School Board Workshop - Feb 17, 2026

001seeing no objections, I will -- special school board meeting. welcome to today's school board workshop. This workshop of the school board of broward county is now called to order. Do not block exit doors and all attendees must be seated except for media. If the fire alarm sounds, exit the room calmly and continue outside and remain until authority has given you okay to return. Board member rupert will now introduce her school to lead us in the "pledge of allegiance" to the flag. Do we know what school this is? Beacon? We're proud to hear from margate middle to lead us in the "pledge of allegiance" to the flag. please stand for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under GOD,

002indivisible with liberty and justice for all. please be seated. as we begin we reaffirm our vision 100 percent proficiency for all students. As which a-rated district, we support students to reach every potential. Our theme is achieve one broward. Our first item is final b O.C. Meeting fy16qi plus OCTOBER 2025. I now turn it over to staff for a presentation. good morning, I turn it over to MR. Omar shim and oversight committee for a presentation. thank you, and good morning. madam chair, board members, and DR. Hepburn, on john 15th, 2026, the bond oversight held its core meeting to discuss the report JANUARY 15th, 2026 which is included as an attachment. And just before I introduce the member of the committee that were able to make the workshop, I want today go over some achievement and lessons

003learned from the completion of the smart program. In MAY 2016, the district established the smart program that included general obligation bond and approximately $200 million totaling close to a billion dollars. Since then the district add add funding to the program and 1.7 billion. Out of that 1.7 billion the district has expended 1.5 billion, 88 percent and 147.7 million now remain on active projects on purchase orders or project balances. All general obligation bond funds have been expended and activity will be -- aouting capital funds allocated in the capital budget. They used to provide devices wiz surpass to achieve 3-1 student ratio to closer 1 to 1. We expand approximated the music program bringing back programs that have suffered through cuts through the great recession with better spaces and upgraded viment. We upgraded to a law students

004to allow access. The program also completed single point of project projects that enhanced the security of our schools. Many significant and renovation projects were delivered with the district completing 2 19 projects, that helped improve the conditions of the learning environment. The remaining 1 19 projects are being completed and on going capital program and many are close to be complete. A list of those projects along with the budget and projected completion dates are provided beginning on page 14 of the report. Page 41 also provides a list of projects that increase the scope beyond what was originally planned in the smart program as an add value to the learning environment. Now the smart program had significant setbacks with challenges to the budget and delays to project schedule. There were many lessons learned a few of them include,

005to ensure that projects are ready before launching a large-scale program a session readiness and aligning processes to accomplish program goals to manage budget and schedule risk up front in the program and build that into communications accountability and transparency in a transparent way. Working closely with regular story agents in the beginning of the program to reduce delays towards the end of the program. The bond oversight committee provided valuable feedback along the way. That utilized information florida tax watch to actively engage and stir the district towards the finish line. So with that h let me introduce to you steve wilbergewilliam tracy and lathy chrisnyer and also unable to make it is patel and tomas who is up in tallahassee. Thank you so much. good morning. our most resent committee meeting was held on JANUARY 15th, looking one

006quarterback into completion of the isn't that right bond expenditures. So as the smart program bond program ends, it's evidence that things did not go as planned. We talked about that through our meetings and presentations quite a bit. So the point that the emphasis has been what is wrong with the program and these issues have over shadowed the successes of the smart program. And one of the indicators of the successes is when you go to the schools and you meet the people that are teaching and presiding over the schools and they're very enthusiastic and supportive with the changes that they've made and it's reflected in the future of the students that are going to learn in the new state-of-the-art attractive facilities. And the second one is program improve safety. This was started before the, the marjory

007stoneman douglas tragedy. But you got that done and all schools are safer because of that. And finally, not finally, the next one is the fire alarm systems were installed in the schools that didn't have them. And tom, who is in tallahassee at the moment were saying that they're pleased that the schools have new fire alarm systems. And, in our meetings, not so evidence here, it's not a glamorous subject but the process of implementing these projects was stream lined. The last meeting, we had the consultant representative talk about how, a lot of the process is now automated and one of the process is anybody can pull up the status. And that's a tremendous thing, it helps with, you know, providing information when needed very quickly. A thing that came up late that really surprised me in

008its, and it was as good as the school board opportunity and compliance, those efforts have put 600 million dollars back into the community and not only that, they trained a whole group more than a group, it's hundreds of contractors on the way to get through the broward school board implementation process which is a benefit for anywhere. I work for a city and we have similar process sxz it's good to have a contractor that know how the things go and how long things take and what the process is, we're all going to benefit from that. And that in its own is a separate education program that you should be very proud of. And last on my list highlights, I guess is the program team showed adaptability. This is a huge effort and it doesn't turn on

009a dime, yet when with the community spoke, and said we are not happy with the stranhan classroom configuration, all of a sudden got quiet and everybody seems to be happy I'm sure there are some destrakt ors but that controversy went away and then the same thing happened to tt bus loop. People came to our meeting and the public does not really come to our bond oversight committees but these did and they were concerned with the conditions at the bus loop. That was also taken care of and we didn't hear anymore controversy. So kudos to this program that took community input and responded to it and was able to achieve a satisfactory outcome. So, that, I'm amazed at that. There is a lot of things that need to change direction to get that t.I'm going to

010ask if latha has anything else to add on this? no. Yeah, couple of things. Good morning p I want to talk start by saying it's pta's founder's day today, 129 years old. We're celebrating today and this week with founders day events all around. Yeah, a couple of things, I have to compliment the out reach. I have not seen so many positive things come out with videos with social media that has reached a lot of the community. So kudos to them on this. That was very useful as we communicated to parents to watch that and to know about their schools and about what was going on. Also, tax watch was invaluable, steve mentioned it, but I would like to commend their commitment. Bob was here at any meeting and any future endeavor of this kind, definitely

011recommend tax watch be involved because they're a neutral organization and they were prompted, their analysis helped us a lot. So I want to thank tax watch for their service. Lastly, music was mentioned but not all schools have music. So I would, urge the board to look into these schools that need it most. There are several, I don't have the names but, these are the schools that can really benefit from music and music program is not in every schools and that could be great if you can look at that. Thank you. good morning. Some of the take ays omomouou work on the bobo oversight cocommittee, this s that could be done to improve any future of large projects such as this. Item number 1 would be to have shovel-ready projects for the next program. One of

012the, one of the delays in the smart program was the fact that once, the bond was approved, they had to go and get into design, and then hire definers, put out contracts to bid but something something at least an idea of what you want to do, and sort of have a wish list that would really speed up the process. The other thing was to verify when the program started, there were certain contractors that are only a handful available for a public type of scope. And when they started 60-70 projects at the same time trying to have two or three contractors all working each on 25 projects or so was, a bit much. The, the continuous streamlining, the project processes and continue with changes required late in the construction phases. One of the things that we

013discussed is many of these projects that are still not complete are primarily, have to do with fire safety, fire sprinkler systems, fire alarm systems where the design was approved but then when they had their final inspections, the inspector wanted to add devices or sprinkler heads in certain areas which caused extensive delays. And then the other thing, is, some of the meetings that we had at some of the schools, we had very enthusiastic students and administrators and one of the most successful things seemed to be, we were very impressed with boyd anderson and the out reach that they had. Students that went through the programs, ended up getting into successful careers coming back and sort of acting as mentors and cheerleaders for the programs that the public schools have is I think an important resource that

014the school board can work on. Having, you know, perhaps middle school students going into the feeder elementary schools to let them know what opportunities were in the middle schools, have is the higher schools to have them, you know, let them know, this is what your local high school has to offer for you. It's one thing for your parents to tell you something, but for a peer to say, this is the experience I had. I think that would be much more affective. And then for project scheduling, once the project kicks off, as steve mentioned, the automation of the process is really helped bring things well into control, I mean, the way this project has run the past several years has really improved from the beginings. There are ways of staging projects so you have a consistent

015workload for all at various contractors and being able to tell particular contractors or sub contractors see what their work schedule is scheduling the various programs so that you're not having one particular contract for all of a sudden slammed with the dozen projects and they don't have is the staff, the resources to handle it. If it's staged at any one time they're on three projects not 15 would be a big a big help. And that's pretty much what our recommendations are. Anything to add steve? omar where is rafiki, he's a boyd anderson grad and he works for the school district. So that's one positive and he has helped us all along. Is he in the building? I want to congratulate rafiki also, one of our own public school graduates. yeah, thank you very much for saying

016that. And I'll just say also, to thank all the staff throughout the district and our consultants, many of which worked hard throughout the program to provide information to the board and to the public and to the committee and it was a long hall. So, thank you very much for that. And with that we'll take board questions. thank you, we'll go to public comment. DR. Nathalie lynch-walsh. Speaker: good morning, DR. Nathalie lynch-walsh plantation florida. I'm going to apologize to the oversight committee because my take on this sounds different. I was on ot task force until 2011 until your superintendent commit approximated misconduct to remove me from all advisories. It's 2015, there has not been a -- and then superintendent decides let's not bother with safety, we're going to put out for a bond and we want

017one thing on the ballot and we're going to put it on the ballot for 2014. So there was a needs assessment that was rushed. The company that did it was coming from houston independent school district where they took an extra year after it was completed, after the needs assessment was completed to come up and come wup a long-range facility master plan where you plan out the projects based on programmatic needs, here they got it done and three months later, I spent 26 hours in workshops summer of 2014, only MS. Rupert was with me where they put the cart before the horse, that was the comment out of her mouth where she tried to put the brakes but no. Not even a final report. And in my experience, garbage in, garbage out, there was no coming

018back from that. The failure was not at the lower level, it isn't because we can't hire people that can't know how to hire projects, there was no master plan, no destructive test iting, northeast and stranhan are not done. The bond funds are gone but the projects live on. I don't think the cheaper and faster cafeteria is done at stranhan. Northeast is having a lot of issues. Poor planning is what lead to changes, not people trying to do things. They're going to try to rebuild buildings at stranhan that were just renovated. And is remember the head of tax watch criticizing an msd students who found the projects and attached a 19-year-old kid in writing to support the superintendent at the time. So tax watch was not awake for the first few years. Plantation just got its

019media center done and I challenge you to find whether that media center compares to a-specks. I'm not sure they changed out the ceiling tile. So, in the future, and nobody wants -- there is not going to be another bond so every plan needs to use existing funds. That's the reality check. Thank you. thank you. Board member discussion? MS. Hixon? thank you. And I just, thank you for all the hard work you've done over these years. This has not been an easy task by any means. I just, I appreciate you giving some of the updates about the funding because often what we hear is that, the money wasn't spend. And I think you made it very clear that the money has been spent, the original money from the bond, money has been spent through capital funding

020and we're almost at the end of the project for smart for the smart bond. I remember when all of this happened, I remember coming with the schools with the bands and telling everybody how great it was going to be. And I agree with you, sitting in the back end as a school board member as opposed to just a teacher and a voter when it first came out. There were a lot of things that were not done properly. And I appreciate that you've given us some of these recommendations because I do hope that we're able at some point go back out for another bond because it is the only way we're going to get what we need to get done. But the public doesn't trust us so we need to be able to share factual information,

021things were done. Things were done wrong. Things were done very very slow, took way too long to get it done but I think, again it's very important for the public to know that the money was spent and then some. and I think that's smart. I smiled when with you talked about out reach and sharing, I was the magnet coordinator when at south broward when we were under enrolled and they did all the talking and we ended up with a wait list for about two years after that. I agree with you, we've asked to have our videos on social media with stud epts saying how great the programs are. I know we started that, DR. Hepburn, I hope we can continue and add more of those because students is what sell our programs because they're excited

022and they are doing great things. So thank you for giving that, that recommendation. And for all of them. I think it's important to look back and see how we can do the next one better because I think we would all agree, we hope at some point that we're able to go back and ask for another bond. So thank you. thank you. MR. Rodes? yeah, I had some comments that I wanted to make in response to what the committee had reported. And it has to do with some of the future audit work that we intend to have done through our capital audits that we do. There was a comment that MAY or MAY not be true. And that is that inspectors are identifying more dwiesz that need to be in place. And the inspect or main

023role is -- so if they're going out and asking for more than on approved drawings as approved by about the chief fire official and/or the chief official, depending on the system, there could be a problem that is costing the district money unnecessarily or that is causing the district to not be in compliance with the initial plans put together by. Chief official and building official. We want to look at some of those things to see whether or not that's a -- by being more comprehensive up front or if there is an opportunity to identify, the district is not free and clear of having overzealous inspectors historically. You I know some of those inspect or did find some things that need in fact need to be addressed. That's one thing. The other thing, I heard in many

024meetings in my time here, that there were many carve outs, and there are possible duplicate costs that could be associated with carve outs and also to question ethicacy of doing carve out to speed up the program in the process. So what we would want to look from audit, was it affective, did it do what it intend today do and did it save the district money and did it stop the district from paying more money than it should have? Those are things that we're looking at. There is a component that they always look, in this case, the aecom contract just to make sure that with a select clauses in the contract that they're complying with those. But I've asked them to take on some additional duties for the same costs and they've agreed to do that

025because they're interested in finding that out as well. That will be a great help to great committee to hear some sft rest of the story. In some cases, it MAY be something that reflect it was done the most correct and most efficient way. I hope that we can bring these reports to the future and provide some additional information with regard to any future bond and any future kind of, look back at what it is that was done correctly or that could be done better. thank you, we look forward to that. DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair, MR. Rhodes, I'm glad you mentioned that because that's one of the things that I have written down that had a red flag for me. So I would certainly like if you're team could get back to us with

026that. So I'm glad you brought that up as well. I don't understand, at the end of the project, at the end of the project, then we have these device that's need to be added or sprinkler heads or whatever it MAY be, why didn't we have these in place? Or why didn't they indicate these were needed? Why it did it happen at the end of the project, I would like to get more information on that? that's what we intend to do to bring that information, so a real look rather than, again a narrative or reality can be deciphered by the board. right, and that caused delays which I assume is costly for the district. that and a lot of those change orders that I was looking at the same time that I was adding this into

027my general capital assessment. It didn't just add, days it added money. So both of these are problematic, if they would have been, properly designed from the beginning, which calls into question and I'm not pointing the finger at anybody, it calls into question whether the designers omitted something in which they have an opportunity to call back or improve the process to make sure that does not happen. right. I saw in page 104 from the 44 delays, a lot of these, majority had to do with design delays. So, I'm just hoping that, you know, should we go back out, to, to the public for a bond or funding, that we can function for efficiently in the future because I don't understand why we have that many design delays as shown on page 105. And also the committee

028mentioned that a handful of contractors were available for specific scope of work. I think that's concerning as well. And they also mentioned different contractors, so it just, the recommendations are very valid. And is do hope that in the future, that we can function a lot more efficient so we don't waste money. It seems there are more opportunities to be efficient. So MR. Rhodeses MR. Magli, I did look forward to the team. Also shout out MR. James griffin, because you know, he was, honored by the city of lauderdale lakes a week ago for black history month as far as black excellence in the city of lauderdale lakes. So MR. James griffin, if you're listening, you did an awesome job. Kudos. thank you. DR. Zeman. thank you, chair. Thank you, by the way for your service and

029all the members of the board, omar. It's alalysysgood to get a a pulse e chececk every quarr r about hohow wewe'rdodoing. To the superintendent, how would you propose that we continue this kind of puresity of reporting back to the board. They projects often take years. So a quarter report as we shift from smart to capital improvement project, the sip as we go from smart to sip. How often is the board scheduled right now to get some kind of construction report, similar to what we got from. Board committee? that's emerging. I would think it would be prudent to a committee that can provide external expertise and feedback instead of just that, just totally coming from staff. I think that's a lot of value with individuals who have a certain levels of expertise that can provide some

030feedbacks. So we can work with MR. Shim and the team to figure out how we design the make up or if any of these young men and young ladies continue to serve in a different capacity in a different committee, it is valuable. I'm going to get david out of retirement. It means you don't get paid. As your understanding, we'll get quarterly reports? yes. But to get this at this magnitude of feedback from people who don't want work for us is valuable also. I appreciate that. And again to the superintendent, I know we're going to have some discussions about the orgtses around facilities, not on the financial side omar but on the actual construction, construction oversight program management procurement and that side. When do you think we'll have the new players and organization firmly in place?

031we were having the discussion around the construction management, next steps based on board feedback before we put that solicitation out. And then we are working on bringing back the oarchart in APRIL so there will be another discussion for various divisions and departments as well. And as our panelist have commuted to, there are lessons learned from this. I don't want to, allow a comment to get going here without providing a little bit of clarity. 800 million dollars is not a big bond. the army corps of engineers constructed one billion dollars in government organization. The navy version is going to do 19 billion dollars. Los angeles unified just finished a nine billion dollars bond. It's the defacto method business which the public pays now for construction not just maintenance but for construction. In less than one billion

032is pretty small. So just a cup of others, north carolina had a district with 4 billion. Dallas did 6. San own 1.3. Portland a very small 1.8 billion dollars bond. Last year there was 100 billion dollars in school construction bonds often in magnitude less than one billion dollars. Texas last year alone did 38 billion dollars. We need a bond in broward county otherwise we will not offer the facility. I'm anxious to think about the new leaders and new organization and you know, some explicit recognition of what went well and what needs to go better. But the end goal we still need to get back to our strategic goal. If we want to be a great district, we have to figure out how to be better than average. We need to build things that our kids

033need. I praise that they are better schools from a construction and maintenance stand point so we can continue to delight our clients. Last point so we put a nice seal on this, a positive spin, not a positive spin but a positive fact. In DECEMBER, a local polling group went out and polled just over 1,000 people and asked them about broward county public schools. The number one choice of broward county is public school, over 3 times the number of people that said they would like to send to charter schools. We are the number one choice for schools and we know we can get better and we strife to get better. So there is a lot of opportunity here. I don't want to think that this bond is is the biggest thing in the world. It's a

034sizable amount of money it turned out about 1.7 billion dollars was executed as a smart project and we no doubt have projects that will wrap up going forward. And I know we'll learn from this. But given that we're the number one and lessons to learn and we can go back and get a bond to do more because facilities do better in education, air conditioning has to work, heaters and windows have to open and close. And the better the facilities the more we're going to have people look at us. And if they look at us, they often choose us. I'm looking forward to the new leadership, I'm looking forward to the new organization and then I'm going to be looking for what are we doing differently in the nuts and bolts to make sure that we

035don't have changeover and TIAs to bog down the system. This is great, I appreciate your service to broward county. I'm tickled the superintendent want to reconfirm? Some experts. As we go forward buzz my expectation is we're going to go back to broward county at some point if not in 2028, then in 2030, then we're going to do what other districts have done which is ask our voters to give us more money to go back. And I look forward to building with more confidence in the community. Thank you so much. thank you. MS. Alhadeff. thank you, thank you for the report. I was wondering or hoping, I don't know whether in the future, I would like to see one-page slide or even DR. Hepburn a report on the 800 million dollars, right, that's what, the taxpayers

036gave us and I'm a visual learner. So a visual would help. And then the 900 million dollars how much projects did that fund? Where did that money come from? But have that as a one-pager. I think it's really important to clearly understand the funding aspect of the projects. And, but also to have like, I mean this is 505 document. I think it would be better, DR. Hepburn to have for our community like maybe a tighter, you know, 5-page document, you know, to really just or even two pages but something where it could be overall snap shot just to clear or give our taxpayers our community, our parents, a better idea of how this money was spent. And then you can have a qr code or link to this 505 document if they want to get

037more detail and understanding. I have a question on page 13, it saids that there was a 10.3 million dollars savings which I kind, I don't really, I feel like that's not really trues. You know, with technology. So DR. Hepburn, could you clear that up? can you give me a page number again. 13. it talks about the technology being complete and then in green, it says that the project was completed with with the saving of 10.3 million to the district. go ahead, MR. Shim. yes, through the chair. I believe you're talking about page 7 of the actual report and pdf, just for reference. So is the technology devices were actually purchased at a much lower cost than what they originally thought. And they didn't spend all the money so ten million dollars was returned from the

038technology budget at the end. So whether or not that is considered saving or not, that's how the program occured. okay. But, I guess, my understanding now, we're going one to one, we spent more money, I don't know if there would be some kind of footnote to explain that to the every day person. i did also as my colleagues did have questions regarding the fire alarms and my first question is, what changed or who changed that came in here and then in the back end, started saying, add this, sprinkler, add this fire alarm pole station. so I'll let MR. Shim and MR. Dorset add. And this is just from the input or feedback received while just work withing capital program. The delays as far as the project, you have some project for multiple-years, specific codes were

039different back then versus what they are now and some of the assumeses gathered is due to changes in requirements within the building, inspection, would result in insuring that the requirements are met as of today not based on the design that happened three or four five years ago, so MR. Shim or MR. Dorset if you have anything to add. And MS. Cully also. good evening, mark dorset desk assigned chief facility officer, usually to MR. Rhodes's point when the inspect ors go out and they site a device, we talked about that in the past as being a separate project going forward to eliminate these kind of situatesings, and that's what we're look to go do now to set that aside as a new project if you will because if wasn't part of the original scope of work,

040I've met with the fire official and sonya coali and other team members that's what was added. okay, so who are the inspect ors? bcps inspector? we use cap inspector as well as some sf our own inspector. what is cap? sonya, can you? yeah, it's cap government, I'm not sure of the name but it's our fire inspectors. okay, and how long has cap government doing these inspections? I'm not sure how long they've been work with the fire department over couple of years, I'm sure, they've been with the fire official. okay, does our chief of fire have anything to do the inspector? Or they're just separate doing their own work? no, he oversees the inspectors. aha, so this is making more sense. Because, rewind history, we had a previous chief of fire, right. They opine probably on

041these projects in the beginning. And then we have change of fire official person. So I think that's where some of this change has occured. Because, I remember in agenda items, they were actually pulling out the fire alarms and now, they're pulling them out and now years later, they're putting them back in. So that's why I asked at the beginning of the question, who and what changed? There is a time line that we're really not capturing, MS. Rupert sees it and so, I think that's really important and maybe that's auditing, that is MR. Rhodes, you guys are going to look into. Just to understand this. we all safety. We all want, I remember I was saying, why are they pulling these out? It seems like it's counter intuitive we should be putting them in. And now

042they're putting them in. We just need to understand this better. Because if the original but then, to your point, DR. Hepburn if there was a change in code, I would like to also understand what year that change of code happened. I guess what I'm asking, is maybe we can have a bet per timeline of all of these pieces to, because you need to understand the past to be able to rectify solutions moving forward. The other thing, I'm going to add high level, that we need to address fire drills and pausing and the fire alarms going on and pausing, and not just running into hallways and running outside to, you know, potential be in the direct line of fire of a shooter. It's something that I brought up at the board years ago. I know MS.

043Chair leonardi opined too. But I don't think it's really been addressed and it real knee needs to be. Our fire official put out guidelines as far as pausing and waiting and before, exiting in a drill. But I don't know really if our reachers are really trained on how to do this. So I, I would like DR. Hepburn, if we can get more training, for our teachers also. If we could I know we go to napa code, this is our decision as far as evacuating. Maybe we decide, unless we see a fire, that we don't evacuate. So there are things that we can do, instead of saying, no it's code, we're not going to do anything. I would appreciate if we could dig in more on that. On page 90 at marjory stoneman douglas high school,

044there is something in regards to the portables. I know I brought this up earlier, they're deciding to keep the portables still on campus until the next phase and then it says portal construction is not into this. We don't need to get into it now, but I would like to understand what is going on with the portables. I know once they're removed, there is funding to put tennis courts in that space. I want to understand the timeline and when the tennis courts are going to be put into place. At the end of the day, it's affecting students that cannot play on those tennis courts. As far as the social media, I think we need to do a lot more grass roots testimonyials coming from parents. We need to connect with the PTOs and pt As and

045get parents more engaged on these, what they are seeing within the projects. I think it's vitally important that parents are aware especially all the safety measures that we put in place as we're trying to bring more students back to our schools, they don't know all at layers of safety protect that we have school. They are look to go send their kids to private schools because they're not aware that of the protections that we put since 2018. We need to talk about it because if they don't talk about it, they're talking about it in the PTOs or in the tennis courts but we need to speak about it. That's crucial as far as trying to bring students back to schools but even not, keeping our students in our schools that we have now because they're scared

046but it's up to us, DR. Hepburn to make sure we're having the conversation and -- because we're doing great things, we need to let them know and talk about it more. The other thing is I think within the security projects, we need to keep looking for funding pathways like our grants and also having passive income coming in. Like ticketing. There is way to see ticket people that whether they're speeding through our school zones or passing when with the arm is down and those are passive and calm and we can bring back millions of dollars to broward public schools. I was just in yesterday, lee county public schools speak to go 100 school resource officers and I talked to the superintendent. And they brought back, last year a million dolllls to t tirir schohools. Gus s

047whwhatit's going directly into their safety and security. Thank you. thank you. MS. Rupert. Any other board discussion? MR. Cervera. thank you, chair. I appreciate the presentation, although, I do echo MS. Alhadeff's comments about perhaps getting something more succinct and easier to read. I cannot imagine too many people are going to read 505 pages of this report. And that's a good segway into one of the crucial issues that we as a district have to face on this whole smart bond issue. Accountability and transparency. We had multiple multiple MISS Steps along the way, since 2014, when this 800 million dollars smart bond was passed which is now ballooned to 1.7 billion dollars. Which I'm hearings of this morning, 1.5 billion has been spent as of today. It's also my understanding that as of the end of last

048year, that 100 projects still remain pending. Or if my math is correct, one-third of the work remains outstanding. In 2026 on a smart bond that was initially passed in 2014. I heard DR. Zeman's comments about portland and north carolina and san antonio and texas and with all due respect with the cities and great districts in other parts of the country, I'm concerned about one thing and one thing only and that's broward county. We can look to outside sources and places outside of our state. But at the end of the day, my job on this board is to do what is right for the citizens and taxpayers of broward county. And while I agree 100 percent that we need bonds moving forward, in the future to make sure that we have to top notch facilities to

049make sure that when our parents our parents and kid drive by the schools, they're proud of their schools. To make sure that our kids are kept safe when they walk through the school house gates. We need those dollars. 100 percent. And I don't think anybody up here, is debathe that. But we need to take a hard look in the mirror as a district and as a board to answer the very tough questions and essentially what are we doing collectively to restore the public trust? Because as we heard from the speaker, if were to go to the street right now and ask ten people who are in the know about the smart bond, you would get ten negative comments in response. And that's unfortunately, whether it's next year or the year after, that we don't do

050some serious work as a district-level and as a board level to restore trust and confidence, with the public, there is no chance we're voting for this again. And we have to look at some of the things that we are doing as a district, to ensure transparency and accountability. Whether it's proper lehmanaging referendum dollars that were meant for our teachers which we didn't do a good job of. Or making sure that we don't understand into unnecessary lease sxz then settle for hundreds of thousands, very foolishly in my opinion. Whether it's ensuring that we have a flawless process for our construction oversight programs which accidentally, we didn't do so well either. So while I appreciate conversations like this and 505 page reports, I think the focus also has to include what are we doing as a district,

051what are we doing as a board to restore trust? What can we show the public that we've done lately, that they can trust us? Because, I read the headlines, I watch the news, I talk to people in my district. I talk to people in the entire county and right noi, they do not trust us. And we can show them all the great facility and all the great things that this smart bond program ultimately ended up with. But until we can come out and say, look at all the things that came out lately. And here's a list of reasons that you can trust us with billions of dollars, I'm not a gambling man but if pifs, I would put a lot of money that this would not pass. So I'm glad we're being kept up to

052speed with all of this and I'm glad we're moving forward. I was not too happy to see that apparently on page 18 of the presentation with all of these schools and the budgetary breaks it would appear that everything is way over budget for the the remaipd per, these six schools that were part of this, part of the presentation. But we really have to take a hard look in the mirror as a district and board to figure out what are we doing to regain public trust and not just for the smart bond programs but everything in general? What are we doing? If we don't start to take some decisive action, I know what the answer is going to be. It's going to be an emphatic no. And if we look at things of late, I think

053we'll support that position. In MS. Thompson's district, there was a 260 million dollars bond that was on a ballot and that didn't do so well. So, I would urge my colleagues and I would urge the district as a whole, we need to start thinking about what we are doing, what positive steps are we taking collectively to restore public trust? Because right now, it ain't there. Thank you. MS. Rupert? thank you. One sec, sorry. Okay. Thanks. Just very happy to hear from DR. Hepburn na you will be having a committee or a task force part of this moving forward, it's extremely important and I would like to share what I believe would need to be part of that. When tax watch, sorry. Kind of up their game and the, the position that they shared with us,

054the report, it became better and bert, the longer we went out there. There was push back from staff feeling like they were, they were being targeted in such a way. That's transparency, you know, that's accountability. I would hope that this would include findings, recommendations, management response and follow-up that was incredibly important as a board member, as a taxpayer to see the recommendation as management response and then the follow-ups. I, wholeheartedly agree with my colleague MS. Alhadeff about the fire alarm, they were in, they were out, there was no explanation for that. And I would recommend that we need to audit those fire alarms if we're not already doing that, that needs to be the process of it to make sure where we are with code because, the code, the code code is a code, it

055does not matter who is is the fire officials, it should be the one thing that stays the same. Is the code unless the code changes, it does not matter who is in the seat unless they're following policy and law. That's what I have here. But one more last thing and I hate to ask it because I don't know the answer, these books, only go up to through 2027 and I have a quite a few projects that are at the end of the page, and I'm wondering, are they flipping over to 2028? As you know, I had to ask that question. So MR. Superintendent, could you ask for staff answer. MR. Shim? Can you be specific what page you're looking at? of course. This actually is is not even my mine, it's virginia shoeman elementary school

056but they go to the very far right of the page at q42027. page number? I'm sorry. This one is 268 and I flipped it open because I closed book where mine was but it's an example which goes through quarter 4 which bears the question, what about 2028? go ahead, MR. Shim. And before I -- . yes. On, on page 14 through page 16, there is sort of a list of the projects that are going to be in the program. And there are completion dates on the far right and if you look on page 16, it shows that virginia shoeman young is slated to complete in 2026. And you can see the rest of the completion dates that are projected for the remaining projects, I don't know if that answers your questions. so what you're saying

057to me, is nothing is going into 2028? Just because the page ends? I'm worried about an ending of a page. I've seen this happen before when you think it's done and it's not. So I, I don't know actually. MS. Carpenter? If you can help us out. thank you. Ashley carpenter with ash lin raw lins. So the projects, omar mentioned. Twos ditch things going on here. In those pages it mentions the completion date which as you know, it's not the end, end, but it is when the contractor has done their contract work and completed that successful and it's been signed off by the building department. So there are a few projects, really at the top of page 14. Because they are just starting design or they're still in design and the construction for those most likely

058is going to go into 2028. When you look at the spotlight pages, you also see the, the close out time. So remember once the substantial happens, they're under contract for a full year, they do a warrant see walk through. So the timelines rail' show that whole year after substantial smraoetion as well. So -- completion as well. So you will see a lot of them that go into the close out phase. okay, so for me, right off the bat I've got, two, in the top of that page 14, charles drew elementary, atlantic tech high school and college, those go into 2028. One is charles drew goes all the way to SEPTEMBER 2028 and a tc is JANUARY 2028. So I can understand where the page ends and we're getting there, but, it's just alarming because charles

059drew at this point, which is h-vac improvement, it looks like we're just ging the design part of it. Or predesign, I guess it's what it is for h vac so that is going to take a whole lot of time and it will not be done until what? Third quarter. Okay. i think that needs to be, I know, it was up here in the front, they're rolling into it capital program, but there should be something said, oops he's not here. I was going to say to my colleague MR. Cervera, about transparency that wasn't very transparent even though we saw it t I can see it again when you called mia tension. But you know, I kind of base the majority of my tenure in trying to ask the questions that the public has. And to be

060able to make sure that they understand that, they're able to look at and say oh my goodness, this goes to the end of the page which I heard. So if there is something that we can clarify that moving forward, I think that would be appreciative and if there are literally only two, that are going to run 2028 or a few, then let us make sure that that is clearly understood by the public and even more than understood, but I would that information going to the current families of the schools, let him know. And our principals do a great job and garth does a great job. I really want to say that in the out, the front part of that. However, ipg it's more importantly, because some of my schools, it's been a long hall since

0612014 and we were waiting on roof and this and now on h vacs. So I think it's incredibly important to be able to let people know where the -- where the light is going to come into this whole process. and let them know that we're moving towards that improvement for their schools and for their kids and families and our employees that have to work in these buildings. So I think, I think somehow, MR. Superintendent, na needs to be clearly understood and let's just say, let them see the light and you know, that this is happening this is what is going to happen and this is realistically what time frame we're looking at. So thank you. thank you, MS. Bulman. thank you. Something that I was very jeered to observe on friday was going to south

062broward high school, you can see the impact of this program there. It took time, it took a lost change orders but there is functioning much better auditorium, practical, the facility are being paint approximated -- painted right now. And to get people in the door, you have to have high-quality pass ilts. That looks like a high quality high school that we're in. Paint and that's equitable across the board. And to the point of public trust, I agree that we need to be investing in doing everything that we can with transparency and public trust. But I take a different a little different view than my colleague because the items mentioned as problematic have been addressed by the board quickly and I think that we've collectively being on the same page to take action to make sure that

063whatever problem that we're facing is dealt quickly. I'm actually very happy to be serving with this board because everyone is on the same page that we do need to have public trust and we need to be transparent. I appreciate everybody the steps that everybody has taken to do that. I have a little bit more faith that if we continue moving in the direction, we're holding everyone accountable in termds of procurement and fq that going to bring forward soon. Is under the guidance of the board different than last year. And if we can keep staying on that path that we will have public trust and we'll be able to do a bond program sooner than later but that takes the collective interest of the board which has been demonstrated and one other thing, is is the

064people that are sitting here today, are are not the same people that started the program in 2014, I think we learned a lot of lessons from that. She wasn't, you know, like leading the program. I was thinking more about them administration. And so, you know, we'll take those lessons and have a totally different approach in the future when we have the opportunity to do that. But, you know, there are definitely some really great things that happened through this program and I think we need to focus on that and I'm very proud to see both the two, of the foururigigschoolss looking azazg g so thank you. thank you. Any other board member before I give my comments? MS. Alhadeff? no, I just would like the board to weigh in on the two comments, I made, one

065is having like a high level document to communicate out to the public about this? any objection to that? Seeing none. thank you. And my second comment, DR. Hepburn, I believe we need to have a long term communication/marketing plan one for the referendum and one for future bond. As leaders of this district, we need to be positive and we need to all be on the same page and communicate and row in the same direction. thank you for that. And I completely agree with you in terms of way we communicate and conduct ourselves and we're talking about these things. A huge part of transparency is acknowledging and something that this district lacked for a long time that we've seen great improvement is acknowledging problems, and then, proposing solutions. So you know, as part of that plan, making

066sure that we communicate ways that we're fixing things. I think publicly and publicly, I don't see how we go for another bond without showing massive transportations in the way that we do, our building department and facilities and things like that. So I think we have to be clear on that. yes, MS. Alhadeff. DR. Hepburn, can you speak to?A as far as? as far as having a plan. absolutely. So the team is building a tool kit within the parameters. A lot has been reduced to our ability to image indicate and not what you're probably used to years ago where we can actually market. But we're developing a tool kit. thank you. The other and I, do take issue with the complaint that that is a 500 page document, if we didn't present all of this, we

067would be accused of trying to hide information. So I appreciate that we have to put this information out there. I do agree with the sentiments discussed today. I think back to a student workshop that we need to speak to people like, you know, they're human beings and the way that we speak in a day-to-day basis so getting rid of jargon. We have to present graphic and visuals that tell people what is going on. We hear a lost complaints, every time, it's budget season that none of the public is here to speak. And that's because it's not an engaging digestble process. Digestable process. And the way we communicate with our community to do that in a very plain language way is very important. And I believe multiple colleagues today, mentioned, you know, centering students in those

068communications. And then I wanted to go back to or highlight the piece of the inspect ors, I'm glad na was raised multiple times. I mentioned this publicly and privately, I believe I see an e mail to our co o, identifying our inspections. And inspect or says, no we need new devices. Is know that code is changing and that was what which heard, I heard that present some challenges but other counties don't have those same issues. So ipg to the extent, well not to the extent, we need to fix that, that needs to be fixed. The coo was made aware of that months ago. So I look forward to hearing there is a serious change in the ways we do that. MS. Hixon? thank you, just to MS. Alhadeff's point. I understand there is a tool

069kit, but I don't think you're hearing what we're saying, that there needs to be small bits of information parent and student center instead of us just sending out to words to people, isn't going to do it. We need the short clip that are students showing how the referendum, that's education right? Students how the referendum money helped them or showing teachers how that helped or different pieces of security, having parents say how much they appreciate the security or the mental health. That still falls under education, but nobody is reading our bullet points. We need to be making videos and reaching them where they are. I'm a facebook person but i know that most people aren't. And I don't do instagram because that's not my generation, but that's where the children are. I think it's important that's

070the biggest piece of the tool kit that we have because I've asked for that a number of times. It has to be continual, it was suppose to be weekly or monthly, and I know we get busy, binge that's the only way we're going to get message out to the public is meeting where they see that information and I don't think that we're doing that to the best of our ability so thanks. any other board discussion, DR. Zeman. there are strict rules for advocating for voters to approve things and I respect that. But I also respect the fact that this board gets attention. Debbie and I, MS. Hixon and I can allocate some time to talk to people about the value of the referendum. It's the only way, really gift programs that come with a facility

071tail to them. It's nice to say, oh we're going to have a -- but a lot of this stuff with ai requires lab and significant equipment. It involves computation al equipment and electrical being school based that we have not thought about. But it's a provocative way to think about how these go. So I think MR. Superintendent, while we're not allowed to say to tell people how to vote. We could spend a night a week between now and the referendum talk to go 20-40-100 people at a time and people listen to us. We do have opportunities to go to every roadery club and just remind them, our factual basis what these things can put together. I also think it's mindful to think a little bit about how we define as a board what we're doing. And

072is keep thinking about winning the hearts and minds of students and parents. Like how do we use business principals and all the other principals we have to win over the hearts and minds? How do we conduct ourselves? How do we debate things and win or move on. How do we determine that the super goal is really awesome. Great that means broward schools builds broward county, it should be inspiring for anyone that serves the board here. So if we focus on winning the hearts and minds of our clients that would be great. I'm always the data guy so I've got to point out that our superintendent is plus 10 on the net perception scale in broward county. So 10 percent of people thinks he walks on water. And our board is net zero. So we've got

073some work to do to try to contribute to the hearts and minds if we're going to catch up to the superintendent on ratings. Even before nora got here, public schools are three times more popular than charter schools and charter schools have been around for 25 years. So the fact that we are still the number one choice in broward -- we need to double done and make it better and better. Thanks chair. thank you, MS. Alhadeff. thank you. Is do agree with DR. Zeman in regards to having community conversation we can do it by district. And I think what you do is you bring in all the parts of referendum, bring in security, bring in students to talk about mental health, bring in mental health professionals and teachers and so I think, it's a great idea

074where we're not only putting things down in paper but we're actually inter accounting with our paerpts and our community members. MR. Cervera? thank you, chair. Just to address some of the prior comments and make sure that my position was clear. Excuse me, first and for most to the committee, I do appreciate the report and I do appreciate the amount of detail that went into this and by no means I am suggesting that you should have not given a report with this much substance as possible. This is mirroring MS. Alhadeff that the average person is not going to sit down and read 500 pages and if we have a qr code that would be easier to digest. But giving the public option if they want to read a one page or or 500 is what is

075important. I am looking forward when it's ultimately completed and distributed. And I just in chair in closing, I want to address this sort of theme about the board and it taking decisive and quick action to correct the missteps. And I agree that some in inspanses that's what the board has done. I did site some things that were a misstep in fact, and to the board's credit, we did take action to fix it. In one of those we settled for an uncomfortable amount of money. But here's the thought, rather than fixing mistakes, how about we just stop tt screw ups? Right? Because in any line of work, professionally, if I make a bunch of MISS Steps, guess what is going to happen? My clients are not going to retain me anymore. So I appreciate the fact

076that we got efficient in mop up duty, if you will. But let's stop dropping the ball to begin with. Let's stop having every piece of media coverage that we seem to be getting as of late, another screw up by bcps and then we've got to come back and figure out a way to fix it. So rather than being good at fixing mistakes, let's stop the screw ups from the get go. Just food for thought. Thank you. thank you. Any other board member discussion? Go ahead MS. Bulman. landyn can go. go ead. I just wanted weigh n I agree with MS. Alhadeff and MS. Hixon about the social media, first of all the meetings, I think that's amazing, I think that's a great idea and then the social media driven by students and parents. I love

077what the schools are doing independently on instagram and stuff when I look at it. Those are really engaging and people are taking the time to enjoy them. If we can do something similar to support and promote these other items, I think that's a really good idea. Coming from students and parents, is going to probably engage a greater audience. So excellent idea. I'm sorry landyn. hi, that's okay. We're not in our normal spot. I want to provide an alternative view. In NOVEMBER 2026, we'll have thousands bcps first time voters. That's 9,000 opportunities for people who just left our system who just felt the impact of our referendum, money whether that be gob or the, I don't know what we kault other one. referendum. thank you. They're all referendum. But those are 9,000 students who understand what

078this is. And I think and we talk about this a lot. We can do meetings all we want. The core population of the county is is not coming to those. Where we get unfortunately some of the old faces and same ol' perspective which are good but we need to expand that, right. So when we get these students who have resent see biased, we can capture them right there. That's number one. number two, I think we really focus on grass roots organizing when it comes to this. You know, for those of you who have all run to be here, you know that you place people who are from the community, at their polling sites, right? So if jae kier are going to go, where my neighbors are. And I think, we obviously like DR. Zeman said,

079staying in the lane of what is advocating and what is telling people what to do, we can get some kids with service hours to go out there not election day, and say hey neighbor, I go to high school and this this is what the referendum is meant to me. That's not saying go vote yes or no but this is how this impacted me. And I'm confident that we we will get an army of students that have felt this. They felt the end result and I think we need to really focus on that that community view because, when we get global, we lose the intent. Thank you. always said best by our students. Any other discussion. Go ahead DR. Zeman. those 9,000 can tell, we have restrictions but the idea of having dozen of people in

080the major polling stations advocating for it, and just telling people what it means is very important for both the referendum for four years additional mill but also for the bond. You know, they want their younger siblings and the people they know to be able to go to even better facility to keep up so the backlog does not grow. And I think the combination of elected city and county school board plus folks would be a really really amazing strategy. Thanks. DR. Holness. thank you, MADAM Chair, to turn it over. all right, we are back. The next item is rule development for 5990 formerly 1101. I now turn it over to staff for a brief discussion. DR. Wanz a go ahead. good morning, to MS. Jacques-adams, I saw your advisors, colleagues across the organization as well our

081community members who are here in the board member as well as well those those watching online, I'm valerie wanza and joining me today are two of my partners. strategic management. willy wood director of director management. again, we wanted to spend a little bit of time with the board but ultimately for some direction. We have two things on the agenda. The first one is rule development for what would be policy 1101, this polly was first adopted by the board in 1990 and it has remained untouched since that time. So it's been just under 40 years, unfortunately, since we have revised this policy but we knew it was more than a time for a number of times because we know that it we must have policies updated to reflect practices of the district. But more importantly, we

082are at the place where the current strategic plan is about to sunset and so we wanted to first look at this policy and get some direction from the board on updating this policy so that's why we have is the rule making and then the portion of the conversation is really to get some guidance from the board on the process going forward for strategic planning. So, the policy at a glance as I said, it has not been revised or amended at all since it was first adopted in 1990 and what you'll see here, we engaged with our partners and asked them to do some research around as it relates to strategic planning and one thing that was surprising but one of their key findings was that board policies concerning strategic planning are uncommon nationally, however, they

083are more common in the state of florida and among the top 15 largest districts in the united states only four, one being broward county actually has board policies it it relates to strategic planning. So hand over research did some comparability of our policy as well as the other policies that we were table to find. They came wup recommendations and you'll see the language here that what we did, we kind of revised the preample section of the policy to be more relevant with at least the most resent adoration that's we've gone through and then we actually updated the rules to speak more to what, tends to be the key elements of strategic planning and policies that they were able to find both nationally as well as here in florida. So for the most part, the policy

084would remain a, at most two-page policy at most. With broad concept, so we need direction from the board. So I'll pause right there. should we go to public comment? yes, I'm going to pause on this part for rule making. Yes, ma'am. public comment, DR. Nathalie lifrmg-walsh. Speaker: good morning, again, DR. Nathalie lynch-walsh. Plantation, florida. I'm not sure these are questions can answer. When I read this the first time and I'm a fan of this policy, as there were, typos and all, there were a few. One of my favorite lines was the confrontation, there was something about confrontation about difficult choices and establishments of priorities. I don't think that made it back in there. Confrontation not be a popular word in the field of confrontation. You have to admit to problems and difficult choices when you

085do strategic planning. And I'm speaking as somebody with a doctorate in leadership, you have different levels of planning. This is speak to go sfra strategic. This is thoroughly centered on what is happening with students which is fine but they're supported by all of these functions. But first and for most, this is come up in conversation again and again, there is no matrix. There is no matrix of existing language, proposed language and why. My eyes are bleeding just looking at this preamble and trying to get. I don't know but guys. You just had a conversation about not using jargon so is the matrix gone, rewrite this thing in language the public that suppose to be a problem. I hate the word cadence but most people don't know what na means. The school improvement plan, that does

086not seem to make it back in again. Staff's responsibilities where and how the policy addresses non academic units, why was r removed, it's hard to tell. And since these two things are combined, I have to jump to the presentation, slide 7 what were the precovid percentages. Slide 8, centered on improving outcomes, I read that is it I took it it's like you're choose to go focus on other things, stuff just keeps coming up. I object to that line. But slide number 9, it mentioned advisory group. Why? You have these things, call school advisory council. They look at the school improve plan. Why is it always making a new group when you have things that exist that are not supported. And state laws relate today sac, so my recommendation, send this back and empower your advisory

087as far as input. Thank you. do you want to continue? Or should we go to board? so we're doing two parts. The first part is the policy and then the presentation is is the second part. So is the first part, yes, we would like to board feedback on the policy itself. board member on the policy. MS. Hixon. to the speakers point, can we go through here, using the term cadence, can we put in a more commonly recognized word, that is on page of 2 of 3 and that is letter g. we can do. cadence of regular reporting, can we use to implement a schedule. I think we talk about it all the time, that we want policy to be easy for everyone to read and often. Everything else seems to be okay. The other piece

088too, is if you could explain why some of the things in the preamble were crossed out. It looks like you cross out things and wrote a different preamble basically to that. So I don't know if it talks about, I'm trying to follow along here. I like the part where it says, the establishment of priorities because that basically is what your strategic plan, you're setting, what you're priorities are and maybe not confrontation, but maybe addressing difficult choices. I also, don't see the intent of that sentence in the part that's been rewritten down here. So I guess, I'll have to look at it while people are doing, and whatever, give a discussion. I don't know if you know what I'm trying to convey. I do, I know what you're trying to convey. I can tell you that

089one of the board, one of the board attorneys worked with us on this language so we can go back with him and have a greater conversation. But I certainly, know what you're trying to say about recognizing that there MAY be conflicting views at times that have to be discussed, addressed, yes. I understand what you're saying. yeah, it says, for example it says strategic planning starts as a mechanism that aligns commission value and values with the district's vision. It just sounds like a high, I don't know that everyone would, I read it and understand it, so I don't want to say that I don't. But I think somebody else reading that would be like, wait a minute, mechanism. All of these terms, there is a way to make this easier for everyone to kind not just

090read but process what exactly it's trying to say. So those are my comments. Thank you. thank you. DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair. And thank you, DR. Wanza and your team, I appreciate it. I just have and I had some question in the past. You mentioned that this policy has not been revised in 40 years? 36 to be exact. almost 40, got it. So DR. Wanz a, I am wondering and I had asked this question before, when we have process and procedures that change, why aren't we practicing identifying and revising policies to align with our changes? So when we change any process or procedure, and maybe, I'm not familiar with the process, can we simultaneously identify policies that are impacted and get it approved by the board? You know, it's almost like if you have,

091I have an education center, right. So if I have a written policy for my parents and I change my practices, it would make accepts to me that my policy that I'm providing to the public aligns with my processes current processes and procedure. So why aren't we doing that? Why do we wait many many years before we, it's almost like the changes to the policy is lagging significantly behind our current practices. I can help answer that. So we're currently in the process of refreshing all of our policies so it's a multi-year, initiative. We're going to be speaking about in cabinet as well tomorrow just to make sure that we're bringing the policies back as efficient as possible. And then after every legislative session, we account for every legislative change. But the district has lagged in updating

092our policies and now we're trying to fix that issue and bring them back to where they need to be. okay, so john, how long based upon all of the policies, when will we get up to speed on the policies being aligned with current practices? our goal is by the end of 2027, to get all the policies up-to-date, because we have hundreds of policies. I understand. So here's my next question, once we get our policies up-to-date, do we have an action plan in place on going efforts to align policies with current procedures? As those procedures are being changed on a yearly basis? so I think best practices is we should be analyzing all of our policies, every five years at minimum. But again, we, unfortunately, historically speaking react to mostly legislation. So if it's not addressed

093legislatively, those are are not been addressed so we'll do a better job at doing that here's my question. Let's say that this year we changed a process or procedure. What is so difficult in saying, what policy does this impact and then make changes to those policies? I don't think there is an issue, there just needs to be a common understanding and best practices which have not been historically done but we're ensuring that it's done now. right, you mentioned that the new practice you'll be looking at our policy every five years. I'm wondering if we can do something even better where it's on going process. We change a procedure that is major then, we need to ask the question, which impact does this impact? And then make those changes simultaneously and bring it to the board

094for approval, am I missing something? we don't disagree. all right, thank you MADAM Chair. MS. Alhadeff? yes. Thank you. My first question is, do we ien need this policy? Can we get rid of the policy? I don't know if you want me to respond. But what I will start, it's an organization, we need a policy that speaks to district-wide strategic planning of any kind, right? So we're talking about the strategic plan but if we're going to have any type of processes as it relates to planning, we do need some kind of policy but of course thahas s up e e boarard d we'll move in w whatever direction t the bod.D. I'm just concerned are we tying the superintendent's hands with process? so this, this policy doesn't, like dictate it, it just says the superintendent

095will develop and employee a process. It doesn't necessarily give verbatim step by step. And I think what that intends to do is that the board ensure that there is a plan representative of the values of the community that will guide the work of the district. okay. And then as far as the whole policy conversation, I don't remember maybe two or three years ago, we decided to go with a smaller company to look over our policies as opposed to do they have, I don't remember the company, there is a larger company that can oversee our policies. I know we're trying to save money but, you know, maybe, we need to go back and look at that to because it's not just, fixing policies but to MR. Sullivan's point p fixing policies when state laws change and

096then we need to make sure that we are up-to-date with our policy so that we're in compliance with state or federal law. if I MAY, super. So the company you're referencing to, my understanding is is the most districts most states use. Unfortunately, the challenges, they want to enter business with us through direct negotiations. So it would be appetite of the board or I think the superintendent can initial it but it would have to come back to the board but they didn't want to bid that's why they were not considered last time. so si would be okay with that. We're the sixth largest school district in the country. We should be using the best of the best of the best to look at our policies. I mean, I understand we're in a financial crunch so I

097don't know what that would look like. I would be open to DR. Hepburn doing some discovery work? at the will of the board, we're happy to talk about the company again and bring back a board item and then the board can decide if they're okay with direct negotiation approximates they're considered professional services. So you can do that, and I have to figure out what their proposed rate would be. do you want us to go around and just? See if there is objection? yes, please. is there an objection to proposal. DR. Zeman? it's costly. DR. Zeman, MS. Thompson. DR. Holness? I have have a question. And I appreciate board member alhadeff's suggestion. But DR. Hepburn, do you see this as a necessity in terms of benefit to the district. Or do you believe what we're doing

098is sufficient? I think if we want speed, we would need additional support and expertise. Again, there is hundreds of policies and we're talking about a policy right now, that almost 40 years old, it has not been updated in almost four decades. okay, so the item coming back, would not, would just be to, to go into negotiations? no, we would negotiate a price for the service that we would need and it would be up to the board to either vote it up or down. okay, got it. So I have no objection to that. MS. Bulman? thanks for the suggestion, I'm actually wondered, why we haven't been using this service. I know a lot of the other, well I was wondering why we have not been using the service, because if they have the uniform policies, we've

099already been spending a lot of money on policies and I would say that, we could still improve them and the way that they're written, is there a way for us to in addition to like the, the pricing to kind of see what the work product is? So we can compare? yes. what we're getting for our money? versus comparable size districts? yeah, but also, I know we had an outside firm that was working on it but I would like to see what the work product is and the way it's written and how that compares to what we've been getting from that we've been using? so we'll make sure that is included. so pricing and work product, I think we need to look at. we'll make sure. it's definitely worth exploring and if we can do it

100more quickly, that would be great. MS. Hixon. thank you. I do, I appreciate looking into it but I just want to remind us that we're in a huge budget deficit and I have huge concerns on taking on something, even though it would speed up the policies and/or revising the policies, I just have concerns about what we would spend on that and how it would be conveyed in the public eyes. For this, I appreciate looking into it but I would within want to be committal at this time. Let's compare to what we're getting to what we might get. So if you bring an item fauxes, I would ask that you bring all of that information easy for not just us to see but the public to see so that we could be able to make a

101good financial decision on that. So thank you. MS. Rupert on MS. Alhadeff's proposal? yeah, I think it's important knowledge. I just asked john where are we in the process with the outside firm? With their contract and he -- I can answer that publicly as well. That contract is has expired and we were just going to do it externally, but it expired DECEMBER of 25. MS. Alhadeff. thank you. So the company I was thinking of is nuola and on their website, they have 46 clients in florida, 46. And I think to the goal of this back then, was to help us with our policies and we spend a significant amount of time going through as school board members trying to this sentence, this word, and I think that provide a service. We need to see what

102the financial aspect is. But it can provide a service where we can no longer have stronger policies but it will eliminate time of us knit pick ing of every sentence and word in that whole process. MR. Cervera to MS. Alhadeff's proposal? I think understand normal circumstances, it would be a good idea. Here I'm not willing to absorb the costs. If we cannot pay our teachers what they deserve, I'm not going to write somebody to write a policy. All nine of us, are representatives of our respective districts, in the county with two of you serve ising the entire county, right. So, I very much prefer to say save some dough and go over line by line with you you folks than pay thousands of dollars to have something tell us where a policy should be or

103not. Thank you. okay, just to go over again, are there objections, I hear a strong objection. To the superintendent presenting. I also object. DR. Zeman, so the majority does not support. DR. Hepburn, you have direction. MS. Alhadeff, are you done? yes. okay. DR. Zeman? thank you, chair. If, -- . DR. Zeman so bring back an a proposal not agenda item? yes. you're the guy with the positive net approval, so I will always wait for you. I don't know what that means. I'll stand next to you in pictures to see if it rubs off. MR. Superintendent, you brought this item with with us, are you comfortable with this item as written? yes, with any additional feedback or input that the board sees fit for any specific changes? I'll give you ideas but first I want to

104talk about strategic planning. It's become important to spend significant. It's not that the plan is perfect because nobody can project enrollment ten years out or any other kind of critical factor that we have. For public education. But the act of planning a laws you -- allows you to adjust. If you have no planning, you have to plan to deal with the shocks. For me, there is a opportunity to write about structure. Tt an artifact. It's the process of planning, and that's where I think there is a new opportunity literally set this one aside. And write one that talks about and I just, to MS. Alhadeff's point. We need a because we get shocks all the time. We get zero increase. We get red ral department of education is going under, it's being shut by our

105commander and chief. So if we don't have a plan, we're going to be victims floating around while people take shots. We don't have any preplanned responses to those things and that would not be responsible. It would not build trust if we don't have preplanned responses which is a much more artifact than the actual powerpoint document in the end. So my view, I would prefer like another other one that takes about it and there is no role in the board, other than, it's going to give us input. I think by law, this board has a bigger law than poppinger and listening and going wrong with the direction of superintendent. Our job is to set goals for the organization. Is that fair? Right? We're suppose to layout of the prior pits priorities of the community. It a

106social well fair organization. It's a safety and security organization. It's a confidence building, it builds people, it doesn't just education people. So I think coming up with those tradeoffs and priorities is the realm of the board and it should be explicit. The other reason, I think I would start off. Is a and b are full sentences, c through j are causes. There are typos as one person has mentioned and I just feel like, our staff can produce something that is just better. And it can really, you know, kind of establish the strategic planning process that really allows this board and senior staff to work together to come up with an enviable process that a laws us to have preplanned response to see shocks, allows us to debate and decide what the over arching goal. And

107then when it's time to present the budget, we have to align the budget and say hey did you fund them? And if they didn't fund them, we get started over. My view, there needs to be explicit direction in this policy about what the board does which is written in the statute. Xwu the strategy itself is per view of the board. And I just need to be clear with people about that so there is good expectation sxz expectations board member. I talked a little bit about grammar. I also talked about -- board meetings. I'm going to press for that in terms of repurposing to make sure that we have moments during the process where make decisions. I also don't like the term adult actions, like students have a huge role in the execution plan. So I

108don't like to think adults are inflicting something on students. Than segment adult actions. And often should we renew a strategic plan? at minimum, 3 years of max, you don't want to go beyond five. so the average of those two numbers is four and you did it a year on odd year, you might have some new members join the board in an even board and odd year, they can spend that time to work with their colleagues to put together a strategy every four years. We need to have a definition so this becomes a regular process. Again, strategic planning is essential for an organization but not because of what it says. when I look at our current strategic plan, it's 2 percent growth in some standards but it's not inspirational, it does not drive people to drive

109themselves, it is just little tiny steps to where we want to go. And I'm not sure that even those numericals are the right way to incompass this. Related to confidence, related to engagement of students, and other things like that that really allow the whole human experience to go captured in the strategic plan, thank you. thank you, MS. Thompson? thank you, my comment right side -- comments are on the presentation, so I'll come back. MS. Bulman. DR. Zeman pointed out the full sentences clauses, that I was going to point out and I, I agree. With the some those comments. So you know, I don't think we have to make any decisions right now about whether we're going to outsource but it would be nice to see in terms of costs and to be able to bounce

110that. I think there is a sweet spot there where we MAY come out on top. That's all. thank you, MS. Rupert? any other board discussion on the policy? All right. Can we go to the presentation, then? yes, ma'am. I'm going to let MR. Parker kind of drive this part of conversation. The only thing I will say for those board members who were not here when this was done originally, they went through an entire on focus students and sthaz why it got developed the way it is. But we're here to receive direction from the board on how the next editration needs to go. good morning again, I'm adrian park, when we went through the last process for the 2026 student outcome strategic plan it was centered on governance models at ccdds promotes where it emphasized. acronyms.

111council of great city schools, where the board's primary work is to focus on one thing and that's to improve student outcomes and how this plan was guided if you will. So, in light of some suggestions made around the policy, it MAY shift some this work but I'll go over what we have in the deck and seek the board's guidance on the model, the process as well as the timeline that we have in place. Our current plan is scheduled to sunset in 2027, so our focus here is to start conversations around our 2032 student outcome strategic plan. We currently use a 5 year process, we're in year 4 of the process. The goal is to get the board's guidance, develop goals this year and use e next year put strategies in playing in achieving those goals.

112So with regards to our landscape, there is a lot that we, that we deal with many headwind strong headwinds. However we've been able to make considerable progress, district wide maintaining our alignment with our mission, our goals leading to two executive ratings, 46 schools of excellent and our highest ever graduation rate under under this 2027 student outcome extra taoej not plan. So definitely a lot to be proud of. The process that we used to come up with a to develop our 2027 plan, is what you see here. It's a, this diagram outlines continuous cyclical process for strategic planning. So I'll ground it in the student outcome focus governance model. It shows uh community voice informs the community of voice and guard rails and strategic plan which then guides planning, implementation and monitoring. It makes a clear

113distinction of which task is the work of the board and which task are the superintendent's work. So the approach strengthens alignment between policy, between but the en and also performance and it increases transparency accountability and measurable improvements and student outcomes. The result of the plan, is what you see here, are one-pager if you will that is displayed and every district facility and, highlighting front and center, our goals and guard rails, making it clear for not only our leaders school base leaders but also our community, what's important to them as this plan is really their plan, it's their vision, their values, translated by the board into goals and guard rails, if you will. also the result, again we're in year four of a five-year plan. What you see here is three years of performance. The table

114tracks the guidelines. From our 2027 targets. It trends around the base line and prior year results. Exceeding targets in college career readiness and hovering for our third grade literacy and science. So we expect this to continue. As we get closer and closer to achieving our targets. The model city for council of great city schools, again, the model that they promote for strategic planning is, around student outcomes and improving student outcomes and having three goals as a high light for keeping the board's work centered on improving student outcomes and also something that the community can relate to and correct with and also see their values, if you will highlighted in our as our primary focus. So, the model recommends that accounts were clear goals and guard goals and monitoring and community engagement. And it also keeps

115the board again, keeps the board centered on improving student outcomes. The timeline, it spans around across six months to get to developing goals. It places emphasis on stakeholder engagement, data, and board workshops and finalization of outcomes and targets. So it's a structure progress to ensure transparency, alignment and timely implementation. And then, thought exchange, it's a way we capture the community's voice. It's a great way to cap daour -- capture data. Where review thought exchange and the results have been amazing. The results are not only transparent for community members but they remain transparent on our websites for, for any stakeholders to review at their will so they can see what they make decisions off of. It's a transparent to platform and process. We plan to leverage this platform if you will to continue ensuring that our

116participation is broad and that it's inclusive. So, we'll, we believe that again, it allows, the input to inform goal development as well as a laws for a visible feedback loop and strong privacy and safeguards as it concerns data, if you will. And then lastly, while we recommend the student outcome focused governance approach for 2032 plan, we're seeking your input, your guidance approval on not only the process but also the, the, the green light to proceed with this engagement and development activities, if you will. So with that, we'll stand ready to hear your feedback. thank you, MS. Thompson. thank you, chair. I have a couple of questions about the process for this. So I think some of the goals that need to be considered is really like a customer service component of it, both our students

117and our parents stakeholders. and I'm not really seeing that on our pregoals from the last strategic plan. I think, foc using on our responsiveness. The needs to address there. I don't know if it would fall under equity or student support. We need to be clear to make sure that our students are having a-rated experiences and our parents are also satisfied with what we're getting. And I also think there should be a component and it would be in college readiness but the abundance of program that our students are able to participate in not only academic with the a Ps and IPs but also our sports and debate and speech color guard. You know, anything like that. Because, too soon, because I think we do have a lot of that we can showcase but I want to

118make sure that it shows that we're intentional in expanding these programs at our schools. And also, I think a goal based around communication and engagement of the community, I think we actually do a pretty good job engaging our community but it doesn't, we can't communicate that there is a plan to do that. And then incorporating what DR. Hepburn is doing with a school based social media push and really helping promote our schools. That needs to be a large focus as well. That's it. thank you, MS. Hixon? thank you. And as one of the people who sat through the day long plan ing of this, I think it's important to remind my colleagues that the suggestion is to stay with three main goals, like everything is really important but you can't put them all as strategic

119goals in here and we pushed to get the fourth one, so because we thought that was important. So, you know, once you go through the manusha of doing, I think you understand. All of those things are important but they're not specifically in this, this is a high level, it is not detailed. But to MS. Thompson's point and something that DR. Holness and I had a conversation with representative honchoski, is that I would like to suggest is that we do is have a town hall to discuss a number of things but one of them could be getting input into what they would like to see in the strategic plan and figure out how we mold that into a high-level goal. But to xlu also budgeting and what their suggestions are on how we improve our budget

120so that when we go, when we come back together, staff could maybe have three plans that include the discussions we've had so if you pick this plan, thaoz the things you get but all of based on that community input. It goes back to the conversation that we've had most of this morning which is transparency, engage the public, asking for them. It always seems like we're making decision and we don't take into account what that is going to translate into the community. so if we started hosting where we're asking them, to give us their top five things that they think we should do to reduce our budget. And look at what that input is, because sometimes we're automatics say that, you're in a classroom teaching your students all day and you're looking at it one way

121and then somebody comes in, and say, why didn't you try that and says well I didn't think about that. So I think the more input that we can have from students, parents, community members, here's our did lemma, here's the thing that we want to do at the end of the day. So there would be different pieces but based on the discussion you would pull out what they would find important. Wiz would be similar to what MS. Thompson said. Do my colleagues think about that? DR. Hepburn, if you can weigh in. But it would be a good way to moving forward and really giving the information that we want them to have in digestable pieces. MS. Bulman on MS. Hixon's point? I think that's a really good idea. I think engaging the public and having them,

122involved in actually getting their direct input is very good. You know, in hollywood, they do commission in the community. So I don't know what, I always enjoyed that t.Oh commission in the community is they have the commission meeting in the different districts so each community would hope one but they have the entire commission there. So I think that brings more people but they come and engage because you're actually in their neighborhood. So I think that's a really good idea. I don't know what we would have to look at sunshine. But to bring it to the people, instead having somebody to come here. You do a great job for community meetings for other things. I think it would give people more access and then we can hear from people when we're making these high-level decisions. So

123I think it's a great idea. anyone else on MS. Hixon's proposal. DR. Holness? I degree with board member hixon. In addition to giting input from. Public as to how we can save money, when we have those incut. DR. Hepburn, let's just say we have several suggestions from the community as to how we can save money. Are we able to say, do a survey to say these are the top three suggestions which one you do you remember. Whether it's through healthcare, block education, whatever it MAY public, does it cost us significant amount of money to do an internal survey of staff? no, we would just use the platform. So essentially what you're saying is widling down the input that we received from the public for various things associated with what we're getting feedback from the strategic

124plan. So we'll widle it down to find the theme most embraced. right, so when we get that collective input I think a step further to board member hixon's suggestion, which I have to attribute some of that suggestion as well to state rep honchoski, is it way to do a survey based on a communication. So they are, in the process as opposed to seeing one as the ones to make decisions, because we always get pushed back in every every single area, we got pushed back ons schedule and graduation. So if we put out a survey from the input they give us and say, which are your top choice in terms of the district saving money because we have to do something. Is that something that you see that would possible and beneficial? so, yes. I think

125feedback is always been beneficial but I also think there are tough decisions that are not going to be popular by people that we have to do for the sakable I can't. With some of the things that we have to do, and p popular as we sustainable for decades to come. right, so I don't think any of these suggests would be if we send it out, whatever it is, to the you you know, to the public or staff, to say, here are three areas in which we can save, which area would you prefer? Even though none of them is going to be popular, at least we can say that we, we did weigh in on, we took into consideration the public's input. You know, and because, what I realize is happening, we brought items in terms

126of healthcare savings and we got push back of every major area of trying to save money. But if a survey sent out and we sort of not proceed with doing so. For survey sent out and said, these are four areas that we're proposing to save money. Woo is your input? We can validate moving ahead on something. Even if we get push backs. yes, we collect feedback via survey. okay. Thank you. anyone else on MS. Hixon's? Ja ea cier. good morning, I don't believe it's a survey, we just need better explanation on what we're doing. During the graduation process, a lot of students reached out and parents said this is what the board is doing. Not knowing the reason why we're doing. We need to explain that why instead of saying we're cutting this. When they

127broke it down to students, they understood. I think it's explaining why. thank you. We because of today's schedule, we need to pause this workshop and go to the legislative update because of people that we have on the line that we're going to lose. We're going to come back and go to the mid-session legislative update. I so I turn it over to staff. I believe you had something. yes, I was able to travel to tallahassee after week five of study session and had an opportunity to meet with about five legislators. Most were and I was able to discuss many of the funding and policy issues on our platform. And I have to say the conversation were meaningful and thth wewe receptor and ny schoho diststricts acssss th statarare experiencing. It was much easier to navigate the

128capitol when ffs not broward dates. For anyone want to go travel up there, I would keep that in mind. go ahead, MR. Sullivan. we wanted provide the board as a midday session. We're now entering week six of the nine-week session so we're getting close to the end. A lot of the bills still need to go through the house and subject to the government approval. Unlike legislative session south side, there is not, there is not policy changes versus what we've experienced in the past. As it relates to the budgets, the house and senates, released their individual budgets last week. Now that will have to work through the process, they will have to go through the process and negotiate their differences and they'll be subsequent to the and part of of the discussions is declining enrollment supplement

129outside of the what is outside of the fpf, so it's a direction that is moving in the right direction. So we're hopeful there is some funding to cover the districts, not only broward but many are experiencing declining en rolt. -- enrollment. As it results to the budget, 1 and a half to 2 percent increase around that range. There is some numbers on page 3 but those numbers have changed slightly, we'll provide the board with a new updated. These numbers are a little outdated. Take account that they include charter and fes scholarship. And vouchers are also funded in the same buckets. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to MS. Knolles to give a quick overview of the process. MS. Knolles. thank you. Good evening, board members, our chair, can you hear me okay?

130yes. As MR. Sullivan stated, this is a advance update for our district. So just want to summarize a few of these key bills to watch. I'm not sure what slide is up to watch but we can go to the key bills. And we want to make sure that we receive any updates that you MAY have for us to move forward us and provide any direction and any advocacy that you see. Keep an eye out for you. We're going to go to the next one, senate bill, 824, and I will be very brief with these. that bill is inventory of real proof property. So that requires district owned property to be submitted to doe in the state wide report and we would have requirement prescribed for data fills and compliance of enforcement. Next one. The education

131bill. This is a large omnibus, this has a lost information, many bills attached to it. But this is a large am any -- omnibus, a lot of osing. Parental rights, opt out, accountability and charter related provisions and instructional requirements and there is a breath of this bill that has a cross functional review regarding academics, legal, stud ept support, hr and talent operations and communications. For the next bill, 85 our board chair was perfect in her explanation when they met with different legislatures for the will. She was able to meet with the house sponsor to get information and we're working on an amount to benefit our district. Should I was awesome on that presentation and this was a buy partisan effort and ray, treymont is from the port area, we're grateful that they're listening to broward

132because we have the pilot for this. This bill, we're hoping with the option 4 for parents. On the next bill, 1216, we have compensation and this expands living adjustment and pay rule. Also under this rule, that depends on funding and implementation, excuse me, implementation details. Newer next bill, if I go too fast, I apologize, I believe you have a hard stop and I want to make sure that we have time for questions. you're good with the speed. okay, thank you. Educational scholarship programs, this is a consolidation. We are watching this bill again as I stated in my opening, this is not a final these bills can go forward and these bills can stop and get pulled and at the end can get over written as we know. We're going to monitor this and there is

133a monitor for district enrollment, funding interaction and any administrative impact. This is senate bill 318 just for the slide. Educational scholarship programs. And our next one would be senate bill 320, administrative efficiency in public schools. I believe these are brief bullets you have the powerpoint there. But it removes certain mandates and timeline requirements in multiple areas. The operational lens, this would we due some burdens while. This requires detail review of what is removed or added or changed in administer pif policies and school districts. And final one that I have as far as these key are candidate qualifying. This requires duel citizenship and it includes school board candidates and this is primarily education, qualifying mechanics and low operational but relevant to the relevance depending on who runs for chief. thank you. I did want to mention

134a meeting we had with the chair and her representative. I did bring up the issue that we're experiencing with the tax collector, the chair wanted to ensure that the board can't object for us to reflect that issue legislatively. As long as there is no opposition, lobbying will move forward and work on tha. It's not on our platform. One of our meetings, I did bring up what we've been experiencing with the tax collector, there was an appetite to perhaps fix that legislatively but it's not on the platform so the board wanted to know that the chair did and board did not have any issues with it. MS. Thompson. I'm fine with that. We're working to resolve it right now, too, right? MS. Jacques adams? I have been asked to through the chair, I have been asked

135to look into the matter and in the process of researching that, yes. as it relates, I'm sorry, chair MAY I. can I refer to DR. Hepburn. I was going to say to the superintendent's conversation with the tax collector, there does not seem to be a mechanism to resolve it. yep, thank you. MR. Sullivan, I was about to sa say the same thing. We had the tax collector is voicing issues and there is no way to go back on that the only way to move forward. as far as legislatation is concerned and how it's applicable to her office and everybody that she collects taxes for. There MAY be some term that she used? interest payments? That her office benefits from. We MAY recruit some through the payments. the only thing bad thing is their fiscal year

136start and end is totally different. It start different so we would not be able to see the funds if they have any interest funds to pay to us until then. MS. Alhadeff? yes, MS. Jacques-adams, can we take legal action against the tax collector regarding this? through the chair, once again, I do not have an answer for you. I I'm going to meet with the superintendent to find out the facts of his last meeting with the tax collector and I will look into the law with regards to that and get back to you. okay, can you please have an answer to the board by friday regarding this matter? yes, I can. thank you. Anyone else on that matter? MS. Bulman? are we working collectively with our municipalities that are also impacted by this? now that we

137have authorization from the board, the lobbyist will work with all impacted stakeholders. thank you. anyone else? Go ahead, MR. Cervera? I'm sorry, MR. Sullivan, i wanted some clarification. The superintendent had a meeting with the tax collector. And -- first of all, let me just confirm. It was the actual tax collector, not a member of her staff, correct? correct. and during the course of this meeting, she explained her rational for doing what she did to withhold the five and a half million dollars. she relied on the statute that gave her that authority, correct. and she is also the opinion that what she did was proper? yes. okay. based on statute. And there was no conversation had between the district and the tax collector in potentially refunding that money and instead this was a well, you can

138maybe do some cost saving or interest payment or things they gave you. the request was a for a refund and the response was this has not been done. has this been done before? And I realize, we just elected a tax collector. I realize this is a new office but has any elected official or county office or municipal ever withheld referendum funds? this is the year 7 of the referendum and this is the first time we've experienced this reduction. were you given any explanation as to why this was done? again, statute was mentioned a variety of times, various times. okay, so here's what I'm having a difficulty understanding. If there is the referendum dollars, have been in the books for several years. I understand that let's say hypothetically for purposes of this conversation. There is some

139authority in the statute that a laws for this type of garnishment to occur. Was there any explanation why for the first time in 7 years with the financial struggles that this district was mentioned that this was the time to deal with it? I believe since it's now constitutional office, they're no long funded from the county, so they have to generate funds. and I apologize, I didn't mean to stay steal, I will say withhold. So for purposes of the record, I will correct myself. So the rational was, I'm a new sheriff in town, and I have the report to do this, correct? I would say, again, they relied on statute to withhold the funds. here's where I'm having difficult with this. It would seem to me from. Information that we know, and we're waiting on MS.

140Jacques-adams opinion. It seems to me that MAY have been discretionary. And if the tax collector has any authority to pull the reigns and not take the money from this district, I think we need to know about that. Because, I cannot think a worse time in the district history for this to happen. and I MAY, have a somewhat of an understanding of how ot statute is s I'm doing my own research as well. But if there is any indication that this was discretionary, in any shape or form, we need to push back. And I'm not satisfied with a meeting consider somebody says, I mab have the authority and so did it, and we say okay, thank you for meeting for us. I'm not okay with that. I'm not going to rehash the settlement agreement we had

141last week. But I think it's fair to say that most people like to stand their ground and for purposes of 5 and a half million dollars that is affecting our district, we need to be a little more aggressive here. well I will say to that t superintendent was hoping to resolve through conversation, we didn't stop there that's why we had the conversations in tallahassee, since it's a legislative matter and that's why we came to the board. well I cannot speak for my colleagues but I can tell what this board member's wishes are, we need to get more aggressive and I'm expecting from MS. Jacques-adams a full option we have, whether that involves filing suit or not to recoup this money. For this to happen at this point in time, is is not acceptable when apparently

142this has been in the books for 7 plus years. Wright? Why now? the other thing we should look at is we're not the only district and perhaps we can see if their tax collecters have also done the withheld. while close on this, I'll I'm interested in my neighboring and sister cities do and how they conduct business, at the end of the day, I care about one county and one county only, and it's this one. So just because they do things certain way, I don't care, guess what? I don't think they're operating at the same type of budgetary deficits that we are. Whether somebody takes five and a half million dollars referendum dollars I want to make sure that it was just and proper and perhaps most importantly that it was not just discretionary. Thank you.

143just before, I do need to respond to a few things. I believe the reason MR. Sullivan MAY have inquired about the other counties is because I'm not aware of any other county with a tax collector that with holds referendum dollars. That's why there was that suggestion. And I want to provide some clarity around the conversation with the tax collector. I think our superintendent and chief of staff are in a position where they need to be diplomatic. So I know, you know, and I had my own conversation with with the tax collector. There was no kind of maybe, we can withhold this money, it was very assertive that that office feels like that they can keep that money. Even with the undering that that money is suppose to go to students safety and mental health and

144paying teachers. And again, I brought up to legal two weeks ago, I asked for guidance on this. I don't think we've been sitting on our laurels wait withing around. This board has been clear that we needed guidance on how to recoup these funds and as MR. Sullivan said, in tallahassee, how that we have the board's authorization, we will seek a way to recoup these funds and prevent this from happening in the future. MS. Thompson. real quick, I just wanted to get clarity on if we are able to do a public records request against another government agency. I do not believe that that letter was sent when it was sent it was. What that would the process for to us initial that? DR. Hepburn? MR. Sullivan? we can do that. They did send it via mail,

145so our publblic records s requeststs for whwh thdomements s create electroniclyly. I'not sure what systems they have or don't have, but we can do the public records requests. it was p certified mail. we have not been able to locate that to the best of my knowledge. would that be through the board direction? we agree. thank you. MS. Bulman. thank you. Anything that we can do to get off the lease issue and put MR. Cervera on a meteor topic, I support, since we're looking at five and a half million dollars. I brought up earlier and I think we'll have more powers and numbers, we're not the only one that are affected, this happened throughout the county and in city, similar. In hollywood, they had a similar. So I think if we work together, we'll be able

146to get a better outcome for this. Our might public distinguishable because we have this referendum money that is earmarked for something very important. So, but I think if we have all the municipalities together, we'll be able to negotiate a better outcomes. And, just like, my personal opinion, you know, based on what our property taxes are anytime, we can be enriching the tax collector's office immensely if they take the two percent. So perhaps, we can encourage that to have a specific budget that is not going to cap over a budget and then we can put. Rest of the money back into the services for the students and then for the municipalities, seems reasonable to me. Thank you. thank you, MS. Alhadeff. yes, MS. Leonardi, I thought I heard uz say that you asked the general counsel

147to opine on this? yes, at the end of the meeting. MS. Jacques-adams, I know you are busy, you but have staff. To day, you have not given your legal opinion. This is five million dollars this is a huge thing for our school district and I just find it, unacceptable that chair asked for this to come forward and, again I get you're busy, however this is, extremely important and we could have had taken action. through the chair. There are items that priority to the board and when they are priority to the board I stop what I'm doing and I handle those priorities. So several times within the last couple of weeks, the priority shifted and I shifted my priorities to handle that. I will provide you with my memorandum on friday like I just in indicated.

148However, if you all collectively make different priorities for me, then I shift. okay, MADAM Chair. I guess what we, I would like if you can can as a chair make sure that we have at least five members that want this as a priority for our general counsel this friday to bring guidance on us on this topic. there any objection? You have priority. thank you. DR. Zeman. just a quick one. Like a lot of things in florida, this came from the legislature, and legislature decided that if you have a referendum, it will charge 2 percent for collecting any fees that they collect. Now the language is not clear about as it relates to school board, so there will be wonderful that we'll hear from our general council by friday but the other is to fund this

149out of user fees and things like that and not to tax county commissions, city commissions and school boards for collecting fees because when the county chising did that, all we had to do is pay the direct costs. It does not cost 2 percent to collect the money. In 2026, the laej -- legislature has chosen to tax. That's one decision that they made. I don't think it's the best policy just like I don't think it's good policy to give five billion dollars to people enrolled in private school already. So it can go to fund people's choice to see go to private schools. So there is legislature, I cannot wait until friday to find out what we can do. I'm hoping that the non lawyers read of the legislation. I would also chair want to piggy back

150a little bit on my colleague, from the northwest and say, you know, there needs to be some speed in responding to a lot of this things. And outside counsel is always available. I have been encouraging that. I hope that the board continues to encourage that. I just, I just believe that demand for legal services exceeds the number of lawyers that we have. That's why we have given the okay to go hire external lawyers. This is another reminder that we should be doing that more often than yes. -- less. Thank you, chair. anyone else, MR. Cervera. while we're waiting on your referendum, I have a question. Is there any bar from this district suit against the collector's office or any bar that would prevent us from filing suit against the tax collector's? through the chair, there

151are statutory requirements prior to filing a lawsuit against another agency. so assuming we get those conditions, we send all the requisite letters, would we be able to file suit if we choose to recover this money against the tax collector money. providing we had a cause of action, yes. is that something that can be handled in-house as oppose today hiring outside council? so that's something that I would need to evaluate. understood, thank you. anyone else on the tax collector issue? All right, staff, any further presentation? on this item? on the mid-session update. the only thing I wanted to mention in both. House and senate, they're accounting for another decline in enrollment as in many other districts, so just want to put that on the forefront. We do have the lobbyist on the team call as well

152if board member had any specific questions. MS. Alhadeff. We have to do public comment. Go ahead. DR. Nathalie lynch walsh. nathalie lynch-walsh, I guess now it's afternoon. I hope there is a cup of bills the lobbyist are not working against, it has to do with a record law. It's house bill and senate bill 770. It would, make for some changes and how this district handles public records. And it's very timely because staff put out, an rfp for public records services, but the bill would require a reason why something is taking more than 15 days as somebody who has multiple records, I applaud that change should have happened. A written detail cost estimate so you can judge whether it's legal or not, as somebody who got a request closed due to them trying to charge 60

153bucks for something that should take them five or ten minutes to do which is a staff listing, I have to follow-up with that and if it takes less than 30 minutes, you cannot charge. So these are some of the provisions and the reason I bring up the rfp is because the law could impact that, but also because your staff and it's ironic that the very staff that is in charge is is not bringing this hup. The rfp, there seems to be some confusion when they say public records management, those have been software solutions not staff augmentation or supplementing. i hope somebody gets unconfused. This should be canceled until we wait to see what happens. And you were talking about a board policy, going with neola potentially. Public records and agenda management all go hand and

154hand. And none of that is part of that rfp, 55 seconds. There seems to be no budget for the rfp, rfp-137, I hope your superintendent will voluntarily cancel it before I have to let everybody know about it. Speaking with the law and as far as charging goes because understand, staff's unefficiency and I'm not talking about the two clerical people in public records, I'm talking about when it comes to custodians there are software solution that's can expedite, auto mate all of these emails. But staff's efficiency from custodial, should not be the reason you're getting charged. If people are get doing things like we're back in horse and buggy days, they should not be charging. thank you. Thank you. MS. Alhadeff. yes, I just on MR. Sullivan's point with us losing more students, DR. Hepburn if you

155could advise the board with if we're expected to lose certain amount of students, how much money that is equaled to and overall budget. I'm going to keep pressing that one-pager is so vitally important when we should have that at every meeting. So we can make the right decisions based on our finances. thank you for the question ms. Alhadeff. We'll learn a little bit more in the workshop later on today and so, you'll get more accurate numbers. But for this upcoming we're slated to lose about 6800 students and lost about 2000 probably this month that will be added to the next school year's decline. So, we continue to lose large chunks as well as all the large districts are experiencing the same exact things. Not a broward county issue. So it's an issue altogether. if I

156MAY, sir. The one-pager will be finalized in launched right after the press conference this afternoon. thank you. and MADAM Chair, if I MAY. I wanted to let the public know that the public records mentioned is in the presentation in both house and senate. any other board discussion on this item? MS. Bulman? thank you. MR. Sullivan for this presentation, I appreciate the mid-session. I think we asked for this last year soy appreciate that we're being updated regularly and have a understanding what is happening in tallahassee, I think that's very useful for us here on the ground, thank you. okay. Before we go back to the strategic planning workshop, we will go to attorney-client session. So I'm advised that the general counsel would like to request a attorney-client session. at this time, I'm asking all who are

157not invited to attend, exit the room at this time. General counsel. thank you, MADAM Chair. I would like to request the board convene a attorney-client session in the matter of ohl building inc. And k8ohla building inc., the school board of broward county, and secondly florida versus civicvich llc and third civickvich versus florida ink under case number cace22-008804. In pa rin 02 pending before the 17th judicial circuit. The following persons attend, sarah leonardi, chair, DR. Holness, vice chair, lori alhadeff. Laura bulman. Adam sur vera, debra hixon, nora raoubeter, rebecca thompson, DR. Alan zeman, DR. Hepburn, superintendent of schools, ofk or so the o esquire, tomas, and kathelyn jacques-adams esquire. The attorney-client session was properly advertised for today at 12 noon in accordance with section 283.001, the purpose of the attorney-client attorney is to discuss settlement negotiations

158or strategy. A certified court reporter will record the session. Only those permitted will be permitted to tend. at this time, we'll recess the workshop for attorney-client session. The attorney-client session will be held in the board room in the cathly c center -- 3301, the attorney-client will take approximately 30 minutes at the conclusion of the workshop will reconvene. all persons not skidded to a -- scheduled to attend, please exit the room at this time. [Board in attorney-client (Meeting in closed session). the next item is district budget update. I turn it over to staff for a brief presentation. thank you, MADAM Chair, board members and public, I'll turn it over to MS. Johnson and her team to go over the next presentation. good afternoon, board members, through the chair and superintendent, I'm ramineer johnson, we'll give a

159brief presentation of the budget, where we are now and you can leave any questions at the end of the presentation. Sofrjts, I would like to start with looking at our historical data about our staffing levels and our enrollment trends. As you can see, that from and 16 to 25-26, we had over 221 thousand students on fte's tha,'s where the district gets funded, now we're down to 122 thousand awaiting fte's, third calculation came in, we lost additional 3306 weighted frk te's that gave us a total as you could see, 8789 which is 80.1 million lost for the district. Now charter school numbers included would be almost 90 million but charter school is not included in these sums. So, this is the overall calculation. Our final kalke from last year 24-25, you will see we were at

160191 thousand fte's, our second count, that's when we get the data come in for us through the adopted budget, we were at 185 thousand which was a reduction of 5483. We got the third kalke collation, we got a reduction of 3306, the loss occurred by levels. So, your third calculation, we got a reduction of 27.3. Charter school got a reduction, the family of scholarship went up by 2.2 million. Overall the district reduction with 39.2 million for third calculation. So, I did paut slide in for DECEMBER because you just -- you know, officially amended the DECEMBER budget to show you where our revenues are, we are 2.3 billion dollars of revenue and estimated expenditures at 2.4. We're spending more than we're bringing in this fiscal year so the overall reductions, we show we had borrowed money

161from the bound fund balance, we didn't boar re, we are take an actual hit, so we had a reduction of our fund balance of 24.5 million, if yu look at the slide in red, so we're many a n a deficit financial position and that reduced our fund balance for 205.9 million to 181.4 million. So, the next slide is when I do my projections, I have to do a high level analysis of all our revenue and all our expenditures throughout the district. First I start, I'm just showing how I do my cal laying of revenues. I look at the revenues based on we have a final calculation last week, palmy scholarship, they overreduced all the districts throughout, we got 5.3 million back from that. Our third calculation t shortfall was 27.2. Our half care plan administration

162funding, we got an additional 152 thousand dollars, our referendum, I did an analysis of our referendum, we're going to have a surplus around 3 million even though with the red uk from the count I, our projected special revenue fund reimbursement to the general fund is 1.2 million. When we had the audit finding, we have f had to transfer that money back to the general fund, that 1.2 2 million, overerl l miioio we'e're going g to be definiteis vevee e but I'm doing additional transfer from the capital fund which is allowed under the term statute ewe, that's 20 million additional transfer tha, will give us a revenue of 2.9 million positive. That's just the revenue piece. Now we have to look at the expenditure side. So, I do an analysis, most of our staff, we got

163mostly people, so I did a high level analysis of what our budget, what did we put in our budget for salaries, so this is what's in the budget currently, if you look tat salary line by object codes, we got 1.3 billion dollars we allocated for salaries in our budget. For benefits, we got 541 million dollars for salary -- for benefits. So, I had to do a high level just general fund only, no other funds, so I do an analysis and I said if everyone that we have bust ago seat that we're paying and we end JUNE 30, what would that cost us, that would be 1.1 billion dollars, this iss base salary only. Benefits, now I'm doing a rough estimate on benefits because I can't control the claims that's driving some of the costs and

164benefits but we tried to be very conservative but making the claims a little bit higher, we're showing that 522 million. Based on projected referendum expenditures for what we give out in allocation we give out to our police, it's 167.8 million, based on employees we have now that'd receiving referendum money. Projected other wages to date if that impainting it is general fund only, those are stipends and supplements that has come to the board for approval and the benefit costs that's associated with that, we estimate it's around 123.2 million. So, projected overexpenditures, we're burning 23.4 million over. But we are monitoring because we have a freeze going on right now and these numbers are revised weekly, so I'm monitoring these numbers weekly to see when people lever, have we adjusted. The next slide, I project vacancy savings

165as well for the rest of the year, 10 million, we said 18 million but I'm very conservative and put it at 10 million. We added the teacher allocation, so I put that in, 5.4 million, teacher salary increase allocation. So, that's 5.4 million because it's not in my salary projection, this is outside. Fund balance transfer, we're projected based on what we have that's going to the board, an additional 19.4 million that's coming from the fund balance, it's going the reduce the fund balance. Then the district non- personnel reduction, I got thousand. Accounts payable is is the close we do at the fiscal year end, that accrual affects the fund balance, it reduces the fund balance, we have 13.9 million left and it eats going make the fund balance be positive because I wait to the end

166of this fiscal year and I'm going the revise that back and get the money back to the fund balance, I have to do the restricted portion of the fund balance that is part of what we transfer out and make the 3.2 million back, okay. So, I have to check, I have to double check my numbers, right, so this is what you see here is everything that impacters the budget since we amended the budget, all those different entries we do by the mother, and we dish start with my salary and benefits, 23.4 million that I said is over, we got a parroted increase of revenue, my revenue analysis is 2.9 million positive. Projected vacancy savings that I showed you throughout the fiscal year, we said 18, I'm being conservative and I said 10 million. So, the

167teacher salaries allocation, 5.4 million reduced, then when we adopted the budget, we have atomically had, we operated in a deficit so, we did budget transfer, SEPTEMBER, we transferred 127 for food service department, then in NOVEMBER, we did another transfer of 16.6 million of fr the fund balance. In DECEMBER, we did a transfer of 7.5 million. So, we're planning to do another transfer throughout the fiscal year around 19 million, it hasn't happened yet, that's the only thing that hasn't happened yet. In the district non-personnel was 800 thousand we got, so we're going to have a total impact on our fund balance of 58.9, and then I did the accounts payable accrual, reversed that is going the give me 13.9, the restriction fofrtion fund balance of 3.2. So, my check figure is 41 million that I'm impacting

168the fund balance. So, in this slide, I'm taking back, putting it on the budget, so I knower people learn different ways so I'm showing you the -- the bunlt where we are now and we did a lot of entries, you know, because we had h ef knew recognition, we had to allocate those dollars, those additional dollars, then we have to do the allocation tof actual impact of the revenues that we were reduced, and then also so that -- all those entries was 17.2 million dollars, so if you look at it, DECEMBER, 24.5 million plus that 17.2, is everybody following me t deficit, then we have 41.7 million, that's my total impact to this budget and I'm estimating all the way to JUNE 30, fiscal year, so if everything go expenditures, we're monitoring and doing all

169the internal controls and checking, and I'm monitoring the budget tightly to make sure we stay below that we don't overspend the budget. This is if we stay within the budget. So, you see that we will be at 205 was our beginning fund balance, we will be at 41 million reduction, 164 million overall fund balance for the fiscal year end. And how does that look? So, I do it -- now I'm looking at the fund balance. So, our fund balance is made of a lot of different buckets, we have non-spendable we have to have for general fund, for our inventory, then we do prepay on our property insurance. So, that's going to be consistent, it might go up and down a couple of million, but overall our prepay is going to be less than this 20

170million, I just kept it the same for the sake of conversation today. But my restricted -- I don't mind my restricted portion is from -- it' required by the state and the only thing restricted by the state is workforce money and school recognition dollars. Those are the only thing that the state requires you to carry over. So, they put it in the restricted portion of our fund balance. Our committed is our staff insurance, we are self-insurance for our health care insurance, we have to have this 54 million, I'm making sure we have that 54 million in our fund balance. Our assigned and assigned is what the state looks at for it to say are we aligned for the fund balance and our assigned is 60.5, unassigned is 54.8, making a total of 115, when we

171adopted the budget last year, we was at 115 million, our total fund balance of all these non-expenditure restricted and assigned and unassigned is 205. So, I just want to look, it's always bh we do percentage of fund balance, we do the amount of the assigned and unassigned over revenue, based on our revenue portion. so when we started this year, we was at 115.3, we were at 4%, well, let me go back, the total fund balance was 8.66%. Our total assigned and unassigned fund balance was 115.3, so we were at 4.85%. Now DECEMBER, what you just voted on the budget amendment, we are now, our assigned and unassigned was reduced by that 17 million, so we're at 94 million, right. So, the 94 million and you see the revenue number has changed too. Because these numbers

172change. I have to make sureuse of the proper amount, so it's 2.388 and now our assigned and unassign ised at 94 million, that makes us at DECEMBER at 3.94% as of DECEMBER 31. Now projected for JUNE 30, I told you' were going to be going down by 41 million, overall from the adopted budget to the projected for JUNE 30, our revenue we projected at 2.3 billion, it's at overall the whole fund balance is at 6.87%. I know board policy say ising that our unassign and had assigned should be 5%, but we're now -- since the reduction, the hit on unassigned and assigned, we are 73.6 which is 3.08% of our fund balance. So, I just wanted to give you the state statute -- required by the state, if we fall below 3%, the superintendent must

173notify the school board in florida commission of education and writing, the reason I work witched third calculation, projections, one thing is projections but actual, so I told the state and I asked the state, when we true up, then I'll let you know if we're below that 3%, but we're not currently under the 3% based on projections. The actual number of the third calculation. If more than two consecutive years below 3%, if that means we fall bethrow 3% this year and next year, the district must reduce admin expenditure proportionately to get back to 3%, that's the state requirement and statute. If we fall below the 2%, the superintendent must notify the school board and florida commission of education and writing with a recovery plan, and then you will be on a monitoring status because at hillsborough,

174we start -- when I was there previously in florida, but we were on monitoring but before we closed the year, we had a healthy fund balance but the state would keep you on monitoring status once they put you on even.You clear it so, you have to be careful when you send these notices tout the sate and say where you're going end up, they will monitor you, it aoem telling you, the commissioner of education, it will take year tos write a let tore say -- even when you're at 10 or 15 percent that they're not monitoring you anymore. The next step, the state MAY determine if the district is at rising of financial emergency, if we don't have a fiscal recovery plan to say how we're going to get out of the hole and get above

175to the 3% tha,'s when we're below 2%, then we have to -- we are at ritz k to have a financial emergency and that we don't know what the state would do, I really don't know how the state processes and proceeds with that, I asked them and they say, well, if you get below, you will find out. So, state can initiate enhanced oversight including appointment of financial emergency board, so that's in statute, that's what it is, it's 10011.51, florida statute, before we move forward and we're at 3% and we have to constantly monitor, it could shift at any time, that's why I'm monitoring because I do want to be in compliance and notify the board if anything's changed or our status changes and you have to notify the florida department of education, first I have

176to notify the superintendent superintendent, then the board, tlen the florida department of education. Okay, I just wanted to go and give using an insight on what's going on currently what our forecast numbers for the next fiscal year. So, when we got the forecast numbers from the state, it showed we're going to have a loss of 6854 students. Based on our base right now, it equates to 62.4 million dollars reduction for the district. In SEPTEMBER, I mean, in th month in FEBRUARY, we did get our count again. We had lost additional 2 thousand students, this is a new discovery for our district because usually in FEBRUARY, we don't have a loss, we offset that, but we had a 2 thousand loss, right now that's making that 9 million because you only could cut half the year,

177so we just put -- we haven't got the final number of what it is from the state but the state is going to impact next year, as you have saoeb before, anything that happened in FEBRUARY, we don't get the notification until we start adopting the budget that we get the final calculation from the state over the summer and sometimes we get it in SEPTEMBER when we already adopt the budget so we're going to start off with another 9 million cut from previous year. Thep they didn't have the 2 thousand in their calculation of reduction because it's ne phenomena for us, so that additional 2 thousand calculated at next rate would be for the next fiscal year tlax's where we get the 18.2, so we're rejecting a total loss of 89.7 million. If the state gives

178us the increase, based on our per pupil, our base allocation, they increase that, then that increase based on the number of students we have would offset some of this reduction that we're proposing to receive. So, we did another chart, so I know I like the picture charts, so we'll show that if we lose that 8854 kids, we'll come from 82579 and weight the fte fte. That's tend of the presentation. So, is there any questions, we'll take them now. we will go to public comment. I have anna fusco and liliana roeto. I have two people signed up for public speaking, anna fusco and iliana roeto. MR. Hill? Yeah, you're right. I have lots of sheets in front of me. DR. Natalie lynch-walsh? DR. Natalie lynch-walsh, plantation, florida. Former audit committee chair, audit committee member from 2015

179until 2025, when your superintendent removed me from all advisories so, one of the topics that was a hot topic at the audit committee was things like the fund balance, the charter school payment, the financials, whether it would dip below 3%, the referendum carry over, where was it, it took a year but I have an answer to that. So, in the fund balance and I appreciate the clarity of these slides but I have questions, I'm not going to get answers so they're more rhetorical. The slide that matters is the -- I think it's slide 123 12 where you're at 3.08, last year was the year to start cutting costs as if you were in a financial emergency. Instead we got costs cut of like 4 million or some small number that wasn't reflective of where things

180really stood. And the audit committee was just about -- we were talking about getting a budget subcommittee because back in 2012, there was something called a budget task force and then it disappeared and it wass never seen again. So, nobody's been looking strictly at the budget and just looking at those charts, it's easy to see where you should have been cutting central office staff each year as students were leaving but that didn't happen. So, on slide 12, the 3.08, if you were to take out the referendum carry-over, I estimate you would be at about 2.5% so, you MAY as well proceed from here on out as though you're under 3% because for all intent and is purposes, you are. The other things in that fund balance assigned is the ap accrual which I guess I'm

181not going to jump up and down, even if it doesn't reverse out which doesn't make any sense to me from a systems standpoint, you would have an ap accrual of some sort. The charter settlement principle is in there, it's million. The unassigned is like 13 million so you have almost no money from the looks of things because everything's assigned in the assigned and unassigned except for 13 million in unawe -- unassigned. So, without anybody looking tat budget, I hope the plan is not to sort of randomly and sporadically start cutting things you might discover you might need next year because I haven't seen a single workshop dedicated to things you can cut, GOD knows I keep coming in here identifying wasteful spending, I mentioned something this morning where they're trying to do a solicitation with

182no budget attached to it, so please be strategic about what you're cutting. an gnaw f na fusco, then iliana roeto. anna fusco, broward teachers union, ditto on DR. Natalie lynch wam sh. We have not yet seen any plans on what you're going to do or how you're going cut, you know we'v'vhehed that yu eve got a projection of cutting many teach necessaries broward county, are you guys going to ask about it or demand it or are we going to continue to build the plane as we fly it. Tla's what's been happening far long time if w this group and it fauns back on the employees of broward county public school who want to show up and do their job. They want to do nt keep the district an a and teach, the one that is

183are in the school that is are working with the children, that's everybody from the bus driver to get there t cafeteria worker to feed them t clerical that greets the parents t the behavior techs, everybody, the classroom teachers, they literally just want to show up and work with the kids and not be -- continue to hear this mess and you can continue to scream to the public how everything is declining, declining, can you please come up with something that shows we're thriving and we're going thrive and going to move. What are you doing? What's your plan? Who's planning it, what group? When you have a budget that's in the red, every line I looked at, I thought I was looking at a grading paper. I'm going to share with you something real quick that I

184learn framed something, for the past two and a half years t school bus stop A.M. Is contracted for an award, it's stuck in some cone of silence and you're losing 26 million dollars a year, so the past two years that it's been stuck and people have called board members to get it to move but it's stuck. Do you hear this, public, they've had a chance to bring in 26 million dollars and you've kicked it and then you want to keep crying that our employees medicines are what's causing you the problem, our employees that have the personalization courses for the student iss a problem, the graduations that kids deserve are the problem. You guys got a budgeting problem. It is not the employees of broward county public schools. I'll continue to read this from the news

185of what this program is that it's dropped the ball with board member ins this room, your superintendent and the attorneys, that is lost you revenue the last two year and is that' just the minimal piece of it. Let that resonate. The last two years, there's million dollars each year. That's 52 million dollars that you said pt to, wake up. thank you, liliana roeto. liliana, I'm here speaking as a taxpayer and it's very alarming what I've been seeing and looking at every chart that you have presented, 89 million is a lot of money and I'm going to say this. All the years that I've been in the district, I noticed that you keep purchasing programs that were not needed in the classroom. There is tons of programs that are working, very effective, very proact -- protact

186tier, you keep substituting one program with the other program when it's already working so the problem here is this, you're going to try to save money on the back of the teacher and that's a problem because the teachers are the ones in the front, in the classroom fighting to make our students be successful. Not only the teachers, also the employees, and also I want to say that for you to keep your employees, you have to keep them healthy and happy and this is not going on the right direction that the point, so I'm going to ask you again, you have to check, you have to double check what is it that you are saving money on but again not on the back of the employees, and the problem is this, I'll tell you, I grew

187up in a business world, for you to have a business and you want to have your business flourish and do every day better, you have to every day supervise and revise and then you manage. This is the only way you will come up afloat in this case and, again, I just expect that you do the right thing about your employees because as it is right now, it is stressful for our teachers to survive with the cost of living among many of the other demands they face on a daily basis in the classroom, thank you. thank you. Board member discussion, MS. Hixon? thank you. And thank you for the presentation. I think it's always important to share with the public in more detail what our budget looks like and it's very confusing even for someone who

188listens to you every single month. I have a question though because it's something I've asked every superintendent, every cfo and I've gotten a lot of e-mails about it just recently, so if you could explain it to us because it's frustrating to me. so, why is it that we cannot build a budget with the intention of paying our employees an increase at the front end, like, let's say 4% is usually my number, so why can we say, what would it cost to give our employees a 4% raise, build that into our budget and build everything around it and I'm asking you this because it's the same question I've asked since the day I got elected so I'm sure DR. Hepburn's familiar with the question and I know we keep hearing hating's what we're trying to move

189towards but this is my fifth year here and we have never built a budget looking at what would it cost us, even in increments, 2%, 3%, 4%, so we could figure out where it goes because our teachers and our employees don't understand and I know that we spend a lot of money, you've clearly spelled that out here today, almost 80% on our employees' salaries and benefits, but as we know, people have an expectation of an increase each year. We would all like to see that and we're not able to do that, so if you could kind of just explain why do we not just start from scratch, say here's what we need to pay this much and then we'll build everything around it? thank you for the question, ms. Hixon. I can't speak to folk

190-- folks in the past and why that didn't happen but I can speak to now and what's preventing us from making that happen right now is the continuous decline in enrollment and the continuous shortfall that we have to plug those holes firsts to make sure we can operate and sustain ourselves as a district. It's something that the cfo and I have talked about so as we plan for next year's budget, as we have to plan for other things too in the budget to make sure we're operating and being sustainable in the future, we can look at what that looks like incrementally ases we plan the budget but there's a lot of -- when you have anticipated shortfalls like we know we're going to lose 8-9 thousand students next year, we know that far fact, versus

191in the past, it hasn't been -- it's probably been a third of that amount or a quarter of that amount, we know it's going to be significant so we have to plan for how we plug that hole first with some things that we're going to be discussing in this workshop and moving forward also which mainly is about resizing not just our facilities footprint but also our staff footprint. thank you. And it's been asked that we share that because as we've seen in the chart that we have here, I think it's chair and you can tell me if I'm wrong or not, we find ourselves -- I'll explain it either as like a mortgage balloon payment or falling over a cliff, we've had ten years of declined enrollment, we've had referendum settlements that were imposed upon

192us. We've had a lot of different things that have happened and we haven't as a district addressed them and now we're at a point where we address them or we fall off the cliff, so I do want to point that part out. If you could also then, DR. Hepburn, smraip to -- explain to everybody, and as we know and enrollment is declining because we're saying it's projected, we should be able to project what staff we do or do not need both tat district level and unfortunately if we don't have that many students, we don't need as many employees on the school level. Can you explain to us what that's going to look like moving forward since we have not done that to this point. becon,..You can go to slide 15, have a visual for our

193reminder, yes, so as I stated before, we're in the midst of right-sizing our facilities footprint, ie, closing school bausz -- because we have underenrolled schools due to declined enrollment, what the budget team just went over, we have yet to right-size our staffing footprint and I agree with one of the speakers, the optimum time would have been 2018-19, 2019-20 and do that through attrition. We wouldn't have to possibly do any layoffs as what I anticipate we're going to have to at the end of this spring semester so we have to reduce -- my goal for this first iteration is a thousand employees, that would be through attrition and also layoffs but that will start at the top and make its way all the way down throughout the organization, but not touching our schools, mainly dealing with

194district staff, administrative staff, that we possibly don't need and re-evaluating how we provide services to our schools because our s frs models are goipg to have to change too because it can't be solely people-dependent. As you can see with that chart, our staff footprint has stayed the same for the past ten years and we've lost almost 40 thousand students and that has not changed at all over the past ten years, so just like we did with our facilities, the same concept, we have to reduce our staffing footprint too. we've had this discussion a number of times, if we have less students, we have to transport less student sos our transportation should also look different yet it doesn't, so what is that plan? We're supposed to be rolling out a plan today, if you can share

195that with us. absolutely, there's ao lot of complexities that are systematic and culture imbedded things from the past in the district. So, a great discussion is trance por taig, a lot of singleton programs throughout our district, as a result, we're busing kids from one corner tof that MAY be all the way if fr miramar and being bused in the central or the north part of the county, and most places, you will find regionalized program sos that transportation isn't such a burden and expensive by busing kids across the county. You MAY be busing one or two kids across the entire county and that cost for that kid increases significantly, so we're rationalizing the programs, we're changing how we transporting looking ats all of those things, our biggest expense are people but there's other things we're looking

196at and reviewing, that's transportation, contracts, consultant service, it services so there's other thing weser ear looking at to realize cost savings too for the upcoming school year, but our largess expense is people, makes up 80% of our overall budget. my last suggestion, we talked about and passed as a board some directions to you, one of them was to work with the county to get bus passes for our students so that we wouldn't need to continually run the actinviter buses at the end of -- after school, they e would get bus passes when they did. I've been here a really long it is long time ago, so the student would still have bus transportation home but it would be through broward county buses, not broward county school board buses, so have we started any talks? yes,

197the transportation department is collaborate witching the county transit to realize some option, it could be bus assess or specific route that is can assist us too, more to come on that. They're providing me some information as a follow-up and update in the next couple of weeks and we'll bring back more information to the board too. We're looking at a lot of different thing tos do things differently and leverage new opportunities that we haven't taken advantage of, ie, broward county transit, when tlifs in pompano, we leveraged in track rail to get kids to school also, there's lots of opportunity and is having those conversations to see what the possibilities are. and I appreciate that because we've heard that people feel like there's not a plan and we are working on the plan but I think it's

198important to be very transparent and say here are the things that we're working on because if we hit a stall, maybe there's someone in the community that has a connection that can help us to unstall it and I just -- I want everyone to understand that there is a plan and I'll end with I think our employ ees do an amazing job here, we would not be an a without the teachers, without the bus drivers, the food service, maintenance, all of that. None of this is ever about the value of the value the people are doinbacker doing in the district, we're very lucky to have everyone that's here. thank you, DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair. So, I agree with a lot of the sentiments shared by board member hixon. What I will say, DR.

199Hepburn, is that we certainly need to implement aggressive cost saving measures in order to save ourselves. We must not leave any stone unturned. I believe, MS. Johnson, you mentioned 3.08%. That is too close for comfort. So, when you look at the chart on page 17, it indicates that in the year 2017, as it compares to present, we've lost 352 million dollars in funding based upon student decline. But as you mentioned, DR. Hepburn, in 2025-26, we've kept almost the same number of staffing. It is important as we lose staffing, as we lose students, that we proportionally lose staffing, so MS. Johnson, if we had reduced the number of staffing proportionally to the student reduction from the year 2017, how many individuals would you say we're overstaffed if the formula was to proportionally reduce the number of

200staffing in 2017 with the number of students loss, how many staff should we have lost? compared to other districts, I will have to say you would have lost at least 1500 to 2000 staff, but where those staff are, not sure. if you look tat numbers proportionally f you look at 2017 and look tat number of students we have is 227 thousand to the number of staffing and we've lost a lot of students, so proportionally what would that number be from that chart? well, that's hard to answer because you're looking at what type of service and what type of staffing you need as a district. I understand that. So, it looks to me, MS. Johnson, fe were to proportionally reduce the staffing from what we see here in 2017 to 2025, I think we're looking at

201well over 2 thousand. correct. if you look at stra it straight proportion, you're looking at -- based off of the 2015-16 school year, if you use the same numbers, you'll be down about 2 thousand. right, 2 thousand plus, so DR. Hepburn, I know your number for attrition and staff reduction is a thousand. I would hope that it's more because I think based upon our staffing model and what we see in this chart on page 17, I would be much happier with 13, 14 hundred staffing because we're overstaffed based upon the number of students reduction. Now, I know that in order for us to resolve some of our issues, DR. Hepburn, we're looking to reduce expense, I know we look at health care, we look at student box scheduling before, we're looking at staff reduction, school

202repurposing, school closing, partnership with city and is municipality and is so on, but I also think we need to look at ways in which we can increase revenues, right. We've had discussions when we look at certain models we have in broward county such as the pompano beach high school model. We need to have more of those. I believe that if we have more schools like pompano beach high, then it would probably result in us winning back system of the students going to private and charter schools. We need to look at how we can possibly have some sort of a pilot two tor three middle schools that are high achieving middle school that is will win ba somemestududt t fr private and d chter. I know erere ary totos look outside of the box to gain

203students. DR. Hepburn spoke before about replacement schools because we're closing several schools and I think if we can at least start the plan of action into having state of the art replacement schools in broward county, we can start to win back students from private and charter. I know that we are coming up later on, we're going to talk about virtual option and we have florida virtual and broward virtual school. When students attend broward virtual, we get money, when they go the florida virtual, we don't so, we need to incentivize in some formal way or bring greater awareness of our broward virtual option which is just as great as the florida virtual option. There are many ways we should not only concentrate on how to reduce expense but how to increase revenues and I hope, DR.

204Hepburn, we can explore and exhaust all options in order to do that. Thank you, MADAM Chair. thank you, MRS. Alhadeff? thank you. So, my questions for MS. Jacques-adams, I have asked this question for a while now, I'm still waiting for the answer in regards to are we able to furlough district staff? so, yes, mrs alhadeff, you have asked me that question, I can provide you with an answer by the end of this week. okay. So, you know, this is something and I think my colleagues really need to start talking about this. You know, if we are going to furlough district staff, it would be -- in my mind, I'm thinking during spring break, I would like to know from finance what that financial impact would be, you know, because we need to underbacker understand what

205those numbers are, we need to understand what our options are. We can't just be loosy goosy about this, we're at the 3.08 projected, waimd like to see is the financial recovery plan now, what can we do in the next four months by JUNE, DR. Hepburn, what can that look like for us to be able to get to 4%? You know, how much -- what do we have to do to -- I don't know -- cut positions if we have vacant positions, are they still on the books financially? I don't know the answer to that. yeah, so those things are what we're doing right now, hiring freeze, absorbing all vacancies, only hiring if it's a specific need that addresses safety or some special circumstance, so all the things you mention jared what we're doing right now,

206travel freeze, the cabinet we go through contracts pretty regularly to see what we don't need so we can exercise out clauses to regain that money back, so we have looked at revenger option and continue to look at every option. Right now I think most of the options that don't have anything to do with people because you can't release people in the mid -- middle of the year, tough do that with the cadence of spring for the upcoming school year we're , we're doing cost savings for this school year. For the upcoming school year, it's easier, we can reduce our staff, we can plan for certain things that we can cut for the upcoming school year. For this current school year, hiring freeze, we've absorbed every vacancy, if somebody leaves, we immediately absorb that as a

207cost savings, and monitoring our expenditures just to make sure that we're not overspending at certain budget and is understanding, and tanding -- under spending, and making sure the services we are utilizing, that we monitor and have tight comas to see if there's additional cost savings there, especially like substitutes and things like that. okay, thank you. And the other thing is that we also have to have a plan to stabilize our enrollment. I mean, the problem is we're losing our students. What does that plan look like? Because we can't keep continuing to lose our students. So, I would like to have a plan on what that looks like to stabilize our enrollment. Obviously we want to increase enrollment too and then also to have a financial recovery plan. I like to see what that looks like

208in the next four months to six month tos a year and then the other thing is like I said earlier and the meeting today, we need to figure out a way to bring in passive income. If there is bureaucracy, red tape, you know, we need to break down these barriers and find a way that we can work things out to bring additional rounding back the our district. Thank you. if I MAY, chair, today's workshop, there's two items that are asking the board for investments, so we can actually bring additional revenue to the district. We have reached a capacity threshold, so the demand is there and we'll learn about those two things. One of them is broward virtual school. We've reached the capacity threshold there where if we increase our capacity adding more teachers, we'll be

209able to increase revenue because we're turning students away from that and also our workforce opportunities with our tech schools too which we have a long waiting list for that and asking the board for that investment to address the needs of those learnings too. thank you, MR. Cervera? thank you, chair. I'm glad we're doing this. i'm glad we're doing this in an open session. That's being broadcast on becon in which the public can see perhaps maybe for the first time our financial situation. And when you look at these projected fund balance analysis sheets within the presentation, it should scare the heck out of you. And if it doesn't, maybe you need to get your eyes checked because I'm looking at these numbers again, obviously I'm privy to a lot of this information by virtue of me

210being on board but I'm looking at these numbers and I'm seeing how we're barely squeaking by at this 3% threshold before we potentially have to start self-reporting to the state. That our finances have gotten so bad that we need to go running to tallahassee and asking for help. That's a scary thing. It really is. And I'm looking at some of those projections also within the presentation here, especially for next year and this preliminary fte forecast in which we're going to lose another 7 thousand kids projected for next school year, coupled with additional losses from this school year to the tune of roughly 89 million dollars. And MS. Johnson, the irony is not lost on me in the fact that it was two presentations that were prepared for today's workshop. And in the initial presentation, the

211preliminary fte forecast called for an 80 million dollar estimated revenue decline. And then when it was revised, it went up to 89.8. It's very interesting how when we updated our numbers, we continue to lose money in this district and quite frankly it's very scary. And what do we have? We have opportunities to figure this out and how to right this ship. We have staff, district staff that has remained steady or has increased despite the fact over the last ten years, we heard the superintendent tell us we've lost almost 40 thousand students. We have overtime that's running ramped. We have a lot of stupid contracts that we signed for millions of dollars in this district for things that quite frankly we don't need and that we overpay for. Like buses and software licensing. I do tend

212to look around the state and see what other districts are doing to try to dig their way out of financial walls they MAY have. And I came across an article, MR. Superintendent, from the miami harold that according to their projected numbers, with their bus camera stop sign program they have there, they generate 2 million dollars a month, the miami-dade county buses, why don't we have one of those, a month. 2 million dollars a month according to the miami harold from an article in JANUARY. That's a lot of dough especially when you have teachers that haven't gotten raises in lord knows how long. When we have facilities that immediate attention and while we continue to operate at over 100 million dollar deficit. What is the suggestion that the district is bringing to us? I'm hearing now

213that we want to lay off a thousand district staff employees. But if I heard DR. Holness' question to MS. Johnson earlier, she said if we're really going keep track, it needs to be closer to 2 thousand. We voted as a school board to close six schools recently. What are we doing to generate income with those properties once those students transition to their new schools next year? I've asked for comps on sales, I've asked for comps on rentals. Don't think I ever got those despite repeated requests but with f what are we doing as a district to turn those into operating properties. Why are we still in this build? Ing why are we here? I know we have a lot of space. We all learn hated in the handy debacle that you have adequate space to

214put us, why are we here? My concern, MR. Superintendent, is that we're not being aggressive enough. We want to kick the can down the road and try to come up with an idea here and an idea there on how to fix this but I'm not really hearing anything substantive. And I'm afraid, MR. Superintendent, we're running out of road. If these numbers continue on the financial path they're continuing on now, we're going to turn ourselves over to the state and I think we know the ramifications that are going to come along with that if we have to go down that parchment while I'm excited there's going to be this press conference and these announcements today that I'm very much looking forward to because I'm sure my colleagues are as well, I want to be on record

215when I say we need more decisive and aggressive action in how we are going the generate funds for this district and how we are going to save funds for this district, not ton backs of our students, by taking away their graduation venues that they've worked 13 years to get there, not on the backs of our teachers, but as a district, as a whole, collectively. And I'm looking forward to you giving this your top priority attention if you will to figuring out how we can right this ship because right now, we are sinking, thank you. if I MAY, chair. go ahead, DR. Hepburn. doi want to advise the board that stop arm camera initiative is in the cone of silence, so just to be careful about discussions around that. And yeah, I just want to make

216sure the board is aware of that part. okay, board member thompson? thank you, chair. I have a couple different trains of thought I want to bring up. I first want to just remind my colleague that we will be discussing the facilities in MARCH when DR. Wanza brings a plan, so that is coming towards us to when we ear doing with our facilities, so just make some notes so you remember. I also would like to get an update from MR. Sullivan about the school bus contracts because even though it niece the cone of silence, I think it's important we let the public know that we're not just giving up 50 million dollars, that there are some issues and I trust he is navigate the cone of silence. I can speak in general terms of other district

217experience if general counsel -- I encourage the general counsel just to make sure. to stop me when I cross the line. yeah. so, with regards to any discussion with regards to the current rfp, we are in the cone of silence, so, no discussions with regards to that. If you are going to talk about other districts, by all means. so, other districts have experienced implementation problems with their bus cameras, so I know general counsel's team has been taking that into account as we work through our own implementation. and I think everyone can read the news when there is lawsuits pending in miami-dade about this, so I will leave that at that, but we are not leaving that on the table, we are actively pursuing options. I also want to address a comment about tallahassee, asking hall

218tallahassee to save us, tallahassee has put florida in the position it's in, I would like you to discuss the educational budget we are given. so, referring back to my presentation earlier, we should expect about 1.5 to 2% increase in the overall budget, but that would be per student which we would benefit from but even with an increase in enrollment, I'm sorry, increase per student, if you're losing students, it kind of washes any benefit that you truly get from any kind of increase. % again, fes, the scholarships and charters are funded in that same bucket, they would get a proportionate share of any increases that we experience from tallahassee. thank you. And I just want to make some comment about that. There is a reason that they are increasing the per student allocation, it is so

219the funding can go to charter schools in these voucher programs, it's not to help public education. I want to be abundantly clear. I do think there needs to be a public education campaign on our budget because there's a lot of confusion about what can be capital, what can be general fund. And I'm sure everyone's gotten e-mails, teachers, why can we afford buildings but can't afford the pay them more, so I know that and I'll harp on social media, a lot of other electeds for city governments have done very short explainer on the budget, is that something we can put together, that would be very -- kind of like our little pamphlet citizens guide to the bujts but something that people will get. yeah, we can do that. I know the chair has requested hutment we

220do something similar in terms of social media and really explain our budgets, only because as you said, it's very complicated, so everyone knows how we're funded, what those different buckets can and cannot be used for and start with that as a baseline, we're happy to partner with the respected board member sos they can get it out on their channels as well. thank you. And then for the 2 thousand we lost mid year, there's a comment that that is not the norm. Do we know what -- so, I would say not last year, we're in 25-26, not 24-25, prior to 24-25, that has not been the norm, the school district would lose its projected amount, that was determined by the state, now you have a phenomenon in not just broward county, if people are paying attention

221to national news, our neighbor tos the north, south, the neighbors northwest of us, all across the country, it taoes same issue, affordability, low birthrate, families can't afford to be in large urban centers anymore and also the comply kings around immigration policies and south florida has really impacted us as well. We noticed that trend last spring when we lost probably about three to four thousand students in the spring semester alone, so it's not a usual thing for us but the past two years, it's become the norm in which it's compounding our traditional losses of about 3-4 thousand kids per year. so it's not necessarily sthe ear going charter -- no, charter schools have declined in enrollment as well, but the scholarship, the -- what's the term, MS. Johnson, the family empowerment scholarship, that has increased to

222the tune I think of about 12 to 15 percent just for us. So, that at -- I talklked mycolllleagues ararndthe atate, th'r're e see thing same thing, we're increasing in increasing scholarship use, if your ear in a larger urban area or a very affluent area or an expense I ever area like palm baoefrp, pin beltless, orange county, you see that declining enrollment due to affordability issues and just the compounding issue with low birthrates too, you don't see a lot of new kids, small age kids coming into elementary schools because people are waiting long tore start their families. and so with that empowerment skol lor ship, they can use that for home school, I think our micro schools and I think a lot of families are turning to that because our class sizes are too big

223especially in our almost ri slaloms so I think that's something we need to consider is how to fix the budget so our class sizes are smaller and that we are truthful when we say our ratios because I know at least in my district,, they are not truthful. And all schools, and so I think with that comment, I do think we need to revisit sofm the cost savoring opportunities we did have and the board changed their mind in. I still think they were good ideas but we need to implement them with more community input. For example, graduations, we had heard from the community that if we were going to put them in a gym, they want to be in their own gym, so is there a way that we can meet with some stakeholders to discuss

224or send out a parent survey saying these are the three options for your school, you can either go to dillard, you can do two ser moan anywheres at your own high skol or some other third option and that way the parent and is the seniors make that choice at the beginning of the year to go for ward that way. That way it wasn't a surprise to seniors from this year where the graduations are. yes, that's part of our plan is registering that visitor -- revisiting that, working with parent and is students because that was the shocker with them, as I mentioned before, they didn't pay attention to our workshops, they learned about it once we put the information out. That's part of the plan too to talk to the board as we go back out

225and do that little bit more organically too and get feedback and empower teachers, parents and students with the high school scheduling because that is a 25-50 million dollar chunk that we always have to plan for and it's being paid for on the backs of our elementary and some of our middle schools. and I think having, that was my next bullet point, having a very open conversation about what the trade offs are and what it means to have 18 kids in a kindergarten and the costs differentials and have them be an active part so they don't feel tafs back door conversation where we tried to bully that through. Following on that, I think there are ways that we can improve teacher experience that is not necessarily budget related, so I think, one, we will cover later

226on with test, reduce thing amount of testing I think would ease the stress on our teachers which would have a better quality of life, not only for them but for our students. So I look forward to talking about that later. I also would like to discuss teacher walk-throughs or observations. I think that puts an inordinate amount of stress on our teachers and while I see the benefits to it to a point, I think really having a reduction in that as long as it doesn't impact teacher learning because these are things we can implement that don't cost money but will be meaningful I hope to the teachers. So following up on that, also when is the org chart combining to us? that will be coming to you in two meetings in APRIL to start that process

227earlier, just to ensure we're able to work with our employees if there are employees that are going to be impacted by the down-sizing, we already talked to carol hilton, ceo career source to work alongside us to make sure our employees have a place to land if they're impacted but that will be in APRIL, APRIL 14, and I want to say the following meeting is -- it's special, the 28th. the 28th. and I think as you guys are thinking through that, one potential solution to the org chart is creating a bigger department with just one exec tier director instead of a bunch of other directors because that's the feedback we get a lot, is it being top heavy, so I would look forward to seeing your proposals for that. We get this comment a lot, I

228know we went out for kcw to get it appraised, and I knower we've also been talking to other government agencies potentially about leasing space here. Has there been any movement on both of those options? yes, as far as appraisals, there's a specific policy where we have to get three appraisals and there's a committee that's convened to come up with the appraisal price. if we were to surplus the property I think the first one came in at anted 65 million, then a second one came out -- in the 40's. and then the third one is on the way. And then the committee will be established to set the actual true appraisal value as if we were going to surplus the property. And as far as leasing levels of this building. yes, we're emptying out the majority

229of this building with the intentions of leasing out those floors. We already have a plan of where our departments are gowning to go and empty spaces in our schools stampeder district. Then we'll start that process of putting that on the street as far as availability of floors to lease. If we sell or lease the building, that revenue gooses to what budget? sale, that goes to capital, leasing is capital also, it goes to capital as well. I think the potential revenue annually for leasing that, we looked at in the preliminary report I want to say it was around 2-3 million dollars. per level? no, no. can you ask per level? no, total for the floor that is we plan on leasing out. . Er and then for transportation, at one point during a workshop, there was

230like a hub b model idea. Is that still being explored or what are our current thoughts on transportation? that is still being explored. The team is going to present some update tos me so I can see where they are at this point we. Ear also going to leverage some external experts to come in and help review and give us some additional innovative ideas we MAY not have thought about just to ensure we're leveraging every opportunity that we can to become more efficient with our transportation services. and I would just say in pembroke pines, sharing with the city our bus passes tha, would not work sx, I have two more comments, textbook adoption, are those mandated by state, can we put them up? those are mandated by state. I think you caning put up for one

231year which we did with the science and now we're paying for it this year. so there's no way to get around that part, okay. And I would just like to agree I believe with MS. Alhadeff about reducing barriers to accepting donations and having people come and give us basically free stuff. i know there was a contract that happened recently that we lost out on that opportunity and that just hurts everyone in the long run and it hurts our reputation, it hurts our partnerships and I think there's a lot of especially small business that is would come in and do murals or landscaping for a few months and, you know, the department that's overseeing it, I aoep not see -- I'm not seeing a lot of results. I agree, the barriers to donations are frustrating, yes.

232do you have a plan to address that? I'll work with my lapels in legal to make sure we overcome those barriers. with ke good aet follow up, what your solutions are to address it. sure, I'll work with my colleagues in legal. thanks, bud, sorry. MS. Rupert? thank you. I first want to ask a simple question. What is the definition for an essential employee? those are the critical to a function for the district that MAY cause us to have a safety concern and just not simply operate at an efficient level where we end up losing money, time and essential functions that keep the district operating. okay. It should be a really simple answer and should be guided by our strategic plan which is coming to a close soon. Every single decision should be predicated on our

233students, quite simply, how does your job impact the life and the growth of our students. Upper management, upper, upper management, upper, upper, upper management, they all need to be looked at. That's the first part. The second is district 7 has a wonderful reputation for having some great schools, broward virtual stc, pbhs, my other schools, they're all waiting lists, you mentioned that before and I know bvs has been really just, you know, wanting to push forward with more students because they are asking to join them so I'm looking forward to the conversation later this afternoon to see how we do that because those are -- that's money right back to us and atc, pompano beach high school, we're doing hall -- hol lin dale beach high school, you will have a north and a southern area

234but there's also space on other high schools, middle schools, etc., that could be partnered up with atc or some of the other programs, the ones that can work out with students on them. There's -- I want to see a robust discussion for that as well besides bvs because we do have waiting lists for atc and I believe sheridan and mcfatter, so obviously we know it's there, I have another question, it's on page 15, looking at the staffing levels across the same time period from 2019-20, it was 22 thousand 721 and then as you go down towards 2025-26, it's 20 thousand 847. So, basically since 2019-20, we have lost 1874 employees already so, I say that to give everybody an understanding that we have been losing employees and obviously positions had to be allotted out, I'm

235sure, and it still wasn't enough, so if the information that you're looking at or that you're thinking of, you know, it should be two simple things, is it working, no, then we need to do something else. Does it affect the ever da I life and growth of our students, yes, then we should be putting our money there, so thank you. thank you, DR. Zeman? thanks, chair. This is very sobering news, MS. Johnson, but it's good to get this out. If I wanted to know how close we are to 3% projected at the end of the year, how many more dollars would we have to spend or revenue would we lose in order to get to the 3% instead of 3.08? What is.08% of 2.1 billion dollars? I think you already know, right. It's rhetorical. 1.7

236million. The reason I wanted some time to pass there, 1.7 million is -- happens quickly. So, sometimes the percentages are more difficult to understand than the dollars but 1.7 million on a 2.1 billion dollar base is just incredibly close. I also want to make it crystal clear what doesn't seem to be so hard in terms of math here. Landyn, if I have a 10 to 1 ratio of student tos tloi yaoe and is I lose 47 thousand students, what staff would be a proportional reduction? 10% of 47 thousand. I need to chat gpt for that. I know you know the answer. 4700. thank you. That's what I thought. I put a lot of stress on you tl. MR. Strauss is probably disappointed in me. I'll text you next time, I'm not part of the culture

237yet. I just want people to think about that because today I proposed negotiating for a new person to take a job at market salary and it got defeated by this board. And to which I wanted to respond very, very loudly, if you don't negotiate based on market, what are you negotiating on? And it's difficult to do individual decisions sometimes. It's difficult to close a school, it's different to do that, so let's do some more math f we did the same proportionate reduction in schools, with would have closed 36 schools, by my count, we closed 7, one last year and six this year. If we were going to reduce staff proportionate lolly, it would be 4702 position that is go abay f way but there's more to that, when we lose students, we always lose teachers,

238so that redline you sea that's plat means we've grained one min vait toersinger, one non-teaching position for every teach thaer went away for the past ten years which means we have increased non-teaching positions compared to teaching positions over the last ten years and I'm going the tell you the bottom line here, we pass the budget, nine people passed the budget, nine people passed these 11 budget and is we did not hold the line and hold business principal tos make sure we were deliver thing best ij casing for this communities. it's one of the biggest failures this board could have. Our job, number one, is to allocate other people's money to build the greatest community we can possibly build and we failed. We failed by 36 schools, by 4700 positions and a decline of roughly 1500

239teachers we replaced with roughly 500 more administrators. Tilting the balance away from the things we know matter the most, classroom instruction. Do we need administrators, do we need grant writer and is people to watch ese, yeah, we need those things but we also know those things get more efficient over time. Often time ins my own perception, I see too many people trying to do a function and it is the layers of doctor mo and doctor no and doctor no on top of everybody that prevents us from innovating so I'm looking forward to a significant reduction in outside school things, to me, the high water mark is 4700, you want to get excited about that, that would free up 352 million dollars. Not counting the school closures, that's just payroll dollars, 352 million dollars, that's a

240lot of money. This board owns this problem, this board will fix the problem, I guarantee it. We have an appetite for doing the right thing, I hope the decisions we make about big dollars are not indicative of some of the dishing we've made about small dollars. As business people know, if you want to make a dollar, watch the pennies. So, when we make small decisions and make immediate yaum and large decisions, the loss of economics are like the loss of gravity, you can run but you cannot hide, eventually they will catch up to you and bielt you in the back side, we have a big bite mark on our back side and we have to figure out how to solve this problem. The high mark is to stop debating things to go against the economics

241of education and lifting for our students by spending your money in ways that you know will deliver a better broward county. The last point that's really important is we ought not to wait to let people know. It would have been more humane to tell them now, if you're in one of those 4700 position that is we cannot afford anymore, it would be nice to know, it would be nice to know which other positions are arnds, what career store cans to to help you, it would be nice to do a lot of stuff. We're doing nobody any favors if tle ear in a position they can no longer afford to do nt let them work with the hopes that their job is going to be around next year, so this cumulative pain has been around for

242a long time, I've advocated for closing lot of schools to no effect. I have argued for this for a long time, I'm glad we're getting to this point. Ere's twthings I ththk we ght to so thinknk abt t whwhh h iswewe ouought t to oooot lilike hockey players, always pass to where the player's going, not to where the player is. Next year's enrollment should be the basis of all the discussions going forward and I want to rescue MRS. Hixon f you guys would please deliver scenario based budgets for us, MRS. Hixon can decide whether or not we can afford a 4% or a 2% or a 0% raise, just show us what it looks like like, tell us the pain we have to endure politically to give our people a raise. Scenario point budgeting works

243in every scenario, please bring us a 4% raise and a 2% raise and a 1% raise and a 0% raise based on the budget discussions we're willing to take and I don't want to judge our superintendent by this issue, he was not even here when this whole waterfall happened, two, we approved the budget. So the relationship between the superintendent and staff and his financial saf, the buck stops at this table where we make decisions about the budget, our leader only execute it is budget we give him. And so I would love to see if my board agrees with me, scenarios, rather than single individual cuts and adds at a time because it's too easy to do adds and sometimes it's hard to do individually cuts but if we can see that one time, I want

244to see if MRS. Hixon is right, can we give raises because right now we don't get to make that decision, it usually comes doup to we're out of money and so we do what we can. I would rather make that decision next month where we can say can we or can we not and it's not giving a raise, but can we set aside expected revenue in a fund that we could use for other purposes that are many the budget and then we can negotiate because it's very complicate today get into that stuff. I think the buck stops here and I think we need to have an elevated discussion about this. There are some things we debated that really aren't debatable anymore, we cannot afford to own assets that do not deliver to our extra strategic

245goals and that's the bottom line and the cost of us doing nothing for ten years, 350, 2 million dollars o a year of operating money, had we made steady progress on right sizing. What's the gain of right sizing our property, we're sending kids to better schools, schools that deliver all their specials in elementary school that have all the debates and the extra programs in middle school and have great athletics in high school, how can you argue against that? We have to move forward and be far more aggressive in doing this. So, let's see how the vote gos in the future, but I hope that we continue to see these scenario bumgt -- budget so we're empowered to make the right decisions but they're not that difficult, our job is to create a better broward county

246schools and a better broward county and I know we can do that. Er MRS. Bulman? how m agoing to follow that. To DR. Zeman's point, I like the scenario based budgeting. What I had written in my notes, I think we know we have these problems, we've been talking about it, we know that we've had some hiccups, we've been talking about it. But now the question is what are we going to do about it and do we have the appetite to o the right thing to make sure that we're delivering the best education for our students and using all of our taxpayer dollars wisely and so I think my colleagues have hit on most of these points of all the things I have. And I appreciate everyone's inpoit, regarding the scenario based budgeting and to MS.

247Hall deaf's point about the plan, we need to see our options so we can make decisions holistically because when we're doing things piecemeal, it's hard for us to see the big picture and one thing kind of informs another thing and so if we're looking at what our options are holistically, I think we'll have a better plan as a board and everyone can get behind that. So, is that something we can do for next month? Because question also deliver that message to our constituents and to the stakeholders too of what we're doing. yes. because we're doing a lot of things, that's the other thing, getting lost in this narrative ir. We're reducing our footprint, I know we've reduced some of the magnet programs that is's going the reduce some transportation and we're working on other transportation

248items. Er we're having very serious discussions about how we're going to reduce other costs that we can't really talk about right now that are in negotiations but everyone is very interested and dedicated to making sure we're moving in the right direction. There are things that are totally out of our control like the direction of education and the state right now and how it's being funded so we have to do what we can with the situation that we have and I think looking at our goal has to be that we are continuing to be competitive and the best option which we are but we are going to have to reduce our footprint to be competitive knowing that we're not the only game in town anymore, so I really like the fak that MS. Thompson's willing to

249put out there, there are thing that is have been brought to the board before like graduation, block scheduling, people aren't happy with that but I think we have to be serious at looking at these options. The communication around it needs to be different. There needs to be more community understanding of what we're looking at, what the benefits are and what we're looking at if we don't make hard decisions, but I do think that we can't leave any of these options on the table when we're coming back. And then in terms of staff reduction which is a very difficult topic, I would feel more comfort fbl we had a plan -- if we had an idea of how we're looking to do that, like, MS. Thompson suggested maybe taking a layer out, but instead of just

250like a percentage reduction in every department or something like that, like, how are we restructuring so that we're not losing the education quality component and, again websinger just need to be able to see it so we can tell the public what's happening and reassure them that it's going to be okay, so, I think like if we can have something more concrete in the next month, I think that would be -- so, the downsizing as far as personnel, that will be workshopped in APRIL, that's something very delicate we just can't put out there, there's certain symptoms from concerned employee to happen, so we want to do that in a good cadence that will inform the board and the public and then continuously inform the public and the board while we talk and have those conversations with

251impacted employees. The budget as far as just putting everything holistically and send hating to the bore, we can send that out shortly. We've discussed and presented a lot of things since I think last OCTOBER up to now and put out a lot of memo sos we can consolidate all that sdmftion getting that out, so -- to the board and public facing, so everybody's well informed. yeah, and if we have -- like DR. Zeman was saying, if we have the various scenario ifs we make the decision to do this, this is what it's going look like, this is the money we need, we can make more informed choices versus one off and hoping we're saving money by picking off things. Instead of looking like we're picking off people, it's like what do we flexed to grow

252the base, what is it that we need to make the schools the best schools that we can instead of -- you know, I know everyone's screaming top down, what is it that we need? The class sizes, those are the things that people come to our schools, if we want to attract people, we don't want to have them going away because we're cutting in the wrong place. And so I think we have to as a board have to did v a better understanding of what the plan is for that, but I would like to see a base, a very strong base and see what we need tat the top versus going the other direction. but just in general while we're getting a lot of negative feedback and there's a lot of challenges, I do think we

253have been addressing this and there are a lot of forces against us that are really out of our control, so this is a new day where you're losing 2 thousand kids in the middle of the school year, we're going to have to raise to the occasion but I don't think that's anything that we as a district have caused. You think that that's been outside of our control, so, now that we don't have to address it, I don't think that's all because of things we have done. So, I will look forward to that plan, thank you. yeah, absolutely. thank you. Just real quick, I wanted to thank my colleagues who brought solutions today. So I wanted to speak to some of those. I do support the proposal for furloughing district staff, I've also asked about that,

254so I hope that the superintendent can look into implement hating and we get our opinion from our general counsel. I appreciate the suggestion for a financial recovery plan and a plan to stabilize enrollment. Those are things I think we really do need in order to bring stability to the district. i also appreciated the suggestion for a public education campaign around the budget. I've been bothering the chief of staff about putting digestible videos out for the public to explain budget and the different processes that we go through because they are not -- they're just not user friendly. So, to the extent that we can engage the public and put things out in plain speak would be wonderful. I also appreciated MS. Thompson's suggestion around graduations and revisiting some of the cost saving measures, and I want

255to emphasize to the superintendent, I think like doing the big town halls where we're recording things and people come up to a microphone, that's not an authentic or productive way to gather feedback. I've been really fortunate to do some parent roundtable and is student roundtables where I sit down and ask questions and to the student advisor's credit, he has helped me with that, our alternate student advisor as well, ask very strategic, productive questions so I encourage you to work with them as much as they're willing to do that, but being able to ask questions in a way that gets us to a solution and sitting down with people to figure out what kinds of solutions exist out there. I know we heard from some parents from fort lauderdale high school around graduations, saying that they

256were willing to work with community stakeholders to secure venues and thing -- things like that. MS. Thompson brought something up earlier today but also in this workshop about quality of life for our teachers and something that stuck out to me in the conversation around impact bargaining was about teachers having to move schools and move their classrooms. And I happen to think that we shouldn't just provide support to those teachers in terms of moving their classrooms. I think tat beginning of the year and oefnd the year when teachers are having to mover, it's like moving out of an apartment, providing the supports they need if the they're even being asked to mover classrooms within the same school. To the extent we can have ppo and facilities staff help with that, it's important. And I'm particularly curious

257to something has was brought up earlier in terms of barriers to donations. Could you -- and this is something that I've heard over and over again as well. can you speak to that. where do I start? So, the team has done a yeoman's job in a call to action that -- with the academic team, pretty much, hey, we don't have the money, let's leverage philanthropists, whatever, partners that we can find out there to assist us in some of our initiatives, and one of those initiatives is broward powered by ai and the other part that people don't hear a lot, I'm the human in the loop, that's the complete statement so, DR. Cone and their team did a great job for magic school ai to scale that out across the board with additional things that the

258donor was providing such as professional development and all of that, so I know there's some complications, general counsel can probably talk about on their side as far as some of the barriers or needs to get donations legally sufficient to be able to bring them to the board. For us as far as staff, there's not a lot of barriers, the only barrier is going out and finding a donor and convincing them that this is a great tool, resource or service to our staff and our students and the outcomes they can get out of it. I know, I'm not a lawyer, I know MS. Jacques-adams can provide some details about what are some legal barriers that MAY get in the way of us bringing that to board to protect the district and the board. are you aware

259of any school board policies that pose challenges in terms of accepting donations? not that I'm aware of. My policy people are over there, I naoment sure if they're aware of any policy, but I think it's more about liabilities on the legal side, not policy issues. I would have to double check, I don't think there's anything in policy per se, but anything that we take in terms of revenue, I believe, does have to come to the board which means it has to go through that bro kress. Er MS. Jacques-adams, can you speak to the barriers in regards to accepting donations? so, one of the issues, there was an attorney that was handling this who's no longer here, but one of the issues was the timing in receiving the agreement and the changes that had to be

260made to that agreement. so, I'm not talking about a specific -- this is something that even when I was a teacher I would hear about. This is not like a recurring theme, so could you speak to just like on a broad scale, are there policies in place that the board can amend to make it more expeditious and beneficial to our students to accept donations? so, it depends upon the type of donations that you're speaking to. There are financial donations and there are donations of tangible personal property. We do have a policy with regards to tangible personal property and that is a policy that we need to comply with. In terms of the finances in the specific instance that DR. Hepburn was speaking to, that contract was provided to, you know, the office of general counsel

261like a week prior to the deadline, and there were a number of legal comments that needed to be addressed that were not at the time. So, I don't -- so, the tangible property policy, is that something that we can revise to make it -- to streamline the donation process? so, I would have to look at the policy in relation to what is required but any policy that we have can be changed. So, we would have to look at the policy in terms of any donations that we MAY get to see how it can be amended. okay. Alright. MS. Hixon? thank you. For round two, just a couple of things. So, in the add campaign that we've been discussing about sharing our district budget and how that process is, can we also add in comparisons to

262the other districts in relation to the how much money we get per student here in broward county and if MS. Johnson could speak to that because we've heard in this room a number of times that both kayoed and palm beacac get sisiificantltlhigher amounts of momoy per studenent so whenen we'r're discsingnghohow we caca give raeses or what our situation ares, I think it's really important we're looking at the bigger picture that we have, so if you could speak to that, if we could add that to the ad. you reer refer tog cost differential? Frj yes, at the end of the day, what do we get per student and what do the other two counties -- because we've heard different things. If it's the same, we'd need know that too. We heard in this room, like, palm

263beach is almost $500 more a student and dade county is somewhere 8 to a thousand dollars more a student, so if you could maybe add that and address it. we can grab that, I know it's based off of cost o f living. I don't know why they think the cost of living is different -- your calculation is a whole page, we've sat through that. you are correct, we do get the lower end. right, and I think it's important to include that in the conversation. That's one thing. The second thing to MRS. Leonardi's point and I would like to say, maybe it town hall is the wrong word to call it, maybe communities do it in smaller conversations, bring up the fact here's why we suggested getting rid of the 8th period personalization, here's why we

264suggested -- and put it into a package where we could have a discussion on what are your thoughts on this, if you had to pick three or four of these things, what would you look at, you know, in terms of -- I think it's important to not just have them come up, it's going to be a complaint session, it's going to be here's the issue, here are some of our solutions, what do you think about them, do you have your own solution, really intentional conversations that maybe are in every district as opposed to regional. I think the town phalluses have to be really intentional around both the budget and the strategic plan because they all go together so I think that would be important. I have asked the superintendent this question a number of times

265and we already have a policy, so we've talked a number of times about naming for lack of a better term, naming rights, right, or naming sponsorships and we have a policy on that, so, what are we doing to actively, like south broward high school, maybe it's called john doe staid stadium, we have a policy in place so what are we going to actively get people, and where would those monies go? I would have to double check where the money can go and be used for, but MR. Nap and I have had conversations x he has the network and the exposure to help us out so we've talked about that with him utilizing bf and the network he has to garner that type of support to purchase sponsorships at schools, be it a stadium or a

266gymnasium and things like that. And then you have MR. Chisom as of recently working with the principals around the high school graduation piece. and I appreciate that, but we've been asking about this for a little while and nothing's come to us yet as like a contract. When ke e with expect to see things come to the board around what we'll call easy money? I'm follow up with james and we'll see what we can come up with. okay. Well, I would like o get an update on that maybe in the next -- yeah, by next month, like where are we, what can we look forward to, we keep hearing it's going to come and I haven't seen anything. A quick question on the org chart. It was a little confusing, so is it coming to us

267in APRIL at a workshop or is it coming -- yes, it start widths a workshop. then the second date you gave was the meeting, okay, perfect. You kind of addressed this but I guess my question sort of is do we -- is there data to show that the immigration concerns are definitely affecting our enrollment? what I can tell you is that our ell students esspshlly our fairly new newcomers have declined over the past two years. I believe we received a board follow-up on that, DR. Zeman requested it. okay, because I've been -- I must not have seen that, I've been to a couple of school and is they mentioned that. I have two more things. So, if I'm not mistaken, MS. Jacques-adams, we have cadre legal on standby, is that correct? through the chair, for

268certain topics, yes. for some of these contracts especially like donation contracts, pretty standard contracts, is there a reason why -- and I'm asking this because I know you're very, very short staffed right now and you just are one person, even less staffed recently, and there are a long list of contracts that are in the queue and some of them are on the cone of silence. So, is it possible for us to send some of those fairly non-complicated things out so we can get all these contracts out the door, especially donation ones that are -- they shouldn't be that difficult to navigate. through the chair, I am in the process of doing just that. okay. Great. And my last point is, so recently, we had people move from kc wright into the classroom and broward education

269foundation did a great job of giving them supplies and helping them with that process, so could we also in the item that MS. Thompson, I forgot to mention this when we passed the ie the, reach out to broward education foundation for those teachers that are having to shift around based on our closing of the school, consolidating schools and just have them find out what the teachers might need or I'm sure they're happy to do that or be more proactive in them sharing because there's whole warehouse where teachers can go to get items for free. There's a process that goes through but I'm not sure if everybody is aware of that, at the very least, if we can give them a one pager, here are all the resources we have available to make this move easier

270for you. DR. Hepburn? I'm taking note of what you just said and when I meet with james and ernie, we can develop that one pager. alright, thank you. thank you, landyn? thank you, MADAM Chair. I appreciated your comment about having productive conversations with student and is we've experienced that and we experience that in all of our speak out, speak up sessions, they start with the same phrase, don't complain unless you take action and that's what we tell our students when we had those conversations with them, like MRS. Hixon said, a speak up, speak out is not a complaint session, it's time for you to share your ideas. And I think that should be a guiding light throughout this conversation. So, I understand that you're working with finite resources and mandates that often feel impossible to

271reconcile. You have a responsibility to be fiscally prudent and I respect the weight of those discussions. But when comments are made at the board level that cuts should and will not impact students, it create ass disconnect between this board room and our classrooms. It just isn't factual. The superintendent and cabinet have been very honest with students throughout this entire process, whether it's through the student advisors or in direct conversations between the superintendent and other students. The fact these cuts MAY impact them. Well, I know this is the sincere intent of this board to not have cuts impact students, the factual resalt is we are feel thirsting weight, respectfully and I know this will be an unpopular statement, I would ask that this is not the narrative anymore. I respect that the comments are come framing

272a place where it's wanted that the cuts won't impact students but they are. The difficulties that we're facing just don't allow it to be a situation where they done and I think it's very important that when we have conversations at a public level, that we're being honest with ourselves, that wre ear in a situation where not impacting kids is just not an option anymore. Our students are resilient, we will adapt, we got close on multiple occasions including block scheduling and graduation, we're used to navigating a world that changes quickly, in my eyes, making these hard decisions is a lot like pruning a tree. It's painful to cut away branches and the tree might look smaller or bare for a season, but we do it because we know it's the only way to ensure the roots

273stay strong. Once these difficult, necessary decisions are made and the pruning is over, I truly believe we will emerge as leaner, for focused and ultimately better district. That's what a a sixth grade student said to me two weeks ago, and they said I want to be in a situation where I'm not told the answer anymore is no, we can't do it because of budget cuts. If we are able to na fr gait a decision where these are made now, we will be in a better positioning in the future and we will be able to regain students again. By acknowledging the cuts today, we build to grow a better tree tomorrow. thank you, landyn. MR. Cervera? thank you, chair, landyn, I think you redeemed your answer for the math equation before, so kudos to you. MADAM

274Chair, if I MAY, I want to clarify one thing I had said earlier for purposes of the record. I said bus cameras, what I was referring to are the speed zone cameras that are outside the miami-dade county schools that are affixed to poles and speed signs and things like that that allow radar or whatever to shoot through and catching people who are speeding in our school zones. And according to an article in the miami harold from earlier this year, that is generating over 2 million dollars a month in revenue for the miami-dade county school board, so that is something that I think we should be looking into to see if that's a viable option for us. I won't get into the bus camera thing because I've been told about the cone of silence, I wanted

275to clarify that. Lastly if I MAY to address the comment that was made by one of my colleagues earlier about the budget that was passed by the board, that was not a unanimous decision, that was passed 7-2, there were two members this board who did not vote in favor of this budge and I was one of them and the reason for that is because I thought there was too much bloat and I didn't think our teachers were getting enough none the budget. Although the budget was passed, it was not unanimous, it was 7-2, along with MS. Rupert, and myself, who voted against the budget, thank you, chair. chair? yes, I was going to provide some information about the speed zone, the school speed zone. So, that is being implemented, it is city dependent, not all

276cities are on board, it sounds like miami-dade has a lot of cities on board and we are collecting revenue from that, we get a small portion of the actual revenue that the cities collect but not all of them are on board. Some of them are transitioning to be on board, there was like a 30, or 60 day period, some are full fledge right now but nout all the cities have implemented. what city ares implement thing program, I would like a follow-up, how much r efr knew are we generating from those cities, and what are we doing to entices the other city that is are not doing it, have we not asked them yet? and some of them have asked us to give them the money we receive. So, we'll follow up. any other board discussion?

277Go ahead, MS. Bulman? just one thing, thank you, landyn, and I hope with landyn's closing comments that all of us adults here can have the stro erng do the right thing for the students. And make a stronger statement, not to steal from him, the (Meeting in recess). thank you. The next item is instruction assessment and testing. I now turn it over to staff for a brief presentation. thank you, I'll turn it over to DR. Cone and the team. good afternoon, board members, superintendent hepburn, educators, parents, students and members of the larger community. I'm fabian cone, the chief academic officer, I have members with me from my team. director hoelz. richard balm, the director of educational assessment, anl alysis and research. gara, mulmorn. thank you for bringing forward this report. This one particularly sit tats heart

278of teaching and learnings, instruction, assessment and testing. So I want to begin by acknowledging what we've heard from parents, teachers, principals and most importantly from students. We heard concerns, frustrations and questions and we heard and shared a like shared desire that every minute of our classroom is used to inspire learning and not meant to [Inaudible]. We want to address these concerns together. This workshop is not the end of the conversation, we believe it's the beginning, so over the past several weeks, we have engaged a broad cross section of stalk holders to examine perception and reality. We have learned some things that were powerful. There wasn't a se assistance to assessment. But more a call for clarity. For balance and for trust. And we take that seriously because assessments must serve instruction, not replace it. And

279at the same time we must acknowledge an important truth, broward county public schools continues to improve academically, we are an a rated district, we have no drf schools, student achievement has increased by more than ten percentage points over the last three year and is we released our career and readiness rates to 74%, a five point increase. So, with that, that progress did not happen by accident, it happened because of strong teaching, strong leadership and thoughtful use of data to support students but progress does not mean perfection. In leadership requires us to listen, reflect and improve. So today's presentation shares our initial findings grounded in educational feedback, student voice, parent input, data analysis, our purpose is simple, to provide clarity, ensure transparency and identify solutions. With your guidance, we've continued this work and returned to the

280board in fall 2026 with a progress point of where we are, what we have done, how we have reduced confusion and ensure that instruction remains a top priority. At the end of the day, we'll share the same goal, to ensure every broward county school student has high quality education supported by thoughtful instruction, grounded in meaningful assessments and protection of unnecessary burden. So we're committed to achieving that goal together. So, this workshop was developed because we heard, we listened from stakeholder feedback, particularly from teachers and parents concerned about over t ing and instructional time. This is improving student achievement, mitigating achievement loss, ensuring equity across the board, but this initiative is ability strengthening how we use existing systems more effectively. So, to be clear, today we are establishbacker accomplishing four critical goal, first clearly distinguishing between

281required testing and optional instructional assessments, second, quantifying how much instructional time is being used for testing, and third, explain how teachers use assessments not as an end but as a tool to support student learning. And fourth but most importantly, present concrete actions we are already taking to strengthen clarity, reduce confusion and reinforce teacher autonomy. Our goal is not just explanation but it's improvement. So this presentation was developed not in isolation, we have had many different meetings with many different teachers through surveys, with principals, and we've had several different meetings with parent advisory groups, we ever had individual conversations with student advisors, their action plan is included and adjusted in n this report. You will hear from landyn as part of the feedback we've heard from him, but this really is shared work. Shared ownership and

282shared responsibility. And because solutions are strongest when they reflect the voices of those closest to students. So, to start, one of the most important sources of confusion is terminology. All tests are assessments but not all assessments are tests. Many assessments are imbedded within instruction such as teach every observations, student discussions, exit tickets and classroom assignments. These instructional checks are not interruptions to learning but they're part of the learning. So, clarifying this dist irntion is essential to addressing some of the concerns, not all of them, is assessment serves one essential purpose which is to help teachers understand what students know and how they support them. But without assessment, instruction can become guess work, so assessment allows teachers to identify students who need additional support, provide targeted small group instruction, accelerate students ready for advanced work and

283improve instructional effectiveness. Assessment is not the goal, student learning is the goal, so assessment simply helps achieve it more effectively. so, we did hear a lot in the field, we heard a lot ant some confusion wean what's required, what's optional, we heard concerns about computer based testing for our young learners, we heard about stresses on students and the stress on instructional time so we want to recognize what we heard and talk about some of the surveys that we put out. So, during my segment, I will talk about what we heard out in the field from the teachers and the principals who were specifically surveyed, fast overview and required testing minutes. Here you'll see we had survey results from teachers from over 1600 teachers, that's about 10% of our teaching force. And we saw a difference

284and we saw that the majority said that students that they felt students were over tested, we saw a difference by grade level at the elementary level, we saw that teachers felt that students were more over tested and at the secondary level, while it's a majority, we saw that there were less teach thaers said they were over tested, also by region, we saw a didiffenen h hee w whe t the sto o region, ose e teache didn s sha this coerern as much. So, here we look at some survey questions, all of the survey questions are in the appendix websinger focused on certain survey questions, over 90% of teachers say they know which assessment ares state mandated, 82% can distinguish between what is district required ask what were optional assessments, 82% of teachers recognized performance matters

285is a hosting platform that required various assessments and more than half of teachers mentioned several different test that is are used. So, they mentioned that the tests are used for adjusts instruction, preparing students for test, monitoring progress, grouping and assigning grades. So, we were encouraged by the fact that teachers understood that there were lots of dint uses for assessments. Finally when we look at our teachers survey and look at the results, the main source, we asked about the main source of stress for teachers and students and what accounted for 70% of the responses were mandated, state and district tests and the testing frequency within short periods, so testing time within a small amount of -- within a small window, these remained the top stressors even when we looked at elementary teachers versus secondary teachers, for

286the elementary teachers tha, third stressor was computer based testing but that did differed for secondary teacher, they said data reporting expectations were the third stressor after those first two. Regarding professional autonomy, specifically teachers perception of the ability to determine how and when to implement instructional assessments, responses varied, indicating a range of experiences across different schools and roles. Now we'll pivot to the principal survey. We did a principal survey and had over 100 principals respond to this survey. We asked what was the main factor influencing decisions and 84% of those principals said district requirements was a primary driver. Next we asked principals what they believe is driving over testing concerns, the most common response was a mix of factors so they couldn't identify one specific one but a mix of factors. There were 39 principals who

287said there was true excessive volume of tests but what is notable, there were 25 principals who said there were no concerns about over testing at their schools. So, finally when we look at the principal vary, principals clearly understood the district required assessment calendar, they communicated what were required assessments versus optional assessments to their school staff and when asked what would most help principals lead a balanced assessment practices, the top request is clear guidance, followed by training for teachers and parent communication tools. Now I want to passover the slide show to landyn to discuss a student's perspective. student haves shared they generally feel teacher created assessments to be more reflective of what they're learning day-to-day. While they do not always feel the same connection to state and district recree dynamited assessments, this implies an important focus

288on keeping v ux and testing at a classroom level while also recognizing the challenges of autonomy in the classroom. One underlying theme that emerges is fast assessments do not show the full set of tested befrmg marks including content students MAY not feel as confident with, this ieg liters for continued extended learning opportunities at both the school based and district level. Our high school students survey with 92 thousand collective responses between quarter one and quarter two have produced limited instances of the word test, testing and over testing when it comes to the field for students to share their concerns. While students MAY perceive a disconnect between class rao m and state assessments, testing anxiety and over testing are not a primary concern from the student perspective at the high school level. However, there are nuances to

289this. This feedback is only looking at the high school level. Work is ongoing to collect student feedback at elementary and middle schools. There are considerable ethical guideline and is immript mr I kaition that is need to be analyzed before those ksing and is surveys can be had with those populations. We are actively working to seek out those voice and is look por ward to hearing their feedback. The call to action from students that we are hearing and talking at a whole district wide perspective is that the test students receive should be directly aligned to actionable curriculum while limiting excessive volume and frequency. Thank you. so, in addition to speaking to the student perspective, we had s efrm conversations with da most recently last week where we soukt to garner some feedback on what had they

290heard, what did they say and what were some resolutions they f we could take away as part of the confusion or what they feel are some of the biggest trepidations around assessment sos we had a conversation, we shared the parent guide with them to give us feedback and gave them opportunity to provide us additional questions for focus group we're doing as part of our extended opportunity to go deeper in where teachers struggle the most, this has been a collaborative process with dac. so, we do feel there are some guardrails that should be preventing over assessment, some of those guardrails include that fact the tha we do publish an assessment calendar that specifically says what our district required assessments, what are state required assessments tha, district assessment calendar is proukt to the board in OCTOBER and

291approved, it's the uniform testing calendar as per state statute. We feel that we are trying to limit and monitor those required assessments that are on that calendar and then this year there really has been an emphasis of walk through in our schools and through those walk through, the schools in the district department haves a clear view of what's happening in the classroom and that can help them improve instructional practices. So here we single out exactly what are the state required, district required and teacher and student discretion assessments, so you can see the state required, the vp, k-2, the statewide science and so on, the district rao required assessments which are the science bin tofg year and middle and end of year assessment ins grades k-5, I-redid and read ining math and the ewea map and

292broward standards assessments that are quarterly exams focused on ensuring that our end of course exam students are prepared for their end of course exam. For the school discretion, we have the adopted instructional materials assessment, so the unit chapter and topic assessment and social studies and under teacher discretion, teacher created assessments including spelling, vocabulary quizzes, form active and exit tickets, hicks like that. So we want today clarify, we know that one stressor was around the fast, so we wanted to clarify what is the fast, even though we're in year three, we know that the state transition from one single end of year assessment to three assessments, a faum, winter ask spring assessment, these are each one day assessments. One thing that is new when they rolled out the fast is that they also added kindergarten through

293second grade computer based assessments that was add today the state assessment portfolio. We do feel that although this feels like a lot more assessments and we know this has added stress, there are some positive tos that, the advantaging is that parent and is students know where they stand at each level. They get a perspective and they can see their current performance level so they can prepare for the spring assessment. Further, the fast assessments tie directly to the florida benchmarks to so the florida best standards are a direct -- the fastest direct measure of those florida standards. And they're intended to be a progress monitoring measure, so they're intended for teachers to receive actionable data early enough so they can adjust instruction. Finally when we talk about the fast assessments, really the idea here is that

294they're an early -- they can can provide an early indication of learning gaps, they can provide the able for teachers to target small group instruction and they can be used to inform professional learning community discussions and so that would in essence reduce excessive testing. We will see in the next slide that the state -- we have here an illustration of the district require and had state required assessments in terms of minutes provided and there's a requirement, a state statute that we stay below 5% of the student's total school hours in a school year and you can see based on this chart that we are about half of that, so, we -- this shows the district required assessments including I-ready, the science progress monitoring and those quarterly cam and is -- exam and is how we

295are well below the 5% threshold. Finally we looked at a comparative analysis, we looked at other district required assessments because everyone is required to publish their uniform destining calendar, we looked at our neighbors and what district required assessments that they put on their district -- on their assessment calendar, and we see a lot of commonalities, we see a lot of the same types of assessments and we also see that most of these other districts are also a-rated districts. I'll pass it over to melissa before we do that, I need to gather feedback from the board about extending the meet, so I would suggest we extend the meeting by two hours. Are there any objections to extending the meeting? Okay, seeing none, we'll extend the meeting by two hours. Go ahead, thank you. thank you. So,

296we know that teachers don't just give assessments for the sake of giving assessments but they use the data from assessment tos help group students for small group instruction, identify students who are near tier 2 or tier 3 support and help push and pull out services. Those assessments also help identify students for extended learning opportunity and is acceleration and enrichment. Thank you. Broward county public schools teachers retain professional independence in their classroom within the established frameworks state standards, district curriculum, board policy and contract provisions, optional assessments are chosen by administrator and is teachers, they are not district mandated and they are used strategically in the classroom. This is the district's role to ensure that high quality standards daysbacker based assessment ares available to teachers but these are optional assessments. We think it's very important we bring

297some potentially famous broward county public school people up to the table with us to share, it's my pleasure to introduce one of our finalists for of the year, MS. Denaoen moore from DR. Martin king elementary to share her perspective to share her test result tos differentiate instruction. good ever -- ever wantoning, what a way to bring me to the podium, I'm going to share just an example from my experience in third grade that highlights why state and progress monitoring assessment matter. I was place ined a third grade class rom to support this teach whore was new to teaching and to the grade level. When we reviewed their student's ela data, we noticed her class was at 6% proficient. As that data would have been discouraging for some, it would informative. My responsibility was f as

298a veteran educator was to help her understand how to use that data and how to drive that instruction we identified strength and is weakness and is we targeted certain standards to move students towards proficiency by P.M. 2 and P.M. 3, we analyzed date the deeply, we were able to see strand by strand, student by student what that child needed and to assess them by creating small groups which we know small groups is the most effective way to meet students individually needs, we were able tobacker able to identify whether students needed to be mediated. It graver us clear direction, it allowed the teacher to give autonomy, we were making informed instructional decisions, asst crunch time, it is very important to be meaningful and intentional with your planning and my job was to be impactful in her

299class. As we use and implement informative and summative measures just like check point, quiz quizzes, exit slips, they were having engaged instruction, I often reflect myself without these assessments, what would e rely on, general observation, hope, none of that would be effective and precise to use assessments to gauge what the child needs. We mrao ufred the class from 6% to 27% by P.M. 2 to 63% by P.M. 3. Having the highest ela data at DR. Martin luther king which contributes to makes historic b and make thirsting an a rated school district. So, sashes ms are -- assessments are not just students at computers. We transformed an entire classroom in this case. [Applause]. thank you so much. It is also my pleasure to invite our second super star, another finalist for teacher of the year this

300year, MS. Ilona alan from pasadena lakes elementary to share her perspective on engaging instruction in her classroom. good afternoon, everyone, I don't know if I'm going to do as good as MS. Moore, I'm going the talk about how i use data and student needs to guide my instruction, my planning, while raoe baiting hands on meaningful experiences through project base learning, stem and real world connections in my classroom. In first grade, engagement is everything. Six and 7 year o els learn best when they are moving, talking, building and discovering, that is why planning begins with one essential question, what do my students need right now, the answer is always found in my data. Data helps me identify students str epgt and gap and is I complete target instruction and adjust strategies to meet their needs. When

301I analyze my phonics assessments, read influence si data, math, exit ticket and is science observation, I identify specific skill gaps and strengths. If students need support with blending sounds, I design interactive literacy centers with hands-on phony manipulation. If math data shows difficulty with measurement or addition strategies, I create stem kajs that allow my students to practice those skills in authentic ways. I create and design projects based on their needs. In first grade to me, project based learning must be b developmentally appropriate but it can also of course include rigor. For example, during a science unit on whether students investment how wind affects objects, they design and test different paper structures to see which can withstand the strongest wind from a fan, they make protections, record observations compare results and revise their designs. This builds scientific

302thinking data collection skill and is academic vocabulary, all at a first grade level but with strong cognitive demand. If student ares learning about plant life cycles, I design an inquiry project where they grow plants under different condition using data to track in journal, measure growth and draw conclusion, they're not just planting seeds, they are analyzing cause and effect, gathering ed and explaining their reasoning. I intentionally imbed first grade engagement strategies such as movement, hands on materials, partner talk, visuals and structured discussion. Students turn and talk, they use sensebacker sentence stems, sketch their thinking and collaborate in small groups which has been mentioned. This keeps learning active while also building communication skills. I build relationships and I adjust my instruction to better meet learning needs for students who MAY struggle with engagement. I also ensure that

303real world connections are clear, when students build a structure to protect an egg, they learn how engineers solve problems, this is based on data. When they design a simple solution to reduce trash in the classroom, they see how they can impact their community. When they measure graph and explain the results, they understand that math and science are tools used in real lineament just as they track their progogssssand d enter r dada inin their goal folder their rir r comes from thinking, student ares asked to predict tests, revise, justify and explain, they are not just completing act tits, they are engaging in inquiry, problem solving and evidence based reasoning. I do not just choose prompting first, I staud di the data first and then design hands on meaningful learning experience that targets shunts while maintaining high

304expectations. By combining data driven instruction, first grade engagement strategy, rigorous sient activities and real world connections, I create a classroom where student ares excited to learn and challenge them to think deeply. Er I ensure all students have high quality v ux and all appropriate support needed. Thank you. [Applause]. thank you so mump to both of you for being here today and sharing and congratulations again on being finalists for teacher of the year. Wait for the slide to go back up. At the JANUARY 13 special school board meeting, a document was share hated listed the assessments that are required to be taken by students during the school year. We also received another e-mail include ago heartfelt message expressing the desire to reduce computer based testing while acknowledging the importance of meaningful data. While just a snippet

305of the document is shown on the slide, the entire document can be found in the appendix. That document and message led us to do a deeper dive of all the assessments listed for kindergarten students to take. Several clarifications were made which did reduce the amount of reported tests. There are no benchmark -- that is kindergarten sample, but we ever done this for all grades, benchmark writing assessment ares not in kindergarten, there are cumulative math tests that replace topic tests, the science middle of the year test was listed twice and there are nine optional benchmark assessments that were listed as required assessments. When broken down, 12% of the assessments listed are state required, 67 of the assessments fall under the school or discretion category. Slides 28 and 29 do further solidify the district's need to provide

306clarity around assessments as well as bring together a cross section of k-2 teach teaser identify best practices for cuter based assessments in primary grades. thank you, as MS. Hoelz mentioned, we can talk about performance matters, it is a platform that holds our test like a backpack holds your assignments and your other stuff. What's in performance matters is some required assessments from the district, optional assessments that teachers make as well as question banks that teachers can use for teacher assessments. Performance matters is just a platform, it's not the assessment itself, it's what we put into it from the assessments. What we will do arousing forward websinger will tighten the communication around required versus optional assessments, we will make sure we have a clear communication plan for parents as well as a training plan for families when

307and if applicable, we'll get better, it's not perfect, we have a couple of complaints in terms of performance matters but we've reacted to a couple of them. Number 2 is one that hits close, it's one that every teacher needs, after a student takes a test, they cannot see the questions they answered incorrectly, we collected that, now the test developer at the district level or a teacher at their level click as butt on and now student cans see the questions they fwot wrong after the assessment is completed. Another one in here is number 6, the voice of the assessment was robotic, I believe now there's an employee that records a human voice, as we take complaints or criticism of pro rm performance agnates websinger try to work with the vendor to rectify those complaints. Here you

308see a slide that talks about a balanced classroom, we have an elementary example and a secondary example, you will see in elementary school a, the school uses checks within the structure, they limit computer based assessments from k-2, they prioritize oral response ins small group and is use P.M. Data only in sdeg united times, there's reduced student stress. In example b for high school, we see a line assessment through instructional pacing guide, they avoid duplication of test and is clearly communicate the assessment that is are required versus optional and the purpose of each assessment. Student and is teachers and all of us and families need to know the purpose of ease assessment because they have to be purposeful, the result of that school is stronger performance, some instructional coherence. What does balanced data looks like, so

309the core instruction should be the majority of the day. Small group instruction should be imbedded within that core instruction, checks from the standing could be short or informal, they could be an exit ticket out the door, they could be a question a teacher asked a student, it could be an informal project that's done. Test ares assessments, not every assessment is a test. I think that's important to take a away from this. And testing is minimal but purposeful, if you're not going to use the data from the test, it's not worth giving so we want to make sure they're done correctly, they're minimal but when we do assess, we use the data and we're purposeful with the data. So, our model for the whole quarter, instruction should lead everything on the quarter, instruction leads, not testing.

310We want the limit the benchmark assessments, we want to make sure we review the check point and is data and adjust instruction as needed. We don't want to add tests to instruction, we have enough data we have now, we can adjust instruction from the data we currently have. We want to teach, assess, adjust ask then support and that's our circular mo dell -- model moving forward. Here is a whole year in the make, we tried to reduce diagnostic tests, in secondary school, we have one or two diagnostics for our reading students websinger want to try to reduce the die diagnostics in the bin of the year, the middle is focused mop storing, our courses have broward state standardized assessments that relate directly to the standards that are taught in first and second quarter and our

311end of year assessments are accountability assessments na are state required, our none negotiable is no layering of extra assessments on top of each other. Now to further e will be rate, we have two amazing prince p l pals that have come forward, the principal of [Inaudible] Ang lean -- ang lien flowers and marie dubervol, I will invite them up to speak about assessments. good afternoon, superintendent DR. Hepburn, MADAM Chair leonardi, school board member es, each of you in your respective placeendings I'm angeline flowers where this year's theme is lights, camera and action, we're setting academic excellence, I have had the honor and privilege to serve as a prips pal for the last years. I have led through fcad2.0, fsa and now the fast, I want to share with you a little bit today how I

312leverage assessments along with my team so we're analyzing data, we're prioritizing instruction and we're supporting teachers. First of all, I use the district's calendar. Before anything, I set the tone no how we're taking assessments, we take the district and our calendar and we navigate it and it becomes a standing item at our weekly instructional team meetings. We're not just, okay, you guys say we got to get it done but how does that look for our skol loess. Rao I right now I'm going self-report, I'm on the whittle list because I haven't gotten that assessment started, however there's a strategic plan, right now we're working with our kind deerer gart ner, then first graders, I don't believe in over assessing and the sake of getting assessments done because swre to get them down. From there, we

313do analyze the data. I heard the panel say already what's the purpose of taking an assessment if we're not going to look at it so we do analyze it, we're looking at trends on how to take this information for intentional action step and is specifically looking at trends, how our kids are responding, I was work witching a group of fourth graders and when you look at the data, they don't know anything, they have pockets of strength but there are some pockets we can shore them up to look better, it was ascending desz -- decimals, we are utilizing this to meet our subgroup's needs, I want to xhen the district, we came a long ways. I remember when we used to have [Inaudible] Where one school had a database, somebody else didn't have a database, kudos,

314we have performance matters, we go from school city to performance matter, we do have a dashboard, that take it is leg work out of me writing all the names down because I'm a writer, I have to writing everything down, highlighting who's this group, who's that group so it takes that leg work out so kudos to the district and I think that's been one of the caveats in helping us be successful with me tonight as a group, we were successful last year and meeting the needs of all of our subgroups and not just supporting scholars, we use the data to support our teachers we don't want to overwhelm them, you grow in your muscle with data the more you get into it. I have a group of teachers the, already know their data, they come with

315powerpoints, MS. Flowers, I don't like how this is looking, this is my action plan while some of our other data helps us to the team up, cold teach, helps us to give hands on support so feel like they're in it themselves so we get very intentional and responsive to the data, not just for our scholars but for our teachers as well so that we can fast a laws to assess the students. Truly driven by movement not like, not level one or two or three t I'm looking at what move, what moved and what instructional response is going to yield the highest academic return. After pm1, achievement level shifts, performance category and then trianglelate to determine the instructional needs behind the scores. The focus is to get identify the right instructional signal for each student. For

316example when reporting category shore shift. Ensure that instruction is aligned. Once we get the information, we group the students based on cohort. Green student and our goal is to really keep them stable. The bubble stud epts, the high level 2 is to convert them to prevision and taught proficiently. The low 2s is providing them access to great level thinking so they can go to proficiency. And also we look at our red students for regression, our goal is to restore them. Specific scale gaps rather than abroad remediation. Supports are "t3"ered according to the targeted small group or intervention minutes. At the same time, enrichment is sustained prioritized in order to sustain students who are proficient to make sure that we don't lose that groove from them. Between pming we monitor and we use different platforms, teacher

317and district assessment and also structure many assessment that the district provides. If growth is is not evident, we adjust instruction. We that guides us in intensifying the tier one or two and also helps us prioritize coaching. Professional development as well. So budget follows whatever instructional need that we have. Finally, moving from one assessment to three progress monitors really I think strengthens intention alt because, we start off the year, I use the pm3 from last year as a way for extra taoenl I can planning. But then pm1 helped me establish priority and then pm3 is what we're looking to confirm. Impact that we have. So the three window really allows us with a smaller window to be impactful to our students and adjust. So fast truly for me, and at our school increases precession. It strengthens,

318teacher practice and measures the need. Sxl intentional alignment is what I think drives sustainable growth and I think I can attribute that to the gain and that has surpassed the scores for the past five years. Thank you. [Applause] so finally, we wanted to connect the assessment clarity and focus to the outcomes. So as we know, we're an a-rated district and have been for the last two years. We've improved in our pro efficiently see and ela and math more than the state average. So our goal is to protect instructional time clarify requirement and reduce unnecessary overload. So schools can stay focused on the work that drives the results. This leads to DR. Cohen's discussion about our next steps. thank you. So, obviously, we said we would listened and we're still lis eping and this is not

319the first. This is the beginning. So there is a commitment to clarity, there is a commitment to transparency and listening. And most importantly, a commitment to continue us improvement. So we heard clearly from our teachers, we have teachers here today that took the timeout of their busy day to come and speak to us, parents as well as students. So we are acting right? And so when you look at slide 38, this was collectively, based on what we heard ux what we have seen from surveys, so you'll see part of our charge is moving forward is strengthening teacher's voice and collaboration, to not only extend beyond but bring the teachers who said in the survey, they would like to participate in the focus group. So we would like to pull the teachers to do additional root

320pauses, I believe there is best practices there. And we're going to bring together cross section of k-2 teachers. We heard that they felt computer base assessment was not accurate. we need to take a look at some sf our internal assessments. We also want to look at how we can calibrate with our district advisory groups to continue to have conversations with nem in clarifying optional versus assessments, so one of the asks was to do a pivot memo clarifying,, e option requiremenen we, we cacasend out anototheone.E. And then, we could soso lookat school level assessments plans and making sure that we verify the required versus optional and more importantly looking at our support and optical tools. You heard that we're still working on performance matters is in, all of the top ten largest districts in florida and

321the only difference that we see, from when we introduced it, to when other districts introduced it, is we started with our adopted core platform. So our parents got used to that platform and we switched. We know there is an unsettling piece, and those specific platform fz, then what there are what performance matters. And then you'll see, we're reinforcing professional autonomy and collaboration. You heard from one of our teachers how she has been able to use her own professional a economy and be very successful at it. We want to provide professional learning in there. So we've got a lot of action steps, we're looking forward to hearing from this board for additional action steps as we think about how we focus on improving clarity and making sure that teachers feel as if they are heard, parents

322feel that they're heard and so we're turn the mic back over to you and we're ready to listen. thank you. We'll go to public comment. We have a number of public speakers today. I would love to hear from the students first. So if you are a student and you would like to do public approaching, please approach either of the microphones on either side of the room and state your name so I can cross you off the list. Welcome. Speaker: my name is antnelan I'm from hollywood hills elementary and I'm here to talk about. Test that we're having. So, what, what I feel and the kids feel from the school, that the school board is giving much like performance matters and tests. And with that, it takes us a whole bunch of time that, we don't,

323it takes us too much time and so we don't have enough time to do like the or original work that we're suppose to do. At least one of the performance matters takes, at least takes, like more than three days or basically like a whole week. And so then, it gives us too much pressure for us to finish it in time. And we basically have two tests, which is like the reading tests that takes like at least a week. And for the writing tests, it takes us at least two days. But, the, it also takes us, also let us have less time for the original work that we're suppose to do like booklets, booklets, magnetic readers, and so I know it's like helping us but like, but like I feel it's giving us too much pressure

324and yeah. [Applause] thank you so much. good job. thank you, antnela. We have our next speaker. Speaker: hello my name is olivia and I'm student at riverside elementary. I'm here to share my opinion of testing. First, I want to talk about diagnostics. The first diagnostic I get, you need something to start you off at the beginning of the year. But whenever I do the second or third diagnostic, I'm already at the level because I'm leveling up as I go through the lessons during the year. Second, I want to talk about performance matters. Why? Performance matters is always glitchy. Two, performance matters does not let students see the questions sometimes. Three, performance matters is combining platforms we already have, such as benchmark and progress learning. This year, my teacher had look at the questions on benchmark

325and then take the test on performance matters because some students could not see the passage. I think the three tests that I mentioned should not be mandatory at broward county schools. Thank you. [Applause] thank you, any other students in the audience that would like to speak. All right, I'll read three names so if you hear your name please approach the microphone. Rachel, and anna fusco. Speaker: again my name is jill seaingle, I'm an elementary mom of a third grader and kindergarten and also pt a PRESIDENT At tropical elementary. And just to paint a picture, and you already heard this so I'll be brief. The reason I was irritating with the testing, I was volunteering and I got a chance to see. The content was so difficult for them on a compute per. It was toward

326the beginning of the year but not the beginning. On the left we have this big article but it has to be read and they have to click. Below that was multiple choice questions that they had to click. And once they decided which answer they wanted to use, they had to scroll down and click next. It MAY seem simple as somebody but somebody who tried to encourage outdoor play. My kids don't go into a kindergarten ready to use a lap mouse and all that. I watched the teacher struggle and so politely, and so much better than me which is why she's an educator and I'm not. And started me questioning, how often are we doing this and what is is the purpose. I don't debate the assessing, I have a son with iep I don't understand

327the need but for so many tests computer test when they're small. We would be foolish to suggest that class sizes are going to get smaller. These teachers have a lot of kids. They want to be able to have the art of teaching back in their hands. They want to be able to look at our children as people and not have to look and answer to all of these different entities that are demanding things and the reality is suggested. Teachers don't want to say, well you suggested it, they're going to do it. So my requests a a mom both my kids by the way are very different. I have one who is one of the last ones done and we feel so bad that the whole class has to wait. And I have one that is

328is the first one that comes with so much work because she is coloring and coloring waiting for her peers. All kids in between the two, that we don't need redundant and unnecessary data and especially computer base for such small children. Our teachers know what they're doing. And that's it for me. So thank you all. I appreciate it. [Applause] thank you. Lisa reyez and then anna fussca and kenny. Speaker: good evening, there are 39 instructional weeks in the school. They do continue include full break like winter break and spring break those things. Within include one half day or half day of no school. We will look at the actual number of weeks that our children are in school and compare that with the assessments that they're required to take or strongly recommended, the numbers are significant.

329Kindergarten students take 59 assessment over the course of the year. First grade, take 56 assessment. Third grade, second grade administrators 59 assessment. Third grade gives 58, fourth grade 63 and 55 assessments during the year. These do not include additional tests. Such as geography spelling tests and other classroom evaluations type two lesson. To further illustrate, I want to read an email that was sent to first grade families from a teacher just informing what the following week would look like. Greetings, parents, I hope your week is going well. Please mark your calendars. One we try to take the unit 4 tests today. We were unable to finish. We will try again tomorrow. Two, we took a science test today on gravity, the kids did well. Three, we will take the topic 8 test. It came on us

330fast, the county will shut down the test on friday, so we don't have time to slow down. So we're working hard every day to about our groups of tens and ones. Four, next week on january 129ing, we will take the I ready diagnostic for reading. We'll take the I ready math diagnostic. These tests are able, to update your child's learning path on their I ready lessons. It's important that they do not just click click click, so the system can align them the lessons. Five, the mid-year assessment will take place sometime soon. We will wait and see when we're told to take it. Six, we'll be taking our first pattern assessments this friday. It will cover words with long a and I. In closing the sheer number of assessment being given is simile outrages. Four many

331children assessments not an unusual event. They shift the tone of the classroom and change the culture of the school. And when testing is happening on near weekly basis, the pressure never truly lifts. With this many required assessment throughout the years, teachers are pushed towards teaching to the test not because they want to, but because student performance is directly tied to how teachers are evaluate asked how students receive their a and b grades. When professional evaluations hinge, the focus narrows, creativity. thank you. [Applause] DR. Trudy and georgedana. Speaker: my name is DR. Trudy jermanvich. I'm going to deviate from what I was going to say. Number one, I think we can fix this with one simple solution. The testing calendar, put the word optional, put the word optional so the principals know, the teachers know, the

332parent know. If that happens, you're only going to have a few tests that are mandated. Those tests would be, the three that are required in state statute. And you had my believe steph, you would believe that everything else should be left to the teacher. The teacher is the professional. The teacher is the win, not the district staff. And that's what is happening. It comes back down you say, oh it's optional. No it's not. No it's continue! When districts staff comes in, and says let me see your data. They want to see the data. Now, you could do it, where you let the teachers actually choose and then you would know which program you should not buy next year. Wouldn't that workout better? You can still put in performance matters so you can still collect data

333but it would be actual data of teachers that wanted to use the test, that wasn't told you must pu must take these tests because it informed instruction -- I'm sorry, I taught that first grade, almost the same way as that teacher talked about here. Project base learning that was my thing. All the way up when I was teaching in middle school. Project base learning. If I had to teach today, i would have quit. I would not do this. And that's why teachers are leaving. That's why parents are leaving the public schools! They don't have to do this in charter schools. The om thing they have to do are three tests a year. That's it! That's all you should require to. Thanks. thank you. And just as a reminder please wave your hands instead of clapping.

334To keep decorum. Speaker: hello, I want today share that this is not about testing and data. I use data from informative to drive my lessons daily. I'm a highly affective educate thaerz works with student intern sxz that was my email that you on page 28. Earlier today, I did reference two short videos to most of you. I respectfully ask that you review those if you have not already. I want to address something that is not being well represented and that is time. The I ready diagnostics are being described as taking significantly less time. That's not the reality in your elementary classrooms, because if you can't test during lunch recess or specials, many students have accommodations, these tests take days to complete, sometimes two weeks just testing. My most resent intern, when university came to observe

335her h I said she has not taught a lesson because we did I read and it took us nine days to do. It's real life. And I have touched base with I ready, and they're changing the test for next year but I'll believe it when I see. And students don't have onscreen independently required to test for long periods of time. Being familiar with your ipad or your mom's phone is not the same. The tools are intuitive and mirror what they say in the past. It reduces their cognitive load. It is not intuitive, errors occur and tests must be reset if a single item is mishandled. Grading inaccuracies have been found when teachers -- it impacts the clite at and the validity of the data which is very important to everyone in the room. If the

336data collected is through a system that is not appropriate or reliable, we must question whether the data is accurate. We're a pre-k to 12. What works for these high school teachers, does not translate to elementary. Developmental appropriateness must be essential. And while it MAY be described as school base decisions, it's pulled centrally and use for kf,. Conversation. My request is simple, streamline the platform and align the tools from fast -- project instructional time and ensure that what we collect is truly reflected of student ability not student navigation school or navigation tolerance. We all want meaningful data but that comes from mean ingful systems. thank you. Bridget, and lucy and heather. Speaker: hi I'm bridget, just introduce I'm a mom of three and also taught in broward county 5th for four years and total for years.

337Is would like to discuss assessments. I don't feel that parents or teachers are confused about what this district is state testing, it's just that it's not clear and they're going to edge only the caution and give it if they need that they need to. That is how I was always. Your data is supported that you showed us earlier that teachers agree that elementary students are over tested and these cause tests driven. Sol that's why I'm mainly talking about. We look at how many tests the kids are taking. In addition to quizzes and instruction is becoming driven by deadlines, rather than undering. -- understanding. Teachers are asked to move, I see this with my daughter with almost every tests and she is not below average. There is no time for support. The district gives testing windows,

338they decide when teachers must give these assessment and put unnecessary pressure. Yes, this keeps everyone on pace but something we learn early on is that not every child is on the same pace. The first district required assessments are administered sometimes weeks after school begins. The final required assessment, are often before the end of the school. Our facing guides are not always accurate right from the get go. I personally had conversations with teachers -- a resent example is one testing window was DECEMBER 12th through JANUARY 9th which we know majority are not in school. Four instructional days after and after the break. State required tests however I feel it's important to know atatmeme cur r multltlele memes a yeyear, escicially I adady much much more time than it says. You said that every student should be

339getting a high quality as a education, it's sad that as a teacher that I don't feel that my children are get ing high-quality. I'm passionate, you can hear it in my voice. It's so hard to think that I'm on the side of possible leaving a county that I worked in and loved it. I loved every minute teaching here. We just heard so many teachers give great example of how they address weaknesses and learning. Did you notice that all of those are active in project base. This is what we want more of. I would like to add that I never knew how it would be a former teach ter. Is know how to want to help my kids and one last thing, unlike palm beach why aren't we aloud to see what our kids getting wrong.

340That's the best way, I really don't want to see it and I'm not sharing it, I'm not cheating, I just want to help her. She is 8. Thank you. lucy and then heather. Speaker: hi, how is everybody doing today? I'm lucy, I'm here representing the teachers and students of the broward county. We're here because the district constantly is raising concerns about the volume of testing from k-5. I'll let you know right now, I'm talking about k-to 5. I see a lot of surveys about the principals. This is k-5. You can see from your own survey that 76 percent of the k-5 teach residenter saying that we're testing too much. You need to listen to the people that you employ to put in charge. The workshop exist here because the concerns were loud enough that you

341needed to hold this workshop. Yet when you looked at the presentation that you guys just saw, it showed, na you were justifying the level of testing that you're doing. That's not what we're looking for. We're looking for you guys to listen to us, to the parents and to the teachers and to the students who are in the classroom and saying that they are being tested too much. You said that you spoke to the advisories, or stud ept advisories, k-5 doesn't have it. This is your advisory group right here. They talked and you can go to the schools and talk to them. The district is not in the classroom. The districts are not getting the six-year-olds on the computer, they're not dealing with the anxiety from the testing after testing after testing after testing. The district

342is not losing instructional time because of the benchmark windows, the teachers are. The parents are dealing with it at home and day-to-day. Some students don't want to go to school on heavy testing period because instead of learning, they spend a lot of time on the computer with assessment after assessment. Is truly believe that the board is concerned about the students but I need to you understand that this is not suggested. You can ask yourself 100 percent of the schools are doing it. If 100 percent of the schools are doing it. It is not suggested. You talk about the amount of time that it takes for the students to take the tests, the amount says it's not. Our state says we need to be under 5 percent. You are not because you're not adding the suggested

343testing and you're not doing the amount of testing, we need to reduce the amount of testing these students are doing. To wrap it tup, we need to get rid of the testing windows. the so-called, optional testing. And we need to give the discretion back to the teachers and back to the principals and away from the district! Thank you. thank you. I believe we need kenny and anna fusco. You're next on the list. You can go ahead. Kenny and anna, please approach the mics. We're going -- okay. Brooke boardy and cynthia dominique is who I have next. Speaker: am I good? go head, heather. Speaker: good afternoon, thank you for this opportunity to come speak on this top tick. Broward public schools has approximately 236 students not data points. Approximately 75,000 are elementary age and I'm

344here to represent my third grader. My name is heather and I'm from damy. Our kids are testing too much. It MAY seem as though students don't minimum pick the sentiments of the students and teacher which indicate that there is a systemic issue at hand. High takes testing, increase of tests, research indicates that it's immaterial paired with memory. Stress is not healthy for adults, let alone children, this means that results don't always reflect the capabilities. Reading writing and math, and science and social studies fall to the wayside. Learning is so narrow. Testing day is so dreadful, sitting in silence while each students has an opportunity to finish the test. Our children do condition recognize what learning can look like. So much time on screens in the classroom and students are not afforded the autonomy. They're pressured

345to administer test weekly to cover all the students that already on the fast test. And I'm talking tests not assess sment. We're putting kids on I ready for minutes and pass ing rates. Some of the standard have not been even formally taught to the students and they're expected to pass. This is damaging confidence, creating extreme dislike for learning and ruining the educational experience. Comparison is is the thief of joy. These kids are comparing and a score. I mean they know what percentage rank they are h this is 5, 6,, 8-year-old. For crying out loud. My child, our children are more than data points. A law teachers to use the time they have. If you have read some sft comment on the agenda item, you should be aware on the mental health toll that this is

346taking on students. Anxiety, physically ill and worry about the weight of a diagnostic. This is isolated to our lowest core house, but all students even high-achieving ones. Don't we want students to be excited to learn and eager to engage? not sitting in front of computers to complete assessment and learn how to use computers. As a parent this is not just a concern for the students but the teachers as well. As a student, are we prioritizing mental health. I commend the teachers that do show up and do their best every day with a smile on their face. thank you. Brooke? Brooke boredy and cynthia dominique. Speaker: good afternoon, brooke boardy and plantation and thank you to the five board members that are currently here. Is know it's the end of the day but this was the

347most important issue. And I hope that those not in the room, are listening. We were hoping to get change. I have a sixth grader and kindergarten and pre-k. The lilz are going to get a different 'eming occasion from my sixth grader. There is a lot more testing. You know, for the older child I didn't worry about mental health or education was developmently appropriate and that's grairkts that's my role to support. But I'm concerned now. Big time and brooks, super well adjusted and go with the flow. I don't know if my daughter is going to go to public schools, we'll be seeing. So the presentation attached to this item reads as an owed to testing, defensive testing and implies that teachers are confused and not informed. But in my eyes, it shows the dpis connect between

348my staff and what the parents and teachers and most importantly students are experiencing. There are two different realities that I can't plain and the entire presentation that I heard and the teachers and principal speaking with staff, that's not our reality. The people that you just heard from that, that's what really is happening on the ground. So suggesting that teachers misunderstand the requirement or that we parents are out of shape, it's gaslighting at worse. Your teachers are telling you that they don't have a choice, you heard that repeatedly. I hope you believe it. They don't have a choice in giving these benchmark tests. We've asked for a memo since DECEMBER from our gac meeting, we asked for a member to saying what is not required. We have not seen it and that's a telling performance to

349maintain the status quo and how many tests have been taken by students since DECEMBER to clarify the bench park testing isn't actually required. We keep asking and if you can't send a memo, maybe it's not true. Many of you are educators and I cannot emphasize enough that there is a vas difference. And for anyone not convinced, I urge to you think about this in terms of enrollment fte what the future of the district looks like. A bunch of parents MAY leave. I MAY leave. We're talking about micro schools, experienced teachers are going to leave as well. Maybe that's convincing. Thank you. thank you, cynthia dominique. Speaker: good afternoon, my name is cynthia dominique from margate, I have four children. And I've had the tupt to speak to parents, staff, academic team, principals and teachers and

350they echo the same testament, too much test iting. We shared with the academic team that we feel that this presentation that they just provided was a defensive testing. It's validation of the value rather than looking at this from a neutral and ho will listic perspective. When we compare the chart on slide 22 to what is done in practice, we see that students that taking three to four to five hours a day which accounts for almost 30 days, this is all data for students without accommodation. I ready takes four to five hours on two days for a total of 20 hours. One to two hours on one day, times three for six hours. That he quaits of almost 56 hours of testing and over 7 percent of instruction time well above what with the state mandates.

351There is curriculum that they're required. We're hearing from teachers and principals they have been told these are required. So I'm so glad for the brave teachers and teachers who speak up. But. Majority tear retaliation and retribution. They're not going to speak up, they're going to toe the line. All of these, including the topic a assessments, if you allow for three top ticks for 30 minutes and at 90 minutes a week for about 20 weeks out of the 35 to 40 weeks we have in school, that accounts to over 12 percent of our overall instruction time. This does not include practice assessment and chats with students. All the things that build anxiety and competition. My ten-year-old decided not to come together because he wanted to speak because he's overwhelmed for prepping to tests and getting all

352of this work done that he has to do. He's in the eyes achieving and gifted class. I hear every day, I can't go to my scouting, I can go to my football trip. He's bringing home books and notebooks because he has to prep for these tests. We need teacher a economy and art of teaching. If the district wants to see greater achievement, recess and specials prioritize mint al health for students. Instead of, decrease class sizes and small group, remove I ready and sent a clear memo that curriculum tests are not required. Move the fall testing window up and move the spring towards the end of the school year so we can maximize instructional time. Implement more assessments and learning so we can test real world applications. Pay teachers a living rate. In that quest, we

353have to ask ourselves, what do we lose? thank you. Cindy. Speaker: we're losing students a body that is dis engaged, they're not curious. DR. Martin luther king said, the function of education is to think one and think expensive and. You can teach nem for a day but if puck teach them to learn, he will continue learn thating process as he leaves. Data does not drive the a, quality of is that instruction is what it drives. thank you, cynthia. Thank you, appreciate it. [Applause] Okay, I think I have kenny? And after kenny anna fusco. Speaker: good afternoon, kenny manchu plantation. Testing, it's a hot topic with me. We had a beautiful presentation with nice colorful pie charts and graphic and what not, it looked good. And then we had had the leadership team up here presenting

354it and I know you're just doing your jobs, okay. It sounded good what they said. But was, is the chart really accurate? And the comments really drilling down into true teaching in our public schools? I think not. This whole testing thing was brought in with with the education reformers. They wanted to test label and blame our public schools as failures. And what they do, they said that there was a crisis in our public schools. They, the media jumped in on it and they carried the message but it's all part of a national assault on the public system. Zoo they usher in the testing. You think, grades might be, not grades but the state data MAY be sometime tankered with to put it nicely? They remove and ignore community voice. I'm so glad to see teachers

355and parents in our community. And no disrespect to the two principals in here today. But you think the principals are going to talk about it when you call them here to have a conversation? Testing destablelizes jobs by bringing in performance pay. Our kids are not like market pieces sold in the market like the market economy that they like to drive, that you know, it's going to make things better. No they're kids. They're not a commodity to sell at the store and their data should is not be used either. To say with these, data chats and what not, where they come in and say well smz smith, she is on chapter 3. MS. Johnson or MS. Johnson or smith MAY not be affected teacher. We know students different at different places and time and spaces. And

356to try to, I guess categorize that and, it's just, it's sad. It's not true teachingment it's not. A data mark is is not true teaching. Get back to what it used to be. The teach tezer, the leaders in the classroom, the educator in the classroom. Group work, make it fun. It's not fun anymore. thank you, kenny appreciate it. Anna fusco. Speaker: is that all the parents and teachers get to speak. I'm here all day every day, sxik stay hours but I thought it would be courteous to let them speak. I'm also educator, I've been saying this for a long time, anna fusco is completely anti test iting. I opted my students out of everything. You don't need to do these testing to be successful. That does not define our students. He's a fire fighter and

357a nurse. We understand that we are force today do that. We're not saying that we want to go against what the state mandates are, but we're saying we want you to take away all the extra test iting. I like everyone of you there, I really do, guy, fabian, holts, they're great people, they're doing their jobs. Of course they're going to put this amazing platform and bring in of course, we know, two amazing finalist, I stood up there on the stainl with them. And you know what we got from all of them? We got the instruction that they were able to give. They, no disrespect ladies but you spoke very little about the testing. You spoke about the data and thamazing instructctn n but they didndn get t tell you the tsts and pieces what was

358balances, was it more testing or more instruction. But we know they're amazing instructor. They spoke well too but the point is there is an excessive amount of testing. You stood there and said 38,000 have left the schools. You've got parents that said, we don't know if we want to stay because of the excessive testing. I know we didn't line this board member with a thousand parents and so forth. You all put out that survey and they did not collaborate with broward union teachers. Now that broward county teachers is going to put the survey and you're going to get the real data and it's going to go to every educator and not the select that the admin was told to give it to. Did you know that? 13,000 teachers didn't get that survey. They did not.

359They will from the broward teacher's union. It will tb anonymous. It will be mimicked questions and some better questions. If you really really want the data, but you know what, those students that spoke, they spoke for the thousands and thousands and thousands of students. It should matter. The parents that spoke s they spoke also. They should mat per. We don't need the 2000 students aligned, listen to the ones here, they mat per. Show it. all right, board member discussion, board member thompson? She's not here? she's on the line. She went home for a sick kid. can you hear me go ahead board member thompson. can you guys hear me? yes, we can. perfect. So I would like to say that I'm speaking first an as elementary school mom, because I do have three kids that

360are in elementary school and take a lot of these tests as well. I think my kids are probably in the minority because when I asked them, they would like more tests because they are highly competitive but I did want to put out that that is some experience as well. But I would like to, to really go back to what the majority of people foc using on elementary school are saying that we are testing too much in our younger grades. And I do think that there is a push on micro schools and home school because they can control that curriculum. And I know there are benefits to assessments and so on. And I know that when I have my parent teacher conferences, I ready is always the assessment to talk about their progress. So I'm not

361trying to discredit that. But I would really like the staffs to engage in meaningful conversation about what it would look like if we just got rid of district testing primarily for elementary schools and look at other. I also caught the teachers that talked and I want to thank them for their courage because sometimes speaking to the board is difficult. There are other ways that you can gather data to make sure that that tests are being taught to. Our children are achieving what you need. So I would really like, the board to explore getting rid of the majority of the district required tests potentially keeping I ready, because na is the tool that I've spoken with teachers that is helpful. And I also thank even we're seeing something is optional, but everybody else is saying, they

362don't feel like it's optional, it's not. Because perception is reality. And then just, by doing community out reach, talking to elementary parents as well. This is a factor in when they're choosing their schools or when they pull out from their school. So I would really like us to think of a strategy where we limb eliminate required tests and leave it up to the state and teachers and that's my comments. Thank you. thank you, board member thompson. So does anybody of the board members want to weigh in on getting rid of the required tests before I go to DR. Zeman and then board member hixon? MS. Hixon? well I mean, it was part of my discussion there. So I don't know if you want everybody to -- ? is would like to hear from my colleagues

363before I weigh in. so board member zeman and then board member hixon. I think we had a swing in the MISS Here today. The comments that the audience brought up about this presentation is spot on. And I think there is, in some sense diminishment of the board's responsibility by getting a brief that provides no options, no recommendations other than what we're doing is right and perfect and idea. What offends me about that is it's our job to know what the community is saying and what might make sense about some very sub tiff things about tradeoff with elementary school meant and school learning and engagement which is very different than middle and high school of the same said. And I wish the presentation has brought us. I keep thinking that that the staff is going to

364keep us things that inform us and provide options and instead what we got today was a very defensive, treat on a status quo. And I appreciate your academic talents and your credentials and things like that. But we have a school board for a reason and our job is to weigh in on big, big policy issues like testing. I'll tell you as parent of two six traders and 8th grader, I've just been through 23 years of elementary largely a little bit of middle school learning and while my kids are three of thousands and thousands of kids, I've watched the anxiety and the stress and the missed birthday parties and missed baseball games and camps because in third grade, they're worried about a test. And I love data but I also recognize that the extreme collection of

365data and the difference between what is formally option versus what is perceived what is not optional is a big deal. And I'm going to continue to push for reduced testing in elementary school. Is it and to me that's the anxiety in order to provide data to adults that would like to have an infinite amount of data. By I think our pace of growth is going to grow. Not because we test so many but because we make good decisions about how much is enough and the marginal value that we can get from other data. So, are you the chair right now? MS. Leonardi is the chair right now. Thank you, as we go arpd or maybe at the end, I would like to do this again. But I don't want a defense of the status quo

366presentation. I would like some serious staff options about what it would look like to reduce elementary k through 5th grade and my colleagues maze have tested in middle school as well. But in my mind, we deserve to have options and to reflect what we've heard from the community and what our own judgment is on this tradeoff. And again, it's not just an academic question, it's a whole bunch of integrated things that all go together. But I feel, on the pretty extreme side reducing testing in elementary school. If we cut it in half, I would be happy. That's where I'm at right now, I'm dying to do more if we can do more and get omtions. Buzz when you bring us a brief with just one option. I would like your expertise and guidance and incredible

367knowledge reflected in recommendations of which are option to see take. But as a board member, I can't tell you that 50 percent reduction is is the right answer because I'm not informed enough nor is is the public where we draw the line, and say this much is too much. But I don't know the number to land on. Thank you very much. MS. Hixon. tuz and thank you DR. Zeman I agree with everything you just said. And looking at -- I don't say that very often. So. Yes. And I, MS. Thompson said something similar. But I think the problem is we could easily say as a board say get rid of the all the district required testing. But we don't know what the value of the things are. I agree with DR. Zeman and how can

368we reduce this. One of the things that I heard, I know MS. Aegen she is my GOD children's teacher, she is fantastic teacher not that all of you are. when she tells that yous I ready takes nine days to take a tests. I see staff taking our head but she is a teacher sitting in the classroom and students even said it takes them a long time. So either something is not going right when they're doing the test or we, I always say this h perception is reality, right? And we can say facts all we want but somebody's perception is their reality. And this is the reality our students. I know that lilly and aj when they went to school, had tummy aches because they were so stressed about these tests. So they didn't want to

369go and then they would have to make it up later. I know there is a lot people here and emails and we're having this workshop because, people feel as if there is too much testing and that includes our educators who are the experts in this room. We hired them to do it. I agree with DR. Zeman, what would it look like. What really help drive the curriculum and then, the movement for students? And which ones maybe don't. And I would say there is a couple that are not listed. For example, it says, district quarter exams that include, civic and U.S. Histories but we get semester xaz. And those are definitely examples. I feel that this list is not necessarily a complete list. And I don't think that high school students they didn't feel that that

370was a big problem for them. The basickest problem is k through 5. I would like to know what ache of these tests do and where you feel as the expert in this room where we can reduce this based on the feedback we're doing. My second question, is it possible, do we have to give the tests on the computer? Can we give at least for the kindergarteners, some kind of hybrid where they're paiking it on classroom. And somebody mentioned classroom, I believe a lot of testing, went to computer base, so it took own us away from the teachers so you can have more time there. We're making assumptions and my three-year-old grandson can get on the ipad and iphone faster than I can. So before I ask the questions of my question, I'll ask, if possible

371to give a on test or is it a state mandates that you have to give it for the computer? so for the star assessments that are given. The star early and star math is given to kindergarten student. There is only a paper that say that they need paper, it's students that cannot access computer. For the state assessments, we are required to give them as computer assessments, we have leeway with non state required assessments. thank you. My suggestion would be for maybe giping part of kindergarten and work their way too. it ads anxiety when you're trying to do something. I've been trying to do something for on forge for a week now, and I'm doing all the things that I'm suppose to do and it's still not work withing, I can't function anyway other, so I

372can imagine how the babies feel when they don't know all the right buttons. We can all way in, but that would be my hope that we move them guide them a little bit better than make ing the saoumgts that they know how to do it when ne get here. A number of people talked about the, the art of teaching and that's the 37-year-old educator, I love that phrase, it's a tapping, it's a tap dance that thank you have. You see what your kids know, what you need the data for, but then you have to figure out how to get them where you need them to be. And you want them to learn and be excited about learning and I think that we've heard today that elementary students don't have that feeling. So I think it's

373important to figure out the balance here of doing that, cause they're missing out on ot things that they go to school for. Art, pe, recess time, snacks all of those fun things. And the last thing I guess, I have a question on is performance matters. Because we've, also heard a lot of complaints about that and I know in the powerpoint, it says, it's just a platform, but we do we have. You know, we don't use it so, we don't know that exact information but even the students we're complaining about performance matters and that it made it harder and I'm guessing the intent was to make it easier. So how do we, rectify that and do we have to use it? If it's having so many issues? sure. So performance matters is the district's assessment and

374reporting platform. So, what we had before was, we utilized an assessment platform that wuz within canvass and there were a lot of limitations in terms of reporting and in terms of the assessments within that platform. So we went with a more robust systems that a lot of districts use. We have, I want to recognize, we have heard feedback at our elementary level for this platform. But our secondary level, we have not heard a lot. We transitioned our assessment at the elementary level that are in the instructional materials because we have instruction materials that are in different, that are from different vendors, so we had benchmark, we have savas for our mathematic and we put them both so we have one unified platform that students can get used to take iting the assessment and teachers and

375administrators can get used to seeing is the results in. It's not, it's not perfect and we're working to you know, to make sure that it's that it improves but what they had last year, or the year before, was they were, at the iment regrade level, they were taking the same assessment but they were taking them in the benchmark platform. okay, thank you. Because what I heard, MS. Aegen say that there were some tests that mirrors the state test whatever they were taking. If I'm going to say this, I forgot what at names of them were, but it mirrored so the students were learning the skills they needed to take the assessment that's were grade on as a district. But the performance matter was difficult. It didn't really help the students in getting the skills they

376needed to be more proficient and test taking for lack of a better term. Not so much the knowledge but in terms of practicing so you -- remember k-5, these are road learning on what you need is really important for them to focus on curriculum as opposed to the test taking skills. So, I don't know, what that looks like, but, again, p.S matters seems to be an issue. And I'm sure it's growing pains. So just like we started on focus and all of those things. we're two years into it. And so yes, the previous platform were more parent friendly and in terms because they were so used to being able to access some sft data within the platform. The reason why manynydistricts are e moving mamatters it ovidides a high leveststrict overvi of principal overview and

377teacher overview, some of the data that the other platforms really technically didn't have all the access to the data nor did the district have access to the data so it made it difficult for to us dispatch the support to schools that needed the most important. -- support. And I think the other thing I think, we do through an adoption every year. So we could go from a different ela and there goes that platform, right. So we're not be holding to the platform if we don't adopt that instruction material. I appreciate that. And I'll just end with this, it's very clear that again, perception is reality, our students are teachers and parents who are affected directly by this feel as if there is too much testing, we have to address it. Again, I don't know, I'm

378not here to tell you what with the answer is, because I'm not an expert but I wish we had had option here, did feel, beautiful presentation and thank you for all the data but it didn't really say, well, you know, here's an option of maybe we can do less of this or less of that and what is your expectations, we did get to an a, I don't want to disregard that either because it's important. At the end of the day, we want well rounded students that love students that love learning and are going to be excited to leave here. And I feel like we're scr ouching that a little bit. can I say something, if we were to remove the district required assessments, those are the ones we would be removing. So you would have

379science beginning of the year, I ready, nwba and broward assessment, those are the ones we would be removing from. Option. The ones that you're hearing about also in the benchmark which is in performance matters, those are optional. Teachers we can make that again, we send a pif another memo saying, here are the required assessment, we can send another pivot memo to remiepd them here is the board approve that has required an optional. If we wanted go a step further to your point earlier that middle row is what we are saying we would have to take away. I don't know about if it's helpful to remove all of them. I do hear people say how helpful I ready. Nine days for I ready is excessive. I see you shaking your head buzz we've had more than

380one persona dress that. So maybe we need to fiepd the disconnect. Because I know the principal and teachers have said, the data from I ready is valuable. I don't want to be the person that tells you get rid of I ready and find out we really needed information. I don't know the right answer but we cannot listen to the people who have come here to share their real life experiences with us. so if I share something, so there was a reason we didn't come to you with options because, like I said, we had met with the parent advisory board five times. We heard, we listened to them and also met with the students and teachers and with principals. There was a variety of things that we had that we can isolate to one thingle thing.

381Right, we heard about the k-2 computer assessment, the over assessment with performance matters and optional versus required. So in our slides 39, 37 or 38 and 39, we said we need to explore this deeper. We need to have a foc fuss group with more teachers to hear what they were saying about these issues before we come to the board and say, here is what we have heard from pefrn, be able to come with the root cause. My certainly is if you come back and look at the another row, it's a pathway that provides remediation and it's also provides homework support. So we have some positives and negatives when it comes to that component. We didn't just to necessarily make that recommendation because it would have created such a cattclysmal so we wanted to come back

382with substantial information that we got. We wanted to expand the pool beyond,000 teachers that responded. we appreciate that. And like I said, I don't know what the answer is. But I know that, I think we would would all agree. we're data collection. there needs fob a definite change in what is happening right now. So appreciate it and I look forward to this coming back after you've gone through the action items to see what we can do moving forward that's a balance for our teachers and students. thank you. I agree. thank you, MS. Bulman. thank you, thank you for the presentation and thank you to everyone who came to speak. I really appreciate getting everyone's perspective. I have four of my children one that just graduated and three currently attending school. I, I'm experience thising on

383a day-to-day basis. I'm aware of the balance that we have to achieve here. We do have the state mandate, we're required to do these tests. Our school and district grades depend on that. But we have to balance that and getting the data that we need with, with the student experience and teacher autonomy. I can't emphasize enough for if the teachers to be able to teach. I said this a different time but we went to the florida school board discussion, conference in DECEMBER and one of the talks that I went to talked about the art of teaching and the ability to allow teachers to be teachers. And when you know when you think back on your own experience. Every teacher is dpif. I would never try to home school my own children so i want to

384have my kids to have all of these perspectives. They get my opinion all the time. I think it's very important that everybody is allowed to do their, to teach in the way na they bring the best out of kids. And, and so I agree with my colleagues about over testing. I've never been a fan of this. I understand that it needs to happen to a certain agree. And I think -- to a certain degree. You're not going to getaway from test ining college but when you're a little kid, you want, you want your students to be engaged to love going to school. So if they hate going to school because they're sitting in front of a computer taking a test all the time, we're not achieving what we want which is to have engaged students.

385I love, the project base learning. I think the most important thing that we can do. I was thinking about that with my son. Because I have not seen any of that at all this year. I think back on my and it is not all leanier but you have funny teachers and some very artistic and you absorb that as a student. I share with my colleagues, I would like to see how we can look where we're collecting, you know, enough data to be able to move forward but that we're also providing that education for our kids that the parent want that the kids are going to take with them forever, that makes our district attractive. And I know, it's a difficult ask because there is so many requirement that we have. I'm not trying to be

386poly ana and act like I'm going to get rid of that. Also also my kids have gone to a c-school and they have the most amaze ing teachers. It's the teacher that are there on the day-to-day. And those teachers have become my very good friends. And it's difficult because you can see how their enthusiasm for teaching has decreased over the time I've known them. My oldest son is 18. I would like to restore. They talk about the early 2000 where people had a lot of more freedom to teach. We're not getting away from test iting all the way, but for the good of the district, we need to figure out a balance. That's what I would like to see. I can't understate how important it is for the kids to be kids and have that

387experience and also just a little plug. I would love to see people reading a whole book because, you know, that's great you can read a passage but there is a lot to be said for getting through a book. Who would have known that tail of two cities would have been good if you didn't get through the horrible beginning. I mean, you're the entitle caters but these are the kids that we're putting the kids out into the world and it's our responsibility to make sure that they have that development and that they have that, what is it? The problem solving the analysis and the endurance really. If if you can get through a book, because it's problematic for people who are going to college because they've never read a whole book. I think we're on a

388good path and I really appreciate everybody's input. And I think we need to listen to them because they're the people that are customers and I think that, they're bringing back good information for us to rely on. So I look forward to the follow-up. I think we can come up with a good balance. I agree and part is to engage the parents again on a larger scale. Even during parent university on that topic. So we can come back with the board with more informed decisions or where we are, because like, some of the parents said, we only got a thousand teachers that responded. And we did send the survey so is the thousand that we got was mixed, right. If you all heard, some of it was around pacing, on performance matters. Sol it was all

389different things, right. So I want to make sure that when we come to the board, we come with some good data, from teachers larger focus groups of more than a thousand, listening and then bringing parents in, bringing students in so you have a forensic audit of information and then we can decide hey, wib we bring the contract back to the board but here is the decision. I will tell you everything on that middle column that is required, we have data to say that it's work withingment. Right? So it MAY be working, now we just need to decide, well it's working but we, we as a district are deciding not to do it. Right? thank you, MS. Rupert? tuz, I actually -- thank you. I actually felt the anxiety coming off the children when they spoke.

390And that just made me -- my kids are older now and they didn't experience this much as this young age. Tt very powerful. And I do want to tell those students if there is any of them left, what a great job to do and to be super brave and speak up in front of all this h that's a lot. That's a lot for me. And also a lot for them. I also felt the passion of the mama bears, and I'm going to say, kenny bear because he spoke, I think he was the only dad that spoke, I had to give him some credit, that attitude flowing from you guys, which is like, you can't explain it, you want to do what is right by your kids and you're going to keep pushing and absolutely you

391should. And I'm hoping today that we actually learn from this. I know I want this craziness to stop. I want to let the teachers get the joy of e back. Because, I believe if we give that joy back to the teach tezer, we cut as much as we can out of the least in a another format, hands-on learning some way somehow. I think that enrollment will come back but more importantly the joy of learning will be with with the kids. Any optional district tests need to be taken off the plate, just me. I love the idea, I think it was you fabian that said about parent university. I wrote down, we need to let parents students, teachers, principals staff and the board collaborate in those open table meetings like we did when it came to

392the facility stuff. I know that we can actually fix this. I yellow it's not us versus you it's nothing like that. Although sometimes it does feel that way. I still feel like an imposter and I've been here a minute. But for me, if I was giving direction, we need to do much more communicating, meaningful communicating and getting more buy in from the teachers. I think we can do this. And I think we can, maybe the experience for our children and our teachers and our families, a thousand percent bet er because everybody will be going in the same direction. So anything that we can do on this, I'm in. Thank you. thank you MR. Cervera. The quized, -- kids that came today, the kids I spoke to. Not any of them are telling me, you know

393what, we have the right amount of testing, it's too much from the anxiety to the pressure to taking away the teacher's ability to have instructional time with their kids. I know we have mandates and in no way, but whatever we can control and we cannot control at the district level, we need to take a hard look at what we're doing and try to come up with some mechanisms and strategies in conjunction with our parents and teachers to try to fix this. I think we had an opportunity today, and we missed it. And, this is no disrespect to, to MS. Mora who does a great job at mlk, thank you both for coming in. The reality is, this presentation was to me, kind of just like, a manifesto about how great this testing is, and I

394don't believe that accurately reflects what my parents tell me. And what the teachers that I talked to tell me and whether they were brave enough to come here and speak their minds freely or not, I can assure you that the imaginers of the teachers that I talk to, think that we over test. Tt just a reality. I was a little disappointed to not see some different options available today. I, I kind of got the feeling like we were defending what we were doing and, I get it. But the reality is, when you're constituents are telling you something, and when our parents are telling us things, we have to listen, we sometimes forget, we work for these folks. That's why we're here, so service our kids and to service our parents. So I would like to

395see some aggressive action being taken whether it's at the paerpt university or from a district level if we can start having some more input about how we start reducing this as a whole and concerning, certainly trying to turn the classroom back to the teachers as opposed to sitting in front of the computers and taking testifies. -- tests. Listen,, I went to scscol a lolong titime, not as longasas DR.. Man n but I wentto school a long time, our tests were once a week on piece of paper and spiral notebook and I'm including too. I don't think I used a laptop until I was halfway through college and I graduated 2001. And I realize things have changed but the reality is, we're doing too much. Everything is this this, this this, and the parents don't like

396it, the kids don't like it. The teachers don't like it. So why are we still doing it? So I really am going to challenge you sir, as well as I ge, hepburn is not here, so I'll direct this to fulton, you'll have to tell him how we can reduce a lot of this testing that we're doing. And I hate to compare things, but I heard it. We look at our charter schools. They have three mandated tests that they have to take. I realize that they have a lot more autonomy. A lot of these parents, you heard, she has been, a broward resident and now contemplate ing taking her kids out because of the testing anxiety. And when we're dealing with very very young minds, we are establishing educational core memories, if you will and if

397this is what we're telling our kindergartners, our fourth graders, everybody in elementary school, this is what to expect. They're going to have some potential problems moving forward about tests. And I'm not going to get into. Mental health issue aspect of that but I can assure you that, it's probably not good to have testing anxiety as a second or third grader. So that being said, I am looking forward to a continued conversation with the superintendent's office and your department DR. Cohen because we've got to find a way to fix this. This is excessive and too much. Thank you. thank you before I give my comments, I need to gather simple majority to extend the meeting, I would recommend by one hour. The strategic plan the rest of strategic workshop can be done in boardwalkanseder. So what

398we have left is is the two workshops on broward virtual and workforce education. So, are there any objections to extending the meeting by one hour. chair I have. I hear one objection, is there another? Go ahead, DR. Zeman. I just wanted to share with you, that I have a motion for both and we can dispose quickly. we don't do motions in a workshop. sorry, I will have a statement that MAY allow us to dispose quickly. would you like to share the statement. the next presentations are spot on and the kind of things that are both and we need to move to action. I was informed by staff that we need to do the two workshops. Their recommendation was to straight to q & a but I was told that we need to do the workshops.

399Is what I was told. we're bringing two proposal one from virtual and also from our workforce education feel to provide some opportunities where we can bring money back to the district but we want to make sure that we do this tonight because we want to push it off. and with all do respect, the presentation is so clear and recommendation is clear and if you want to go to a presentation, q & a but those are brilliant presentation. I heard two objections. I ob sect. is hate being second. all right, by a simple majority we will extend meeting to 7:40. I would like to give some comments on this. I had a bit of different take away from this specific presentation and some of my colleagues. I did not get the sense, well let me back

400up. If you are looking at the survey results of the teachers and the principals, the teachers and the principals in the survey results that are presented to us in this presentation, say they feel we are over testing. So, the district, the staff, did not present us a picture of everything is fine and everybody things everything is great. Our people are telling us that we're over testing. So I do want to clarify for staff who put this presentation together. They are not trying to present some perfect picture of what is going on. So I did need to clarify that and I did, I think DR. Cohen beat me to it but on slide 38, there are next steps. They didn't bring a presentation to say everything is fine. Now whether or not these next steps were

401as a aggressive as we would like, that's a different story. But, I think that, in fairness to the people who gave this presentation today. This is the first time in my five years that we've asked them to address this. And I think MS. Bulman made this point very clear. The culture of over testing has been so en grained in public education in the united states. Even when which was taking my teaching and learning klasz in college almost twenty years ago now, this was a huge part of the curriculum. And there was a major public debate that was going on at the time that really has died down. people have accepted that this is part of the culture of public education in the country. So if we no longer want that to be the culture, I

402never. I was a teacher in the classroom giving tests that were I did did not feel were meaningful or good for children but I did it because I was forced to. My first question is, when can we expect the follow-up to this workshop? So staff is going to do their next steps and focus groups and come up and look at different options for reducing, the testing on in our schools, when can we expect the follow-up to this workshop? so I would say, we can provide you a follow fup either at the tend of the third quarter or sometime in fourth quarter. One because, if we make a decision that some of the contracts will no longer move forward, we'll have to be bringing those contracts to the board for next year. okay, so sometime by

403the end of this school year. yes, this school year. okay. Again, to reiterate, I understand that a lot of the over testing is either coming from some sort of miscommunication, from the district, or in between schools, I would say that pivot memos are maybe not the way to communicate these optional tests and things like that. But I will say having been in the classroom and you know, being told that hi to give the tests and often times the district was blamed for that. Sometimes optional does not feel optional in our school. The school leadership says, it's optional, I'm going mandate it. Those things need to be clarified. And I don't think a pivot memo o is the way to do it. They're going to be very valuable, like speaking into people in-person hearing what their

404day-to-day and then communicating, you know, through bpaa and, you know, I know you guys have your meetings, monthly meetings with principal approximates communicating that way. I would say that the issue of the computer base testing like some of my colleagues, I understand like the push and pull and the balance that needs to be done there. Like I remember, years ago, the first time my kids took the like had experience taking a computer base tests was with the fsa and that was the first experience with the platform and it created all sorts of problems. So I understand that they need to practice on the compute per but what I've heard from parents and I share this concern as somebody who's children will be going into public school not in the far future. Is screen time overall.

405And I think like we're going to have a conversation in the coming months about tech nology in our classroom. Parents want to know how much time they're spending onscreen in school. so sure, maybe we're testing on the computer too much, there is a reason for that, right that they need to practice the testing on the computer and the state testing is on the computer but are there other way that's we can reduce the use of computer in the classroom with while still remaining equitable. And I'm very concerned about this the screen time of our students and I hear from parents that they're concerned about screen time. So I don't think it's just testing issue. I'll echo the desire for more project base learning. We know that it's affective. That it's good, petagagi, how do we

406make performance matter? I do recall when we went to fast testing. So we tried to fix that problem by implementing matters. How can we do that better? what we're already doing, working specifically with the vendor, we're lucky enough to have two vendor two of the employees onsite here that are going through some of the troubleshooting that we're going through and we've, made a lot of corrections, to the system, you know, interesting enough that had you bring this up, because they are so many districts you would think that the problem should be rampant but I think broward is so unique because of how we brought it. We started something that paerpts really liked and then moved to something else that helped the system out, get better. so I think to your point, bringing parents around performance

407matters asking what are some of the things that they want from the system. And get nr buy in is bring parents be part of the focus group to a law them to make some changes to the system. yes, absolutely 100 percent do that. I think, somebody used this phrase and I don't have the ending of it, but when I was in the classroom, they had us pose an essential question and the essential question for us is, needs to be, I'm going to butcher the quote but if you're not going to use the data from the test why are you giving the test? So I think as we move forward with our principals with our teachers, our district staff, how are we going to use this test. And if the data from this test and if

408we're not going to use it, then we're not going to do it. And I'll say, just again, going back to my experience, it felt like sometimes I was giving, these assessments, in the way it was communicated to me too, like we have to feed the district over lords, the data. We were not really using it it was not helpful to me in my instruction and I think another interesting thing. I heard this from students too. There is a disconnect between like the instruction and the fast testing and assessments, we need to look at that and try to, not have a disconnect there. But, again, like, I think if you roll back tape when did we move to fast testing? It was like 202? 2022? I remember when the state said that they were going to

409move to this fast testing. I said on this dais, I am very worried about the over testing this is going to cause. And I'm not trying to eliminate blame from us and say that we don't have work to do to try to reduce test iting, but this is coming, again from almost, 30 years of culture of testing in this country. So, if we want to move away from that, then we have to do so deliberately and it's going to take time and we have to do it aggressively. MS. Rupert? You said you wanted, you flagged me that you wanted to speak. I'm okay. anyone else? Board discussion. DR. Zeman. I want to be very clear about my view of my recommendations, if you bring what you label as direct actions, it includes releasing a pivot

410memo, I'm going to just say, that's not a direct action. If if you're going to talk to more people to gather more data t a direct action, is here's a list of 20 things, and why we don't need them. Those are things that we can then ask a few questions and say, why don't you bring us some items. My concern is there is a lot of tal ept sitting at the table. A mountain of talent and I want a note kind of your assessment how you read the data, if you need to get more data, that's great, but if if you can do it quickly, you can. We have tens of thousands of kids like in elementary school, roughly around 20,000 kids that are suffering to some extent and we can relief that suffering and

411increase our academic success in some people's view. If you spend time opening that up. And all of those benefits. And I'll tell you one other thing. There is 13,000 teachers in broward school, there is 500,000 parents? If we buy software that is going to be open up to parent use, not in academics but in anything, facilitron, if we let pta, we better do parent focus groups to figure out if they like it and make sure that we get the features, there is a massive amount of parent compared to employees and that's good guidance. Thank you b u thank you very much. Any other board discussion. can I respond? yes. is appreciate the feedback and I welcome the feedback. So is the next editaration will come back with some data, we collected some of the data

412we just didn't want to present because we were still collecting the data. Thank you, I appreciate it. DR. Fulton. so before I close, I want to thank everyone and thank the team for working on this presentation. this did not happen overnight, they've been make sure that they beat of pavement, and also with students as well some feedback came from all of our stakeholders, it was really good input to take forward to move. I want to thank the students and parents and advisory groups that have been helpful in guiding these conversations. But what I will tell you the conversations that you heard tonight is a positive step forward to what our district is about. Moving forward and work to go do what is right for our kids. I don't think nrs anybody in here that wants

413to continue to say, we want to test our kids to death because the outcome is is not what we want. We want to do it right. It a delicate dance. MS. Leonardi did talk about the assessment argument that has been around for a very very long time. But I think it got exacerbated when fast moved to two years. There is a big pandora's box out there. While we will not be able to solve it tonight, you have our commitment that we're willing to work with our teachers and to do everything we need to do to keep learning at its highest. Broward county is at its best. So there are a lot of great things that are happening. We want to understand that it's a delicate balance and the outcome of what we want is to

414ensure that our students continue to learn but learn in a stress free environment. With you but the feedback is going to help us be able to come back prior to the end of the school year to see where we'll and protect instructional time and that we reduce any redundancy in the area of testle. Thank you to the team and thank you board for your comment sxz feedback. hold on, MS. Hixon wants to say something. I just want to be clear that all of us appreciate very much the hard work that awe all did, the staff to bring that presentation to tuesday. So I don't want anyone thinking that we didn't really appreciate the information. I think you know, we also appreciated the parent input. But, it took a lot of time, it was a great

415presentation and I just wanted to make sure that you left knowing that. Thank you. thank you. So we'll take the next two items together it's broward secondary school and education expansion. Bha we need from staff is just information on investment and return on investment. Compared to 40,000 and that equates over a three-year trend of 3200 ft which the math is about depending on what number you use, which calc is about 25 million dollars. , with the initial investment of 5.6 million dollars, we can retain 10. I'm going off memory here, 10.3 million and fte in the district. Now obviously, that doesn't mean it's a 10 million dollars profit because after expenses, that brings to the general fund 4.7 million dollars. That's just the tip of the iceberg that's with an increase and staff of 40

416teachers, instructional personnel, some support personnel to go along to provide student support and and I hope that the slide does, virtual school does, made sense. I was hoping to present that information but that's okay, I don't have to. I think that's it. Okay. all right, I guess we'll do the q & a on bra word first. MS. Hixon. I'll say I'm a thumbs up for this suggestion. And you know, we talked about this actually when I came to visit a couple of times I've been there. And interestingly, enough I've come to learn that there is really a need in our district for some flexibility for our students. We have a large population of students that are athletic, and are performing at high level and need the afternoons to be able to do their practices and

417by expanding this, you know, we talked about it in different school situations where they needed to leave early and that became an issue. But this would be such a great way to keep them not have them go to a charter or private school and keep that ft money for ourselves and have them not walk away thinking we were inflexible and didn't give them the opportunity to to reach the hoo potential. When we go to graduation, I remember last year, most of the people that spoke were athletics, the baseball, gymnastics, swimming, I think people don't realize how much students we actually have in that capacity. So I think, that's a really good way for us to show them that we've heard that we're flexible, we want them to stay so I'm a thumbs up on anything

418you want to do. thank you, MS. Hixon I appreciate it. And thank you for coming to our graduation last year, we appreciate it. MS. Thompson? my comments are about workforce. But I'm supportive of this as well. DR. Zeman. As am I, and I would like to reach consensus on this woo ideas are we markable. Increased revenue means increased service to the community. absolutely. so while we're fascinating with revenue right now, because it's fascinating, we measure what we need to do by serving our community and so hooser a case where there is a real double bottom line, you figure out a way to serve more and deeper and it's a wonderful idea. I just think that we should reach consensus to expand this program to extent that service and revenue increase. thank you, that point, is

419so well taken. Because we believe we deliver a better level of service locally. We understand our teachers, understand the community. Nothing against florida school it's a state wide model and they've been in business. We were the first parter but they're teachers are all over the state. And that's okay, that's what they were designed to do. This district 25 years ago, went down this path, to say hey, this is a good thing for kids and we can enhance it locally. Soy take your point. It means a lot to me. thank you, MS. Chair. thank you, MS. Bulman. thank you, chair, fantastic keeping kids in broward county schools and making money, what's not to love. And you know, I recently had the pleasure of work withing MR. Mcguire, he's been helping one of my children as a

420student, top notch service and so, I'm two thumbs up and I love that you're bringing this solution to us. It checks all the boxes and this is fantastic to expand this and I love keeping it local. thank you very much, it's a pleasure to work with your son. thank you. DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair. And MR. Mcgwire, since my sister is one of your teach and staff, I'm not going to be hard. before you were elected. there you go, he had to qualify that right. Well you won that one MR. Mcgwire but my knowledge on what you do is well appreciated and bringing today, is awesome. And by the way, tell michelle I said hi. But the increased enrollment and generate revenue I'm completely for this. And I believe also, I wanted to, to

421ask DR. Hepburn, we're putting a blan in place I'm assuming to also, you know, have our students choose broward virtual as a first choice as a florida virtue. I know florida virtual is a great program but we have that here in broward providing services, is there an action plan to ensure that students are not leaving us to go to florida virtue? there is a plan to make sure that we're well aligned with the school staff to have to approve students taking virtual courses and the marking. After they get blessing about moving forward with this investment, the machines start working. I'm spoifr. Good to see you. thank you. MS. Rupert. okay, okay district. Of course I love it. It's about time. And your former student is in her third year of teaching. love it. kids will

422thrive when they have a great environment which is what you run. that makes me very happy. Thank you. Please send her my best. MR. Cervera? All right, you have our direction on broward virtual, all right, awesome. good afternoon, I'm please today bring before you too, our ask for broward technical colleges but before I do, I just want to say that broward technical colleges have been ranked number one for 8 consecutive years. [Applause] And our ask is straightforward that we basically, demand already exist for broward technical colleges so we just need space and capacity and we have an idea how we can expand maybe using workforce dollars and maybe capital funds. I'll kick to DR. Neatingna. But first our principals, daniels from sharon and tack. Celest johnson from batter and anita, @ lant I can technical

423college. All right. good evening, and just to reiterate they are the best tech directors not in the state but against the nation, I'll put them against anybody. We need space. And taking a phased approach and being responsible in identifying strategic spaces so we can expand program across the district and provide an expansion services to our community, not just the adults but also the high school students for dual enrollment. We're speaking about receiving funding for the high school as well as for workforce college. Expansion will allow us to increase enrollment. We have three tech colleges 245 students that we cannot allow into our programming because of limited space. That yielded 1.3 million dollars loss for this school year. On the adult side, we have somewhat of a wait list of over 700 adults that are eager

424to get into the program but due to space limitations and that resulted over 10 million dollars loss. So when you divine the figures we have today, we're losing 11.5 million dollars. Additional space will not yield back that 11.5 but have potential to earn more based on the space that we and being strategic where that location is provided. So in short, it really is about -- we need space. thank you. MS. Hix ob. -- hixon. thank you, first I want to say thank you to the three fantastic women, women power. And to you MR. Mcgwire. Everyone sitting at the table, these are the most successful program that's we have in broward county schools along with the pompano beach. Thank you for coming together. I think it's important. We sort of had the discussion about expansion when

425we were talking about glades middle school and you know what that look like, and I would say there was a lot of not at glades but the general idea of expanding was the popular idea of the people just not in their school. So I'm wholehearted for this. I appreciate it. I just want to say, I love the ways, our schools work in these three schools because I've had this discussion with DR. Hepburn and DR. Fulton but we have to change the patigogi f how we teach our students. The bell rings you move here, that is not our world. and so, you have to such a good model that we can start to move into the realm of how does ai fit in there? How do we move our model of how we're teaching students to

426real world. So being able to expand that would really help us be in the forefront of the nation on how we chi patigogi and teaching across the county. So thank you very much. thank you. MS. Thompson? thank you, chair. I am incredibly excited about expanding workforce development. I think in the survey that DR. Zeman referenced talking about how great hepburn is, it left side talks about how much the county walks workhorse development opportunities. And I would very much welcome it in district 2. As MS. Hixon said. At my community meet approximatesing a lot of people wanted these opportunities and now that we have three, potential vacant buildings, or I think it, it gives us an opportunity to build there. I also think that it's something that we can sell as opportunities to the high school

427students, not only in our schools but potentially in charters that this is a new opportunity that they MAY not get anywhere else. It's a big fan. I think district 2 should be the launching pad for this and thank you for all the work. thank you MR. Spellberg. I'll be brief because I have good news to share. And I want to say thank you to these incaed leaders. These schools out performed the district average on every single category on the student survey that is new this year and some some cases by marge minutes by 36 percent. 29 percent, 27 percent. That's a big deal and we have proven data to show that students are experiencing these programs in a positive way. And I can't look -- forward, I need some additional virtual school english classes, I

428look forward to seeing the incredible action. MR. Zeman. I want to connect the dots similar to what MR. Spellberg here, we have two cities thinking actively about how to en happens their enrollment which both have space available both of are in areas where there is great to be demand. My vision is 30 high schools would have these programs because it means so much and there is a big demand for theme to take these programs but there is some near term targets with a little bit of utilization of space that could capture more fta, so under that model, they want to get guarantee. All models acceptance into a university, acceptance into a institution of national service so they're doing the military and corps any core that is there at the time. Or go to work after

429they graduate at a living-wage job. Think of a high school that makes a commitment where they can move smartly through four years with the kinds of programs that you offer, additional counseling to make sure that they're lined up and swap in between the two it does not matter. But it's an a track I have thing to send their kids which is what we're looking for. What is the keys to the kingdom to win the hearts and minds of students and parents. And this program at high schools embedded in the high schools to really a law the people to realize their dreams, beyond that. And sometimes there is multiple dreams. There is I want to have a craft a trade that I want to do right now, while I have to work to put myself through

430college. There is a real cool opportunity to make is this universal commitment that you're going to get an education, enlisted in some service or go earn a good living the day you graduate. I'm hoping that we can come back to the board with specific ideas. I also would not runaway from spending capital money where you need it t.You try to simulate where with you really need a lab. I hope that we're a wise board and invest on some of your labs not just in adult colleges but to capture the need. Thank you very much. thank you, MS. Bulman. thanks, I love this, I think just being a parent and hearing from my n who is in gh hool d d hihis frieies,s, e e conversations has shifted from times past where people were talking about

431college and a lost kids want to do the technical training. So the fact that we're the ones that are able to provide that, to broward county is amazing. And I'm encouraging, all the kids to use these particular services and you know, to the point of everybody else. To be able to have a job a skill when you get out of school, especially for those that don't want to go to college is great. But urine attracting people na MAY be on the fence about going to college and getting a skill. It speaks to the great programming and such a vas array of different career pass that we have. So expanding it, I think is the only option for us and it really differentiates us from any other educational offering in the county that is available. And

432I think we have to keep making sure that we're telling everyone about that. You go to a private school, they're not getting these types of options. So this is what makes broward county schools, great. Keep up the good work. thank you, DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair, so DR. Smith, it's good to see you. I know we took a tour of bear together and thank you DR. Tumor for something that guy give me that wonderful tour. I'm very supportive. I know I visited mac it was a pleasurity visiting mac foughter and I see the programs and you're running out of room as you have told me before and MS. Danielle, I will be visiting your campuses soon. So I am very very supportive of this and I, I believe it is a good opportunity for

433the district to increase revenue which is another direction that we can go as we also try to battle the fight on declining enrollment, so thank you very much, I appreciate it. thank you, MR. Cervera? obviously, also, in favor of all this. I think these schools offer unique programs and opportunities for our kids who want to thank outside of the extradition al box, right. And I think in a world where we MAY be facing the reality that ai MAY be taking some of the more, computer technical jobs, a lot of these technical jobs are, recession proof, ai proof, and things of that nature. So I'm glad to support this. Hopefully we can get what is needed and these programs can continue to excel in our district. Thank you. thank you, any other board discussion? At the

434direction, you have your direction, yes? Okay at the direction of the superintendent the following agenda topics are scheduled to tb addressed in the upcoming workshops. Attendance update, rule development, attendance, policies legislative affairs, referendum and intended allocations, rule development ssepp part two, the peamoore rfq designing scope and expectations and then MARCH 24, we have our master board training, redefining our school updates. Please note to the topics and subject to adjustment at the superintendent discretion. I know we did this earlier but MS. Hixon had a board comment. I have a one more for one workshop and we didn't have that much this time, and we're almost at 7:30. That seems excessive. we'll review it, but a lot of them were planned and then, a lot added due to requests from the board. We'll review it and see

435what we can widle out or possibly push to a different. let's see, so we have the advisory committee report, those have to go. Fast pm economic update. mid-year update from pm2, unless you want it a different way? Okay, so we can probably. DR. Hepburn, we did provide it as a memo too. so it's already been sent out. attendance update and rule development for attendance? well I guess rule development has to go but can we just -- . yeah, the attendance was follow-up. that was a while ago. so it was in SEPTEMBER. Again, if you want certain, things differently, we can provide it differently and bring the items that really need a lot of discussion. There is a lot of packed stuff for the next three or four months. so would you like the attendance update

436in a memo instead or workshop? I would like a discussion on that. okay. Policies legislative affairs? those are five policies and those should go relatively quick, it's trying to bring all policies. referendum and allocations. is that for the third? yeah. you can remove that. Because the board needs to vote on the resolution on the 10th, -- I'm sorry of MARCH so that intended allocation would be a later date. so probably MARCH 24, then. yes. I don't want anyone to think we're not discussing it publicly. yeah, MARCH 24th, yes. vaoul development ssep? -- rule development. again all of these policies we're trying to bring them up code assignment. I see the chief is back there. and the peamoore. peamoore has to stay. are the rule development time sensitive or can they be moved? chief can you?

437SSEPs? I just need to clarify which one? Which policy was it? it says rule development ssep. 28 -- 29, they're still? Legal, we have not received them. Buzz I want to remind the board that they're time sensitive because they're dealing with our staff regard aring fingerprinting and dis qualifying offenses. and dis qualifying offenses but it's with jacques adams so they can opine when they will be released. so through the chair, originally there was another that was working on it that is no longer here, and do you think you'll be ready by the third? yes, yes, we will. okay. Okay. So my thank you. That just struck me, so I would like to ask the superintendent, we the board directed not just an audit on the referendum but for the referendum issue to be sent to

438the ig, and based on the discussion that I had with the ig last week, that has not occured yet. And they were really specific about how it has to come totem in order to -- and I'm guessing you had had the same conversation. yes, I had had the same conversation. can you update us on that and also mentioned that maybe, there would be one contact person at the district that had communication so that they would know how it needs to come because it was very specific. Like if we had just said, check this out, they would not have done anything that there has to be a specific way that it gets communicated. Can you update us on what is happening with that and when that allegation will be sent to the ig so they can

439start working on it. yeah, we had had the same conversation with the ig, for me I was expecting that the chief auditor would send that. So it's a great discussion of who when this things come up to send these yz for an investigation and/or review whatever the ig conducts for certain matters that we're discussing as a board corps. -- corporate. Great discussion now I can send it but moving forward, who should send is that going fob different per item? As I was telling the ig, right, it right now h the referendum is looking at my side of the house as far as staff. I don't think it's appropriate for it to come from me when it's, dealing with, you know, potential mishap that comes from my staff. And I don't know if that looks different

440that we were concerned about who is in that, right? So I think it's a great discussion to have right now. But I can send it just to get that to the ig's office or if you prefer that rhode's office sends it. that would be the question, we thought because it was an audit and ig falls under that? What do you think of her suggestion of having one person be that contact and maybe that person is in the auditing office? Because there is specific word thating has to occur for them to take it tup. So having too many people, fall into the possibility that they don't take it, not because it's not valuable but you didn't make it as an allegation. So do you think it would make sense? yeah, we can identify a point person.

441chair? I'll add you to the list MS. Thompson? I have something on this. MS. Hixon are you done? ?I. Just want to discuss to it moving. would it make sense to come out of the board office, one one appoint approximated person since si feel like most of the reports are going to come from board direction. Is my suggestion. MR. Cervera. couple things and I'm making these comments on the assumption that my colleagues had had the benefit of actually sitting down and speaking with the inspect or general. First and for most, there is no pending anything with them right now. So -- that's not true. they have several. excuse me, in regards, are we talking about the referendum? you just said there is nothing pending. the referendum, there is nothing pending with referendum because it was

442given by a board directive without any clear instructions or any jurisdiction -- and we continue to sit up here and think when we have issues, let's send it with the ig and they'll fix everything they'll accept jurisdiction of these reports. I think the reality is s we have to be mindful, they only have jurisdiction over certainly things. And the directive, it's my understanding that they would not have jurisdiction. now if we want to have the chief auditor try to tinker to trigger jurisdiction, but as of right now, it's not going to happen. I'm pretty sure that some of my colleagues up here, will term out of their board positions before we get anything back from the ig's office on this. This is another reason I didn't called for an independent investigation that would have been

443stwifter. Be that as it MAY, we have to have is the realization of what the ig's office and what is under their jurisdiction pursue, we would like to think where that is magic in the sky where they listen in on our board meetings and they handle it. That's not how to works. Those are my two thoughts. Thank you. MS. Bulman. is too thought that ig offices was listening and taking it. Just kid can go. I think that the issue is that we have, is how we get it to the ig. We gave direction, time and then there is another step that needs to be taken for it to get there and that was a conversation that she had with everyone which is this point of contact, but it wasn't clear, MS. Jacques-adams was in at

444the meeting maybe you have a idea best way to do it? So through the chair in order for if the ig to receive is the information or tip, it has to have a lot more information than motion that was made, it has to misconduct and/or gross mismanagement as defined in the aia. It has to be supported by those facts. And so I'm not here to tell you who but whoever you need to address it from that perspective. so it seems like the auditor and I think the audit is already, done, so that would be the supporting at least initial facts that we're providing? So I think whatever you send to them would have to have gross mismanagement. It has to be structured in a certain way. can the auditor make the allegations based on the

445audit. Is that something that they can't draw the conclusions? I see what you're. they would have to be some logistics in terms of instruction to whoever you assign to this. It's not enough to state a motion. I think there needs to be some instruction on obtaining that information that rises to level of misconduct or gross mismanagement. so can I jump in. yeah. I think the issue is, if you recall we had the oig come and give a workshop presentation to tuesday over a year ago. I think that and I do want to clarify any MISS Characterizations of what is going on with our staff, because we made a motion, our motion was not specific enough. We didn't know that it was specific enough. We didn't get that guidance and that's fine. And staff, obviously, it

446kind of everyone kind of assumed that somebody else was going to do it. The chaired email the auditor, I think the auditor for this case would be the most appropriate place to do this. But, you know, I think that, and I discussed this with the ig as well. Like the allegations is, the allegation is, and I don't think I believe it, but I think we need to clear it up, the allegation is that we have staff who put something on the agenda to mislead the board to enrich themselves. Right. That is is the allegation that has been made. And so that is what we, I would like the ig to investigate. And I think that would qualify as a gross negligence misconduct based on that allegation. So I don't know if we need to take

447formal board action to direct the chief auditor to do that. I believe we have a special meeting on the third or if we can just come to a consensus tonight to do that. But I think the chief auditor makes the most sense to be the contact. MS. Hixon. I would agree because both the auditor now and the chief auditor we just direct appointed used to work in the ig's office so they will be very familiar with what that wordings should look like and what would be the -- taken up so they have is the expertise to do that. I think we could, I think, if we just have consensus today that we could, let the auditor know that, we expect them to send this expect them to the ig based on the discussion we had.

448DR. Zeman. yes and auditor and our policy, I'm not sure that we need to have consensus we talked about this ad nauseam, you know what we like to do you just make the allegations and get it over to the ig. Any employee can make that type allegation to it. But if the board does it, because of our policy that says the chair is our liason to audit plans, this fits naturally to that policy. any objection to that? No? Okay. Any other board discussion? The scheduled order of business for this school board workshop at the school board of broward county florida, has been completed. Seeing no objection, I will now adjourn the broward county