001school board of broward florida is now called to order. DR. Hepburn are there any items that need to be added to the agenda. no changes. MAY I have a motion to close the agenda. so moved. second. MAY have a motion and a second to approve all final orders. so moved. second. there is a motion and a second, any discussion? All in favor of approve a all final orders? aye. is now declare this special school board meeting adjourned. welcome to today's regular school board meeting. This regular meeting is now called to order. Our primary foc sues to create a safe and productive environment for all participants. Please be reminded of the exit doors clearly marked for exiting. Please refrain from blocking the exit doors. Once the board room is reached its seating capacity, attendees will be
002directed to overflow area. Upon activation of the fire alarm, remain outside until the authority that has jurisdiction has deemed the building safe to return. Thank you for your cooperation. Board member holness will now introduce his school to lead us in the "pledge of allegiance". DR. Holness. thank you. at this time, it's my honor to welcome the piper tc who will present the colors and lead us to the "pledge of allegiance". forward MARCH. MARCH. Left turn, MARCH. Colors, hold. The pledge. Ready begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under GOD indivisible with liberty and justice for all. right turn, MARCH. Forward MARCH. Forward, MARCH. MADAM Chair, so I can give the students credit I would like to recognize the names
003if you don't mind. So who participated are tir stnd ten porter, battalion commander and cadet of the quarter, nia, executive officer and recipient of the broward school's outstanding senior leadership award. Camille russell and band selecty and tai ler, drill and color guard officer in charge. These outstanding cadet with part of the piper high school lead by principal matthew lewis and under the leadership of dexter gamich. Thank you. thank you. board member hixon has requested a moment of silence. MS. Hixon. thank you. I would like to take a moment to honor the life, paul was a kind and gentle soul, who was always eager to help others. He was thoughtful in the small ways that mattered most, remembering birthdays, important dates and always taking the time to check in on the people around him. Paul truly
004loved his career and education, supporting students at plantation park and ebd cluster and foster elementary. He cared deeply about the students he served and dlt close relationship. Outside of paul was a proud alumna of florida. Paul's dedication to helping others, made a lasting impact on the lives of student and colleagues who knew him. He will be deeply missed by his school community and by all who had the privilege of calling him a friend. A respectfully ask that we take a moment of silence in the memory of paul comeau. Thank you. thank you, board member cervera has requested a moment of silence, MR. Cervera. thank you. It's with heartfelt sympathy that we pause and han or the life of language arts high school. Passed away on FEBRUARY 26, 2026, not only remembered by her adult children
005but by the countless colleagues and friends who's lives she touched throughout her career. We extend our respects to the family. MAY they find comfort and peace during this difficult time. Please welcome me in in a moment of silence in her memory. Thank you. thank you. The superintendent released a revised agenda with certain changes. he has further revisions, DR. Hepburn. thank you, MADAM Chair. they will change the from termination torres I go nation. Thank you MADAM Chair. the chair finds pursuant to section that good cause exist for such changes. MAY the chair have a motion and a second to close the agenda. moved and second. moved and second by MS. Rupert. All in favor of closing the agenda say aye. aye. all opposed say no. The agenda is now closed. MAY the chair have motion and
006a second to approve -- for the school board meetings. . so moved. ed moved by DR. Zeman seconded by MS. Rupert. Is there any discussion? All in favor of the approving the minutes as listed as listed say aye. aye. those opposed say no. The minutes are approved. As we prepare to begin our regular school board meeting, we're reminded that our vision is 100 percent proficiency, our vital task is to sustain this achievement. We will continue to help all students. Our theme believe and empower achieve one broward. The chief officer pulled the board on any agenda items they wish to address in advance of the meeting. The following consent items have been identified. H2, 42, h -- f2 and m1. at this time, MAY the have a motion and a second to pass the consent items
007that have not been pulled for discussion, which are h3, a 1, c2, f1 and o-2. so moved. second. moved and second by MS. Hixon. Are there any speakers for the items not pulled for discussion? no speakers. all in favor of those not pulled for discussion. Say aye. aye. those opposed say no. Items pass unanimously. Can have a motion and a second on each one. so moved. moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Hixon. Any speakers. one speaker, martinez. if you heard your name, you MAY approach the mic. Speaker: sorry. Can I give a copy. Can I give a copy? MR. Sullivan if you can grab. I just want to say she is probably here for h2 and not h1. is would like to provide a statement to you. please distribute the statement, go ahead MS.
008Martinez. Speaker: good morning, I'm yuri diaz I'm in my 30 years of teaching. I find myself sitting here in a position of first instance defending myself from allegations against me after a long career. I'm here to address the lack of due process with the procedure at the school. on JANUARY 9, female student was transferred to my class but neglected with a ai p and 504 plan. I will not repeat my short exchange upon her entering my classroom but it was not the exchange written by the mother p.I challenge the motion that a brief exchange was responsible for exacerbating the child's disorder and forcing her to leave school. The mother made the complaint on JANUARY 22, at about 10:30 the 504 plan was emailed to me and the mother explained in an email. The student returned
009to my class, in summary, I did not make the offense statement nor did I have any prior knowledge that this student having an anxiety disorder. I was told not to speak to witnesses. Therefore my superior retained statements. The students who are absent and stated that they and stated that they knew what they knew because the students were gossiping the situation. In a statement from student that matched that the mother had written in her part. Notably the other adult in the room, was not requested about what he heard. Admin mentioned that the student was in my classroom on JANUARY 20th and student was not in school that day. The student withdrew the same day that. Afterwards, when the students have provided their statement, I asked if any of the students knew about the student as I
010had not been told she withdrew until JANUARY 26th. The student offered that she left the school because of what I said to her. If she only showed up on one day JANUARY 6th. At that point, the investigate tory phase was over. I did continue stop the discussion for that reason nor out of intention. A student ofmimine thisis past ek, asked meme if erythingng was okokay, cacause he was lllled dodown to provide a statement where is this statement? Thereafter I was told that I was being suspended for three based upon the estimate against me. Furthermore in the statement. thank you. yet, I know that the other adult. just to confirm, these comments were on h2. okay. board member discussion on h1? MS. Hixon? thank you. I just wanted to congratulate, we have 44 retirees and one
011stands out, I think all of us would like to say thank you so much to mary moulder for the job she has done for the many years that she has been here. Those will be some big shoes to fill. I think she has a couple more days left. I want today give as the wellness committee chair thank you to mary and wish her good luck and good fortune in her new journey. Thank you. thank you so much. Any other board discussion on h1? All in favor of h1 say aye. aye. any opposed say no. Item pass approximates unanimously. Can I have a motion and a discussion on h2. board member comment MR. Cervera? my issue has been resolved thank you. any other board discussion on h2. All in favor of h2, say aye. aye. all
012opposed say no. Item passes unanimously. Can I have a motion and a second on h4. Moved by DR. Zeman second by MS. Thompson. Any speakers? no speakers. MS. Bulman. thank you, chair. So, I just had a question about this, down at the bottom, let's see it says, and this is just arbitrary so I don't know if this matters or not, but it says that you have to be able to assist individuals or objects weighing 130 pounds or more and pair eager doctoring individuals or objects weighing 130 pounds or more. How much more are we talking about? DR. Hepburn? chief. good morning, chief mike gregory that was updated to language outdated, for employees and the police department. These were taken from. Police academy standard for all police officers that go through the process and the weights
013involved there is to, at least cover a child or somebody larger if they need to do a rescue or recovery in a disaster or critical incident they can carry them or drag them to safety. so okay, it just seems arbitrary, I get that 130 pounds if that's the standard but you can weigh 400 pounds is that what the expectation is? as a minimum. okay. all right, thank you. thank you. any other board member discussion? All in favor of h4 say aye. aye. all opposed say no f.Item passes unanimously. Can I get a motion and a second on h5. so moved. moved and second, public comment? no registered speakers. board member comment, DR. Zeman. thank you very much. This item is to set calendars for staff. There are lots of interesting things in here, you know
014that, that kind of repeat what we've done in broward county. I don't have any objection to this particular item but we're in the middle of fiscal crisis, we're in the middle of all hands-on deck. We're in the middle of making sure that we're able to in some sense make structure changes to make sure that we tilt the ship towards winning the hearts and mind of every parents. This item is really about staff including, includes a calendar that has staff having fridays off in the summer. For the staff listed here, it makes sense. It makes sense they MAY get more work done in ten days. But administer pif leaders who have huge responsible not being on fridays during summer. I don't know, when we get to decide that but MR. Superintendent, is there going to be
015an item before us that talks about the summer schedule for senior administrative staff? no, DR. Lozano, this covers everybody correct? correct. it does cover everybody. It's not clear that the idea does. I cannot sell fridays off to my neighbors. There are no private sector organizations that work less a billion hours a week particularly at times of crisis where instructional change are need approximated. I hope sometime in the future, we decide to change the schedule to reflect the community's need and the hard work that is done during summer. The summertime is no time of school and students. Easier to coordinate, because we have people around to coordinate. So, I'll find a way to put together some ideas on that and I'll bring it back to the board another time, thanks chair. any other board member discussion,
016MS. Rupert? thank you, MADAM Chair. Through the superintendent, I was I thought that there was going to be a change to this particular item. did that happen? DR. Lozano? in reference to? lisa maxwell. that was done yesterday in a member to revise completed and adjusted and fixed on this item. okay, so it's fixed. it's fixed. okay, thank you. okay. And I had a quick question, DR. Hepburn, with fridays off does that turn into savings? Tort district? yes, it does, it translates average about 1.4 million per summer. okay. Thank you. Any other board discussion on the item? MS. Hixon? DR. Hepburn, can you explain where that savings come from? mostly for utility costs and shutting down the district. any other board discussion? All in favor say aye. aye. all opposed a no. item passes unanimously. Can
017I get a motion and a second on b1. so moved. moved and second by MS. Hixon. Any public comment on b1? no public comment. board discussion. MS. Hixon. I brought this item forward, for a long time educators believed that steps was taken away because of the state. So in conversations with teachers across the county, they kept asking me about steps. So I did a little research about it and had a discussion with the superintendent and other people to ask what we can bring back some kind of step program so that teachers could be able to have some kind of stability, and know when they were going to have different increases throughout their career and pay, because as you know, I have bugged about this since I the day I got here. That I want us
018to bake in salary to our budget and we have never gotten there. So this is another way to try to do it. It is to act the superintendent to explore, it's not to make steps right now but to bring back to us what a structured step salary would look like, or salary step schedule would look like for teachers, you know, what na would be budgetwise and we do some employee groups who are still on steps here. There are two county, if I'm not mistaken in the state that do have steps. I know it gets complicated because of the paper performance. So this is just to ask the superintendent to look into it and see if that is something we can do moving forward. I hope that you will support me in this. thank you. Board
019member comment? MS. Thompson? I guess what would be your expected deadline or timeline? it's on there, JULY. sorry, I didn't see it, prior to this meeting. that's all right. I know it came late. The expectation is to bring back something to the board by july of this year. So that we can do something for next school year. to the superintendent, is that a reasonable timeline with everything else that we're trying to figure out? yes, we'll try to get our legal and also reach out to the school districts who are doing this and bring back the information because it pretty much talks about bringing back information and recommendations too. and it would be to a workshop? yes, we can add it to a workshop. okay, thank you. thank you. DR. Zeman? thanks, chair I'm wondering if
020the superintendent C.F.O. Has some comment about, I love studying everything, it's always nice to learn about alternatives. It's my working understanding that paid for performance, while it doesn't say you can't have steps is an alternate pay step. I was a government employee for 25 years, I loved it, they were great. To MS. Hixon point they allow you to plan and predict. There are some that have a lot of money. I spoke to an employee that had a million dollars laying around, I wish I lived in that county. And there is structure, 9 percent balance in palm county, different structure and budget environment. In broward county, we don't have that. and it's my understanding, if you're going to pay people for performance and put them in three bands and assign pay raises based on the bands,
021those different performance levels, you cannot have a automatic pay raise. So, I don't want to spend staff time doing this if it's oppose today what we have to do by statute and that's been my understanding. If you do pay performance, that's opposite of pay for ten years which is what steps are. Can somebody explain to me, MR. Superintendent or from your staff, whether or not these are two alternate that can exist. Or is this worth studying because it's something that we can have together? I think from my understanding, you can't, typically have in the environment. You choose one or the other, and most of the districts around the state chose what we are, actually implementing. But I think it does, offer an opportunity for us to do research and come back with some information for
022the board for further discussion on some next steps and also work on btu on this also. right, here's kind of what I only see as a feasible solution. If we do steps, we're going to give teachers guaranteed pay raises every year. Or they make based on what their evaluated performance is, the state law, the superintendent isn't the state law paper performance? Isn't that mandated in florida? I'm not sure, MR. Lozano, if you can provide some details on the specifics of that? staff salaries are not mandated in the state of florida. I asked if paper performance is mandated. as of right now, it is. yes it is? correct. thank you so much. So I, I enjoyed the steps when I had them as a federal employee, it did help us plan. And I know that step
023employees started at a pay level that is lower because we would make more over time. This will generate no new revenue for broward county, is that correct? Like if we shift today a step? that's right. it would not generate my more money so you still have to squeeze it into a system. And I don't know if steps are feasible if by law we have to do paper performance, that means that our starting salary would be so low in order to get raises. I don't understand how you can, I don't understand how this can be done in broward county. But I'm always interested in learning more about it. Maybe there is a result different than what we talked. Every time we talked to people, you can have a or b, but if you have steps, you've
024got to do something dramatically different, about, about how you compensate people. I prefer this philosophically to pay for performance it allows us to differentiate pay raises for people that are perceived and assessed to doing a greater level of performance. Thank you. MS. Hixon. thank you. It's a state law that we have to start teachers at a certain pay rate. I just want to clear that up. There is no way that we're going to do anything that starts a teacher at less than what the state requires. I did run this past legal, and they, and our general counsel that is coming in fromly county, they just went to this with lee county so she is familiar. They asked the superintendent to explore it, so we're sure that we are. We know that this year, we're not
025giving teachers a raise. I don't want to be in this position again. I've ran it through sfba, ran it through legal and couple of different places, so there is nothing illegal about this and I really would just like, our staff to look and see and maybe that it's a hybrid dwaoen paper performance and step there is a salary range and things of that nature. I don't know the answer but I know, that we have to be doing something different. And I would like to be able to explore what that looks like. thank you, MS. Alhadeff. are we already doing steps in the contract? there is -- go ahead, DR. Lozano, you can explain the small group of teachers that are still on steps. your professional services contract but as far as every teacher receiving steps,
026that is not part of our collective bargaining at this time. so if we explore this, and we work with the broward teacher's union, is this something that has to be negotiated? that's correct. thank you. any other board discussion on this item? All in favor of b1 say aye. aye. all opposed say no. Item passes with one descenting vote from DR. Zeman. Can I get a motion and a second on I3. Moved by DR. Zeman seconded by MS. Hixon. Public comment? no ma'am. board member comment? DR. Zeman? thank you. This item includes a data sharing agreement that includes sharing the names of teachers and students can an organization. I'm curious, MR. Superintendent do we need to do that while we're also providing unique identifying. thank you for the question. I'll have DR. Cohen provide some details
027on this item. good morning, DR. Zeman, board, DR. Cohen, chief financial officer. This is a state-approved program. It's the only state approved program for high dosage tutoring. It's a cam panian -- companion to comingle. That's item data sharing is in place. MR. Superintendent, does this data agreement include the name of students of parents with through the florida with, vendors? go ahead, DR. Cohen? it does not. It includes performance, demographic data, program participation. DR. Zeman are you done? no, I'm not, I just want to get a page number. On page 13, exhibit d, it says data fields requested it includes student first and last name. Parent's first name parent's last name. Why are there checks on the column 13 if we're not providing this data to vendors? so those are the requirements of the study but
028the information is not shared to third party. Doc can you expand on that. Speaker: thank you for the question. It does include first and last name DR. Zeman, it's for the new world's project that's why they send books to students parents to their classes and the rest is needed for rostering purposes only.Y. I'm going to let the board ke up their own mind but I'm not interested ever in sharing parents name to university of florida, kan, vendor xy z- university a B.C. That is information that is unnecessary. They have student identification number that means it's unique. I'm troubled by the fact that this data sharing agreement says that parentses names are provided for distribution of information on state initiatives. I just, I see no compelling reason to give out the names of our students or
029parents unless, you know, I just, I would have a hard time imagining what kind of data sharing I would like to have for people to do research high tutoring. Every day there are data breaches in the real world and a data breach that gives up the names of our students and addresses and parents names is is not worth the value of this study. So I hope the board thinks hard about this. I have three children in high schools, the fact that their names MAY be go to other schools, bothered the heck out of me. I don't want my name. And I don't want the names of my kids to be shared with university of florida with latera with con academy so they can do an ethicacy study. They can study the results and have unique
030student identification number. Beyond that, this is not something that I can support. Thank you. DR. Zeman would you like to make a motion. I was going to wait for discussion. okay. MR. Cervera. thank you, chair. I echo DR. Zeman's concerns but this goes a little deeper. It's not only names and last names and mailing addresses, it's email address sxz phone numbers. And I don't think this is information that should be floating out there in cyber space and available to vendors or worse a hack or anything of that nature. MR. Superintendent this unique to university of florida do similar agreements exist with other universities or vendors where we're giving out emails addresses along with students first and last names? DR. Cohen? so there are cases where that has happened. But I'll share something on this agreement.
031The majority of the large school districts are part of this initiative. So this is not unique to broward county, this is the only state-approved grant that is being funded. The state requires that the university of last who was approved by the state and only state that provided grantee to do the ethicacy because they're looking at how high dosage student is impacting. This is about measurement of student outcome and to provide some recommendation to see districts as districts lose funding and look at opportunities to expand out reach to families. Last year, we did have varsity tutors, we did share with varsity tutors because they were tutoring our students. They did one to one tutoring in classrooms where it was face-to-face. So it's not unusual that that information is shared because these are teachers that are working
032with other students. so I want to be clear, I'm not against the program or the benefits of the program. What I have concerns is is exhibit d which listed in exhibit d is part of this exclusive data sharing agreement. And the prom he ens -- comprehensive issue. This is not a program issue not tutoring issue not even a university of florida issue, despite any feelings about the university of florida. This is strictly are we allowing our parents personal data to be out there to vendors and in cyber space. And I think the things that are included in this list within the exhibit d here, I don't think they're necessary. I certainly understand the need for the names but all of this other stuff, I think it's too, expansive. I've got some real concerns with this.
033And, and I think I know how I'm going to vote. I'm interested to say if my colleagues have any other comments. MR. Superintendent, I would like to follow-up on this. I want to know how many other vendor agreements that we have that have similar to this, where we're giving this much information out to third parties. Thank you. thank you, any other board member discussion before I go back to DR. Zeman? DR. Zeman. thank you, chair. I came into this meeting thinking this is a bad idea, I'm sitting here thinking this is a horrific idea. I've done dozens and dozens of studies, hundreds studies and in none of this have I had a data agreement that gave information. It's very different by the way to be doing tutoring and needing the names of students. I would
034like to introduce myself, here is your tutor, nice to meet you, sally. That's great. But, in all of our contracts, there is an agreement about destroying data that you have that is pii or otherwise restricted data. There is furpa that restricts us. There is zero need for this information to do an ethicacy studies. Zero, you have a unique identifier, in fact some require us to do new unique identifiers. So the risk of this data breach, the risk of this information with phone numbers of parents and students being released, is whatever it is, it's a real risk the and value of schools that are participating in this is zero. There is no value in the ethicacy study having names in it. If it has unique identifier, they can tell you how it works based on identifier.
035I'm surprised this got to the board. I just don't think it makes any sense. And what I would like to do chair is make a motion to lay this on the table until our next regularly board meeting and see if the staff can renegotiate. I'll suspect, and I'll end it there. second. would you mind, rewording your motion to postpone po APRIL 7th which is our next regular school meeting. I would love to. I would like to make a motion to lay this on the table. postpone. laying it on the table. it's still early, this daylight saving time, is besides me. MR. Cohen wants to provide some information. the motion was by DR. Zeman, seconded by MR. Cervera. so exhibit d is not the entire agreement. The agreement that doctor zeman and MR. Cervera are talking
036about, it's an opt. Parents have to sign up and share that information. This is different from the data sharing agreement na is part of it. So is want to be clear, this is no different than if DR. Holness, you own a tutoring company when parents come to you, they sign up to their tutor they give you the information and student records. This is the same thing. To this allows parents to opt in and give their information to participate in this. Although it's bundled as a data agreement, it's a separate component. So the agreement is that the deidentified data that we're referring to that keeps the safety that you're referring to but this exhibit d for new worlds is for parents to opt in and sign up for tutoring, which is why they will have to
037get the books to them, register for and hours and so forth. public comment on the motion? Board member discussion? DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair. So DR. Cone. The data that DR. Zeman and MR. Cervera are having problems with, are you saying that based upon their concern, that that's not the data that will be shared? correct. so xa -- what exactly will be shared? student grade performance, teacher data, school performance data, classroom data, all of those non deidentified components that will be available to the center so they can compare other districts that are also in the same cohort, so they're comparing student information by grade level, by, by content area because they're doing math and ela. So it's really more the information that they're looking at to compare the result from one school to the
038other. I understand that. But in terms of identification for students who's data is being shared. What identification are we sharing? DR. Zeman mentioned, why do we need to use names and emails? Why can't we use some identifier that is ab -- abstract? So, I hear what you're saying in terms of the data that we're collecting but, what are we divulging in terms of student identification? just the grade level, performance, content area. so are we giving students names? no. so we're not giving students names? no. how do we, are we having any identifying number to determine students? yes. so names are not going to be given. that's correct. and so I'm, I'm misunderstanding the comment from DR. Zeman and board member cervera, as what they believe to be shared and what you're saying. they're looking at
039item d. Item d is a separate piece which allows parents to sign up and register for separate tutoring that allows them them to opt into it. okay. So for the record, should we vote on this item, we're not sharing students name? unless the parent opts into the new world reading program. that seems like an addition addendum but this item is based on data sharing with the university of florida. that's correct. so with this item and what we're voting today, are we sharing students names? not for the last piece but if parents opt in, they would share. okay. d. okay. Thank you. thank you. MS. Bulman. thank you. So, to the point, I'm looking at exhibit g. And all of this information is, listed again as on page 24, so I guess it's g-5. It receiving
040parties of disclosure, records. How does that fit in? so you're looking at exhibit g, it does highlight a a new world reading as part of that and it refers to exhibit d, which is kind of been the discussion that we've been having. well it highlights, five different programs? you're referring a through e? yeah, so a 1 lists five programs. At the bottom they're listed again in a 3-1. so those are the various programs, one of them professional learning. These are all part of what districts could have opted in in terms of when they wrote the grant. So what the university of florida through the state of florida, these are the things that districts could have signed up to say, hey, we want in-person tutoring, and virtual tutoring. Those are top five. right. So my colleagues
041question about information na is collected, so 51 under exhibit g, sez they will disclose the record to latera to ensure student eligibility, and data claiming and that lists all the things that we're having a concern about the names and date of birth, yeah, I would say that again refers to one of the five at the very top under a 1. Refers to professional development. Okay. I'll have to read it more closely to understand what it is saying. DR. Cervera. I would like to go after DR. Zeman. DR. Zeman. I want to postpone this and bring an item that explains in a better way. But it says broward county board disclosing party. And it shows will release the data. So to the particular, these explanations are not apparent to them. So at a minimum, we need
042to think about a little bit about this and make sure that we're crystal clear with the public that this is an opt in and then we can let the board decide at that point, by this board and by the public of what is being released. What is in this is alarming as what is written in the item. I want to be clear about that. The item says the disclosing party will send, these items as exposed in exhibit d. MR. Superintendent are there any damages that would happen to us or to the study people if we postpone this to the 7th of APRIL? go ahead, DR. Cone, because if we postpone this we have to postpone another item on the agenda. this is a companion item to the kan middle school agreement. last month, they approved
043kan high school, these are companion to both of those. And if this data sharing agreement is not approved because this award happened late OCTOBER, we will lose the funding for this particular initiative with the state. so just to be clear, this item was brought to us today with a mandate to either pass it or lose fund, that's correct? so we actually went to the board past kan high school, past far sea, elementary. To have as part of the ethicacy study. I would really like my question answered. The board was brought an idea that we either pass or lose funding. I'm sorry, can you repeat. this item was brought today with the mandate that you pass or lose funding. it's not a mandate. The thing is, because past pm2 came out, what the state wants us
044to do is look at the starting point and high dosage. Because we will not have enough wove time between fast pm2 and 3 to conduct a ethicacy study. That's y I think there is a sense of urgency. But we can go back to the university of lasinger and sew if they can tweak the agreements. But these are the agreements that all the districts have provide. This is the same kind of data sharing agreement that university of last year did the same thing for all districts. So we'll go back and see if they can tweak some of those things. I don't know if MS. Jacques adams wants to weigh in in terms of the agreement. If there wewere any alarmsms based wh her teamviewed. DR. Zeman, I don't have anything to add. A lot of the
045questions that you're asking are problematic in terms of whether or not the agreement is legally sufficient. It is legally sufficient. right, so it allows. I have the floor if you don't mind. MR. Superintendent, was there any restriction to bring this item in JANUARY of this year? go ahead, DR. Cone, I'm thinking pm2 data, correct? I just want to be crystal clear. I'm over this. I'm over the mandate, I really am. I am over items that don't describe what really happens. I'm over the mandate, I'll pass this or some crisis is going to happen. We could have passed this in JANUARY, knowing that pm2 is last week. Let me ask this again, MR. Superintendent could we have brought this item in JANUARY? all depends on the work flow. As with all items, depends on all items.
046It depends on the work flow. thank you, chair. MR. Cervera? thank you. I just want to make sure that we're clear on a couple of things, we're talking about the opt ins and opt outs, the way that I read this agreement, on page 4 of the agreement. once this is signed, bcps which is desiepd as the disclosing party, has to share the data shared in -- the way I read this this, once it's signed, it says will share. Not MAY or has an option. It's a will. So once this agreement is signed, the data is being transferred which obviously when you're transferring that type of sensitive information, we like to think and we hope that there are safeguards and guard rails to protect the data. But the data is being transferred immediately. The thing about
047opting in or opting out, let's be honest if a parent wants to sign up, they're not reading the fine print and they have no information that this information is getting transferred. And I think we have an obligation to protect the information that is been entrusted to us by virtual of the fact that we're educating these kids. I appreciate the opt in and opt out aspect of this. But I think the reality is 95 percent of the parents will come into this program probably won't know that their email addresses and home addresses are being shared with their party vendors. So I'm having some issues. Hopefully we can work something out that does not require giving all the sensitive information and this program westbound aout eyesed and use the funding for its intended purposes. But I've got
048too many issues with exhibit d to be comfortable with in this current form. Thank you. MS. Jacques-adams. one thing I want to make sure that I referenced was when I indicated that this agreement is legally sufficient. There are certain exception to see furpa, there is a reference that this particular entity is school official. So you either require consent from the parent to disclose information or there is another exception to furpa and in this case, I do see a furpa exception which is school official. I appreciate. I was not suggesting that the document is legally sufficient s.You can contract for most things for things in this county and state and I appreciate that. That does not mean I have to be comfortable with giving out the information of my parents. that's correct. does not mean that
049I have to support it. absolutely not. And one other thing, I would like to point out this was not in response to your statement, this is just in general, is that there is also a provision within the contract that allows for safeguarding, the confidential of records that is on page 21 of 25. So sej occasion records is listed there, it security is listed, and as well as liability for the vendor if those safeguards are not. and I appreciate that. But you know the best safeguard is, not giving the information in the first place. Thank you. MS. Alhadeff. yes, so on page 2, section 4, to MR. Cervera's point. The data to be shared. The issue is, exhibit d is an opt in by the parent but based on what it says here, the data would
050be shared and it does not mention anything about parent opting in. So I would like to make a substitute motion to delay this to later in the meeting today, a law MS. Jacques-adams to figure out what can be added to section 4 to speak to having exhibit d, speak to the opt in of the parent and if that would cure the issue with that my colleagues have this item? second. motion made by MS. Al that definite to table this item to later in the meeting. Public comment on ot motion? Public comment on the motion? DR. Zeman. I would be happy to get this done. This is a structural issue with this contract. It a structural issue with all 25 pages. There is no word opt in any of the summary or data sharing agreement. So
051this was built in a way so it's going to be difficult by the end of today to do this. If we can do this, great, that way we get both, we get a correct opt out. I'm not sure there is enough hours to get this one. This is a big rewrite. It looks like me two weeks worth of work not one day but i'm happy with with the substitute motion if it can be done. If we table this, with MS. Alhadeff's motion and the staff is is not ready to, the item can come back and move to other motions. correct. thank you, appreciate your motion. MR. Cervera. through the general counsel, this agreement has been approved bit university of florida trustees. yes. so if we are making changes, we have to go back to them.
052I appreciate the idea by MS. Alhadeff, but I don't think this is something that we can do today. Even if we change and their legal team is going to have to review it and approve it. Unless you can get them on the phone and present it to us at 8:00 o'clock tonight, that the only way. the changes that are being described are factual, so I can only make changes to legal. So the facts need to be added in and I would legally review that and then the opposite, the university of florida would have to agree to it. so in your professional opinion, can you do today what board member alhadeff is asking? no. DR. Holness. thank you, MADAM Chair. So it appears based upon, MS. Jacques-adams comments given to board member cervera, that this is
053not doable today as far as the motion. So I have another question, dr. hepburn. Is this particular problem, is to approve an ethicacy study for funded program of broward county schools. If in fact this item comes back and it's not approved, what is the impact? What does it mean, does it mean the programs continue? Or, will the program discontinue? Is it contingent on us conducting the ethicacy studies? it's contingent on us having the ethicacy study? okay. Thank you. okay, I had some comments. I, I am a little frustrated, this board has said that we're not interested in sharing this data. In fact it's in our legislative platform. So I appreciate that there were boardwalk around around this initiative. But, the idea that this was not a flagged issue for staff, at all levels, when it
054comes to sharing this kind of information when, you know, we've said this repeatedly publicly, in the last few months, that we do not want to share this kind of information. And we've taken a formal vote on it as well. Is appreciate the piece about how perhaps, this is contingent on an opt in. But I'll just tell you, from my experience in the classroom, we had student sign up for things like con academy or things and it was part of the kid's homework to have their parents sign them up or have their parents opt in. so because we were told, and I don't know. I don't know if this was accurate or not, but we were told that the district wanted us to be using that program and they were checking reports that we were using
055this program every week. So I, you know, I appreciate the idea of a parent opt in but the way it plays out, in our classrooms MAY be a little bit different. And I, I also appreciate our, or I recognize that tau said that there are other districts all districts that are doing this in the state, I think this is such a new issue that people especially parents that I talked to parents of young children who are very concerned about and I think it's important to note that, because all districts or other districts are doing it, it does not mean that we should be doing this. And I think this is an issue that is going to grow overtime that people are going to bring awareness to. That maybe a lot of people are not paying
056attention to at this moment. So I, I share the frustration around like if we don't pass this, we lose funding. And I think, there needs to be a lot more due diligence in educating the board about these things. Especially when we made it clear that this is a concern of ours. So I think we've been put in a difficult position today with this idea. And I will say again, and i don't know if it matters that it's being said but we are not interested in sharing this kind of student information or parent information. We don't want to do it. So as contracts are negotiated moving forward, that should not be included. I don't know if we need to take another format vote, if we voted on our legislative platform. Any other board member comment? MS.
057Hixon. thank you, I just like to ask MS. Jacques-adams about this. I know she is a stickler about data sharing and many of the contracts that we have. So can you, kind of weigh in on the discussion that is being had here? thank you, MS. Hixon through the chair. One thing I want to express. As a part of a program whenever the staff has a contract and that contract supports a program, there are times where they have contractually perform the responsibility of the contract. So concern information is required. Whether it be education records, security records, each time those types of private records are required, one of two things happen, we receive consent by the parent. And if there is an exemption, then that would be applied. Each time education records are required in order for
058that vendor to perform their duty, we either get consent or falls under exemption. so that applies to well security, would not be any type of exempt. I'm talking about education records. So if across the board education records would not be something that we would provide to those vendors, then that MAY affect whether or not the vendor can perform. So I just want to caution, like a blanket straight, we don't share education records that MAY affect certain programs that academics has and other departments has. And then, one more thing, with each, we always have safeguarding that is required and safeguarding includes things like, if there is an investigation as a result of breach, the vendor is required to participate in that investigation, it includes payment of penalties, it includes, compliance with furpa and a lot of
059safeguards to ensure if there is any type of breach, the vendor will pay. And others provisions related to third party vendors. Often times, they need to share that data with third parties in order to comply with their responsibilities under the contract. That is explicitly stated in the agreement. It's stated who the vendor or the party will share that information. are you done? MS. Hixon? MS. Alhadeff. so MS. Jacques-adams, I heard your response and I head, hey why not try. We had nothing to lose. and we lay this at the end of the meeting and your lawyers try to make this happen. I don't see why we just don't try. And my next question is how much funding are we going to lose? total about 1.3 million dollars of funding in terms of licensing. If you
060price out the licenses for con academy, at $10 and the elementary varsity tutor pricing at their retail at about 750,000 or so. That's retail. So it's, if we had have to purchase on our own, that's how much they would cost. so if we vote no on this, we lose 1.3 million dollars, is that correct, DR. Hepburn? we're not sure we'll lose the money right now. I know that uf does want a data sharing, if it does not go forward, it will be taken. They're waiting for this data sharing agreement to go through. Buzz what we can think about doing is maybe parsing out the new world reading initiative from this agreement and bringing the new world reading data sharing back and just leaving the last tutoring agreement here with the data sharing and bifurcate this
061agreement, if it's amenable to MS. Jacques-adams as well. So we can rework with the world reading. In exhibit d it's the new world reading initiative that requires the data. MS. Jacques-adams is that a solution? so everything that is being state is factual I cannot opine on anything factual. Whether or not it's bifurcated and taken out how does affect the contract, I cannot state that as I sit here. I do have an attorney that can look at it. But in terms of the negotiations, her opinion as well was because of the amount of time it took for the agreement to come back, that MAY not be a possibility for this to happen today. If it takes two to three weeks to get the agreement back from university of florida and nobody is available to talk about.
062Changes being made, I just, I just don't want to make promises that certain things will happen when it depends upon not only ceiving fafaual chanans frfrom staff but also receiving a response from university of florida. do we time to extend this to later in the month? To vote on this? Is that allowable under this agreement? we can reach out to the university of florida, delaying it we can certainly verify. okay, so I believe we should do two things. Have that conversation, DR. Hepburn today. Also MS. Jacques-adams see if the lawyers can fix the language. And have the conversation with the school and bring it back to us later in the board meeting. And then if, worse case scenario, we have to vote it up or down at the end of the day today. so through
063the chair, I want to clarify. hold on, MS. Jacques-adams. I'm confused we have other data agreements in our districts. And we have explained to MS. Jacques-adams about other nonprofit. I guess I don't understand my colleague's concerns with in agreement that they don't have with boys and girls club or other place that's are tutoring services that we are sharing agreements with. And so, I guess, I, I obviously we want to be protective of our parents data, I don't think any of us want to go against that. But I'm having trouble seeing the concerns of my colleagues and I would like to move forward with this. I would also like to call the question. all in favor of calling the question say aye. aye. all opposed. what are we calling the question on? on the substitute motion.
064roll call, school board member hal ha definite. -- alhadeff. yes. MS. Bulman. no. cervera. Hixon? Holness. yes. leonardi. yes. rupert. yes. thom on. yes. zeman. yes. 8-1. all in favor of the substitute motion to table this item to later in the meeting, say aye. aye. all opposed say no. no. substitute motion pass wz sun descenting vote by DR. Zeman. now is is the time of the meeting where we have split the general public speakers to incorporate a morning session. Each is reminded to present their public comment in accordance. First up we have trudy jermanvich. go ahead. I'm waiting for a few people. please proceed with your comments. Speaker: my name is trudy, I think the staff MAY be tone deaf. How great students were doing on the second test. The student slewer show improvement on
065the second tests and on the third that's because they were taught the standard. How stupid that was, if the district looks at the comments and social media, you'll know that the parents don't care about the tests, they said that, they actually said they were considering taking their child out of broward schools because of the over emphasis in testing. During a prior meeting many parents expressed why they believe the district should give teachers back the ability to decide how and when they assess their students in the classroom. teachers said why should I write another comment when they don't listen, they being referred to are upper level administrators not administrator usually at the school. If you look at the statistics from principals, they mirror believe that there are too many mandates. Teachers also often lamented that administrators
066out of touch. They only seem to care about. Data being collected and not the actual individual children with whom these teachers work every day. Teachers need to have their autonomy restated. Let them be the decision maker as to when and how assessments will occur. As carolyn darcie said, teachers and parents have consistency expressed concern that students are losing valuable classroom time to testing. At the elementary level instructional time is critical for direct teaches, guided practice and intervention. Most importantly we ask that instructional time be protected so we can focus on teaching and supporting student growth. The district should stop requiring tests assessment or other collection devices that are not mandated by state statute. That's important, it MAY provide assessment and give teachers the discretion on how and when they should be used with individual students.
067Allow the professional teacher in the classroom to be the ultimate decision maker on how he or she implements. Give them back the autonomy since the 1960s when I began my teaching career. It's in your hands to allow teachers the time to teach. Thank you. thank you. thank you, josh jamenson. Alan? Speaker: good morning, my name is alan bumbert. I'm here on goldstein pike and environmental a principal that appears in JUNE 18th, 2024th. That offer still stands almost two years later because inexplicable, goal stein kite environment is in the business of acquiring cleaning up and redeveloping contaminated site, this type of property is in our wheel house. Critically, we have is the ability to remove, to excuse me, move very quickly on highly impacted properties and willing to close this transaction in 30 days, subject only
068to clean title. Our officer would put several millions back into your budget in one month's time. And having to carry a vacant parcel. It would also immediately eliminate a remediation liability sure to cost the district millions in the future. We've written to staff six times and every reply the staff continues to conduct the necessary diligence. Especially when this board is struggling daily with the painful decisions to close and sell schools and layoff thousands of employees. We request transparency as to why this process is not moved forward and again to commit to bringing the district a clean offer and a quick closing. One final point, your last buyer was in contract for three years before closing. Again, we will close in one month. Thank you for your time. thank you. Alyssa. Speaker: good morning. My name
069is alyssa carcontinuena and I'm a speech language pathology with broward public schools. I'm a direct hire and I've proudly served this district for the past 20 years. I spoke before this board before about the srp stiep ep and I appreciated your support. For the past 8 years, I worked at the am P.M. Program that closed. Shortly thereafter, my principal told me I was a possible hire and repeatedly tried to persuade me not to accept the position. I wanted that position because some of my students are now placed in that school and I wanted to provide continued, consistency. Since then t I have not received what I need and I have been met, receive the support that at this need and I have met and I have been with a lot of opposition. I have experienced
070bullying and intimlation since the last year. I will provide a de tailed follow-up email. Right after my hire I was asked to return to central park, after the school year had closed, and explain to my principal, why people were saying I'm difficult and argumentative. I assured her that at this always advocate for students and as long as we work collaborative and resolve issues internally, there will be no need to escalate matters. When I start at central park, I was given an email with first naid and grade levels. Organizing a case load of 140 students between only one and a half SLPs is not sustainable. I work tirelessly to ensure that teach students receive the services they need. I even completed an audit because last minute, evaluation and ipe meetings were coming at me and I
071wanted to be prepared as possible. I had more difficulty with the esp specialist as well. She was not organized, she did not look outlook for meetings and scheduled meetings not on my case load, and everything was last-minute, fix this, fix this, fix this, as a situation escalated I requested -- accommodations. And was told that I only brought chaos to central park elementary. I was also told that if I didn't meet my deadlines, is would be written up. I was granted several accommodations including using outlook which is standard for everybody. And ample notice for meet approximatesing. I was granted assistance with scanning and copying and -- . thank you. Speaker: I was also asked that they would. thank you. DR. Hepburn, can you have DR. Lozano address the employee in the outside room. Thank you. thank
072you, DR. Lozano. all right, I will now turn it over to the superintendent for his report. thank you, MADAM Chair, good morning, everyone. As you're aware broward public schools implemented copilot across our system, become ing the largest district wide. Milestone reflects our commitment to innovation and ensuring that our staff and students have access to cutting edge tools that support operational efficiency. To give you a closer look, we have a short film highlighting microsoft copilot experience. Thank you to microsoft for sponsoring the film and clarity innovations and crafting a powerful customer story. Becon if you can roll the film please. it all started with the big problem. broward public schools we've been facing some financial challenges. And that's due to declining enrollment. for copilot, we looked at facility that representative tens of millions in gains. For
073example, there were hundreds of air handler that were operating inefficiently that MAY cost 12,000 a year to continue operating. copilot our foundational ai was critical and instrumental in us making decisions where to correct and spend money. We feel confident that our very serve -- conservative will be in the 40 to 50 million dollars savings. It's not about this saving it's about as much as the learning environment in school, those environmental are very important to success as well. it created an environment where we can adopt additional ai solutions and in your classrooms that drive student performance. our microsoft deployment was deployed to our staff and teaching and learning community. With microsoft, I noticed that I can do assignment very quickly, just a few sebds on some of them. Nouz I'm able to reinvest at that time,
074and also challenge the students more. ai agent to help seniors who need to meet graduation requirement. It will tell you how to en roll and if you're not in this class, it will email you and your parents and your guidance counselor. microsoft copilot and other tools will give students the opportunity to be detective I have gain that will take them to the next level of study and career. They can do that through artificial intelligence and safely. we're educating students using ai, that's unique. I think it's going to be a really successful part, because we're going to be ahead of the game. copilot is going to help you create inside and find the information that you need. We're in a brink of technology. it's so important that we expose our students to copilot so they're not
075just surviving they're leading the future. [Applause] all right. That video will be posted on our platform so feel free to repost. A little lag in the video but nonetheless we'll see it in the media outlet. And network that wants to show it. This stream lines operations and enhance student outcomes across the district. It has been a very busy month and we will like to share a few highlights from around the district. Becon, if you can roll the tapes of highlights. Thank you. and thank you to broward county public schools, DR. Hepburn for doing this day of service and love so that we never forget. good morning, students. Staff, guests, visitors and volunteers. This is your superintendent, DR. Hepburn.N. Wordrds cann exprpress the trtremendo grief our students, employees, families, school district and community has endured as
076a result of tragedy that occur on marjory that happened. We acknowledge the resilience, of our employees, first responders and volunteers and community partners fpt at this time, we pause to honor those we remember. thank you, MADAM Chair. Before I close, I want to give a huge shout out to our partners who are able to facilitate many of the experimential opportunities that you saw on the video. Really engaged in our activities that our students have. Shout out to greater lauderdale alliance, career source broward, children service south side council and definitely our district staff for helping to coordinate all of those activities. That's my report here, thank you MADAM Chair. I'll take a point of privilege accountser I'll take the honor of visiting the ai academy, at nova yesterday. And I recognize I'm looking forward to our
077workshop on that in in the summer. We'll go to our update. Go ahead alhadeff. in regards to efficiencies and energy savings that we'll see, are we seeing money coming back with the energy and also doing solar paneling? yes, we are seeing money coming back and we're definitely, I don't know if we've actually installed but it's in the work for our solar panel. So there are options and other companies. okay, thank you. It only took seven and a half years. yeah. all right, bef? good morning, everybody. James nap, PRESIDENT And ceo of 'eming occasion foundation. Just wanted give a quick update. We currently have given out up to this point a little bit over 1.4 million dollars worth of school supplies back to teachers back so far. We're looking at 2.3 million which will be a
078record for us which we're excited about. Every single school board member will have a break down to the teachers and schools taking advantage of them. So you'll be able to go in and see who your district is taking advantage of it. The reason is we want to make sure that we're getting this across the entire district not just in specific compartments. So we're looking at a delivery system, we have an app and we're excited about that. We had our idea expo, next year will be idea expo 30 this year, thank you to so many school board members who attended. We had close to 300 teachers that came and had an opportunity to learn from each other and, and do things that were outside of the curriculum and expand base with each other. We're continuing to
079assist those teachers that going back into the classroom with their school supplies because we understand that is not the easiest thing to do. We want to continue with that and we have the upcoming teacher, hunani for all those teachers who received teacher grants. We're going to give about 280,000 in teacher grants back to teachers this year. We wanted to say thank you and we have some large upcoming grants coming up in the next two school board meetings. We're excited about that also. Thank you. thank you. student council, they sent us an email with their report. Employee union groups, we have bto? Speaker: ana fusco. I'm going to piggy off james, broward teacher union has been and continue to be as the good lord will help us, we have a great membership, the membership is large
080and thriving and we are always happy to, through great avenues in our budget to be able to donate money that we see. And I'm glad it goes back in the reports, it goes back to the educators and the students. We'll be at the next event of hootnani, it's a great event. You get to see a lot of people that have written and gotten grants and how they utilize it. I want to puddle jump to some other business. I mean, the items are coming, I'm going to talk about in the items but I get this time to reiterate, I'm looking forward to board members up there, talking real strong and fruitful about our medicines. It shouldn't matter what medicine it's called, it shouldn't matter what it does, it's a medicine that gets described by their doctors
081and people need it and they're using it and whatever they're doing to make them thrive and feel better and lots of medicines when you take them, gateway to help you stop other medicines. We need to hear and see people that are healthy and strong and not be full of, stress anxiety and other things. And whatever can help them get there, to feel better, I'm asking you guys to reconsider and bring back the medicines. We've got a real strong medicines out there that are helping people with anxiety, thyroid and the weight lost, that people are saying, I have not heard anything more than ever, other than get me a raise, honestly, this is more than get me a raise. I want our meds back. And broward's teacher union and you can check with hr, we're working
082really hard and strong to make things work with the insurance. We understand that there is a lot going on. We know that there is some, you know, turmoil in budgets that is happening. And you're trying to figure out which way. But I have to ask again and again, don't take it on the backs of employees. Let's look at programs that we know are here, we've use, we need and we think we need and move them and figure out how to maybe push them aside. And maybe we MAY push them aside and bring them back to the schools. You just stood out there how we moved the best scores and best graduation rates, a-rated district. Things are happening in our schools, bring things back in our schools. Get rid of some departments, we know that educators
083have to get back in the classroom. A plan, can you guys really talk stropger on doing it that way and let's keep our benefits strong. We know that the district pays a lot, almost a thousand a month per employee, we get that. I get that, but we need everybody to get that and work together to keep our benefits strong, it's best insurance, around. People don't know it until they need it. And I hear all ways when people have gotten cancer, heart conditions, all kinds of things, they're like I'm so glad we got this aetna insurance. And to hear that meds are taken away. I don't care what medment I don't need to use them o be on them to know that we need them. When we were going to covid, thank GOD that I didn't
084get covid but is had empathy or people who got it or have it, that they need to be taken care of. That's where I stand with that. Let's talk about the, we got some impact bargaining going on. We worked out some great situations, I don't like any schools closing. Whatever the reason, rational why you decided it's going to happen and I'm going to talk about 3000 mark, 1,000 here and there. Please look at your statutory rights. Have this projection of a thousand a year. That's a strong strong thing to put out there. That's going to be a strong plan. So we need to know who these 3000 people are. And we need to know how it's not going to impact educators. I'm talk again on those items. thank you. thank you, bpaa. Esmap? Okay. Fopi,
085copa a pda? Okay. Okay, could I get a motion and a second on f2. so moved. moved by DR. Zeman, sektd by MS. Thompson. Public comment on f2. no come. -- no comment. board member comment? MS. Hixon? f2. got it thank you. MS. Hixon. thank you. I have a question to the superintendent because it's come up about budgets in the last week or so. Can you please explain to us about the acceleration money which would be the cape, a p, ace funding, things of that nature. Can you explain to us, how that money comes in, how do schools ask for it, how does it go back to the schools and how do we keep track? And the question really is, if I'm a school and I've earned 400,000 in cape money but I have not
086spent all that cape money this year, let's say I spent $300,000 of it. That $300,000 available for me next year when I have other things that would meet the requirements I guess, that the district has in terms of what I can use that money for? great question. MS. Hixon. Let me take a go. Just first how we earn the money, the money is earned for successful, our satisfactory testing for, ace, a p, ib and also some industry, certification. And sources that have industry certification tests. There are some ct that don't have ct certification tests that garner additional revenue from the state. And so, we only get a pocket of money. We don't, unlike years past, where we, for every student we got money, now, it's a specific amount of money, no matter how many kids
087we're testing. So our acceleration has expanded tremendously but we're not getting same amount that correlates to the expansion. So fast pardon, schools will usually, receive some of those funds, small percentage or so will go back to the district. And, schools would, use those funds to support certain program and scaling, up scaling or buying equipment or whatever the case MAY be. Due to the change of how that money is actually, actually gained by the district regardless of how much you expand as far as students enrolled in the program can a successful completion, we've decided especially due to our budget situation to centralize the funds in making sure that we're being very financial responsible with the money. If if the money is not totally used this year, because we've sent information to principals. We have the c
088taste department really talking with the principal. Making a list of specific needs, if the money is not spent this year, it's part of our general fund. It is going to be used for the intended purpose which is to support accelerated programs for those specific schools. A good example of that if a school earns $400 thousands, let's say they make a request to use the money for some program but, the team that working with them is letting them know that the program does not have any value due to the number of students through the feeder pattern. They will work with the programs that support the feeder program and ultimately to the students. And they MAY not spend all of that money, while building that program. That money is part until it needs to be used for
089a specific program and for that specific school or to support other programs in the district, ie, feeder program. So hopefully that kind of clarifies it a bit. okay, so, and when we talk about the general fund, it isn't that that money went to the school and we're taking it back. Would I like to use this explanation. When we get paid for direct deposit, to goes into our checking account and then we distribute out there. So it's not like we're taking it out or in. So since it's not being used, it's sitting in the general fund until it is moved out into the schools, that? correct. and that's for all of our dollars that we collect. I just want to be clear. I have a question second and I hope that we can do this. Is
090there a way to make a dashboard that would track acceleration funding requests? So in other words, how much does the school garner, how much did they request and how much was actually provided to them on something that would be public facing so we can be very transparent with what money came in, what money is going out to the schools and so we can kind of get rid of this idea that people think the district is stealing the money from the schools? And not providing those services that they need? Because really what the conversation is? absolutely. Is know MS. Johnson is working on a dashboard not just for accelerated funding but all of our projects so that the public is well-informed as well as our employees and at the school. A lot of people don't really
091understand, school district budget or school budget it's a complex things because it's not. We're not, we're not garnering revenue from something selling, we're getting funding. They're in the works actually designing the dashboard. so when do you think that, that dashboard would be available? For specifically the accelerated funds? I'll have to check with the team just to see where they are and figure out what the project timeline looks like. okay, and if you can give us a follow-up as school board members it's not on the dashboard yet but in excel sheet so we can see for the last year or two what has been asked for, what has gone out and what is sitting in there. so we'll definitely give you the ask and all of that for this year. The past few years, that's hard
092to track. that's fine. just this year. Is fine. okay. And just to be clear, no teacher bonuses have been affected? no. Teacher bonus is something we're required to give. Absolutely. thank you. MS. Rupert? thank you. DR. Hepburn, what is the current mid-year net position? For our fund balance? go ahead MS. Johnson? good morning, superintendent, board members. I'm johnson, C.F.O. Our net position, well it's 2.42 percent of our sign-in and under sign. okay. I know we talked about a little bit last time publicly but I'm still getting questions about this. So, just to make sure that, nothing counts against us during this part of the cycle, it's not until the final end of the year which we will be at the at that point, 3.08 is what we're projecting? yes. so and I don't know what
093a better way is to actually give an example of this but we have to be able to make it more people friendly, and I don't know what that looks like but the explanation is will bing beg more questions at times. So I don't know if you have any ideas. there is a slide in the packet and the budget to show that nepotism as of JANUARY 31, and projected as a JUNE 30th. right and I can go through that easily but after a few years and a couple of minutes being here, I can do that, but the general public cannot. It's a lot, they're not going to read all of these pages. So just moving forward, just to make it easier for the public to see so they can count it out. And I was also,
094wondering if at the beginning of the month, and the end of the month, up until we, we end this year, if there could be updates, maybe a dashboard if we're doing a dashboard aspect so people can see, okay, this is where we are this month and at the end of the month, we're here, it's just an extra look to, just really to follow this steps to get us past that 3 percent to the 3.08, people like to see movement. I think that wawas it, just give me one s sec. Yep. That was it. So thank you. thank you, DR. Zeman? thanks, chair. Thank you, C.F.O. For this report. it is a state mandate to put these things together. So in a monthly basis, we put things, the table right side difficult for people to digest
095but we continue to put out the information which is really useful. This board puts out a budget every year. And every month, we show any changes that have to happen. So you get both the details in a form and you can get more in the future. The role of this board though and being responsible is also an interesting one. Some boards have policies about sharing information related to finances. We don't. We don't have our explicit policy. It's something that we have to think about. There are two questions that keep coming back. I think MR. Superintendent, I would ask for a follow-up on what our policy is for carry over full stop? There is a lot of government agencies that operate on fiscal years, and they have rules about things like carry over, most districts in
096the united states don't understand what carry over is. You get money for a year and expend those funds and there is a relationship in terms of how much you get. But that gets sorted out, you get a budget and you execute those funds during the year. If that's not our policy, it will be interesting but I just want to kind of point out that carry over funds are kind of interesting and novel interest as opposed to used in the larger districts in the united states. The sektd follow-up, MR. Superintendent, I ask for is really a little bit geeky but I'm curious about the ingredients about the fund balance. I would like to get a follow-up MR. Superintendent on what we put into the assigned and unassigned, where the fund balance and what we could put
097in the assigned and unassigned. So if there are any adjustments, I think this board would like to be aware of those so you can go forward. Also want to point out that broward county has observed some pretty big hits. The third for FTs eliminated 28 million dollars from our budget. There is other pluses in the budget that are coming due in the next month. So hopefully we'll get some balances. Do you have any doubt that will end the fiscal year above 3 percent in our balance referred to in the fund balance? no doubt, sir. that's critically important. I want the community to know that too. The C.F.O. Workdayly. Whenever shocks happen, whenever there is a flood and money needs to be spent, when there is calculation or nfpl things go up. We all budget for
098our water bill and the water bill comes in a little higher. These are things that we have to adjust to and that's what we do here as well. i look forward to these monthly reports, and I look forward to them being more consumer. And I would like to address forever this idea of carry over finances. It's not, it's something that is standard in our other school districts. And I'm interested in carry over funds in broward county. thank you, to figure' back off DR. Zeman's about carry over funds. There is another question going around. Some people call it accountability and superintendent call it improvement funds. But the schools used to receive that and then in 2021, it was vetoed by the state. So is the schools had a chunk of money that they put aside, I'm
099going to use an example. There is a school that uses 3000 every year for a program they buy for their after school program for tutoring. So they have 15,000 left, they've done it over, so they're figuring five years, they'll be able to use the $3000. There is about 3 million left and they're being told district wide, and they're being told that they can't have that accountability funding. So in this inspans, they were saving because they knew they were not getting anymore money. Is that something that we need to address as a board? Is that something that you'll do as the superintendent? so, great question, MS. Hixon. The budget team is putting together a document for school advisory council sacks. So they have a clear understanding and also, everybody, so everybody can speak common language as
100well too. I hear accountability, I hear this type of fund. It's so we'll have everybody using the same common language and terms for the specific funds and let everybody know what carries over, what hasn't the district received due to changes in laws over the past ten years. So once that comes out, it should be coming out sometime this week, it will provide some clarity. And then MS. Johnson and I can sit down and look at any funds that have been sitting in sac for quite sometime and talk to the principals and they can talk to their teams and figure out what next steps. What funds do they actually need. So I don't want to answer that question, right now, until we actually sit down and go through all the it. All it is is surfacing
101the past couple of weeks and we want to have the budget team dive in to see what is what is see what is in those sack internal funds and figure out what next steps work best for the school, the sack. I know sac supports school too. so they're not going to be automatically taken back? I don't know what is, I don't know what they're saying as far as taken back. Cause I hear, if I talk to one person, it's a different term. if I talk to another person, it's a different term. I want the budget team to go through the items and utilize the correct terms so we can know what people are talking about. That's why I don't want to answer that question, because I don't confuse anybody, I want to make sure that
102we get the correct information. I hear what you're saying but a school board member, if they put that money aside because they're supporting our students, I want to be part of that conversation. I think it should be up to the board where that money goes. We don't want it go anywhere should stay with the school. I just want to be clear, if it's already sitting in their accounts. once we find out, once we find out what said money is, and if this is common across the whole entire district, maybe one or two schools, can say, hey we've been holding on to this. So we need, accurate information. so you'll bring it back. and we'll bring that information back. nothing is set in stone. no, we're doing the research and coming up with the information. Thank
103you. thank you. MS. Alhadeff. so the carry over funds, being brought back to the district, from the school, to MS. Hixon's point, that school was saving the money year after year after year for a specific project. If the money is going back to the district, I believe the should still have the allocation connected with that specific school. Even though it's with the district when, the time that the school can now do the project, they should be able to pull the money to apply to their project. again, I don't fully understand. That's why we're doing our research. Finding out what money is in our all of school sac funds, I hear piecemeal things. I would feel more comfortable finding out what money is sitting in these accounts and bringing the information back and then we can
104have a discussion. okay. Looking forward to the conversation. thank you. Any other board discussion? MS. Rupert? thank you. The superintendent, and I already discussed an issue at my schools where the same thing happened. I want to be on the record and say I'm hoping sooner than later, we can have that conversation because, we have our school leaders that are saving that money for new programs and, especially to pull up their enrollment. Thank you so much. any other board discussion. All in favor of f2 say aye. aye. all opposed say no. Item passes unanimously. can I get a motion a second for time certain items. Public comment on those items? yes, we have two public speakers. sorry MADAM, we have two public speakers, joe cox and sharyl brown and ana fusco. can you read those again.
105joe cox, sherri brown, PRESIDENT Ana fusco. Speaker: good morning, chair leonardi. Members of the school board and superintendent hepburn. Joe cox, PRESIDENT And ceo of museum of discovery and science. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today and thank you for your continued support of the museum over the last 50 years. 50 years we've worked together to bring on hands-on learning to students across our community in whatever form it happens to be in. Today as you launch the broward powered by ai, in MARCH we're preparing to launch a supportive initiative called critical thinking in the age of ai for elementary learners. Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming the part of life. Shaping how life is integrated and how we learn and how we shape. Not whether they encounter the question is whether they will understand it.
106Our goal is to simple important, we want broward county students to grow up not seeing as a ai not as a cheat code or fear, but rather a tool that requires critical thinking, creativity and responsibility. together with broward public schools, we're willing infrastructure, that introduces ai literacy for students in pre-k through 5th grade this. Will reach students in three way sxz we aim to launch for the upcoming school year. First, our stem mobile out reach program will bring ai learning experiences directly to schools across broward county allowing students to explore concepts, such as pattern recognition, and prediction and how machines learn. Critical skills to learn before they log into ai. Second students visiting the museum on field trip will participate in new ai maker workshop where they can design and experiment and reflect on how
107artificial intelligence can support human creative and problem solving but those are both skills that are needed. Third and most importantly, we'll work closely with with the district to provide professional learning opportunities for teachers, giving educators tools and classroom resources to help students use ai responsively and thoughtfully. This works aligns the district's vision where artificial intelligence can support learning and instructional excellence. By connecting the district's work with hands-on experiences, we can ensure together that ai becomes a toll that strengthens education rather than distracting. At the museum, we believe that one of the most important roles that the museum play is helping complex new ideas. Together we'll ensure the next generation does not simply use ai, they will understand it. Thank you. thank you. Next speaker. good morning, good morning, MADAM Chair, leonardi and the school board
108members and DR. Hepburn and staff. Many of you I've worked with for many years. My name is cherry brown I'm vice PRESIDENT Of community foundation of broward. On behalf of our board of directors and ceo DR. Jennifer anderson, we would like to express our excitement and support of the broward powered by ai initiative. Our partnership and joint leadership in advancing innovation learning and community engagement, have deep roots stemming from our collaborative work that began in 2010 through 2021 to improve middle school outcomes as a strategy to increase graduation rates. This work became known as reimagine middle schools and was woven into the district's strategic plan. The community foundation infused over 8 million dollars in that initiative about half of that was directed to nonprofit working within the schools under the guidance of the principals and
109about half was directly distributed and awarded to the broward school district to launch project base learning and to establish community liason positions within schools. fast forward to today, the community foundation of broward and the school district have been collaborating and coinvested in a gender achievement gap study with hanba research and discovered that a gap exist where boys are lagging behind girls and some populations of boys are considerably further behind. We are so proud to share that these results are shared at the same time of this board reviewing and passing the resolution in support of broward county public schools advancing education powered by artificial intelligence initiative. Adoption of ai, is customer will allow for customized curriculum and lessons to meet the unique needs of students and it could not come at a better time. We are
110grateful that two of our communities most activist philanthropist stepped up to support broward powered by ai. They have a deep passion for helping make transformation projects and initiatives come to life. Simply in their words, lieucriia and I are excited that the schools will soon be benefit froming ai. Thank you to DR. Fabian cone for making ai a reality with adoption of school. And DR. Sherri wilson who has been steadfast in supporting this effort and being to you DR. Hepburn for your vision, and your commitment to advance ai in public schools. We are on the right track, the community foundation is here to continue to support and we thank you for partnership and biel be powered by ai into the future. Thank you so much. next speaker, PRESIDENT Ana fusco. Speaker: ana fusco, broward teacher union
111PRESIDENT, ditto and ditto to the speakers before me. I rise in favor of having this program come that our amazing educators that are sit ising here in the room, right there besides DR. Cone and DR. Wilson, because of that group is what made DR. Cone and DR. Wilson shiep to bring it forward. I'm not going to talk much. Because I have other items to speak on. This is a given. I see, obviously I see some shirts up there matching and you know, with with the purple, so take your time whatever questions and other things you need to do to get the full input and let the community hear that we're bringing more grateful to keep our a-rated schools a-rated. Please vote in favor of this. that concludes registered speakers. thank you. DR. Hepburn? all right,
112good morning, MADAM Chair, members of the school board, colleagues and members of broward county community. Today is a very special moment for broward county schools. Today we celebrate powered broward. If I can get the humans in the room to stand if you have one of those shirts on. [Applause] Thank you. A day that representatives both incredible work already under way across our district and insighting future ahead for students. Across public schools we're replacing a bold look for what learning looks like for the years ahead. Extended reality are transforming the world around us, resaipg the schools and the skills our students will need to thrive. Our responsibility is not to react to these changes but to lead them. Through broward powered by ai, we're building a strategic approach to innovation, one that expands opportunities and prepare
113students for a future that continues to evolve. Our district outlines, how these technologies are not about replacing great teaching, they're about amplifying it, and expanding what is possible in classrooms across broward county. Over the past year, broward has taken historic steps. We have launched one of the largest ai with microsoft copilot, introduced emmersive opportunities and develop a comprehensive framework for ethical and ai integration that protects student's privacy while preparing students to enenga. But t day mamarks anotheher signifificant lestone. Today we celebrate the generous support of la caoeshia, they're investment will support the ai platform, bringing powerful tools directly into the classroom while supporting teacher professional learning and parent engagement opportunities across broward public schools. This generosity reflects something power pfl, a shared believe that education matters and that when schools, and community leaders and philanthropic
114partners come together we can transform opportunities for students. Wayne and lecrecia, thank you for believing this vision and for investing in the future of broward county. Today's celebration is an not ending, it's the beginning of phase 2 of broward powered by ai, a new chapter that will expand teacher training and deeper leadership and learning and museum of discovery and science. Who are already collaborate withing us to expand ai opportunities across our community. Together we're building something remarkable. A school system where innovation is responsible, where teachers are empowered and students are future ready and where broward county lead the nation preparing the students. Thank you and now I turn it over to DR. Cone. thank you and board. Over the past year, we worked intentionally to build coherent artificial intelligence in our classrooms. I had a
115great opportunity to walk through and got some great feedback. I appreciate the feedback and we're building forward on that. and we look forward to JUNE where we're bringing our workshop. And this is tt evolution of that next step. So as we, kind of look how we prioritize educators first, we want to ensure that these technologies improve. We're accelerating so this particular launch will continue to help us to accelerate and through broward by ai we're equiping teachers with the tools and training and support necessary to integrate ai in way that's personalize learning and expand access and more importantly prepare students for the demands of increasing technology in the driven world that we live in. I would like to echo that with addition, made possible by the possibility of wayne, thank you. [Applause] This will help expand
116this work district wide. So our approach is simple, it is to support ai instructional liason to help other teachers. It's to provide very deep professional learning. It's to engage parents in a thoughtful around discourse and make sure that ai literacy is built in. And ensuring that educators and families alike understand how ai can be used to support student success. And such as as important, powered by ai resolution that you'll hear, it's a commitment to ethical implementation and human oversight and ensuring that ai enhances teaching and learning without replacing the most key member of the school which is is the educator. so thank you, wayne and lucrea and thank you, thank you, on behalf of the teachers and students. Thank you, for this generous donation. [Applause] all right, board member discussion? On these items? I have
117MS. Bulman. thank you, chair. Thank you for the presentation. This is so exciting for broward county schools. I, I can't express enough how grateful we are to have this gift to MR. And MS. Wiener, it really puts us at the forefront of the ai revolution and I think, instead of just being competitive, which we are, this is allowing to make leaders of our students and because of the size of our district, it really will impact so many people in broward county that it's going to just radiate out and the impact of this gift is going to be, more immense that we can really come prehence right now. So thank you to the community foundation, thank you to DR. Cone for all of your work, DR. Wilson, mods, I look forward to that partnership as well.
118And just thank you for giving us this opportunity to lead in broward county. It's amazing. thank you. MR. Cervera? I also want to thank MR. And MS. Wiener for your generous donation. I think with this whole ai it can be scary and exciting at the same time. This is a relatively new technology that a lot of us are kind of finding our footing with. I'm not, the most tech savvy person in the world and my kids remind me of that every time. But even I started starting playing with the Chatgpt because I don't want to be left in the dust so to speak. So I'm proud to support. I think it's a good thing for the count other'. -- for the county. And whoever made the gesture of giving me a large but I have
119not worn a large in a long time. I'll try to put it on when we take a picture. This shines a positive light in the district, and us being the trailblazers of the ai front not just the state the county. So I'm proud to support this and I'm proud to thank everyone involved. Thanks. thank you. DR. Holness. thank you, MADAM Chair, I echo the comments of board member bulman, we're certainly at the forefront of embracing technology that puts us ahead of many other districts as board member cervera mentioned. We're trailblazers I'm highly supportive and proud of the work that we're doing in staying ahead of the game so we can be competitive as we move towards the future. DR. Fulton and cone and the team and teachers and staff we're so grateful for your diligent
120effort for the work that you've put into this. And I can say as a district we're so proud of how we're doing academically and the strives that we're making. i'll continue to reiterate, that we're proud of broward, we do have some challenges and we're going to get stlu all of that. -- through all of that. But there are a lot of great things that we're doing. Thank you all for what you're doing. Appreciate it. thank you, MS. Thompson. thank you, chair. I want to reiterate my colleagues thanks and appreciation to the wieners and to mods for also doing a companion. I did have some questions as to the impact I heard a lot how this is going to make our teachers lives easier. I would really like to hear what work we've done with students,
121what is our plan and also from our student advisor about the impact of this item. go ahead, DR. Cone. so great question, MS. Thompson. In working with, the wieners and really looking at ai nationally, we're a leader in the district and if you take a look at the, executive summary for the school, you'll see that fundamentally we're capturing and looking at ai in two spaces. One is around, teacher time, because we hear so sofn teachers don't have enough time. So what we're doing to really, look at our return on investment is we're going to measure how much time is reclaimed through the use of ai and the schools that it provides so there are targets. There is a motto and you'll get more of this when we come back in JUNE in the next phase
122around ai, I believe that's in JUNE. The second part which is critically, it advances our academic plan around making strides and improvement. So that really talks about improving instructional using nt ss, so we'll be looking at that and supporting while this is, while this is here today, there are many teachers already using magic school ai, the free version of it. We have some antidotal data about how it's making a a unique difference of those lives and students. So we do have that data that we'll be bringing back in JUNE to speak about how that piece and ethicacy study is really helping improve that. It's going to want help in the stew specific areas. But then when we start to look at the student impact, we're going to do a slow rollout for students, only because
123we want to make sure that we do it right. We'll start to gather additional data in terms of data and sometime. And one of the other things that I thought was important and I think this was MS. Alhadeff in our one on one, we want to make sure that for the students, I think that was what you sent me, that we create base line courses with teachers in terms of the ethicacy of looking at ai and making sure that they understand how to use ai. There is a lot of ways that we use it. I appreciate that answer but how are we having students engage with ai, how are we going to have them be trailblazers? What input do we have with students. Real ' a student focus answer. students know that we have ai
124in the tools. I'll tell you that it is slow, it depends on the teacher. We do use ai through our workforce programs because it's embedded. It's part of that program. So when we look at the problematic piece of ai, they're seeing a lot of success in terms of acceleration, so it's already happening. Not so much yet at the elementary level, we're again, being very cautious in rolling it out at the student level. Because the teachers have to make sure that they get trained. But at the secondary, it's more prevalent. all right, I would like to see, I have concerns in the elementary level but I would like to see a actual plan of what students and how we're rolling it out. At the end of the day, I think it's important that we're saving teacher's
125time and making their day easier but we want to make sure that the students are walking away with the skills to succeed. Would I like to shift and ask our student advisors on this. Thank you. good morning, landy, thank you MS. Thompson for the question. I definitely echo DR. Cone's comment and we've had students involved in the ai task force for work that has been going on for over two years. What I will address is what DR. Cohen -- cone said about the rollout. It's important to look beyond what the district is offering when it comes to copilot and in turn. It's good that it's a slow turn out to make sure that it's done right. But we also have to address in a world where there is non broward schools resources. Students are having
126access to different beyond copilot, Chatgpt and with all due respect limited guidance on when and how to use that. And that's something that the task force has tackled, I believe we developed a strong product for something that will go out to students. But we have to look beyond the resources. When it comes to copilot, we would like to increase our collaborate to ensure that students know that they have access to it. And the final point, it's important that we emphasize that ai is here to supplement not supplant. We cannot have a reality where students are submitting ai work, they address it as a cheating minor incident. There is a lot of great things that can be done as ai as a supplemental resource and it's really moner that we address students to look at the
127resources. Thank you. thank you, and I'll echo MR. Spellberg's. Ai is a tool that people need to know how to utilize. I'm excited, I hope these comments do not make it seem like I'm not. But I'm making sure that students know how to use this tool appropriately and incorporated because at the end of the day, that's why we're here is to train our students. Thank you. thank you. DR. Zeman? chair thank you very much. I, I have spent a few thousand hours playing around with ai, came out 8 days Chatgpt was released 8 days after I joined this board. So it's anonymous with being here time wise, it's 1196 years ago, fabian. Sorry by calling you by your name, this is personal. Your time was not in vain. You lifted up an entire district. I
128want to say that up front. It a team efrt to get it done but it takes a leader. One of the things that DR. Cone understand, ai, plus hi equals total ai. The idea that ai is going to replace humans, it's decades. We close our eyes, gosh that is something a human would have done. They're all technology and as we observe technologies, ai plus hi equals total intelligence and to the superintendent and DR. Cone's credit, they have kept that. You'll see in the t-shirt, I am the human in the loop. It's very important to keep that in mind now that we're 112 days in human in ai. it's spiraling towards a four-day workweek or three-day. And our needs to teach different skills to we fully take advantage of it. To MS. Thompson's point. I'm going
129to tell a story about any daughter which is terrible. We're trying we're playing golf and my son used ai and determined who won. My son said you won by two points. To imagine a world in which magic school, tools, copilot, lots of training and professional development and liason is going to be an answer, is not true. What is left to do? To anybody listen, we still don't know what skills we need to teach to kids in a world of ai. We continue to teach from a grayian world. We need to make the changes. We started a world with ai, we have not changed what we teach. But we have to change what we teach. Things like critical reason, math skills, logic skills, the ability to make sense of data. Where do we teach the ability
130to make sense from data and analytics. That's the coin of the realm for landyn and all his colleagues. To MS. Thompson's point on tech nothing, the technology is is the easy part. What do schools look like in a world with ai? Wawas maria montesri riright an you self promote yourself? Many can operate ai a lot easier. And they're able to do that. last point, to the wieners, you have set a standard for generosity for this district. I hope it's a standard that many other members do it. This is going to mean the world of difference. To be honest, we didn't have two million dollars to spend on ai, we had maybe five shekle, we don't want to do a-school and call an ai lab. And get call it that. Ai is baked into our tools.
131And with your gift we're able to rollout 130 tools to 250,000 people. And byway, the parents are using it at home. I have heard from a lot of parents and they're working on stuff at home. I hope it is a standard for other people to follow. But what you have done, has changed your community and that's what you look for. But you've done it. You know, I'm in awe of your generosity. Thank you very much. Thank you, chair. thank you, MS. Hixon. thank you, and first I want to thank the community foundation, the wieners, mods or staff for bringing this forward to us. Because, artificial intelligence is quickly becoming part of the educational landscape. Tools designed for educators such as magic school ai have the potential to significantly support both teachers and students. I say
132this all the time, for decades our school system has largely followed a model designed during the industrial revolution. One teacher delivering the same instruction to all students at the tame pace. While our educators work hard the reality is time and resources limit how personalized learning can be. Teachers can respond to student's needs in realtime rather than waiting for the next unit and grading cycle and some of you who have been here a while, will remember the marzano model, that was a dirty word back then. But this was the piece behind it being able to if differentiate for students to they learn at a pace that is works for them. They allow teach inventories quickly generate differentiated lessons. And enrichment for those ready to move ahead. Instead of spend hours, teachers can spent more time to
133do what matters most. Facilitating deeper learning and deeper relationship. However as a district, we must approach this thoughtfully. Ai should never replace a teacher it should serve as a tool that supports great teacher and helps us better meet the individual needs of every student. Our responsibility as a school board is to ensure that we put. Right guard rails in. Clear guidelines, protocols for student data as we've talked about a lot today and pro investigation al development to educators can use the tools effectively. I can't tell you how much times this great idea came out and no one trained us in it and if you didn't put the work in, yourself, the students did not gain. I love the piece of it because it's what is going to make it affective. , I has the potential
134to help us from move from one size fits all towards a system that supports person pal eyesed learning for every students and I'm excited to be at the forefront for that. Thank you. thank you. MS. Rupert. I highway patrol -- I hope it does not feel redundant but I want to thank everybody here and especially for the wieners and for mods and our staff. So it's exciting. We of course will never be able to have the growth that we've gotten in the last few years without educators in the classroom. So they will always be there. What their role will be, is is a facilitator. And for our students, the key learning is adaptability, they still need a heart to be able to work through that and to have a veracious appetite for knowledge. It's absolutely
135amazing right now to think about what all is going to happen. And as a mom of three entirely different crazy kids, one is an elementary teacher one is a graphic artist and he continuously updates his portfolio and he's always going on and adapting and finding new programs to help him do be smarter. my oldest son, 33 and he's been everything from a self phone tower engineer to a die hydraulic forklift those are jobs that you can never think about ten years ago. And he gets paid more than the other two. So jobs that our kids don't know exist will be there for them and we will have to make sure that we do have that teacher in the classroom. We do have those students and we're showing them that heart matters in this world. And
136really help them to where they're going to be. It's so excited. I wish I was twenty years younger. Thank you, I appreciate it. MS. Alhadeff. I'm very excited about this. Thank you for your donation, thank you for everything helping make this happen for our school district. We've come to a point where we need to find a way to blend ai with what we're doing now and I want to make sure that our students are are not just solely relying on the ai to do the work for them. That they, they still have the information that they need to have being able to, I heard they're getting kid of clocks on walls because kids can't read the clocks. These basic life skills our students need to v they have to have them. Cursive, being able to
137sign your name. Knowing how to address an envelope and where the stamp goes. Even though, we have ai and it's going to be amazing and it's going to take us beyond, we still need to have the foundation and those life skills. I want to bring the board's attention to page 3. So the spending authority is for the next three years. I don't -- I won't be here but you need to make sure that you're putting money away in the budget so after these years, you'll continue this forward. Thank you. thank you, and I'll close us out. I just wanted to give one big applause, standing ovation to the wieners and mods but to the wieners tor their contribution. [Applause] Public education thrives because of people who are willing to support it. I think we'll see
138the impacts of your generosity for many generations to come. So I am very grateful to you. I know this district is well. Any other board discussion on this item? DR. Zeman? just a quick one. I'd ask your permission for us to take a picture with the whole audience. yes, I was going to recess. that's wonderful. all in favor of oo18 and rr2 say aye. aye. all opposed say no. Item passes unanimously. We will now recess for a brief photo. all right, we are back. This school board meeting is reconvened. can I get a motion and a second on m1. public comment. no comment. board member comment, MS. Bulman. thanks, chair. So I really like this we're using our space and creating partnerships. So I wanted to point that out, and I think, it would be
139great if we can do more of these. I just had a question, I guess for the superintendent about, this follows our policy, I know, this is okay to do this. And just a technical question, when I was reviewing the lease, it looks like this is it looks like they're renting the classroom two times a week? that's correct. so in a case like that, is that classroom reserved for them exclusively for the entire week and it has all of their stuff. so I'm going to ask DR. Cannon who oversees the operations at broward estate to see give context to that, please. lori canning, executive director for family community engagement. It does not mean that they have exclusively have that space. great. I love this and thanks for putting that deal together. thank you. MS. Hixon? thank
140you. And I did already ask staff to follow-up but I just wanted ask it in-person. So we had a lengthy conversation when we were in our legislative our delegate legislative meeting about not doing in kind and that we needed to make sure that we were not in a financial situation to be giving things away for a dollar and things of that nature. And this agreement, although I don't disagree with this, I'm just asking if we can explain why this is an inkind lease with this organization? thank you, DR. Wanza? thank you. Good, what time is it? Morning. Valley wanza strategy and innovation officer. Thank you for the question. As noted in the follow-up completed policy 1820 allows us to the contributions of the entity. So when you look at the staff time and resources that
141they're going to provide as it relates to counseling services for students and families and we took that dollar value, that was utilized per policy that gives the superintendent, the authority to have this agreement situated for in kind seely because the services that they're providing at no charge to the families receiving the services. thank you. So I think that's important to distinguish because we want to make sure that people leasing our facilities are paying for that. This is a unique situation because they're actually providing services at no charge to our students and so that's why we're doing in kind. But we don't want to make this a practice moving forward. so I just want to be clear about that. Thank you. thank you, DR. Holness. thank you, so DR. Wanz a you answered one of my
142questions that there is no charge to families. And like board member hixon, I'm not a fan of totally inkind. I don't mind a hybrid approach but I understand this particular situation. So DR. Fulton this particular service that is being brought forward, there has been a needs assessment to determine that this service is needed there. If you can expound on the number of early childhood children that will take advantage of this service that is being provided. thank you, I'm going to have DR. Cannon respond to your questions. thank you, DR. Holness, when we first started for the effort accountser we met with the partners and city of lauderdale, meetings. And I know when we had the board member workshop, we explained what the services would be. This is the first leasing agreement that will be brought
143and that focus is mental health services for families with young children. And it will be provided at no cost to families and also families in the surrounding schools and community. We don't have a specific number of how many will be participating, but we know that it will be open to families within the community and families at the school. okay, so DR. Canon, based on your, needs analysis determination, and I know you don't have a specific number but, it appears that this is going to be one classroom. Is it one classroom, DR. Wanza? so they are leasing a classroom two nights a week. okay. So DR. Canyon, do you have an estimate as to how based upon your overall perception of what the needs are of how many students approximately will en roll. I know you
144don't have specific numbers. I know that in their projections for that in kind analysis, they projected 20 families per month, that they would be able to service. and this will begin when? as far as we pass it. as soon as we pass, great. And my last question, DR. Wanza, how did we come up with this in-kind amount. If you can break na down for me. How did you come up with that? Specific number. so they looked at the personnel cost for them to staff the actual two days, two nights a week and one building for the four hours per day. And then you take that and multiply it what would be four, four weeks, so a month worth of time to come with what would be, the considerable staff costs to apply to what would,
145in our realm would be a rent cost. So they looked at personnel cost to staff service south side, two excuse me, four hours, two days a week and then that's how MR. A cabuzo did the computations. okay, did we come up with the costs, did they provide that for us? so I can have MR. A kabuzo provide that. But those are the to determine. that's right, but they came up with calculation? correct. correct, it's based on how they pay their employees what would be comparable to pay? okay. we can give you a more detail analysis. is this comparable to what the market rate if we were to lease the space? so I will have MR. Acabuso give a more details analysis for that one classroom two nights a week if that entity decided that they
146want today go through facilitron for four hours and what other discounts, they can do tt side by side analysis. okay. I would love to see that information. Because if we're doing in kind lease arrangements, to me it's important to what is comfortable with the market rate. And I appreciate, this company coming in. But I just want to make sure that what we're doing for one we're doing for all. so I think, so I certainly appreciate the questions from the board and we will provide that, but if you will, later in the agenda, the board will be asked to consider item mm1 which is not in kind. And it does have a dollar amount with it that an entity is going to pay the district to use the space. all right, thank you. Appreciate it MADAM
147Chair. thank you. DR. Zeman. thank you, chair. Couple of issues to follow-up on MS. Hixon's important point on our policy. Chair if our policy that we're going to either get market price up on a sailor market lease up on a rent? that was my understanding but I will differ to DR. Fulton? MR. Acbuzo? good morning, chair. DR. Zeman regarding your question, school board policy governs the properties of sale properties. We have to do comp based on law, you have to do an appraisal. You have to do one a phrase al. Valued about $500,000, you have to do, if there is some kind of differential. So yes, we have that to go to the markets. the reason I asked chair, I read 8030 to prepare for this item. Sure. and sometimes we say things and sometimes
148we put them in our legislative agenda and sometimes they become a de facto without becoming policy. So I believe MS. Hixon's description of the policy is what we stated as our expectation. I would like us to consider whether or not we made that as a part of our policy. The reason I want to pull that out. There is an opportunity every time we dispose of property to be able to use our policy is say I'd love to have, you know, company x or do good organization y or local governmentzcome in and use this land or buy it. But we'll have a policy that will only disclose for market sailor lease if it's not rented out. Right now, it's not written out. But we can sell at appraised value for specific properties. We don't have a
149part that says we have to lease. I think it should include for exceptions like this. Here's something that si community that really needs services that is being provided. Just to think about this. I'll do more research and bring back some ideas for us to consider at the next meeting in the 7th but policy and what is being said and it's the way that things get done. There is a bigger point which is if you're talking about carry over money or description drugs or benefits, it's all the same amount of money. And if we're going to be serious about balancing the books which we have, with two years of enrollment declines, all of those things matter and our practice and policy MAY have a little bit of a gap between the lip and the cup and
150we need to be careful. Last point on this item, if this facility is taken over by an organization who's job it is to do wrap around sefbses and social welfare programs and we a law that organization to take over this facility, do we have is the right to terminate this agreement? so, so, the answer to your question is yes but I want to draw a clear distinction between 8020 and 8030. This is done under 8020. We have not disposed of the property. I want to draw that distinction to nobody thinks anything different. The district still owns and operates programming, all types of resources, provides services to students. So we have not disposed the broward estates property. If we were to get to a case where we were not going to dispose that would go into
1518030. But I'll let MR. Acabuzo speak to the language around termination of an agreement if the district so chooses to do something different with this property. in this case, and the board item in the actual agreement, 3.06 is termination clause. This is the school board template for the lease. So each party should give 30-day calendar written notice if you choose to terminate. terrific. And my comments were about 8030 and our belief that we have policies in place but they're not actually in our policies. And the way, the legal standing of policies is very high. And we strife very hard to accommodate policies and I know the staff is careful to check items to see if they're aligned to policy and when they're not, we have to be conscious about the exception approximates. But the 8030
152acception is where we codify. it's important to have that in our books overtime and I'll bring some thoughts back at our next school board meeting. Thanks chair. thank you. Any other -- I had MS. Bulman who wanted to speak on this again. I think that, DR. Wanza, clarified just for the record, I think two things happening here. One is when we're getting rid of a property like if we're getting rid of an entire school that's a different situation than renting a room. And having an opportunity for inklein to use the room. I think that's something that is very useful for our students and for our community that we're servicing. So I like seeing that. As long as they're accountable and I think the way that the lease is set up makes them accountable to ensure
153that they're providing the sefshszes. Soy appreciate this, this arrangement that you guys have made so thank you. all right, any other board member discussion on m-1? All in favor of m1 say aye. aye. all opposed say no. Item pass approximates unanimously. Can I get a -- hold on. So this will be the part of the meeting where we will consider all the open agenda items. The following open items have been identified for discussion, a a 1, bb1, dd5, f f1, ff2, gg1, gg2, gg3, jj18, mm1, 1, 3, 4,4, 5,5, 6, 11, 1212, 14,, 17, 18 whh h we already did. Our in rr1 and we already passed rr2. At this time MAY the chair have a motion and a second to pass. Items not pulled for discussion, dd1, 2, 3, 4, 6, jj1, through so
154jj1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 13, 14, 15, 16u-17, and o o-2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16 and pp1, 3, and 5. so moved. moved by DR. Zeman seconded by MS. Rupert. Are there any registered speaker? Are there any registered speakers on the items not pulled for discussion. one registered speaker on jj2. Jackie. chair I request that dd2 be pulled. sure. so we'll remove dd2 from the list that was not pulled and add it to the list that was pulled. point of order, for a a 1 I think it's a companion item should we wait until that item comes back? a a 1 was pulled so. but staff said it was a companion item to a 3. it's pulled, so we're not passing it right now. okay. all right, can I have a
155motion and a second. No registered speaker since MR. Cervera just pulled gg2. all in favor say aye. aye. all opposed say no. All right. Items pass unanimously. What is the companion for a a 1 again? A 3, we'll come back to that. Can I get a motion and a second on bb1. so moved. second. moved and second by MS. Thompson. Public comment on bb1. double b1? yes we have four registered speakers, cassandra. DR. Trudy jermanvich, PRESIDENT Ana fusco, if you heard your name if you can please proceed to the podium. Speaker: hello my name is cassandra and I'm speaking on bb1. I'm speaking because I'm a little concerned about the thousand staff member number only because reiterate that more staff will be cut and it will affect the district to run as efficient as possible.
156I just want to make sure that the necessary -- I'm so sorry. That the necessary, work that is being done in the district is being done with people who are experienced as possible and can pass down institutional knowledge that is pivotal and ep shoeinger that tt district runs as smoothly as possible. I do believe that every older person that I have worked that's influenced me that I do my job as good as possible. I just worry about these staff cuts and how the impact the classroom down the line. And I want to make sure that the jobs will not be passed down and filtered down and later down the line teachers. I'm not sure what positions are being cut and how that works, I would love to learn more about it by having discussions with
157you down the line. but these are any concerns. thank you. DR. Trudy jermanvich followed by pete. Speaker: my name is DR. Trudy jermanvich and as most of you know, I've been around for a while watching and coming to these meetings. And I've watched the district staff grow enormously, over the years. And, the student pollation has been going down and the staff is going up. That's all you have to say. This is a good plan. You have to obviously, take each case independently, however, the teachers in the classroom are the ones that you should say, okay. Is this important to that teacher in the classroom. That's the only thing that matters. Nothing else. Is it important to the teacher until the classroom. So please as you make these cuts which you should, because the districts is
158in financial need, do it, quickly, I don't know whether even you should speed up this process. But I do appreciate that two board members brought this forward and I believe you should all agree with. Thank you very much. thank you. good morning, my name is pete tingeum I'm the executive director of mneb. I want to thank you for ai, I like the comment that DR. Zeman said, ai plus hi equals -- I know when I was in school due millennium ago, a teacher said that 90 percent of the jobs that happened five years ago, do not exist today. And we need to plan for that. I'm here to speak to the proposed 1,000, person per year for 3 years, elimination. I just want you to know that I received over two dozen calls in the
159last three weeks from high level staff members that are providing important input to you regarding state federal and other programs. And they're very concerned about not knowing when, they're job will be held or non renewed and what I have suggested to them is, there are 31 municipalities in broward county, palmdale county and that have positions similar to what they're doing now. And you should consider that, about letting people know sooner than later so they can pursue the opportunities. Your lack of speed could cost you a number of employees. I also like you to consider that every time you request a report, every time, you need some information, ask that person, if they're a member of the s mab employee group, and I'll be surprised how much you depend on these support people. Thank you. thank
160you. our past public speaker, PRESIDENT Ana fusco. Speaker: okay. Ana fusco, teacher union PRESIDENT. It's a catch-22, keep their jobs. We want to know and need to know every piece that is happening but if this is an item that we have a board member and superintendent directed to come up with a plan, a thousand employees this year, and a thousand next year and a thousand in the third year that has to connect with closing of schools. It's inevitable, so that needs to be a stronger faster better plan so not just, employees of broward county public schools, they need to know what the real impact is going to be and how it's going to happen sooner than later. I can't imagine and I'm going to keep saying it. If this passes, how it cannot, would not
161impact a teacher. If you're closing schools, I hate to say it out there in the universe, we all really need to know. Where the employees are coming from. We're the largest group in the school district. We have 12600 teachers. That's just teachers that does not include my 3000 in broward teacher union with our PAROs, that is behavior tech and assistant and stuff like that. That's 15,000 employees, we only have 25,000. Where is it coming from? We know in every piece of public schools, every group struggles with having enough employees from the teacher component, the pera component. You heard from one of our slp s, you outsourced that. We have to say what department has gone from keeps growing. That's on you guys. So, who is going to help create this plan with the superintendent? Is
162it going to be outsourced? Is it going to be people here, the same ones that have been here 30 years themselves? That should be a conversation where is it going to come from? Who is going to help. What business sense? Who is going to be in the budget to make this happen? All of this is huge. Nobody wants to lose a job. Everybody wants to know sf me? Are you going to specify a time frame? Lots of things like that. I think it's go going to be a ginormous discussion. I don't know why this is an item and it didn't get work shopped. I guess it's being pushed through because there is a need of saving a lot of money. thank you. Board member discussion? DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair. So, part of the
163concern I believe, in our district is, it appears that our teachers are always on the forefront of consequences as it relates to student decline. So whenever we have, declining a number of students and which we've had significant declining in a number of students, we automatically reduce the number of teachers. The problem is s we have not done the same with non teaching staff over the years in the past 10 to 15 years. As a result, we are over staffed. Not over staffed as it pertains to teacher, because teachers are the first to go unfortunately when we have declining enrollment. So this item is to look at how, the district can, get back on a financial path where we can properly compensate our teachers and staff where we can improve our services, we can attract talent
164and so on and so forth. So DR. Hepburn, are we in a financial deficit at this time? yes, we're definitely have a budget shortfall. are we over staffed? yes. have we reduced non teaching staff in the same proportion over the last ten or 15 years. no we have not. okay. Would you agree that the district did not respond efficiently over the last 10 to 15 years to reduce non teaching staff. I concur. okay, if we reduce, if we reduce staff, by up to 3000 in the next three years, approximately how much will the district save? MS. Johnson, was that about? Probably over 250,000 million, 350 million. oh yes. so you said over 250 million. Okay, and what is our current budget shortfall? right now, 90 million and walking into another 90 million. okay, so had
165you said had the district responded efficiently over the last 10 to 15 years in reducing staff as student declined that we would within be any financial situation. we would not be having this situation. we would not be having this situation. I run a small learning center, if I lost 100 staff, I would have to reduce my staff and support staff for my teachers. It works the same in a big organization. Now what I would not do, is wait until I lose 100 subject to get rid of a third of my staff I would do it progressively as we lose our students. The problem is we're losing students for the last 10 to 15 years, but we have not reduced our non teaching staff. So while our district is perform well, we have serious financial concerns.
166I mentioned this before that we must be resolute in taking action to put a district on a more stable path where we can compensate our teachers and staff and meet the needs of our students. Our expenditures exceed our revenues, with one of the major reasons being that we're heavily over staffed. Our school district is facing financial challenges due to years of not intentionally aligning staff in levels with as enrollment as decreased staffing levels have not been adjusted, and labor costs exceeding what is necessary to meet operational needs. By reducing staff into better align with enrollment, we will be better position to see operate more efficiently. This will help the district improve compensation and staff. At present the district expenditure exceed in coming revenues, leaving us operating at a deficit of millions, it's the district's responsibility
167to take action now to address this issue and put us in a more sustainable financial path that supports both students and staff. This will likely impact mostly non instructional staff, non teaching staff. As a past practice, when students enrollment decline, we also proportion ately reduce the number of teachers. But we have is not done the same with non instructional staff. Therefore, after losing over 40,000 students, we still have approximately same number of teaching staff. This was within, an affective or responsible approach in my opinion. It cult mated in the -- culminated in the concerns that we're facing today. We should look at all non teaching positions starting from the top and continue across job levels. And this problem did not start here, this problem started years ago and it culminated in the financial concerns that
168we have. So I'm hoping the board will support this so we can get back to a path where we need to be and we can resolve those issues and be a top rated district in the nation. Thank you. thank you, MR. Cervera? thank you, chair. I'm in support of this. And I've been on record before, excuse me. Acknowledging my support of this. Because to me, this is not some sort of complex mathematical equation. our enrollment numbers have been going this way, while our district staff numbers have been going this way. That is not a, sustainable financial business motto. We do need to take action and I'm very very hopeful that when the superintendent does come back with his ultimate plan, it is something that can be executed swiftly and efficiency. And that we're not going
169to be dilly dalying with these decisions. Once it's identified who the superintendent decides who should be part of the this plan. I do want to say something to the members of the commitment and a commitment from pu DR. Hepburn as we move forward. Whatever plan you come up with, cannot, should not, and must not, include teachers. Under any circumstances, we must not lose a single teacher over this. We have far too much staff members that you can take into consideration to meet your 3000 threshold that do not volve our teachers. So I'm willing to support this, as long as I your commitment that whatever plan you have will not subject a single teacher to potentially being part of this. That being said s I like what I'm hearing on the numbers on this. If I
170heard correctly, if we go through this reduction over the course of the 3 years at a thousand a year. This district will save apprproxately 250 0 milln dodollar MR. Supentendent,, can any of that 250 million dollars in savings be used to implement raises for our teachers in beaut budgets. yes. Funded out of general dollars. So yes. so just so we're clear, by reducing certain staff members we'll be able to save enough money to give raises to our teachers who are lowfully paid and not had a raise in are we going on three years now? correct. Cost savings can be done. ?Fm let me put it this way, a viable raise. or annual raise. so I'm hopeful that with this money coming up, this 250 million dollars we can put some dollars back in the pockets
171of our teachers and this can all come full circle. So I'm very interested in seeing your plan when it's ultimately put together. I'm in support of this. And I hope that we, I'll be optimistic, I hope that we surpassed the 250 million that is going to be the positive energy that I'm putting out in the universe for this. Thank you. MS. Jacques-adams. hi, I just wanted to clarify that our office reports directly to the board. We have position that's are open because that we're short staffed I wanted to make sure that this does not include our office. Our office is required pursuant to two policy to review certain matters that come before the board and we cannot be short staffed. so I want today clarify for the public, that our office is still advising those
172positions and we're still seeking to ensure that our office, provide a high level of service to staff as well as the board. MS. Hixon? thank you. I, I just have a, I guess I have a question for DR. Holness and then I want to address something MR. Cervera said. So DR. Holness in your plan where it says 1,000 positions for three years, does that not include teachers? You're not specify who those 1,000 people are. Can you be specific? understand. So over the years, teachers are automatically reduced with the declining enrollment. Or the number of teachers in the district goes down when the number of students decline. So this particular, what has been happening is that we have not been intentional in reducing the number of non teaching staff. It has only seemed to have affected
173our teachers. So when we loosen rollment, we ended up not requiring the same number of teachers. So this in plan as we move forward, we need to sort of realign our non teaching staff in terms of their reduction where how we're reduce iting the number of teachers. And when we look at the numbers and my question that I've asked, it appears that the non teaching staff, that we could reduce that by up to 3000 over the next three years. To balance out proportionately with how the students have declined over the years. So students are automatically, teacher numbers decline as students volume declines. But we've never, aligned with reducing the number of non instructional staff. So this item is zen shoeinger that we, get the district back on track we're the non teaching staff that we're
174over staffed by will be where it's suppose to be and going forward, beyond the 3 years, we'll continue to reduce if we're declining in enrollment, the number of non teaching staff with how we would have reduced the teachers. But this is not impacting teachers. The item is separate. Because teachers were automatically impacted. it's the point that I want today make, if student enrollment is declining, naturally, teacher numbers will decline because you needless teachers if you have less students. So this is in addition to that? correct. Because as a district we've been reducing the number of teachers, automatically but we have not done the same. thank you, I just needed that clarification. I agree 100 percent we have to decrease our non teaching staff. I'm just not comfortable how I am with giving a actual number.
175But it does say to develop and present a plan. So to the superintendent, do you feel as if a thousand per year for three years is something that, that is, I don't know doable is the right word? Does that align with where you're headed in this? so we know we need to downsize not just this year but subsequent years. Because this has not been tackled. So we'll do our due diligence, creating a plan and working the third party that we're working with and come up with a plan that does not endanger the central operations of the district and also the support that our schools are receiving just to make sure that we're not, declining in the level of service that is being provided to students and families. so I, I would still -- you didn't
176really answer. You don't know whether it will be a thousand or year? yeah. I'm nervous about that number. I don't know how comfortable I am with the number of 1,000 per year because we're directing him to that, that's what we're expecting him to do. I know it's a plan, but I would rather it, not say, not a person personally. And I understand why, you want to make sure it's going in that direction. But what if the third party finds out that based on all the data, that it's 800 or 500, we gave a direction to do 1,000. It bothers me when we give direction. So I'm kind of a space here where I don't know that I like the number of thousand. so board member hixon, I will get the will board member speak but
177I'll be able to make a minor change to satisfy that. thank you. MR. Spellbergh. thank you MADAM Chair, good morning, good afternoon, again. I just wanted to address some of the comments that were made. It is probably out of order but I would like the superintendent how many positions that the district has added in the district meant and health in the past years. we've add I quite a few. But it's in the hundreds. thank you. That's my point. MS. Rupert? thank you. I have a few questions. Like my, like my colleague MS. Hixon. The delien ating of thousand period instead of a specific amount. You can cut 1,000 people, who are making 20,000 a year or you could put 1,000 making 100,000 plus a year. And why does not this specify if it includes attrition
178or not? That's a question for superintendent? that's a question for DR. Holness. It's not my item. so is the item implies from top, down across the district that is non instructional non teaching. As we look at attrition versus staff that we have to layoff, how do you see achieving 1,000, I know your plan is 1,000, the upcoming year, but in subsequent year, year two and three, how do you see that being possible? Would attrition need to be part of that? attrition is a sticky subject because the person can leave the position that the district actually needs. So I think it's more about, evaluating the service motto across the district and how we provide services to schools or different department providing a service to other departments. It's a way to providing greater level of service. correct.
179So there could be positions as far as attrition that MAY not necessarily be needed and some that will be need ited. So board member, rupert. He would bring back a plan that would include all of that and it would include employees from across the district that are non teaching staff. okay. na is great. -- that is great. However, not having a specific dollar amount is important in this, you know. Actually I don't feel very comfortable asking questions to my colleague it seems awfully weird, I'm either going to support it not support it. I love that you brought this, but this is where I have conversations. I feel weird asking you for answers, but the superintendent differed to you so okay. I think the board should weigh in on what the money number is and to
180give direction when we're a little bit closer and I don't mean closer as in, you know, we've all heard APRIL. I don't mean it to be rushing it but the sooner that we can come to a consensus. looking to say, 250 million dollars go over the next three years. I'm very alarmed at, to do it. Within the scope. The last time or the meeting before that. How does your every day job. Students, we want to keep you. The dollar amount. I have question about this running through my head but I stated thed few things couple of times so you know where I'm at. And I do appreciate having this conversation brought to us. Thank you. thank you, MS. Thompson. at first I want to reiterate some of the comments I made in the past when
181we discussed this, is that the people that work in this building our district staff, help run the system just like our teachers and our professionals and our social workers and when we talk about impact to students. We, we so we have to have an hr system, right? We're a huge, organization, so we have to have those people even though they don't necessarily impact students on the way that we would traditional think. Same with our budget department. We have to have people that are running our financial, even though, say they I am pack our students on a day-to-day basis. I just want everyone to know, similar to when we're discussing closing schools, it's not because of the school not excelling or the families don't feel at home or the, the experience that students have having there,
182is because of this financial situation that we're looking at making these extreme cuts. And I want staff to know that they're valued and appreciated no matter what department they are working in. And I also want to reiterate MR. Spellbergh's point that the district level staff also includes our safety and a lot of our mental health professionals so when we're looking to reduce district people that it includes, those incredibly important, positions as well and to be mindful about that. I do want to correct the record about raises. Could we get just a brief summary of the raise we've been able to give over the past five years. go ahead, DR. Lozano. yes, we can put that together for you quickly. okay. And then, I had a question about the district level staff, how many are funded
183at a general fund? go ahead, doc. wiz positions? -- which positions? the central office. let me pull that up. it's about 4400, I confered with our chief financial iser. -- officer. okay, and then I also have. While I do think that we need to start planning. I have concerns about giving a specific number because I feel like, other than that this year, this year we have committed to 1,000 positions but going forward, saying a thousand positions every time, i'm not comfortable with that. But I am comfortable with the idea of having a long term strategy moving forward. And then I also share MS. Fusco's concern about who is crating this plan. And I like the superintendent giving us an overview of if this passes, who he would have in his team and who is the
184third party. this is something that we will not go at it alone. We have historical knowledge, our en internal data and our database and talk to our employees and leaders about the value of proposition to the district and also our students. Right now we're working on also with mgt who is a, national consultant in various areas of, of public or government entities not just school districts who are assisting us with analyzing our benchmarking and giving us key inside to assist us with key steps. all right and when we're considering reductions in staff, how is student support in mental health being weighed into your decision? that's at the top of priority, to ensure that we're not diminishing services essential to students and teachers. okay. And then, I think as the item is written, I'm not comfortable
185supporting it because of the very specific numbers involved. However, if there is a chanange to th, cacareconsiderer. Thk you. tnk you. DR. Zeman? thanks, chair. and thanks to DR. Holness for bringing this. I'm not exactly what talk to give but I'll start with math talk. If we aligned general fund position to enrollment we would reduce broward school positions by 4702. So to DR. Holness, thank you for only asking for a three-year plan to do 3000 when the appropriate level would be reduced by 4702. Why is that the point? The point is for every student and for every school and for every unit of production. There are people involved to make that production work. Our base number has gone from ten years ago, 2 2000 to next year. So our job is to serve 17 3000
186students. And when we do not reduce staff, we're not serving the students. We're using a motto used years ago, to serve students today. Let me switch to the next speech, are we here to serve students or not? A bureaucracy that is loaded with people that is perfectly willing every year to reduce teachers, every time we go down 20-30 students, we lose a teacher position. In fact, when you take out the los angeleses and teacher, we've grown non teaching positions. So are we here to serve stud epts or not? In three years a plan to reduce 3000 a year is not getting to the 174 if we wanted to reduce. So I think it's an appropriate plan. i want to point out a second sthing, you guys own the budget. A plan that says hey, here's
187a thousand, you don't like this, come up with something else that is equal or whatever you would like to do but if you don't have a plan at the end of the year, then I'm going to not hear any whining about taeper pay. That's what it's going fob. You would either stop doing or start doing things so we have money to do that. It's just simple. So I want to pay teachers and educators more. I think everybody that works here needs to have increase every year. It's immoral to have years where there is a zero percent raise. I find it hard money and no, I'm not done this year. I still hope, even though it's desperate, I hope that we can find the 90 million and more so we can do more. Anybody want to
188know the equivalent number of schools that we would close? 45 this year, you're so close MS. Rupert. We have done 7 or 9 depending on how you do the math. That's not 45. And those positions are incredibly expensive. So our mission is how to put the money in different buckets. To DR. Holness, credit, there is two buckets on two people. And everybody else. And what DR. Holness is saying which is just taking up the superintendent on his commitment this year, which is show me a thousand, and by the way I want to see a thousand next year. The critical part of this resolution is, direct the superintendent to develop and present a plan, that reduced by 1,000 to the school board of broward county. But we cannot build up a plan to MS. Rupert's point.
189I don't think we have a staff to say if they said, 230 positions, we need 830, we don't have that staff. But we do have the ability to reduce to 1,000. And look at some things, where that risk is too much. I don't know whatever we want to do, we have the staff and the ability and reduce a plan. We don't have an ability to build a plan because none of us have a budget staff to my knowledge. So we can propose things to the superintendent, this is I think, a very very modest plan, compared to the 4702 we should be reducing today to we give them notice of positions going away. Because we'll get attrition and we'll have a position that's go away and the big mix as people who lost a job and
190no longer a position to fill, get somebody to apply for the job where this is attrition. We should tell them as early as possible. But it is legitimate issue. Tt actually a slow roll issue to ask for 1,000 over 3 years when you find 702 is the number we should be reducing. I don't know why we have not done it. It's easy to let teachers go and it's not difficult to not let non teachers go. I never felt it was the right decision and I voted that way for the past three years. But now this has come home to roost. We get a plan and we tell the public we're serious. I don't want to hear more about educator compensation, our money goes to people. And if we're not going to put people, there is
191no way to put the contract and tip toe around utility bills and save any kind of money like we need to continue to pay our teachers and my belief is that we give our educators some form of raise and this is an excellent idea to ask the superintendent to do it and it fulfills our obligation. Just to be clear, chair, does this a blig -- obligate us to reduce positions? DR. Holness. so is the intent of the item is to have the superintendent bring to us a comprehensive alignment plan. That, where the plan would be presented that would include reduce iting staff by 1,000 per year for three years. So main point of the item is to bring a plan to us, that would consider reducing staff in up to a thousand per year. Now
192DR. Zeman, the superintendent MAY present a plan and he MAY come back to us with a thousand a thousand for the third and MAY create challenges, he MAY, convey challenges of reducing staff up to 1,000. But at least at that time, we can entertain and determine what is a good number. but about the intent of the plan is to bring an aggressive plan of a thousand per year back to discussion and then at that point, we can decide what would be a good number. and my last point, it's really nice to say this sounds very aggressive but this is to make up of ten years of not doing this year by year by year, every year we should have been looking at positions. We did not do that's a school bother or a district. So
193we are where we are but the accounting does not lie. And the accounting says that we should be reducing general staff by 4200. This request for the staff to bring us a plan and figure out what to do is a pretty conservative plan. It does not get us to the numbers we want. It puts a percentage of positions outside of schools. I look forward to seeing this plan this year and I hope that we can continue to get a substantial plan like this every year for our consideration. Thank you so much. thank you. MS. Bulman. thanks, chair. Thank you, DR. Zeman for your comments. I, I appreciate DR. Holness that you brought this. And, first of all, I'm looking forward to the staffing plan for next year that is being brought in APRIL that going
194to be a good start and kind of see where we're looking at. I looked at this with a little bit of flexibility and I don't know if that was intended because I think going through the exercise of it will put us in a position where we can see what is feasible and not feasible and I think it's going to help design the motto that we're going to have moving forward. Are you married to a thousand, a thousand, I would read it as no, maybe some of these things are not feasable, I think you have to go through the exercise to see where we're really at. And to DR. Zeman's I'm not sure how you got the math, maybe your daughter doing a little put put ai math on the golf course, but maybe it MAY
195change. So I think, I think this is an opportunity for us to really put things on the right and going in the right direction and looking at this. You know, if it comes to the point that you're going through the exercise and we cannot cut 3000 over the next three years, it is a good thing that we know that now. And to landyn's point we're adding positions that are value to our students. So my question is, we have on the item, you have an MAY 12th deadline and right now we're working on next year's plan. So do you, DR. Hepburn, MAY 12th a feasible deadline to put this together? I didn't notice the date, thanks for pointing that out. MAY is not going to work. We're working with our cut ant, we have a lot
196of action steps to do as we help our employees for those impacted. A date in the summer, would be more feasible and I think it provide more discussion for the board also because we're going to have a lot of things between now and MAY that is going on, not just for staff but also for the board and workshop items come up. what do you think? what did you say MS. Rupert? Oh you moved it tup. no. summer, yeah. I would probably say sometimes in JUNE or JULY. We have a lot-things in motion with our current staff to write this, this amount of downsizing that we're doing this year that has never happened in this district this year. We want to do that with a lot of care. I don't want us working on another plan
197interfering with what we want to do. and I think that's important to take into consideration because we're going to be making cuts this year which is going to impact people. So I think we need to definitely need to put a lot of resources on doing that the right way. DR. Holness, would you be opposed to extending your deadline to the summer? knoxer that's fine. And I have probably another amendment at the end, so yeah. : okay, so I'll wait to hear your amendment but I appreciate you bringing this n.I think it's important and it's great that we as a board are looking forward, we need to do this with many facets and this is a great start. Thank you. thank you. I have MS. Alhadeff. yes, thank you. So I'm a little perplexed about this
198item because if we didn't have a superintendent that was already addressing this then absolutely. But DR. Hepburn is already talking about. He's already addressing it. It was previous to superintendent for the last 12 years that have not been addressing this. Right, so we know that our staffing have gone like this and we never had a superintendent that was doing something about it. So sing it's wrong to micromanage DR. Hepburn on this. I think it's right that we're dictating how many positions. It should be financial, it should be a number, because each position is not equal. thank you. MS. Hixon. thank you, I'm trying to figure out how to get to a point. I like that it's a money number as oppose today positions. Would you be open since you're looking at some amendments instead of
199saying, reduce by at least 1,000 to say it to say up to 1,000? Cause that way. When you say at least, you're direction is no less than a thousand, that's what it says. So if we change the wordings a little -- wordings word a -- word wording. All right. DR. Holness. okay, the JUNE date is fine for me. when is the board meeting in JUNE? if we're talking about the workshop, it would be JUNE 16th. okay. So, DR. Hepburn, JUNE 16th is okay as far as an amendment to the date? I'm thinking of the run of show right now, DR. Lozano? Your team is intimately involved with career source. I just want to make sure that we're not doing two things at once. I want to put the right amount of care to addressing employees
200that are impacted. Is this the JUNE 16th work or do you need a JULY date? the JUNE 16th for which specific? for bringing back the plan for that we're going to work on for downsizing over three years. I just want to make sure that developing this plan is not going to interfere for what we're doing. I recommend JULY 21 workshop because that would get us past the next school year. I concur. ?Fm okay, so DR. Hepburn, the plan that you're bringing to us, in APRIL, will include a possibility of reduction of 1,000 staff. correct. and that's for this coming year. I'm okay with JULY 21 and I would like to make an amendment I would like to have the superintendent move subsequent year to bring up a plan as to how we can right-size the
201staffing and we can have an idea as a board what that looks like going forward. so I like to amending the date to JUNE 21st, to also include up to 1,000 in the second and third year. But no less than 500. is there a second? second, motion made by DR. Holness, seconded by MS. Hixon. Public comment on the motion? Speaker: my name is DR. Trudy jermanvich and I disagree with both issues. I believe, you're doing the thousand already, that's in APRIL. Why can't the rest of the plan come back in MAY? I'm sorry, but I've watched this board, you, not the previous boards put lots of things in the middle of summer when everybody is gone so that maybe nobody will make any waves about it. I don't like it. The way you're doing it
202is you're not being, you're not including the public. You're saying, oh we've got to do it for the staff? Well you are doing it foirt staff, you're doing it right now. You're letting them know a plan is coming and the plan should come in MAY. Sorry. can have the exact motion repeated please, the new amendment. MADAM Chair. Okay. So the new amendment to the original item is that, a thousand for the first year and second and third year up to a thousand but no less than 500. okay. I think there should be a plan put in place, not wait until june, to have this workshop, JULY, oh wow, well, I don't know how that got approved. You've got to work a little bit quicker. People need to know if they got jobs. You've got two
203surrounding counties that are financially fine. I agree with trudy, lots of ththingshave happened wiwith thisis particar board ev thnew three that have been added elected and appointed. People have been here multiple-years, not just one, not just six months maybe one person up there. And is, continually to make some actionable conversation. So people need to know what is happening and I do question about not just asking who got raises and bonuses of just the educator and ask how the departments have grown. thank you. Any other public comment on the motion? Board member comment I have MS. Hixon. thank you, just to be clear. The thousand that are being affected this year comes to us in APRIL. that's correct. I think there is some confusion. yes, I'm going to clear that up. For the upcoming school year,
204on the APRIL 14th workshop, we'll be discussing that plan as well as the workshop changes we'll make. To bring a plan in MAY also. Number one, we have tons of staff that will be impacted by the current plan that we're going to bring. And this is the first time that the county has had something this large at the scale. Probably ever and to bring a plan in MAY for subsequent two years or specific positions. That does not boat well for a system where we're trying to maintain affective support and whatever people departments that they service to tell the employee in MAY that hey in the next two years, you MAY not be here or the next year, it's, it's, it's not the cadence that we want to take. So number one, care for the employees
205that will be impacted for this year. Talk about this h this additional part of the plan in JULY, so, that we can have a good discussion and know how we're going to move forward. And people will be paying attention. In the first place, so. MS. Thompson. thank you, MR. Holness. Is did want to support is the long term plan for it. Is appreciate the change. The reason we would move it is to be respectful to the staff to the thousand of people who are going to lose their job and if we have speakers who are concerned about public opinion. I trust the superintendent's judgment to do this in a respectful way to make sure that the people who are losing their jobs are taking care of and the best way that we can. And to
206rush that process, is disrespectful. So thank you, for your changing your motion, DR. Holness, I'm excited to support it and thank you DR. Hepburn for clarifying why it's best to be done that way. Thank you. thank you. I have not gotten a chance to speak on the item. I had a few things that I want today point out. Saying which position approximates two years from now we will eliminate. We've gone through a difficult task. [Captioner change] I remember two or three years ago, we had big discussions on our slp's, we decided to increase pay and things like that, so I would like -- in order to make sure that we're reducing the outsourcing of that service so I would like a follow-up on that. Er if I MAY, chair, I can give you that follow-up
207right now. We lad a robust discussion either last summer or last spring about slp's and the amount of money we're spending on that contract to contract out the services for slp's. It was directed by the board for if ese staff to create a plan sx, they have trying to aggressively hire slp's that work for us so we can lower the cost instead of contracting out, so it is a difficult task because, you know, we hire slp's, but a large number of them still work for contracted company and is they're difficult to recruit and retain, so it is a three year plan, they have submitted it, we can can resubmit that plan, the ese team is working diligently on hiring our own slp's. got it, you don't have to resubmit the plan. I know we had
208extensive discussions about it as a board. I was interested in like what the results of that plan -- how those are flushing out but I'm glad we were able to correct the record for that, thank you. MS. Rupert? I have a question, it was before my time, I think 2008 when the economy had a big bump. I distinctly remember hearing layoffs, mass layoffs at that time, so I think the conversation about what were the parameters that they did that before, with were the effects of that happening, you know, scaling down, scaling up, whatever it MAY be, but it seems to me if we had that and we certainly have historical knowledge out here with people that have worked with us for a long time, DR. Hepburn, have you had a conversation with any of your
209tenured employees or chiefs that can give us any guidance at this point as to how it was done. Was it enough, was it not enough, and were you aware that they did that? I know, I haven't had a conversation with anybody at bcps about 2008, but every school district across the country and especially florida has the same strategy that is was changing the number of courses you're teaching during the day. You didn't need as many teachers as you had during that era. It was cutting back specific types of services and it was also extra teeming I -- strategic layoffs too, I can find our historians that could shed some light on specific strategies that were used back then. right, that would be really good. I can see one who doesn't want her head up, but
210DR. Wanza, mark dorsett. DR. Fulton, MR. Wanza, half of the people in front of me was here during that time. well, I for one would certainly want to have a conversation about that because it's something that was part of our organization and how it was handled is -- was it a best practice, was it not and I don't believe after that there were any other layoff sos there's been a long time, but my point is there is historical knowledge to the see how it went down and what was accomplished from this, you know, what were those best practices. Also just kind of a side thing here. I think when you -- when we talk about multiyear staffing alignment plan, we really need to have the number of consult tans on who we employ and how
211many consultants do we have on the district, what is their salary and what can we bring in to this district, so those are -- I mean, in-house, and not consult tans. I think the two conversations can happen together because if we can cut the consultants and the money goes down, then the number of staff should not have to be drastically done that way. And those are two points I guess for me, I would appreciate a follow-up on both of those, thanks. MS. Bulman? I think we can see this is going to be a complicated situation and I don't want to detract by doing this by planning for m ex -- next year and I appreciate you showing the numbers. We need a model where we can kind of stream up and down depending on what
212our enrollment is and what our needs are, so I think that would be the best way to approach it, we don't know what it's going to look like in year two and year three to reflect it, we could have more students, we could have less, things could change. We don't know what our budget is going to be, so that's what I would like to see, incorporating in what everybody has said, and we're also not scaring everyone that works here because having people create their own -- create a plan that removes their own job doesn't seem to be an attractive proposition for getting anyone to participate in the day-to-day work, so I really support a staffing model, really looking into that. I think that that would -- that's mentionable and I think that would be the
213best way to approach it instead of a number or a budget number because we don't know what our budget is going to be, so then we can -- so that with can use it moving forward. thank you, MRS. Alhadeff? so, I think that we shouldn't be tying the superintendent's hands. I think allow him to do his job. He is doing it. It's not like he's saying no. He's doing the job, so let him do the job, don't dictate year one, year two, year three. No. He needs that flexibility not to have his back against a wall that was set today in MARCH, 2026. Things are going to change and the health for this school district, we are at a boiling point, water is boiling over and our staff needs to know that they have job
214security in year two, year three, but there has to be a natural cadence to it and to put the superintendent's back against the wall to a staffing plan from two, three years from now I think is is wrong. thank you, DR. Zeman? thank you, you know, it's not uncommon for organizations to do multiyear budgeting and I think just to be clear, chair, could the superintendent in the year dwo discussion that happens later this summer, could the superintendent propose positions in general terms rather than specific positions by position number? For example, could he say we think we can reduce this group of employees by 10% and we can reduce this group by 10% and thins like that. Would that fulfill the requirement that is in today's proposed item from DR. Holness? I think that's up to
215DR. Holness. yes, that would be perfectly fine with me, you know, the item is just to present a a plan of at least 500 students up to a thousand -- 500 staff up to a thousand. And it could be generalized, it doesn't have to be specific, but it gives him dr ek and it givers him an idea where we will be the second and third year. do you believe we're on a declining trend in employment for the next three years in broward county public schools? yes. . Er to MS. Alhadeff's point which I'm sensitive about, I have been in a government job where there were dramatic reduction ins the dod budget so we were all scare and had scared for five years about reductions. One of things we knew is where the reductions were going
216to come, so to the people who are in positions for which there is a reduction and I just hypothetically said 10% so, we had a number out there, the 90% of the people who feel like they're doing a great job and performing at a high level feel fine, the people who are not in a bucket which is going to be teachers, our teachers are determined by the number of students we have, they're not going to feel that so there is some humanity in letting people know what the pansies are so they can make plans. If you're in a group, I know there's been discussions about whole functions being centralized or being outsourced, it's good for people to know that, it's under discussion, they can make individual decisions along the way that are good for them
217and I respect that very much. Chair, do I still have the floor? yes. MAY I call the question, please. all in favor of calling the question, say aye. aye. all opposed, say no. All in favor of the motion, say aye. as amended. as to the motion. Er youfrjts made a motion to amend the item so we're valeting on a motion to amend the item. All in favor, say aye. All opposed, say no roll call, school board member bulman? yes. cervera? yes. hixon? yes. holness? yes. leonardi? no. rupert? no. thompson? yes. zeman? yes. alhadeff? no. it passes 6-3. any other comment on the item as amended? All in favor of the item as amended, say aye. aye. all opposed, say no. no. roll call? roll call on the motion? on the item. school board member cervera?
218yes. hixon? yes. holness? yes. Er leonardi? no. rupert? no. thompson? yes. zeman? yes. alhadeff? no. bulman? no. yes. Er 6-3, it passes. bb1 passess 6-3. can I get a motion and a second on dd2. Public comment on dd2? jackie lescom. thank you. This was a special order item for 11 A.M. In 2019, students and staff who are deaf and hard of hearing came to district leadership with a request, they felt unsafe because they couldn't hear emergency alarms or announcements such as if they were alone in a restroom or classroom or a deaf teacher or deaf students and a lock down evacuation would be under way, they wanted vital moments to respond in an emergency as their peers, 7 years, that basic safety request isn't resolved. The story of this project is not just about technology,
219it's what happens when planning is unclear, oversight is inconsistent and the voices of the end users are not fully included. I'm sorry, there is quite a lot of disturbance, can can we stop the clock for folks can listen to me, I have waited three hours, it is really disrespectful. please continue with your comments. one of the striking thing ins the report is that the very people who rely on this system, deaf and hard of hearing students and staff were never sbr viewed and page 14 lists one of the ordered objections is to ascertain whether the epic installation is being achieved. The report itself identifies stakeholders as the students and staff in the program schools tese department and it names me e too as chair of ese advisory, none of those voices appear in this order
220and the executive summary states under input not applicable. It was irrelevant and disconnected to this and the fire chief stated he had not evaluated any of the dhh school site that is installed this system. It also state that is bcps yao u user and stakeholder groups were act timely engage ined the pronlt and it lists this under a headline of an assumption on page 5 rather than evaluating it veracity by speaking to those stakeholders. If the purpose of this was to look back and learn some mess l esz sons websinger misled one right there. How the project unfolded, the board was told that was a mass notification system, it was an entirely different system and it did not exexain how w that shift occur and had the wewe crititic issues how the system ininteractwiwi the
221fifire ararms that were only discovered after the system was purchased and was being install and had despite the report's confidence and ongoing support systems, teachers are reporting out tangs including one that has been waiting more than a month, I would like to draw awe teption o the two public comments submitted from two deaf teachers to feedback on that. I sent some questions to some board members on the this yesterday, I hope you will answer them but I want to be clear, the system makes a real difference when it works properly, we got more than we asked for. There were individual nrs the district that worked hard to move it forward include thing project manager. When it comes to student safety, learning the entirety of what went wrong with this project and not just some of
222it is going to be more constructive than not, thank you. thank you, board member comment, MR. Cervera? thank you, chair. MR. PRESIDENT, I have some concerns that we just heard from speaker, specifically in regards to the stakeholders being a part of this and being interviewed, what did that process entail if any, and do we know the specific individuals who are part of that process. that's a question for the chief auditor, MR. Magly. good afternoon, earlier today, just as a point of reference, MR. Harvey was here who conducted the audit but he left earlier based on the time certainty thing. Relative to the stakeholders and who was engaged with him, I know he spoke with -- when he speaks to stakeholders, a null of the staff particularly in the safety and security group and also in
223it, so relative to the community and the folks of the users, the people that gain the most from that, I don't have direct detail on that interaction. This engagement centered on installation and selection of the equipment and it tracked the progress that the projects made for it, not necessarily the performance of the units in the sense that way. Certainly I think that's a relevant thing to include and anything that would be evaluated and I'm not sure if groups particularly those groups I mentioned are monitoring performance in assessing the effectiveness of that. This particular audit looked at things from design to procurement to installation to inspection. are you satisfied with the results outlined in this audit? based on the scope that was conceived, I'm fortunately -- I can't say I was involve ined scope of that
224review. To have future engagement of this nature, it would be critical to see that the selections particularly with systems we are using currently would be important to determining what the specifications and the things for the equipment moving forward and whether they were effective would be crucial. I know you're in this role in a newer capacity and congratulations on the recent appointment. What was your office's involve in all of this? the initial engagement was con -- conceived in our office prior to this, they performed the audit. so, you were reading this after the fact? that would be accurate. are there any additional or particular high level concerns that you have that you need to make this board aware of? no, I would say that to the concern, I think people should be assessing and on a
225continual basis, whether the system is functioning as it was intended and effectively providing what it was suggested that it would provide, so that I think is ongoing regardless, audit or no audit. I don't know if anyone else can answer, those who regulate that on a daily basis as to what measures are being done to do that but I think it's essential, so that I would lend specifically to how that system has been implemented and followed. thank you, thank you, chair. MS. Rupert? thank you. I have some follow-up questions to ask so we can get an answer later. When it refers to the audit, what I read through was that the substance and intent of the epic installation is being axhao efed or not, that was left out of the consideration, so for scope, so for
226next time, I would hope that that's in there because it was part of the other contract. Why was an evaluation of the proj's operational efficacy not part of this audit? I know it's unfair to ask you. no, it's not. Based on what I know and as I tried to explain and I understand that we want a full and robust understanding of how this is working, the scope of this audit was to say if they were going to meet their budget timeframe and have it installed in a timely fashion relative to the start of that school yardmen those things were achieved. We can look and reflect whether the scope should have gone further or maybe based on the timing been adjusted to include some of those considering but based on what it start out to be,
227I think they achieved that but I see that it doesn't necessarily cover everything that might be essential to us moving forward as the district and being able to see whether that's effective. thank you, and did the audit include how we wound up with the epic system instead of the second half of the alertis? I'm not sure how that was selected. It was noted there were a a number of sdifrnt f different classifications in the procurement of these particular pieces of technology, but I don't know the detail of how that particular item was selected. okay, what I would like to see moving forward is that there is an evaluation part of it and how was epic picked instead of doing the second part of alertis and how is it procured purchased without it being fully evaluated
228first. So, those are key decisions, MR. Magli? I wanted to lend it to the fact that the procurement group was involved in this, the selection of those things and is the process that took place, I cannot say that did not occur, I don't know the details on how they assessed and selected that particular item. the reason I ask this is if I can remember correctly, this odyssey for our dhh -- I always say this wrong, dha students and faculty members, 7 years ago, so that is a very long time to wait for safety and confidence in being in a school board owned building for both saf and for students, so I think we can do a lot better than this. I know that you weren't in that process over there but it just -- to
229me, it's can -- it's important that we have the scope and everything clear right at the point and definitely at the very least know we need to talk to the end users which should be the students and staff themselves. So, I think definitely lessons learned on this. I'm sorry for the dhh community, we've let you down and we will do better. So, thank you. MRS. Add has deaf? when does this contract end or expire? DR. Hepburn? are you aware, MR. Magli? I'll have to follow up with you on that one. . Er we implemented this before we implemented the wearable panic button, so my questions are ill -- I would like to see an analysis of the two. Maybe this now is duplicative what we have now with the wearable panic button and the strobe
230lights and taking over the boards, so I would like to see if we can -- I don't know, maybe it's a great system, what we have now, or maybe we cannot do away with that system here and just go with what everybody is using with the wearable badge. okay, now I understand your question, MS. Alhadeff, I thought you were talk about the audit team that did the audit. Go ahead, chief gregory? safety and security officer, to so that feature of alert ining a panic situation is one option of a list of features with the audio enhancement product and that's one we've chosen not to activate and use because we do have [Inaudible] Through the entire school t systems built to work together and not compete. whether the alert is over in the contract, do we
231still need to continue it? do you mean the autoowe enhancement product? yes. that is our current product moving forward to replace outdated in legacy intercom systems. so, okay, I just would like to have a better understanding of the systems, the two systems if they're duplicative and then when that -- if you're telling me we need it for these schools, there's a reasoning behind it, thep fine. But then maybe we don't need it and we can just use the sintegics,. the audio enhancement is replace thing speakers throughout the school as well as it enhances the class rao l experience for all students with speakers in class and the teacher and instructor wear ago microphone to help improve hearing for everyone, not just for the dhh community, so that is the product we use now, not just
232in the four dhh schools but in all the schools we have that need intercom system replacements, that's the system we put into those schools, not as part of the alerting -- panic alerting system but as part of the overall general intercom/speaker pa system in the school. so, are those schools currently now -- do they have the wearable panic button? Jts yes, they do. thank you. thank you, any other board member comment on item e dd2? All in favor, say aye. aye. Er item passes ewe dman mousey websinger will now recess this school board meeting for 30 minutes. (Meeting in recess). this regular school board meeting is now reconvened. Can I get a motion and a second on dd5. Moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Hixon. Public comment on dd5? Any.Public comment? no comments. MS.
233Rupert is not here. Does anyone else want to speak to dd5? MS. Rupert can approach the dais, please. okay, I did ask this ahead of time and I'm sure I got the answer but I have not been on my computer, so my question was did charles drew ever reconcile their cash exception? That was my question. DR. Fulton? MR. Magli? one moment. Excuse me, I'm going to have nakia who's the director over that section answer that. that would be a corrective action that staff would have to resolve. They would have to answer as to whether or not they've put in -- done their corrective action with regard to the cash. oh. So, what we could do is follow up. If it is a corrective action, typically the regional offices will be the ones that will follow
234up to ensure whatever was written in there is done to fidelity. When they do the additional audit, it is our expectation it will not be another audit exception. okay, I only asked it because normally it says, you know, that there was a recommendation and then they followed it or they followed up with it, so I just missed that part so I appreciate if you get me a follow-up. absolutely. any other board discussion on dd5? All in favor of dd5, say aye. aye. all opposed, say no. Item passes unanimously. ff1, moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Rupert, any public xhen? board member hixon? I want to say thank you to the grants department, this month we a v a total of 1 million 472 thousand 650 dollars that are included in this item, so thank
235you so much to everyone for all the hard work that goes into bringing this money to our district. MS. Rupert? thank you. And on the same vain, I want to thank you, the seminole coconut creek education foundation if r the grant for lyons creek middle students to have face to face one on one counseling, so thank you. any other board member comment on ff1? all in favor of ff1, say aye. Er all opposed, say no. Item passes ewe nan nosily. A motion and a second on ff2? Moved by MS. Hixon, second by DR. Zeman. Public comment? one registered speaker, alan bombert. . Er I don't see him in the audience. Board member comment, MS. Rupert? I'm good. any other board member comment on ff2? All in favor of ff2, say aye. aye. all opposed, say
236no. Item passes unanimously. Can I get a motion and a second on gg1? Moved by DR. Zeman seconded by MS. Rupert. Public comment on gg1? no comment. board member comment? MS. Hixon? just a quick question. MS. Jacques-adams, are these items, gg1, 2 and 3, are they all for you for the contracts for the cadre council that is we were discussing before? one of three are. okay. and it is the gray robinson. okay, so what is gg1, is that for a specific -- so, all of them are primarily for labor and employment. That's the air of expertise our office does not have and to a minor extent, they MAY do some contracts as well specifically related to labor and employment and/or other matters related to labor and employment but the primary firm that is handling the
237contracts as we discussed is gray robinson. but they are all for cadre? yes, ma'am. thank you so much. glad to see it come forward. any other comment on gg1? MADAM Chair? DR. Holness? MS. Jacques-adams, these positions are not additional positions, right? These are positions that are open positions that you need? so, specifically these are cadre attorneys that we normally hire to handle matters that are outside of our expertise or outside of our capacity. okay, thank you. any other board member comment on gg1? All in favor of gg1, say aye. aye. all opposed, say no. Item passes ewe nan nosily. Can I get a motion and a second on gg2? Moved by DR. Zeman, seconded by MS. Rupert. Public comment? no comments. board member comment? All in favor of gg2, say aye. aye. all opposed, say
238no. Item passes ewe nan nosily. Can I get a motion and a second on gg3. Moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Rupert. Public excellent? no. all in favor o f gg3, say aye. item passes unanimously. A motion and a second on jj18. moved by DR. Zeman, second by hixon. jj18, public comment? no. board member comment? thank you, chair, in reviewing the agenda item, there's this thing that jumps out at me and says is this really consistent with where we're at as a district and this one jumped out big time. This is an item to spend 840 thousand dollars this year on three score boards and I was a trem moan douse beneficiary in high school of having great fields and great coaches asks score boards and things like that so I have tremendous value
239in these items in general. I don't think this is the right thing to do this year. This is almost a million dollars, it's something we can push off while we're getting through this fiscal crisis and do it in a year or two from now as we need more, the second issue I have, I don't think score boards are the technology we need my mer, you go to a small division 3 college, they have monitors, even rolling monitors so you can roll them from the football field to the girl's soccer game to the debate club to car line, and they're wonderful technology and I think in 2026, we want to get away from traditional score boards and move to monitors just as fast as we can. so, for those two reasons, I won't support this today.
240I just want to make sure the community understands that while I love athletics and I love our athletes and love what we're doing, I would rather push this off for a year or two until our finances stabilize. any further board member comments on jj18? Board member bulman? thank you, chair. To DR. Zeman's point, iktsz that would be for MR. Dorsett, are there alternatives that were looked into to traditional score boards? mark dorsett, task assigned chief operating officer. No, we didn't look at any different type of score boards, we wanted to stay with the type of traditional score boards. We did meet with the athletics department and this would be considered the standard now for high school score boards for football fields. That's why this is the only option we have at this point, but if
241it's the will of the board, we can take it back and look at another option. yeah, because I definitely support enhancing our football fields. I think, yes, I think it attracts students when you go out. I think with putting in the new turf and everything, it really makes everything look fantastic and then to have the new score boards I think will just further enhance the look of what -- what is expected in a high school football field but villein be opposed to exploring a different option if -- what's the timeline that we would have to -- like, to have these up and running for football season for next school year? I think two of them are -- you know, we replace the fields and the score boards weren't working, but I just wanted to let
242the board know that this is -- we're using capital funds for this. This is not general fund obligation here, so we are using capital funds for this, but again, we can go back and look at the possibility if the board would like for us to look at a different model to use going forward. but this is what people are using? through the chair, if I'm correct, I believe that we decided that all of our schools were going to get score boards, our high schools, if I'm correct. And we didn't make this decision while we were in a financial crisis if I'm correct as well. yeah, the only question I'm asking is whether there's technology that -- if we're purchasing score boards and there's something that DR. Zeman was mentioning that there's some better technology we
243should be looking at and we're looking at something that's more traditional where we could be singing something more flexible, that's the only question I have. I support getting the score boards, if this is best -- I don't know whether it's better technology, it's different technology. I think the better technology is the traditional score board, it's a video board, it's what we're looking at, so it's different technology than the mobile monitor that DR. Zeman speaks of. okay, I support the item. MS. Hixon? thank you. And to your point, I think we already agreed to put score boards in. This is just asking for additional funding based on you going out and getting the actual -- like, what it cossets to put it in. We already voted and agreed we wfr going to put score boards in,
244is that correct? yes, that is correct. The board did agree to fund a school board at the amount of 600 thousand dollars a piece per year for the next couple of years. The money that we're using for that are the smallest school boards, the baseball, the softball score boards, the ones in the basketballs, so smaller ones like these. The score board we're referring to here, they're paot ball score boards, it has to require calculations, it's a different process than the smaller score board for like the gym and baseball and softball field. would this score board be similar to what they have in pompano beach high school? yes, very similar to that model. thank you. any other board member discussion on this item? All in favor of jj18, say aye. aye. all opposed, say no. no.
245item passes with one dissenting vote from DR. Zeman. Can I get a motion and a second on m m-1? Moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Hixon, public comment? Board member comment, MS. Hixon? thank you. I want to say I'm glad to see that we're getting money from a lease. It's 106 -- a little over 106 thousand dollars per year, so I just would ask the superintendent what are we doing to get more items like this to the board? more to come as we start moving staff around, we learn more about that in the next workshop about staff placement and freeing up space so we can lease space. This isn't a new opportunity, this has been an ongoing partnership with broward county public schools and toyota and also some other various automotive groups as well.
246excellent, to the point of not just leasing but happy to see it's in a workforce program and I know we have an item coming up to expand those as well, so any way that we can continue to get certification and workforce education for our students, for adult students and be able to get money from the partners through that, I think we should be doing as many of these as possible. Thank you. thank you, MS. Thompson? thank you, chair. I just had a question about leasing. What happens to the income and does it go to the district or does it stay in the school? Especially as we go not only this contract but we move the lease some of our closed school spaces, where is that money going to go? it goes to the general fund.
247even though it wouldn't be -- no, we don't allocate money like that, it's a bucket of money as far as frfp, it comes in as general, facility rental. from what my understanding is, it's not general fund -- it's capital -- leasing is operating. any other board member comment on this this item? All in favor of m m-1, say aye. all opposed, say no. item passes unanimously. Can I get a motion and a second on oo1? moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Thompson, public xhen on oo1? no comment. board member comment, I have MR. Cervera. thank you, chair. Just want to echo what's been said by this board before about how valuable education is and what a great overall experience the rally to tally program is for those of us who are fortunate to take
248part in it earlier this year, myself included, I think the kids had a really good time. I think that it was able to doors for them that they otherwise might not be able to walk through. Our legislators were gracious with their time, they accepted a lot of meetings, they were engaging with the kids, they answered questions, there were capital tours, it was an overall great experience. We're fortunate enough to get a tour and a speech at the florida supreme court which I know a lot of the kids really enjoyed, so I'm a huge fan of this program, I think it provides sort of firsthand view about how our legislative process works and our form of government here in the great state of florida and I'm hoping we continue this program for years to come, so
249the kids get the benefit of these tours and these trips. Thank you, chair. thank you, DR. Zeman? thank you, chair. Chair, is this -- what type -- time of the year does this happen, when do our scholars go up to tallahassee? DR. Hepburn? MR. Sullivan. yes, and then MS. Adele will jump in, for MR. Cervera, the trip you're talking abis separate and apart from this. This is outside of that capital day, so I'll let you talk about rally to tally. becon, mic., please. I think it's on now. There we go, good afternoon, everyone, vicky, director of bilingual dezal, we have some tent tier dates set for MAY to make sure we get them on this trip this school yardmen and, chair, I love this program, I love making a big deal about these student, I
250love extending it beyond the senior year. What I don't appreciate is kind of the statement in the item that says if we don't do this, we're going to jeopardize continued title 3 and immigrant support funding. Isn't it possible if we didn't do this extension of the close up thing, we could spend title 3 money on other things for these scholars? cek, we write this actinviter into the grant. If we don't approve it, we would have to go through the whole process of amending the grant and removing the activity which as you said is so valuable for our students, so we would just have to do an amendment and repurpose those dollars for something else. terrific. Again, I'm -- there's this continued like problem that I have with mandates. This is a school board with statutory
251authorities including like approving things like had and when a mandate comes, we don't have any authority. It's either do this or the funding goes away or do this or that. Is it possible, chair, that for part of the grant application process that permissions of the board could happen before the grant was submitted? I would be a little coconcerd d out ---- I mean, I hear youpoint, I would be a little concerned about the board getting involved in operations, but I'll defer to MS. Jacques-adams or DR. Hepburn on that. through the chair, I believe that would be infringing because there are deadline tlas are associated with applications and if it was necessary to go to the board to apply, staff MAY MISS The deadline. thanks, chair. I withdraw my concern but at some point, maybe we
252need to mark these items, you know, school board not relevant, okay. Because what happens is we apply for funds, they're going to be used for that or not and then you come to the board and ask for approval. It doesn't feel like we're relevant in that process and I'm fine with that, this is a world class program, but I don't appreciate the process that just kind of sidelines us and it's great to apply for grants and great to do things like this but either we have authority to approve this or we don't and it just feels like we don't in this case. Thanks, chair. any other board member comment? All in favor of oo1, say aye. aye. all opposed, say no. Item passes unanimously. Motion and a second on oo3? moved by DR. Zeman, second
253by MS. Hixon, public comment? PRESIDENT Anna fusco, I do not see her in the audience. she's outside, I'll grab her. she's not here. no other comments. no comments? Okay. Board member comment, I have MS. Bulman? thank you, chair. I just wanted to say thank you for this item to MS. Johnson and to everybody that worked on this. I think this is a great example of problem solving, thinking outside the box to find solutions to some of the issues we're having right now and so I am happy that we will be having these other options to save money and to provide better benefits to our employees, so I really just can't thank you enough for putting this together, both of you, thank you so much. thank you. MS. Hixon? thank you. I also wanted to say
254thank you for bringing this forward. It's a great way to not only save money but to give better services to our staff but I have a question, it will seem off kilter maybe here but I had to find a place where we were talking abspend -- about spend authority. I have asked this question many, many times about spend authority and it always frustrates me so I'm going ask the superintendent if it's something we can change because I had a long conversation with MR. Wanza about this when we were talking about her item. So, we do spend authority because someone thinks that it's going to cost let's say a million dollars. And then they find out that it only costs 800 thousand dollars and so 200 thousand dollars gets tied up in spend authority, tla's not
255available to other people. So, and then if they use a million point 2, they have to come back to us anyway, so why do we continue to do spend authority. Can we -- and I believe it's not in policy, it's in practice we've been doing. Can we do budget authority which was DR. Wanza's term. I don't know where it came from, but where they're giving us exactly what they think they're going to spend. That's what we approve and if they have to spend more than that, they come back to us so we are not tying up unnecessary money in contracts based on what might be needed. Superintendent? DR. Hepburn? yes, so yes, we can do that. I'm hearing -- it's not so much about the mow men clay khur, more about the action is you're
256talking about budget authority, spend authority, you're asking us to be as precise and accurate as possible about what we expect to spend. right, because what we hear of the on times, we're asking for the spend authority but we MAY not use it all, that's great, but whatever you're not use, we've put aside because we said this is what we're going to allow you to spend on it and it doesn't allow us to spend in other places so if we called it a budget authority and then if they had to spend over that, they're going o have to come back to us regardless and then they would come and ask for more budgeted -- yeah, we can change the nomenclature, as far as the actionable things we're doing, as we do our agenda prep and going
257over these ietems, we are sending things back for folks o go over -- to show data that shows historical spend or to give detail thes ear going spend the money on so they can give a more precise and accurate number so we don't have these type of conversations for things we've been been singing for a certain amount of time. there was a canting that was going to come to us, when somebody lined about what the cost was, they said we MAY not use it all, that's not what wah should have been brought to us. My colleagues can weigh in, if it's budgeted authority, that's exactly what you think can -- you know, close to what you think it is and if you have to spend more than that, you're going come back and ask for
258more budget authority, not just spend authority. go ahead. are you the chair now too. I love it, that's awesome, thank you, chair. I wasn't going to talk until she addressed me. I want to be clear about the mechanics of the budgeting, an item comes, they're buying computers, they're 250 bucks a piece, they think they're going o buy ten thousand of them, they do the math and that's it, we're going to go 10% above that just in case with breakage and stuff like that. My understanding is spend authority is not what's reserved in the bujts, so superintendent, when we come and ask for what we think we're going to spend plus 10% in spend authority, what is actually -- what's the mechanics of the hold that's put on the obligation, when you think about funds being
259set aside for something, is it what the estimate is or is it the spend authority that's set aside? so, right now we're wringing based off of what the actual spend authority is because we're trying to get people to calculate and be as precise and accurate as possible. If we need more, we come back to the board. No longer about asking for this exorbitant amount -- that never should have happened, I'm comfortable with that, what I'm not comfortable with is coming back if it's some reasonable amount above and beyond it which I thought is what spend authority gave you. It said we think it's ten thousand and the breakage is 3%, it's 3.5%, we need more to serve our students, I don't think the board needs to be tied up on these things, that's why we
260try today give you authority which we didn't really do. We said we gave the superintendent 100 thousand dollars on spend authority in construction items, but then it comes to find out f we didn't approve the spend authority, he can't even do 100 thousand dollars, our agenda gets bigger and longer to do things like the code went from white plates to red plates, but there's 900 outlets to a school, but now it's about spend authority and tho tha could take two month tos get to the board. We yell at mark for not getting stuff done but we don't provide that. If we're going to be accurate about it, we also make sure that we give the superintendent latitude to spend a little bit more money including breaking the spend authority if we have to in order
261to do things to get things done which is what we want. We want those white plates to be red plates, that goes with code, but if 3600 dollars ought not to come to the board, that's a normal way, cost of doing business. I like being as accurate as possible but I like giving the superintendent and staff the able when there are thing that is happen out of their control o do it, so it's almost like there's an estimate and then there's, yeah, but we're not sure about the 3% break a kaj, it might be 4, so I wonder if we could do both of those things, MR. Superintendent. sounds like the latter is the will of the board if you want to add a certain percent of overage over the spend authority, that givers the
262leeway to continue to get the work done and purchase what's necessary without coming back to the board for such a small amount. and is your cfo comfortable to having an expected amount and a spend -- a budget authority that is slightly higher than the precise estimate? we're okay to move in that direction t question from myself to the board, is the board okay with that? I just feel like we demand speed, right, we want agility and speed and going from 3% to 4.5%, I would like the give you the authority to move within that kind of decision says so I would prefer to have like an estimate but then a budget estimate and then a spend authority that is just within a management control allows you o do it. I don't know how you operate
263an organization without some kind of latitude on very specific things. If it's a contract for service and is you're going to pay an auditor 60 thousand to do an audit, that's easy, if we're buying laptops or construction material and the price goes up 3%, you wait two months to get back to the board, a month to get together the item, a month to get it on the agenda and then we yell y el at you about not getting stuff done. I want to be reasonable about things so we can meet the expectations the community has for speed. MS. Hixon, were you done with your comments? they could put that as part of the budget authority where here's what the total is, here's what would be, you know, 4% or whatever and put it in the
264budget authority but not have this -- you're talking about minimal amounts of money, you're not alining about 500 thousand dollars. I want that to come back to us, I don't want to give 500 thousand over what they need and then they have that spend authority, so I want to reign it in, I want them to come back if they exceed that. I think we're alining about the same language. MS. Rupert? my question was answered, thank you. MS. Thompson? I'm good, thank you. MS. Fusco, would you like to approach the mic.? Three minutes. anna fusco, broward teachers PRESIDENT. I appreciate the dialogue and conversation about spending authority. I think when there's any type of budget, there should be some guideline and is rationale of who and how the superintendent can spend but you have to give
265them some leeway to be able to make some operational decisions and good decision making on your part of what that dollar amount is, the community appreciates it. I know the employ owe aos of broward county public schools appreciate hearing that conversation. I want to get back to the situation about -- which is oo3, the medicine and insurance piece since it's on topic about spending authority and giving authority and talking and asking for what we're doing in our insurance and how we spend it. I know you guys have total control, the school board, of how we use our insurance. You can call etna and dictate every peek of information, you even get to call etna and ask exactly who's using what. I hope you don't do that but I hope you knower you can because you're
266the owner of the insurance, 100%, making that clear, we all know that. And 9 of you have the authority to make sure that you want your employees taken care of. You've already set the tone you're going to be losing definitely up to a thousand employees this year, possibly up to a thousand, no less than 500 within the next two years, anywhere from a thousand to 2 thousand employees, to make it more enrichment and better for the employees you have. You even said we're going to release up to 3 thousand employees but we still want to make it where people want to come and work here. It's kind of hard to say let me go to the an organization that is getting rid of employees, but one piece that you guys made sure over the year,
267some of you sitting here longer than most, a lot of you are in your second term, okay, that come work for broward county public schools because of great schools and great benefits. And one of the biggest pieces to have employees come to broward county public schools is the insurance benefits for everybody. And to keep people healthy and happy, they have to have the means to be able to get to use their insurance. So I told you, you have an effort from me, broward teachers union to work diligently with the office of benefits to move forward to getting insurance bet and her the understanding what we have and what we're paying, but asking somebody to make some motion up there and someone second it to bring back the meds and let's go forward and have great
268strong conversations on making our insurance -- keeping our insurance amazing. . Er any other board member discussion on oo3 which is health insurance cost reduction implementation services. MS. Hissing son? just based on the public comments, can MS. Johnson maybe explain what this item is, like what are we paying the consultant 120 thousand dollars to do? Because it's -- I don't know if it's particularly clear what our end goal -- we know what our end goal is, I don't know based on the contract if that's something everybody would understand? DR. Hepburn? go ahead, MS. Johnson. through the chair, this is to high consultant tos do an rfi or rfp to cover our service under etna, current plan, it does not change our plan but it lowers cost. One of the carve out items is looking at
269claims, the claim costs are too high, looking at weight loss drug causes implementation, the weight loss drugs back and lower the cost on those drugs and is to look at pharmaceuticals across the board and to lower those costs on pharmaceutical drugs. thank you, so this is -- we are hiring a consultant to bring back all of those items to us and once they bring that back, we would be able to move forward with the things that you just listed based on the vote from the board? that is correct. thank you. any other board member comment? All in favor of oo3, say aye. aye. all opposed, say no? Item passes ewe nan nosily. Er can I get a motion and a second on oo4? Moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Thompson, public comment on oo4?
270no, ma'am. board member comment, MS. Hixon? thank you, I just want to say this is very -- a great item, glad to see it and how do we move this -- how do we accelerate it, this is for atlantic tech, how do we get more of these apprenticeship programs at sheridan, at cadger, are -- mcfadder, rewith using our unused school spaces sto enhance this, how can we accelerate this? DR. Toomer? yes, we are, based on our last workshop when we brought the technical colleges to the board to talk about our plan for the future, it's all about expansion and acceleration so we're looking for opportunities wherever we can to expand and to build these programs because they are amazing and they provide a tremendous service o the community. and the reason I ask is because
271we hear a lot -- I don't know if other board members do -- but when I go in the community, they're like, it would be great if you have apprenticeship programs and we do, we have amazing one us, and I want to extenuate this for the public to make you aware we have many apprenticeship program and is we're moving forward to increasing those. any other board member discussion on oo4? All in favor of oo4, say aye. aye. all opposed, say mo? Item passes unanimously. A motion and a second on oo5? Moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Thompson, public comment on oo5? no comment. board member comment, MS. Hixon? like the hixon show today. I have a quick question, very excited about this accidenter I knower there are a lot of school that is participate
272in the dual enrollment, so my question is does this contract include the new program that's happening at coral springs high school? Are they part of this? yes, coral springs high school is a part of that prprram, we have 12 high schohool and is 13 middlechoolsls paparticatining. E eelellent, thank u u so much. MS. Rupert? thank you for that. It's a wonderful program. But I wanted to take a little side trip, I wanted to ask the superintendent about space florida, I keep asking and I know you're working on it and I want to give you the opportunity, so broward will be the first district to do this. yes, so we just signed an mou with space florida so we are in the process of rationalizing the program so we're going to be taking a look at
273two central area, north area and south area schools that offer industry certifications that are aligned to space florida so we can do a full roll-out and marketing plan starting this year for next school year. very good to hear, thank you. any other board member substitution on oo5? All in favor of organization o5, say aye. aye. Er all opposed, say no. Item passes unanimously. Can I get a motion and a second on oo6? Moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Thompson, public comment on oo6? no, ma'am. board member comment, MR. Cervera? MAY I be passed? MS. Rupert? yes, thank you. What data is determining which school playground time to fix it in the order of service for this? good afternoon, alison, environmental health and safety, so we're working through inspects of all of the playgrounds and
274as we identify issues or items that need work orders or vendor support, we are working through that to get the estimates and everything so we're moving as fast as we can. thank you. And is it part of the fca or no? not at this point. okay. And are we primarily talking elementary school, right? yes. yeah. And I would like to see some sort of determination or a time at least to see when are we going to have them all reviewed, when is that process happening? Because I know in my district, there's many we can't use just like everybody else's district, so this has been an issue not only for mental health benefit but physical benefit for our students, so I appreciate your work. thank you. And we hope to move that forward and be able
275to provide you with a better schedule with something that will be come tog the board in the next couple of months. great, thank you. thank you, MS. Thompson? thank you, chair. First I want to say thank you for including playground shades because I think as we are progressing in this world, it's very important that we have some sun protection and then I had two questions. One, because we are consolidating sunshine into fairway, I would like to make a motion to move fairway elementary up to this year, so that the kids going into the new school will have a brand new playground. second. public comment on the motion? anna fusco, broward teachers union PRESIDENT. I'm in favor of any school getting a proper playground and having a new playground, you should throw in bethune that hasn't
276had a playground in over 13 years, these kids play in dirt, but I appreciate school board member thompson wanting to make it more presentable, encouraging, enticing for our community, we understand a school's closing and we want to get them into another school. If we can highlight things we're doing to build up our schools even though that we're closing schools, it should give us an opportunity to be able to take care of the ones that we have and help them grow, so I hope that everybody's in favor of what it would take to be able to get that situation over at fairway to get it done, so please vote in favor of that and also have some conversations if you can and add into it any other schools that don't have shade or don't have playgrounds
277because it's only going to get hotter here in south florida. any other public comment on the motion? Board member comment on the mowing? MS. Alhadeff? does the motion, does it add to the list or does it just bump someone that's on the list off the list? mark dorsett, chief operating officer, task assigned, so right now fairway is in the design fa phase. It was supposed to be done in 2026, we're still working on schools on 2025, so that is in the design phase and we hope to get the plans out of stein and into permitting relatively soon, so that one is in the works right now. so, then is this motion necessary? yeah. I would say yes because I would like it done when these kids come. So, is that -- are you saying because
278it's in permitting, that's not possible for the kids that had their school closed and had to go to a new school to have it by AUGUST 2026? that might be an aggressive schedule to get it done before the beginning of the school year. Again, it's going through permitting right now. I believe alison, you can correct me if I'm wrong, after permitting, it's going to be about 6 months for construction, so, it MAY not be ready before the start of school but the kids will be able to play on it during the school year. so, by SEPTEMBER? alison? I would like a firmer date on this because we are closing a school. Thank you. okay. any other board member comment on the motion. they didn't answer. go ahead. so, I will have to probably give you
279a board follow-up on the exact schedule and get the information from the vendor who's been selected for that specific playground but it is on the schedule as part of the defp to be installed in 26. okay. And then I had another question surrounding -- because there was board consensus to move forward with some changes at glades to make it into a k-8. When would be the appropriate time to include that playground into the drk efp or is that coming back at a later date? mark dorsett, again, chief operating officer, task assigned. Right now if it's the will of bore, it would be a perfect time because we're going through our defp process right now. If that is going to be considered a priority for the new k-8 at glades middle, this would be the time
280to request the funding for that. so, since we've had previous discussions where that process will take one to two year, where do you think that would fit into this schedule? I don't think that -- I don't think it will be two years. Probably maybe a year out for the construction of just the playground at that facility. Now the other portion would be -- I meant including the other porg because I don't want to change a plan -- like, I don't want to do it next year and the school is not going to be ready for two years so I'm asking if r your recommendation of where that would fit into this. so I would say two years out. so, 27? yes. so, I would like to make a motion to add glades to -- there's
281a current motion on the floor, we have to vote on your first motion. I have another motion after that. are you done with your comments? with fairway, yeah. any other board member comments for fairway? I guess I had some questions about the feasibility of doing that. I hear you, MR. Dorsett, you think that might be a bit aggressive. Help me understand because it seems kind of wild that it would take six months to build a playground. So, help me understand why it takes so long. that's the timing that we're getting from the vendors based on all of the things that they have to deal with, the soil sampling and so forth and so on, that's their timeline for construction for a playground and I want to just clarify. Everything to be done in 2028, not
2822027, 2027 is next year. So, 2028 for everything at glades. okay. In your professional experience, is the time that it's taking to build these playgrounds comparable in the county t cities? Is that how long it takes? our process, we do have more defined processes if you will, it MAY take us a little longer than it would a city because of our procedures and the requirements and everything that we have to go through. So, I don't know the timeline for a project to be done in the city, a playground to be done in the city, but with going through the architectural review, the drawings and everything, submitting for permits and so forth, and getting everything, it will be about a six month process for construction. got it. Is there a way to speed that process up
283without compromising like the safety and integrity of the project? well, again, what we would have to do and I'll get with alison and the vendor that's going to construct the playground and we'll have that discussion to see if there's a way we can do it with help from the building department to make sure we don't violate any requirements that we need. So, it's going to have to be some conversations we have with the building department and the playground vendor and so forth. I guess to the maker of the motion, I want to support the motion. I also don't want to put unrealistic expectations o on staff so I'm wondering like if we pass this motion, and then they don't make it happen, what happens? I'm annoyed -- I mean, if it's because of permitting, you
284can't speed up -- but I would like a commitment that you will do everything absolutely possible so that the kids who lost their home in their school will have a new playground. we will definitely investigate that. I don't want to make a commitment just yet. I need to talk to the appropriate people before I make that commitment. Because if I make that commitment, I want to be able to stand by that, so I want to make sure I get all the information that I need. MRS. Alhadeff? yes, so when we talk about timing and I hear this very frequently that it's in the building department, it's in the building department, so my question, DR. Hepburn, are we analyzing the -- what is happening in the building department, whether it's appropriately going through the work or
285there's delays or is there a reason, but to really pick that apart in the building department because it seems every time I ask a question, it's in the building department. yes, so, you know, when they design these projects, there is time imbedded in the timeline for back and forth. When the design plan goes to the building department for permitting, they MAY send it back several times until the design is up to specs for current requirements, so there's always time built in for that because there's going to be back and forth. So, it's not that the building department is holding it up, they're ensuring it meets all railers requirements for the county and the building department. is there a way we can look into the efficiencies of the building department that could possibly speed up the
286building department to make it more efficient so that the outcomes, the things are faster, whether they need to be more technology than paper driven, maybe they need more staff, I don't know, but I think this board would like to know what that answer is, how it could be more efficient. it's the ladder, they need more staff. That's part of our plans as far as when we rev up our capital program that you guys will review after we come back from spring break, that's part of accelerating sofm the work, so we do use an outside support, contracted support to assist the building department for many of the reviews they have to do, but for internal, it's about -- we need to rev up the amount of staff we have. is the building department still paper driven
287or have we pivoted to electronic. I think they are pivoting but a large part -- we are pivoting, we're in the process of acquiring licensing for the new software for the permitting process to be implemented, so we're really close to doing that right now. okay, do we know, DR. Hepburn, how quickly we'll see that process? we can follow up. I don't know off the top of my head, we can can follow up. thank you. any other board member comment on the motion? All in favor of the motion, say aye. all opposed, say no? Motion passes unanimously. MS. Thompson? thank you, chair, if I'm understanding correctly, fy28 would be the right place to put glades? yes, if we're tabling ublg -- talking about the construction -- the playground. the playground, we can accelerate that, that would
288be done before 28 but the construction that we discussed, it would not be done until 28. so, my train of thought here is I don't want to prioritize a playground at a school that won't be used for those ages until it's ready, so like when would you suggest that it gets added in so that we can be in compliance with florida building regulations which I can't remember what they're called right now, so after everything's ready to open, when should the playground be -- it can be done simultaneously once we get everything in place, you know, that can be done simultaneously with the construction of the renovation of the building so it can happen all at the same time. Thafrjts would be fy28? correct. so I would tliek make a motion to add glades to the
289list for fy28, that way when it becomes a k-8, it is in compliance with whatever the requirement thing is called. second. public comment on the motion? Board member comment on the motion? MS. Hissing son? Jts I have a question. Did we vote as a board to move glades to a k-8 or is that coming back to us? I don't remember b. I believe we made that direction in a workshop, I can't remember. good ahead, DR. Wanza? thank you, DR. Hepburn. So, we haven't done the formal ro cez like we did this past school year, but as a part of the conversation when -- and I forget the item number that it was voted down, this school year to actually expand the elementary to k-8 and do something with the boundary for new renaissance and glades.
290The conversation at that time was to come back in a year which we would do in this process and MRS. Thompson talked about how wringing through her community, there was more of a desire for glades to become the k-8 realizing that we would then have to do something with a couple of the elementary schools so that's what's going to be a part of -- you're going see in the MAY -- I think it's MAY 12 board workshop when we start planning and talking about next school year is when we will get that final direction from the board on that, but the board did have conversation, the board expressed its respect for the work done by MS. Thompson in her district and that being the direction for staff to look to go when we bring proposals
291for the upcoming school yardmen so, based on that information, I don't hi it makes sense to the add a playground to a school that's not an elementary school yet, so I would prefer to wait to do that until there's a formal vote because we know lots of things change in between and once there is a final vote about it becoming an elementary school, then ke we can go and add it on there. I don't think it makes sense to do it right now because it's not an elementary school, it is a middle school. Thank you. any other board discussion? All in favor of the motionfinger say aye. aye. Ment all oppose, say no. Er motion passes with one dissenting vote, MS. Hixon. We're back to the item, MS. Ofrp son? I yield the floor. MR.
292Cervera? nothing from me, thank you, MS. Rupert, for covering my areas of inquiry. anyone else on oo6? All in favor of oo6, say aye. aye. all opposed, say no. Item passes unanimous -- as amended, item passes unanimously as amended. Can I get a motion and a second on oo11? Moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Hixon. Public comment? no comment. board member comment? As I mentioned last week, DR. Hepburn and I visited rickards middle school and something we heard pr the staff pretty overwhelmingly was the need for more portable space, modular space and I'm wondering if we are accounting for that in this item. DR. Hepburn? go ahead, MR. Dorsett? yes, we are accounting for that. We're looking to adlike suggted, a a clasoooom and a group restroom are the two items, and this item
293would support that. got it. Would the classroom be -- what would the classroom be for, like an actual class or other uses? the community wanted just an open classroom in the event something happened, they wanted some place to congregate or whatever, so we were just going to put a classroom -- a building the size of a classroom will and staff can decide how they want to utilize that space, they did mention something about during the pe time when it rains, they have no place to go and those kinds of things. The building, almost the size of the band room we were in, that's what we were looking at. . Er hopefully if this item passes x we would deliver on those asks? Mensing yes, I will be work witching sonya coli, staff torx get that
294on the way to see if we can get na for the school. got it. Another issue that was flagged for me when I was there is that the school counselors don't have any confidential space to meet with students one on one and deliver counseling and things like that. So I'm woner ifing that's something we can contemplate as well. we can definitely look at this during the process. any other board comment on oo11? DR. Zeman? thank you, chair. For piggyback, it's wonderful and very quick, it's an award already competed in another district, how many piggybacks did we look at before we selected the one we used in this particular item? and I'm sorry I missed it, I think it's from swanny county, how many piggybacks did we look at to find the best one for broward
295county for this particular construct pr ugt? the reason we went with this one is it was two-fold, this iss the company that we're running the portables for our parkland, markham if&the ones at rickards right now, the same company that's using -- that has the rental on these units, we're using that same accompaniment we wanted to stay within the use of that agreement to utilize this one, that's why we're doing this one. and I'm curious though specifically about my question, I understand you want to use a vendor and that's -- I can understand there's some strong reasons for it. How many piggyback contracts did you look at that that vendor has when you considered using the one from swanny county? I will refer that question to sonia to see if they contacted any vendors. good afternoon,
296sonia coli, exec tier director of capital programs. We did not look at any other companies, we were again extending the original -- since we have mobile modular out there and we have a piggyback with swanny, we decide today extend it with them, we did not look at others. in general, I understand piggybacks, it bothers me because we're not saying something and we say we want things and it's fast. If there's a piggyback and the places haven't inflated because the contract they had, we can save money sometimes for doing piggyback. If we pig gay back after looking at one contract, there's no understanding that this contract is better than any than the dozen of orether contracts we've had, so I'll keep asking about this but I hope nr superintendent that we -- MS. Superintendent this time,
297whether or not we think a little bit about this in our procurement space. We have to qu us justify other people's money all the time, we all do it with our personal finances, it seems like we taught do it with other people's money, so in the future, I will not be able to support items that come before this board that have no piggyback competition. We have to look around and find best deal around we can find for the county. any other board member comment? All in favor of oo11, say aye. aye. Er all opposed, say no. Item passes unanimously. Can I get a motion and a second on oo12? Moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Thompson. I have a comment on oo12? one registered speaker, PRESIDENT Anna fusco. okay. I got them mixed up,
298this is one I should have talked on but I guess I was feed thing seed. San na fusco, for our health insurance and keeping our employees in good healthy conditions, you know, you've talked about plans of letting go a thousand teachers this year, up to a a thousand next year and up to a thousand the following year, there's lots of components with situations happening, cosigning of school and is people moving out televising's a lot of people under severe stress, high anxiety, pressure, and let's tie into some other type of health elements, however they get them. Being out in the community, sometimes from in our schools, you know, illnesses arise and it's very important that we make sure that they stay healthy. We've all said it, that the health plan that we have is amazing. If
299people do get some type of unfortunate illness or even worst case scenario an illness and so forth, we have the best possible places to go and doctors to see to get the treatment. But you talked about that our cfo talked about when changing of money and is so forth that the plan doesn't change but I have to stand people corrected, when you take things away as medicines, as part of the plan, and then when you take medicines away while people are already enrolled in OCTOBER, not knowing things are going to be taken away, they were counting on certain meds. Again, I don't care what type of med it is, I don't care if it's a medicine that helps lael a paper cut quickly because teachers endure paper cuts each day. I'm trying tog make a
300point, you're not doctors, I'm not a doctor, I don't have to be on to medicine to tell you why people need medicine. By medicines being taken away because you guys decided it, I have learned so much and got to meet so many different people out there and their rationale why they take the med and why they need the med, it doesn't matter if it's the weight loss med, the anxiety med, the thyroid med, I heard there's another one for osteoporosis, it helps inflammation that keeps them healthy so they're not getting at a stress level that can cause other things like hyperteption, heart conditions and I don't care what anybody says, tle f three s's cause kans and her stress is the biggest one besides sugar and salt. I'm making it clear to you guys that
301people are beating down my text messages, phone numbers, e-mails, instagram, facebook, whoever they can reach out to me, meeting me in schools, meeting me many the community, meeting me in stores saying we need all of our meds back so I'm asking you guys to make a motion to bring back meds and let l ets work to getting other cost effective with our health insurance. thank you, any other public comment? no comments. board member comment, MR. Cervera? thank you, chair. I've got a question on this proposal that's in front of the board this afternoon. The agreement between the school board and etna has already been finalize and had put into proper form if I I'm not mistaken. This is now asking us to vote on a proposed amendment to an exhibit d which is entitled pharmacy
302service and fee schedule to the master services agreement. My question, chair, or perhaps to the deputy superintendent is, if this board does not vote to approve this amendment for the pharmacy service and fee schedule to the master service agreement, what happen tos the viability of the master service agreement that is currently in place between etna and this district? thank you fulton, although that MAY be a jacques-adams question. interim general counsel should answer that. MS. Jacques-adams? so, I don't understand, is there a -- can you repeat the question. sure, so we have a -- I believe, let me use the proper terminology here, we have a master services agreement with etna, there are exhibit tos that agreement, correct? Okay. Before this board, it's asking us to approve the amendment, first it's entitled first amendment to agreement,
303specifically to exhibit d of the main contract and exhibit d to the main contract is entitled pharmacy, service and fee schedule to the master service agreement. you with me? yes. okay. So, if this board hypothetically speaking, excuse me, if this board votes against the amendment to this exhibit d, what's in front of it today, what happens to the overall agreement, is it still a viable agreement or is it wholly dependent on this amendment to exhibit d? so, I'm going to answer generically but if you want fact specific, what will happen, then staff will need to answer, so whenever you have a contract and you are seeking to amend it and you do not amend it, then whatever that proposed amendment is does not happen. Now, it's not a straightforward matter, so it all depends upon
304the underlying facts of what you're trying to amend, so in terms of the specifics of this particular agreement, what would happen if the amendment to this agreement did not move forward would be a question that staff would have to answer. MS. Jacques-adams, I would have much like to know the answer to that, so if we can, deputy superintendent, ask staff, I would appreciate it. thank you. good afternoon, DR. Dildra, director of benefits and employment services for the district. So, MR. Cervera, in answer to your question, hypothetically if the board decides not to vote this item up, then the current exhibit d -- well, the current exhibit d would remain in place and the pharmacy fee schedule would not be changed and also the drug that is referenced in the contract would remain in place. so,
305just for I guess the benefit of people who maybe don't read contracts every day, there's currently an exhibit d in place that's part of the master contract, correct? that is correct. and we are now being asked collectively as a board to amend that version of exhibit d and replace it with the version that is in the agenda packet today, correct? that is correct. okay so, the version that is in front of us today, if hypothetically speak ising rejected, the contract would still remain in place but the original version of exhibit d would also remain in place? that is correct. okay. Thank you, chair. thank you, MS. Thompson? I'm good. you're good? MS. Hixon? thank you, I just have a couple of questions for staff. So, can you tell us how many employees are impacted by
306this change and what would be the cost savings to the district if we were to vote this item up? through the chair, approximately 2216 employees are impacted and the net savings is approximately 12 million dollars. thank you, and we have a total of 25 thousand employees, is that correct? approximately benefit eligible employees, yes. and how many people take advantage of our insurance? I would say approximately 23 thousand. okay. So, this is about 10% yes. approximately, okay, thank you. close, yes. any other board member comment on this item? All in favor of oo12, say aye. aye. all opposed, say no. no. item passes with two dissenting votes from MS. Rupert and MR. Cervera. Can I get a motion and a second on oo14? Moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Rupert, public comment on oo14? no
307comment. board member comment, MS. Bulman? sorry, yes. I had -- could we e have decorum in the audience, please. go ahead, MS. Bulman. thank you. Sorry, I was looking for my note on this. Okay. So, my question I think MS. Hixon kind of addressed this earlier, so it's just about the -- I guess I'm -- I guess I would like to know what the mechanics of this is because it's asking for an amount that goes through JUNE 2027. Right now we have budgeted from FEBRUARY to JUNE 2026 but then it's asking for more, so how does that work. Can we approve spending that isn't in the budget yet? DR. Fulton? I'm confused about the way it's put together. MR. Dorsett? yeah, the amount we were requesting was for the five months for now. I think
308that was the original amount to carry us through the end of the year. Then we would have to come back after the fifth month. so, the ask would really be for 192930, not for -- that puts you at about 612, 613, the way that it's written in the executive summary? yeah, [Inaudible] the amount for the -- from FEBRUARY to JUNE would be 192930. so, on the executive summary because I'm looking at the memo to revise, it's still asking for 420 thousand 70 dollars for JULY 2026 to JUNE 2027 so, should that be removed until we come back? if I understand it correctly, the way we have revised the executive summary iss to do the budget for each school fiscal year. for the one year. from now up to JUNE 30 complete this is fiscal year
30926, that's the 192 thousand 930, and then when we go into fiscal school year 27 which is JULY 1 until JUNE 30 of 2027, that's the 420 thousand 70 dollars we're asking for. Because we're no longer crossing fiscal years so if thereafter contract we had for three years, it was asked to break it up every year so you can see what the ask is because we only fund the budget every year. so I guess the question is if we haven't budgeted it, we don't have a budget yet, we haven't budgeted it, is this something we can do here? So we're basically approving not only for the rest of this fiscal year but we're approving for next fiscal year? I mean, is this normally what we're doing? yes, to your question, but we're trying to make
310a little bit more transparent to break it down by each fiscal year so you can see what the actual hit for this one here is the general fund would be every school year instead of looking at it as overall, so right now -- for the record, I approve of making sure that the air quality is good in our schools so I'm not objecting to this, I was trying to read it properly, yes. did I answer your question? yes. thank you. any other board comment on oo14? All in favor of oo14, say aye. aye. all oppose, say no. Item passes ewe nan nosily. Did I can I get a motion and a second on oo17? Moved by DR. Zeman, second by MS. Hixon, public comment on oo17? no comment. board member comment, MR. Cervera? thank you,
311chair, I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this. I would like a little bit of clarification. First and foremost, the amount of money that we continue to spend on school buses, while certainly I understand the need, we want to keep our kids safe, we want to keep them comfortable but as we face the declining enrollment numbers that we continue to face, it seems like our bus maintenance and allotment fees continue to increase. I remember not too distant in the past, we were facing a request for like 80 million dollars in buses that I was like against. I'm looking at almost 6 million dollars for vehicle maintenance. I'm wondering if I can hear from staff the necessity for this at this point and just confirmation that in fact this is not like some type of grade
312or newewpurchasese. This keepouflt opopatational d d sasafe. so, all of the above, I'm going to have DR. Wanza to go into detail. If you noticed in the executive summary, we did background and homework to make sure we did our due diligence to ensure the amount we're asking for was an accurate a amount to make sure our tires were being rotated and changed, so DR. Wanza, if you can add to that. thank you, valerie wanza, chief strat yi and innovation officer. The ask before the board today so we we're clear and this goes back to MRS. Hixon's comment, this isn't an ask for additional funding, this is an ask to spend.The money that is in the already allocated bujdbacker budget for transportation and fleet service and is I also want to make sure that to your
313point, mr. Cervera, not only the board but the public is aware, this is for more than just school buses, this is for the driver's ed vehicles, this is for our service vehicles that ppo uses to go around and repair schools, you know, so it's the yellow fleet which is the buses that everyone knows coupled with what we call the white fleet, so -- and this is for more than tires, this is parts, tires and it's really to keep those vehicles maintained. It is not asking for any new bells x whistles if you will but it's to ensure the safety of the vehicles that we have on the road each and every day. thank you for that. Thank you, chair. MS. Hixon? thank you, and this just kind of goes to my point about budgeted authority
314versus spend authority, so we already gave them the ability to put that money aside but now they have to come back to us to ask if they can spend it. If we've put it aside for budget, they should be able to spend it. That's really why I think it makes more sense, this is your budget, if you spend beyond what we've agreed is your budget, then you have to come back to us to ask us for more money but we do this whole spend authority thing and then they have to come back and ask us, can they spend money we said they could spend, so in terms of DR. Zeman talking about wasting time and stuff, that's some of the other pieces of spend authority that just doesn't make a lot of sense to me,
315so thank you. any other board member discussion on oo17? All in favor of oo17, say aye. aye. all opposed, say no? Item passes. r-r 1, moved by DR. Zeman, second by [Inaudible]. Board member comment, MS. Thompson? thank you, chair, just a second, please. I think I would like staff's opinion on the resolution language and how we can can make sure people understand that there won't be a repeat of what happened with the last resolution, with the last referendum. through the chair. yup? alright, so this resolution is -- the most important part of the resolution is the ballot language tha,'s what the voters will see and that's what we sent over to the county to drek them to place it on the ballot. The board will workshop the intended allocation and will vote on has at
316a later board meeting to formalize the intended allocation. And that vote, it will be a lot easier for the board to restrict the supplement payments, the challenge with the ballot language is you only have 75 words. We did try to make it a little tighter than last time around, instead of saying staff, I believe we have teachers, school based and support staff. MS. Rupert? yes, I look forward to that conversation, MR. Sullivan. I try today bring a b item but it was too busy to pull together in the last two weeks so but I was working on it and I look forward to making sure that it is more stringent and definitely leaves no room for wiggling, so thanks. DR. Holness? MADAM Chair, I had the same concern, so I'm good, thank you. MR. Cervera's
317not here right now. MS. Bulman, are you ready to speak to it or do you want me to -- DR. Zeman? thank you so much, chair, I'm ready to talk to this item. This is a life or death situation for us to be honest with you. The funding that comes through this referendum is what keeps our educators kind of reasonably well compensated, not compensated what they deserve or with wah we'd like to give them but reasonably well compensated and, chair, now I think we have an upper limit to our instructional staff of 12 thousand dollars per year, is that correct what we use this referendum money for? I believe so, but I'll defer to you, DR. Hepburn? that is correct. thank you, and it's been my pleasure to kind of spend the last few years
318taug k to people in the dmaount and I'll tell you what I have learned loud and clear, like over and over again which is broward county supports increasing educator pay. So, I've drafted a motion that would change the wording slightly to make it very, very clear to the public that what they're voting on will increase educator pay and I think that the workshop we still have to do on the allocation of the 100% will be a great and rich conversation but I'm kind of focused right now on getting 50% plus 1 vote and the best way to do that is to give the people what they want and to make it crystal clear what we're going to spend this money on. So, if I could, chair, I'm going to move right into a motion. I
319would like to make a motion to replace the current language in item r-r 1 for what goes on the referendum, after conversations with MR. Sullivan and DR. Hepburn, they invited a rewrite and so I've rewritten it and what my motion will do would be replace that language with the following language, label for the title, funding educator pay school safety and mental health service and is related expenditures through a one mill property tax levy, hen the body making some changes, the changes include to recruit and retain teachers and essential educators, improve school safety and enhance mental health services, shall the school board continue to levy a one mill ad valorem property tax from JANUARY 27 to DECEMBER 30 to fund additional pay for teachers and essential educators r fund personnel and fundamental health services for public
320and charter schools. Because I'm a student of my colleagues, I have printed one of these things out so we can read it. And I will thank DR. Hill for printing it out for me, thank you, DR. Hill, but my point in rewriting this and again, this is after talking to to DR. Hepburn and MR. Sullivan was to make this lapping waj crystal clear to voters that this one mill we're asking them to sustain is primarily going to be spent on teachers and that's what we did last time, we spent let me just ask the superintendent, MR. Superintendent, we had an obligation to spend at least 75% of the previous referendum money on teachers. What per sen tamg of it did we spend on teachers over the past four years? 75% per year. at least 75,
321I'm not sure exactly, ma'am, do you have another number that's better 75 or is that right? So, we did that. the only thing I would say, it wasn't just the teachers, it was at least 75 towards compensation which included a multitude of -- I'm with you, but here's my thing, the people want teachers and educators to get this money, they've been crystal clear about that, that means they're going to vote if we put that as the lead item and so when we lead with safety and security which is essential, mental health, so essential, and then say educator salaries, third, we're diffusing the message and I don't want to do that at this time. These funds, 375 million dollars to the school district, only 300 stays with us because we have to give 20% to the
322public charter schools but 300 million dollars is a make or break amount of money. We have got to write this in n a way that ensures the maximum chance of pay and so this is my draft, make it better if it's possible to do that but my motion, chair, is to replace the current lang wangbacker waj for the ballot with this language that's in the second half when I've already read. Thank you. second. MS. Jacques-adams before we go to public comment on motion? I wanted to ensure that our outside counsel, bob gain, had a chance to review this, this language is critical the way it is phrased so I want to ensure that any rewrite of it is approved by our outside counsel. so, is that possible today? I can reach out to him but
323I did not know there was going to be a change to this language. Is he aware of the change to this language? not that I'm aware of. I found out about this as you did. okay. So I'm not objecting to any changes, I just want to make that clear. I want to ensure that our outside counsel who has specialized knowledge in handling these types of things had a chance to legally review this because he reviewed the prior version. just real quick, is there public comment on the motion? Board member comment, MR. Cervera? MS. Jacques-adams, I'm wondering, is this -- I'm looking at it, I'm going to study it harder and I've made some highlights but I kind of like what I see. My only concern is we can't vote on something and then outside counsel
324comes back and says it's MISS Ago word or a comma or something, who knows, and we've now wasted what and we have to come back in another meeting. I guess my first question, number one, can we get an answer in the next -- it's the last agenda item we're doing. it's not. can we get an answer by the end of the day? if I MAY -- MR. Sullivan. le's pretty responsive to us so once we finalize the language, we're e-mailing him now, he's pretty responsive, we'll give him a call, so I think it's doable. You know, I'm not an attorney so I'll put that disclaimer. I counted the words so we're definitely within the word count. And it has all the terminology from the first one. We would run it by him, but I don't
325see any glaring challenges. But there is an impact to -- I believe there would be impact of how you worded it as it relates to essential educators which is fine, if the board wants to do that, but I don't believe -- like the transportation workers, the food workers, the clericals, which obviously that's the prerogative of the board, I wanted to point that out. I guess is it worth having this conversation now when we don't know e the answer from outside counsel, we're going to spend time on this now and if he doesn't get back to us today, I don't see how we can vote on something that's not approved by outside counsel. do you want to call the question? no, I'm wondering is it better -- can we pass this item and see if we
326can get a response if we have two other agenda items to do? you mean table it? you mean table? can I make a motion to table it. before we table it, can we get the finality from the board of the proposed language. Sofrjts we can converse with them amend it with the language that you want and table it. I have no opinion one way or another on DR. Zeman's language, I'm reading it and it creases fine, I'm not suggesting that it's going the pass constitutional muster or whatever all lawyers are looking at but I'm satisfy witched the words as they're put on this piece of paper. MS. Hixon? thank you. I like the -- funding educator pay to start off with 100% gives a whole different connotation than funding school safety, although I know it's
327all important. I think it's important you start off -- I just have to MR. Sullivan's point, a couple of suggestions, so to recruit and retain teachers and essential employees because educators is like teachers assistants, you know, teacher aids, things of that nature but doesn't include the bus drivers and all of those people who I believe we also would like to include, so I would say essential employees, not educators, and then where it says to fund additional pay for teachers and -- instead of essential educators, I would suggest and staff that directly impacts students because that's what I think -- I don't know how many words we are here so I MAY have added too many, but I think the whole point of what we've said over and over is that the money should only go
328to people who directly impact students and I think that needs to be written in the ballot wording. are you making a substitute motion? unless -- I don't know a friendly amendment, I guess we're not allowed to do that so substitute motion to change the wording nr the first sentence to essential employees and then the second to fund additional pay for teachers and staff that tetley impact students. I didn't count the words. the if I MAY, MR. Sullivan, correct me if I'm wrong, maximum of 75 words, correct? yes. and this -- DR. Zeman just informed me his is at 63 words, so just an fyi. Er because it's really just adding three words to it. Thank you. that was my intent, so.You don't mind, I could make that amendment. yeah, that's fine. which three words did
329you want to add? so, well, I want to get rid of essential educators, where it says additional pay for teachers and -- instead of essential educators, say staff that directly impacts students. Or it could say essential staff if you want. I would rather be really specific with the voters, essential is so vague, I like the original one, I would make that change. Read it back to me one more time. Staff -- additional pay for teachers and staff that directly impacts students, comma, fund school safety personnel, and so forth. Then the other suggestion was instead of essential educators, essential employees because food service, bus drivers, those aren't educators. and I intended it not to be for them. So, part of this is to be honest with our voters. Let me finish, there's a real intent behind
330this, let me explain it. Our county has been loud and clear about wanting people in schools to get additional pay. If in fact we do this, the amount that's available for those people that are the direct beneficiaries of the referendum would be with significantly higher than it is right nowfinger we collect 300 million dollars, you're in the 15-20 thousand dollar, 15-18 thousand dollar employee range, not 12 thousand max all the way to 500 for the newish -- newbie, that's 13 thousand student and is people working in schools would get significantly more money than we give them right now, that frees up the opportunity for the administration the&the school board to find efficiency tos pay the bus dwrao ifr and is to pay people who are not getting paid, the people that need to help us
331find efficiencies so it's the business lines so, the intent is with this wording to give the people what they really want, which is to reward the people that are working on our school sites but it doesn't exclude anyone else from get ago pay rate, we have to find efficiencies or increases in property tax 1r58s ror from the required effort or from the state or grants in order to pay the business line folks as opposed to those who go to work every day on a work site. so, let me ask the superintendent, right now, do the bus drivers, the cafeteria workers, do all of them get money from the referendum? yes, that's correct. right, so my concern is they do directly impact students. If we don't get them to school, if we don't feed them, they
332-- I think we're going to have a hard time getting this passed if you don't include those people. and we should have that debate, so I think I'll leave my motion as is and I'm not hard over that my version is better than yours, it's just one that reflects what the voters have told us they care about and it maximizes the chance of winning the referendum so I'm going to propose that to the bore, as an amendment, you should propose yours as well. so I'll make a motion to make the wording to say to recruit and retain teachers and essential employees, improve school safety and enhance mental health services shall the school board of -- continue to add the ad valorem m taxes to fund addidional pay fo achersrsanand afaff atat directly impact students, comma,
333pruned school safety personnel, comma, ask fundamental health services, comma,.Er public and charter schools. substitute motion made by MS. Hixon seconded by MS. Rupert. Public comment on the substitute motion? okay, anna fusco, essential employee iss too broad. That's how we got into this mess, sorry, debbie, I lover you but let's be real. It's only going to get passed because I did the working out on the streets knocking on doors for teachers. I agree, there's tons of employees and support staff that need to reap the benefits of the referendum and I think that piece can be worked out but once you put that word essential, that can mean anybody, it can mean us sitting here, they're essential, you caoe f guys create the narrative to make them essential every minute. You didn't care about the 10%, about
334the medicines, all of a sudden you want to care about other employing, I'm at a loss right now, totally at a loss, so I think it shouldn't pass with this amendment and go back to teachers and the support staff that works with the students and that I think would win and generate besides teachers. thank you. Any other public comment on the motion? Board member comment on the motion, MS. Hixon? I want to point out I did say in there that it was staff that directly impacts students, that's in the wording, it's just in the bottom part of the sentence, so I'm fine if there's a different way to say that, if you say essential educators, when you say staff that directly impacts students, it doesn't include people we want to include. So, the only change
335sto say to recruit and retain teachers of essential employee and is the other change is to say to fund additional pay for teachers and instead of staining essential educators, say staff that directly impacts students. I think that somewhere has to be in here to get to where we want to be about this money should only go to people who directly impact students and maybe it says up there retain teachers and staff that directly impacts students and instead of essential employees, if we have enough wording to do that, I'm happy to change it to that. if I MAY. MR. Sullivan? I think if you add that second part o the first part, we're going to be over the words and I think the important part of what we're going to use the funds, the wording where
336it says to fund, everything after that is the important part of who's going to get those funds. We also did speak to the outside attorney and he's standing by to approve the language. MRS. Alhadeff? I don't want to agree with the motion staff that directly impacts students x how do you define that. Everybody is directly impacting students, so I think it's too broad. if -- MR. Cervera sm I'm o not an english major, okay, but I'm take ago hard look that the and now perhaps I've confused myself which wouldn't be the first time, but the way I read this, if we break this paragraph in half, right, the first part of the paragraph is talking about recruiting and retaining teachers, essential employees, improving school safety and enhancing mental health. It's kind of giving a foreshadowing
337of what we're trying to do. The problem -- not the problem but the reality is the way this is written is the only thing that the money is being spent on are the items that occur after the words to fund, right. So, thank you, so as this is written now, it's talking about what our intentions are about -- we want the recruit, we want to fwet essential people, we want to improve this, that's great we want to do those things but the way this is written, the only thing the money can be used is to fund additional pay for teachers and if we were to accept the motion on the floor, staff ta that directly impacts students, fund school safety personnel and fundamental health services for the public and the charter schools. So, the stuff
338in the beginning about recruiting and retaining, I don't know that that falsest into what's being funded. So, if that's intent of this bore, I think this needs a complete rewrite because, again, the only thing that the money is being spent on under the current version of DR. Zeman's proposal is pay for additional teachers and staff that darkly impacts students, the funding of school safety personnel and the funding of mental health services, those -- what is it, four, those four category ares the only thing the dollars are being spent on, the way I read this. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe our general counsel can tell me I'm crazy, but that's how I read this, so I just want to make sure my colleagues understand what's currently before in this version which I realize we still have to
339vote on but that's what's being proposed. Thank you. other board member comments, DR. Holness? thank you, MADAM Chair, so should we agree with the language from board member hixon in terms of to fund additional pay for teachers and staff that directly impact students, DR. Hepburn, should this pass through the voters, when it comes to us, right, how much latitude do you have as a superintendent after the voters pass this to determine staff that directly impacts students? Is this too broad? no, that would be determined in another workshop by the board as far as where exactly the money would go as far as personnel, who do you specifically pay. if this goes out to the voters and it passed with the language that board member hixon, you know, has developed here, when it comes back to
340us at a workshop, the board will now have the right to determine who is defined under staff that directly impacts students? Fshlgtbacker frj correct. so we as a board could come back at a workshop and determines who gets the money? correct. so, then it wouldn't matter if the language seems to be general because when the fund are approved, we can then have a discussion in a workshop and determine the staff that we will give the money to, cek? correct. okay, so I am okay with the language from board member hixon. I'm also concerned a little bit though in the prior current wording, it mentioned essential instructional programs for public and charter schools. So, with the current language, DR. Hepburn, from you -- what you interpret, how will instructional programs be acted if I's not within
341the proposed lang wamg from board member hixon? John has his hand up. go ahead, MR. Sullivan? in the original language that was a carry over from the previous two referendums. Previous boards had that, although I don't think we utilized it but it was -- it did did give the board greater flexibility of using referendum funds as it relates to essential instructional programs. so, MR. Sullivan, even though we had the flexibility to use the funds for essential instructional programs, did we ever use it for that? no. okay, so it was just in the language but we never used it? correct. okay, so another concern. I know it mentioned to improve student achievement. Did we ever use prior referendum funds to fund improvement of student achievement? I would say indirectly you did because we used it to
342compensate teachers and help with recruiting and retaining. okay, so that would go back to compensating teachers, right? yes, but the first part of the ballot question in both versions of the proposed and DR. See ma p's and modified by MS. Hixon, the first part is really you're telling the why and then you're asking -- telling what you're going use it for. I don't see a problem with board member hixon's motion because we can come back a as board in a workshop and discuss which staff would directly impact students so who should get the funding so I am perfectly okay with board member hixon's motion. MS. Bulman? I'm a little confused at this point. This is going around and I'm trying to type it out. So, the change in the language that you made -- okay,
343there's a couple of questions I have about this that I would like to discuss. One is I think the language that said that it impacts students darkly -- directly -- staff that directly impacts students. The reasoning for that is in the discussion and is the issues that have come about, that's what people -- we said we only wanted the money to go to staff that directly impacted students and every staff does not. That means school based people who are there every day impacting students directly, I mean, everyone impacts them in some way. I understand language that says school based, I would put that back in there, I'm wondering with you're saying -- it's broad to say impacts, it would be too narrow to say work directly with students? it's the same thing. well, it's not
344because you're impacting a a student -- I mean, I guess, we could come up with some examples that I don't have off the top of my head right now. If you're not working directly with the student but you're creating programming that the sunt is benefiting from or you're -- I think that's not a person that we want to have in there, okay. So, I think if that's the case, I think we should say recruit and retain teachers and staff who work directly with students and that we should -- and fund in addition mall pay for teachers, school based employees and employees would work directly with students. I'm okay with -- you're okay with changing it. yes, instead of saying and staff that directly impact students, and staff that work directly with students, so you're adding
345one word. I'm goipg -- going to try to type it so I can read it. work directly with students. I don't know if it says the exact same thing of what you said, I can type out mine and I'm share it with you. I'm okay with changing my motion. MS. Thompson? I just think it's better how MRS. Hixon has it just in a purely when you read it, when you think of directly impacts is a stronger word, not that I want to get into all thisfinger it's a stronger word, I think it's more persuasive than works darkly with students, so my preference would be to go with MRS. Hixon's wording of it and also as a board when it comes back to us, we can ensure that what that mean, do we want it to
346be programmatic staff, potentially it would be people at the school or social workers, etc.. can we have the -- do you have that in there? school based staff that directly impacts students. I also have concerns about that because social workers are considered -- they directly impact. but then you're saying two different things in the sentences. yeah. if I MAY. I think if we go toback to school based, it's the prerogative of the board, you would be exclude thing bus drivers -- but they directly impact. security. I was thinking -- you can't just say school based. MS. Thompson, are you done? I'm just against the school based sentence part. okay. I would like the make some comments. I hope that all of my colleagues who had issues widths the language shared those concerns with staff before
347hanh -- beforehand, before this meet, that's why staff reaches out to do agenda item meetings. I appreciate the shortened language, I'm always for shorter ballot language. I can say I don't know that I can support either of these motions. I think to MRS. Alhadeff's point, when you say directly impacts students, you have attorneys in the general counsel's office that do work that directly impacts students and we took a vote to not give them -- to amend all their contracts nor to stop them from fwet thing referendum supplement. They are working on lawsuit that is directly impact students. It feels like a little bit silly to be picking apart words like this when -- again, we could have shared all of these concerns with staff beforehand. I don't have an issue with the idea of school
348based because when I saw that, I had the same concern that MS. Thompson did, what about our employees that don't -- that our school social workers that are not based if any single school. MR. Sullivan, what was your response to that with I asked you about that? in the original item, it say ins support staff. we did meet with the board and we heard the board's concerns, that's why we added school based and support staff. Originally it said in the current ballot measures, it says for teachers and staff. There was no school based or support. yeah, I'm feeling a little bit confused about the conversation in general. We have been informed over and over again that this resolution comes to us, we vote on it, we have a workshop to codify, to identify the groups
349of employees that we intend to receive this money and then we codify that in a vote. So, again, I support the shortened language but to be picking apart these words is I don't think the best use of our time but I would support some I guess shorter version of the original language or just the original language that staff has proposed to us. Any other board member comment on the substitute motion? MS. Bulman? so, I don't disagree with you and I think we're agreeing in a broad aspect. I like DR. Zeman coming back and putting the teachers first on the lead sentence. If we're looking at the original language. Because I think that does say what is the most important part of this referendum and the reason why we're going out with that and if everybody
350agrees that support staff does the job we're looking for and we can vote on it when we allocate, then I support that as well. On the original language we had, the only real issue I lad a question was about essential instructional programs and if that was going to be overbroad for our purposes, but if we can also do that in the -- when we workshop it, then that's okay as well. MRS. Alhadeff? yeah, so I support the original language. I beg to differ with my colleague and school safety and mental health services is the most important part, if your children don't come home alive, then nothing else matters. anyone elsing -- else on the substitute motion, all in favor, say aye. aye. all oppose, say no. roll call. roll call on the motion, school board
351members hixon? yes. holness? no. leonardi? no. rupert? Thompson? yes. zeman? no. hall deaf? -- alhadeff? no. bulman? no. cervera? no. 3-6, fails. back to the motion, MS. Hixon, you still have the floor. This is DR. Zeman's motion. okay, I'm good. DR. Holness? MADAM Chair, am I able to make a substitute motion? sure. I would like the make a substitute motion we keep the original language with the exception of removing improved student achievements which is the third line and removing essential -- removing the last part that says and essential instructional program for public and charter schools. could you keep -- just -- you want to remove and essentntiastructionanal programsms, I thinink you need to keep the for public and charter schools. just essentially instructional programs, I'm sorry, and essential instructional programs, to remove that portion and
352to remove improved student achievements since that's redundant, as john -- MR. Sullivan mentioned. And to keep everything else with safety as priority the way it's written. and just to be the english teacher in the room, could you add and before school based and support staff? yes. thank you. english teacher. second. public comment on the substitute motion? . Inger can you repeat the substitute motion in clarity. so, it was to remove -- it starters on second line on the paper we have, let me read it out, to enhance skaoul safety and mental health service, recruit ask retain highly qualified teach and he iser essential employees t previous language said improve student achievement f, DR. Holness is remove hating part, and support critical school operation, shall the school board of broward county remove the ad valorem property
353tax to fund school safety officers, mental health service, increase compensation for teach e school based and support staff, the previous language said and instructional programs where DR. Holness is remove hating for public and charter schools. So he's removing and essentially instructional program and is removing imrao ufed student achievement. but all the health and safety stays in, correct? Jt yes. okay. So anna fusco, broward teachers union PRESIDENT. We know wording matters because it all makes it clear on how the money is separated to fund for recruiting and retaining the employee, the health piece which is the mental health flt we know you guys all don't care about employees, you know, health, you show hated when you're willing to take away medicine, I'm going to keep putting that in there every chance I get, the 7 of
354you which you did. Mental health is very important for everybody and obviously safety and security, I respect the strong comment that school board member alhadeff said about there's nothing else matters, if our students aren't safe and don't get home safely. So, we need to make sure that is never ever treated lightly. Let's see what you guys talk about in your debate for this new amendment. thank you, board member discussion on the substitute motion? MRS. Alhadeff? could staff speak to the essential instructional programs. yes, through the chair, we -- again, that was part of the last two ballot measures, so it's a whole -- it's a carry over from that and it was really to give the board greater flexibility in using the funds if needed but we never used it for those items, so if
355the board removed it, there are no actual impact, it limits our ability to do anything in n that regard in the future. can you give some examples of how it could be used for essential instructional programs? the lang wamg is pretty vague, I think it gave you a lot of flexibility as long as it had to do with instruction. can you just give two examples. I-ready, ai, textbooks. thank you. you're welcome. I had a question. We are still paying out money to -- we're paying out the charter school settle: would this change in language impact our able to do that? no, but also there's no impact because the payments would be done by the time this referendum was instituted. . Er got it. Any other comment? DR. Holness? okay, MADAM Chair, and maybe I can
356get -- I would love to get further input from maybe board member alhadeff and board member hixon and anyone who wants to comment. I know the original language says school safety officers and the proposed language had said school safety personnel, I don't know if we say school safety officers, if we're excluding some other school safety staff. So, that we would want to include here, so, I know this is a concern that all of us embrace and certainly I respect the opinions of board member alhadeff and board member hixon as well. if that language needs to be changed to say school safety personnel versus school safety officers. . er the reason why we put school safety officers, because each school needs o have one, that could be an sor or a guardian, we currently use those
357funds to fund those positions. so, john, MR. Sullivan, are there any other school safety staff besides school safety officers where we need to say school safety officers and personnel? yes, so I think you should -- our security. yes. just school safety -- personnel gives a wider breadth to include -- would personnel cover school safety officers and everyone else under school safety staff? yes, that's a good catch. okay. Alright, so MADAM Chair, my motion is to say school safety personnel as opposed to school safety officers because it would be inclusive of officers and other school safety staff. got it. So, -- itbacker it's after the DECEMBER 30th day to fund school safety personnel. any other comment on the substitute motion? MRS. Hall deaf? sorry, just to go back to that essential instructional program. I think leaving
358it in gives you more flexibility in the future and then I think it's also important to taoep keep the improved student achievement in there because it just gives the every day citizen a better understanding of what we're trying to do, why we need this funding. okay, so the reason I decided not to include those, in my prior questioning, MR. Sullivan mentioned that even though it was in the referendums before, that we did not use funding for essential instructional programs and secondly that improving student achievement is redun dan as it would imply if we're funding teachers, then we would certainly be improving student achievement so I didn't want to create a level of redundancy and didn't want to include language in there that we didn't use before which is essential instructional programs in the prior referendums.
359but it's limiting you to do it in the future by taking it out. . I understand but it appears it wasn't need ined the past. DR. Hepburn, in the past, we did not use a the prior referendums for essential instructional programs. Do you anticipate that funding will be needed for those purposes? go ahead, MR. Sullivan, I'll let you before I hop in there yeah, so the reason that we felt it was important to leave in there, again, is to give the board the greatest flexibility possible with the additional funds. We never know what will come out of either the state capitol or our national capitol and if there was any kind of impact on our existing funds, that language would give the board flexibility to to use it as it relates to essential instructional programs.
360so, MR. Sullivan, if we leave that there and we in fact decided to use some of the referendum funding should it pass, for essential instructional programs, that would possibly result in a reduction of the amount of funding that we would use for teachers, compensation and safety and all of that, correct? correct. I would prefer to leave it out. MS. Hixon? thank you, and I have a question because I think it falls on why we find ourselves in the position we're in with people not trusting us. The main purpose of this referendum is to increase teacher pay, is that correct? DR. Hepburn? yeah. okay. So, when I said earlier that it was the most important thing, I didn't mean in general, obviously I believe that school safety is the most important thing in the system we're
361in, but for this referendum, the piece we're going out for is increasing educator pay. So, it makes sense to me that we have that as the first part of the wording because the teachers union goes out and knocks on doors and asks people to please support the referendum because it will increase teacher pay. If it's what we put kind of on the end part of this, we're not really being honest about what it is we're going out for the referendum for, so I have a concern that it starts off with funding safety. Of course funding safety is important but this referendum is about increasing pay mostly for teachers, so although I appreciate all of the changes, I would like the maybe also suggest that we at least use the title that DR. Zeman had because
362it starts with funding educator pay and that's really what the referendum is for. MS. Thompson? I was going the make a motion to keep DR. Zeman's title because I do think that's important. I think taking out essential instructional programs, I agree with DR. Holness. I also think we do have a problem with the money being spent for other uses and this just makes it crystal clear to our voters that this money is going to go to increasing teacher pay, school safety and mental health services. I'm fine leaving the language and I would like to make a substitute motion to keep improved student achievement because people who are reading this referendum don't -- aren't necessarily as in the know as we are, so it's better to spell that out, so I guess my -- we have
363a substitute motion on the table right now, we have to dispose of that before we do anything unless DR. Holness would like to make any amendments to his substitute motion. board member thompson, is that a friendly suggestion? yes, please. I am okay with -- I appreciate the rationale for improved student achievement and although it MAY appear redundant to us t public MAY not know that, so I am okay with having that remain in the motion. I also like the idea of the title that DR. Zeman gave with having funding educator pay, school safety and mental health services, that title is fine with me but keeping the wording with the changes that I have made, so I'm okay with keeping improved student achievement and removing and essential instructional programs and including from our wonderful english staff
364here, chair, including the word and between teachers and school based and support staff. And MADAM Chair, so the title will also appear on the ballot, DR. Hepburn? MR. Sullivan? yes, I believe so. okay, so I am okay with going with DR. Zeman's title where it says funding educator pay, school safety and mental health services and related expenditures through a one mill property tax levy but I'm -- regard thing changes I have made to the current wording, I'm going to stick with that with the exception of including improved student achievement. any other board member xhen on substitute motion? the title is funding educator pay, school safety and mental health service and is related, expenditures through a one mill property tax overfly and then to enhance school safety and mental health servicesser recruit and retain qualified teachers
365and employees sx, support critical school operations, shall the school board continue to levy a property tax from JANUARY 1, 2027 through DECEMBER 31, 2030 to fund school safety personnel, mental health services, increased compensation for teachers and school based staff and support staff for public and charter schools. you got it. that's correct, that's it. . Inger we're all on one page fm any other board member discussion on the substitute motion? All in favor of the substitute motion, say aye. aye. all opposed, say no no. substitute motion passes with one dissenting vote from MRS. Alhadeff. we are back to the item as amended. DR. Holness, are you done? I am. MS. Bulman? wait, sorry, hold on, I'm on the wrong list. DR. Zeman? we're back to the main item, r-r 1? Yefrj. I'm looking forward to getting
366this new language out there. Toe remind folks, two things, one torx the chair's point, I asked about how the bring changes and I was told this bring them to this meeting so I was following instructions. I hope next time maybe I'll be send them out earlier, I did ask and I was told to do that and I was following the advice on that one. Second is the second step is going to be a lot more important than the first step. The last time we got the language right and then we quickly debated in a workshop how we were going to allocate those funds but last time 17% for safety, 8% for mental health, 75% for emg kate tor or for staff compensation adjustments was what we ended up with. I would ask my colleague tos
367think hard about that low al location and see na's where we are today. We have gone through some serious changes and funding forecasts, the state of florida continues to give us less than inflation every year, so you MAY think algt bit about what is core that we don't want to lose and what are the things that we need to do and in what relative percent. The second piece is lost in our english lesson of the day which is we said at least 75% for compensation and up to 8 and 17 percent for mental health and safety and security. That graver the board and the superintendent tons of flexibility about how to allocate those funds but I thought it was a very useful way to kind of indicate our priorities and as a lot of people
368have said many this room before, if you want to know about the values of broward county schools, look at the budget because the budget is the way we reflect our values and so that debate, MR. Sullivan, I'm sorry, chair, when is our debate on the allocation of these funds? MR. Sullivan? MARCH 24. I think the second step is going to be more important than the first. Did we get permission from the lawyer to use the language? we just sent it to them but I don't envision an issue because you deleted more than you added. He's going to respond back. at the end of the day, I'm looking forward to the MARCH 24 debate and I'll maybe submit some thing ahead of time so we can think about them prior to the school board meeting. Thank
369you, chair. thank you, MR. Cervera? thank you, chair, I'm also looking forward to the debate at the upcoming workshop. I want to be clear and on record as soon as possible. In no circumstance will anybody who was the subject of dispute last time when we dealt with this referendum situation be entitle today this money as far as my voice and my vote is concerned, this is very clear, this is going to fund school safety personnel, mental health services and compensate our teachers. That's it. That's not cabinet level raises, that's not raises for people who are making six figures in this building, that's for school safety personnel, mental health services and teachers, full stop, I want to be very clear about what my position is from the earliest possible onset that we're not going to make
370the same mistakes we made last time with this referendum dollars and I want the public to know that -- at least from the board member sitting in district 6, it's going to be very vigilant in making sure this money is singed for the proper and intend purposes this go around, thank you, chair. thank you. MS. Bulman? I can't remember, have -- I have you not crossed off. we didn't really get to my comments so I think we fixed it so I'm good. MS. Hixon? Okay. I just had a quick question just because of the comments that were just made. As the language sits today, will it just be teachers who are eligible or will it be school social workers and bus diverse and cafeteria workers? DR. Hepburn? with the proposed language, yes, but I believe
371with the additional restrictions, it would already restrict it to -- cabinet members are directories at the district level wouldn't qualify and then reremeer the inintend allocationon we' bringingng to the e marc24 meeting wiwill be the superintendent's recommendation, of course the board will have their input but part of his recommendation of course would be to restrict those funds as they're currently were restricted currently by the board. so, you said yes but I think I asked like an e either/or question, so does the language restrict it to just teachers or -- no. okay. Thank you. MS. Hixon? and just because you mentioned a number of people, not all of nem, currently the money goes to principal and is assistant principal sos the way it's whored now, that would still be an option? yes. MRS. Alhadeff? so, on
372the ballot will be this lang badge with you we'll have a one pager explaining all the details and the breakouts? correct, once the board votes on the intended allocation at the APRIL meeting, that's when we eel start the awareness campaign. After this vote, we will send the resolution to directing them to place it on the ballot. thank you. any other board member comment on the item as amended? Okay, do we have to table -- okay, so I'll make a motion to table the item to the end of the meeting. Is there a second? yes, second. Er second by DR. Zeman. Public comment on the motion? Board member comment on the motion? All in favor of tabling the item to the end of the meeting, say aye. aye. all opposed, say no. Motion moves unanimously. MS.
373Hixon. motion pass-3. I have a question, if that motion did not pass and we have to items that we have is to deal with, what would happen? MS. Jacques adams? through the chair, you would have to issue the tabling and not extending the meeting because those two are in conflict. thank you, this is the time when school board members will hear from our evening speakers. Interest r there any evening speakers MR. Hill? no, ma'am. is there anyone in the audience? no, okay. Could I get a motion and a second on a a a 1 and a a 3 separator together. I would take them separately. can I get a motion and a second on a-3. so moved. moved by DR. Zeman, we already did public comment. Go ahead MS. Jacques-adams. so the last information that
374I received was that staff corrected the language and our office one of our attorney declared legally sufficient and it was sent out to university of florida. So I don't know, the facts of whether it came back from university of florida or not. DR. Hepburn. DR. Cone? it has not come back so they agreed to remove the new wall reading in the agreement. But I do want to say, or add that, the new world is not an vendor it's initiative and in 2021, there was a house bill three declare initiative to support k-5, students who are reading deficit. They approved an agreement to provide that information to its students and that agreement does not end until 2027. So there is already an agreement with the doe and the university of florida to do exactly what this
375agreement is doing. So this agreement extends it to 202 but the board chooses to remove it, that is something that they can do. any board comment? Let me ask, so is this to amendment to take the out. we can do one of two things, we vids the university of florida to strike it, so we can come back to the next board meeting with stricken, or we can approve it as is. Council PRESIDENT: can we table the item to MARCH 3? 31? postpone it? yeah, postpone it to MARCH 31. The students are still getting books. I hate to put you on the spot do you have feedback on initiative? If not. you're not asking me to do math, like DR. Zeman did. I MAY be able to answer the question. We're on a-1? a-3. I believe
376this primary impacts elementary. no it's high school and elementary. So the data sharing agreement is for the con mingle high school and varsity elementary school. I have some feedback that conmigo that is data agreement. Sorry I'm pulling it back up. if this agreement does not pass today, it will be fine. Because the only condition that we're discussing is this language around thed new world reading and that is a doe, initiative so if we're saying, we don't want students who are struggling with reading for parents to have access to books, based on the criteria that new role has set up then we can remove it. That will go until affect. It will strike it from this agreement but again, the district already has an agreement to 2027 so we're already doing it. chair, let me explain
377this. Can I make a motion to postpone to 31. second. 31. motion by MR. Cervera and seconded by MR. Zeman. Board member comment. What thompson. what impact does it have to the a a 1. it has no impact because a a 1 is separate. A a 1 is just a typical agreement that looks at usage is achievement which is not this dwraoement. -- agreement. but I thought they were companion. the companion was the high school, there are two comingos. okay. all right, all in favor of postponing the item say aye. aye. anybody opposed say no. passes unanimously. Can I get a comment on a a 1. DR. Holness. I'm good. MS. Thompson. I'm good. DR. Zeman. totally good, thank you, chair. anyone else. All in favor of aa1 say aye. aye. any opposed say say
378no. no. item passes with one descenting vote with MR. Zeman. We're now at the end of the meeting. We'll go back, can I have a motion and second to bring back rr1. moved and second. can I have a motion to bring back rr1. Do we have a response from council. yeah, we're going to need ten minutes. okay. We'll recess for ten minutes. at this time, we'll hear from my colleagues who have any student successes or concerns to bring to the superintendent. MS. Thompson. thank you, chair. I have a concern I would like to bring to my colleague's attention that happened during an incident a school resource officer used pepper spray while respond to go a student fight. Based on what was report asked shared to by students and what I saw myself on the video,
379the pepper spray was deployed twice, first one with students exposed and slash sprayed. And the two, I'm not going comment whether I use the force was excessive because there is on going investigation. I'm raising this because some of these incidents leave our students feeling shaken. I heard from parents who say they dont want to go to school they witnessed their principal getting sprayed in the face. They handled the situation inappropriately and I believe that the situation raises broader questions that we as a board should discuss regarding how we ensure our students are safe involving fights and also when law enforcement intervenes. So I have some questions, do we currently have district policies regarding the use of paeper sprays or tasers on our campus? DR. Hepburn? I yield to general counsel? and I'm not asking for
380specifics just in general are there policies that keep our students safe from this force? yes. so through the chair, I have not performed a search to see if pepper spray is a subject matter of any policy but I can do so. thank you. And then, when this these items are used, do we defer to the police or municipal departments or bso that are in our schools or is this something that we can create a policy around? That's a complex situation due to our resourcing our services to many municipalities on how they interact with depending on the situation. So if I, if you got anything else to add, chief gregory, I know that's what makes it complex because we have ten or more municipalities that are providing sro that have different policies that are not aligned
381even if we create a policy, they're on abide by their policy. so I have a problem with that, these are our students, we should be loud to dictate what is going to happen to our students, so I would like to make a motion to direct the superintendent to explore this situation and also policies to ensure that our students are kept safe from this use of force. MS. Jacques-adams can a motion can be made when we don't have a item? yes, through the chair there are policies are set up, MS. Thompson if you were to bring a b item -- so I'll bring an item. I would like to know what kind of our training our sro officers receive particularly around deescalation with minors under the age of 18. go ahead, kevin, I see you back
382there. broward board police, I was talk to go board member cervera. can you repeat the question. would I like to know what training our officers receive particularly around deescalation with minors, I received your response and it did not address my concerns. deescalation is general and broad, it deals with, deescalation, any type of situation. So even in our cit training, we've dealt with juveniles especially when there MAY be a suicidal risk and we're trying to deescalate them from that or they're being violent and we use verbal deescalation on that. and who is responsible for these trainings? so cit training is done through the united way of broward county. All officers in broward county are trained in that cit. And police academy also trains for anybody that is becoming a police officer going through. Even our guardians
383receive this training as part of their guardian training. We here at our police department, put on a separate class for deescalation above and beyond. ?O. You're saying that there is no training specifically on how to deescalate with minors with children. everybody is incompassed with one training. but specifically with children? Not like a general, this is how you would deescalate, this is where? I don't know of any other. All I know is the training that I've seen, and there is no specific, one specific class for deescalating juveniles because the class INCOMPASSEs deescalating, maybe teenagers, adults people in mental crisis and so forth. okay. So moving on to our own staff, what training do we do, what training do we do are people who MAY be around these fights? Woo training -- what training do we provide?
384DR. Washington isn't here for that one. Unless you have any info DR. Fument on or DR. Lozano. so we do have a training on deescalation. Mostly on our special needs but also classroom management training that also has a component that helps teachers or staff or health members deescalate a situation. I'm seeing from our union rep that she does not necessarily agree with what you're saying, if I wanted that to occur, I need to bring an item? MS. Jacques-adams. yes, bring a b item. okay, perfect. So my final question is what procedure do we have in place for specifically at the school when schools like pepper spray is used. Or even when fights are used, do we know if a pepper spray is deployed in lunch-time setting, if kids are still given their meals to eat
385or they're told not to eat it. What is the procedure to clean up the agatha has been placed? Do we have any of those procedures communicated? go ahead, DR. Fulton. fortunately, that does not happen often. Staff does not have pepper spray so it actually happens because of a school resource officer MAY do that. And usually when a school resource officer takes control, we have to back away, we cannot interfere when law enforcement decides it's a situation that they have to take control. that's not what happened but it's the administrators that are cleaning up, need to know how much time they, should clear the cafeteria for that chemical to be disbursed. Apparerentlyitit eses happen. Isis that an ea. whaik tell you, we have to look into the issue but if you deploy pepper spray in a
386clodes space, you should get out of the space. I don't know the extent of what you're speaking about. But anytime pepper spray is sprayed in a closed area people have to leave the room. our administrators don't have that information, they don't know if the food is safe to eat after. They don't know how long space should be cleared for. Is it something that I have to bring an item for? we can look into and look at chief gregory and his team. And also the team to come up with some procedures, that's not a problem. and then also do we have a procedure in place so in this particular incident, there were and I'm not blaming the people for not getting involved but there was a fight and no one really cleared the students away from
387the fight, is there a procedure or training that we give that if, an incident like this is happening, where police officer is involved that we, clear the space? Or have students back away or anything like that? That's always the expectation, whatever the case MAY be, that adults assist in clearing the space. Often times that does not happen, because kids are being kids and pulling out their cell phones and trying to get quick bait and not listening to directions. But in some cases, students listen and they disburse and leave the area while the administrator and security staff deal with the situation. okay, because at least one of the kids that got sprayed is because he didn't move and kept eating. It could have been the case that he didn't listen to the teacher. correct, and we're
388not forcefully. no, I'm not going to advocate for that. most kids follow direct but you always have a few in the xhietment of the moment. so in general, teachers are trained that they should clear this or whenever is there, they should try to get as many students as possible. correct. okay beinger those are mine but I appreciate my colleague's attention to this. Thank you. MS. Jacques-adams and I know MR. Cervera wanted speak to this. just as an answer to MS. Thompson, the only thing on pepper spray a class b kem chemical weapon but that's the only place that it can be found. which is about the amount that students can bring or their use in getting in trouble. So it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't address security or SROs. thank you. thank you, MR. Cervera. thank
389you, MS. Thompson, unfortunately, it's a bad situation that being said, I do want to be, clear and I don't want things lost in translation. We support our school officers in this district. The brave men and women that go to school and arguably do one of the most important jobs in keeping our kids safe along with the teachers, are, an essential element to how this district functions. And I don't know the exact circumstances other than what you shared. I'm sure that chief gregory can attest to this, as well we're not going to disburse a chemical agent unless it's necessary, somebody was about great harm was to fall upon them. I don't want what fell in this instance to be in a situation where we're not recognizing the brave men and women who put the uniform on.
390They do receive training and they do have protocols that they have to follow and our law enforcement officers, for the most part, do that and they're happy and they love the kids and they love their jobs. So I just want to make it clear that we're very appreciative that all of our law enforcement officers of our RSOs who walks around the our schools and keeps our kids safe and this is a unfortunately incident that there was a fight and had to be used and maybe the spray radius went a little bit further and we don't want harm to fall upon our kids. But I don't want to take away from our law enforcement officials and the value that they bring to our schools. Thank you. MS. Thompson. thank you, chair. I just want to be
391abundantly clear, that I was not being disparaging on our officers and i would hope all my colleagues would want to keep our students safe. Thank you. MS. Hixon. I just wanted give a shout out to our student athletic in activities department, specifically patty brown for the play like a girl, I believe it was the third year that, this happened. And so, they invited the middle school athletes. Then there was laura, bio, I don't know how to say tbiondo is a freestyle soccer player, she did amazing -- I don't know people did that with a soccer ball and she brought the medals with her, so the girls can see them and touch them and they all said wow, that's so heavy. And she was a piper high school graduate, so really excited to have her come
392back and share with students. You know, middle schoolers don't like anything, they always complain and we asked them, how did they like it and they said that was awesome so to get that out of two 13-year-old girls was amazing. It's a great event. Hopefully when they have the fourth annual one more people can come and participate and see the excitement. But the whole point was to keep female athletes engaged and involved in athletics, because we do have an issue wherefore a lot of different reasons, they don't stay with it. And most of the stories from the females are journeys of struggle and how they overcame them to stay in the sport that they were in. soing it's -- so I think it's always important and besides that, there was the 5th annual black male symposium
393at south broward high school. And another phenomenal place some men came to support our students and toif say there is a football player who played for the university of florida and I don't get excited about that but he major, I forget major wright, and he,le story I liked, he was at the top. He played, at the highest level of nfl football did not know how to manage his money and became almost homeless. And then a homeless man actually turned the life around. Those the stories that our students need to hear. It's important for them to know all of these pieces so to have somebody like that come in and share their story with our students to give them some sin spir -- inspiration of that plan b is two great events, one specifically for females
394and one for males and I just want to thank every one who put that together and who came and participated, because the more we have people pour into our students, the better off they're going to be. Thank you. thank you, MR. Spellberg. thank you, deacier had to leave but he wanted to me to share that he had a family member in hospitalization, and wanted to give shout out for writing cards to the family member and delivering them to the hospital for one of their students. Another example of broward county schools. thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Anyone else before I go? I just wanted to recognize some of the great news for broward schools. I know that there was the state of the county last week, I was unable to attend but I did
395get lots of text messages from you know from other elected official because of florida chamber acknowledged broward schools in a charity of different ways. They recognized that we're ahead of the state average on kindergarten readiness, third grade raiding and eight grade reading and the they acknowledged our copilot. It's very exciting to see that other organizations do see the great work going on here. So thank you. can we hear from staff. can you check on those guys right there besinger make sure they're not having too much fun. they have to fix their watches. Two more minutes. Do my colleagues have anything else to bring to the board? MS. Thompson. good things happening, john in the back, our schools are deploying the B.C. Ps advantage. So if my colleagues can follow and share yes, they should be
396tagging you in it, but make sure that you heart it or like it whatever flat form you choose to use that helps our schools build an audience. Trying to fill some place, the cambridge thing, we're number one in the country for cambridge. yes for cambridge for a large district designation. I'm a little brain dead right now. Go ahead MS. Hixon. thank you, I forgot another one. So there was also a wonderful event at wooden rogers, it was called a day of redemption and it was also for females at school there and we had some guest speakers that were female leaders. Some of them had been incarcerated and had one actually for 30 years and had come out and now she is an advocate for other prisoners to make sure that they have an opportunity when
397they move out of the system, but they were really there just to inspire the students that one decision does not define what your life looks like. The students were very engaged, really appreciative that every one came out. There was a B.C. To officer, there were two that had been incarcerated. DR. Wanza was there. I can't remember who else was there. Anyway, just every opportunity that our students have to hear from people to get some background information about life in different places and ways. I mean, those in mates really shared that, jail is no joke. And it was, you know, it was really it was real for the students and important to know the consequences. That was also a very powerful opportunity for our students. great thank you. MR. Sullivan? I'm back. Okay. The good and
398the bad. The good is the language he signed up off, his count at the limit. The title though is far beyond the 15-word count. So we need to adjust the title. Do you have a recommendation? let's hear it. and remember I only have fifteen words. To fund, I'm sorry to fund school employee compensation safety and mental through a one-mill property tax levee. Fund school employee compensation safety and mental health through a one-mill property tax levee. any board comment? Council member rupert? right. Good do you have any recommendation? Board member raoubeter. MR. Sullivan can you read it again. sure for the title we have a 15-word limit. we got it. fund school employee compensation safety and mental health through a one-mill property tax levee. for me, thank you. For me, it's the employee compensation doesn't get,
399I don't think it addresses what it needs to address. remember this is just the title of the ballot measure. I know. Sometimes people just look at the title and they decide it does not work anymore. would it work if we call it pay instead of compensation? Plain english. better. MADAM Chair. MR. Sullivan, would the words be sufficient if we should say fund teachers and staff compensation would that be too many words. I'm at 15 right now, so any word you add, you have to delete. So yes, it would be. I'm sorry, soy heard what the language is okay, the title is on. the title is only 19 words and only per missable to 15. the document in front of me, the title fund school through one mill property tax but I don't recall us doing
400that. this is just a proposed. Since you're limited to 15 words that is what we're proposing instead of the other title that was 19 words. okay, is rr1 back on the table. in essence. Okay. Does anybody object to the proposed title from staff? I just nominated pay instead of compensation. pay is better. compensation is like a long word pay is right there. Is anyone okay with that. yeah. no objection. do we need to make a motion to that affect? Yes? I move that suggestion chair. second. Public comment on the motion? Board comment on the motion? We are so we're amending the title to read fund school employee pay safety and mental health through one-mill property tax levee. All right. Go ahead. is the one-mill going to be underable by the public? it was last time.
401it was in both of proposed before 2. unfortunately, that's the legal term, so we can't move away from it. okay. any other board member comment? All in favor of amending the title say aye. aye. all of opposed say no. Passes unanimously. Any other comments on the item? All in favor of the item as amended say aye. aye. all opposed say no. Item passes unanimously. The scheduled order of business for this regular school board meeting of school board of county florida has been completed. Seeing no ab -- objection, I now adjourn the meeting.