Regular School Board Meeting - Feb 10, 2026

001please stand by. Please stand by. welcome to taod today'sing regular school board meeting. This regular meeting is now called to order. Our primary focus so to create a safe environment for all participants. Please notice the exit doors. While in the board room refrain from blocking the exit doors. Once the board room has reached its seating capacity, a ttendees will be designated to overflow area. In case of a emergency, remain outside until the authority that's jurisdiction has deemed the building safe to return. Thank you for your cooperation. Board member zeman will now introduce his school to lead us in the "pledge of allegiance". I'm over whelmed and happy that we have western high school to be here in two different ways. Cheerleading team was the state champion for the cheerleading team for the state of florida,

002this year, which was pretty darn remarkable. Lead by the coach carry and the principal, the great michelle, pedura, we're incredibly proud of you. If you can join me by rising and join western high school with the "pledge of allegiance". face forward, MARCH. MARCH, right guard, MARCH, guard hold, three, color. please stand for the "pledge of allegiance" I pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for it which it stands, one nation under GOD indivisible with liberty and justice for all. please be seated. order guard, MARCH, right guard MARCH, forward, MARCH. [Applause] chair, can I finish my comments about western. Western many people are familiar with. Last year the class of 2025 a earned 13 million dollars in scholarships, 135 bright color scholarship. Several other students went to military

003academy, they went to the air force and army's west point. The bad news is none of them qualified for the navy, so we'll have to work on that for next year, MS. P adu ra, but western high school is one example of and I'm very proud of their color guard. Thank you chair. thank you. The superintendent release a revised agenda with certain changes to this meeting and published on the website. Pursuant section 0.0.25 that go cause exist for such change in agenda. MAY I have a motion to close the agenda. so moved. moved and second. all in favor say aye. aye. all opposed say no. MAY the chair have a motion and a second to a fraof the minutes for following meetings, DECEMBER 16, 2025, regular school board meeting, JANUARY 6, 2026 special meeting. JANUARY

00421, 2026 special meeting. Expulsions, JANUARY 13th, 2026, special school board meeting. so moved. moved by DR. Zeman, seconded by MS. Hixon. Is there any discussion? All in favor of approving the minutes as listed, say aye. aye. those opposed say no. The minutes are approved. As with prepare to begin our regular school board meeting, we're reminded that our vision is 100 percent proficient to all students. We'll continue educating all students to reach their highest potential. Our theme is believe and power achieve one broward. Pulled any items they wish to address before the meet ing. The following have been identified for discussion, b1, f2, m1, 01 and o-2. DR. Holness had originally pulled h2, he informed me this morning that he no longer needs h2, so I removed that from the list. At this time, MAY the

005chair have a motion and a second to pass the agenda that have not been pulled for discussion. so moved. moved by DR. Zeman seconded by MS. Tom sonl. Are there any registered speaker foeser the items not pulled for discussion. yes, MADAM Chair, we have registered speaker for h1 and h2. JUNE, patricia, DR. Lynch-walsh, you MAY proceed to the podiums. Speaker: good morning, my name is JUNE cole. I want to address h1, over the last year and a half and make a comment. Over the last year and a half I've been dealing with a series of health issues that have compromised by health system. I'm concerned with the en viernlt al conditions of several facilities where I've worked and being present. I'm requesting a facilities condition assessment and air quality analysis including but not limit today

006mold, ventilation, humidity and particle matter testing deer field itch, blanche ily high school and my coconut high school. Including reports, work orders, remediation efforts and inspection results. To the extent permitted by law and privacy protection tz, aggregate information not identifying individuals. Regarding current or former broward county issues reported issues or health complaints associated with these locations. Given my compromised health status, I'm requesting this information so I can better understand any environmental contribution to see my condition and ensure that appropriate corrective action are taken to protect staff and students. Please provide an estimated timeline when these assessment and records will be available, if in any part this request cannot be fulfilled, please specify in writing and I want to say coconut creek high school I've been on a leave of absence for the past year and

007a half because of this. Thank you. Speaker: DR. Nathalie lynch-walsh, plantation florida, I'm also signed up for s-1. As for h1, every board meeting, items are being brought where we're nickel and diming the lower level staff. What should be happening is all-day workshop on what kind of structure you're going to have moving forward. Centralized decentralized, I don't necessarily see that happening but that's what should be happening. Specifically on this item because, you have duplicate finance, accounting and it and budget type positions in individual business units and there is no way they're not duplicating efforts. You have the business support? Center which is neither procurement or logistics. Task assignments, in the real world in the for profit world that I come from, this is what would happen when somebody would leave. So and so just resigned,

008we're going to need to take on their responsibilities. Was there an item to give you more money? No. If after a few months, you show that you can do that job, you can probably negotiate yourself a raise and if that didn't work, you went to some place else with your new found skills and they gave you a raise and sometimes the first company would hire you back after a couple of years at even more money. This is the only place where before you even know if they can do something, the second they get task assigned they are given more money. And you don't know if they're screwing up job number 2 worse than they screwed up job number 1 and maybe they were confident but you taxed them too much for job number 2. So

009now you're giving them money and maybe doing their job. So when you do start talking about the ort chart here are some suggestion south side. I would like to a' a ort chart that shows dollars in the position and below the line. Because we're probably going to start cutting some of the little people instead of eliminating them altogether. A list with all the positions with money, and a ten-year history of the orc chart per student by department and in total, because, we keep seeing where the amount of administrative staff has grown as students have been shrinking. And teachers have not grown they grow with students in terms of growth. But administrative costs are way out there and you need to know all of these things so you know what kind of structure you need in

010the future and who you should be cutting, thank you. next patricia hill, followed by PRESIDENT Anna fusco, and robert merchant. Speaker: good morning, my name is patricia hill. I was here at the last meeting. I had got terminated because of somebody using my identity but I just spoke with a couple of folks just now while I was sitting and they handled the situation already. So, I guess I'm good. thank you, have a nice day. next public speaker. PRESIDENT Anna fusco followed by ashley chiles, robert merchant. Speaker: so I signed up for h1 and h2 just in case I want to cover everything. MS. Hill, is not in broward teacher's union but anybody that knows anna fussco likes to speak about how process is handled and how it goes through you when you're deciding approval. You

011put your name on it, we agreed with it. We agreed with staff. She sat up here last time and spoke, I've had members come up and speak. And I do appreciate that you guys hold back on some and let's go back and read. But she clearly said somebody lied and stole her identity and then, staff came up and said, nah, we don't see it that way. So I'm reading documents that clearly shows, let's see, MS. Hill, I have to call you out, you asked of me to help. She is embarrassed, she deserves to be reinstated. You should have never let her go. You're quick to drop the hammer on the low rank and mile but we've got millions of dollars sit ising right here. Let me see. Clearly from the state attorney that somebody stole

012her identity. I cannot even imagine, I know nobody would steal my identity, nobody wants to be a fusco but I cannot imagine it. And now we're going to rectify it, how many people have gone through 30,000 employees schools, not for this ip stant but they release, non renew, forget about our probationary teachers because we're on the topic of h1, our probationary teachers, you're not a good fit, I'm going to let you go, but don't worry you can come back in AUGUST and we can rehire you. This is all tied in to what I'm sayingle. Of the wrecklessness, and foolishness, let's just do it, come back if you can or take to us court, that's the best one. Take us to court! Like you guys got a boat load of money to keep hiring these attorneys.

013Which by the pay, our records requested. I don't get the records. Sol that's tell tale. So, broward teacher's union and other groups have come with some solutions on how you can save money. But the releasing, and then bringing back, I would like you guys to ask for cost factors on that. See I puddle jump but I have a tie to where I'm really getting at. What the real cost factors are when you have these large job fares, you hire people then you release them on probation because of whatever budget situation, and you want to keep it in the back of the employees. That's my conversation. So whatever it takes, and I appreciate the group over there, they're a good group, they're just being driven by somebody of a higher power to reinstate when we're wrong.

014quicker than later. ashley childs, robert merchant. welcome. Speaker: I'm not ashley childs iemes he esmeralda, through the council. With respect to MS. Hill, the florida statute for level two-screening, is current and new employees, right. So we do back grounds checks for new employees, certain things come back they must be convictions, they can actually be not just convictions but I will not get into those details. With respect to the situation with MS. Hill. This body, the professional standards committee and consultation with legal made a decision that on the 435.04 statute which is is the level two screening, when dis qualifying offense comes up, under statute we have authority even the person is formally charged to dismiss them to terminate them. We have that authority, however a decision was made to see that we would wait to

015see if the person was charged. MS. Hill was charged. The dismissal of those charges, then we can proceed to reinstate. We received that yesterday and that's pretty quick. Normally in these criminal charges, if an all-process will be issued it can take up to a year. This happened fast and her it happened as as a result of staffing reaching out to see what was going on in the state attorney based on the last meeting. because there was a concern. So she is being reinstated, it's not willy nily, it's required by statute, she is ex ron rated. And we reinstate. I just wanted respond that so that the record was clear. any questions? Any board questions for our council? MR. Cervera and then DR. Holness. thank you, chair. Is the young lady still here? Or did she

016leave? through notable counsel, I want to make sure that I understand and more importantly that the public understands. If you're employed in this district in my capacity and you're arrest asked charged with a crime, I apologize, I tried to scribble the statute down but I missed it. it's 435.04. It's a dis qualifying offense, not just any crime. so if you're arrest asked kharnld with a dis qualifying offense under the statute, does the statute require the district to in fact terminator place on leave or take action. it requires the district to place on action and the disqualifer requires termination until there is clarity with the charges. That means let the disposition work itself out, the charges are dismissed, we reinenlist. So. okay, so just want to make sure we're clear. This district did what the statute

017did what the statute required us to. This was not a ven data. absolutely not. I didn't read the information when it came down. I'm looking at the no process document that came from the state attorney's office. And this was monroe county, if I'm not mistaken the 16th circuit. The no pros document that I'm looking at, says as to the defendant in counts 3 and 11 only. which were the dis qualifying offenses. are there still pending charges? there is a little bit of confusion as to pending charges. I have other information that the charges, I went to the monroe county website yesterday and looked. And it appears that all her charges were dismissed, so we need clarity. But my concern and professional standards department concern, were the disqualifiers and those were the disqualifiers. Those have been

018dismissed. As far as the other charges because there were other counts. My understanding is that she has been ex ron rated of those charges because those were the ones she was charged with. This was a multi department case. that's exactly where I was getting. It identified her as to a department. -- a-defendant. And subsequent investigation shows that the name and identity were used fraudulently and the defendant's action did not intend criminal intent. My wrecklation of when MS. Hill came at the last meeting, she indicated that her identity was stolen, this, and I'm not a criminal defense attorney nor do I care to be in that space, this indicated that in fact her identity was improperly used in a commission of a crime and it didn't volve MS. Hill. that's accurate and as was stated at

019the last meeting on that issue. That is, that's the job of the state attorney to come to that decision. 100 percent. until the charges are permanently dismissed our hands are tied. perfect, so just to the understanding of the public, some charges were launched, MS. Hill hired counsel, counsel did what counsel does in a situation like this. The state attorney investigated it found out that m fact MS. Hill's identity was taken or somebody gave the police her name when it was not her. She has been dismissed or exonerated from these charges. That case is over, as far as MS. Hill is concerned. And now she has a right to be back and reinstated and join bcps again, correct? that's correct. And I witnessed a conversation between professional standards where she was told as much. this is

020a unfortunately situation, I think we can all agree. But what I want to be clear, is this is something, from what I'm being told that the district followed the procedure that was in place, this is obviously, a very unfortunate situation where the wrong person was fingered for a crime. She has now been cleared and the district is going to make this right upon her. absolutely, correct, sir. thank you. And I want to thank MS. Hill for coming in fwies and explaining what happened. Tell your attorneys they did a fantastic job. I think we heard from counsel that it usually takes a long time to do this. So give kudos to your counsel who did this. Thank you. DR. Holness. so MS. Hill was an employee, how long was she out of work? How long was

021she terminated? heather parente, she was terminated at the last board meetingsing and we received her paperwork as he esmeralda shared, so she will be reinstated as of yesterday. okay, so I know her identity was stolen and district followed process. But DR. Hepburn, stolen identity can happen to anyone, it can happen to us here on the board, right. It's just one of those things that is unfortunate, that happened to this individual. So, can the district choose, I know it does not have to, but I want to know if we can choose to repro pay for her lost time? I'm not sure what the specific protocols are. DR. Holness, we will look into that and meet with the employee and work with legal and follow-up. okay. So I know, we, it's not something that we have to

022do. But I think on a moral level, stolen identity can happen to any individual, it can happen to me, it can happen to DR. Hepburn. So we need, in myopinion be considerate and caring when those things happen. So I would love to know and I know you're going to do your research but I think it will be a kind gesture to this individual and to all of our employees sending a message of care, that when things like this happen out of your control and you're not at fault, then broward county public schools will react in a care and kind manner. So I'm hoping the answer is yes and if it is, I think we should. thank you. all right, any other? MR. Hill are there any other public speakers? that concludes public speaking. any other

023board discussions on the items that have not been pulled? All in favor of approving the consent agenda items that have not been pulled for discussion, say aye. aye. those opposed say no. Items pass unanimously. At this time, I will turn it over to DR. Hepburn for a presentation of recognition. DR. Hepburn. thank you, MADAM Chair, board members and the public. Before I get to the actual presentation, I want to give a quick report, first of all I would like to begin by recognizing the district's annual caliber awards. I want to thank our staff who worked behind the scenes for putting tolgt a great event. The evening was a powerful reminder of the extraordinarily talent and dedication and heart within our district. This year's caliber awards recipients are teacher of the year, DR. Saima, sorry DR.

024Sumala, principal of year, koermy. Assistant principal of the year, anna. And our school district employee of the year, vanderbilt carpenter the third. We're grateful for the impact they make every day for the difference they make in our classrooms every year. With that, I'll ask beacon to roll the tape and then we'll have a special presentation right after. deno visited william danny middle school to film a student who was receiving a just do it award. Deno fell to the floor and went into cardiac arrest. They shut down the patio area and school nurse, began administratoring cpr but deno remained unresponsive for 11 long minutes. MS. Graham acted decisively using a defibrillator. He was transported to hospital and was told that his survival was critical. He did not only survive, he welcomed the staff in the hospital.

025After that was on board meeting following a three-day holiday weekend. That's deno. The entire school team is to be commended for their swift action and broward celebrates MS. Graham's expeditious response and efforts to save MR. Deno's response. MS. Graham, the county school of florida and aetna, presents to you a curated gift basket along with visa gift card and wellness items. MAY we have MS. Graham come to the front. Also deno, if you're back there, come on down also. If we can have all you guys come to the front. [Cheers and applause] thz MS. Graham for exemplifying courage in the face of emergency and thank you for taking care of your staff at william dandy. [Applause] we'll recess the meeting. conflict is that that it puts the board to at-risk. thank you. any other board discussion

026on g-1. All in favor of g1 say aye. aye. item passes unanimously with MS. Rupert on the line. Can I get a motion and a second on g2. Mo fd by DR. Zeman and seconded by MS. Bulman. Board discussion on g2? no public comment. all in favor. aye. item passes unanimously. Can I get a motion and a second on f2. so moved. moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Thompson. public comment. one speaker, DR. Nathalie lynch-walsh. Speaker: good morning, again, DR. Nathalie lynch-walsh, plantation florida. F-2, the last year and the year before, the audit committee was relentless in trying to understand what was in the fund balance. We knew the charter school settlement was in there and we tried to get clarity on whether the rer dumb carry over was in there. And the answer

027is yes. That's in there. Which means it's inassigned as oppose today saying it's restricted so those are the two things proping up the fund balance. Were you to move either or both of those things, that percentage of assigned unassigned would disappear almost altogether. However, we heard cause I can't unhear these things, on the 21st of JANUARY, the C.F.O. Was asked as of today because that's how you have to phrase these things and I appreciate DR. Zeman catching himself, because depending on how you ask the questions around here, you're going to get a different answer even though you think you're asking the same question. If you ask as of today, you're going to get a different assigned unassigned percentage out of staff. So he asked on the 21st as of today, what would the balance be

028and what would the percentage be and it was 2.59. We're now in FEBRUARY and I see that a question has been asked again, we don't have, we now have the DECEMBER report, which is I believe, 2.94, was it? No? It went up? 3.94, I don't know I'm not looking at DECEMBER because now I'm concerned at JANUARY. If it's at 2.59 at the 21st of JANUARY, what is it at the end of JANUARY? We're now in FEBRUARY. That's not a question that's been asked by staff. They got asked what is it? But if you don't give a what is it as a specific date, you get something like oh it's just above a threshold. Is that accurate? I don't know. Are you going to have referendum in there? Are you going to change how you classify

029that? Understand that assigned has a lower, you can move their moving things around, you don't need. They don't need board approval if they use it for something else. With committed, they do which is why the 54 million has sat there. With restricted, it's beyond the board, they just can't touch it. So toll be interesting to see what happens at the end of JANUARY. no other comments. MS. Hixon. thank you and good morning, I wod like totoask the e C.F.O.O. Ifif s could ki of explain what was said in the JANUARY 21st? Because I think, the way things were worded was concerning. And I know by state statute, if we're projecting to be a certain number, we have to notify the state. And it sounds as if we're projecting below that number, can you explain and

030in terms of where we are and what is our projected general fund balance as of today. good morning. Through the chair, this is cfo, I just want to explain the fund balance how it works. I'm going to respond to your last question, the fund balance as of today projected for JUNE 30th, is at the 3 percent mark. Now, when we do fund balance, when we do budget amendments, the budget amendment as of that month, will show an actual fund balance. Now projections change based on third count, did not come in yet so we didn't know the exact numbers that's why it's projected. I have to wait until third count comes to play and get those numbers and it does change. It varies, we can project the number but the actual number can be different. thank

031you. So based on what you said, as of today, uh projected number would be at 3 percent, thank you very much for clarifying that. MS. Rupert? mine was the same question, thank you. DR. Zeman. thank you so much chairs. I have four questions today. First is, a system's issue, and I think we need to think about this as a board all the time because of what happened last year. last year we spent 75 million dollars that was not approved in the school board's budget. And it's impossible to run an organization that doesn't manage to the budget and this year we have a commitment from the superintendent empowering the C.F.O. To make sure that we don't do that. So I'm going to start with the question. Will any cost centers spend more than they were budgeted

032this year? the answer is into, we have title controls and monitoring. terrific. And I appreciate MS. Hixon's point about the end of year fund balance. The law says, it's not your projected but at the end of the year, if you're below the three, there is some other things that happened. So it's great to hear from our cfo that we're projected to be just over 3 percent by the end of the year. And for the audience and anyone that cares, there is this wonderful presentation next week and a discussion at the workshop about how we're going to balance our expenses and revenue for the balance of the year. Our system has changed. Because of our adam of growth as a student and our student have that's changed it's common now for us to have more students

033who leave throughout the year than who join. And that makes budgeting very very challenging and I'm tickled to take sometime next week on agenda and spend sometime talking about our budget. This particular of report, in DECEMBER, expenses up 22 and a half. So our net position 75 million dollars dollars on a 5 and a half billion dollars base that is not too much to be concerned about. But next week at the workshop, I do want to ask my colleagues to think about something this week before we get to the workshop next week which is this item, this monthly report always starts out with the same sentence that says this is not required by state policy, this is required by state statute. So this is the minimally necessary to the board. We're at a new time

034in money in broward county, declining enrollment in new numbers, state that has not added to the funding, stream for traditional or charter public education, for the past several years. My belief is that we need to think about what else we want to see every month as we're tracking money in this new environment that we're living in. So I'll talk about that next week, I MAY even bring amen ooh that we can add to this report. Because the board is responsible for approving the budget and monitoring the budget all year long. If what we get is the acceptable report as our data, to manage it, I think we have to explicitly say that next week in the workshop and if not come to consensuses that we like the superintendent and C.F.O. To bring to us. That's

035all I have chair, because we're going to be talking about this next week at the workshop in great detail but I would like to think about whether or not this report is really giving us what we want or if there is other data that we want to get on a monthly basis. Thanks chair. any other board discussion? All in favor of f2 say aye. ? . Aye. all opposed say no. Item pass approximates unanimously. -- passes unanimously. can I get a motion and a second on o1. so moved. I have a motion and a second. Any speakers? no speakers. board comment, I have MS. Rupert. MS. Rupert. yeah, I had trouble getting back in there. I have the one question for this, I'm not sure if the answer happened yet. And this is, who sits

036on the q set committee, I'm not sure if that was sent to me, if not, I will look and maybe to check via the superintendent to john sullivan? no, we have MR. John white here in procurement, MS. Rupert. perfect. Can we. Thank you, if he can answer that question, thanks. could you repeat the question? who sits on this committee, names and companies? It could be a follow-up but, I just that's the question. who sits on it. the q set committee is determined by policy 7003 and 7003.1, I can provide you a copy that. That indicates the positions and organizations that are appointed to the q set committee. okay. Do you know bha they are offhand? Those committees? Those people who sit in the committee. I do not have them by specific names, I can email

037you the list of names and the excerpt from the policy that shows you the organizations. that would be perfect, thank you very much, I appreciate it. Thank you MADAM Chair, superintendent. any other board discussion? All in favor of o1 say aye. aye. all opposed say no. item pass approximates unanimously. -- passes unanimously. public comment on o-2? no public speakers. o-2, DR. Holness. for item o-2 which is a economic compliance department, I am looking at the, the quarter 2 certified spend by ethnicity chart. And it shows that 10 percent of the district spend for quarter 2 for certified small local business, it shows they received 8 percent which is 30 million dollars from a total of 375 million in district spend fnlt the 8 percent represents the share of what was provided to these certified small

038firms, african-american, asian, hispanic, non minority and white female. So from all of what we have, all of these groups received 8 percent. I think it is fair to say that, based on the demographics of broward county that we should have, we should have it appears there is disparity, and whether it's intentional or not, I think as a district, we need to try to the best we can to make sure that we are given opportunities to all groups because when you have 8 percent which means 92 percent goes to one group and 8 percent goes to everybody else, white females, hispanic, asian, african-american. DR. Hepburn, I hope we're trying to do everything we can to try to attract minority firms to, you know, to bid for work. And can you reiterate what we're doing so far?

039Because the disparity here is pretty significant and to me it's concerning. thanks for the question, DR. Holness, I'll have the procurement team provide some info. if we go back and look historically what we've been spending, for example in the fourth quarter of fy25 that number was 13.8 percent. In the quarter it was 12.56. So for the particular reporting period, our numbers are down. If you look at the second page of the work provided. You see the district spend by commodity. And certain commodities, we did well. If you look at major construction, we were spending 32 percent but there were some other areas like academic and student services where 48 million dollars went to non certified firms and only 108,000 went to certified firms. So that really dilutes the fine efforts that the ed O.C. Department

040has been doing. And I've got michael scott who is the director here who can give you an overview of the activities that we're handling here. okay, I'm sorry, would you say with certified small business firms, comprising of african-american asian, hispanic, white females, would you say 8 percent is a bit low? I would say it's low and it's an anomaly, yes. so I'm assuming 92 percent would be firmed earned by white males and everyone else is 8 percent? yes. michael. good morning, michael scott. Through the chair, DR. Holness, we're doing tons of out reach through our department, we're doing learns and match makers to let the community that broward schools likes to do business with our small local businesses. I've spoken at city of mira mar events, out reach events as well. Letting the community know

041that we're open for business to bring in more businesses to increase those numbers. okay, so I appreciate the comments and just for the record, 8 percent is just, just doesn't look right. But thank you for your comments. thank you MADAM Chair. thank you, niz other board member discussion? MS. Thompson? I want today give a shout out to michael scott's team because they came to an event in miramar to talk about the opportunities, so they are definitely getting out and doing their best. Thank you. any other board member discussion? Any other board member discussion? All in favor of o-2 say aye. aye. all opposed say no. aye. item passes, unanimously. Can I get a motion and comment on s1. so moved. I have a motion and a second. Any public speaksers on s1. nathalie lynch-walsh. Speaker:

042nathalie lynch-walsh. I have to spread my 12 minutes. There seems to be something where broward was the lone hold out. So I cannot tell from the language in the agreement what the problematic language was. And that would have been helpful because then I could see what was the holdup that had all of these parents losing their mind on social media and there are dates that start on the 21st, nobody needs this kind of stress whether it's graduations, color guard or anything dealing with children. Soy hope that you will get an explanation for what the holdup was, because is would certainly like to have one and I hope i don't have to do a public words requests. Thank you. no other comments. I have board member comment, MS. Hixon. thank you and first I would like

043to say, thank you to MS. Jaques-adams forget thising done on time. Because there were things on facebook that maybe were not accurate. I got a text which I'm going to guess many of my board members got a similar text around same time in a desperation that there was a issue with the contract. Soy immediately called the superintendent and MS. Jaques-adams, which I think most of my colleagues did because this was an important thing. They went right into trying to figure it out. She was not aware of the situation. They called me on 9:00 o'clock on friday night to tell me what she had figured out and they were going to have a meeting with the wg lawyers to figure out how they can solve is the issue. So the next week, last week, they met,

044they apparently figured out some of the concerns with the language and you know, I believe myself and everyone sitting on this dais made it perfectly clear that we wanted this contract to come to tuesday no later than today. So I want to say thank you to MS. Jaques-adams and her team to bring this so we can vote on it and our students can participate. if everyone I understand, thank you give us a brief synopsis of what the concerns were and what you were able to negotiate with them so that the contract came to us today. Thank you. sure. There was a fundamental difference with regards to the facts that underlying facts of the agreement past agreements involved with the education records. So there is a federal law with ward to federal records and when the

045school board is providing education records to vendors, there is a process that we need to follow, we need to get consent from parents. So wdgi had changed the facts under the contract such that they did not require that information. So that was acceptable. In addition, they did not want to add a provision that we have in our all of our contracts in auditing provision. They were able to accept that auditing provision that was required because we must audit all of our contracts. There were other issues that was requested, they wanted us to provide consent on behalf of parents, under certain circumstances, we could not do that. Because the education records issue was such that they didn't require these records so that was taken out. There were issues with regards to indemity, and we arrived at

046a provision that was acceptable to the rest of department. Those are some of the issues, there were many more but those were some of the issues. And our rule is to ensure that contracts are legally sufficient. So it was, after negotiations and myself together with my team virginia bonsconski from our office was able to negotiate for this board meeting. thank you, and based on the conversation that we had a large portion of this a large portion was about data sharing. And I want to be clear with the public as a board, we have question data sharing in almost all of our contracts because we want to make sure that we're protecting the privacy of our students, as much as possible and we're not giving away, information that is not necessary to follow through on a

047contract. And I know that's a big thing that we talked about. So I do again appreciate everybody working so hard on it and really happy to be able to vote yes on this today. So thank you. thank you, MR. Cervera? thank you, chair. I echo MS. Hixon's comments. This is a, this is a big one for our kids. They were at-risk of being held out of competition which, I think I speak for everyone in the dais when I say that nobody wanted that when this was brought to mia tension last week, I sprung into action as well and now I'm happy to be part of the board that will hopefully be voting unanimously to approve this contract. I do want to thank all the kids and all the parents who reached out and expressed concerned

048over this and made not only myself but presumably everyone on this board aware of what was going on. When was initially brought up, there were some contractual hurdles that arguably took a lot of hard work from MS. Jacques adams and her team to get over and get us to this point, I'm grateful for her efforts in getting us to appoint where we can now vote. I do want to take a moment to apologize and the kids as well for the angst and anxiety that you MAY have felt thinking you worked hard and possibly be left out of competition. That was unfair and I do want to extend my apologies for that. However I want to be clear, in this district, we follow the law. And one of the major hurdles that was initially up for

049discussion, were for epa issues. And we had to work very very hard. The district was being, in this case, in this case, we were acting appropriately. And I'm never going to sign off or be a part of any situation where our student sensitive information is not properly safeguarded or we're not following the parameters of the law of that that was initially being requested by us or for to us do by wdgi. So I want to thank the council for standing firm and getting those issues resolved. I want to wish all the kids the best of luck in the upcoming competition. But, nothing the less, I wish all the kids the best of time and go out and represent your high school proudly. any other board discussion. I just want to echo my colleagues thinking of

050MS. Jacques-adams and her team for getting this through. It's always important that we're protecting our student's data and I want to thank the team, dance moms is nobody you should be messing with. I saw district 2 nominate in color guard and cooper city was amazing, I don't know how they placed. But I think any opportunity we have for our students is imperative that we're offering because this is something that the charter schools only dream about having this opportunity and it's something that my schools are able to recruit to give them this opportunity. I would like a follow-up of how we got to this point. Like when the wgi contract came to us, because it does, I've heard that this is an issue that happens recurrently every year. Not necessarily on our legal department but I

051want to see how this is happening, could we find a way to extend contracts like this? So it's not every year that way parents don't come across this again. That's it, thank you. thank you, DR. Zeman and then MS. Rupert. thanks so much, chair. I look forward to the response to MS. Thompson's question. I don't share the same deep interest as the legal department. This is a combined effort it always is, between staff lead by often or almost exclusively by a chief here in our employee trying to get a package together in time to get it for legal review. It's clear, that there is improvements. But I do want to zero in on something we learned from this. Our vendors don't know who to call when there is a crisis and that's when social media

052becomes a nightmare. They know how to post a reel, a statement, they know how to get on insta, facebook and x. And before long, we have a public kind of issue where our process is not working. So MR. Superintendent, do we have an issue with vendors knowing who they can engage with on your staff? If in fact, a process seems to be not working in the best interest of your students. They knew to contact legal and post their grievances. I'm impressed with our reaction to this, to be moving quadray to a point that's almost the first choice when ever we get to so the board no doubt expects to use more quadray or external lawyers. There is a requirement's owner, there is somebody who writes, you know, the body, the statement of work for solicitations,

053who can engage our regional superintendent as needed. But dgi didn't seem like they knew who to talk to or getting responses. This is not what with the superintendent has said as a standard for engaging members of the community or vendors. that is part of the story. So I look forward as MS. Thompson has requested to get this detailed timeline, what happened and when. Not to readjudicate but to say, what are the other processes that we might need to look at beyond just legal requirements? I'll eat it for a while until we get to a point where somebody in this organization can write down with the top 100 contracts and maybe back date that six months so we don't have crisis contracts anymore, it's embarrassing and we're going to do another one today. It's not the

054way, we're going to win the trust of the public. That is an indication that things are not perfect at bra word schools and it's just something that I'm, I'm at the end of my patience with it. I don't know why we're in that business, we're not telling the community much. Thanks so much, chair. MS. Jacques adams. so I am going to provide that MS. Thompson but I want today touch on two answers that I do have. One to your question, MS. Thompson and one to MR. Zeman. With regards to the three-year contract, we did every attempt to make this a multi-year contract but as a result of wgi not being able to hold their prices for the three years, we didn't know what the prices for the second and third year was, so we had

055to make it a one-year contract. Additionally, with regards to the contact, you know the day lf the letter, our, our office attorney has submitted legal comments and so, dgi knew who to contact and the response was the letter that you all received so I wanted to respond to your question of whether or not there was a contact person that they can speak to. MS. Rupert and MS. Then MS. Thompson. I feel strange now because I was speak abouting guard, after this conversation, so I have to interject happiness. But as a mom of a former color guard girl and you know, those years are special, I'm so happy that the board was able to t you know, hear them and actually our staff did a tremendous job to get everybody everything done. It's an atmosphere and

056comradery, you cannot put that in a contract per se. This is a real win. So good luck to everyone. And to my friend who's not the band director at at the school that use to be out -- you know, it's going, you're going to go well and everybody is going to win and I'm going to, enjoy seeing it and, and look forward to trying to catch some of myself during the competition. Thanks, bye. thank you, MS. Thompson? very briefly. I just wanted to clarify, it's not just the wgi, it's more than the process of how we got there. The wgi, you managed it quickly, given your short time on this board but it's how the contract works and where there MAY be barriers to success. That's it. absolutely. MS. Bulman. thank you, thanks MS. Jacque

057adams. And I'm sure you would like to avoid that situation moving forward. As well as like the rest of us. We'll be moving forward planning ahead and I do think as a board, we have been asking for better contracts, making sure that we are protected and you're doing that for us, so I appreciate that and I think moving forward. I actually had people that I work with that live with color guard coaches calling me about this. And MS. Thompson and I went to the meeting, there were multiple students waiting, color guard and students waiting to be assured that we were going to get this done. And the involves of emails that I received, mobilizing to see this. If nothing else this has put color guard on the board for broward county. I wish everyone luck

058in the upcoming competition season. Thank you. thank you, any other board discussion? All in favor of s1. aye. all opposed say no. Item passes unanimously. This will be the part the meeting where we consider all the open agenda items. The following have been identified for discussion. Bb1, special order for 1:00 P.M., jj1, yj2, jj3, jj5, 6, 7, oo5, oo6, oo7, rr3 and special order 12:30 and rr6, DR. Hepburn. at this time, MAY the chair have a motion and a second to pass the open items that have not been pulled for discussion? Jj8, jj9, jj10, jj11, jj14, 15, oo8 and oo4 and oo3. so moved. moved by DR. Zeman, seconded by MS. Hixon. Any public speakers? no public speakers. those in favor say aye. aye. those opposed, say no. passed unanimously. don't we usually have that

059we can talk about something. yeah, I'll go back. okay, thank you. All right so those items pass unanimously, we will go back after the consent agenda in a, in a moment. So at this time, 10:17 we're going to acknowledge this moment. On saturday, commemorates 8 years when a 17 innocent staff members and students were killed. This morning, the broward county will pause for a moment of silence to recognize the loved one tragically taken on FEBRUARY 14th. MS. Rupert. aaron sighs. Hele petty. alex shaktor. Cara lockran. carmen shinstrop. Gina montalto. helena ramsey. Jamie gothingberg. alyssa alhadeff. my husband, chris hixon. joaquin oliver. luke hoyer. martin dequai aguiano. Meadow pollack. nicholas boret. peter wong. And scott beagle. on friday FEBRUARY 13th, the district will honor the fallen eagles with the day of service and love and give

060back to their communities. Thank you to the entire broward schools community for participating in a day of service and love and for honoring our beloved fallen eagles. These remarkable 17 individuals, will never be forgotten. Thank you. we will recess the meeting briefly. this regular meeting has reconvened. Any board member discussion on that? I believe she MAY have had so we can come back to that. We'll do that after public comment. This is the time of the agenda where we will split. Each registered speaker is reminded to present their agenda comments accordance with policy 1020. We have nathalie lynch-walsh, trudy, joey and mark. So if your name was called he is mra, approach the mic. good morning, DR. Nathalie lynch-walsh, since today's theme is going to be memories, people who keep for getting and maybe we'll

061send them some forget you not to help them to remember. A couple of every now and then I speak to a board member and there is something that I need to clear the air on that occured when a few superintendents ago, I guess it's two with DR. Licata and to get us up to speed, we'll start with 2011, 2012. So once upon a time when runsy was a superintendent, he and I discussed having me help him because he thought I had had the skills to help him reform the district. That remains true since 2011, so we discussed that and nothing happened. I figured, I'll do that as -- . I offered to help keep the wheels on the bus so they can see the process was made before they came. It's now six years later.

062That same year, he issued a gag order on staff as it relates to the facility task force and he received help by the then general counsel barbara, then we had DR. Cartright. That was in 22, when I ended up running for school board the second time. She also had staff manipulate the policy 1070 committee in making the superintendent solely able to remove volunteers from committees. I think she had a plan but unfortunately for her she was not here long enough to carry it out. Then we had DR. Smiley, I handed her a job description that was the chief strategy and accountability officer, it practically had my name on it in terms of qualification sxz job functions. No response but shortly thereafter, the current chief strategy and innovation officer that's what it turned into, asked me

063if I wanted turn in an application, which was a function that could have been done under aaform mention position. But superintendent licata, offer ed me a position, I asked for 150, he said the cabinet would be offended if he brought meta rate. And I was a mom. So superintendent had me removed from committees. I have not goent them in this so I can hold him accountable. DR. Trudy. DR. Trudy, written by scott travis written in 2013, the doe released the data for each teacher in the state, the scores are part of a controversial and complicated formula the state uses to evaluate public school teachers, they crush students with factors such as attendance and class size and prior achievement to determine how much a teacher helped the students learned, that score made up approximately 40 to

06450 percent of a teacher's overall evaluation. It was only partial reflections. Of impact teacher influence has on his or her students said robert ramsey. The state ruled out the controversial evaluation system more than two years ago, this was in 2014, so 2012 that assessed teachers base on test score data and a rigorous classroom observation, by school principals, starting next year, the evaluations affect teacher pay and it still does. Sharon PRESIDENT Of btu called the scores flawed and meaningless. Station vam is a scam. You MAY think that vam has gone away but as you heard it, next workshop, it has changed and really expanded. Teachers are overwhelmed and unhappy with the amount of data which is collected by the required testing by this district. Many teacher evaluation are heavily dependent on district collected data and other

065mandates, I urge school board members to ask the superintendent to provide all written comments that were attached. I should think it should be by the public, doing so supports the transparency, you always say you're going to do. Thank you. Speaker: I'm a southern -- I fought traffic to get up here, so it's great to be here. Thank you so much for putting me on the agenda. The reason why I am here is because there is a crisis in our state that unfortunately crosses county lines and I'm currently attempting to grow a organization that believes our roads should be as safe as our classrooms by banning cell phones behind the wheel. I was proud to lead the coalition, making texting while driving a primary offense but that was only the first step and I'm here today

066because that work is not finished and we need your help to make our roads safer for everyone. In your school, teachers work every day to finish distractions, they MAY MISS A lesson a grade. They understand that that MAY be a minor setback when somebody is on the phone behind a wheel, it can cost a life. Distracted driving, so what we're hoping to do with that law, is to make that law clear as to what that violation is, and with your support, we can hopefully ban distracted driving behind the wheel as well. So soy hope you all pass board member cervera motion at the end of the meeting. Speaker: good evening, I'm founder of small little company, fire athletic force started in 2005. In boca, started with my first school teaching schools in an elementary school.

067From there it was passed out to another school and another school and before you know it t here we are 20 years later, we're one of the largest leasing program in broward county teaching cheerleading, flag football, basketball. And we said after 20 years, we're ready, we're ready to bring your programs down to broward county. And we're very excited. Got our first school, beautiful school choral park elementary with an amazing principal, amazing staff and amazing parents and of course amazing kids. Very excited to get started and here's why I'm here. Now I understand palm beach county, broward county two different counties, but you're together, sibling counties. When we rent in palm beach county, we have a charge of $60 an hour for rent. We rent, we lease one hour, per week for soccer, one soccer per

068week for cheer in each schools. when we started the leasing here, we noticed quite a higher charge. So looking into it, to start, the rates are $150 for an hour at an elementary school, after school. Then there is a consumption fee, I don't know what that is, $10 added to that one hour and then, and I'm not here to attack any company but you have a company called facilitron that takes care of your lease sxz they add us a convenience fee and conveniently, we have to pay $20 per class we're now at 180 it's literally triple the amount of palm beach county. I'm not sure what we need to do. Something that can be worked on, because the only people that lose are the kids, the schools lose because they don't want, you know, some

069fee and then of course the companies. Not just us. Whether it's art, extracurricular activities, art music, it doesn't matter, things that we can bring to the schools so the parents don't have to drive around to around the city our program comes to the school. So hopeful ly that we can do to drop the rates for the lease. Thank you very much. thank you, is natalie here? Okay, I do want to go back to the comments on consent, MS. Hixon, did you have? thank you, yes, just on h1, I always like to point out the retirees, so we have 28 retirees on this month's agenda and I just want to congratulate them all and wish them the best of luck in their new journey. Thank you. thank you. MS. Thompson? can we staff meet with that

070gentleman and discover what is the facilitron and if there is a partnership thing that he MAY be applicable for. DR. Wanza? thank you. I believe DR. Wanza will meet with you to try to troubleshoot. Any other board discussion? hi anna fusco. It's very concerning that we have to have people that want to give to our students and our community that they have to come here to get your attention. There should be a process that they don't have to do that. So if you guys at the board can work it out, direct the superintendent to come up with a process. I'm not sure about this company, I don't know yet exactly what they do but anything that brings any type of sports or athletics to our students, it's a shame that we have to wait until

071after school if you made sure pe was in our schools, superintendent howard hepburn, we would not have to be having kids get it through the school afterwards but hey the more the merier, I heard him afterwards. Him and I will talk afterwards to see exactly what they did and why is it only at one school. I encourage any type of activities for your stud epts, all you do is test them, test them and test them, that's why trudy had to talk about the data data data, do you get the all the time we get to teach the kids. If you walk the schools organically, you would say that you're walking more than teaching. All of this bs data on the board because we're soda at that driven. Not that I'm against the data. Maybe you

072should work on data with that to get out of that hole and stop taking things on the back of our employees, that's what I'm going to gateway into right now. So I want to reach out not only our broward county employees but the community, I want to you know what they're doing to your educators. They're okay with decreasing things in their headlight insurance to make sure that they don't stay healthy in many ways. There is many way to see stay healthy, not just losing weight. There is gateways to that. There is gateways to mental health, there is gateways to hypertension, to blood pressures to cancer, there is gateway to see multiple things. If anybody has done any research, sugar intake is real big factor of causing cancer. Stress is a big reason of getting cancer.

073Being in schools with mold and mildew and not the proper cleanliness because you cut everywhere. Every group is cut from cafeteria clerical to our educators, we MAY be down students but our class sizes has not decreased and that's a fact. Now I reached out to all of you with back door garbage, you did with our health insurance. How dare you! And some of your opinions are embarrassing and pathetic, you should be ashamed on the things you have done. You have snowed in with the back door conversation with a group that is suppose to be consultant to come back with alternative and ways that we do stuff. The insurance community was not talked to about all the things you're going to cut. The unions were not talked to on what you were going to cut in

074our benefits, and yes our attorneys are coming with information but it has to be, why does it have to be done this way? You say you're, you're our friends to public school, that's why you ran we're going to sit here and be the greatness to our public schools and what do you do? You start with going after school scheduling, student personalization, graduation for our students, now let's go after employees health insurance benefits. You don't want your teachers and employees healthy? They already have to work two or three jobs, they're sick and tired, and they're tired of being tired. So they're trying to find avenue to see get healthy a certain way. You're not doctors, you didn't bring a doctor in the room, bring back medicines and cut revenues. And to read your email,s we have

075to get 20 million here, it's enough. the employees just want to show up and work. And they want to come to work healthy and they have avenues to get healthy and you want to take it away, take away other avenues, not on the backs of your employees? thank you, do we have any other employee group? All right. Could I get a motion and a second on item ee1. so moved. moved by DR. Zeman, seconded m m thompmpn. Y pupuic commt?T? DR. Nathalie lynch-walsh. Speaker: what item is this? I couldn't understand? bb1. b as in boy? Speaker: oh. Okay. DR. Nathalie lynch-walsh, I was just reading something related to that. Yes, in favor of this item. It keeps things consistent, you have somebody with a similar back grounds and the current chief auditor and keeps the

076wheels on the bus, I don't know what else you would do if not make them the chief auditor, thank you. no other comments. board member discussion? I have DR. Holness. thank you, MADAM Chair. So, I am in support of this item. I have seen the, the and diligent work of MR. Magly and I am very supportive. I am confident that he'll be able to come into this role and shine. And I look forward to approving the item, thank you, m dam chair. thank you, MS. Hixon? thank you, I just had a question about this, it's not that I don't agree with it but I know that we received the, the resumes for a number of people. So I'm asking if we can just get through the process of just hiring somebody in the time that

077we have? So if DR. Lozano can speak to, we're doing that internally, right? correct, but there will be a small period where we will need a interim general counsel based on the retirement date of the current? okay, so can you tell us, what is the timeline? For hiring a new one and in relation to MR. Rode's retirement date. I believe we're going to have that conversation later. we can have it now. just so it makes sense to the public why we would need to task assign and what is the start date? This was to, to go into negotiations to do that? Just wondering if we need to do that. If we're going to hire somebody in the near future. So if you can talk about that? I think to ensure consistent transition, we need to

078continue the process of an interim. okay. based on ot today's date. I hear what you're saying, but I think for the public, would I like us to tell them what is our timeline so it's very clear that we do need someone because we, we're giving somebody extra duties and money and I just want to be clear as to why we need that, chair. DR. Zeman? thanks so much. Thank you, MS. Hixon for asking about the timing, it's important. We have a chief auditor until MARCH 2. So I'm understanding that we're likely not to get through the process full-time. I do want to, kind of bring up a new idea to my colleagues here though, if I could. Which is we've gotten into a, tradition here of of paying people more when they get an opportunity

079to serve as interim. I am moved by the fact that we're removing a thousand positions from broward county schools. I'm moved by the reduction that's we've made by our security personnel already. I I'm moved by our ability to pay our school people more. I'm going to publicly announce, if there is negotiations with salaries on this, I will vote against t.I don't think we can justify to our community anymore that we're going to pay people for doing an interim job. And there are people, and let me just ask, if I could chair, if we assign an assistant principal to a job at a school because there is a vacancy for a limited amount of time, do they get special pay for that assignment? DR. Hepburn. you've got to be more specific. no, so says you have

080a gap and in the system in assistant principal and you say there is a limited time period, we would like to give I a shot for serving as an assistant principal, in a school base environment. If somebody was assigned, do they get special pay during that time? so in most situations if you're at the school and the principal says, we want to you pickup some of these duties, no. But if it's something unofficial that needs to happen to change that person's title so they can help out with evaluation, yes that would result in increase. obviously and if we hire to be assistant principal that comes with slightly higher pay. as long as they're not evaluating. I'm with you. My point is, I don't think the public supports this anymore. And as a board, it's time

081to think about some of our traditions. This is not a fiscal, you know, hiccup, this is not a hiccup, you know, a temporary issue. This is a fiscal crisis, full blown. You know, we lost in revenue roughly $100 million due to inrollment decrease, the projections are going to be on similar size which means we're going to start next year trying to find $100 million. We're cutting supplements for people who works at schools, at least talking about it. The experience to be able to fill-in for people has its economic value. You can do it to proof that you're really great and get additional salary benefits down the road. That is the standard in the private sector, when you fill-in, you don't get extra money until you're the permanent hire. So I'm going to be very public

082about this and tell people some of them who are sitting in the front two rows, that if you get asked to serve as an interim, I will not support additional compensation for you. And that's one of the things that we need to be serious about, because if we're not treating our in-school people with extra money when they fill-in for jobs, how do we stand before the public and pay people that have significantly higher salaries? I'm not going to hackerin up the pay band issue, we'll deal with that separately. But this is not a time where I believe that people who fill-in and in this case, I think it's going to be short period of time, that they get extra pay. And I think it's time in 2026 that we start a new practice in broward

083county which is if you're given the privilege to serve and get a chance to serve at a higher level, you do that because you want a chance to serve and the modest increase in the money is is not really the kind of funds that we can afford anymore. So that's my view. And I don't know chair, I, in this item, you're being asked to be a negotiator, do you need any guidance from the board about parameters for negotiating? I'm open to any guidance from the board? so my recommendation and I ask my colleagues to chime in as well now, or I guess, is the now is the best time about the idea? Do you expect to pay more for an interim chief auditor than is current salary that is being asked to sit in? MS.

084Hixon. thank you, DR. Zeman that was kind of to my point. I think I said this, the five years that I've been on the board, it bothers me that we ask higher level people and pay them. But daily, we ask cafeteria people, bus drivers, security monitors to do extra work and it never comes with extra pay. We do studies on pay salaries for people at the higher level and give them this these big chunk of raises and I've been clear that I don't agree with that. To the point that you just made. If MR. Rodes, let me ask this, because it's going going to be a short period of time, which is why I asked the question initially. If MR. Rodes was out for a week, what would happen. Wouldn't the director step in and

085do that job? Do we have to have a chief auditor, I know we have to have one. But if we have this period of transition in between, wouldn't it just make sense that the executive director who is the one going to be? The task assigned anyway? Isn't that just part of the job description is if you step in when the chief auditor is not available? And to me, if it's a short period because it appears that it will be, because we're in the process of hiring a new one and it MAY be the executive director, I just don't think it makes sense to go through all of this extra work for a short period of time, where in the job description you're sitting in for that chief auditor if they were to be gone for

086a certain period of time, and this is continue personal in any shape or form, I have just said this all along I don't think that for me, I don't think that this is necessary. So. any other board discussion? MR. Cervera? just a follow-up question to DR. Zeman's point. I don't think I got the answer that I was expecting from DR. Hepburn and I just want to clarify. On the principal hypothetical dp somebody is named interim principal if the a p retires or goes somewhere else, are they given a salary increase for that position? yes, correct. okay, thank you for the clarification? does anyone want to weigh in on DR. Zeman's point? Do you guys want to talk about about the timeline? Go ahead MS. Bulman. that was going to be my question. but staff didn't

087really answer my question, what would happen if there rodes was out for two weeks? What would typically happen in that situation based on job description? fay MAY, I'll use myself for an example, if I'm out for two weeks, DR. Fulton steps in. that's my point. I'm not sure, MS. Hixon to your point, do we need to appoint an interim chief auditor? I don't know who can answer that question. It's not like MR. Rodes will be on vacation or taking sick leave, it's just that he's not in the position at all. I agree with you, if we don't have to do that, then, yeah. I don't know, MS. Jaques-adams. if we have to go out and continue the process, we MAY revisit it at that time. okay, so MS. Hixon, do you have a recommendation? well

088I mean, we can vote it up or vote it down, I don't think I have to make a recommendation but I would, is would agree if it turns out, we find ourselves a week out from MR. Rode's retirement and we can clearly see that we don't have a path to getting somebody soon, then we can revisit this item but I just, personally don't think we need it right at this moment. MS. Bulman? I just want to have a better idea at what we're looking at in a timeline. yeah, so I did ask staff, everyone should have received the resumes for the applicants, yesterday. I guess my question would be to staff, would we be able to schedule a special school board meetings on the 17th, next week, in order to vote on like finalist for

089that? MR. Hill? yes, MR. Hill. I know you have a packed workshop and it's at 8 hours. I guess, is there an appetite for that from my colleagues? I see one yes. so we schedule a special school board meeting? yes. do we have time for that? Is there objection to scheduling a special meeting. I have a preference of doing the special before the workshop, would that be possible? I don't think that's not an issue. okay. And I have a follow-up point. so we would identify finalist on the 17th and then we would need a schedule to day of one on one interview and then a day? Is that what we agreed on? One on one and then a public interview? Okay, so we would need to schedule that. Can we do that, the week of

090the 23rd? I can't, I'm gone. I will be away for the first two days, so, can we schedule, I mean, MS. Thompson and I have limited availability that week. So the week of the 23rd but again MS. Thompson is unable to be there so if we can accommodate her schedule can we schedule something the week of MAY 2nd? Is there a desire to move that earlier. Okay. So can we do the one on one interviews on MARCH 2nd and then schedule the interview on MARCH third since we're going to be here for a workshop that day? Is there any objection to that? So we would schedule a special school board meeting for the morning of MARCH 3rd and staff will help arrange one on one interviews for the second? absolutely. so just to confirm, there

091will be a special school board meeting. both. we need an idea to identify. Am I wrong that we need an item to identify the finalist? got it. so there will be a special school board meeting FEBRUARY 17th before the workshop begins. And then especially school board meeting the morning of MARCH 3rd, before the workshop. Is there any objection to that schedule? And they'll schedule one on one interviews for MARCH 2. MR. Rodes. I want to ask MS. Jacques adams, because we heard this from the past from MS. Batista by statute there has to be a chief auditor whether it's acting interim, task assigned whatever happens to be. I just wanted to make sure that there was not a situation for a day or week or however long of a period that the board was not

092out of compliance. everyone needs to keep in mind that just because we would be voting on the third, whoever needs to negotiate a contract. It would be for more than just one day. MS. Jack adams. so one of the direct boards, the auditor, they have statutory duties, I need to look at the duties because depending on what they are, having a lapse MAY be something that needs to be considered. So I can take a look and bring that back to you as a follow-up? DR. Zeman. we have heard multiple from MS. Batista, it has to be a stated. Like it is for the superintendent. We have a state law that says, every time we're here we must have a superintendent, whether it's task assigned blessed by the chair. I don't want to lose track of

093I think the central issue here, because, because, it's important, I think now for us to give the chair direction, if we're going to move forward with this interim, she can't go negotiate a contract that majority of us reject, that's just kind of, I think it's not in good order to do that. So I'm going to ask if we can get a vote or if you need me to make a motion, I'm happy to do it but. But I believe we've had two people of negotiating for acting and interim and not adjusting the pay. We have to figure out, how would you like me to proceed? I mean, I've made a note, I think the individual in the audience can hear as well. I think for me, if I'm in that position, it's clear what my

094negotiation would be. I don't hear anyone objecting that there not be supplemental pay for this. So if somebody wants to speak up now about that. no objections from me. Thank you, chair. m m hixon. so goininbackck to ththe otother, lelet's y y we figure it's going to ba a week. So MS. Jacques adams, can you opine when the superintendent is going to be out for a week and his designee is going to do that. MR. Rodes is going to do that, he can't do that. But can the chair appoint somebody as the acting or designee for chief auditor for a certain period of time and still fulfill the legal role just like it does for the superintendent. I'm going to check for any exceptions but the way the statute reads, the board, you know, appoints

095an auditor. So it would be the board collective and not the chair. er so it could be a board item, can we do that today act as a board instead of having the negotiations the contract negotiations just make an appoint as of this date, somebody as the acting chief auditor until such time as an auditor is selected? Or a certain date if that's the need to determine whether we need to move through interim. so through the chair, I believe that the the agenda item needs to be brought by superintendent in terms of what the superintendent would be would suggest. but it's not his. no. but I think it's up to us to decide. So the item is asking, part of it is to a poipt an interim chief auditor but maybe we changed that term

096to acting. So maybe amend this where we are appointing the same person until MARCH 12th or like if we picked a date and said, this date or when a chief auditor is hired. okay, so please forgive me. I was stating process, and I MISS Spoke in terms of a direct report, you're absolutely right, that is different than you know, another, you know, position that superintendent would bring. The only question that would come to mind would be the notice of the item but if the board collective wants to reverse what is planned, and assigned somebody, I guess the next question would be whether that person would accept. it's the same person so it's just changing that we're not negotiating a contract we're just going to direct appoint them until the certain date or when the next

097chief auditor is selected. so the next question that I had in mind is whether or not MR. Magly would accept. so I guess we'll ask that because I'm going to make a motion based on that information. So chair, that makes sense to ask. MR. Magly? Speaker: I guess I MAY have anticipated some this happening over the last since I've come here and hit the ground running as you know, there is a lot of things and there is a lot objectives that MR. Rodes and I have started into that we have not gotten where we were, I thought the opportunity to do that in the interim role would have been to continue on with what we have been doing and continue to progress this thing. There is been a lot of things that have happened since

098I came here under conditions of employment that have changed since the day I hit the ground. So we continue to do that. I didn't anticipate speaking on right now, of course. Doing the role, that's who I am. I'm going to do what I have to do, that's what I've done since I've been here 25 years ago. But I don't think I should be the ground breaker. There is a number of people currently in the roles right now and I would hate to see that happen to them because I know their doing their part. So respective of what is taking place, I will accept whatever the board direction is, but I'm a little disappointed, not in the grand scheme but it's not what I anticipated but we'll move forward. thank you, very much for your comments

099and I get that you don't want to be the groundbreaking in this. So I would like to make a motion or an alternate. if fick interrupt through the chair. I want to ensure that, staff opines on any internal roles or directives or on this matter? so I think the only thing that it will lean you, general counsel, is that you would have asmap employee moving into contract position. That's the only uniqueness of this. situation. That's different nann you know, our other task assignment or acting positions. well did it t didn't that happen for our chief facilities officer? Of course, he is task assigned. I apologize. so through the chair, to opine a little bit more in response to what DR. Lozano had indicated. So if MR. Magly is currently in a meet and confer and

100now this is a contract position, contract would need to be negotiated. that's fine. I'm still confused though, because we would just be making him the acting for a short period, I would give it a deadline. And if we didn't hire somebody by that date, then we would move into the interim information knowing we would have a longer period. So I don't see it at. It seems silly that we're going to go through contract negotiations for a peek. It's not, we're at make him the active chief auditor. I would suggest until MARCH 13th, or until a auditor is selected in case they get selected and put in place before that. so through the chair. If my memory serves and there are other direct reports where where in the interim was assigned for a short period of

101time and there was still a contract for that short period of time, so I would differ to staff with regards to those facts of direct reports. and if I MAY, MADAM Chair. yeah. so we did this for DR. Wanza, she was the superintendent for a week and that was done through a negotiate contract it was going from s map. but we task assigned her. but there was still a task contract. that's what I'm saying, if we just made it acting not task assigned, we were not changing his actual job title and then there wouldn't be the necessary -- do you see what I'm saying? Just the superintendent says I'm going to be gone for two weeks and I'm designating DR. Fulton or whoever, I'm, I'm not understanding why this does not fall in the same

102way. I think. the chief auditor is not really going in the seat anymore that what the difference is? I think DR. Hepburn is returning. When DR. Fulton takes on the designee, that's the difference where as ones MR. Rodes retires, he's now no longer employed with the district. So the position is vacant. I got it, okay. I appreciate you walking us through. I just want to make it clear for the public because it seems like a lot of work for a short period of time, anyway. Thank you. MS. Bulman. okay, so we have it clear, we have to do the contract? Okay. i really appreciate MR. Magly's being such a class act. Because this is a short period of time we're going to negotiate a contract and this is a direct report you know, I don't

103know I don't know that I don't support compensating him. He's going to oversee a department that has been doing well and he's been depending on. I think we can create a policy but to do it on the fly like this when somebody is coming in to negotiate in good faith, I don't, I don't know if I want this to be the test case for this. I think we have some distinguishing facts here because somebody that somebody that gets task assigned that is working for the DR. Hepburn and three people working for us leading our three main branches that we oversee. So, I, I would like to see us negotiate and provide MR. Magly with the opportunity to negotiate would be a reasonable increase given the increase in his duties. okay, so I'm hearing one objection,

104DR. Zeman? I would like to make a motion that we hire mark magly as the acting chief auditor on the first day that there is a vacancy in that information for the period of 30 days. is there a second? second. motion made by DR. Zeman seconded by MS. Hixon. Public comment on the motion. Speaker: DR. Nathalie lynch-walsh. I appreciate that DR. Zeman heard me on h8 which is where my concern lay. mr. Magly is the opposite of my concern, he used to work in the district and has been working along MR. Rodes since he came back. There is almost no transition, MR. Rodes as much as I would like to see him stay, is going to be gone in a few weeks, when is the transition where he can hand it to a person going

105to happen? If you don't hire have an interim? For at least, the few weeks he has remaining. You're about to create and please don't ever add a date to something whether it's a smart program or higher date. I looked at the resume and there is definite number twos and I don't know about number one. Again, it's and did they not plan for this? any other public comment on the motion? Speaker: DR. Trudy, I just I'm happy that you finally have decided to do the right thing as far as the pay. Personal experience, I was unfortunately, I put administer administration on my certificate. And when there was a problem at the school, I was drafted, I didn't want the experience. I took it off my certificate. Please don't do this people don't get paid more at

106the base level and you should is not be doing that with people at the top. any other public comment on the motion. Board member discussion on the motion. MS. Hixon. so MS. Jauqes adams, you're saying if we appoint him which is the action in the b item, we still have to negotiate a contract? Is there still has to be a contract in place, if that's what I'm hearing correctly from staff and you. through the chair, that is correct. there are two task assignments I don't believe there is a third but a contract would be necessary. so the motion that was made does not do anything different than the item before us. so as I understand it, instead of its interim now it's a permanent position. no, he said acting. Which is the same word as

107interim. excuse me. I would like to differ to the hr because the two designations that I know of, are task assigned and interim. So acting, I do not know whether? so acting is when you meet qualifications task assignment is when you don't meet the minimum qufntions. So MS. Hixon, it's semantics if you want to call it interim or acting, if he meets the qualifications of that position which he does. okay. so I would ask the maker of the motion, do you, is your motion just to change the b item that is before us, bb item before us from interim to acting? yes. okay, thank you. any other board member comment on the motion? No? MADAM Chair. DR. Holness. okay, so I want to make sure I understand the changes. So we have interim that is

108there and now we have acting. Does the implication of acting, because I know the prior concern with DR. Zeman had to do with increased change. So we're changing this to acting, is this now meaning that exclude any pay increase? What is is the real difference between acting and interim? As it is in reference to DR. Zeman's prior concern about increase pay? I just want to make sure I understand it clearly. so even if the asmat salary handbook it says it MAY receive compensation, it does not say will. so both acting and interim, it could include increase in compensation? that's up to the board for this position. correct. So for either one of them, it would not have any bearing on increase in pay. So MR. Lozano, for my understanding can you reiterate the difference between

109in motion and this change. Being acting. changing the word from interim to acting. does the word change any job description? no, sir. so is it redundant then? it's the will of the board, the preference. okay. Thank you, DR. Lozano. MS. Bulman. I think if you're the acting interim, you would be redundant. If you pick one, then you're safe, but that's just my opinion. Just to the board, I just wanted to say one thing. I hope we're all taking into consideration, fact that MR. Maingly g -- magly is one of the applicant for this position. You know, remind the board and I also, have concerns about other people working in the district that are given a lot more tasks and not paid more. I don't know if going to the lowest common denominator is the way.

110Or filing additional responsibilities on our employees and not compensating them for that. Maybe we need to look at it in the opposite direction, on how we need to reevaluate our people working hard. I don't support the motion. I think you should be paid for the job that you're doing and I don't know if we have a workshop so that we can look @ how we're paying the rest of the employees in the district. Thank you. any other board member, discussion? MR. Cervera? just for purpose of clarity, the last day, the last official day for MR. Rodes is what you're? I believe the resignation date is MARCH second? and the maker of motion, you asked for 30 days after the motion? yes, sir. thank you. MS. Thompson and then DR. Holness. thank you, chair. I was

111going back and forth whether to chime in but I want to agree with MS. Bulman sentiment, which agree instead of taking away pay for somebody doing extra work, we should do the opposite. For supplements, giving more for tasks done for testing and absentee work. And I cannot think that we would not have paid MS. Jacques adams more for the great job she is doing. And we won't be MR. Rode's salary and I'm guessing a diererce. And d it's's a month, I just, anand I geget that we ask teachers to do it, we ask social workers to do more every single day, but I don't think we should be going backward on this. Thank you. I'm hearing two objections. DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair. So what I am say is I fully understand where DR.

112Zeman is coming from in terms of, in terms of concerns financial concerns of the district and so on and so forth. But I ask with the moral aspect of what we're doing. Should we continue to wrong the wrong. The point of the matter is, if we're not paying people for more for doing more, then we need to figure out a way to have some plan of action overtime period to be able to do that. So moving in this direction, and while I understand DR. Zeman, I had to think about it for a little bit, I think we will continuing to wrong the wrong, and we should figure out the way to right the wrong overtime. I'm not sure if saying that since certain employees don't get an increase for doing more, we should continue to

113not give increases for doing more. We're moving in the wrong direction, we should start to think about, even if it's meager, how can we proceed to give people more for doing more. I had to think about it, DR. Zeman, and I understand where you're coming from but I also I have to, look at the moral aspect of it and I'm not sure that would be the best direction. So MADAM Chair, I would prefer that when you go into negotiation that the salary increase is considered in the negotiation, hopefully MR. Magly will be cognizant of concerns with the district. And but I do think it would be in our best interest to provide some sort of increase for doing more. thank you, MS. Jacques adams. another consideration would be seen color class for frs purposes. So

114I do p know and staff MAY want to opine on this as to whether or not if an increase was not given would it affect that senior class status because MR. Magly would be moving from s-mab into a direct report. I don't think if that's a consideration or issue. But I wanted to reference that. no, lack of increase or increase does not I am fact senior class status, it's a specific designation for frs for retirement purposes. I just wanted to ensure that that was clarified. MS. Hixon? thank you. I just want to say, we sit here every day and we say how we're trying to find cuts and that we don't have enough money and these are little piece approximates of it's not a big amount of money, but we're doing so much at the

115school level and if we don't start doing at the district level and I feel bad that this happens to be the one we start with but I just can't, see, it's a short period of time, it's a job. He's willing to do teachers do it all the time. I'm going to go back to the teachers and the people in the school, even principals most of them when we ask them to do different things, they don't get additional money there are things that happen in khefrngs of time that, we don't give the people in the schools extra money if we're ever going to stand up for saying, we want to be equitable across the word board. It has to be equitable for everyone and I know that this is a big position and I'm not diminishing

116that or the job that you do at all, I don't want to come across this way. I said it. This is not my first time and I have never never agreed on paying task assigned. We keep saying that we need to save one when are we going to start? And again this is a small drop but the small drops add up and I just stand firm on it. I don't think any task assigned should be getting extra compensation. Thank you. thank you. I would like to weigh in briefly and MS. Hixon, you're not alone in those sentiments, I remember asking if we had done a job study for our teachers. But I wanted to ask DR. Hepburn, how he's handled task assignment pay. How it was done before he came into the information and how?

117thank you, chair for the question. So I definitely walked into a variance of how for a person main tasked assigned, the variance was very wide. And concerning, when you go specific in the numbers but sometimes it's 5 grand all the way to $30 gran in the situation. Recently for most pf this year, I decided to put a cap of 5 percent, no matter the position that you're going to. For he quit sake and consist apartment see spaik and also for the reason that you order a 35 -- but 5 percent is what we're doing right now. and that's on the base salary. yes, based on the base salary. thank you. So so far I've heard three objections to the proposal to not offer any supplemental pay. Is there any other board discussion on the motion?

118call the question. all in favor calling the question say aye. aye. all opposed say no. All right in favor of the motion, say aye. aye. all opposed say no. no. roll call on. roll call. school board member alhadeff. Not present. Bulman. no. cervera. hixon. No. holness. no. leonardi. no. rupert. no. thompson. no. zeman. yes. 6-2, fails. all right. DR. Zeman, you had had the floor since you had the motion do you have anything else you would like to add? just want to make sure that we get back to basics. Government agencies get x dollars to operate. So anytime we spend money on one asset we're inherently not spending money on other assets. So when we get to individual decisions or team decisions and things like that, it's often that we, we are generous on individuals

119and small teams and at the end of the day, that prevents us in some measure from being generous to some groups. and question is, how do you split up all the money. Not do you want to give people more money. Do you think it's fair? So we strife for equal fairness and equal kind of under paying of everybody the same amount. Because in public education, we don't pay people what they are worth, we pay them less. So what we best can be do, is equally, under way with the people that are doing the amazing work that we do at public schools. I just believe that we're doing draconian things, a thousand jobs will be gone for next year. Dramatic negotiations with our labor unions, all starting with zero, they MAY end up with zero, nrs

120no money in the bank. And more importantly than anything is the public perception of how we're managing the public's money. We have made big mistakes. That chief auditor iconickly just published a major report on a major major mistake and I'm going to undo that MISS. But to compound that mistake by paying people more, does not pass the mustard. Those people do not want more money going to our highest paid people. They want money going in the classing room, people working harder and they do not want to it go to the people already making a significant amount of money. And so, I'm, I'm anxious to see where this item goes. But, I do believe that if we think a little bit about affixed a pot of money and having allocate the 5.8 million dollars that we

121get across now, you know, 28,000, next year 27,000 employees, we'll continue to find how we spread it equally. MS. Thompson. thank you, chair. I'm feeling frustrated from this conversation because the staff has presented things to save the district money. And the board through push back, changed its mind, we could have saved money on graduations, we could have revisited scheduling, we could have looked at plenty of things, at some point in the future, we've been momsed ork charge change. This is what through the superintendent, like potentially what? $2005? -- 5,000, does anyone have what this miniscule amount would be for a month? It would not be above that for a month. And so, I just, if we're going to say we're going to make hard choices to cut, then we make hard choice to see cut

122across the board, not on one individual. The people that work in this district staff, do hard work as well. And I'm getting increasing frustrating by the way, that some of the members of the board and some of the members of the be public are demonizing the people in the building they support our kids as well! They support our teachers as well! They make sure our buses run on time, not all the tile but -- the time but they're working on. They support our ese department, and the way we a law the public to bee rate them is wrong. So if we want to fix the district, if weigh want to manage our 5.5 billion dollars better, let's make hard choices even when with the public gets mad. That's the right thing to do, not this.

123DR. Holness. thank you, MADAM Chair, I wanted to clarify my understanding as far as the concern with senior leadership pay. And I know, we have the referendum issue as as far as senior leadership. But I think this situation is different, right. And because in this situation, in prior situation it's about senior leadership getting increased pay. In this case, we have somebody moving into another position that requires more responsibility not staying in the same information, that requires that person to do more. So it's a little different than if somebody has a senior leadership and you give them an increase in pay. As opposed to keeping the pay the same. That's completely two different things. So I want to clarify, it's not apples to apples. This is increase in pay on the rational that this individual would

124have increase in job title and responsibility. So while I fully understand that, we should be doing the same, for all of our staff that has increased responsibility or teacher's would increase responsibility and school base staff, and so on. I don't think that the right direction for us to go is to say, well you have we have not been doing it right in the first place. So let's continue to not do it right. I know we have financial constraints as to how we can make it right for everyone. But I don't want to go in the direction of making it wrong for everyone. So I wanted to differentiate between my thought process of what we have here as opposed to the referendum increases for those who had senior leadership positions, they're not moving up in positions

125this individual is and we're asking him to do more. That's the basis of my support for an increase pay, whatever it is, 5 percent p the superintendent is, or whatever you negotiate, thank you MADAM Chair. thank you, MR. Rodes and MR. Cervera. so, as the chief auditor, I still want to caution the board and call back to general council's confirmation a while ago, that number one, the statute does not require that we have an executive director that is running the audit function for a period of time, except they have a chief auditor. And the reason for doing that is to appoint somebody to do that role. Any second quaution to be a in many different situations within this, this different. And I've not had 30-daytime period turn around. I know things can be different when

126the board is pushing that boulder down the hill as opposed to a hiring manager pushing it up the hill. But I want the reasonable amount of time and for future motions that MAY come forward, it could include something to the affect of until position is filled, because position was not filled within a 30-day period, you can find yourself in a situation where that prior agreement expires leaving the district without chief auditor. So I MAY be looking alt things slightly different than you guys, but that's one of the things that I try to look at in terms of assisting you. thank you, MR. Cervera? thank you, chair. I want to touch on the pay issue, if I MAY briefly. First and for most, progress has to start somewhere, right? You have to find a point of

127time where you're going to collectively talk about change. We talk about a change a lot up here. And there are many many instances where that change never comes to fruition. Now this is not a personal slight on MR. Magly, I know he's going to do a great job in the interim position, I watched him work in the months, I admit, I was not here 25 years ago, when you were but I've been able to watch what he has recently accomplished. And I have all the confidence in the world that he'll do a fantastic job in this interim position. The public is tired of these increases that are coming out of these buildings. We hear from my constituents, I hear this from my constituents all the time, I'm sure everyone else on this dais does as

128well. And we know our financial situation, we have to start making some progress now. And I understand it MAY only be 5,000 here or whatever, we have to start somewhere now. We've gone through this before, we have apparently set some change. I admit that MR. Magly is not idea for him but there has to be a moment in time where we're going to get this district financially back on track. And just to address some of the comments about, some of the other things that perhaps could have been done, with the graduations and the block scheduling and, I understand the perspective of that, I do. I'm just not in favor of some of these cost measuring things being placed on ot backs of our kids when we have an opportunity to do things in-house and start

129initial some change as opposed to save one off the backs of our kids with graduations venues and things like that. I heard my colleagues obviously, however my position on this is very clear. We need to start some change. Change has to start happening now, and this is a good opportunity to implement some of that change and we are where we are but this is not a sustainable business model, overall to keep spending the way we are and we do need a change. Is that handout for me? Or for her, I thought you were going to tell me what great comment I made. But I'll turn it over to our general counsel can speak. go ahead MS. Bulman. I don't think anybody disagrees at we have seseris s budget cocoerns, buets s nsnsaiais s d d

130that thineed to be addressed immediately. But the way that this has been going with this piecemeal somewhere throws something out to save a few dollars, somebody, we ask the staff to bring a plan back, it gets uncomfortable, and so we reject it and now we're going to go and save a few thousand on the back of one person, I just don't, I don't like the optics of this either. What we're look for right now, is a plan. We need to have an over arching plan on how we're going to tb addressing the budget instead having one thing brought to us over here, some three people are getting a lot of push back from that so we're not going to approve that and somebody is going to bring something over here, we can save 35 million

131dollars but it's not commuted properly so we have to back off of that. If we're committed to saving money, we need to be doing it in an over arching way that is addressing all the different aspects of the day district and not having on our question about what is going to result in what you said, 5,000. i understand we've had some bad press release about what we face. The boateder has done a great job coming together to address those issues, we can be proud of that we're take iting the measures that we need to to make sure those things are not happening again. But I don't feel comfortable with this narrative that we have to start somewhere and we're going to start on MR. Magly's contract because of this budget crisis. I want to see

132a plan where we can agree these are the places we're going to cut and be committed to it. That's the only way that we are going to change. Make up of the district to fit what the current circumstances are and the only way that we're going to be healthy and be able to move forward into the next era of our broward county schools. So I want to see a plan that we can all look at, discuss, and then collectively agree to the agree to the things that we can do without and the things that we want to see in place. And particularly, we don't want to put on the backs of the kids. The money should be getting to the schools but as so to just randomly pick out who we think we don't think

133is important on any given day, so we can get a sound bite or what have you, I think it's fair to anyone working here. Ho how are we getting a proposal a plan on how we can really address the budget issue? MADAM Chair? DR. Hepburn? yes, we've sent the plan, what was that? Months ago. A plan that actually actionable, because if up hire talking for an hour, that item is not actionable. it was actionable, we're going to send more for more public facing, we have a large decision about personnel downsizing too. But we can resend that and we'll be sending you guys something in addition to that this week also. ?Ment so I think for the public and our constituents and stakeholders, to see what is on the table that we can actually cut in

134terms of yes, when we're bringing the ork chart, when do you think that is going to be? the ork chart? yeah, like what we're looking at in-person he will. the ork chart discussion will start in APRIL, so the first workshop in APRIL. Did we send that to the board? no, not yet. If I MAY. go ahead. so the plan is next week, C.F.O. Is giving a presentation to the board on the budget and we'll have a press conference after that. APRIL 7thcious will be a workshop where the superintendent will present his plan and then there will be a vote on that on APRIL 21st. As the board is aware, most of our funding is in informations. That's where you'll see the majority of cost saving and cost reductions in the ork chart. thank you. I

135guess for next week, maybe if we can see very concrete ways that we've already made cuts? So that we're all aware it and that we can share that with the public as they're asking us because it still seems nebulous in terms of what we cut. This is what we've done so far and this is what we intend to do moving forward. And that's, I mean, I'm a big picture person. So I really want to see the big picture before we get into the minusha of one person's one month pay. I agree. sorry I need to correct the date, APRIL 14th is the workshop and then there will be a later board meeting for the vote, but APRIL 14th not the 7th, I'm sorry. I would like to weigh in a little bit, I will not

136weigh in on whether or not I agree with the proposal of additional pay or not because I will negotiate the will of the board. But I do appreciate MS. Bulman and MS. Thompson bringing up the, the interesting aspect of this conversation. You know, we spent quite a bit of time talking about saving several thousand dollars and I think MS. Bulman is really challenging us to have a more strategic conversation, you know, whether or not we save a few thousand on this interim contract, feels silly in comparison to the idea that we'll be voting a contract that is 200 times that amount. And I'll be curious to see if we spend the same amount of time on that item. So again, I mean, we can spend a lot of time on symbolism and you know, po

137litically making choice that's will appeal to some people for the time being. But to MR. Zeman's point we need to really making smart strategic responsible choices for this district. And I do want to be clear just so that etcher and I have the same understanding, so far. I heard the majority of the board express the desire to not have additional pay, I heard DR. Holness, and MS. Thompson ex pressure desire to supplement for additional pay. For this position. So if anyone has a different sent many, I would ask that you share that so we're clear on what my direction is going into these negotiations. MS. Jaques-adams, you had a point to make. I just want to point out that after MR. Rode's retirement, I do not know from a factual perspective weather the auditor needs

138to perform certain task under that capacity. I just want to say if that has an interim auditor, I don't know if from a factual perspective there are actual tasks that the auditor needs to perform in the auditor's official capacity as opposed to somebody just pitch hitting to the auditor. I would like to call question. all in favor of calling the question say aye. aye. all oppose say no. all in favor of bb1 say aye. aye. all opposed say no. item passes unanimously. could I get a motion and a second on item gg1? so moved. moved by DR. Zeman, seconded by MS. Hixon, public comment on gg1? yes, MADAM Chair, one registered speaker, DR. Nathalie lynch-walsh. Speaker: good whatever it is, morning, still. I have no idea how much time I have left and I'm not

139planning to give my three minutes on b1, so I'll try to be brief. Nowhere in here, do we know who's bad idea it was to go lease space from handy, we have a lot of information but nobody is owning up to what's bad idea it was. There is only so many people who have prompted that. When you have cash out one year and cash in the next year, that's a net zero, that is not saving. This should be turned over to ig and where does rock island go now? Where does the staff go? Are we spending thousands and thousands retrofiting somewhere else because nobody has brought you the plan. I don't know where they're going and you MAY want to ask about that to make sure it's being done with fiscal responsibility, thank you. that

140concludes registered speakers and for speakers, she has three minutes remaining. MR. Cervera? thank you, chair. Before, I give my comments, I do have a question to our general counsel, MS. Jaques-adams, are you aware that if this property as been prelet as we terminate thised lease some months ago? through the chair, I have not been provided with any information from handy that has been relet. I can tell you that they're required to tell us that, they're required to report that to us. And if they do, either relet it or sell it, then the amount f money either lease or sale goes towards payment under this settle agreement by the school board. In other twords, those funds will offset that amount of money that is paid under the set many requirement. is there any requirement that handy

141hopefully soon, relet's their property that they can charge a higher amount through this agreement. through the chair x the school has no control over how far is relet or how much the sale is, the set slment agreement jufl several that that goes towards paying them. So the amounts of money that the school board would know is offset by those amounts. MADAM General counsel, how much is handy getting into this agreement assuming that it comes to fruition and they do not relet the property? let me pull the figures from the settlement agreement. So the total amount and then I have some amounts that go towards that. The total amount is 355,525 currently, handy has a security dop%backer deposit in the amount of 85,000 and 85,000 would offset the photo al amount I gave you, so the

142net would be 25,275 and that would be paid to handy in payments, the initial payment would be a partial lump sum of 228,225. And then additional monthly payment there would be three, would be 14,166.67. And then the last of which would be 14, 166.66. so just I'm clear, the settlement amount is roughly 355,000 and they're getting offset of the previously set 355,000 that this district gave them when this lease was being negotiated. So the new money is 275,000 pursuant to the set slment? specifically 27nd -- 270,255. thank you for the clarification. I am against this this. I have been against this from day one. And I think this is an a senine amount of money that we're paying folks that we properly terminated. We spent an hour arguing about 5,000 and we're going to give

143potentially 355,000 like this. We spent a lot of money on our general counsel and our legal office to draft us lease documents to make sure that we have provisions that protect us. And we have one here. This contract was properly terminated. This contract we had a out, if you will and we took it. And we got in my opinion, and this is no disrespect to the attorney that drafted, a very weak lawsuit filed and we buckled. In a district that is operating at 100 million dollars deficit, I don't think that we should be giving away this type of money on a settlement on a contract that we properly terminated. Now I of all people have risk of litigation risk and attorney fees, and I appreciate that. This is one that I think the risk was

144worth the reward. This handy situation was a debacle from beginning. We no longer have a cabinet member because of this this, a lot of blunders. But for to us run back to handy after this board did the right thing, and realized it made a mistake, terminated pursuant to a viable and proper termination cause and now to settle for this much money in my opinion, this is a travesty. I am against this h I think this is a waste of money. We should have put our big boy pants on on this one. Let the legal process play out because I'm very confident that if we would have litigated, we would have got a defense yesterday in this. But be that as it MAY, I know I am only one of nine so I wanted to make

145sure that my position was stated very very clearly that this is quite frankly absurd that we're now about to write a check for this much money to these folks. Thank you. MS. Jacques-adams? so I wanted to point out that, the office of general counsel received instruction from the school board to settle. And this settlement agreement is within the parameters of our instruction. So with any lawsuit is filed, there is uncertainity, literally it's up to the judge or jury with regards to whether we're going to win or lose. And so as a result of that uncertainity, our instructions were to settle and we settled, successfully. for the record, I'm not blaming general counsel and if I came off that way, that was not my intent p I was expressing my displeasure with the decision made by

146this board to bring this item and settle this case. Ipg it was a waste of money. I'm not blaming you, I know you were asked to prepare a document and I appreciate you. My intention was not to, assert my blame on, certainly not the case, I'm dis expressing my displeasure with the desire to settle. Thank you. MS. Thompson. I would like to ecec mrmr. Cervera's mmmmts, I I ll not do as firery as he did. But this serve as a to not settle when we were in the right and I feel like we were in the right, we caught an error, MS. Bulman factored an item to fix that and then we folded. So I will not be supporting this item. MS. Bulman? thanks, chair. MS. Jacques adams, I apologize, but what is the amount

147over the one-year lease that we're paying? To settle this? the one year rental amount, how much are we paying for that? through the chair, if I can lean on staff to provide me with that factual information. I don't think we have that in front of us. mr. Dorset if you can have your team. when I did the math, it seems like it was like 31 grand. that's correct. that was after the we added the 85,000 security deposit. 25 -- 35 over the one-year lease. so to back it up a little bit, than MR. Cervera, I share his spirit of being unhappy with this entire transaction. I don't, I think you know based on the fact that we have no, insurance, assurance that we're going to win if we take it to trial that settling is

148in the best interest. It does not change the fact that this contract was brought to us that should have never been in front of us that we can approved under false promises. We can beat a dead horse but the sticky point is that we should never of had this and now we're doing damage control for something that we approved for something that we should never have approved. And the only thing that is making me feel a tiny feel better, is that we terminated this lease when we discovered that it was not terms and circumstances were not fully discussed to us. So we've actually saved some money in terms of continuing to cable prepare the premise for occupancy and we saved ourselves money not to having moved into the property and then we saved money not

149having to move out of the property when we would have terminated this lease at the end of the year. I do think that given the bad and circumstances around this situation, by acting swiftly, the board has actually saved some money from and that's the only way that I'm making myself feel better. I support it because I don't want to spend another dollar on it but I never want to see a contract like this come in front of us again, thank you. thank you. DR. Zeman? thanks so much, chair. How many days of occupancy did we get for this? DR. Hepburn? DR. Hepburn or MS. Jacques-adams. through the chair, this is a factual issue, there was there was a five months where occupancy. I'll help you, we got zero occupancy for 35,000. And that's our mistake,

150that we are getting good information for making bad decisions. There is a enough blame, our staff still needs places to go, thankfully, we lost a lot of students that there is a lot of opportunity force them. I don't appreciate some things that are written in this item, MR. Superintendent. I think sometimes for the public and me to recognize that we're going to hold ourselves accountable for this, you noi, there is no joy joyce in fy26 because we have something on a contract that we should never gone in. This is 345,000 that we got zero occupancy. This is something that we need to learn from and not do again. But the descriptions that are in this item are overly optimistic and I hope that reality, that everybody has from this is different than the, than the

151tone of this item. The tombstone reads, zero days of occupancy for our staff and that should never happened in a government agency. Thank you chair. DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair, so if the board should vote no on this item, what would be the next step in majority of the board say no? through the chair from a legal perspective, more than likely we will be served. Currently the school board has not been served. And we would have to litigate and spend attorney's fees and then, after the attorney's fees there is no guarantee of success in this lawsuit. okay and MS. Jacques-adams can you reiterate how much we've spent so far in attorney's fees? so currently because we have not been served there has been no activity in the lawsuit but as soon as we are

152served, then there will be activity and we will start incur attorney's fees. But this item is to either approve the settlement agreement or not and I'm not at liberty to discuss any further, what strategies we would follow. I understand. But it would obviously, start to result in increase in costs for attorneys once we're served should this item be voted no by majority? yes, correct. and that number could be anything? because we don't know the costs of what attorney fees would be over a certain period of time, as this case goes on. correct, not only attorney's fees but the plaintiff is seeking the entirety of the contracted amount which is 5 years. okay, and there is no certainity even if it looks to be in our favor that we will win this case. There is always

153that possibility that we will also lose which would then, result in significant increase in costs to go through all of that, correct? xrek. Worse case scenario payment of the five years plus attorney's fees. okay, so MS. Jacques-adams, thank you for your work on this. You know, like, board member bulman and board member thompson, I have concerns with this whole contract just the same but I also worry about continuing to increase our costs and there is a possibility that we MAY not be successful, there is also a possibility that we will, it's a matter of what chance we want to take on it. And so I don't feel good about it either, I have the same sentiments but I just want to get it over with and I think that it's time to move on. Thank

154you. MR. Cervera? MS. Jacques-adams we just heard from DR. Holness about continued costs on our end. If we were, if this were to shot down and asked you to defend this case, could this be handled in-house? through the chair, I would not like to discuss any strategies with how to move forward with this litigation case right here and right now. okay, in a general sense does our house have way to handle simple contract. once again, MR. Cervera, I am at liberty to discuss. okay, let me ask you this way. If it's kept in-house, if any legal matter is kept in-house, do we get a bill every month for legal fees or our attorneys get paid their salary. our attorneys get paid their salary. so hypothetically speaking, if this was kept in-house, we would not have

155additional bills. so in order to answer that, I would make determination whether we're going to keep it inous or out house. I'm not talking about this case. I'm not talking about this case, I'm talking about generalalities. They don't send us individual bills they just work because they're salary employees. that's correct. so every matter hand in-house is covered by the lawyers and salaries. that's correct. just want to make sure that I'm clear. And I'm going to leave with this. We have to appreciate that everything that we do is in the public's eye and the public's perception. There is no secrets or anything like that when it comes to settlement, obviously we have stuff behind closed door to help you to get to this point. But the fact that we have this is public and in fact,

156the actual settlement agreement is online everyone can see. Approving something like this on what I deemed to be a very very very weak case is sending a terrible message to everybody that crossed paths with this district that if you shoe, bcps we're going to fold and you're going to get 275,000 in this case, or whatever matter, sue us, we'll fold. We don't want to defend our positions and spend other costs, this is asonine amount of money to pay about it. And I understand we want to get rid of this this, I want to get rid of this too. I want to get rid of this too, but you're sending a message, line up the lawsuits because they're coming. You have to have a backbone in this world at some times and you have to defend

157your position and I believe that we are right for the basis that we terminated. So I would caution all of my colleagues that, if we settle this, we're sending a message to everyone that crossed our paths in this county, that if we get sued, there is a high probability that we're going to fold because we don't want the additional expenses. Thank you. through chair, one thing that is very important for me to say, is whether or not a case is weak or strong, it's up to the judge and/or jury to decide what the outcome of the case is. So I want to be, just very clear about that, that you know, I know that people MAY assess a case as being weak or strong, but it is up to the judge and if it's a

158jury trial, it's up to the jury to decide who will win. I'm giving you my opinion who also is a litigation attorney and I assess these types of cases. And I note, we got judge robinson in this case and he's a fine judge I have all the confidence that he'll do a phenomenal job adjudicating if it's a bench trial or along the way. Soy appreciate those comments and I'm speaking obviously in any individual capacity, I'm not disclosing anything that you or anybody in your office, suggested this this. I adam cervera is familiar with the case and believe in my opinion that this is a weak case. MS. Bulman. thank you, chair. Thank you MR. Cervera, I brought the item to cancel the item to cancel, so I thank you for thinking that it's a weak

159case. I want to ask, are we defending any other lawsuits right now? so, do you mean internally? is broward county public schools defending any actively litigating and defending any lawsuits right now? so currently, there are litigation within the district both from plaintiff as well as the defendant perspective. okay, so, we are defending lawsuits when they come and when we feel that we have, defenses that we can exercise. I just, in this particular case and I would love to, I would love to have the faith that MR. Cervera has that we could win and have absolutely no repercussions, I don't have that level of confidence. And I think in this situation, this is a self-inflicted wound, this is something that we should have not been signing in the first place and we made a mistake. And

160I'll use we lightly because if we had known the true understanding of what was happening, I'm confident nat board would not have agreed to enter into this contract. So, that is why I support the settlement. I don't think it is a whole in one for sure thing that we would getaway. I think for sure, we can cancel this contract after year one. There is no question that we can getaway not paying the four additional years but I do think it's sticky. And I don't the stomach for paying for a bunch of additional fees. We cut our losses and internally and we already started doing this, and we're setting up systems and guard rails and all the board is on notice about asking the right questions and making sure shah we're fully advised in the promise.

161And also I do think that we have pushed back enough that people are more accountable now because of this issue, this is been the direction of the board to get better executive summaries. so moving forward, we don't have a problem like this again. But I would really not want to draw this out and then end up paying another 100,000 for opposing council's legal fees. And to the point that MR. Cervera, we MAY have some circumstances of doing it in-house because we're in a transition period in our legal department. It MAY not be that simple. And then if we have to incur fees on our side and pay fees on the other side, we're just blowing it up. So I think settle it and, don't let it happen again. Call question. all in favor of calling

162the question, say aye. aye. all opposed all in favor gg1 say aye. aye. all opposed a no. item passes with two descenting votes, MS. Thompson and MR. Cervera. can I get a motion and second on f f1. on a more positive note, I want to share that we had almost 7 million dollars brought into the district through variety of different grants, thank you DR. Zeman for clapping on that. The biggest was 3.5 from ct, or career technical education, 2.8 for civics in history 340,000 for teacher certifications through the state and also 115,000 dmrarz for the district threat assessment coordinator which is no nice to finally see a state that is funded instead of unfunded. and then there were some, local grants through walmart and different things that allowed our schools to have gardens and drones

163and music. So I just want to say to district staff to the teachers, to the administrators, everybody in the schools who does this extra work to bring in extra funds to our students can have our amaze ing opportunities and we're appreciative of that, almost 7 million dollars being brbrough to the district.T. Thank k yo thank you, m MS. Rurupert? thank you, mamam chair. In the same vein as my colleague, I want to say congratulations to our blanche ely high school from the great fund to go support workforce development. I'm very excited for those increasing opportunities which gives more students for opportunities. Thank you, thank you so much. thank you, any other board discussion? All in favor of f f1 say aye. aye. all opposed say no. Can I get a motion and a sektd on

164jj1. so moved. moved by DR. Zeman and seconded by MS. Hixon. Public comment? no comment. board member comment, I have MR. Zeman. thank you, chair. While in the process of filling of absolutely critical roles here in broward county, the chief operating officer, I'm very excited about the work that is being done by the staff about linking together all the pieces of the system, all the ork structure and government staffing and really creating a system of success for going forward but at the same time, we're in an interim role or task assigned role bring your favorite adjective and it would be useful to talk about these items so board gets a good idea about the current situation about chief operating officer and executive director of construction, just to make sure that we understand what we're voting

165on and to give the public, some believe that we continue to manage construction to the greatest of our ability. So chair, I wonder if you can poll the staff through the superintendent and see if we can get a short summary of change order number 7 at woodenrogers. DR. Hepburn? yes, absolutely. MR. Dorset, you're referring to jj1? that's the item we're on, yes. just to summarize, we are with wooden rogers, we're 90 percent complete with the work there. We're asking for an extension the change order to deal with some issues that were brought up termites and some water damage, we want to go ahead and clean thaup. We're on target to complete this pronl ekt for the school, so we, we just need a little indulgence on the change order so we can complete this project.

166thank you for instill some confidence in the management and leadership that is going on in this thing. Chair, last week, you moved me about your description about win. We had a discussion as a board and we talked about consolidation of saegle and wip. This contract just so my board members are aware, were written years ago, well before we thought about saegle and constituents that will be going there. Do we have any confidence that this contract is going to execute where all students are going there? Now that we have changes? yes. DR. Hepburn. yes, this project can be completed no later than JULY. let me ask it a slightly different question then, we have different students there, we have a different student load, and different staff load, there are changes on there. And what I heard

167this board say, is we want the facility the start of next year to be completed to broward standards for the new students and the new staff and the new operations at wooden. I'm not confident that this scope is really appropriate for this combined school. And again, we did this with DR. Holness, we had many many discussions, many of what I would like. About we're closing schools, we've got to be careful of the facility what we're doing. Do we need to do some additional work on defining what has to be there in order to meet broward standards by august 10th? Is this contract already perfect? Even though we had no idea that the staff at seagul were going to move in. yeah, we walked every faucet of this building and identified certain rooms and areas that

168needed some upgrades or beautifications and everything has been done and everything will be done before the school year starts. This is reflective in the facility teams will do within their budget. okay. I'm going to define risk here with you. I think what you're saying is na our ppo is going to do all the you grades that need to happen and not any outside help? correct. and our ppo is going to have na done by AUGUST 10ing? correct. MAY I ask in your report that is coming back to the board, that you include on the outside contract. yes, we can provide that. do you mind? uh-huh. I think that's important, the risk level is a risk level. Our ppo is taxed to do all kinds of things. I personally worry that we have another weather event,

169that we have fire, we have, you know, somebody drives a truck through, you know, a school on the weekend, we have a lot of catastrophe that happens. So I'm worried that ppo would do all of these things. But the board has been clear that they're broward county standards. It will not be less than for the students and the other others that we put there and the new staff from seagul na is transitioning there. I'm looking for the monthly reports for that. This work and ppo work is all going to be done by AUGUST 10ing. that is the plan. timeout, chair, I don't think we said, we want it done. We said we need this done. We are closing a school moving people and we committed to them that on AUGUST 10th, we will deliver county

170school facility. that's correct, DR. Zeman. thank you, that's all I have. I would like to just add, for me, it's important to highlight that the fashion ilts are suitable for our awa program. There is additional needs of the pregnant students as well as the mothers and parents at the facilities. So just is to emphasize the facilities. yes, we got a full scope not only from the principal but myself and DR. Wanza and a few staff members met onsite to see exactly what was needed. His staff meet out there, the staff that is going to do the work. We're talking about getting the building ready, configuring building 4 to a law for students can disability and to include ramps covered walk, that kind of thing. So we want to make sure that facility is ready to

171accept the students and the plan is is to make sure that that is done before school starts. thank you. and I plan to have a student roundtable from seagul. We did from the staff and as well as parents in our district staff was there for that. But I would invite, you know all send DR. Hepburn the date and time. I invite staff to join me. I just wanted to extend that invitation. Do we have any other board member discussion on item jj1? All right, all in favor say aye. aye. all opposed say no. Item passes unanimously. We will now go to our time certain. Can I have a motion and a motion on rr2. so moved. moved by DR. Zeman seconded by MS. Hixon. Public comment on rr2? I don't think there are recommendeding speaker

172but I don't know if you want rr2 and rr3 together? so moved. moved by DR. Zeman seconded by MS. Hixon. No public speakers on rr2 or rr3? no speakers? discussion? ing no board discussion? I do. go ahead MR. Zeman. ?Fm these are administrative items on the flow of funds. I appreciate the chief financial officer for many things but for cleaning these two up. I look forward to getting past these. Thank you very much. any other board discussion? All in favor, say aye. all opposed say no. Items pass unanimously. Do I need to recess to go to the leasing corporate. we will recess to go to the