001You know, word here, word there. I think that is still what the superintendent intends to do. Is that right? Correct. Yeah. And then we. And when we. And we decided that the language would cover multiple proposals that have been made to the board so long as they included academics or compensation to school based people, mental health and security, safety. Is that your understanding, Doctor Hepburn? That's correct. Does anyone object. MADAM Chair? DR. Holness I, I just wanted to make sure we're on the same page, I believe. Board member Alhadeff suggested a a new recommendation as far as 7515 and and ten. Right. And I believe three of us agreed with that. And there were some other suggestions that were variation of the percentages. That's my understanding. Okay. Do you have your direction? Doctor Hepburn? Yes,
002MADAM Chair. Okay. That concludes that topic at the direction of the superintendent. The following agenda topics are tentatively scheduled to be addressed during the upcoming workshops APRIL 14th. Student Experience Data Dialog advisory Committee reports rule development for policies 50, 90 and 5100. Student code of conduct. Transportation update Meal Benefits 2026 20202 Aprilil1s1st, 202626. 2027 organizational Chart. APRIL 28th. Rural Development Information Systems five policies Rural Development Finance seven benefits Policies Rural Development Policy 1000. Rule Making Rural Development Policy 7530. Formerly 4001.2 use of service animals in school district facilities. Please note that the order of topics and the scheduling remain tentative and are subject to adjustment at the superintendent's discretion at this time. Do any of my colleagues have anything to bring to future workshops or student successes to share? MISS Thompson. Unfortunately, I think we
003need our general counsel on the dais, but I'd like to have a conversation with my colleagues about what happened today with the timing, because I feel like we to end something when we're med meeting. Unless it is time certain. And even in those cases, we don't necessarily stick to that. But we were almost done with the conversation. And then the meeting quickly got shut down. And we have people that were like in the audience waiting to participate. Then it had to move on. And unless there's a legal need to handle our meetings like that, I am in strong disagreement for what happened today. Okay, maybe our general counsel, I don't know if she's in the room, if she could come to the dais, because I know that was specifically her guidance. So just to summarize
004why we conducted business at certain times today the way we did. So the statute requires us to properly notice. So when we notice for a particular time, that is when the meeting is supposed to start. That could be a sunshine violation. And I will give you a hypothetical where a meeting well, the doors were closed five minutes right after the meeting began, and that turned into an issue. So timing is extremely important so that we don't put ourselves in any type of situation. My job is to protect the board. And that's that's the reason that we want to stick to times. Well, I would say I disagree with that. That's not been the process that we have been doing. I think it's also disingenuous to the conversation. It it messes up with the conversation also.
005That was wrapping up. We had four more minutes. So to stop a workshop to then continue the conversation an hour or two later for four minutes is not practical to me. It also, again has not been the practice of this district. So I understand you have one interpretation our former general counsel has had. Obviously others. So if that's our stance, how are we going to do this moving forward? Because we have conversations that are going to take longer. And it is important. And I would say the feedback we had on the referendum took the proper amount of time because everyone's thoughts needed to be respected and included in that conversation and the respect and comments of our public who come to our meetings. So if that's your interpretation of it, and I guess my colleagues
006will, then that's how we will move forward. But then there needs to be a better setup of our meeting with items properly, given the amount of time on the agenda. So I would like to hear from my colleagues. Missus Alhadeff, thank you. So a couple things. One, you know, kudos to MISS Leonardi as the chair. She has a very difficult job in juggling ten things at one time in the timing. It is very challenging. As chair for two years. I know that. The other thing is, is we are paying outside legal counsel. And besides, the reason that our general counsel gave us per statute in that is another reason we're paying outside legal counsel. The other thing that I would like, maybe we can look into, and this could help with this issue in overall
007timing of our meetings is to have time debate on an item. So I would like to bring that as a suggestion moving forward. DR. Holness thank you, MADAM Chair. So I believe general Counsel. Based upon her expertise, provide us with recommendations. Is that correct? Yeah, the the recommendation is based on the law. What statute? Correct. Correct. But but what you're providing to us or recommendations. Right. So I believe we would expect general counsel to provide her recommendations. Now the other question is do we is it mandatory that we follow the recommendations or is it not? And if it is not mandatory, then what is the process for us not to follow the recommendation? For example, in this particular case, general counsel recommended that we stop the meeting and go to closed door and then come
008back to the meeting based upon possibility of violating the Sunshine law. That was her recommendation to protect the board. Now, if we choose to not follow that recommendation, MADAM Chair, do we have a process, for example, where we have consensus to continue the meeting and not follow the recommendation, which would then I think that would because the general counsel is doing her job to say, this is what I think would put the board at risk. If we choose not to follow, then it's on us, right? So what is the process then? If we choose not to follow, can we then gain consensus to continue the meeting for an additional five minutes, ten minutes, whatever it MAY be, because we were winding down that particular item. And so, MADAM Chair, do we have a because we
009can reject the recommendation at our own consequence. Right. So what would be the process of doing that? Do we gain consensus to say we're going to continue? And if the board says they're going to continue, then we would then have to live with the consequence of going against the general counsel's recommendation. I guess I would ask MISS Dupree Bruno, who, you know, is it under the authority of the chair, or does that have to be at the will of the board? So my suggestion would be, you know, not knowing how much more time was required, if it was just like five extra minutes, we could have continued if it was going to go for another 30 minutes, an hour, then that's probably something that we would have to discuss. So perhaps MADAM Chair can just
010ask the board, are we getting ready to wrap this up for do we need another five minutes, ten minutes, and then the board can say yes or no? Or if the board requires additional time, then we would probably pause, I would. When it comes to sun.Shine issues and the notice issues and those types of things, I would be very, very careful. But you are the clients, you guys are the board and all I can do is advise you and then you make your decisions as to how you want to move forward. Understand? So, MADAM Chair, if you don't mind, and I hear your follow up, MISS Bruno, in terms of if it's because you weren't aware of how much more time we would have needed, but in the event that you highly recommend, regardless of
011the time that we need, let's say we say we need 15 minutes and your recommendation is to stop and come back. My question is, as a board, although we should. But if we decide not to follow your recommendation, we have the right to do that. Correct. At our own consequence. At your own consequence, you are the client. You direct your. Your correct. But. But at the same time, your recommendation, I believe, is to protect the board. But we we can choose not to follow. So I don't want. In other words, I don't want to limit what you're telling us to do. But if we decide to do differently, then we need to decide among ourselves if we're not going to follow what you're suggesting. Is that correct? Yeah. So MADAM Chair could just ask the
012board, you know, General Counsel's recommending this. Would you like to move forward with this, or would you like to continue with the meeting? And then by, you know, majority of the board discussing it, you can decide how you want to move forward. That's probably the easiest way to do it. Okay. So we can we can simply say the general counsel recommendation is this. The chair can say, will the board follow General Counsel's recommendation or would you like to continue discussing? Would that be appropriate? Would that be within our right to do that? It it's definitely within your right to do that. But I would hope that that is used very, very sparingly because when I give some legal advice, there's real reasons why I'm giving you this particular legal advice to make sure, again, my
013priority is to protect the board. Yes. No, I understand that clearly. I just want us to understand clearly that we have the right to go against the recommendation, but at our own consequence. Right. Okay. All right. Thank you. And just so everyone has all of the context, we I recessed the workshop at the recommendation of our general counsel because we noticed a special school board meeting at 12 P.M. And I was advised by the general counsel that we need to start our meetings on time. We then went to another. Once that special school board meeting was done, we went to another item because we were paying outside counsel. So that is why those series of choices were made. In the future. If we would like to ignore the advice of our general counsel, I will
014bring that to the board. MISS Hixon. Thank you. I just wanted to point out, I believe in our policy. We do have timed board debate. We just don't use it because every time the buzzer goes off the buzzer, if looks could could destroy something, the buzzer would be gone. So just saying it is it is. It's time for the first round and timed for the second round. We just kind of moved away from it. MR. Cervera then MRS. Alhadeff. Thank you, chair. And I do want to commend you for listening to our general counsel and MR. Bruno, I was kind of watching your face a moment ago, and there was a look of astonishment and surprise on it. And the simplest explanation is, I understand why you are a member of the bar. You are
015an expert in this space. You are board certified. You've been practicing for several decades, if I'm not mistaken. Of course, you started when you were very young. More than a couple dozens. But the fact of the matter is, we have a lawyer up here to advise us, and we should we should always take that advice into account. I can't speak for my colleagues, but I will certainly not participate in anything at the advice of our legal counsel, whose job it is to advise this board someone that we pay a very nice salary to do her job, and she is up here for a reason. So this idea that our counsel is going to be giving us good faith, legal advice and legal opinions, and we're just going to ignore it because we don't want to
016be inconvenienced with time or whatever the situation is. I would strongly urge against that. I, I note that there's only three of us up here who are members of the bar, and perhaps our take on this MAY be a little bit different, but to my layman colleagues, it's always important that you listen to your lawyers, especially in a space like this. When we have sunshine, especially when we have a space like this as elected officials, where there can be consequences for taking actions that are contrary to law. She's up here for a reason and we should listen to her. If you don't like her advice, I guess the option would be to perhaps find a new general counsel, which of course, I'm not suggesting in any way, shape or form, but the idea that we're
017going to avoid or ignore our lawyer, quite frankly, I think is a ludicrous suggestion. Thank you. Missus Alhadeff. Thank you. What I was speaking about is a timed amount of time on an agenda item, not specifically per a board member. So on b two we are going to have time to debate for one hour. You know, based on whatever the direction that the chair decides. That's what I was speaking about as the item as a whole, not us as individual. Yes, we have our individual times and yes, I know that ends up going over, but I'm speaking about as the entire item, a specific amount of time to debate on that item. Thank you, MISS Thompson. I would just like to clarify, I wasn't going against legal advice. However, the past precedent has been this
018to not happen. I would assume that our former general counsel was also trying to abide by the law and keeping us in check as well. So there seems to be a discrepancy between what our former general counsel did and our current one, and I'm not saying anything about that other than if that is going to be our process, then we need to put other things in place to make that happen. Because concluding a meeting when the people are here to listen for a two minute wrap up does not make sense to me and our former general counsel, who was again also a board certified lawyer who is also following state statute, one would assume, let it happen. So if we're changing our process, that's fine, but we all need to be on the same page
019with that. I just want to also offer some some additional context. In hindsight, we can sit down here and say that the additional debate was 4 minutes or 2 minutes or whatever it was, but it didn't seem clear to me that the conversation was wrapping up anytime soon. So I apologize for misestimating that, or not being able to read into the future about how long that debate was going to take. And I would also just say, you know, I think I'm not I'm not a lawyer, but I think there is legal interpretation throughout our our society. So I want to allow our general counsel to, to the grace of understanding that there MAY be a different interpretation. And she has a different set of life experiences and professional experiences that inform the advice that she
020is giving us, that perhaps our other councils did not have. MISS Rupert. Mine was on a student success. So okay, so when I. Will wait, you. And we always have time for that. Any other DR. Zeman. Look, the person who brought this up said that if we're going to do it this way, we just have to be consistent. So I think we're done. Congratulations. Glad we had this conversation. Anyone else? All right, MISS Rupert. I had the pleasure to once again be on the Broward League of Cities Scholarship Committee. And I wanted to I've been, like holding it in all this time to to congratulate our two student advisors, Jasira and Landon, for being two of the four students that we picked for those awards this year. So congratulations. [Applause] And you guys nailed it.
021You nailed it. So very proud. Anyone else? The scheduled order of business for the school board workshop of the School Board of Broward County, Florida has been completed. Seeing no objections, I will now adjourn the school board workshop. Do you ever do you ever wonder what the staff is thinking?