spoke with the vendor about adding that to the contract for the next five years. great, I guess. I'll submit a question separately on this. I wouldn't normally expect for us to enter into contracts of lighting and trash compacting together but we'll figure that out separately when I send you a question on that. Second to the board's kind of expressed intent at this point, I would love to see this come back next month with some kind of fixed accelerated schedule and why. Because

014of the time value of money. If we could get this done, MS. Bulman, in less time, we get to realize the savings forever after that, right? So, there's a pretty big incentive for us to get this done. If it's a break even deal, if you get this done in four years instead of ten years, you have more savings being baked in. Can you come back with an item that rephrases this so what we approve is we could go with the pace of the vendor in getting this done. The sooner we get this break even done, the more we're going to realize those savings for the rest of the life. so, I would prefer bringing this on a timeline they just discussed, I think it was 4-6 months. Leer's -- here's why, we have a discussion

015of underenrolled schools coming up again, just a simple update in MARCH about a couple of thinlbacker things but in MAY initiating that discussion again, so I don't want tlem to come back in a month and they have all these lists of schools and some of those schools MAY be for consideration for next steps based on what the board gives the direction to do, so that's my only concern is bringing it too early and they've identified schools that MAY not be schools that MAY be in existence for upcoming years. I understand, I appreciate that. To the extent we have a good aiming -- timing on this, when we list the next accept -- set of schools, that would be good, I don't understand the trash compactor part, on the lighting part, this is a traditional loan

016and it pays you back with reduced cost quick, but organizations would benefit by doing this faster. To your point too, DR. Hepburn, are we certain that the plan for the next six month doesn't include schools that -- let me ask it factually, are any schools in the current six month plan that we're approving today on list of schools we considered for repurposing this year but did not close or did not repurpose? Thafrjts we MAY be considering in the future? I meant it the way I asked it because I don't want to get into projections of who might get into the list next year. yes, there is one that will be pulled off of this list. okay, so that's going to be corrected on the way, I appreciate that, thank you, chair. thank you, MS. Hixon?

017thank you, and I appreciate the conversation because I think the last time we talked about this, I asked how we could add more companies to this so we could get it done faster for all of those same reasons and I just have a couple of questions because when MS. Bulman asked about what is the barrier, the mention was about the loan but I in conversation with people also understood that some of the barrier is the amount of people that are working on it, so could you speak to that. Because e -- even.We solve the money issue, if there's still an issue of people, we need to know that because getting a bigger loan won't solve that problem. If you could speak to that, please. sure, so alison, director of environmental health and safety, right, so

018the number of staff that I have to support the collaboration with the vendor generating or not us generating plans but reviewing plans getting them to the building department and all those kinds of things. We're doing in phase 4 right now about 30 schools so that's kind of our limit and this one is -- this phase 5 is 20 schools so we can increase potentially with the current staffing but only to a certain extent. and could you explain to us like what is it -- what is it that the staff is limited on doing? And where I'm going with that, we're paying a project manager for some construction stuff, is it possible that they could collaborate with your -- with our staff and help expedite those things where there's different people? Because the company is working

019on installing everything, the issue I understand is permitting the paperwork part, so how would we be able to collaborate with someone to increase that so the company could do more of those schools and we might be able to move this along faster? yeah, so we're the liaison -- they're the liaison wean the vendor and all the schools, the building department, so we're coordinating the access and making sure the permits get processed in the building department. Similar to the office of capital programs. I guess that's my point. it's a project manager position. right, so is there a way we add another project manager or move some people around to do that faster, that's really the question I'm asking. How do we resolve the people barrier within the confines of what we have? I mean, if you

020want to give me more staff, I'll take staff. [Laughter]. right, but it's within -- right, there's other people, my question is I guess really to the superintendent or MR. Dorsett, is there someone that could be shifted over there for a short period of time to help move the paperwork process along. . Er as you know, we got a lot of downsizing, a lot of shift tog do, so as we work on that holistically, we can work on the needs and see if there's a possibility of shifting somebody around in other areas that essentially are saving the district money. right, that's why I think all of us have asked about doing this faster so we can -- it would be nice to see the plan. We could see that money better, so if that's possible, I

021would love for us to do that, thank you. any other board discussion? All in favor of oo1, say aye. aye. all opposed, say no. item passes unanimously. Could I get a motion ask a second on item oo2? so moved. sorry, chair, weren't we supposed to go to the resolution. sorry, thank you so much. I mover we withdraw the item. can I get a motion ask a second on r-r 1? so moved. moved by DR. Semaan, second by MS. Hixon. any public comment on r-r 1? MS. Hue rupert, discussion? I'm good, thank you. any other board member discussion? All in favor of r-r 1, say aye. Er all opposed, say no. r-r 1 passes unanimously. Now could I get a motion and a second on oo2? so moved. moved by DR. Semaan, seconded by MS. Hixon.

022Any public speakers? one public speaker, natalie lynch-walsh. passed, I'm savoring my three minutes for the referendum audit. board member comment, MS. Bulman? I had one question regarding this, the renewal only goes until SEPTEMBER and this I think is supposed to complement our aecom contract, so what's our options after we've made our final extension on this contract and we still have from the termination in SEPTEMBER all the way to JANUARY for the aecom contract? well, the whole solicitation for construction manager and long range planner, this is encompassed in that too as part of that process as far as the solicitation for the controls. well, just theoretically, if we were not under contract with a pmor, whoever we decide to go with after we have our workshop, how does this affect our ability to get the work

023done while we're still under contract with aecom if we're not under contract with atkins, do we have to do an rfq for controls? yes. okay, so we would basically have no controls for -- so, the timeline is mirrored for the whole pmor, whatever the ending concept would be, so the same timeline is mirrored for the construction management contract also as long as the long range planner. that would depend on us having a contract in place when this contract expires? correct. but we don't really know that's going to the happen based on what's -- I guess I'm looking for a plan b. Because that limits our contract to have a year contract for aecom and I guess when I was thinking about it before, thinking we have a year but this really -- that takes a

024lot of months out of putting our program together. Can we function without controls? no, not particularly. I'm not suggesting we can, I'm asking -- I would like to know what the plan is if we get to the point where we don't have a contract in SEPTEMBER for a pmor or equivalent, what we're d what our options are. so, I'm going ask MS. Coli or ashley with atkins, if we have a an exexnsion,n, this is e e lalastxtxtsion, bubut th isa tatay y fffferen socicitati from the pmor, cmor, whatever the concept is, it is a totally different solicitation. they're working together, so presumably you would be doing it on parallel timelines. we have aecom until the middle of JANUARY 27 and we have atkins if we approve this today until SEPTEMBER of 2026, so we've got

025a big gap -- potential gap in time. would this be like another example of an emergency? no, so our anticipation is we have a solicitation raised to be approved by the board for everything by JUNE at the latest, JUNE, JULY at the latest. Not in JANUARY. We're working with the specific timeline so we're not in a predicament where we're up against the end of emergency contract, we're working to have several months before an emergency contract is done so there is proper transition time for the new -- well, so maybe for our general counsel, what are our options if we don't -- what are our options if we don't have our pmor in place, we're going to solicit separately? The controls and specially have them -- potentially have them in place in SEPTEMBER. so, to clarify

026your question, are you asking -- is it your assumption that the pmor, the controls is within the pmor contract? no, so we have the pmor contract and that expires in JANUARY. We're going out for a new rfq for the pmor, this is the first that I'm learning that this is expiring in SEPTEMBER for the atkins portion of it. So, they should be running kind of parallel sh right? correct. so they don't need to run parallel? So, DR. Zeman -- so then we would have to have someone else in place in SEPTEMBER for the controls even -- so it doesn't -- at the very least, we would have to have someone in place in SEPTEMBER with the controls contract even if we didn't have something in place for the pmor contract? correct. that's all. thank you,

027MR. Cervera? I'm satisfied. MS. Hixon? thank you. I have a question and I don't know how we end up changing it but you know when we had this discussion about aecom, within the contract, we were able to put something that financially held them responsible if they didn't meet a certain deadline. I would like to be able to do that in this contract as well because when you look at the things that aecom is supposed to be handling, you can't blame everything on, I'm sorry, atkins. We kind of blamed everything on aecom landing us where we are but if atkins is the control, they also allowed things to land where they landed and there are some issues about e-builder in here and different things so how would we go about including some kind of accountability in

028terms of not meeting those deadlines in this contract that's similar to how we did in aecom's contract? go ahead, MS. Coli. sonia coli, executive director, there is already something within atkins contract that they have to -- if they are delayed in reporting, so there is something within the contract for that. Is that your question? well, the reporting part isn't where we're getting an -- having an issue, I mean, reporting, is that all that they are doing -- they're doing a lot of other things than just reportingfinger they're making timelines and doing all of these things and to me it feels like when we're falling behind on a timeline, they just adjust a timeline and that's how we end up to where we are. How do we hold them accountable for keep og the timelines that

029we have and the expectation of getting the projects done on time the same way we're going do with atkins and the way we change their contract, it was more about what are the deliverables and I don't have a problem with the way they deliver the reports, I have more of a problem with the work that is done behind that and how do we hold the company accountable and what was in here isn't their original contract, it's just an addition, so I didn't see anything that holds them accountable if we're not meeting the expectations that we have. so, theirs is not an accountability with regards to projects being completed on time, they're reporting on the cost control level and also in terms of the master schedule, so they are tracking whether or not, again, whether the

030program manager's schedule based on a schedule is tracked against the master schedule so that's what their reporting is, we can't hold them accountable for the contract, they're not completing their work on time, again, we're tracking the master schedule so they're at a high level reporting for us. Their issue is if they don't inform the sdwrikt or inform the office of capital programs that there is an issue, then that's what they can be held accountable for, not bringing it to our attention in a timely manner but they do that with the monthly reporting that they do. and we use that information to hold aecom accountable. I just feel that atkins has been tied with moving along here and there are things about e-builders in here, we're having issue about how e-builder has come online, so my

031board members can weigh in. Maybe I'm not understanding, but I just -- I don't see wra there's an account lt piece in this contract and I want to see an accountability piece in every contract that comes before us, so I'll just leave it at that. thank you, DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair, so, I understand board member hixon's concern and in terms of holding atkins accountable. But DR. Hepburn, I spoke to you in the past, so we can better understand because at one point I heard where atkins was responsible for master schedule and aecom was doing master skemg yule and now atkins is doing master schedule so I think it would be beneficial to us as a board maybe because we've heard sometimes from aecom, maybe hearing from atkins as to -- I know the

032reports come to you. I think as a board if we hear from atkins on a consistent basis, it would help us to better understand what they do and hole them accountable for what they do because I understand that they create the timelines but aecom is responsible for carrying out those in a timely manner so you told aecom accountable but there also has to be a way to define or at least us understand and define the role of atkins and how we can hold atkins accountable for what they're responsible for and maybe atkins reporters to us sometimes so we can -- because i have rarely heard from atkins and I know we hear from you about the reports so it makes them almost invisible, so if we have some frequency in which they report to us,

033we could better understanding what they do and how we can have measures to hold them accountable for what they do, so DR. Hepburn, do you have any comments? I'll ask MS. Coli and MS. Carpenter to provide detail. Every change order, every time we get an impact analysis, all of those things are done by atkins. go ahead, MS. Coli. We can bring back with a workshop so we can see, you all can see specifically what atkins does for us and it's very extensive. so I would personally appreciate that. It doesn't have to be every month. Since I've been here, I rarely hear what atkins is doing, every now and then in a workshop, it would be great to see the wonderful work they're doing, so that's not in my expertise so I'm not going to fully

034understand what they do but if they talk about it in a workshop, then I'll get a better picture. I'm teaching and learning, that's what I do, thank you so much. thank you, MS. Thompson? I do have several concerns, I have voiced them in previous workshops. A company we're paying 14 million dollars to, we should have a better understanding of what they're doing, so that's one level of concern. I also feel like we need to be building in controls on our district side and not spending 14 million dollars to do this so I will be voting no on this. Thank you. thank you, DR. Zeman? thanks, chair. A couple of things I think are worth noting about what a firm like this does to support them, to MS. Hixon's point, how do we hold them accountable?

035The biggest piece of accountability is they're going to try to win a new contract in six months and our staff, our government staff is going to assess their performance right before they go into writing a proposal and trying to compete, so right now atkins is going to be -- just have tremendous incentive to perform at a high level for what they do, so it's 1.3 million over six months, they've got a staff of less than 10 people who are working on it, they do price controls, time impact analysis, they do analysis of why things are going slow or fast ask things like that so they're the brain, kind of the deep thinking brain of this overall construction pronlt. I think we're doing pretty well on this. I have a bigger fatal problem with this item

036is aiz mentioned earlier, I'm out of patience. There should be a list of our top 100 contracts, not hard to find, in fact televising's some tools that can do it in about four minutes and when each one of those contracts is up. We now get a contract -- am I right, chair, this contract doesn't start until MARCH 17? DR. Hepburn? yes, that's correct. do we have a school board meeting between now and MARCH 17? ye, I think so. so, while this is urgent, at least we have one more school board meeting if MS. Thompson is successful or if someone decides to lay this on the table and bring it back, we still have time to do that. I just don't know when we do the mark magly thing on contracts, when do we go to

037a contract that's presented to us with a gun to our head and say do this until the business fail and is we tell the staff this isn't good enough anymore. When do we stop the process where we cannot figure out how to get contracts to us and compete it. The reason we're doing this right now is because we didn't get the contract six months ago solicited and procured and through a process evaluated and awarded. What happens by the way, board, when we do that? What happens when you compete a new requirement, you get more people, what does that do to the price, it doses it down. Now everybody who bids on the group tells you how great and cheap they are and how wonderful they've been to all of their clients so this isn't a

038trivial issue, it's 1.3 million dollars, so I'm above the thousand limit today on this part of the item, but in reality, I'm just curious when the board wants to stop and say we're the board, we're supposed to be able to say the will of board is to bring contracts early to recompete things when they expire but we continue to see contracts coming to us that are on the edge of expiring, gun to our head, approve this at full price. Chair, is there any diskoun on this price to what we paid for before? not that I'm aware of. is -- it's rhetorical question to the board, is this the one where we say we're not doing this one? so, DR. Zeman, just to add some comment to your comments, this is not the standard we do

039have a working -- a doc with all the work sheet and is all the dates that they sunset, the team initiates many of the procurement processes a year to six months, there is various variables and I'm not talking specifically about this one, but overall, there are various variables amongst the whole entire process that creates speed bumps for lack of a better term that slows that process down and we have a continuous improvement process. We bring contracts to cabinet now to discuss them and figure out where they are and where are they bottlenecked? would it help you overcome those bottlenecks if we decided today that this is the last contract we're going to pass? it would. that we have a gun to our head. we pay too much for services, we don't get competition because of

040this and I have to tell you, I don't want to hear about obstacles and challenges anymore, I watch other government agents and get contracts competed on time, much bigger urban districts and much bigger cities, they will not do this, they will not continue kind of this bad behavior which is costing us millions of dollars. If you want to figure out how the save money, let's save money in our processes because when we don't compete contracts, we pay more and get less service. Like I don't know why -- I don't know what the other side of this argument is, why would we pass this contract with a gun to our head when we know it costs us more and we get less service? Is this the one where we say no? Do we ever say no

041and do the right thing fiscally on a contract? If we don't do it on this contract, can we say this is the last one we're going to pass with a gun to our head? It costs us more, we get less service. Alright, I'm going to make a motion. This is FEBRUARY 10 of 2026 and I would like broward county school board to make a decision right now that this is the last contract that we're going the renew that's within 60 days of sunset. is there a second? okay. That's where you guys are, it's not where I am. It aoem not there because I know it costs us more money and gives us less service. This is a management problem that is real and it needs to be solved. I understand obstacles and challenges but there

042are lots of other districts and lots of other government organizations that figured out how to get this right and I'm going continue to talk about it until we get it right and I don't like being put in a corner. This vendor has done great work for us, we're assigning this only under duress and it's not the right thing to do. It will be a lot of accountability because of the recompete time but at some point this board's going to have to decide we want to hold this administration accountable for doing the right thing and today we took a pass. thank you. I would like to speak and then we can go to round 2. I suppose I do want to clarify why I as one board member didn't second the motion and, you know, I

043agree completely with the sentiments expressed by DR. Zeman. I think all of us on the dais have said as much in the last several years. I think like making a blanket policy like that without any exceptions is maybe not realistic and I don't want to -- as MS. Hixon says, why have a policy if we're going to break the policy. But I guess I wonder too, DR. Hepburn, you know a lot of us do feel the same way as DR. Zeman when it comes to contracts that we're kind of like pushed against a wall on and I'm wondering what your plan of action is around that. I feel the same way all of you do. And my team knows that, and so we have isolated many issues but there are tons of variables that make

044the procurement process that goes through a specific work flow, it can get hung up in certain areas ask get hung up in risk management because the vendor that is we're negotiating with want certain typesets of -- types of information from our students, it could be a certain type of a contract that we demand, so there are tons of variables, all of them ararnot smooth sailing, some of them gegeththugh h the prococs super r quicbut yo ve meme that tatake ququite a lolot of time to negotiate in various steps of the work flow, and so we're doing a better job, MR. John white, since he's been in has done a better job of isolating any contracts that have just been sit hearing and in a stalemate and figuring out where's the barrier, with where's the hang

045so we can isolate those, if it's with procurement, we'll address it, if it's with risk management, we'll address it and if it's with management, they'll pick up the phone too and address it. It is not one issue per contract. MS. Hixon talked about this months ago, about a contract tracker, so the team has been working on that. I know we have a new general counsel coming on board who I communicate with, she's using a contract tracker where she is now, the one we've been looking at now is the same one she's been use sog we can ultimately adopt that so we can have a visible process for everybody versus what we're using right now but there is -- for each contract, it is different, there is different aspects of each contract that could cause a

046delay that pushes us up against the wall when it comes o the actual board. got it. And to what extent -- I have certainly heard from staff anecdotally about people, you know, bringing contracts at the last minute to legal or trying to add it to a board agenda at the last minute and things have to because it's an emergency, so to what extent are you holding staff accountable for things like that? You know, not things being held up by vendors but people just not being proactive? great question. We created a process, must have been last summer where you have to fill out a form if you're trying to expedite a canting because you didn't start the process on time. That was one of things that wasn't visible for us in learning some of these issues

047by talking to risk management and legal saying you just got to me last weekend, you want me to get it done so. We create add form for folks tos fill out to identify who's not following the process so we can hold them accountable. We have a process for that too, that's what we've instituted to identify those people. We know we have those issues too. I appreciate the systems approach to that. I guess I'm wondering, so like how are those people being held accountable that has been identified by that system? they go through the process with their supervisor, if it's a chief or an executive director, it could be a summary memo to start and then it goes up progressive from there. will some of that be addressed in the org chart? yeah, absolutely. I had

048the same concerns as MS. Bulman around the timing of this contract as not matching up with the pmor process, I won't be redundant with that but I did have those same concerns. Okay. MS. Bulman? thanks, chair. I agree with DR. Zeman as well in theory but I think we -- there's nuance to sometimes things become an emergency, so, that's why I didn't second that. So, I have a question about this contract because all we have is the amendment. Do we still have the ability to terminate this contract on 30 days notice? Is that in the original contract? MS. Jacques-adams? so, I would have to look at the original agreement. I think all that is attached to this particular construction contract is a third amendment, so if somebody can e-mail me the agreement, usually it's section

0493.05 of our standard agreement but I'm not sure if this utilized our standard agreement. It might be another provision, if someone can e-mail that to me, I can let you know, but the 30 days is pretty standard. so, assuming we have the days, we can put the entire program back on track the way that we need to being at the various bids out. And, you know, we've experienced a lot of hiccups, I'll use that word, but just had a lot of problems trying to get out the rfq. The last time and I will certainly be giving the benefit of the doubt, we're under new leadership for the procurement department that this is going forward tha, we're not going to experience the same problems we've had recently but like the overarching program that we are putting

050to the that we're meeting again to discuss on the workshop, I really -- I don't know how my colleagues feel but I'm going to assume that we really wan to be confident that these rfq's and the rfp's we're putting out for controls and is for pmor are going to be well formed this time and they're based on good advice and an advice that's being given by a non-interested party that understands how to put this together. I just can't express enough how important it is when we have our next conversation at the workshop that our options are very clear and that we achieve those by going out to other entities that do government work, that won't be bidding on these projects. i think there's a way to do this and the a way to present it

051to the board so we feel good about it and then we wouldn't have so many questions about what's happening on a contract to contract basis but I hope we can have the assurance that that's what's going to happen because -- when are we having na next workshop, on the 3rd I think, so we have a couple of weeks for that to happen. I hope when we get there, we will be overwhelmed with our option and is how clear they are for us and how that's all put together. excuse me, MADAM Chair, I have an answer to MS. Bulman's question, yes, pursuant to 3.05 of the agreement, the board has the option to terminate with or without cause. thank you. any other board discussion? All in favor of oo2, say aye. [Inaudible] all in favor of

052ork o2, say aye. Er all opposed, say no. Roll call?Frjts I'm a yes. roll call? roll call. Bulman? yes. cervera? no. hixon? yes. holness? yes. leonardi? yes. rupert? yes. thompson? no. zeman? no. alhadeff who's not here. Motion passed 5-3. alright. Could I get a motion and a second on oo5. moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Hixon. Public comment on oo5? no comments. board member comment, MR. Cervera? can I be skipped right now. MS. Thompson? my questions were answered, sorry. you're good. chair, where's the actual contract we're voting on? DR. Hepburn? I am checking. I see a renewal letter. I do have an answer in terms -- I don't know whether it's attached but with an itb, the itb acts as the contract itself, so the formal solicitation package, the itb acts as contract, as

053opposed to an rfp where there is a separate contract. is that included in the materials, MS. Jacques-adams? so, for oo5, I see the renewal letter that renews the itb but I don't seem to see the actual itb itself. do you think it's wise for board members to be voting on agenda items in which that type of documentation has not been provided in advance? I can answer that question. That is a no. Our standard is to make sure you guys have all the information you need to vote. So, we need to bring this back with the proper information. so, one thing I would like to ask is if you are -- is this for an extension of the term of the contract? yes. so, if this is for extension of the term of the contract, I

054would advise that you take a look at what those dates are so that if you're bringing it back sometime in the future, it's not beyond that expiration date because if it is, then you would have to formally solicit again. It would lapse, so in other words you cannot extend a contract that is already expired. if the executive summary is to be believed, the it would appear that the current version -- the MARCH 16. yeah so, if that date's right. we'll bring it back with the proper information. thank you. would you like -- I can make a motion. I would like the move we table this item until -- could we do by FEBRUARY 17 since we have a special school board meeting? yes. second. motion made by MS. Leonardi, seconded by MS. Thompson to table

055this item until FEBRUARY 17 special school board meeting. Public comment on the motion? Board discussion? MS. Jacques-adams? yes. Let me take a look at the actual executive summary because there are times that the purchasing department has a hyperlink to the itb, so let me take a look at the executive summary or if staff who created the executive summary -- . Er I'm looking at the executive summary right now, it says as copy of the rfp document is available online at -- and then there's a link. I suppose there has been some concern raised by my colleagues about lack of access to the information. The if we weren't able to consider that, I think it still would be wise to table the item. o blg, I just confirmed and I aop not trying to stop that,

056I just confirmed in clicking the link that it refers back to the itb-fy23-251. MR. Sullivan? I was going the say to MS. Jacques-adams' point, that's usually how it's contained. There is an earlier item that is also an itb that had already passed and I believe that also has the link to the original itb, but that's how we historically have done it. i believe mostly due to the size of the files, that's why we do the links, but that's been the practice that we've done for itb's. so, I guess my question is to my colleagues, is your preference for that to be a separate attached item to -- I mean, document attached to the item in the future as opposed to imbedded in the item. . Er every time in every instance. any objection to that

057request. repeat it. sorry, MS. Rupert. she said repeat it. I was just asking if the desire is to in the future have the itb's or rfp's, rfq's document attach today the item separately instead of imbedded in the executive summary. separately. okay. Alright. DR. Hepburn, you have your direction? yes, we'll bring it back on the 17th separately. That way it givers time for the board members to read the itb. MS. Jacques-adams? through the chair, I wanted to clarify to respond to MR. Cervera's question earlier when I was looking at whether it was attached, I was looking at the arf which had no attachments but there is a link to it within the executive summary. any other board discussion on motion to table this item to FEBRUARY 17. All in favor of tabling the item to FEBRUARY

05817, say aye. aye. all opposed, say no. Motion passes unanimously. Could I get a motion and a second on oo6? Moved by MS. Thompson, second by MS. Hixon. Public comment on oo6? no comments. board member comment, MR. Cervera? I found what I needed, thank you. MS. Thompson? my question stemmed around vape det ek, it looksses like the majority of the money is going to that if someone could expand on what that means. DR. Hepburn? MR. Davis and also chief gregory, if you guys can provide some detail on oo6, questions about vape detection as far as the cabling and installation. trey davis, chief information officer, I'll address the -- hold on a second, my mic. Moved, trey davis, chief information officer, I'll address the overall spend authority is 8.48 million dollars, of that is broken up

059by facilities, 2.04 million dollars, isd, 1.4 million dollars and issd, 4.4 million dollars as you mentioned that includes vape sensing projects as well. Of that, 1.6 million from isd, we were able to expand that to 2.14 million which allows us to again advantage with erate discounts, we're getting 10.7 million dollars in equipment from the erate side, that's the isd side of it. I'm going to turn it over to -- chief mike gregory, chief safety and security officer, I did MISS The first part about the vape, can you repeat that. it seems like a significant amount of money is being spent on this surveillance program and vape and also the intercom projects. I don't -- I knower we have talked about vape detection as a board and potentially investing in these types of programs but I

060don't remember anything passing so I'm curious on what this money is going towards ask what kind of project. so, currently the network cabling function of this contract supports the intercom project, we've been replacing intercoms across schools in the district, so the vendor brings their equipment with the expectation that the networking connections exist in advance and that's where mr. Davis' teams come in before the contractor arrives, wires the building to the locations where the intercoms get connect and had then they plug into them. Same thing will be -- is the concept with the surveillance cameras where we need the add additional cameras in different schools as part of our camera replacement and enhancement programs. The expectation is that the wiring is already there so when the contract -- so when the camera installer arrives, they are

061merely plugging into an outlet on the wall or in the ceiling, they plug into it, they don't run any additional cabling because all that cabling work is consolidated in the contract so we can get best pricing over an extended period of time. With regarding to vape, that program is in rfp to development right now, we're anticipating the rfp being released to vendors to bid on by the end of this month and hopefully if that's successful, we expect it will see a good number of vendors to support closing that about 30 days of so of it being op the street. We will be able to start a review committee to assess the vendors and make a selection to bring before the board for an award. so if I'm understanding correctly and trusting my memory, we have

062not approved any vape sensor, we have approved an rfp to go out but we have not approved it. So, if we approve this additional spend authority we're spending, is it the same cabling for all three projects or are we setting up something for something that hasn't been approved yet? . Er it's the same contract for the all the safety security projects and the rfp projects. It predates my arrival here, there was a pilot conducted at three separate schools for the vaping systems and for I believe six or 7 different vendors install those systems on campuses. I'm understanding they utilize ososcablblg servicic to instalalthat equipment, itit stted backckthenen th a a pilot which is concluded but we're roll hinting the real product solicitation, so the expectation is those dollars would be used for the same process

063as we did in the pilot. I think I understand your question, MS. Thompson. She's asking the wiring that's being installed for all the other devices that we MAY be using, cameras, or whatever else that MR. Davis talked about too, would the same wiring be used for the vaping detection system or are we going to install separate wiring for the vape detection system even though it's not -- have come back for formal approval, the vaping system, the vaping systems. right, these would be additional wires, network cables that would be installed. The vape as we talked about in the pilot are being installed in middle school and high school restrooms, of course we don't have cameras there so there's no connections that exist for the vape in the bathroom, so these will be new additional cabling added

064to the middle schools. and you will start that once the approval of the rfq, correct? nothing before the approval and this is not a purchase as I understand, it's a spend authority. so you MAY -- if you guys don't approve it, we don't spend the money. alright, so, no action will be taken until it comes back for a vote? that is correct, with regard to vaping. alright, DR. Zeman? I just want to continue this line of questioning those because what I did not hear is that -- or what I'm assuming is that there is wiring being run to places where vape detectors will be installed in and now if we don't approve the vape detoekt tersest, we have spent money running cable into place where is there's going to be vape detectors, is that true?

065no, we won't run the wires until you approve the actual -- what's the requirement for cable ining broward county public schools for this type of stuff, what is the requirement, how much money do we need to do it right? if you want to provide any detail, trey. so, that would depend on the number of locations, you know, for where the vape sensing systems would be. Let me break it down like in my particular case, so the 1.6 million that you see allocated for isd is specifically for upgrading to 10 gig network from 2 gig networks which we currently have targeted at middle school sos we just completed this past year high schools, so that's the core network. the 10 gig? yeah, the 10 gig, that's the core network upgrade. Now depending on where the run

066is based on the assessments are of the vaping sensing subpoenas, different rooms, different needs, additional cabling would be done to accommodate those applications but not until it was approved by the board. right, so here's where I get lost as a board websinger ear being asked to approve 8.5 million dollars of spend hooter and we have no requirement to back it up. Like no one has the requirement for vaping subpoenas in the broward county school board, we have not approved that. We have a rimer to get to 10 gig in middle schools even though they can't use cell phones in middle school anymore, I think they're getting laptops and there's tons of reasons we want connectivity, I get that 1.6. Wr what is the rimer that gets us to 8.5 million dollars of spend? What are

067we chasing? Does this win back students, does this improve academic performance, why do we need to have a spend authority of 8.5 million tlars, it doesn't say that in the item. . we're looking at where the majority of the expense would come from, the majority of it would be the video security cameras. what's the requirement for the security cameras, how much money do we need to spend to make sure our schools are secure and safe. One aof our security pillars is our schools to be safe and secure, what's the standard? that's assessed each year whi provide to you the security risk assessment. We have cameras in all the schools now, most would venture to say we cover the bare minimum but with that security risk assessment where we rewalk the sxaol see what's changed and

068what new features or locations are now of importance to us, we look to move those old cameras and put them in new places, that's where we determine what the new standard is each year. my preference is when you're done with that, come ask me for some money because right now the money niece the budget so we want to put it on this contract. I don't like spending money because it niece a budget, I want to spend money because it meets one of our strategic goals. You haven't done the assessment yet. they completed the assessment. well, then how much do you need for cabling to give us safe and secure schools? the numbers for the security rising assessment have been submitted as we do each year to the state for grant support tha,'s our first wave

069request. other people's money. that's what we're going for. what we don't get covered by the other people's money, that's what we will bring back to you for capital expenditures which is coming up I believe later this month if not the beginning of MARCH, we'll be having capital discussion asks how to build out the capital requests for this year. That's the process we're following for those camera prompting and some of the security projects. right, but you understand my problem. I would like the know how many dollars you need the make our schools safe. And instead I have an item that says I need 8.5 million dollars of a blank check that we can spend because I gave you the spending authority nudism like the budget is chase thing requirement. Your colleague there just said I need

0701.6 to get to 10 gig in all middle schools, I'm happy to write a check for that, that's great. I need a number for safety and security that says I need the cabling ask wiring to get to the safe and secure school and is it will cost us the balance of the 8.5, that's hen you come o the board and ask for approval. not I have this money in the budget so I'm going put nit this contract. . Er MR. Greenberg supported the development of the [Inaudible]. jason greenberg, the break down on the security side is 1.2 million for the cameras, 2.8 million for intercom and is about 600 thousand for vaping. okay, it's 1.6 for 10 gig, I'm still not at 8.5 yet. so, the other 2 million is facility projects. new buildings at

071bethune, markham, coral glades. . Er how urgent is this? just a second, if you don't mind, DR. Zeman, can you repeat that, MR. Gren berger? 2 million is for the facility project which is are at mar ko m, coral glades high, parkway and bethune. those are for dedicated security officers. those are for the two admin build x, is cabling and network equipment for those new buildings coming nup the 26-27 year, that's the cost for the cabling. chair, is this urgent we act on this today or is this something we can come back on next month after we have more definition of the requirement? DR. Hepburn? MR. Davis. trey davis, relative to isd project that is are e rate funding, we couldn't wait until next month because we have a deadline that won't start until JULY

0721. could you do it next week? we can did it next week. I would like to make a motion we lay this on the table for just that one week and what I'm looking for, chair, is some very specific requirements broken down by isd and by security in general but with the details and is I would be curious what the real requirement is, what do you really need sx, I know you're asking for 8.5 spend and I'm confident this board will release that next week but I would be curious, don't stop @ the 8.5, tell us what you need and we'll understand that this is 8.5 towards the total but it's really important I think for this board to understand, when we give you a strategic goal for our safe and secure schools, there's a

073bill that comes with tla and we want to know what it is, and we MAY not always fund it but we'll at least understand what are the things that would make our schools even safer and more secure if that's okay. That's my motion, lay it on the table for one week. could you postpone the item instead of plaining it on the table? certainly. so, motion -- I made a robert's rules mistake, I would like to postpone this for one week. until FEBRUARY 17, seconded by MS. Thompson, motion made by DR. Zeman. Public comment on the motion? I would like to say thank you for thinking this through a little better. As I have said a couple of times, I've been coming here for more than ten years watching money just go, go, go, go and

074then sitting in negotiations a at btu and being told there's no money, there's no money, there's no money. It seems like there's money for lots of things, and stuff, there's money that needs to be addressed a little bit more carefully because, yeah, it's good to have some things but things are not people, people make this district an a district and all the things and all the projects and all the programs that they can try to sell you, they're not our people so I appreciate waiting and finding out a little bit more on each and every item each and every time, not just this one, but thank you. any other public comment on the motion? Board discussion on the motion, MS. Hixon? thank you, it's not particularly on the motion, sort of, the gentleman that was

075just here, can you read all of the numbers. The 1.2 million that staff -- I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name. MR. Greenberg. MR. Greenberg, thank you. so, you want all the numbers? yes, please, all -- you start witched 1.2 for cameras. 1.2 million for cameras, 2.8 million for intercoms and 600 thousand for the vaping cabling, for vaping. okay, thank you. And to DR. Zeman's point, I've said this every time we talk about spend authority. When you do spend authority, you're putting that money away that can't be used -- and people argue with me for this all the time. My understanding is if we're saying we have 1.8 million dollars for these things, we're putting that aside and we're not touching it and if we find out we only needed 6 million of it televising's

0762.5 million that somebody else could have used for something, so I always question when we do the spend authority and I understand sometimes it comes to us because you don't want to have to come, keep coming back to ask for more but we are just in a situation that we can only be giving authority to spend what it is, is absolutely necessary and to that point I also want to point out there are two buckets, no one ever wants to hear this but there's a capital bucket and there is a general fund, we can't mix and match them and we cannot do employee salary increases out of the capital budget, so it gets mixed up when we're having these discussions. This is about capital dollars, still have to be very intentional with them but freeing

077up capital dollars does not give us a place to be able to give employee salary raises, although we wish that we were in that situation, so thank you. any other board member discussion on the motion to postpone this item to FEBRUARY 17? All in favor of the motion, say aye. aye. all opposed, say no. Moex passes unanimously. Could I get a motion and a second on item -- on our time certain, item b1. so moved. second. Er moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Thompson. Public comment on b1 yes, three registered speakers, DR. Natalie lynch-walsh, PRESIDENT Anna fusco and DR. Judy jermanovich. good afternoon, DR. Natalie lynch-walsh, plantation, florida. Where to start on this? Housekeeping issue, items added after the participation deadline like at 8:30 the night before the meeting, the comment and sign deadline

078should be extend. We shouldn't be get ago message that you can come down here or send the board an e-mail, like who knows to do that tha.'s first and fore mo. The public never intended the word staff and I'm speaking as one taxpayer, to apply to cabinet members and other executives. We were trying to get teachers and other low paid employees more money and we voted for that. And now as a result of everybody coming with their handout included your recently departed general counsel, how do you get money back from here, she got over 20 grand probably, because of that, this thing is at risk the next time it goes out which is why it needs to be narrowly, narrowly defined. Number 3, every item the school board votes on is a recommendation from the

079superintendent. It's just that simple. So, how did the school board approve and is it binding an ie where language was removed that effectively changed who received the supplement. And this is where the memory issues come in. i don't know about you but I've had michael mcdonald on repeat singing keep forgetting all weekend. 2023, the executive summary was clear, the supporting schedules I have seen are meticulous and clear. I've done a public records request for the supporting schedules from 2024-25 and 25-26, the executive summary not clear because it doesn't tell you about the missing language. So, then there's a difference in people's memories on page 3, the former cp ork, MR. Azzarito said he discussed the change with the superintendent, DR. Hepburn. On page 10, there's a closed door agenda item that would imply that you

080had to come somewhere close to this but nobody remembers, nrob can remember. So, how many board members were aware, how is the superintendent not aware if he is bringing the recommendation to the board, how does he not know what he is recommending? So, I'm concluding he's either covering for knowing or he's completely clueless and covering that. If you're going to believe your superintendent, then you need to report these rogue staff members who made written misrepresentations to mislead the superintendent, the school board and the public effectively misappropriating public funds to line their own pockets. Turn them over to the fdle and expedite the referendum pay out audit, for the record, I believe azzarito, thank you. DR. Trudy jermanovich, I don't think I have to say much after that but I will say that this will hurt

081the next referendum. We heed to be extremely careful about the wording in that and I don't know, I know you have to keep them concise and there's rules and all this stuff, but I don't know whether you should put staff ever again in a referendum because that covers everybody in the district and that's what you've done. You've covered everybody in the district. You did it because you voted for it. So, it's not your fault that you didn't understand probably because staff didn't explain it to you. It would have been very simple to say this person is getting 20 thousand dollars, this person is getting 10 thourk, that's a year, per year do you know what teachers could do with that? Do you know what esp's -- anybody that makes a reasonable salary in this district

082under 100 thousand dollars, now, I know people don't want to put a line like that because there's always going to leave some people out but I say you need that in the referendum next time because you've got to put a stop to this. I'm sorry but DR. Hepburn knew what was going on because he didn't take the money. What happened to all the rest of the people? They should have known too. Thanks. PRESIDENT Anna fusco. well, I have to follow those two, it's usually people say hating about me. Anna fusco, teachers union PRESIDENT, we all know the intent of the referendum, we know clearly this situation happened. I stand and I believe david azzarito, he's never been anything but with high integrity and when you read piece ins there of saying I don't recall, I

083find that hard to accept. I know I represent members through over my decade of being a union PRESIDENT, when they're getting interviewed, I never accept them tosay I don'n'recall, itit'snot an acceceable swsw.. It'sotot acceptable. So, what I am asking you to do is do what you need o do today, peel the band aid off, get it done with, we cannot keep revisiting this beat ago dead horse as a cliche we say in our italian world, we know this happened, you guys took a position and you made a determination to cease further. At the end of the day, you voted on an item. I can't explain in detail because I didn't get a chance to investigate or go out in question. I know if I did, there would be straightforward answers that I would make demanding

084but that's how I roll. Sometimes you guys like to accept things as is and that's why you're in the position you're in now. I know three of you were not on the board at the time, school board member thompson, bulman and school board member cervera, and you're kind of seeing from the outside in but you're in it because you guys get prepped and information before you sit at a board and I see DR. Zeman saying -- and I see cervera saying no, I need more, so, I've been saying it for a very long time, certain staffers tend to bring things minimal because it's how it is, not all the time, at times. Or they just figure you know it, you understand it or you're going to read it but we do have to sit here

085at the end of the day that I say all the time, when you sign off on something, you should know every piece of it and if it's in writing and wherever you can get it, whether it's a hyperlink or digital or in your black box or whatever, but apparently something happened in closed doorfinger I mean, I just lived it what you did to us in closed door about our insurance, that's another topic, I'm not done with that one, but send this today, move on to we can get to real business. Thank you. that concludes public speaking. thank you, board member discussion? Go ahead. MADAM Chair, I failed to sign up, MAY I speak? go ahead, MR. Tinjan. okay, thank you, my name is pete tinjan, representative of smab and a lot of the discussion is

086centered around people in the district who are at the upper end of the pay scale. I want to know these are the people that answer to you, the board, these are the people that do a lot of the work here and yesterday in discussion with DR. Hepburn, it was stated why can't we get more candidates and referred to some of his engineering friends who don't come here because the salary is so poor and I can't disagree with that. I gave all of you a chart that showed how flat line all those positions were for almost a ten year period of time and also how we were excluded from the first referendum and after discussions with MR. Sullivan, we were included as a possibility in the second referendum and this board voted to give that money

087to those people and I don't think it's right to cut it off or claw it back. Thank you. MADAM Chair, I also neglected to sign up. go ahead. thank you. okay. Part of the problem that we've been having is that certain people who are already making over 100 thousand dollars and, yes, I will use that figure, were able to benefit from the referendum, that includes people in bargaining units where the money is already higher. We know that, you know that. The public knows that. They knew darn well when they voted on this it was because teachers, teacher assistants and those people who are just barely scraping by. My personal insurance went from 4 thousand dollars to 15 thousand, how does a teacher do that? She doesn't, she loses her house, okay. That's what happens. So,

088those are the people that were trying to help. And those are the people you need to think about when you reword this. I appreciate that you allowed the gentleman to speak. I told him he should if he wanted to even though he didn't sign up so, thank you for letting me speak also fwhauz's one of the problem wes have is we don't know the exact amount that's going into everyone's pocket and why some of it just doesn't make sense. When we wrote the referendum, we already knew how much admin and other people were making who was never in the picture of our mind at that time, things have changed but I question why. Because as someone else said, the money's there and now everybody wants to say, well, the money's there. Well, we fought for

089the money, we went out and knocked on doors, we told the community it was goipg to be for teach and he iser for teacher assistants. That's what we did, we did it and I'm not never going to let anybody forget that. And I know that sometimes as a broward teacher union yuan, we are very generous, I'm not going to let anybody forget that because we're the ones would brought it forward and we saw the need sdp if we would have been in power, PRESIDENT Fusco's leadership when they took away our steps websinger would have come up with a solution for that too, we wouldn't have let that happen either. So, when we say we need this for us because we can't make a living, it's for us, so whatever you need to do to make

090sure that it stays with the people who really are having trouble paying their bills, sending their kids to college, I would greatly appreciate it, thank you. sorry, I think there's been a lot of conversation about the money involved with this item, so I want to just bring up a different issue with you. I have confidence in each of you individually and collectively to make good decisions when you're given information but if you're not given good information, you're not going to make good decisions and there is nothing -- you have so many challenges facing you right now, it's just overwhelming. It's imperative you be given accurate information and if you walk away with one thing today, walk away with a plan to make sure that when an item is brought to you, all sides are brought

091to you, not for different conversations of what could or couldn't happen with this money, how much it costs, all of that could have been presented to you in an item and should have been and this is just one item before you, so my take away, one of them after reading this was, how incredibly important it is that you insist that you mandate that when an item is brought to you, it has correct and accurate information, thank you. alright. And just before we begin, because I do want to address the issue with the public speaking since we had a number of speakers who were unable to sign up. I hope that in the future when we do a late add, we can make accommodations for the public speakers to sign up, so we have -- we're

092able to follow our policy. MR. Cervera, since you brought the item. thank you. This audit report confirms what parents, teachers and taxpayers have fearedfinger serious failures in process, transparency and oversight when handling voter approved referendum funds. Those dollars were meant to support our teachers, front line educators, student safety, mental health services, not to be quietly redirected without full disclosure to the board or to the public. When voters are asked to tax themselves for education, we as a district have a duty to be crystal clear, disciplined and accountable in how every dollar is spent. Our teachers are stretched thin, our classrooms need resources, families are worried about budgets, staffing, school closures. In that environment, even the appearance of mismanagement is unacceptable. We have to restore trust and that starts with transparency, accountability and putting our students

093and our teachers first. They deserve quite frankly nothing less. This audit is quite damning to this district. It makes clear there was a lack of fidelity, inconsistencies, lapses in xlaoun -- communication and failures to follow basic governance and who got screwed? The teachers once again. It's bad enough we can't give them adequate raises, it's bad enough we cannot give them a living wage, and now we're going to take depending on which estimates you look at, roughly 500 thousand dollars in referendum funds that should have gone to the teachers. We need to fix this now. MR. Superintendent, have you reviewed this audit report? yes, that affirmative. have you reviewed the recommendation that is MR. Rhodes prepared in the conclusion section of the report? affirmative. how long will it take you to implement all of these needed

094guardrails and to make sure that this does not happen again? they're already implemented, sir. every single one of them? correct. when were these implementations made? at various times, some were made for over a year now and some were recently instituted. wait a second, sir, I'm confused. This audit report was released a week ago. You're telling me the guardrail that is were suggested to be put in place in this recommendation that was released a week ago have already been in place for the last year? some. which ones? hold on just a second, sir, I am pulling up the report just to make sure I provide you accurate information here. Yes, let me clarify. So, these are specific to when the referendum comes, but holistically it's talking about as MS. Verdic just mentioned about ensuring the board

095is well informed about all decision making the board has to make and we made those changes to ensure we include all financials, all background information and ensuring that our file is not -- our document for executive summary is not a static document, it's a living document and we continue to make updates if we find additional issue or get any additional recommendation from the board. so it's your position, sir, that on FEBRUARY 10, all five of these recommendations have been implement and had are in place at bcps? some of these are not applicable to us, I think like number 2 is for the board. let me rephrase. All those that are in your control, sir. yes. fantastic. Are you satisfied with these recommendations? no, we go beyond these recommendations. Our discussions cabinet -- we meet after

096every board meet tog reflect about processes and information that the board needs to know that we probably didn't provide. Something happened today based on the lack of information that you felt you didn't have at that time, instead of including the additional documents in a link in the summary, based on your comments about the information, the board decided, hey, can we separate that out and add that as an amendment or an attachment to the actual item. So, those are the things we constantly try to update based on what we hear from the board. It MAY not be an overt direction, it MAY be something as we listen and we go back and reflect just to make sure the board has all the information possible. So, my team know my stance is that we want the board

097to be well informed so you can make the best possible decision that's going to be impactful for this district. fantastic so you're not satisfied with these recommendations alone, sir? no. fantastic, because neither am I. If we're going to go back and ask the vote teaser pass another referendum in NOVEMBER after this debacle, I don't think we're going to be successful. How can they trust us as a board to get this right after going through what we just went there. I don't think they will. That's why I think further action is needed here to get to the bottom of this and to start the long path of restoring trust with the public. MADAM Chair, I would like to make a supplemental motion if I can. My motion is that we need the hire outside counsel to

098fully investigate what happened with this issue. We have to have accountability here. We do -- if we don't get to the bottom of this and find out who was told what or who said what or who voted what, the public is not going to trust us in NOVEMBER with this. And if the public does not trust us in NOVEMBER with this, guess would's -- who's going to get screwed again t teachers. If this referendum doesn't pass, they're going to be the ones ta -- who are losing dollars from their paychecks. So, chair, that is my motion that we hire outside counsel to fully investigate all the processes in these, I think MR. Rhodes did a good job with the initial version of the audit report, however, with all due respect for him, I don't think

099it went far enough. We need an outside investigation to find out from a-z what exactly happened here. is there a second? if I MAY continue. Gofrjts ahead. so, thank you. I'm disappointed although not shocked and I have a great fear that -- and I'm speaking to the members of the public here, that the missteps of this district is going to cost our teachers. I don't see how we fully move on from this unless we can fully understand how this happened and how this happened. And with all due respect to PRESIDENT Fusco and not beat ago dead horse and moving on, I think there's a lot of unanswered questions here and I aoep not ready to move on for this. And I'm disappointed that my colleagues don't share that position with me. MADAM Chair, if I

100MAY address our general counsel. go ahead. MS. Jacques-adams, we heard over the weeks since this has happened about corrective action and not only doing thing tos make sure this doesn't happen again should a referendum pass, but how do we correct what has happened in the past now? Have you compiled from a legal standpoint all of our options regarding possible clawbacks of these 500 thousand dollars in referendum money that is were given to others who are not teachers? through the chair, so, asking whether there are -- like what the options are in terms of the results of this investigation, I'm not sure whether that is our role, we legally review. in terms of some of the options that have been floated, yes, I have begun to look into whether or not there is -- what liabilities

101that the board MAY have as a result of moving forward with some of those options. I have begun to take a look at that, but in terms of coming up with what you believe needs to happen after this audit, that's not truly our role to make that decision. let me clarify, just so there's no confusion. What I believe needs to happen after this audit is a full investigation. Obviously my colleagues don't agree with me and that's fine. What I'm asking of you is -- and I believe this request was made on legal almost immediately once this was brought to light. Are there options that this board can consider in potentially clawing back the monies has were given to certain district staff that should have gone to teachers? Are you working on a legal memo or

102any opinion letters or anything of that nature to explain to this board what the options are as to potentially clawing back those monies from district staff and redistributing it to teachers? so, to be -- yes, I am wringing on a memo but not -- I want to clarify the way that you posed it. Like, it's not up to me to determine what those options are because from a logistical standpoint, our office does not take care of understanding how to take back money from an employeeeeso that's t e questionon thatat I'm ananswining. The questi thatm m answering in terms of claw k back is -- clawing back is what liability does the board have to clawing back, I'm going to utilize your phrase, monies ey -- from the various people who have received it, whether they

103have contracts, whether they're part of a meet and confer, whether they're part of any type of other group. I appreciate that. And when will your memo be ready for distribution? depending on the priorities that the board sets for me, I was trying very hard to provide that to you as soon as possible but there were some other priorities that the board wished for me to focus on. So, I'm hopeful to provide that to you as soon as possible, within the next couple of weeks, providing that there's no urgent matters. now you also mentioned there's other people in this district whose job it would be to determine how or to get these monies back, you're giving a legal opinion on it, correct? yes, I'm not focusing on the logistics of how that is done because that's

104outside our office's role. who would be in charge of make hating logistical determination? that would be something that staff would need to sfond. I don't know the answer to that question. MAY I inquire from the super? you MAY. Yes, so we already have written a specific memo. I know we sent it to legal for their review so we're just waiting on their specific review just to make sure. I did receive that and I responded over a week ago as to certain caveats that need to be put in because once again, I cannot comment on the logistics but I have already provided that response on 1/29. when can we expect that memo? in terms of the memo we f I spoke about, my goal is to provide that in the next couple of woes barring any

105other priorities that you place before me. okay, I apoll jieds, I'm confused so I'm hear hearing's two memos, there's a moem that DR. Hepburn submitted and there's a memo as far as the legalities of what we can do. in terms of looking at the memo that DR. Hepburn is referring to, I was requested to take a look at it from a legal perspective and although I could not respond to the lo -- logistics of it, my comment was to add a caveat that the perspective of the memo was on the logistics and not whether or not it was possible legally speaking. so, can can can you distribute that memo this afternoon? staff has that, the final, and they can distribute it. I only have a a kp -- copy of it. . Er we'll take

106a look, our memo originated from a board question, I think it was DR. Zeman, it's a board response, we'll take a look at what you put in because I haven't reviewed it since they sent it up and if you sent it back, we'll check it out. . Er MR. Superintendent, will you make a commitment this th afternoon to make that a priority and make sure we get that by the end of the week. yes, if we dpet out of here in time, yes. fair enough. Thank you, chair. thank you, MS. Hixon? thank you, and I wanted to ask a couple of questions and point out, I also appreciate how fast the audit came out and the investigation, but I was very concerned that it didn't really -- it says staff, it doesn't really give specifics

107to staff but I do have a question because I didn't see it mentioned in here to MR. Rhodes, did you go back and watch the school board meetings specifically on these particular items? yes, and more. okay, thank you, because I didn't see it referenced in there and I will -- my perspective of things that happen in those board meetings was on the JUNE 30, 2024, the board did vote to give that 5.5% to the azmab, band e and below, right, dm below, and the discussion there which I didn't see -- yes, sir ?Frnlts I I'm sorry to interrupt, you said JUNE of 24, but thep you referenced the d band and below which was AUGUST of 23, and then the meeting that I think you were referring to was the JULY 30, 24 where the

108approval was for the e and above without it being -- yeah, I'm just trying to put a perspective from someone that was sitting on the board, so when it first was approved, testifying approved by everyone on the board, there were a number of us that didn't agree but it passed with enough votes for consent but the discussion at that time which I think you did reference in there, there were board member has were saying all means all,.If we're giving it to all, it manses all. It was very clear that there were board members that were driving that discussion in terms of their expectation was it was everybody. Before that, the reason we heaped the wording in the referendum on the ballot was so we could expand it beyond teachers. So, that it could -- the

109intention was to include principals and bus drivers, more people -- people who were directly impacting student ins a school setting, and to that point, I would like -- when we have this discussion, I think that's what the wording in the ballot should say is that you could say staff but staff that directly impacts or are in a school setting because I think that is what the public is asking for, and I think us as board members sitting up here have to be really careful of what we're saying to the public because it sounds like rielgt now we're telling them not to trust us and don't vote for the referendum tla.'s what I'm hearing. And we madly when it became obvious to the chair, she brought an item forward and we immediately stopped what we believed

110to not be the intention of the public or the board was, but just going backwards. The first time we voted on it, it was clear it was going to go to more people than just in the school. When it came back to us to vote in the JULY of 2024, aim saying that right, -- am I staining that right. That only came to us to say make that for three year, not for one year. It wasn't a discussion about per sen tangs anymore, it was about extending the contract longer. Between the comment that is were made at that meeting and the backup documentation that was provided with that agenda item, I would agree with your assessment. thank you. So I want to put it in context for everyone that when it came back to us

111that following year, it was not adjusting percentages, we were just going to make it for the rest of the remaining time of the referendum so we didn't have to continue to bring it up. To be clear, that's why I think everybody wasn't read thing fine print we caner weren't changing percentages as we understood it on the board or who we were giving the money to, we were extend thing tame period to cover the entirety of the referendum. So, I want to give a little context, a lot of things got thrown sxout people weren't necessarily here at that time. So, I think it's important that people understand that when it got changed, was tent that we weren't paying attention, that wasn't the part we were discussing sitting at the board. For me it's very hard to

112read the audit and not be able to know who made that change even though -- we weren't aware that anything wasn't added to it. It was disappoint tog not be able to pinpoint something and say, okay, we know that's how this happened and we know it won't happen again but I do think that we can be all assured that it won't happen again and we will be more diligent on asking better questions now that we have seen this but I think the public -- this is really important and we really comment that the public has continued to support the referendum for our teachers, our staff that's in the schools, for mental health and for safety and security because we know we just don't get the funding from the state to be able to give the

113salary that is we would like to give. I also want to point out that the money that was distributed to the higher bands that we within aware of did not get taken away from teachers and I think that's where we have to be really intentional about the way that we're talking about this. There was a set amount of money that was put aside -- this is how many teachers there are, this is the percentage they're going to get, this is how much teachers -- no one took any of that money away from teachers, although that extra 500 thousand dollars that was there could have been used for mental health or for something else but I just want to be really clear that that money was not taken away from teachers. So, I think putting that

114out in context really hurts us in the idea that we're going to be able to continue to have trust in the public in that we need to go out for a referendum and continue to make sure our teachers are getting a higher salary that we know we're not able to give them. I also want to make a point and we'll discuss this later, that there should never be anyone who gets more money from the referendum than the people who are working in a school, so that will be a structure we'll look at once we get the next referendum passed but I just -- it's really important as board member who is are going to go out and ask the public to do this again that we have to give them the right information and I

115don't think it's fair to be telling the public has we took money away from teachers to be able to give it to higher ups when that's not really what that situation was. Also in the recommendations, people aren't sure what was on here, there were five recommendations and the ie thaem MR. Cervera, thank you very much, brought forward today was to ask the superintendent to make sure he is implementing all of these recommendations moving forward so that's really the specific item that came before us today and those things are specifically related to referendum funded supplements, so I just wanted to point out that we need to make sure that we're talking factual information because I don't want the public to think that anybody on the board took money away from teachers, thank you. as a co-sponsor,

116I would like to go next and ask some questions and then I'll xwo to the rest of my colleagues. I have a question for MS. Hixon. When you made the motion to -- I believe it was a substitute motion to direct the chief auditor to conduct this investigation, did you not also ask for us to refer to the oig for investigation? thank you, yes, I was going to ask that, so we did say to do both. So, I guess your direction is going to be where do we sit with that. well, I wanted to clarify because I felt like some of our intentionbacker intentions were mischaracterized when we didn't second a motion that was made by my colleague. We already have an outside investigation going on. We directed that in JANUARY when we ordered that

117this investigation be done. The oig has more authority to compel, you know, testimony and things like that than an outside counsel would, so I don't see the sense in hiring an outside counsel when we have an outside organization with more legal authority to do that investigation which is why I didn't second the motion. It wasn't that I don't believe there should be an outside investigation, we are already doing that work. Further, I believe there is -- I have a concern about the our general counsel doing -- figuring out options for clawing back this money because there MAY be a conflict of interest. There are people in the legal department who are getting that money, so this is a situation where -- well, let me ask our hr staff. In what scenarios do we -- does

118the district have the authority to ask employees to pay money back to the district? hi, MADAM Chair, susan rockelman, when there are situation wes ever discovered there has been an error in a paycheck, a teacher MAY have been paid for a masters degree but only has a bachelors degree, they will make that correction. We notify the employee of the mistake and then we refer them to payroll to set up repayment plans. okay. So, it would be like an accidental overpayment that that's when we are able to ask employees to pay us back? correct. I also have my own concerns about our staff figuring out ways to claw back that money because again some of that staff has received the supplement, so again there's an inadherent conflict of interest, so I will make a motion later

119but I did want to add to the context that my colleague, MS. Hixon, spoke to. You know, when this item originally came to us, we were still recovery framing the after math of 6 superintendents in three years, and I just want to remind everyone that when there is such turnover in leadership, there is chaos and in that chaos, there are failures and things fall through the cracks and this is a perfect example of that. So I think it's really important to reflect on that context in which this item came to us. I'm grateful to the the chief auditor's office in doing this investigation and doing it thoroughly and quickly and I'm glad that we as a district and as a board can can reflect on something that happened almost two years ago and implement changes

120and I'm hearing from the superintendent again, a complete willingness to improve and acknowledge failures and make changes, something that we would not have heard four years ago. So I just think it's important to acknowledge that and to acknowledge that there are still going to be mistakes that need to be fixed and I hear from the superintendent that he's willing to implement systems to fix those things. So I just think it's important to put that all out there. I will go ahead and make a motion to hire outside counsel to weigh in on the legality of clawing back money that was paid out to employees band e and above and determine whether or not those were accidental overpayments. second. motion made by MS. Leonardi, eked by DR. Zeman, public comment on the motion? DR. Natalie lynch-walsh,

121plantation, florida, I support the motion because I think you need outside counsel for that given that your current interim counsel is one of the people getting referendum dollars, as you pointed out. If I were putting myself in the the shoes of the employees that were still here, I would good annoyed doesn't quite cover it,.You do claw it back, I'm going say this again, how do you address the fact that your general counsel, former general counsel who was the highest paid employee after the superintendent, how do you claw it back from her? because you claw it back from all or none. And she high tailed it out of here, you will have to figure this out, it's not like you didn't know this was an issue when she was giving you a long good-bye, did you

122guys her somber out of here without addressing that with her. She knew it was in her contract but I support the motion. any other public comment on the motion? Go ahead. hi, I'm super new to going to these meetings, but there ?I kind of documentation that specifies the type of positions to give clarity to the population that's voting on these referendums? I want to know, I voted in the election last year, I don't recall if this was on it or a couple of years ago, but it would be help fm because there seems like there's a definition issue can which I don't know if it's been resolved in this conversation. thank you, any other public comment? good afternoon, thank you for the motions, both of you, as you were speak, MR. Cervera, I was thinking

123that as you are talking about outside counsel and I think MS. Leonardi, your explanation of why that is necessary was very good, I was thinking to broaden it slightly and ask what remedies are available to the school board to deal with this issue, it MAY be going beyond whwh your ininialal thoughghtsould bebe, I knknow DR. Zeman a few meetings ago came up and that was spon tain you, as you have this audit before you, I would look at what different remedy and is what their recommendations for preventing this in the future would be. Thank you. any other public comment? Board member -- go ahead. anna fusco, broward teachers union PRESIDENT, no, I don't support the motion. I don't think you have o go and hire outside counsel, we have a ton of counsel here, if

124they're not sufficient under the barriers of having to meet the needs that they have a bar over their head to do it correctly and right, I'm at a loss, and, you know, at the end of the day, you guys voted for it. Now, how we come to the conclusion of how or why, I think I've gotten or heard aside from the three that weren't here plus the counsel, plus the superintendent, so that's 6 plus 1, that's 8 different rationales. I'm asking to vote this down and let's move this forward. It happened, there's multiple rationalness why, your report showed, let's move on. any other public comment? Board member discussion, DR. Zeman? thank you so much, chair. We're 8 month and is 24 days from the referendum and the concern I have is that last sentence of

125the motion, chair, the first half I think if I characterize it this way would be we want outside counsel to look at recouping the funds on the legality of that, was that the first half? the legality of recouping the funds, yes. thank you, and then the second half was to investigate further the the root causes of why this happened? no t whether this was an accidental overpayment. and I appreciate that. The first one would allow them to opine of the accidental overpayment or any other cause -- . Erbacker I'm happy to eliminate the last point. I would be happy to second that amended motion. I really think this is the way to close this. The idea that we want to do it with outside counsel, avoid the conflict, ask them to do it promptly, come

126back and tell us what recruitment looks like, I'm very, very desirous of doing the recoupment largely because we always need to do what's right and what we did wasn't right. The way it was done was not right and we have to put it back in place to the extent we can and clearly we can -- if the lawyer agrees, we can recoup those funds at least from those people that were here and so, yes, there will be people who left, we have other people who are leaving in the near term that won't get caught in the recoupment effort but there are ways to recoup funds and there are great reasons to do this. I'll reserve my comments when we get back to the item, thank you, chair. Great motion. board comment on motion? MS. Thompson?

127thank you, chair. I am in agreement with the btu PRESIDENT, I don't think we need to continue with this conversation. I think I obviously was not on the board but I watched the meetings and I remember clearly that it said all staff and I understand that it was a period of transition and mistakes were made but that was not on the individual employees, that was on board. The board voted for it. So, I have a question for our general counsel. So, given that employees received referendum supplements only after board approval, based on that and their salary schedules, is there any legal basis for holding individual employees responsible for governance and documentation failures? through the chair, so, each type of employee should be treated differently. There are employees who are receiving it as a result of

128the decision of the board to give it to all, so in that case, if the permission was given based upon board approval, then staff was moving forward with what the board approved. That's one aspect of it I want to clarify, it wasn't if, the board approved the item tha,'s not if the board, that is a statement of fact, that is what happened. Continue. yes, so, with the board approving a matter and staff moving forward with what the board approved, that's the statement. There it is, staff moved forward with what the board requested them to do. Additionally, there are employees who have contracts, so in addition to that approval, the contract subsequently was approved with those raises within the written contract and so those class of employees would have contracts wherein the only way to khaipg

129that would be a change in the contract, an amendment to the contract, and that would have to be a voluntary amendment of that contract. So, my example,.If you have a vendor where you have a contract with them, board approved it, vendor approve ed it, in order to amend that contract, both parties need to approve and then of course there are -- the next class are the employees that are in unions. understood. And I through the chair to general counsel and maybe hr, what legal labor or employee relation risks will the district assume by attempt tog recover compensation that was paid again under board approved actions? so, and that is what I was looking into, but thus far, if it's contract, then, you know, trying to do something different than what the contract requires would be

130a breach of that contract. anyone from hr want to weigh in? . Er again, your question is more of a legal question than an hr question. alright. I think the audit makes it clear that there wass failure, there was failure in governance and in transparency and our internal controls. I think it's also clear the superintendent has heard these concerns and is already moving forward with correcting them. I think it is clear that this board should be required to craft language that -- or craft a policy if it's too long to put in the referendum language to make sure this never happens again. However, it happened because the board approved it, point blank. So I would not be in favor of going through legal counsel, you am not in favor of forcing employees to pay back

131money that the board approved to do so. Thank you. thank you, and MS. Thompson , I happen to agree with you. The reason that I feel -- I felt like it was necessary to make this motion is because we have people saying that they intend to bring an item next month and to have staff recoup those funds. And I don't feel comfortable voting on that item without clear, legal guidance on whether or not that is allowed and I don't think -- and I done maoep this as a slight to our general counsel or our staff, but I don't think that the public would be satisfied with someone who had received those funds weighing in on whether or not they should be forced to pay those funds back. So I'm with you, I will also like

132to move on and I agree with your assessment on it, but in case an item is brought, I would really like to have clear legal guidance one way or the other if that is even allowed. thank you for your clarification, I will now support that motion but I just want to be abundantly clear that I am not interested in forcing employees to make up for our mistakes. Thank you. any other board member discussion on the motion? DR. Zeman? DR. Zeman, could we give -- absolutely. MS. Bulman, MS. Hixon and then MR. Zeman. I appreciate the comments from MS. Thompson and our xhair and I appreciate the clarification as well. Based on the assumption or based on the fact that the board approved this, unless we -- unless we identify a bad actor who can be

133pinpointed as having been the master mind of this and, you know, something of that nature where you can actually find fault with an individual or a group of individuals, I don't support trying to claw back these dollars. The board approved it and people were paid accordingly. My understanding like hr, i think people have these funds in their contracts moving forward as this was -- I know it was discovered by the chair in our -- in negotiations, but did anyone after this was passed have referendum funds offered as part of their contract? so, again, azmat employees don't have contracts, they're annual reappointment, but when there's salary compensation package, the referendum dollars were included. When we offered salary packages to employees. right. I don't really see a fact pattern where someone accepts a job and relies on

134the fact they're getting these funds that we would then try to claw that back. And it's a great hardship when the board approves something and thep you try to claw money back from -- when the money's already been spent. That's a hardship on our employees. So, I am not in favor of -- except at the very fact pattern of clawing back these fund, the thing was done, we have taken steps to realign the referendum, funds being distributed as intended by the voters and I think it's just time to move forward but if we -- but I don't mind supporting your motion if we insist upon this but I will not be supporting clawing back funds in f that item is -- if that item is brought later. thank you, MS. Hixon? I will echo that.

135I appreciate the mo motion so that we can decide whether it's even legal to do it or not, but I am not in favor of doing that. I think that although this board doesn't agree with it and I also wasn't a person on the board that didn't at the time that was voted on, there was a board who believed all meant all and had enough votes to get that through, so I as much as I would like to push this off on someone else, I think that was how the votes landed unfortunately at that meeting and we've addressed it as a new board moving forward that we don't agree with it and we'll fix that moving forward for the next year but I don't think we should punish people -- it's different when you're overpaid

136because of a mistake and when somebody agreed to give you money and then decided it was a bad idea. So, I understand optically it will look bet tore the public if we do that but again it wasn't money that was taken from teachers, so taking it back sint isn't going to give it back to teachers so I think we need to be really clear that wouldn't be the end result of this and I just dish don't agree, but I would agree with having someone at least weigh in to whether it's legal or not because I would venture to guess it's probably not. Thank you. thank you, DR. Zeman? I'm the unnamed person that plans on bringing the item next month. I will bring the item and I'll tell you why. This total amount of money

137that was paid is lez than one-third of 1% to the referendum dollars and if you take today's referendum dollars, roughly 350 million dollars and you divide it by 13 thousand toppers, you get 27 thousand dollars per teacher and contrary to what was said up here today, we could have paid every dime to teachers. Our referendum said we'd spend at least 75% on staff and up to 17% on safety and security and 8% on mental health. So we could have spent 100% on staff and we didn't and I think we didn't for good reasons, there was a rationale split on staff and safety and security, some of my colleagues MAY not recognize that this referendum represents 17% of our operating dollars. DR. Hepburn, would we be an a district if we lost 17% of our operating

138dollars immediately? it would cause some challenges in maintaining that. how many teachers do you think would stay if we took away their up to 12 thousand dollar stipend from the referendum? I'm not sure. . Er it eats not a pretty picture. Our teachers, everybody outside acknowledges they're underpaid to what they deliver in term of value, not recoup thing the money is going from a 60% referendum that passed in 2022 to a number that will be less than 60% and I'm not willing to take that risk, I don't think anyone who got the money wants us to take that risk. It isn't about hurting people that spent the money or already bought stuff with it, one, I don't think that the board while the literal transcript of the meet lg was clear, those of us that

139were here were not informed the underlying resource allocation tool had changed, that it was no longer scheduled d and below. MR. Rhodes' report made it clear that that was omitted from the item but not struck out. I hope that we do what MR. Cervera says but not just about referendum money, I hope we write items that is are crystal clear, that are not wildly optimistic, that don't represent the joy juice, rather than be honest with the public of what we're doing with their money. I hope we give all of the data to the bore, I hope we're crystal clear in our answer, I hope we bring trends and timelines and better analysis to it to the board does a better job. I would have made your item much stronger, MR. Cervera, I would have said

140on all items, let's improve the agenda packet we ghet broward county schools but a letter two or grade, a letter grade or two. But for me, for one third of 1% of the referendum, I'm not willing to take that chance. It's probably ambiguous about who was responsible so I will say everybody's responsible for what happened but you aoem not going to be on this board and take a rising of 17% with our operating dollars. And this is what voters will be thinking about when they go in the poll, did they spend the last amount of money that we gave them, it's over 1.2 billion dollars over four year that is we collect and it will be another 1.5 or 1.6 given property taxes going forward because this is an ad valorem tax. Doi have to

141be clear that we could have spent more of this money on teachers than we did. I think we made very responsible allocations between mental health, safety and teachers, but to pay our highest compensated administrators a bonus is not consistent with what we sold to the voters or what we ro wrote in the ref run dumb. I hope when the item comes, cooler heads will prevail, it's not about someone's name about having to pay it back, do we want 17% of our money with a high probability of passing or do we want to pray like hell at 7 P.M. On NOVEMBER 3 that voters either forgot about this or forgave us because it was a mistake and I don't want to take that risk, it's a difference of opinion, but I don't gamble with 17% of

142our operating budget and I can't even imagine. We go crazy with our cfo trying to find 100 million dollars, how on earth can you find 350 million dollars out of the budget? Like, that's -- it's literally inconceivable. We would do a hillsborough county and reboundary the whole district and close 70 or 80 schools just to stay open. We'd be going through unbelievable forkhur to take a reduction of that all at one time and the state's not going to help us, our private sector donations aren't going to help us, we're going take a hit and it's a lot of money. So, that's why I think we need to have a lawyer look at this and tell us what we can do, if we can't do it, we can't do it and that's the end of the

143store rising I will not bring the item. If the lawyer says there's a way to recoup the funds, then I'll bring the item and I hope cooler heads prevail that the point and we realize that the risk we're taking is the future of our community and the future of our school system. Thanks, chair. any other board substitution on the -- discussion on the motion? All in favor of the motion, say aye. aye. . Er all opposed, say no. Motion passes animouslsl websinger are ck the emem, I am done with any comments. I believe MS. Thompson, you are next. I made my comments, thank you. MS. Bulman?Frnlts thank you, chair. I think we need to make sure we're -- and to DR. Zeman's point which I don't agree with the way that he gets there, but

144I think that the most important aspect of this entire conversation is making sure that we're trusted by the public and that we have our referendum passed coming up. And we need to do -- we need to take the steps to make sure that every day we're regaining the public trust. Again we've talked about this multiple times today and during the meeting and other items but we as a board have been addressing this as quickly as we can when these things are coming to us, so I think that we collectively all agree that public trust is our number one priority and so, you know, I'm wondering when do we have to have the referendum language submitted. When do we have to agree to that? DR. Hepburn? MR. Sullivan? I can tell you when we plan to

145bring it, lonely I'm not sure when you have to bring it, we're mirroring the schedule websinger eel be ahead of schedule which will be next board meeting, we're waiting for the counsel to review it so we're within state statute. is this something we can workshop before we bring to the board so we can have public input? Do we have time for that? DR. Hepburn? MR. Sullivan? so, there's two thin that is happen with the referendum based on the last two, one televising's a board vote on the resolution, the resolution contains the reason the board feels the ballot measure is needed and then the actual ballot language. After that vote, there is a separate vote that the board historically has done the let the voters know how that is intended to be spent, so there's a

146vote on the intended allocation. That would be we followed last time around, this resolution would be voted on in the MARCH meeting and then the allocation could be workshopped and voted on, so that would be APRIL and MAY. so, can we put the lang badge on a workshop before so we can get public -- I don't know when we have to have the resolution. I would have to work with legal and maybe the outside counsel to determine the timeline of that because that would delay the resolution portion, but again there's two aspects of it, there's the resolution itself which I know the board will want to structure the language in such a way to account for what happened in the past but the ballot language only could be 75 words, so I think the board

147will have a challenge on restricting those funds the way they want to, that's why there's a separate vote that you're not limited in terms of a vote count to say how you want to spepd fund if it were to pass. well, I doint want to be self-te fleeting before we get to it. A workshop for the second part, okay. I mean, I think we're going to have a conversation about it when it comes to the board anyways so I don't know how we want to spend that time if we want to do it in a workshop first or spend it all day at the meeting. I would recommend the board takes up the resolution in a board meet, the public would have an opportunity to speak on that item as well and the board will

148have an opportunity to discuss it as well and then have a workshop for the intended allocation and then a board vote would be my recommendation. is there any objection to that process? we're not going to be having a workshop to right the allocation but how the funds will be allocated and -- yes. and what about the resolution language? the resolution language is -- I don't want to say it's not important. the only important part within the resolution is the ballot language which is contain ined the resolution because the resolution goes to the county commission and then that's what dictate it is ballot language on the referendum, so the language behind the ballot language isn't the important part, tiets ballot language which is contained inside the resolution in my opinion. so, under the current proposal televising

149would not be a workshop on the ballot language. but we can talk about it at the board meeting and then the public can comment on it. I know it's 75 words but obviously those words provided some ambiguity last time. I know I'm out of order, you're way too short of time. you need to get -- please yield the mic., please yield the mic., okay. I was going to add, MADAM Chair, I believe the intent of the board will be similar to the previous referendums in terms of the buckets so I don't imagine there would be a lot of change of the ballot language with the exception to see if there's a way to restrict the funds, with 75 bords, I think the board will have a hard time doing that and that'd why the intended

150allocation iss the appropriate place to place any kind of restrictions the board wants in terms of those funds. okay. I just want to make sure that we're not off putting to the voters in the meantime, the intent here is we're going to pass this and that the voters understand that we've got the guardrails in places so that this isn't going to happen again, so I don't know how we're make hating -- waoefrmgts have a lot of runway, last time the board did this, tafs four month turn around, with the timetable that I described, it's closes to a 6, 7 month timeline because we're going out in NOVEMBER versus an AUGUST primary that the last two referendum ballots were, by the time the board votes on the allocation, we would make that part of the communication

151plan and the information that we hand out to the stakeholders. okay. and one other comment I wanted to make, it always just cheers -- well, I have a great deal of respect when [Inaudible] Tells us about knocking doors as someone that's knocked a lot of doors, I think that as we're going into this next referendum, we need to remember who really worked to get it passed originally and the reason why we have it right now and I certainly will be remembering that, but there was a lot of blood, sweat and tears that went into this originally, so, you know, to be able for the original intent here for our teachers and other staff to be able to afford to live here and to serve our students, I think we need to remember that and to

152have that message loud and clear to the public that that is the intent of the referendum and that's where the majority of their tax dollars are going to be going moving forward. So, that's all I have to say on that, thank you. thank you, DR. Zeman? thank you so much, chair, I think I shared a lot but I look forward to all the things that we could do to refwain the trust and I think that this board is full of very thoughtful, intentional people, we have honest, good conversations about thing and is we're clearly trying to find the best things to do moving forward to the extent that we keep that tone from now until NOVEMBER t more we're going to win the confidence of broward county. Thank you. MR. Cervera? I want today address

153a can cup ofl thij that is was said if the first go-around. First and foremost, obviously I want the 2026 referendum to pass and I would never suggest to anybody they shouldn't vote for it. The reason I brought this item was to make sure that safeguards are in place so that the public can feel comfortable in voting for this come NOVEMBER. And as long as I'm on this board, aisle be extremely vocal and I'll do evading my power to make sure that future referendum monies go to our teachers, so the insinuation that I was suggest hating I was not in favor of the referendum is certainly not accurate. That being said, this 500 thousand dollars that was give ton district staff as opposed to teachers was taken from the teachers. If there is a sum

154of money that could go to the teachers and instead it went somewhere else, that money was taken from the teachers. So, it's contingent on all of us to make sure we do whatever needs to be done so this never happens again in the future. Now I realize that the pyre board voted the way they voted and you MAY have had information you, MAY have not had information, I'm looking forward to our outside counsel coming forward with their report and review hating and we'll take the appropriate action but I don't want this to come off as some sort of simple mistake, we took 500 thousand dollars that should have dponbacker gone to the teach and he iser striated to other folk that is quite frankly did not deserve it tha. Money was not earmarked for them,

155nobody in their right mind voted for this several drapers ago thought people in this kcw building would -- wouldn't go to the toppers. It's contingent upon us to make sure that never happens again, thank you. MS. Thompson? . Inger I want to make clarification that social workers, school psychologists, those people are all considered district staff as well, but that's not how it is put in the language. I also wanted to clarify and ask that question, was money in the referendum set aside for teachers? DR. Hepburn? yes. so, I just want to re-emphasize MRS. Hixon's point that it wasn't taken from teachers, it was taken from the other pot of money. I also want to remind -- that is 100% accurate, but anyway, I also want to state that the reason it was expanded in the

156referendum language was to give those people part of the referendum and also our principals and our ap's so, anyway, I would like to call the question now, thank you. all in favor of call thing question, say aye. aye. all opposed, say no. Nofrjts. no, I had a question that I needed to ask. It's okay. So, does the motion pass or -- I'm not sure because you need -- I believe it was a supermajority for a question, I'm not sure you got that. I would like to recall calling the question so the chair can ask a question. I just had one quick question in terms of the logistics of hiring an outside counsel, does that go through the general counsel's office? yes, MS. Leonardi we caner have contract counsel that can be able to handle labor

157and employment questions. got it. It was not in the molesting, I need to make it clear that opinion needs to come to us before the next board meeting. understood. thank you. DR. Zeman, did you have anything else? the timing. Again, general counsel, I hate to press on this,.If it's available a week before and they say that we can't do it, then we avoid community drama by not submit thing item. Thank you so much. alright, any other board discussion on the item? All in favor of item as amended, say aye. aye. All opposed, say no. Item passes unanimously as amended. Alright. Could I get a motion and a second on item r-r 6? Moved by DR. Zeman, can I get a second from someone? I'll go back to that, can I get a second. Motion made

158by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Hixon, pub lib comment on r-r 6, hand free wireless communication device. no comments. board member discussion, MR. Cervera? if board member rupert is on the line still, I would like to temporarily yield my time and speak last on this if I MAY. . MS. Rupert? I'm good. MR. Cervera? thank you, thank you, chair. I want to take the opportunity to acknowledge some of the folks that have been working diligently on this throughout the state which allow it to get before this board this afternoon. I want to start with some of our elected folks in tallahassee, senator allen growl as well as omar blanco from district 15 with the known dangers of distracted driving and why state law and is resolutions such as these are necessary, so I'm super supportive

159and super appreciative of those folks for laying the foundation here on getting these passed at a state level as well as a local and city municipal level and I'm excited to bring this resolution before the broward county school board today. Motor vehicle crashes are the second leading cause of death for children and teens in america. In 2023, 3200 people died in distraction affected crashes nationwide. Teen driver ares 16% more likely to be involved in fatal crashes when distracted and the younger drivers, when it comes to our phone widths the technology x the phones and all of those items, in broward county la year, there were 2763 total distracted driving crashes, 1700 of which involve serious injuries and two fatalities. That's more than 7 distracted driving crashes every single day right here in broward county. Now

160while there are current laws on the books that ban texting and e-mailing while driving, hand-held in only banned school zones does not go far enough. I'm thankful for the proposed legislation that's working its way through tallahassee and I'm appreciative for the opportunity to present the resolution to the board this afternoon for hopefully unanimous support. I would also like to thank vice mayor mark from palmetto bay for coming for public comment for -- in support of the motion, that being said, I'm asking for everybody's support in this very important resolution involving hands free wireless communications devices while driving, thank you, chair. thank you, any other board member discussion? good job, adam. thank you. From the skies, thank you. any other board discussion? All in favor of r-r 6, say aye. all opposed, say no. aye. item

161passes unanimously. . Er can I get a motion and a second on oo7? Motion by zeman, second by hixon. Public discussion? none. . Er board member discussion(Er I pulled this because I was talking to MR. Herosa, she was rattling off a lot of statistics of the way that we are having amazing successes with our see taste program so, I don't think she's here but I don't know if -- is she here? i wanted her to just share with us major successes we're having right now. If you don't mind, can you give us those great statistics you are sharing the other day? we're number one for industry certificate faye phi occasions for the entire state second year in a row. [Applause]. Also number 1 for dual enrollment, this is for the first year and then our

162overall acceleration, so all of our accelerated buckets, we were number one for funding as well. So, we've increased ten thousand industry certifications over the last two years, 6 thousand last year alone. wow. awesome. well, keep up the good work. I'm very proud the hear of these successes and I know you're working hard to continue to expand the program. When we ear out in the community, people want these programs and I think with the changing environment and ai and all these other things, these industry certifications are going to be invaluable for our students, so thank you so much. thank you, I want to add our school team ares doing a fantastic job implement thing program and our scholar ares rise toing the occasion, so thank you. awesome, thanks. thank you, DR. Zeman ?Frjts thank you, I

163wonder if I can continue with our same witness here today. This program's not big enough. xh kh one, is it barry. the emt program is in ten high schools. What is the demand for people to become ent certified? what we've been doing is we surveyed the principal and is we were able to have the 10 principals on board, they put it on their core selection seats as well, it was totally student driven but aside from the emt program, we also have 21 health science programs across our districts. I'm familiar with all the programs. My issue is that I want to make sure that we as a district are meet thing demands of what the students want. It's essential we go out and survey the students. We not only just to be clear about this, chair,

164when we get these kinds of certifications done, MR. Superintendent, how does that affect our student district grade overall? well, it pends on the e ininstry certication. A lolot the instst ceceifificatnsnsdo count towards the florida's accountability system and some don't but nonetheless the ones that don't, they help to propel new opportunity infuser the students after high school, even some during high school and during college with part time joshes and utilizing those industry certify kings. -- certifications. it's one of the big distinct advantages we have, it helps us become and excel as an a district because it's one of the 13 sub scores there are to give us an a district. Does emt count towards state accreditation points? they do if the students sit and take the emr industry certification at the end. I want to find

165the secret sauce so we can get it to them. If you're serve thing student and is ask them what kinds of certifications we want, they're going the graduate with the ability to get a job and come to our schools more often. Those jobs allow them to do a whole bunch of other things in their life. My certification in high school allowed me to earn three times minimum wage which nifs high school and I paid my open way through college and I didn't have any trouble paying for college because I had this trade that I learned through one of these certifications in high school and it paid huge dividends and I'm one of hundreds of thousands of stories ins broward county that's been the case but our job is to recruit more students in broward county

166to give them opportunities to earn as much as they want in a trade they want and doesn't broward county need more emt thaoes are created here rather than recruit people from orange county, but we need to produce them here in broward county so we can make sure we have enough to fulfill our requirement, according to all the industry on the other side with you talk to the broward healths and baptist health and jack nicholas, they're short on emt's and they're all working overtime. Thank you for doing this, if there's more demand, I hope you come back to the board and ask us for more money. sounds great. any other board discussion, MR. Cervera? I echo DR. Zeman's comments, I think this is phenomenal. I'm excited for this to go into fruition and hit stride. I

167know all of my kids in cooper city high school and nova high school are excited about this and this em the t field is an ever growing field. I talk to kids all the time, whether they're high school kids or kids who got out of high school. The need and desire to be in this space is ever expanding, so I'm thankful for this opportunity we're giving this kids and this partnership we're providing for barry, these first ten kids -- ten school ares a great start. any other board member discussion? All in favor of oo7, say aye. aye. all opposed, say no. item passes unanimously. This is the time of the agenda when the school board members will hear from our evening speakers. So, on our list for our evening speakers, sharifa, joyce, lisa, diane and

168deidre. chair, I believe they're outside. Here they come. Right on queue. right on queue, thank you, I'm waiting for my friends to arrive. Hi, they just came from school from fort lauderdale high school. We want to wish all of you guys a thank you, a thank you for taking the time to look at this issue with graduation venues, etc., so we want to at least -- you guys took the time to examine this and look at all of the data so we just wanted to say we're fraoesh active t kids are appreciative websinger ear appreciative of you, you guys get a lot of slack and we wanted to come and say we're grateful, thank you so much from fort lauderdale as well as the other schools in broward that are grateful as well. I'm pta

169PRESIDENT, on behalf of me and my student and is parents, I want today thank you, there's over 200 signatures on this board from all our seniors at class of 2026, this was a hard year for you guys and is I understand why you guys did the decision that you did but thank you for reconsidering and choosing our hold venues that we did for 2025, just so you know for next year, our upcoming year that is you have, if you want to coordinate with me, with lisa or dianne or other members of our pta and the school, we have tons of venue that is have reached out to us willing to work with us. I have a budget list, I have price lists, everything you guys need. Very low cost that are willing to help fort

170lauderdale as well as other schools across the county, so again my name is joyce, pta PRESIDENT, I work for marte's office, he's aiz -- amaze, if you need anything, reach out. Adam, you are all about the parents, all about our voice and is the students' voices as well, so thank you for supporting us, our teachers, our students and the county as whole, thank you. How do we give this to you guys? Thank you. I'm diane fish bishop, I initially spoke at the first school board meeting and my daughter is a senior at fort lauderdale high school and I wanted to come back because I know that people come and constantly complain about things and request thing, I thought it was really important that you guys know that we appreciate you and we listen to you

171too and it's nice to see that you work together, I know you guys care about our kids as much as we care about our kids and I think that's the whole point of all of this. I can't tell you how excited the kids were when this was working out for them, they were thrilled and we really appreciate that, so thank you so much and keep up the good work and we appreciate you, have a great day and I'll talk to you soon, bye. can the first public speaker restate their name for the record. I'm sorry, my name is lisa quinn, a parent and a taoep and her the senior advisor at fort lauderdale high school, I tell my students I'm a senior, a seep yor citizen. -- senior citizen. joyce clstin, vice-PRESIDENT, everybody knows me,

172thank you again. I think you got my name, diane bishop, and I volunteered at a lot of schools, even schools my daughter didn't go to. Thank you so much and we appreciate you. thank you. We also had shariffa and deidre. good afternoon, my name's shariffa the vice-PRESIDENT Of programs for big brothers, big sisters of broward counted county, we have served as a mentoring program for 15 years websinger are within 32 county broward school and is we're hope toingsing expand our reach to many other sails. Last year we engaged 1311 youth in broward county throughout our ram and is our different initiatives, this year we are trying to expand and many more broward county public school and is we have run with a hiccup with our contract. We have principals that are very breasted currently in

173some of our new initiatives which is the non-traditional mentoring space where is we're offering group mentorship versus the traditional one to one mentorship, we currently collaborate with other mentoring programs like mentoring leaders of tomorrow that serve our miramar high school youth. We cover youth from the annals of 5 years old to 21 years old and we just want to make sure that beare able to create a larger impact, we've created our wellness initiative, little steps, big strides, we're collaborate witching henderson behavioral to offer our participants wellness and mental health s frs that is will become free of charge and we've always done for our youth at the county and that's in our broward county public schools. We submitted our draft in and we were able to work with tom albino to add the additional exhibits

174has we were missing for our contract, however, we submitted our final draft last year and we have been in pending status for quite some time. That has created some of our principals to not want to mover forward until we are officially bcps contracted vendor, so I am here on behalf of our organization to try to find out what would be the next steps, what assistance can we receive so that we can continue to provide the amazing services that we do to our youth, last year we gave out over 400 thousand dollars to our high school junior and is seniors to go to college for scholarships and we want to be able to continue to give out funding, free of charge, to our youth, give out programming, free of charge, to our youth which many other

175organizations do not provide. Although it caused big brother, big sisters of broward county 230 thousand per child to create a mentorship program for them. I'm here to speak to you all on behalf of the organization and hope this will gain the attention of many other board members that could assist while proceeding and have our contract approve and had moved forward and thank you so much for your time. thank you, MS. Hixon? thank you, thank you so much for coming today. I appreciated our conversation last week and the suggestion you come and share the concern with the board. I just like to ask MS. Jacques-adams to address because I did reach out the general counsel to find out where we are, so MS. Jacques-adams, if you could give you an update and let them know what

176the process is so we can move this forward. yes, so, our office did receive that late last year, I mean, OCTOBER, and we're going to go ahead and legally review that and provide it to staff. okay, thank you so much. I know we've had an issue with the data sharing because we do use grades as a metric to show we're providing impact to the youth throughout the county but we are willing to remove that portion because we can receive report cards directly from parents with their signed permission, to whatever we need to do, we're hopeful. Thank you. any other public speakers? Now is the time of the agenda where we could go our board member discussions, if you have concerns or student successes you wish to share, please go ahead. DR. Zeman?Frjts two things, one,

177MR. Superintendent, you offered to bring the draft of the nester year org chart on APRIL 13, would you be bringing your final draft on APRIL 14 so we can spend six weeks or so with you in thinking and organizing around that? Is that a first draft or is it a final draft you MAY be bringing APRIL 14? that would be pretty final, just like we get feedback from the board and sometimes there's small changes before the vote. I appreciate that, I think chair, this year in particular, with the shifts and is change and is budget wes have in broward county schools tha, will be a robust discussion until it's finally approved at the end of JUNE. Second is there's an instance in which the board gave direction to the staff about a relatively minor action

178that was supposed to happen last week and that direction was not followed. I'm not convinced that polling school board members is an effective way to change direction. When this board gets together and meets as a group websinger get to hear each other and have speeches and talk about things. Chair, let me ask you, is it acceptable for poll thing school board mb tosing change the direction na the school board graver to the superintendent and staff? for me as one board member, I think it depends on the situation. I think these thing ares nuanced but I think that's something that would need a larger board discussion. I don't think I'm the purveyor of what is acceptable or not. . Er that's terrific. I would like to add that when it's available to it. I'm very concerned

179about it. We don't get a whole lot of actions given to us where we get to say explicit direction. And I understand that life sometimes get ins the way of a really good plan but it's just -- it's something that doesn't settle well with me because of the authorities vest ined this board based on the authorities vested by the superintendent, so if we can can have a good time to discuss what's the best way forward, I would appreciate it. thank you, MS. Hixon? thank you. I just would like to again congratulate all of the winners -- well, I would like the argue that everyone was a winner at the caliber awards on friday night but also a shot-out to DR. Stewart and the district team, tafs manl cal night, -- magical night a beautiful venue.

180Everybody had such a great time sxit's nice to be able to celebrate all of our teachers. I know there were winners that night but I would just say that everybody who was there and was recognized by their peers as someone of can excellence should be so proud of themselves for being recognized. Also it was already mentioned but congratulations tos west broward for winning the class 2a extra large non-tumbling state championship and western for winning the class 2a small co-ed state championship in cheerleading, that's very exciting, and I just would like to ask the superintendent, we've had this discussion already and really just staff, you know, we -- the families really appreciate that the district has made sure that our loved ones are remembered every single year and this year FEBRUARY 13 is a day of

181love and service and I think it's really important, we appreciate all those service projects but I think it's important that it's consistent across the district and that everyone understands what that day is about and that we are not calling meetings and we are not doing any of those thing that is we're not supposed to be and it needs to be consistent, it's been brought to my attention a number of times that there are meetings being called on that day and treating it as if it's regular teacher work day ask that's not what that day is set aside for, if we could make sure it's consistent across the district and again we'd like the thank all of the schools who spend so much time preparing, they're very excited to share with me and all of the

182families, you know, the different projects that they're doing the, put a lot of time and effort into that and I just want them o know it doesn't go unnoticed, thank you. thank you. MS. Bulman? thanks, chair. Last friday, I along with MS. Hixon had the pleasure of attending the 8th annual youth climate summit that was put on by our applied learning department in conjunction with the environmental health and safety department and it was amazing, we had over 1200 students attend, a student keynote speaker was there, I had the privilege of sitting on a panel with him in front of very engaged and enthusiastic students and so I just -- these are kind of things that aren't necessarily recognized when we're talking about student gains and things like that but there's so much else going on

183in our district and all of the hard work that went into doing that and really like seeing students outside of the classroom becoming leaders and being willing to engage and really tackle problems. We had like a call to action, so I look forward to engaging our students further but I would like to thank susie cantric, alison, lisa and summer just off the top of my head were all very integral to making this day happen and we're looking forward to year 9, thanks. thank you, MS. Thompson? thank you, chair. I just want to add that west broward is also national champions but thank you, MS. Hixon, for the shout-out. I also want to acknowledge the schools for stepping up their social media game, I know that this often goes unrecognized by traditional marketing, but a presence

184is important in this day and age, so [Inaudible] Have been putting out some funny videos, followed them on instagram, same with coral cove with our cte department and our brace advisor and is our mental health have good video that is are informative and I think the public appreciates. And also for us being number one in dual enrollment and certifications funding. I think too often we're not acknowledging our successes and we tear our district down and I want to give that a shout-out. Thank you. . Er thank you, MR. Cervera? thank you, chair, I want to recognize a special senior from western high school in district 6, cherish, she's a foot 9 defensive e back, theyey ayayflag otball and shsh was selectedto partipipate in the nfl sanctioned flag football showcase out in san francisco during super

185bowl week, she had the opportunity to represent the miami dolphins and obviously for the afc and her afc team defeated the nfc team 7-6 and of extreme importance, no other miami-dade or broward player was chosen for this game, so good job, cherish, as the lone football player. thank you, any other board member discussion? I just had a quick question for the superintendent about an upcoming workshop. I understand that will be addressing testing in an upcoming workshop I believe next week and we have heard from different community members the desire to have teachers at the table for that discussion. I happen to think that that would be a valuable voice to have at the table and I'm wondering if we've made plan tos incorporate teacher voice into that workshop. yes, that is affirmative. There will be

186teacher voice contrasting teacher voice in the workshop. great, so we will have teachers at the workshop? yes. awesome. Okay. Any other board member discussion? Anymore questions? Alright. The skembacker scheduled order of business for this regular school board for broward county, florida has been completed. Seeing no objection, I now adjourn the meeting.