School Board Workshop - Apr 14, 2026

001Welcome to today's school Board workshop. This workshop of the school board of Broward County, Florida is now called to order to ensure a safe and productive environment. Please note the clearly marked emergency exits do not block exit doors and all attendees must be seated except for media. Once the room reaches capacity, attendees will be directed to the overflow area. If the fire alarm sounds, exit the room calmly continue outside the building and remain there until authorities give clearance to return. Thank you for your cooperation. I will now introduce my school to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. Please rise. Please stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under GOD,

002indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please sit down. Thank you. Board member DR. Holness has requested a moment of silence. DR. Holness. Thank you, MADAM Chair. At this time I would like to request a moment of silence in memory of Jason Ramij, a dedicated employee at Discovery Elementary. Jason was known for his kindness, compassion, and unwavering commitment to his students, particularly those in the asd special program. He supported his students, colleagues and families with patience, care and a genuine love for his work. Jason's presence touched many lives, and though he will be deeply missed, the impact he made will forever remain in the hearts of the Discovery Elementary community. Thank you very much. Thank you. As we begin, we reaffirm our vision 100% proficiency for all students. As an a-rated district, we remain committed

003to sustaining this achievement and supporting every student to reach their highest potential. Our theme this year is believe, empower, achieve one. Broward. Before I begin with the agenda, I'd like to turn it over to the superintendent for some opening remarks. Good morning, chair, school board members and public. Good morning students. Thanks for also being here today. And parents. I see some principals in the room as well and other support staff. So I have two things to to share with the board. Any feedback is welcome. So based on consensus from a previous workshop, we will move forward with directly negotiating with Neola for our policies. Once a contract is in place, all the policies will need to be reviewed. So therefore, unless critical, we'll be pausing bringing new policies. Until we begin that process. With Neola,

004we do have a couple of policies that we're still going to bring forward, such as the facility rental and a couple of more. But for the majority of the policies that are remaining with that direct negotiation with Neola, we're going to do a pause, since they're going to go through all of our policies. Once we finalize that contract. Also, the second thing with the board support, I haven't talked to MR. Magli about this yet, but of course he directly reports to the board. I would like to request that the Chief Auditor engage in an external audit firm to conduct a review of our referendum. This will help to demonstrate that we are what we already know, that the current referendum funds are being used in accordance with the approved ballot language. So if we can

005get approval for the from the board to move forward with a firm and external firm to conduct a review of the audit, that will be awesome. Just to continue to be transparent and build confidence with our public. Any more board member objection or discussion? All right. Do you have your direction? All right. Great. We will now proceed with the agenda. Today's workshop will operate in accordance with school board policy 1020. And the board will review items as advertised and presented by the superintendent. Our first item is Student Experience Data dialog. I now turn it over to staff for a brief presentation. And I will turn it over to MR. Doctor Wanza. First, before we move over to MR. PRESIDENT. MR. Spielberg. Good morning. Thank you, Doctor Hepburn. Good morning, school board members. To our colleagues

006across the organization. Definitely guests here in the boardroom and those watching online. I'm Valerie Wanza. I'm the chief strategy and innovation officer. We certainly this is the last of our student dialog with the board members for this school year. We are eternally grateful for the student leadership of Landon Spielberg and Jason Leone. Not sure how we're letting them graduate without a bachelor's degree in some kind of employment contract, but we'll get to that in a later conversation. But before we begin, we I would ask my cabinet colleagues if they can introduce themselves, and then I know Landon is going to walk the board and the the other board direct reports through introductions as well. So MISS Hollingsworth. I'm sorry. Oh good morning. I'm Romania Johnson Chief Financial Officer. Good morning everyone. Simone Hollingsworth Chief Student

007Services Officer. Great morning everyone. So happy that you're here this morning. We're so ready to hear the amazing things and feedback that you have to share for us. I'm Angela Fulton, deputy Superintendent. Good morning everyone. My name is Mark Dorsett. I'm the chief operating officer. Task assigned. Good morning everyone. Fabian Cohen Chief Academic Officer Welcome. Good morning. Trey Davis Chief Information Officer Welcome to you all. Good morning. Ernie Lozano Chief Human Resources Officer. Good morning, Jermaine Fleming, North Region Superintendent. Good morning. John Sullivan Chief of Staff and Communications welcome. And before MR. Spielberg begins, we would be remiss if we did not recognize MISS Brown, the director of athletics and student activities, as well as MISS Xenia Santiago, who was out there. There she is. She always hides in the back for their leadership and

008their work with all of our student activities, athletics and student leadership programs. And with that, gentlemen, you're on. Thank you, Doctor Wanza and good morning. Welcome to our Student Experience Data dialog. We are excited to have a new and improved quarterly student and school board feedback session today, where we have two new purposes to hear from our students and also to review the data that's been collected through the Superintendent's Student Engagement Initiative at the start of the 2025 2026 school year, the superintendent launched the Superintendent Student Engagement Initiative. This initiative contained three main goals one establish implementation guides for Principal Student Advisory boards. Two create and implement a thought exchange feedback loop at all high schools and three ensure every student can easily identify necessary information for success on district web pages. 44 schools were

009identified to participate in the initiative, made up of 29 traditional nine through 12 high schools, three technical high schools, four six through 12 schools, three education centers, two alternative high schools, the Broward Virtual School Franchise and College Academy. At bc. Each principal participated in the initiative and designated an assistant principal as their Student Engagement Ambassador. In JULY 2025, the district launched a new web page, which included a refreshed students page with easy to navigate language for the most requested and accessed resources. In AUGUST 2025, the district successfully launched the principal engagement packet, also known as the Pep, which is a comprehensive best practice and resource guide for high school principals seeking to establish a Principal Student Advisory board. And in SEPTEMBER 2025, with the support of the Division of Teaching and Learning, Department of School,

010Culture and Student Support, Department of Athletics and Student Activities, and the Office of Strategic Initiative Management, the district launched the first of three quarterly student feedback surveys to all 44 participating schools. The survey, conducted through Thought Exchange, asked five questions each quarter and uses a powerful artificial intelligence tool to synthesize student input. A 75% benchmark of participation was adopted after the first quarter. Survey administration to encourage schools to receive a meaningful population of student responses. Two administrations of the survey were later held in DECEMBER 2025. For the second quarter in MARCH 2026. For the third quarter across all three quarters, the district collected 146,000 submissions of student feedback, with an average 78% response rate district wide. With that being said, we will move on to our presentation. So today we will go over the student

011feedback initiatives and then go into quarter one, quarter two and quarter three data dialog. This is an overview of what I just briefly spoke about, and I want to talk about this for a moment to show you where we've been, where we are, and where we're going. As you can see in the prior to this school year, the district had extensive student feedback initiatives. However, we needed to improve this to expand it to all of our schools, especially our high school populations. As you can see, this year we've expanded the principal engagement packet, Speak Up, speak out sessions to nontraditional schools. The Superintendent Student Advisory Council established these quarterly discussions and increased school based initiatives. Looking to next year, we're looking to expand to elementary school pilot programs, an expansion of quarterly student feedback surveys

012to middle schools, and increased support structures for school based administrators. Here's a look into the initiative. This is the excerpt of the principal engagement packet, which was shared with all of our high school principals, premade plug and play resources for them to create a principal student advisory board at this school, at their school. We expect that this took the process from ours just down to approximately 30 minutes. Here's a look into our quarterly student feedback survey. And the qr code is on the screen. This is also a clickable link to show you the preview of our survey. There is an ai powered survey tool embedded that asks students follow up questions based off of their responses, to make sure that we're receiving the most accurate input. So with all that being said, we are here

013today for our data dialog. Our students here today apply to participate or were selected by their principal. Applications have been reviewed for the set criteria. And the only criteria, as we previously shared, is that students MAY not have been externally suspended at any point with the exclusion of our nontraditional schools. Next slide. The following slides will present district wide averages of student respondents for selected who selected strongly agree or agree to each respective survey question. These MAY be referred to as favorability scores. One student represents each single board member's district, middle and high school. Two students are representing our nontraditional schools. So we're going to take a pause and have our students introduce themselves. And then we'll move around the table and have the board m mbers, MR. Bruno and MrMr. Magag,ntroduce youelel We'lltartrtitith Amy.

014Good morning. Good morning. My name is Amy and I'm an eighth grader at Alston Alston Middle School. Good morning. I'm Sophia Allen and I'm a junior at Hollywood Hills High School. Good morning everyone. My name is Paris Langford. I'm an eighth grader at Walter Middle School. Good morning board. My name is Naomi Castro and I'm a junior at Everglades High School. Good morning. I'm an eighth grader at new River Middle School. And my name is Kaya Bahari. Greetings. My name is David Santiago. I'm 11th grade at Northeast High School. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Anna Fletcher. I'm an eighth grader at Millennium Collegiate Academy. Good morning. My name is Sofia Restrepo and I'm a junior at J.P. Taravella. Good morning everybody. I'm Kristena Gregory from William Dandy Middle School and I'm a seventh

015grader. Good morning. My name is Ashley Telfer. I'm a I'm a junior at Piper High School. Good morning. I'm Scarlett Gamoneda from Indian Ridge Middle School and I'm in seventh grade. Good morning. I'm j. Fleming, a senior at Novi High School. Good morning. My name is Kennedy Simpson and I'm a seventh grader at Lyons Creek Middle School. Good morning. My name is Woodmia Antoine. I'm in high school. Good morning. My name is Jerusalem Moore. I'm a sixth grader at Pine Ridge Education Center. Good morning. My name is DeAndre Spence. I am a freshman at linear Jjames Education Center. Good morning. My name is Rebecca Thompson. I'm the district two school board meeting member. Good to see you again. Good morning guys. Mauro Bulman. I represent district one. So I represent Sofia and Amy and DeAndre.

016Thanks for being here today. Good morning. I'm Debbie Hixon. I'm one of the county wide school board members. Thank you. So so I represent all of you and it's so nice to see you. Thank you for coming today. Good morning everyone. My name is Cathy Dupree Bruno. I'm the general counsel, meaning that I'm the lead attorney for the school board and for the school district. And I am so impressed to see sixth graders, seventh graders, eighth graders, high schoolers. All I can say is wow. Good morning. I'm Sara Leonardi, school board member representing district three. Good morning, Doctor Howard Hepburn, your superintendent. Always an awesome day when we have kids in the building. Good morning students and everyone. I am Jeff Holness. I'm the vice chair and I represent district five. And I believe I

017have two of my students here. Kristena Kristena from William Dandy and Ashley from Piper. Good to see you all. Good morning everybody. Adam Cervera representing district six. So Scarlett and j. I'm your school board rep, but it's good to see everybody this morning. And I must say DeAndre and David I'm loving these bow ties man. You guys look really really sharp. Kudos. Good morning. My name is Lori Alhadeff representing district four. And hi to Sofia and Anna. Good morning. I'm Mark Magley. I'm the chief auditor for the school district here. And it is in fact a very impressive to see you all here. And I've watched your leadership over the last few months, and it's been very impressive. And I look forward to seeing all of you continue on. Thank you. Thank you. All right.

018Let's get this party started. So we're going to start with our data dialog for the first quarter beacon. If you could pull up the slide again. Thank you. Sorry. I know I'm jumping all around with the screen here today. So we'll leave this up for a moment to show you. These are the favorability scores that were collected for our quarter one data. These were the five survey questions that were asked to our students at all of our schools. There were also two additional open ended survey questions that that presented some extensive data. We're going to start with our first question this morning. And because I started with Amy last time, I'll start with DeAndre. Oh thank you. We I was told that we have two board members on the line. If we want to have

019MISS Rupert and DR. Zeman introduce themselves. Thank you. Good morning everyone. I'm Nora Rupert and I represent district seven and welcome you all and look forward to discussing this wonderful information. Thanks, Landon. Allan Zeman beaming in here from San Diego. We're out at a big conference with Arizona State University on k-12 education, but glad to be here and great to see the students. Thank you. I apologize that I skipped over you both. So we're going to start with DeAndre with our first question. Sorry to sorry to pick on you DeAndre. But our first question shows that quarter one data showed a strong majority of students feeling supported by their teachers and feel that school leaders listen to student input. So our first question is what are some ways that students feel supported by teachers and

020heard by school leaders. Go ahead DeAndre. Good morning. Students MAY feel supported by teachers. Whenever a teacher listens to students feedback and acts accordingly. Post to listening to their feedback. I don't really have anything else to say. Thank you. Mark. Students must listen to teachers feedback by taking that advice and putting it in their head, and just continue doing life with it and just go around with it and just use it around the school. And yeah. So, well, you didn't feel scolded by teacher. Like they always give advice how they treat us. I always try to make us understand how that so we feel the support. Feel supported by their teachers when their teachers like give them feedback about how they're doing and what they can do to support their education and fix their grades.

021I think students can feel supported by their teachers and school leaders, by the adults in in the school, making themselves accessible to students. For example, my principal is in the crossroads during lunch, so students can come up to her and talk to her and ask her different questions. So I think when teachers and school leaders are accessible, students can feel supported. Also with Jay said, my principal, we can all ask her questions whenever and she can also give us great advice and to make us improve ourselves at school so we can feel really supported by them. I think teachers can. Make students feel supported when. They ask students for feedback and make it a safe and comfortable environment, letting students know that it's okay to give feedback and constructive criticism. Some ways students can feel.

022Supported by their teachers and heard by school leaders is for me. I feel like you have to be comfortable enough with your students so that you feel willing enough to talk to them and they can talk back. And like, for instance, at my school, my principals and aps often walk around lunch and just them making them small conversations with us makes it so that we're willing to tell them about issues and stuff like that. Some ways students feel supported at my school is through the connections being built through clubs at my school, not only with teachers, but also the principal and aps and other staff members. They open up to students and have that open line of communication with students rather than students go to teachers as well. At my school, we offer a principal

023advisory board where issues are brought up and we work on plans to improve. I feel like this is an amazing way that students can feel supported by teachers and also staff members like our principal and our eps. Students feel supported when a teacher listens to student feedback and they actually implement a change in the classroom and learning environment. Another way students can feel supported is when teachers show up and show they care. Overall dedication. So many students feel supported by teachers as if their teachers give them the opportunity to be heard, which creates an environment for the students to open up to. So at Everglades, the teachers are very amicable and we're able to speak to them and raise our own concerns about the classes and whatever the curriculum was coming up during the week.

024And they are very excuse me, they do mend their classes to what would help the students in learning and getting better results from their teaching. So my students feel supported by teachers and heard by school leaders is when it is publicized that support is available, when they know that they have someone to talk to, if they're going through anything. And also communication between teachers and students. Like if say, for example, we take a feedback survey communicating that there will be action taken after the survey, and it's not just going to sit somewhere. Thank you. I believe that students feel supported when administration. Or teachers. In general are more accessible. As someone stated before, I don't remember, for example, at my school, guidance counselors stay outside during lunch because that's where we eat in case we

025have questions to ask them, which I've done that so many times. I've gone up to them so many times with any questions that I had. And they listened and they taught me. They told me how I can change and what I can do better. So I do think that's very helpful. Well, at Olson, we have lots of teachers and our aps. Everyone, all the staff members are there to help us become better. And students feel supported by the teachers and all the staff members at school, because if we have any issues or we're feeling any type of way, we can go to our teachers and or during class, after class and we can say, hey, so I was having this issue during class, or there's this where I'm going, I'm going through this and teachers

026will help us find out a way how to solve it and how to work it out. Thank you. See, it's not that scary, right? You guys all got it. Great job. All right, so our next question, as we showed in the data slide quarter one showed lower results around school cleanliness and facilities with lots of opportunity for improvement. What aspects of cleanliness and facilities are most important for supporting a positive learning experience? We'll start with you, Amy. I say that having a well, speaking with a few of my classmates, having a cleaner environment in our classroom helps students focus more, and having the opportunities to not be distracted easier by having a mess in the classroom, or by there being students that are disrupting the class. I believe that the vents are the most important

027because there's always possibilities of mold. It's happened in my school and a lot of students were sick, and I feel like that disrupts how we learn, because that leads to us having to stay home to being sick. So yeah. Yes, I feel one of the most important things is just proper maintenance with the bathrooms, not the bathrooms specifically, but the entire school. For example, if something spills on the floor, making sure that it's cleaned up immediately. I know we just experienced a lot of rain this past week. One thing that my school did was they put caution signs in the hallways, because I know some feet can get slippery and that can lead to some accidents. So those were definitely helpful. And then also just little things in the bathroom, like making sure there's always

028paper towels and things of that. I agree with Paris with the supplies needed in the bathrooms, because I feel that positive learning experiences can be fostered from clean and functioning bathrooms. So possibly day long custodians that clean the bathrooms like on a regular throughout the day. Because I do feel like after lunch, specifically, the bathrooms can start to smell and it kind of affects us going to class. So it would be nice to have clean bathrooms throughout the day. In terms of facilities, I feel like classrooms play a big role in a positive learning. For example, if the classroom is a mess, I feel like that creates easy distractions and it's harder for students to learn that way. I agree, definitely help us focus like no trash and dirt on the floor. I believe that

029having a clean and neat classroom would promote better student learning, because knowing our school cares about our health and our wellness is important. I would say sanitation is extremely valuable to our school because it promotes a safe environment as well. It it's a motivation for students wanting wanting to come. You're not going to want to go to school if your school's quite dirty and it motivates you, especially like bathrooms. At my school, I feel like the sanitation takes away from students instruction time because at times they'll be only one bathroom or one toilet open. So students would have to wait in line for over 5 to 10 minutes. And that takes away from instruction time. Adding on to what Sofia said, I also adding on to what Sofia said. I also feel like sanitation is

030important in classrooms because of how long we stay in there. All the germs can really sit and like just seeing it on the desk doesn't really help. But I think another part of that too is making it so it's more normalized for us, the students, to want to clean the area so it can feel normalized to have a clean environment. I agree, what was what was said previously about having clean restrooms. Sometimes the bathrooms can be quite dirty or they don't have paper towels or toilet paper that we need to use the restroom comfortably. And so I think unclean restrooms make it very uncomfortable to be at school. So I think increasing the cleanliness of the bathrooms is extremely important. Okay. Having cleanliness can be very important to having a positive learning experience. And without

031it being like sanitary, we it can cause a distraction in school and lead to students not to be motivated to learn more. I would say more. So speaking about facilities, the drainage at my school is a bit of an issue. Whenever it rains during the school day, the doors in front of. For example, the math building will be flooded in front and then students can't really get to class as quickly as they usually do. On a more broad scope, I would say kind of piggybacking off of what Sophia said about making sure that students feel that they can maintain their health at school when it comes to disinfecting surfaces and then keeping the air vents clean. I feel like the most important facility that should be cared for is honestly the hallway, because there's a

032lot of trash in the hallways at school, and I've actually slipped on a piece of trash and fallen, and it made me like her class. And it's really hard to get to class when there's so much stuff in the hallway where you can't even move. So yeah. Honestly, I there is no major concern about that, but I can also agree with you, like during bathroom should always clean. How like. How like how we go to the restroom and I can pick up Paris and Sofia said how we can, how people can go in the restroom. Sometimes people just don't, they don't just clean up after themselves sometimes. And the restroom, the floor to the floor can be the floor can be sticky and other stuff. And like we sometimes we just need to clean up

033after ourselves in the restroom. And I just don't like seeing that because why? Because other people's going behind you and using the restroom behind you. That's just disgusting. I personally can't relate at my school about the unsanitary of the facility, but I have past experience from my old high school urine all over the bathroom, in the stalls and stuff. There is barely any supplies to clean yourself in the bathroom stalls. I've had problems with. What is it? Something like in events like there's animals living in the ceiling, like. Sounds like rats and stuff. I've had that experience and somebody said it. I think the student from Everglades said it. Having custodians clean the bathroom throughout the day and not only in the in the morning and after school hours. So that's all I have to

034say. Thank you for sharing that. It's very important. And Jerusalem, you've been hired. We're going to put your quote on the sign in the bathroom. All right. There you go. All right. So we have wrapped up quarter one data review beacon. If you could pop back up the presentation, please, for quarter two. Thank you. All right. So looking at the quarter two data, I know there's a lot on this slide. So I'll briefly walk through it. We did ask a question to our students about guidance counselor resources. You'll see there's a footnote at the bottom there that addresses that. We did take out the students from the in the denominator that said that they didn't need counseling services, right? So we did have that as a fifth option. So rather than saying, you know, they

035strongly agree and they've never used counseling services before, we did take that population out. So that is just the footnote there. We saw some really good areas and also some areas for improvemenen And as always we'ree lookikingt d dtrtrt wide ta, ght?O we're dngng -d-dthth alylysis school b by school. But you're looking at more of of a district wide data share. So we're going to go to our quarter two data review, quarter two data shows. And DeAndre we'll start with you. I'm trying to give you guys warning. So you know who's starting quarter two. Data shows high access to learning materials clubs and access to counseling support. What is one resource or opportunity at your school that makes you want to go to school? Excuse me? My school is full of resources. We have textbooks

036for learning online learning, websites, counseling, etc. I think that the benefit of doubt is that students will love to have something that they can work with instead of just listening. Listening to a teacher give a lecture, they can go on their own on the website and go at their own pace. And I feel like that's better for the students. Now, with all this technology in the world. How like, like how we can go to one resource? Is that how we can go to school and we probably won't understand in school, but later on, if some of us have taken tutoring, some of us can take tutoring at home and stay after school for tutoring. And then and then you can tell the tutor. The tutor like what you're struggling with in class, and then they're

037going to help you and they're going to move you through what's going to help you in class and stuff like that. So yeah, that's all I got to say. I think that one opportunity student can have like that can make you want to go to school. It's like the support after school. If you don't understand something that you can always ask for help. That's always help a lot. To be honest, I love school and I'm really glad to have the resources that we have, like the fact that we have individual textbooks for science and math. It's it just makes my life easier. So. So the thing that keeps me coming to school is I'm gonna be honest, sga, that's my motivation because I know I have the sga class. Being a senior is hard. So

038I think students finding their motivation and finding whatever it is that they feel like they're comfortable with at school, where they feel at home, whether that be in extracurricular or a person, a counselor or an administrator. I think them finding their own motivation is what will keep them coming to school. For me, I really enjoy going to student council and we have like a bunch of clubs that keep us involved in school. And we also have a bunch of resources like computers and textbooks, that we can all look at for reference in school. And I really enjoy that. Personally. I really love. That we. Have study hall class. I think it's an amazing opportunity for students to get extra help or to make up work, or to just talk to their favorite teacher. Like, for

039example, today one of my teachers is hosting a study session for the Journal Paper Cambridge Test. And so it's just an amazing opportunity for us to get extra help in areas that we might be struggling in, or to prepare for tests that are coming up soon. So yeah, for me. Honestly, I can't really choose one. So I'm just going to go with my top two, which is sga and mock trial, because I feel like those of all things is what really makes me want to not MISS School or, or skip it. Because with first off, with mock trial, we get we get to argue with other schools, make our own opinions, and then we get to try out like real courthouses, like the circuit one, which is kind of down the street from here. But

040with sga also like the opportunity of being able to be a leader. And also like, since I'm the secretary of my sga, it's helped me better be able to organize my ideas and all that stuff in a minutes. So yeah. I would say what motivates me to go to school is the clubs that my school offers and the Ace program with the Ace program, I feel it's really changed my opportunity to go to college. It's like changed that trajectory. It really offers like a really great opportunity for students. And going back to clubs. I strongly advocate for Race club. I love race Club. I really am happy that the district did that. I really see the difference that it made in my school. I see the way that students show up for meetings, and they're

041excited to learn more about what the future entails for them. For me, the opportunity to be able to speak to my teachers if I'm struggling academically on a topic and at my school, there are opportunities for like after school tutoring that I have attended, and they're super helpful in preparation for like fast testing to help us get higher scores. My school has an abundance of resources, but one thing that I want to highlight is my brace advisor. She is phenomenal. She like helps all naughty students, even with like sports and academics. She's so dedicated, like top tier. In terms of opportunities, I really enjoy extracurricular activities after school, and I feel like I can see the difference that sports motivate kids to show up to school and be a part of their school's sports teams.

042So something that encourages me to go to school and gets me excited to go to school is the welcoming environment that invites me in the morning. Like, for example, our ninth grade assistant principal, MR. Smith, and my principal MISS Is always outside and says good morning and greets all the students and it makes me feel comfortable and excited for the day. And also, I have the privilege of cutting it close to the first bell because of our swift and efficient security screening. So I get to go through the metal detectors fast and get to my first period. And another resource that I greatly appreciate, I'm a school is the media center because I have a lot of paper heavy classes that I need to print a lot, and I don't have that resource at my

043house to print a lot of papers and documents. So I have the ability to do that. And another resource that we offer is Mu Alpha Theta, which is a club that I would attend as a to be tutored last year, and now I am the tutor. So it is. Yes. Thank you. So yeah, it is a very helpful club and also sns, which is the Science National Honor Society, and that also provides a lot of tutoring for chemical for science clubs. One opportunity that I think makes me enjoy going to school is that our teachers are very supportive of us doing group work. A lot of times in my class, I'm presented with the opportunity to work with my peers, even if it's something small. But my teachers are very supportive of that, and they

044have instilled a lot of trust in us that we can still focus on doing our work while still working with each other. And then another opportunity that my school has is an incentive program that we have. They're they're called Night Books and they are very they started about two years ago, I believe, and they were fully started by the students. The design and everything was designed by the students. And they are earned from your teachers for good character. You get them when you get on roles, things like that. And yeah, I think that is really something that kids look forward to a lot at school. Similar to what David said, I love my brace advisor. She constantly posts new scholarship opportunities, deadlines. She notifies everyone when a scholarship is about to end. And it really

045motivates me because I feel like a lot of kids, especially my age, spend so much time overthinking about college and the future and what they want to do. So I feel like my brace advisors really help me with that. And yes, that's it. Well, at my school, there are. Lots the what I like and what makes me really want to go to school are the sports, the clubs and the extracurriculars that they are at my school, I am a very athletic child. I'd say. I did most sports and I just love going to get to meet other people because this year I was the soccer captain for my team and I met so many wonderful girls. And now during the hallways, I see them and I just smile at them. And another thing, I want

046to go all the way back to Jerusalem, the tutoring I have gone to tutoring at my school. And one thing I would like to say is that, yes, tutoring is good and everything, but I would like if maybe we could extend it for all year long since maybe like a little bit more early, not just for fast testing for Pm3 because. Now I have a class which is geometry study hall where we recap, we do lots of things for geometry for students who aren't really understanding the class or having a little bit setbacks. So I would like if we could have like tutoring all year long or have even more extended, maybe a peer to peer because there's lots I have lots of classmates who need help or we're like just struggling with the math

047assignments. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. So some of you already addressed our next question. I think you were sneaking to the next question a little bit, but we'll do it again. Many students have shared that they have a trusted adult at school, but not all do. What could help more students feel supported. And we encourage you if you want to. You don't have to to maybe shout out who your trusted adult is at school. We'll start with you, Amy. Well, at my school, I have so many staff members who I can just go up to and talk to and say, hey, how are you? Or just like get a hug and get and just be able to like, feel better, talk to them about whatever I need to. But I have like a

048little special shout out for MISS Mujica. She is, I'm working on a novel study with her, and I just love seeing her every day at lunch. And I can go up to her and I can talk to her, and she's just there for me whenever I need her. And all staff members are there for all their students. But I just wanted to give a special shout out to her. Thank you. Okay, to start off, I want to give a shout out to my us history teacher, MR. Curry. He always well, when he's waiting at the door, when you walk in, he is always like, hello. He always mentions something new. Something changed about your appearance. He's like, oh, new shirt, new earrings. He finds a way to make every lesson interesting. And sometimes they can

049be boring, but they he always finds a way to get you engaged and ask questions. And after the class, like, I really leave the class feeling like I learned a lot. However, something that I think could help students feel more supported and more engaged in a way is if it was less lecturing and more like engagement. Because I feel like with strict lesson plans with teachers, which I don't blame them at all, but with strict lessons, plans, it's it's very easy for students to just feel like just straight hearing a teacher talk and then straight to book work when I feel like there could be more opportunities to make it more interesting and fun, because that's what really pushes students to do better. Yes, I 100% agree. I think one thing that could help students

050feel more supported is if each assistant principal just has sessions with each grade and each grades, guidance counselors will and talk about them. If there's anything that's frustrating them, anything that's bothering them, or any concerns that they have at school and let them know that they can talk about it freely, and that there's nothing wrong with having someone to talk to. And also, I'm going to shout out a few of my teachers, MISS De Roover, MISS Ryan and MISS Zara. Thank you so much. And they are some of the trusted adults that I really know that I can talk to at my school, and I'm very thankful for them. Okay, so I think, oh, sorry, possibly implementing a big and little program so where the upperclassmen can adopt underclassmen and like show them the ropes

051around campus, show them possibly like their trusted teachers and. And introduce them to their friends or advise them in clubs that they should take in classes they should take. And I also would like to shout out MR. Was. What could help students feel more supported is that they know that their staff is there for them and that they're accessible to them, that they're they can feel safe to talk to them. And I would like to shout out MISS Galiano. She's my marine science teacher and she makes our lessons very fun and engaging. And she, in terms of our lessons, she always has a lab that goes with our lesson and she makes everything not seem boring. And I feel like when I walk out of marine science, I feel like I've learned a lot. Something

052that I think could help students feel more supported if teachers overall reach out more. But at my school, other school too, like we have so many resources, I think it's just like us as students, we have to go and like reach out and try to find it. For example, if you want to major in biology, you can go to Biology Teacher and say, do you recommend that major and like get advice from them? And I want to shout out MISS Jamison, who and also my advisor again, MISS Gordon. Thank you guys so much. I would personally feel more supported if there was better communication between the school and students about opportunities and events. And I would like to shout out my administrators because if there's a problem, they will go and fix it. And they're

053super supportive of all the students. To kind of go off of. Anna, I would say shedding more light on the resources that the school offers through like digital media, like social media, or even at school, like over the announcements, because a lot of students don't know the resources that we have and they think that our school just doesn't have it and they compare ourselves to other schools. But in reality, we have those resources. They just don't know about them. And I would also like to give a shout out to MISS Collins, my junior class sponsor. Thank you so much for everything. I feel like what could help students feel more supported is I guess, as I said with the first question, is just to try and make the connection with your students because nobody's none

054of us are going to want to talk if you don't even try to make a short conversation. And I think for my shout out is my sga club advisor, MISS Pink, and my pre-law teacher, MISS Lumsden, because, MISS Pink, any little achievement that you make, she will hype you up in the best way possible, which really makes me feel better about myself. And also like what? Pre-Law and mock trials. She often is always there to help us, whether it's with our opening, closing, or just any little things, so that even if it's not limited to just those aspects, we can talk to them and they'll always be there for us. Our trusted adult is our amazing superintendent, Doctor Howard Hepburn. So I want to begin by giving a shout out to my assistant principal, MR.

055Kofi. He's actually the one that recommended me to be here. And just knowing that he believes in me and supports me was very motivating to me as a student. And I think that one way students can feel more supported is that if we focus more on test taking skills in the class, a lot of the times teachers focus a lot on teaching the content, which is amazing. But for tests like the eoc, the s t, I think it's important that we spend more time on test taking skills. How to read the question, how to understand what the question is asking so we can accurately answer the questions. At my school, I have a lot of teachers and staff members that are really, really amazing that can help us feel more supported. And one thing that

056I think is really important is to have those staff members and teachers more available to students and let the students know that they are supported by many people at my school. And I would like to shout out my civics teacher, MISS Norman, because she always makes every lesson fun and not boring, but also really interesting to learn about. I think. Something that could make students feel more supported is. Is if they knew. That even if they're not always in trouble or always needing help, or if they're not always high achieving or always in a leadership position, that they're still seen in the school by their teachers and their counselors and their administrators. Because I think it's really easy for the adults in a school to see the extremes of students, but not really the in

057between the students that are in a few clubs, not a lot. They go to regular classes. So I think that would make a lot of students feel more supported. And I want to shout out my sga advisor, MRS. McBee McDonald, and my guidance counselor, MISS Prosper. I want to shout out my science teacher, MISS Shannon, because she is the very first teacher I've ever had that made me feel seen for my learning preferences and how I feel about her instructions. She always finds a way to make it fun, and she's just one of the coolest teachers I've ever had. And I honestly wish all my teachers would use canvas and make it easier to navigate and stay caught up, because some of them don't use it, and it makes it really hard when you accidentally

058MISS A day. So. Well, I want to shout out to MISS Carvalho also, MR. Medina, because they are very helpful. I always try to make you keep going. I always try to give you advice like that's unbelievable. I really love them. Also, school can improve by helping the students so we covered from men to issues that can help them to learnetter. All of that because s see studedes, they're n n g gna tal b b th h have problems like mental health that I think that's very helpful for them. So thank you. I want to give a special shout out to MISS Porter. And I also want to give a special shout out to Doctor Brown. Why? Because every time when I go out to dismissal, I feel safe around because he makes sure every

059kid gets on the bus safe, go home safe. And I love that. And I had to realize realize that because I just, I just love that about it because that's my favorite thing about the school, really, and how I can feel safe and what he said the first day of school, how Primary Education Center is one of the safest schools in Broward County. Now. I really see why I believe him now. Now I really see why why he said that because he's I see my ap and him outside every single day, and he just makes sure the kids get on. They're safe and yeah. I feel like a way students can be to sorry. I feel like a way students can feel more supported is. Rewarded. Students are criticized more than praise. And I feel

060like if students are congratulated for more things than they are booed for, they'll feel more supported and feel safer around, and they will have more trusted, supportive staff to go to. I want to give a special shout out to my principal, Michelle Laurent, and my mentor Shanti Butler. They're like, I don't know, they're my supporters, I love them. Thank you. Amazing. All right, we're going to go on to quarter three. And I promise you board members, we did not pay the students to to speak and share all these positive experiences. So you all are doing amazing. And we're really, really happy to hear those positive experiences and also your ideas to make your experience better. So as we move on to our last quarter, just know you all are doing amazing. All right, let's move

061on to quarter three. What you'll see in quarter three is that we expanded the opportunity for schools to add three school specific questions. We heard overwhelming feedback from the school based administrators participating in this initiative that they liked the questions that the district was giving them, but they also wanted the opportunity to add their own. So schools did opt ins. Not all schools did, but some schools opted in to be able to add through three school specific questions. We also expanded the ai capabilities in quarter three to do some really meaningful follow up. And I want to share this with you because it it really gave us some really enriching data. There were that second question, I feel that I belong at my school. And then the last question, I would recommend my school to

062another student if there was differences between that experience. So for example, let's say I said, I agree. I strongly agree that I belong at my school, but I disagree. I would not recommend my school. The ai saw that difference and asked the student that follow up. So they said, we're happy you belong, but why aren't you going to recommend your school? Right? And vice versa. So we were really able to understand what that difference was like. And with the ai tools, we were able to categorize that at a school based level. So we, we've got some really, really good data from quarter three that I wanted to share. So looking at the first question, when we see that 78% of our students are sharing that a staff member has talked to them about our future

063goals. And DeAndre will be starting with you. Our question is, what is one thing your school does to help you feel prepared for your future? And maybe we're going a little bit off script here, but what is an idea that you have for your school to help you be prepared for your future? The way my school helps me prepare for my future is first and foremost, prepping for all of the tests. They give us extra study time, one on one tutoring in case we need it. In certain circumstances, they would. Give us group projects to help us get along with our peers so we can all understand it together. And I think that's an amazing opportunity for us. What DeAndre said, I agree because like we some kids need children and some kids need some

064extra help. And yeah. I also argue with them like they said, like I always have help. So group work also projects that also make you feel prepared for your future. So. Okay. My school helps me feel prepared for my future by my teachers using like real world examples to help us kind of like experience what it's going to be like for us once we leave and start to start our own life. Oh yeah. So at my school, my brace advisor publishes a college and career readiness newsletter every so often, so we can have opportunities to apply to different scholarships, look into different careers. If there's a job fair, if there's a college fair going on, that's what we'll find out about it. I think something that can help students feel better prepared for their future

065would be more S.A.T. Prep implementing that more sophomore year, right before you take the school day, S.A.T. Could help a lot of students that maybe can't take the S.A.T. Two, three, four times. So I think that would allow a lot of students to get better test scores and then prepare them for applying for colleges. At my school, many teachers can let us know about like the announcements or special events or meeting dates for special clubs. And they also have special times that we can all study together, like at tutoring at my school. And that makes me feel really, really prepared for the future. And when those dates do come. My school does really well at helping prepare students for college. For example, a few weeks ago they held a workshop on how to write a

066college essay. We also had a college fair at our school where colleges came to the school, and we were able to learn more about the schools, and I learned about schools that I haven't even heard about. And so I really liked that. But I do want to touch on the what was previously said about sat prep. I definitely think that students need more prep with s t and it needs to start earlier. Even as far as freshman year, so we can get better scores and be better prepared for college. One thing my school does to help me feel better prepared for our future is what our pre-law program and the experiences that we have. Like, for instance, we have we had a partnership with Greenspoon Marder, and basically they come to our class and give

067us help with litigation skills, how to properly analyze text and all the sorts of those things, but with all the things that it teaches me personally, it makes me realize that a lot of the stuff that they're teaching us doesn't just have to stay with what the program we're in pre-law, all those public speaking skills, knowing how to analyze stuff doesn't just limit yourself. So it helps you in the future, no matter what you want to do, which I do like a lot. One thing that my school does to help us prepare for the future is through our Brace program. Our Brace advisor helps students all day, all the time. I help her a lot as well because I'm a brace cadet, so I work hand in hand with her and I see the impact

068that it makes on students and how it refreshes them for the future. It really calms them down and lets them know like, hey, I got this. Like I'm able to take this next step. A lot of stuff that our school does is like a college fair, like I mentioned before. And then a thing that my school does that I really like is that we have colleges like bc, fau, fau come and help students with their applications for the next step in their life. At my school, the teachers and support staff, they're very focused on preparing students for further education by providing advice and always listening whenever students have questions and ask for help. But definitely having better communication about the teachers being there and able to help would help students, because not every student is

069going to advocate for themselves and speak up when they have questions. One thing my school does is like host different workshops, college fairs, and send out different military branches so we can see all the opportunities, even besides college. And one idea I would say is just more tutoring, especially for Ace classes. One thing my school does that helps us become prepared for the future is my school hosts Saturday camp and it's eoc prep and I can see a difference from me going in my eoc results, and that really helps me. So one thing that Everglades does to help students prepare for future for our futures are the eoc review sessions that they host during our study halls for all juniors. And these review sessions also help me and my peers in ace us history to

070prepare for our Ace exam. And we also have a very active brace advisor that posts announcements about college workshops and opportunities, and another program that was newly implemented at my school was the cte Summer Internship Program, which gave interested students the opportunity to go to the emirate Bank arena to meet with quality internship providers and to engage in a practice interview, which I feel prepared me for the actual interview that I got with an internship provider from the program that also landed me in a summer internship. One thing that my school does to help me feel prepared for my future is that they make it very known that it's important to have many achievements and do good in school and have goals for your future. And we also have a lot of different classes and

071opportunities at our school that are good for career planning. If you want to go down a certain career path, they also have many opportunities in different subjects for the eoc, whether that's reading math, history, science, and then also reminding us about the requirements, like for any field trips that are coming up and we have field trips for every grade. So that doesn't only apply to eighth grade and that there is a certain criteria for that. And if you want to be a part of that, you have to meet certain requirements. But they also make it known that it's not this, this and this. Like you can still enjoy your time, but just be aware that there are certain things that you have to do. Thank you. My school does many. Things to help us prepare

072for our future. There's different classes and extracurriculars. For example, jrotc, Hosa, which I'm in, which is for people that want to go into the medical field when they're older. And along with that, there's not only is there the college fair, but throughout the entire school year, different colleges, even even one from Japan, like different colleges go to my school and they spend the study hall, period, just educating on whoever wants to listen about the college and the requirements to get into that college. And along with guidance counselors who, as I stated earlier, who is always in the cafeteria or right outside in the patio during lunch to answer any questions that you have. In my school, there are lots of teachers who come and they give you like life lessons, or they tell you like

073personal experiences. On my history teacher, my my us history teacher, MR. Gomi, on the little shout out, he's always telling us, oh, so I did the military for this amount of time. I did this and that. And and I think you guys should do this. Or like he sometimes gives us like one on one talks. He's like, so you're doing good or I think you should do this instead of doing that. He's always like giving us like even personal examples or things like he's always giving us personal examples of things in the future that we could or that we should do. And so does my gym teacher, Coach Angelucci. He's always every single day he gives us a pep talk. He's like, he's like, oh, I saw this and I and it reminds me of

074you guys. And today we're going to be talking about this before we do our two laps. He's both of my teachers are always like telling us about our future. They're like, if you, if you want to do college, if you want to do university and things like that. Also, I'm in mtl since seventh grade, since last year, and we've gone to fiu and Barry University. I've learned a lot and I think I kind of know how to apply to university already. And I'm just about to finish middle school. So I think that going to all these universities and I'm even much more excited for high school for all those opportunities. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So our last question for quarter three shares that 70% of students said that they would recommend their school

075to another student. DeAndre, what makes your school worth recommending and what could make it better? Unfortunately, I wouldn't recommend my school to another student. It's an alternative school. You have less privileges, and every time someone asks me what school I go to, I tell them I go to Lanier James. And based off of their parents and their body language, I feel like I've been judged. So I wouldn't recommend that to anybody. That's all I have to say. I would recommend because every time I wouldn't recommend because I feel like I'm safe there. And plus I feel like I don't want to go nowhere else, but I have to BoardSource. I don't want to go nowhere else. But I have to. And I feel so safe there. And I love my school that I'm at right

076now. And thank you. Got. So honestly, I would, I will defer because they don't have great job that when you are going to school, you feel safe. I feel almost like home because the way you feel the help like student also the teacher too. There is a great environment. I really love their field. So I really enjoy my time in Deerfield too, because sometimes I always think that I'll be done. I'm not going to be there again. So I usually like enjoy my time every day, really enjoy the field. So I love the field. Then I will always recommend If.Your because that's a great school. That's how I say thank you. I love my school. All the staff there are so kind and welcoming and it's just really nice place to be. You find friends

077really fast, but I wouldn't recommend it to anybody because people haven't really heard of my school. So when they're like, oh, I haven't heard of your school, so it must not be a great school. I feel like I'm judged like DeAndre said, but it really is a really great school and I'm really glad I'm there. Thank you. I would definitely recommend my school. In fact, I often recommend my school because of the programs that we offer. We have an ai program which is impressive and innovative. We also have different clubs and activities such as our award winning debate program. And besides all of that, I feel like a lot of students at our school, no matter what they're interested in, can find their place. I've seen that a lot of students that are, I would

078say they they deem themselves to be different, as in they don't really fit in a lot of places. They find somewhere for themselves to fit in and feel like they have a community. So I think anyone that I would recommend to, to my school, I would tell them that they will find their place there. I would definitely, definitely, I would definitely recommend my school because I love my teachers. They're all so kind and welcoming, like Kennedy said. But something that would make it better is by having more accessibility to more of the sports programs and more electives, because it's really hard for me to choose between some of my favorite subjects at school. And but I would definitely recommend it. And I love my teachers. They're also amazing. Some similarities to what others said. I

079think some people do. Judge Piper High School definitely based off of its past. However, I would recommend it because personally, i've been to other schools and I just found that the students there, I've had such pleasant interactions with the students. The staff is really kind and helpful, and I do really enjoy being at that school. However, I think one thing that would make it better is increasing access to counselors. They do try to make it that counselors readily accessible by. However, I just feel like they're hard to get to, especially because a lot of the times they're in meetings or they're just not always available for students and it's I, I personally find it hard to get into contact with counselors without having a parent. So I think increasing access, student access to counselors would

080make it better. I think what makes my school worth recommending is our magnet programs, which is pre-law and pre-med, because just from my age and just being in seventh, we can already go to courthouses, we can go to law firms, we literally go to even go to work places to be making the laws and all those experiences. But then with pre-med, you also get to go to hospitals and you get to go to clinics. And then also in class, the hands on activities, to which I personally love. Because if you keep on making me sit through lectures, I'm not going to learn a thing. But I feel like when I'm actually like trying to do it myself, it makes me more entertained, which I think a lot of students would like, but I feel like

081what could make it better is how the teachers talk about students. Because when you're in like the higher classes or what some might say to better, which I don't fully agree with, they talk about the kids who aren't in such high classes. Like not exactly saying slow, but not as intelligent, which I intelligence intelligent. So I don't think it's right. I would recommend my school based off of the programs that we have like Ace and ap courses and also the technical programs we have, we have engineering pathways, Hosa as well, ande haha elyly chihoododwhicichs for students who wantoo become teachers in the future. I feel with all those programs are worth recommending our school because it gives that it opens those doors into those careers. I would say what would make it better is promoting

082safety at our school more. I feel my school has a little bit of a reputation of not being the safest, and I would really like to see more security guards who are trained and know how to react when a situation happens. I feel like my school is very focused on academics and they offer many opportunities for accelerated learning. They like allow you to take college classes when you're in ninth grade, all the way up through 12th grade. And the staff is very focused on the students well-being. So I would recommend my school. I would also highly recommend Northeast High School. It's like a phenomenal academic school and have wonderful staff, especially again, my brace advisor, MISS Andrews, our dedicated anatomy teacher, and our lovely admin. One thing that I would say could improve is the

083obvious the bathroom maintenance. Everything else is pretty good. What makes my school worth recommending is the magnet program that it offers, which is marine science. Within marine science, we get to go on a lot of field trips like snorkeling, shark tagging, and kayaking, and I feel like it gives students an opportunity to see what they could be when they grow up, and it gives students a chance to see what goes on in the marine industry. I would definitely recommend my school because I find it to be a supportive environment, and the best way that I can describe it is like Hollywood arts from like the Nickelodeon show victorious, because I feel that so many, there's so many different groups that allow students to express themselves and platforms to showcase their talent. But one thing that

084I think can make it better is overall student engagement, because I noticed that there is a stigma that having school spirit is something to be embarrassed about, and I feel it would be difficult to alleviate that perspective from upperclassmen. So that's why I feel that it would be beneficial to foster the big and little relationships, to hopefully advise and steer newcomers to toward a more engaging campus. Yes, I would definitely recommend my school to other students, because I feel that Walter c is a very welcoming school. When I first started there, I didn't know anybody, and within a few days I had already made friends and just the environment of the school all around us. Good. And I also very much like the system that they have set, just the. It's the little things around

085the school that you don't really notice at first, but once you are showing up to school every day, it's just like at other schools. They don't have this. I don't know what I would do without it. And then also the stability at the school, it's very like, like I said, they have a very strong system that's set. It's the same thing every day, nothing new. And then they're also very willing to make accommodations. If there's something that you need, you shouldn't be afraid to ask for it. And I think that's very good, especially for someone who's coming in new or new students that are that plan on transferring to the school. That's very good for someone. Thank you. Okay. For me, I personally feel 5050 on whether or not I would recommend my school. And

086in some cases it is very strong in things. For example, if you want to go into the military, my school has an amazing ltc program, so you might thrive there. But I also feel like I would not recommend my school because it is so it's very small compared to all the other schools, and it's over capacity. There's so many students and so many students don't know what they want to do or what feels right to them. So they're just kind of like floating, I guess. What could make it better? Similar to what Naomi said, is a lot of students think that having fun or participating, like pep rallies and stuff like that is embarrassing when really that's what any adult remembers from their high school experience. And I just feel like with my school, there's

087a lot of things that we don't have that I see many schools, especially ones here that we don't have. For example, mock trial. I've seen so many schools have mock trial, and I've always wanted to have that in my school, but I never have. So I guess that's why I feel 50 over 50. To make it better. I would say finding a way to engage the students more because I have seen when our like our student body, for example, if it's like the junior class or something or the senior class, I can see what it looks like when they're all engaged and they're all excited about something. And I feel like that's should be more normalized in my school. I agree with Sophia. I would and wouldn't recommend my school. It all really depends on

088the person who I will be recommending because not like this school Alston isn't just for anyone or for everyone. It's for like the people who. It's for anyone who wants to become a better person. Because if you want to become better, if you want to know something, if you want to do something, you must speak up for yourself. You can't just stay quiet and expect people to just say, oh, she probably wants that, and that's why she's like that. No, you need to speak up. You need to say, hey, you need to find someone who can help you, someone who like. That's why the staff members are there. They won't just guess what you want. You need to like if, like Sofia and Naomi had said, if you want to be in a club or

089like having school spirit is amazing because I've been having school spirit since elementary and that's all I mostly remember. I don't remember the classes or anything. All I remember is like the extracurriculars I've done and all the places I've gone for all the activities. So I would and wouldn't recommend my school to everyone. Thank you. So that wraps up our questions section. I want to give a shout out to the students here and the parents. This is the fourth session that we've done, and this is the first session that we've had perfect attendance. So good job. [Applause] But also for sharing your true lived experiences and for being brave and bold in sharing that. We know it's hard to sit in a room full of adults. So thank you for being here. I also want

090to take a moment, because this presentation was meant to be the reflection of the superintendent's student Engagement initiative, to thank our superintendent for challenging, challenging us to pursue a true paradigm shift in student voice. Your call was very clear to us at the beginning of the year, not just to have students participate, but to lead with courage, to think differently, and to ensure that every student feels seen, heard, and valued. We thank you. We are sincerely grateful to the core project management team behind this initiative, whose expertise turn vision into reality. The Office of Strategic Initiative Management, and specifically MR. Carl Yates, provided the structure, strategy and technical insight needed to bring this initiative to life. The work was strengthened by the leadership of MRS. Patty Brown, Director of athletics and student activities. Your ability

091to lead with both clarity and empathy ensured that school leaders felt supported and empowered throughout this process. We thank you to MISS Xenia Santiago. Thank you for being by our side throughout this all. You've been an incredible asset and idea partner to this work and we appreciate you. We're especially thankful to Doctor Jody Washington, director of school Culture and Student Support, whose unwavering commitment to students anchored this initiative. Your willingness to confront challenges directly while never losing sight of what is best for students brought integrity and focus to this work. We also recognize MISS Simone Hollingsworth and MISS Kelly Fisher for their steady leadership and presence during times of transition. We extend our sincere appreciation to Doctor Angela Fulton, Deputy Superintendent MISS Shaniqua Lee and the Teaching and Learning Executive team for ensuring for ensuring

092that meaningful participation was intentional, not incidental. Thank you to MR. Allen Strauss, Doctor Jermaine Fleming and Doctor Ted Toomer for championing this effort at your schools, and we want to thank the participating directors, MISS Holly Darbar, MR. Todd Lopez, MISS Teresa Hall, MISS Davida Johnson, MR. Ricardo Santana and MR. Thomas Carroll, whose dedication to supporting schools made measurable progress possible. And finally, we offer our sincere appreciation to our leader, Doctor Valerie Wanza, chief strategy and innovation officer, and MISS Pauline White for shaping a comprehensive, strategic and forward thinking approach to student input, ensuring that this work wasn't just isolated but part of a broader strategy for our district's future. And finally, I want to thank our incredible school administrators who helped us make this happen. A lot of work goes into getting 146,000 student responses,

093so we thank our principals and our school based administrators for making this happen. And finally, the biggest thank you to the students here at the table. You really brought life today. [Applause] You really brought life to the data that we presented on screen. We could not have told the story of the survey without you, and we appreciate you. With that being said, I'll turn it over to MADAM Chair and we welcome board member discussion. Thank you. First, we have DR. Zeman. Oh, thank you so much, chair. I appreciate the opportunity and I hope this team's connection stays good. I happen to have done a little student feedback on my own this weekend. We had a a group of six graders at our house for about 24 hours, which was a whole nother way to get

094feedback from kids. But what we heard today is just incredibly valuable. And in we have said this before individually and we've said it collectively, but you are the pride of Broward County. Thank you every day for showing the community the great things that can happen to students in Broward County schools. You're so good. By the way, Landon, I often forget that you're a high school senior heading off to a great university here this fall, but this has been a hell of a year with you. And I just wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. One of the things I love about these sessions, chair, is just how frank the children of Broward County are. They don't pull punches. They don't shy away from the spotlight. And again, just a reflection of

095the quality of students, the quality of the education that they've been getting, that they can walk into a room like this in front of lots of adults and, and, and warm up quickly. Maybe the first question was a little, little stilted, but boy, it warmed up and they gave us everything they got. And I really appreciate that. If the feedback from anybody parents, students, community members, mayors, you know, about different topics and things like that could be color coded, you know, green for great, yellow for okay, and red for, you know, highly critical. Over time, I've learned to love the red, you know, to study things that, you know, people are critical about to try and fix those. And it is just kind of my own way of looking at this data. But, but we

096got so much green and yellow and a lot of green on this, and I don't want to MISS That. There's a lot of great scores in the first, second and third quarter on these data. And we also got some really, to me, fascinating insight into like, not every data point is exactly what it seems to be. I was going to ask a question about why do only 70% of our students recommend our schools to others? Until I heard kind of the additional feedback from students that they're in a school that that they don't recommend for a whole bunch of reasons, or that quite in an adult like manner manner. Hey, it depends on who I'm talking to. You know, to some kids, I'd recommend this school. I think it would be a great fit for

097this kid, and maybe not such a great fit for another kid. And so it reminded me that, you know, a score by itself is just a number. And you have to be very careful about reading infinite wisdom into that until you get more, more feedback. I did have one question, though, for the superintendent. If if you don't mind, share there is a first quarter score that bothered me when we got it. It bothers me today, 56% of the students responding saying that their school is clean. Have we done anything since first quarter, MR. Superintendent, to try and improve the cleanliness of our schools? Yes, that's a great question. Yes, there have been some things put in place since first quarter when this data was available. I have MR. Dorsett talk about some initiatives that they've

098put in place and how that scaling to other facilities as well. Good morning. Mark Dorsett, chief Facilities Officer Task assigned to your point. DR. Zeman, we have established a positions that's called the quality assurance. We've put those specific positions in place just to make sure that we monitor what goes on on a day to day. And we specifically want those positions to report to the night shift, because that's where a lot of the work happens. We wanted to make sure that the work is done at night. I heard a couple of concerns regarding cleaning the schools during the day between classes. I'm I'm taking notes of all of that. One of the things that we are suffering with right now is being able to obtain custodial staff for for the schools. A lot of the

099schools are are lacking custodial staff and, and Doctor Hepburn, they must have been in our meeting yesterday to talk about what we need to do to get those people on board in these classrooms to clean the classrooms. So we are looking at alternative ways to get those classrooms cleaned. I've heard about supplies not being in classrooms, so I took a lot of notes exactly as to exactly what was going on, and we're definitely going to make those improvements. But to your point, we have started the process in making the improvements to to increase those scores. And DR. Zeman, if I MAY jump in here, MADAM Chair, I want to also highlight to your point, DR. Zeman about the red. So when we did in-depth data reporting at a school based level, we did see some

100consistent red. And that's where we took the opportunity to work with MR. Dorsett's team in ppo to do follow up school visits with students at some of the schools where we saw some of the most struggles. And MISS Holly Darbar has many of those schools in her portfolio. And she really challenged her principals to open themselves up to those conversations with the students. And we had our meeting yesterday to follow up, and a student at one of those schools shared that they have seen the improvements made since quarter one, specifically around garbage cans, mirrors, bathrooms, things like that. So that's an initiative that we're looking to expand. But some of the most critical areas we addressed immediately. Thank you very much, Landon. And, and MR. Dorsett, it's good to know that we're moving out on

101that. I'd be anxious, chair, to think about doing another survey, maybe q1 of next year and see if our scores are better across the district. So thank you very much. And thanks again for all the students for coming today. You've made my day. Just listening to your thoughts, your passion and the depth of your answers. Absolutely remarkable group of students in front of us today. Thank you. Thank you, MISS Rupert. Thank you, MADAM Chair, and thank. You so much, students, for really sharing with your heart and and really getting involved with this, I appreciate it. I do have some questions for Mark Dorsett. We talked about the proper maintenance should be followed the bathroom supplies, but I wanted to kind of see the weather draining problems. What are we doing prior to hurricane season and

102in hurricane season? And of course, we just came through all that rain. I know that there's certainly a lot, a lot of schools that are involved with having some drainage problems. So what can we expect moving forward? Okay. Thank you for that question, MISS Rupert. We've actually had staff and outside vendors go out and survey our our site drainage system, the, the drainage system that connects throughout the campuses. We found a lot of debris in them over a period of time. You know, that gets filled with leaves and, and all different types of debris. So we do have a service that go out specifically before a hurricane season to clean those drains out to get the water flowing. I know there has been mentioned of schools, for instance, Nova and Boyd Anderson specifically, we focused

103in on because we know that there are problems out at those schools. And that was one of the schools we actually visited to and provided some follow up to the principals on on the drainage concerns at those two sites. But this is a district wide initiative. We do have to certify the site drains every five years. They get certified through the through the county. So we do have a maintenance program to do that. But over, over the course of sometimes you have leads build up and so forth in the drainage system. So sometimes that kind of holds us up a little bit. And thank you for that, MR. Dorsett. So would it be accurate to say that between now and JUNE 1st, they'll have been. Pushed d outo o e s schlsls atate knono hav

104pblblems and enen jus a, you know, a general check through before then. So is that kind of happening now? Yes. Usually the schools that are problem schools with regard to drainage, we know we know the list of schools that we've had drainage issues with, and we pay close attention to those schools. We wanted to make sure that things are done at those schools to to minimize flooding, because because of the area, you MAY not have adequate outfall, you MAY not have the specific drainage in a particular area. Specifically, we had issues at records where we actually installed some pumps out there because we know that that system is compromised right now. But right now we we manage that. We monitor that on a regular basis during heavy rain season or any time there's a heavy

105rain, there are people dispatched out there to look at to see where we are and what we're doing. And if we have to get our vendor, Shenandoah, to go out there to to reclean or redo whatever we need to do to those drainage system, we do that. Awesome. Thank you for that. And I had a, you know, kind of a teeny bit of a story here, but when you're in your school and you know, you see there were some examples of garbage in the hallway and slipping on some of the wrappers that people don't, you know, don't take care of that. When I go to a campus and I'm walking with principal students, you know, whoever they on their to meet. And if I see something on the ground, I pick it up, you know,

106and then it's, it's amazingly fast. How principal a p the students will do that and it's, I know it's overwhelming when you see it a lot and you're busy, but I'm wondering if, if the students think that having a, a response, seeing student leaders doing it and seeing your staff members doing it would would help at all. They think that. So we'll open it to the students to answer anybody that would like to. You don't have to. But if you'd like to. And MISS Rupert, to your point, that's part of our strategy and recommendation for future years to increase the level of student involvement in school cleanliness. We've heard at all of those focus groups where students acknowledge that they can play a role in that. So we definitely hear you on that. And then

107we'll go around the table. If anybody wants to share anything in response to this question, MISS Rupert's question, anybody want to share anything? Anybody? No. Nope. Go ahead. Amy. Well, I say that if students see that their apps or their friends or anyone starts picking up trash, most likely they will do it as well. Because it's like if you see someone doing it, you're like, oh, they're doing it, so why can't I? And then everyone starts doing it. It's like the same thing with like friendships and like stuff like that. If you see someone doing something bad, your friend's doing something bad, you're going to do it as well, or you're probably going to be influenced. So if we start having students involving to do good things, then the rates of like disciplinary things can

108go down and we have more student involvement. Great. Thank you. All right, I have. There's more. MR. Rupert, if you'd like, I didn't. Okay. Sorry. Okay. I definitely think students participating in picking up trash that They see can help. But I do want to acknowledge the fact that sometimes it's quite disgusting. If something is unwrapped or like a piece of candy or a piece of gum is not wrapped. It can be very uncleanly to pick that up with your hands. So I propose maybe having like student cleanups during study hall or something. A teacher organizes it, or an administrator gets students together to help clean up the school and contributing to having a safe and clean environment for everyone. Great, great. Sorry. Excuse me. This is Naomi Castro with Everglades High School. And I do

109agree with what you said about the bystander effect. If you do see someone doing it. The people around are most likely to do it as well. So I would take what you said, and I will implement that with my sga. Possibly have a day in the school where we have a cleanup. A cleanup activity. I do agree with what I'm pretty. Ashley. Right. Yeah, I do agree with what Ashley said. That is nasty. I don't think kids would most likely pick up stuff with their bare hands like in passing. So if we do have a dedicated time to do that with gloves and trash bags, I think we can clean up the school efficiently. Great. So from what I've seen and what I've kind of figured out, students sometimes do it on purpose because I

110don't know. But if there's like maybe an incentive for them to do something, like if a teacher is like, if you help me clean up the school, I'll give you like extra credit on an assignment that you didn't do that as well on. Like, I feel like that would make it easier and it would keep the school in shape. And it would also make other students happy. So I really like that idea. Kennedy. And I think another really good incentive is giving volunteer hours or service hours, because some students don't really have the ability to go to places they don't have transportation to go to a place to get volunteer hours. So I think that encouraging student cleanup through providing volunteer hours would definitely encourage students to participate. That's a great idea. Okay. To add

111on with incentives for the cleaning, I would say something that we do in my school is like copying good coupons. So when you do something good, you get a coupon and we have carts that we roll out on Fridays that have like sweet treats and whatever that kids can come and exchange their coupons for. So apart from volunteer hours, I would say that in implementing, copying good coupons is another good incentive to have on campus. It's a great idea. I think everybody that wanted to speak spoke MISS Rupert. Okay. And then the last thing I want to say is I was very. My heart was very full when I. When I heard several of you guys talking about the ability to be yourself, that your school environment gave you that opportunity to be who you

112are and accept it as that person. And I share, you know, I'm a little bit older than you guys. And when I grew up, one of the best things I've ever experienced in my life was public school in New York, but also the ability to be your own person. It was a an environment that was extremely accepting. And it, it gave me the ability to try things and to graduate early and do things that I might not have done if I didn't have that, that feeling that, that I, you know, I'm worth this, you know, this. Sorry. My dog has great ideas as well, but we cannot figure out how to translate dog y.Me ism to everybody else. Sorry about that. Anyways, how how it is to be, you know, the ability to be yourself.

113So I was very happy about that. And of course, we want that within 100% of all of our schools. So I was very, very happy to hear that many of you had shared that you have that ability. And I you know, I don't think our job is done until the way that some of you feel. Have all of you feel that way and that acceptance. And I thank you all for sharing that. Thank you. Thank you, MISS Hixon. Thank you. I again want to thank everybody for coming today. As Landon said earlier, it it MAY not be that easy to come into a room full of adults and, and be able to share what you believe will help your school be better. And we really appreciate that feedback. And, you know, I personally feel glad

114that you were comfortable enough to just say what you thought. So I really appreciate that. And Landon called out everybody to thank. So, you know, I'll ditto that this is such a great experience and I appreciate, as DR. Zeman said, the fact that we had some survey data. But then we gave voice to what that meant because numbers mean one thing. But when you can put behind what those numbers mean, it gives us a pathway to how to move forward, to continue to make the experience for students better. So that's a gift to all of us and really appreciate that. I wanted to say a couple of things and I have questions for the superintendent. So Jay, I really appreciate your point about being able to see all students because I, I do agree with

115you as a teacher for a long time, and it's really easy to see the really good students and the students that are causing a lot of disruption because they draw your attention immediately. But there are students in the middle that have to feel seen, valued, and heard. And I love the fact that you mentioned that point and DeAndre to that also that you should be praised more than criticized. And I, I think that was also a very good point. And sometimes it's easier to point out the things that are going wrong than it is to point out the things that are going right. And just based on your conversations, there's so much going right in our district, and I think it's important that the students share that with the public, because we get slammed a

116lot for things that are going on. But I think they're often more adult behavior issues than they are what's happening in the schools. So thank you for that. Sofia asked a question or gave some input about the vents. So I'd like to ask the superintendent, how often do the vents in the schools get cleaned? To her point of, you know, having mold issues? Oh, that question over to MR. Dorsett. Thank you for the question. Normally, when we do our core cleaning process, we not only clean the coils in the in the system, but we also clean the vents up in the dark work and the actual vents themselves. So all of the interior portion of the, of the vents, as far as it can be reached is cleaned up. Normally the, when you, when you

117look at event that might be just dust or debris that's laying from the, the diffuser itself sometimes. Well, when we, when we do the cleaning process, we clean the entire thing. So sometimes dust build up on events, we clean the coils, I would say once every six months. Right now, I would have to confirm that with my, my team though, I think they do it once every six months. And that's the complete cleaning of the of the Hvac system. Thank you. And is there a way if a student or an employee noticed that the vents were dirty or they had some concerns, how would they go about notifying someone so that maybe that could be, you know, taken care of at the moment? Yeah, that's just through my work order process. If a student tells

118an adult that eventually gets to whoever the principal is tasked with inputting work orders. Okay, so, so maybe there's a way in terms of letting students know if, again, see something, say something, but in a different way, who is that person? Because if we're just if you tell them to tell a teacher and a teacher doesn't know where to go, you're playing that whole hamster on a on a wheel trying to figure out where they're going to go. So maybe because what I noticed here is some of the huge concerns students had late last year, middle last year was they didn't know where to go for counseling or if they had an issue or, and now that number is much better because we made an effort to make sure students knew where to go. So

119we're hearing an issue about cleanliness, especially the bathrooms. I will say that all the town halls that we've hosted, which one's coming up on Monday, students have clearly said they do not use the bathroom. And the concern I have for that is students will go all day not using the restroom in their school because it's not sanitary enough. That's we can't have that that that's a lot of issues. So in line with also the duct, just in general, if there's a facility issue, who in the school should a student go to? So I think if we could give them that information along with if you need mental health services or, you know, college information, that should be also something that's really accessible to the students because they're the ones going in the bathroom to see,

120you know, does it need toilet paper? Does it need to be cleaned or whatever, so that maybe it could be addressed quicker rather than them just being quiet and not using the bathroom? Because I just don't think that's healthy for anybody. My other question is about tutoring. We heard a number of things, and I'm really glad that we have tutoring on campus. But I had a question because I think this is correct, but I'm not sure. Is there a online tutoring platform available for students on campus? I'll ask Doctor Cohen to to provide details on that, but I know we have an itb where schools have access to online tutoring services that we've acquired through itb, and they can purchase those services for their for their students. But I'll ask Doctor Cohen if he's back

121there. I am okay, good morning everyone. And you are correct, Doctor Hepburn. There is an tb that lists several high dosage tutoring companies that are available. Actually, the board approved two of them through the tutoring advantage. So at the secondary level, students have access to conmigo. At the elementary level, the students have access to varsity tutors. But those are district sponsored paid for through federal grant. But schools can use title one dollars through the itb to purchase high dosage tutoring. So they could they have access to those things. And so it's happy to hear how students are encouraged by using that. I think one student mentioned tutoring at home. Some of that is also considered part of Iready curriculum. Associates is part of some of that tutoring piece. So there's a plethora of different opportunities

122that schools and parents have access to. So thank you for that. But my question was more for if a student goes home and they they're working on their homework. I know we did this during Covid, so I'm just wondering what the options are now. And they're struggling. Can they go online on varsity tutor and and do a tutor at home? Like is, is there access through canvas based on whatever it is we purchase through the district that if they're not at school, because they're all mentioning that they have availability, whether it's peer to peer or, you know, whatever they're doing. But when they get home and they need help, what is it that we have that's available to them? And how can we make sure they know how to access it? Yeah. So with canvas.

123Canvas is a learning management platform. It's where the teachers house their curriculum and their instructional materials. It is not where there is an actual tutor that they go on to. It is where resources are available. If they have supplemental resources, they can utilize. So like if, if varsity tutor was a resource available, couldn't we put a link on canvas that they could click on to use? Yes, absolutely. But it would be something where the schools would have to purchase that particular high dosage tutoring for that specific school or that class or that subject area. So but the district covers the cost. I guess that's where I'm getting lost. The district does cover the cost for some schools for those soft for that. That is correct. Some schools, those schools post it. So maybe students. Maybe

124I can help out here. I think MISS Hixon, you're referring to clever, not canvas. I'm sorry. Clever. Yes. So clever. Varsity tutors is available on clever as well as additional resources. So like, I just opened varsity tutors and clicked on one of my classes. And there's extensive tutoring that Doctor Cohen referenced. So that's. Clever as opposed to canvas. Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to. From someone who uses it, they they understood what I was saying. So thank you. I appreciate that because I think it's important for students to know that that there is a place for them to be able to go to get tutoring if they're at home. And I was pretty sure we had something available, so I apologize. Clever, not canvas. And the last thing I just like to say is

125to MISS Rupert's point. And so some of the conversations that you're having, I think it's important that students take pride in their school. And one way to do that is if they're like when you do beautification days, right? If you're planting the plants, you're more likely to say to someone that's throwing garbage in that plant or stepping on it, walking through, hey, don't do that. You know, we, we put this in here. You have pride because you put grit into to making that work. So I think the more you could have days of, of cleanup around the school, you're less likely to throw the garbage on the ground. If you're the person who's picking up the garbage when it happens at other times. So I really appreciated your response to MRS. Rupert's question that, hey,

126I'm going to do it at my school and we could do it during personalization period time. So you are the voice for your schools. So I hope that when you leave here, that you go to your principals and say, I'd really like to start this, this initiative. I don't think students always know how powerful their voice can be and how much adults really do appreciate the input that you give them. You know, like I mentioned, I was a teacher for 32 years. So when my students came in and wanted to use an electronic game thing to, to review things, I was like, at first I was like, no, no. But they pushed it and we, we ended up using it all the time. And my students taught me so much more than I think I

127ever taught them. So I think your, your vision, your input is so important to the adults inour school.. 's important t ts. Andd I I jtt wanan t to againayay thank you for comin and sharing your, your thoughts with us, but also make sure when you go back to your school that things that you heard here today, things that you thought about today, that you also continue to use your voice to make those great changes in the school. So thank you so much. Thank you. DR. Holness. Thank you, MADAM Chair. So London and just here, as always, thank you for the wonderful work that you both do to lead our students. And you make it seem so seamless. And yet I know there's a lot that goes into it. So we appreciate both of you

128so much. I want to thank all of our students for being here. We appreciate you. And I would be remiss if I did not thank the parents as well. If we have any parents in the audience, raise your hand. Any parents? There we go. So thank you. Give them a round of applause. I just want to say also to some of the students, there is some familiarity in terms of where you go to school. Paris, I did, I did teach at at Walter c young a while back and Kennedy. I taught at Lyons Creek a while back, and Ashley, my son, graduated from Piper. So good to see all of you here. Just want to say in terms of. And also I just want to say a big shout out regarding Piper because it's really

129special to me as well. Big shout out to MR. Lewis and I know you all are doing shout outs, but also to a great guidance counselor. I think he's the best in the district. MR. Dwight Francis okay, so big shout out to him as well. So regarding the and I know board member Hixon made some comments as well. Doctor Hepburn, this might be I'm sure, for MR. Dorsett, but the concern seems overwhelming as far as the restrooms in the schools. And I think that is that should be high priority. And I, and I did hear MR. Dorsett mentioned that they have made some changes and have been doing extensive cleaning, especially at nights, but the question I have is considering that the restrooms are an issue. How can we prioritize the restrooms that there can

130be ongoing cleaning throughout the day where there is some sort of a frequency time schedule to which all of our schools, the restrooms can be clean, especially when kids come in in the mornings and they go to class and especially after lunch. How can we increase the frequency and enforce it, or have it in some kind of a routine part of the requirement for a custodian? So if MR. Dorsett could answer that, because I think that's a real problem. No student should have to be reluctant to use the restrooms and wait all day because our restrooms are not clean. For one thing, that's not healthy for them. So, MR. Dorsett, I think this is priority. So if you could comment on that and and actually, before you come in, can you tell us how frequently

131throughout the day, our restrooms looked at maybe not an extensive cleaning, but at least touching up? And is there anything already in place to enforce this? Thank you for the question, DR. Holness. I just want to say that those questions, we have to direct those to the principal, as they are the leaders of the custodian at the school. So we don't here at district, we don't establish this the, the cleaning schedule for the site based custodians. So that would be a question that I would have to defer to either the area office or the principal at the school. With regard to how often the areas are touched during the course of the day. I was going to mention that too. So thank you for adding that, MR. Dorsett. It is a site based kind of

132leadership model when it comes to to schools and their custodians. I think the grand scheme of things that most principals try to accomplish is having, you know, that reoccurring cleaning of certain areas, especially high traffic areas or areas that are used the most on campus, every principal knows that. I think one of the issues to accomplishing that at most campuses is staffing. It is a high turnover position with custodians or school based facility workers. So to to gain that constant person to go in who has that expertise and demonstrating that level of pride like some of us are used to when we went to school. But today it's a very high turnover position, just like MR. Dorsett said earlier, you guys must have been over our heads because we were talking about this yesterday or

133was yesterday Monday. Every day is Monday for me, but actually talking about how do we augment some of these services with contracted services and things like that to fill some of those gaps, because it is a high turnover turnover area schools do not have the same consistent custodians year after year because of the turnover. But the goal is to kind of mimic what you see in some of your shopping centers or stores or restaurants, or sometimes you see that list of where that custodial came in and signed in that they actually cleaned it at this time, right? And also getting some support from the people who actually use the bathroom too. Hey, make sure you don't flush this in toilet and things like that. So it's a, it's a partnership, but it is a high

134turnover position that kind of creates some gaps for us to, to really fulfill the, the mission, but looking at how we augment that with some contracted services for some custodial services that are external to support. Okay, so Doctor Hepburn, I hear you, but I'm not sure if I am overly satisfied with that answer. And I'll tell you why. We have every school in Broward County has custodians. I don't believe throughout the day there is any school without a custodian. I think what I would love to see is that, and I know that we have a lot of. Different roles and duties of the custodians, but the restrooms to me are high priority. They are of the highest priority. It's sanitation, it's students health, it's students well-being. So there, and I understand the comment is that

135the school based principals and so on, each has their own guidelines, but I think it should be standardized. I think it should be directed by the district because when you have situations where kids are not able to use the restrooms and it is left up to a school based leadership, I'm not sure if we'll get the same uniformity in terms of standard that we need to have for students health and well-being. So, MADAM Chair, I don't know if this board can, but I believe that we should request that the superintendent provide some sort of a standard to which restrooms especially are prioritized and the frequency to which, at minimum, they should be done on a day to day basis as far as the custodians that are there. So, MADAM Chair, is the consensus that I

136seek. Before I seek the consensus. Doctor Hepburn, are you able to. Yeah. I don't disagree with DR. Holness in that it's it's a priority and it is a priority at the schools there. And the reason that it is site based is that there's a lot of variables from schools to schools. Every last one of the schools that these students attend have lunch at a different time of the day. It MAY be 30 minute or 20 minute swing. There is standardization about how you should clean the chemicals that you use and how you're trained to actually clean the bathroom. So it is a priority. It's just that every school is different, different layout, different number of bathrooms, different number of staff depending on turnover or not. So there is standardization. It's just that the variables are

137different per school. So leadership knows that hey, I want my custodian to clean after every lunch. I want my custodian because I know as the principal, what's the, what's the high traffic times? What part of the day students are using the bathroom. And so those are the nuances that are unique to the principal versus us as a district saying, hey, we want everybody's going to clean their bathrooms between at between 1030 and 12. That MAY not be the time for that school. So as far as standardization, there's standardization for training chemicals and how to clean as far as times of of cleaning. That's where the variables are. Okay, so Doctor Hepburn, can there be standardization as far as frequency? Because if a school is not, the restroom is not addressed all day. Absolutely. Right. And,

138and, you know, we hear it from a majority of the students. They're saying it's a problem. Absolutely. And it's not one of them. I heard it from at least 3 or 4 of them. So not necessarily the specific time. But can we standardize a frequency to which not necessarily deep cleaning, but but some sort of a touching up throughout the day at a certain frequency. Is that possible? Absolutely. So I think that's a, a work that's between the. Oh, and also the t n l team, right? Collaborating with with their principals to come up with what that looks like as far as a specific time it's going to, I know it's going to be different. So we'll, we'll just let them do their work and figure out what. They understand. So can MR. Dorsett and

139ppo report back to this board of any changes to address that particular issue? Because I'm personally concerned about it. Yeah, as we are as we are. But I know there's a lot of variables and we can bring back something because there's a lot of variables that they have to consider just for standardization around time. The other things are pretty standard with how and what to use. Understand. But, but I'm speaking of standardization around frequency. Yeah. Okay. All right, MADAM Chair, I'd like to move on to some other concerns. So I just want to also mention that I believe Sophia with f with an with f as the spelling mentioned, that they're need more safety. There were some concern about safety for Taravella. I believe you had mentioned that. So Doctor Hepburn, I don't know. Is

140it possible to to have a member of the staff later on kind of see what what more concerns are there as far as the safety now in terms of. DeAndre, you mentioned perception of others that MAY influence your decision as to not recommend linear. James, I guess. And I and I hear you, but I wanted to find out. Do you think Linear James is effective in outside of the perception of others in terms of you attending linear? James, do you think Linear James is effective in helping students stay on track and becoming successful? What is your opinion on that? I've heard that students have graduated from there with and call it not a college, a high school diploma, or a ged, but I haven't got there yet and I don't plan to graduate from. I

141don't plan on graduating from that school. I plan to go back to my home school, Cooper City High School. But I feel like. How do I explain this? Can you repeat the question one more time? Do you believe or do you feel? And I know you, you were concerned because when you say you go to Linear James, the perception from others that you're providing this information is not that great based upon your feedback. So but on the other hand, do you feel linear? James is helping students to be successful academically outside of the perception of anybody else in terms of your attendance there? Of course, this teachers take their time with the students and they plan their teaching. What is it they're teaching plans. According to the kids test grades. Okay. Very good. Doctor Hepburn.

142The some of the students mentioned test prep help that that's a concern. Are you able to provide us with feedback on that and if more is needed in that area? Yeah, actually took a note on that. I heard test prep early for the national tests like the SATs and Acts. Some students want to start that in ninth grade and probably even eighth grade. I know we give psat what eighth grade and 10th grade. For the most part. I was specifically referring to ninth grade, but I do think that starting in eighth grade will be helpful. But from my personal experience, I think starting from ninth grade would have helped me prepared better for the test. Yeah, absolutely. So I'll have the academic team back there kind of give us a synopsis of what we do

143right now and how we support test prep for for those national tests. Awesome. So I'm not sure if this is going to make Doctor Fleming more nervous or j. But but I'm going to make a couple of comments here. So Jay, you mentioned students find their students. It's important that students find their own motivation. Right. So I'll ask London and Yassir, how can pair support help students to find their motivation, especially for the quiet reserve child in terms of identifying those students, how to how to bring awareness to them of the programs the schools offer and how to help them find their interests. So what recommendation you have in terms of peer support? So DR. Holness you hear from us all the time. I would love to hear from some of the students that are

144here to address that question, if that's okay with you. Okay. We'll hear from two of them and then we'll move. On two of them. All right. Anybody want to share in answering? Could you repeat the question? DR. Holness. Okay, so Jay did mention that students should find their own motivation, but in doing so, it's important that they have some sort of support, maybe from peers to help them to, to be aware of the, you know, the, the programs that the school offer as well as help them find their interest. So how can pairs help these students, especially the quiet reserved ones, to find their motivation through programs at the school? Okay. Well, from my experience at Everglades. We offer a club, a club, a club drive. So basically it's we have all the clubs open

145out onto the campus, on the courtyard during lunch, and all the students can go grab fliers, pins, stickers, whatever that advocate for the club and not necessarily every club and every student interest is something that has to be loud or something that students have to deter from shyness for if their interest is art. National Honor Society, we offer that if it's like working stagehand for theater, we also offer that. I feel that changing students. Their ability to. With public speaking and things like aren't necessary all the time if they don't plan to pursue that. So yeah, we do offer support for students who do have shyness and want to pursue their interests. Okay, great. And then thank you so much. Lastly, I just want to talk really quick about I believe that there was the

146issue of initial when we started out talking about the importance of, of listening to student feedback, of valuing students feedback, of being accessible to students, and also not just listen, but take in action. So I guess this MAY be for Doctor Hepburn, Doctor Hepburn, how will you provide direction to school leadership to increase attentiveness to students in terms of. Staff listening to them, gathering their feedback and taking action? Thanks for the question. We're already in that. We're already in that process, especially through this student engagement initiative, the data that is being shared with you has been shared throughout the year, with principals and assistant assisting them in closing any gaps, making any improvements that, you know, changes or enhances the student experience. So it's an ongoing process. So, you know, this is the first year

147of really diving in robustly with understanding our student experiences and really trying to do something about it, to really change the narrative at schools and enhance the student experiences. So this would be ongoing. But this was a great start to this year to really enhance those opportunities for our kids and listen and listen to them with true intent and true purpose of actually reacting and changing the way we do business. Understand? And MADAM Chair, just one last question for Doctor Hepburn regarding feedback. So, Doctor Hepburn, is there any is there some sort of a student portal that exists in terms of where, say, that we can empower students to inform the district and board members of their concerns where they can select their school, select a category such as, you know, cleanliness, restrooms, school leadership,

148and we can capture those feedback. Does that exist for students? Not per se a portal for that. It's more organic at the school level. So you have the student advisors are collecting the data, as you see right now from the different quarters. But and, and also in addition to that, the schools have been creating, what do we call them, student councils. Principal, student advisor. Principal, student advisory group, so they can capture additional feedback from a various diverse group of students, ranging from as simple as cleanliness to also student club opportunities, other engagement opportunities, so they can tackle those issues that are very unique to their school. So if I'm a student at a particular school, is it doable where a, some sort of a portal could be created where any student randomly can go in

149and click on a category, a school, a category and say, I have this concern and the district captures it. Yeah, schools can create surveys, serverlink and things like that to capture that type of information. Okay. But is it something that we possibly could do on a district wide basis to, to get a better feel as to what's going on? And specifically. You can and I don't know, I don't want to speak on what you guys are already doing. If are we can you speak about if, if some of that is in existence right now? So I'm going to speak to to next year. I will not be here. So I'm not sure what will happen with the recommendations, but we are in the process of creating a place on the clever dashboard where every student

150outside of the student survey wiwiow, bececse we only w wll do at nex yeaea twiwice to hav atat ongng pcece. The fefeedback we receiverorom principals is that we need to be very intentional with how we do that, because it's something that they need to continuously monitor, right? And that takes a lot of time and energy. So we're working with those administrators. We have an administrative focus group, and then with the regional directors to figure out what that framework framework will look like. And that should be finalized within the next month. Okay, great. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone. Thank you, MADAM Chair. Thank you, MISS Thompson. Thank you, chair, and thank you, students, for sitting and bearing with some of this. I know it's incredibly challenging to sit for multiple hours, so

151I appreciate your focus and attention. I was also going to address the bathroom issues, but I feel like our students and other members have addressed it. The only other thing that I would like to add is potentially having a qr code in the bathroom. So if they are dirtier or whatever, that the principal and then someone at the district gets notified, and then that way we can keep track of what schools are having a high prevalence of students complaining about this issue. The other thing I want to address is how we get student feedback, and especially how we as school board members get feedback. This is something Landon's been assisting me in meeting with all my high schools and middle schools. About one how do you guys get news about what's happening throughout the district

152or throughout your school? So that's my part a to this question. And I mean, like, how did you guys learn with no commentary on the policies about cell phone policy? How did you guys learn about potentially changing graduations? How did you guys learn about potentially changing block schedule? Like where do you get the news about what is happening in your school or in the district as a whole? Go ahead. Okay, we'll go around the table. Go ahead. Amy. Well, to answer your question, my principal machine, Carly, she's always every single morning during the pa when she's doing and like during instruction, she will give us the same speech over and over again. And she'll say about the the phone policy, about dress code, about sorry about like all the policies that there are. And it's

153like every single day, like at some point, maybe, yes, students are like, they memorize it from listening to it all like two, three years of middle school. But she's always repeating the same thing. She's always like, so remember, students, we're not allowed to use our phones. It's this like, I forgot the number of the the policy, but she's always repeating it and she's always reminding us that we're not allowed to use phones and like things like that. And I also have my history teacher. He's like very into like the policies and he's always reminding us as well. Thank you ma'am. For me. The if it's like a new policy, I follow the Broward County public schools Instagram. So I do get information from there. But same with what Amy said. Every morning when we have

154our like morning announcements, that's where they remind us to not have any earbuds phones out. So yeah. I agree with both Amy and Sofia said, I'm definitely reminded by my teachers all the time about dress code, phone policies. And also, like she said, I do follow Broward County Public Schools on Instagram. So I do also get information from there, especially at the beginning of the school year. If there's a new policy that's being put in place, we're definitely reminded of that. So we can be cautious of that as the school year starts. And then also, I don't know if any other schools do this, but we have a quarterly discipline assembly. But it's really just a reminder of all the rules and regulations that come from the district, and also that are specific to our

155school, just in case anyone forgot or especially very helpful at the beginning of the school year to new students who aren't aware of those rules yet. I do agree. I at my school, we also have our principal go on the pa during the morning announcements and she does address new policies. But apart from that, we also have a Gator Gazette at my school that we have on our Everglades website. So it does highlight the new policies. But in reference to the change in graduation venues, that's not applicable to my school. We weren't affected by that. So. My school, especially my principal, she's she goes on the pa and she reminds us of dress code and no phones. Teachers as well are constantly reminding us of no phones. And as well our teachers for the morning

156announcements and on their. The new policies are on there for us to constantly to constantly see them. So I'm going to add to my question because I think some of it's getting missed. So we take a really long time to create these policies, right? So for the cell phone that took months of the board discussing it. So when there are things coming down the pipe, like where you guys could potentially advocate for yourself if you knew that these changes were coming, is there any avenue for you guys to figure out what's happening on the school board level, other than potentially your friends sharing like TikTok or Instagram reels about like graduations changing or being annoyed about cell phones? Like how can the district improve that communication? Not like telling you after the fact that these

157things are happening, like happened and are approved and there's really nothing you can do about it. But like in that process, is there any way you guys are getting that news? Does that question make more sense? Okay. Ashley. I would say. From my experience, no, we don't really I don't. I mean. Personally, in talking with my peers, we don't really know what's going on with the school district until we hear teachers talking about it or stuff like that. I mean, I remember when I first heard about study Hall, maybe them getting rid of City Hall. I only heard that from my teachers conversing amongst them. So no, and I think that way we can improve. That is what DR. Holness said, is that having some kind of platform where we can go directly to the

158school board, sending a message concerning a specific topic, because I feel like going through a principal or an assistant principal is not really helpful. They're not always available. They're very busy. And it's not always students aren't always comfortable talking in person. And so having an online platform where we can be anonymous would definitely be helpful. There's really sorry, there's really like no way for us to find out what's going on with the school board because we don't have morning announcements. And the only time they come on the pa system is at the end of the day to announce bus numbers. So I feel like it would be best if maybe the school board sent out like a newsletter to all like the administration, and then they sent it to every single parent so the parent

159could notify their kids. Yeah. Sofia. I would say I kind of disagree with some people because at my school, I feel with my principal, we have a very good line of communication. When the policy about changing study halls and like the block schedule came up, she had told me, because I'm an sga, she had told me to come with like five other members from sga. And we're going to discuss like what that means for our school and how that would look next year. We also have something called sac, which is, I believe, every month where teachers and students can also attend and voice their opinions and vote on situations at school for the district level. I really agree with, like Ashley and others, that we should have a direct line of communication or a platform

160and a newsletter would be very beneficial for students who cannot or don't have that direct communication with their principal. Thank you j. I think keeping students informed. As to what goes. On in these school board meetings is very important because like you said, a lot of times students don't figure out what's going on until it's already happened. And that creates a lot of outrage and a lot of upsetness amongst students and staff in schools. So I think if students were able to stay in the loop more when it comes to when these things are happening actively, I'm not sure how they would be able to stay more informed with these meetings, since a lot of students don't actually watch the school board meetings. But I think if if we figured out a way that we

161can, like really tell the students what's going on while it's happening, that would help a lot. Jerusalem. I agree. I agree. With you. On that one because we need some information from the school board and yeah, basically what she said. All right. Kristena if I'm butch, I think I butchered that. I'm so sorry. I also agree with what everybody was saying. I feel like it would be better if we just because I feel like as a student myself, we don't really feel like we can have an impact on all of these policies and stuff. So maybe, I don't know, like on campus, when it's in the process of a policy being made, maybe we can like answer questions about it, how we feel or even have like comments regarding it. Because I personally feel like

162a lot of the time when these policies are made, I never just think that maybe it could, maybe something else could be done, maybe we could be aware. But it's just like once it happens, it happens. Yeah. David. I also highly agree. But one thing that I do know that most of us teens use social media, so maybe like utilize the bcc Instagram page and like post updates more frequently. So like we know what's happening. In Paris. One thing I was going to say, I agree with everyone. Another thing that could be implemented is I know you guys are very busy, but even once in a while coming to the school and asking if there's any issues to address, like, I know we kept talking about bathrooms and things of that. But even just coming

163to the school for a little bit can be very beneficial. Amy. So like as Paris was saying, maybe doing like little assemblies, like grade wise, and you could ask us exactly what Paris was just saying, like little assemblies would really help. Thank you. And that's something Landon and I are planning, at least for the district, two schools to do more frequent site visits and forums and stuff like that. By a show of hands, if we put the policies on Canva that we're going through, who would who thinks that would be helpful if we did more of social media debriefs about what could potentially happen at schools, would that be helpful if we sent out text messages about what's happening? Okay, a few if we sent out emails. Okay. And then and I have a question

164regarding emails, and then I'll go back to you guys so we can wake you up. Why don't students have access to their emails to send emails and communicate that way? Doctor Hepburn. Go ahead. Amy, you look like you were going to answer that question. I'm going to yield to you first. Then I'll yield to the cio team. The reasons, because I feel like I think I heard that when a 12th grader graduates, their zero six number is given to like a new student. So maybe, possibly. That's why I think though I'm not sure. Thank you. I can't see who's behind me. Go ahead, MR. Davis. Trey Davies Chief Information Officer You are partially correct with that p number issue relative to archiving in the system as well as a licensing issue. But there's also a

165security assurance concern with regards to student email as well. So it's a good question. So I would like to see a pathway or a proposal of how we can give emails back to students. I think this is incredibly important as their way to access school board members and any really decision maker administration. It's also for our high school levels when people are trying to get internships in the district or elsewhere, to be able to use their school email, I think shows more professionalism than potentially whatever your gmail name is, which I won't try to guess. I also find that when students do reach out, a lot of times it will go to our spam because they are not approved emails. And so I understand that there MAY be concerns. I also understand that we are

166the ai capital of the nation, and if we can figure that out, I think we can figure out the emails. And so I want to go back to our students. How would you guys like to be able to give us feedback? Like, what is your preferred way of speaking to adults or to complain about something or just get your voice heard? Paris. I think any programs that are maybe on clever or on canvas that we're able to give feedback anonymously, because i feel like even if you were to come in person, the most likely situation that would be is if you were to say, come to an sga meeting, you would have to say your complaints or your feedback in front of a larger group of people. So I think being able to give feedback

167anonymously would be very beneficial and would make more people be able to speak freely about what they have complaints about. Ashley. I definitely agree with Paris said about having. a designated platform. I also really like emails, and so maybe having someone in the district who is specifically there to answer emails from students about concerns that they're having in their schools would be very good. I don't see your name, but stripes. So what if it was like. Ashley and what Paris said? Sorry, but also like it was a forum where like other people could also share their thoughts and like, yeah, yeah, I don't know. Sofia. I would say an app similar to like fortify where you can like submit stuff anonymously, but obviously not for serious situations. It would go to like the district board

168or whoever deals with communications. I would say also maybe a Microsoft form something like that, or even like polls on Instagram. I do a lot of that with like at school to get students opinions quick and easy with polls. And I feel like it's really beneficial. Thank you. Naomi. So in the discussion that we had at my school on Friday with Landon and you yourself, we were discussing how in-person things and providing examples like hands on examples like raise up the issues that students have with it, like in the moment. And for the, the students who don't feel comfortable also like to speak in round tables. I feel like they would have the opportunity if you were on site to go to you after the fact and present their concerns, or to even have like

169a box where you can write down your your thoughts and then put it in there. Yeah, like a feedback box. Okay. Anybody else? Awesome. And then I guess one more question for Doctor Hepburn. How do we communicate directly with students about our policies, about changes, about events happening? Because I know when I do district town halls, the parent link goes to parents. So how are we making sure that students are. And that's Landon and I talked to people about the town halls we have and how there's a lack of attendance. And that's because every student goes, oh, I didn't know that that was an option. So what is our avenue to communicate directly with students? I'll leave that to MR. Sullivan. I'm in my seat. Look at that. Good morning. So we typically don't communicate

170with students. We communicate with parents that student communication is really done through our school leaders. So I can get with the deputy to see how we can maximize those communication efforts as it relates to making sure the students have that information. Because at the district level, our standard practice is communicating with parents and not students. But we can definitely work with the deputy and the site leaders to come up with a standard operating procedures. I would like to see a follow up for that, especially because we have town halls and internships and service projects are specifically geared towards students, and students don't know that they're an option. And we'll probably have to also partner with general counsel just to see what kind of if there's any restrictions of us doing that communications directly with students

171without informing the parents first. But we'll see if there's a way to do it and come up with a plan. Okay. So thank you guys so much for your active participation in this. Thank you, Landon and Josiah for setting this up. And also thank you to our incoming student advisors. You have big shoes to fill, but I know you guys will do it. Thank you, MRS. Alhadeff. Thank you. I'll be fast. Good job everyone and special shout out to Jerusalem and Anna and Sofia. Way to go. I did have concerns also about the s t a c t test prep. What we're doing so that all students can get that. And as far as the bathrooms go, I know that there is also a vaping problem that we have, and we're going to be putting

172in vape detectors in the bathrooms. I also think signage could help too in to have that in the bathrooms. And what I tell my boys is carpe diem, seize the day. And what that means is don't wait for the perfect time. Take opportunities when they come and live fully in the present. Thank you. Thank you, MISS Bulman. Thank you. Well, it was great to hear everybody's feedback. I think that this is always my favorite part of the job. We spend a lot of time hearing a lot of issues and complaints from adults, and it's nice to know to really be on the ground hearing what you guys arexperiencing because there's a,here's a dififrencnc betweenhatououe expeperienci e eryry day a andinin ofhe pceception o of people that aren't actually attending school in your seat. So I,

173I really appreciate that. And not to beat the dead horse with the bathroom situation, but I think Jerusalem really hit the nail on the head, recognizing that a lot of that has to do with the students that are not keeping things clean. And so I guess my question and I actually live with all four boys and a husband, so I'm very familiar with the situation in the bathroom. I can clean it and it's not clean enough, you know, so I get so this kind of segues into something that we, we have a district initiative that we're going to be starting recycling in the schools. And we also want to start composting because we have the most organic waste. We produce the most organic waste in the county, in the school district. And one of the

174concerns that one of the main challenges, I guess, is that if you start having recycling receptacles, if you start collecting organic food waste, it doesn't work. If it's contaminated and people are just throwing other things into those bins. And so I guess my, my question is how we and you guys are all leaders, how we can, you know, kind of move forward to create a culture of like Hixon was talking about with pride in the school and pride in, in accomplishing those tasks so that like, you can get the buy in from the other, from the other students to participate in those things because everyone benefits if we're doing these things. But you know, how do you get the message across to the other students to care about that? Does anyone have any? Oh, great.

175Thanks. I think definitely making them into incentives will definitely make students more interested in them. And then not only that, but like you said, you guys are planning to start a recycling and composting for schools. I think turning those into activities or events that students can look forward to doing them will definitely make them want to participate in them more, and not just as a, oh, you see trash pick it up. That's it. Like make them want to be more engaged in it. Okay? Make it, make it fun instead of an obligation. All right. Yes. Ashley. I definitely agree with what Paris said about having incentives. I also think that we should have at schools, recycling club or a cleanup club, like I said previously. And maybe we do field trips like we go to

176the beach and do cleanups. That's kind of like fun activities that get that get students excited because we're not just going to be at school, we're also going to clean our communities and stuff like that. So incentives, starting clubs and doing field trips to places that need to be cleaned up. That's a really good idea. Jerusalem. I agree with Paris and Ashley, and I also think that. People on the intercom should say it and announce it that that we're using recycling, where we should use recycling, and students tell other students to recycle and pick up and put it in bin. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I think that's great. So hopefully all of you will help at your schools to lead those efforts. When they're when they're rolled out. That's going to be happening

177pretty soon. And, and it's just important that we're all working together to accomplish that, because I know that some people would prefer to, you know, ruin whatever the efforts are of the majority. But I think if you guys are leading the way, then more people will have the buy in and then we'll be more successful. So I appreciate all of you listening to that. I wanted to thank Landon and Jasper. You guys have done a fantastic job. I would can't imagine having this level of leadership in high school. It's just so impressive. Are your successors have big shoes to fill? I hope you're taking lots of notes because it seems like we have a lot of outreach and student communication that we need to be working on for next year, but we would not be

178able to do our jobs and reach the people that we do without you guys. And so I just can't thank you enough. You're going to be very successful. We're always here for you, but you guys have just done such an amazing job and just one and I something that I took away from all of you that I thought was really great. There's always going to be issues to address. I know there's stigmas attached to certain things that we need to be working on, but something that I heard from every one of you is that you all have at least one person, if not multiple people that you're giving shout outs to that you feel comfortable with, that are making your experience at school better and allowing you to be engaged. And, you know, Landon went

179through a list of thank yous to all the people that have made this possible today, and it's just so impressive how to see and recognize all the people that make going to school better for the kids. And so it's nice to, again, when we're listening to problems and complaints all the time, I really appreciate hearing that those people are there for you guys and that you recognize that as well. And so I'll just end, I think I also really like that Kristena is getting those litigation skills early in middle school. So we'll be relying on you to lead the communication efforts going forward because you're prepared for that. And the other thing I, I agree with, you know, the sat prep, I think is a very important thing for us to, to recognize. And I'd

180like to look into that further, because I think that while we're providing the tests. There's a big gap between the people, between students that really understand what it takes to prepare for the sat and how the guide like how you get to that point, and then just sitting down to a test that you're unprepared for and you have no idea what's happening. It's there's, that's a huge gap that I think we need to fill. Is there? I'll make a note. I'll make a note of your as a follow up. Yeah. Because I just, I know for my own kids, it's like my one, my oldest son is obsessed with, you know, getting a high score. My next son has no idea what the top like what this even is. And he's sitting down to take

181it. So like, if we're preparing people to at least have a baseline ability to take the test, then I think that will be doing everybody a service with that. So anyway, thank you very much. And those are my comments for today. Thank you. MR. Cervera. Chair First and foremost, thank you to all of our students for participating today and for your feedback. I do very much enjoy these sessions with our students and of course, to our parents in the galley. Thank you for raising such wonderful kids and for for joining us today. I think our future in this county, in this state is, is very bright with you guys climbing the proverbial ladders, you know, having this insight about what's going on in your, your schools is, is very, very important to, to all of

182us because we can't be everywhere all the time. Right? And you guys are at your respective schools every day, hopefully every day for as much as you can. I try to make it a point to visit all my schools in district six, but certainly there are other schools and other places outside the county that I don't get to visit as much as I'd like to. So it's always great to hear from all of you with your invaluable insight as to what's going on. Just a couple comments. I think the bathroom thing has been explored and discussed at length in in nauseam. So I'm going to I'm going to pass over that one. I think it was. Sofia. You had mentioned at lunch that you have guidance counselors at your school that are able to talk.

183That's fantastic. And I would I would encourage all of you, especially those in high school and who have the opportunity to have members of your school staff there, especially counselors and stuff, go talk to them, put away your cell phones at lunch, and go talk to people in school who can give you advice about where you're going to go to college, or what kind of trade school is available to you. Take advantage of that. Obviously, it's nice to be social and want to talk to your friends. You want to find out what's going on on Friday night, I get it, I was young too, a very long time ago. But certainly if you have that available to you, utilize it and take advantage of it. So thank you for sharing that. Sofia. MISS Gregory, how

184are you? Thank you so much for for bringing me up to speed about William Dandy's programs in the medical field and the law program. That always makes me very, very, very excited. I don't know if you know this, but there is an extremely intelligent, articulate and zealous lawyer on this school board. She sits all the way down at the other end of the table. Her name is. Oh, did she leave? Oh, look at that. Giving her a shout out. And she's not even here. MISS Bowman is is is a lawyer. So I'm glad that you are participating and brought that to my attention. Nova Middle School has a law studies program with the great MISS Murphy. And what you guys are learning in those programs is just, is just tremendous. I'm also a lawyer by

185trade, and I didn't start getting any classes like that until my senior year at ucf. So the fact that you're able to do it in middle school, you're already ten pitches ahead of the curve. So good for you. And if you have a desire to to, to go into the legal field or to become a lawyer at some point in your life, you're going to be way smarter than some of your colleagues when you ultimately get to law school. So kudos to you for taking advantage of that. And thanks for bringing that to my attention. The school spirit issue. I'm glad that we touched on that. And I have definitely seen a shift among students on the school spirit issue. I graduated from jp Taravella High School in 2001. Many, many decades ago. At this

186point, unfortunately, and I loved my high school. I told everybody where I went to high school, especially in Coral Springs. I was telling all the Douglas kids, that was a terrible kid. I was telling all the Coral Springs High School. I'm a terrible kid. I had a tremendous amount of school spirit. And the fact that it seems that we're we're shying away from that is a little disappointing. And certainly I'm not putting blame on, on, on anybody. But I would just encourage you guys, be proud of where you're be proud of where you go to school. Be proud of where you're from. Be proud of your of your community. And, you know, I realize that no community and no school is perfect. We obviously strive for excellence at this in this county and on this

187board. But I do understand the reality that that there's room for improvement in a lot of aspects of, of our schools. And we're going to continue to work hard to make sure we reach that. But I do think school spirit is, is important. And as corny as the pep rallies MAY seem, you know, some of the comments I heard were, you know, when you grow up and you're an adult, those are really the core memories that you're going to take with you. And it's true. I remember all the pep rallies we had. I was an athlete. I played football for four years and going out with the band playing and everybody cheering in the gym was really, really a special experience for me personally. So I hope that you guys can experience that as well.

188Let me see DeAndre, you want to come back to district six. You want to come back to Cooper City. We will welcome you with open arms young man. I'll hook you up back up with the great principal Karen at Cooper City High School. We'll talk offline after. But if you are serious, you want to come back to Cooper City. We'll help make that happen for you. Okay, so thank you for that. And lastly, to our great student advisors. The amount of work that you've done this well over the years, not just this year, but especially this year has really been tremendous. You have helped provide a perspective that none of us up here possess because we're not in schools, right? We can visit, but we're no longer students anymore. So just here in London, I

189thank you tremendously for all of your hard work. I wish you both the best of luck moving forward. I know you guys are going to succeed no matter what you wherever life takes you, I know you're going to be very, very successful. And I hope that when you guys are rich and famous, one day you won't forget about Broward County. And lastly, of course, i'd be remiss to not welcome Lily and Mikhail to the to the new roles. It's great seeing both of you here. I know we had some meetings together in up in Tallahassee, and I'm glad that the future of the student advisor advisory positions will be bright with the both of you. So, so welcome to to you guys as well. Thank you chair. Thank you. I'll just get right into it.

190The the question about the student email addresses, I'd like to delve into a little bit more. I know our cio mentioned a security concern, a licensing concern. Could he elaborate on that? MR. Davis? Troy Davis Chief Information Officer I can't get into deep detail relative to some of the operational security issues. What I can say is there is a an enormous risk allowing external email to come into students relative to the way that we we archive student numbers and reuse. You know, that's something that could be, you know, addressed to have done internally. But essentially, that's the, the rationale is there are a certain amount, a certain threat to students that we find unacceptable by allowing the outside to use the email, not just within the domain itself. Right. But I guess that's not necessarily,

191I think the question that was asked before the the question I'm wondering about is like, why students can't use their student email to email within the organization. So, so at the moment that's it's due some to p numbers, but there is a restriction on student email and correspondence with certain employees internally. Do we currently pay for student emails? Do we pay Microsoft for that? We do have licensing for for that, but there are some restrictions with student student licensing that that could prohibit the archiving of said mail. Okay, so I. Help me understand this. It is my understanding that. And maybe correct me if I'm wrong, does each student have an email address assigned to them? They. They have a p number, but not necessarily an active account. The p number is used to identify

192potential uses of. Applications like that are in the Microsoft suite. But. I think a follow up memo might be useful. Okay, like in plain language, I think would be important. And I guess I'm very concerned if we are currently paying Microsoft for some level of student email and we're not utilizing that. That's really concerning to me. So I don't know if that's the case. I would like in plain language, some, some detailed information about what that looks like. Yes, that's a great question. There's no fiscal impact to us on on the student email side of the House. So I can tell you that at the moment, but I do think a follow up would be useful with more detail. And I think to, you know, MISS Thompson raised this issue and I've been raising this

193issue internally for a while. Like I have to regularly check my spam to, to make sure that I'm getting, you know, I'm reading all the emails from parents and students, and there was something that came up recently where, you know, I checked my spam and I had like a dozen, maybe a teacher, like did something in her class or something, but like a dozen student emails in my, my spam folder that I didn't even see or wouldn't have seen if I hadn't checked. So I understand that we have to maintain security in, in, you know, our organization, but that can't be a barrier for communication with students and parents. And I've experienced this as a parent where I've emailed a principal of a school, like in my parental capacity for my personal email, and I

194just don't ever get a response because and it's not because the principal is not responsive, it's because they don't get that email. So I would really like to see us clean that up because I'm wondering like how much we're not capturing as an organization because things are going to spam or our filters are blocking it in a more positive direction. I was really excited to hear Jay mention MISS McBee McDonald. She is kind of an icon at Nova and saved me in a previous life from having to be sponsor of sga. So thank you to her. But, and I think that touches on the theme of something that I wanted to, to highlight from the conversation today. You know, the things that the students consistently talked about were having a sense of community, you know,

195the trusted adults that they could go to feeling safe and cared for, being engaged beyond academics in schools and the people in those schools, making them feel confident about the future. They didn't talk about, you know, they want to go to school for testing or for software. They talked about the people who work in those schools and and how they make them feel safe. And as a part of a community in Jerusalem, I think your comments on on a variety of different issues. But for me, on the safety that you feel from your, your principal and at your school was really moving. So thank you for those comments. And when we talk about being in a district, those are the things that make us in a district. So I think, you know, as we move

196forward in making policy and, and all of these changes that are coming in the school district, we keep that that sense of community and safety and, you know, having optptimm for ouridss future Wee keep that aththe heart of, of our decision making. Amy, Amy mentioned something I wanted to touch on the tutoring piece because, Amy, I know you talked about, wanted more tutoring all year long for Pm3 can what did that look like? Like, are you talking about in-person tutoring or the varsity tutors platform? Can you elaborate a little bit on that? Well, when I said that, I meant like it could be in person or it could just mostly be just there for students because like, there's lots of students I know that they, they can't like they don't have, they probably don't have

197resources online to like or at home, they don't have it online. So they can go and figure it out themselves. Like maybe like something after school, like how they do for pm3 testing, but like mostly like all year long or like for a wider, for wider set of time. Thank you for elaborating on that. And that's kind of what I was hearing. And, you know, as a board, we've had conversations about Overtesting. And I think like, again, looking at our education as more holistic and not just we need to prepare our students for this pm3 test, but, you know, we need to give students opportunities to remediate and, and engage with their academics all year long, and not just to prepare for a test. I hope that we we heard that. I also wanted to

198highlight the conversation about the extracurriculars, like over and over again. You all talked about how important the extracurriculars are, and I just want to shout out MISS Bulman, who brought an item several months ago to, you know, pay our sponsor our our pay, increase the supplement, pay for some of our extracurriculars. So shout out to MISS Bulman. And of course, like everyone else, I would be remiss if I didn't thank our student advisors for, you know, really lifting this position up to another level and uplifting the voices of the students that you serve and that we all serve. And, you know, just thinking to the future, I'm wondering or I'm hoping and I hope maybe you guys can explain this a little bit more, but is there an infrastructure that you've put in place to

199keep these conversations going, keep the dialog in the surveys and the feedback going? So MISS Leonardi, this is what keeps me up at night. We have developed a pretty comprehensive transition plan. Much of that is, I'll be frank, is contingent upon staffing levels for next year. So we are awaiting some confirmation of what that will look like next year before we divide out some of this work that currently lives with us to make sure it's accomplished properly. So we have incredible support from the cabinet members that support us. And I think I can confidently say that many of these things will continue into next year. And we've created a recommendation and guardrails document that will be presented to the superintendent within the next few weeks. Awesome. And I will just say, like, again, the the

200job you both have done in the past year and, you know, your entire service in Broward County public schools, I think the adults in the room have a lot to learn from you and the way you've conducted yourself with such professionalism. And then I would also want to take a moment of personal privilege and congratulate Landon for his acceptance and commitment to unc Chapel Hill. Did you want to say anything? Go Tar Heels. All right, those are those are my comments. Anything else from my colleagues? All right. That concludes this item. We will recess briefly to take a photo and do a transition. So students, you're going to go up over here. Where in front of the screen, in front of the dais. We'll take a picture with your certificates. Thank you all. Those. Thank

201you. Our next item on the agenda is our committee reports. I would like to thank our chairs for their patience. I think we can all appreciate that. We wanted to give full time and hear all of our student voices. I appreciate the so thank you to those individuals. MR. Hill, could you please add five minutes to the clock? We will now hear reports from the following. We'll start with audit Committee. Oh, he gave me a name tag. I like it. Okay, well, I don't have much of a report today. We have not met since the last time that I was here, but we are meeting on MAY 7th. But I wanted to come today because last time we talked about creating a parent university on the financial challenges facing our district and and inviting the

202superintendent to speak. And I just wanted to tell you, if you didn't catch it, it was wonderful. We are so appreciative. I'm speaking on behalf of our committee of the Audit Committee, that we were able to work with the District Advisory Council and the Parent Community Involvement Task Force to put something together to show the collaboration that we can have as a district. And one of the things that I know we've talked about that I probably mentioned last time, but I'll just mention it again, we just encourage you to have a meeting or some kind of a forum at every school where you can play this program, encourage our community to watch and ask them for their ideas on how to address the challenges facing you. So that's the follow up I hope you'll do.

203And again, we want to thank Doctor Hepburn, John Sullivan, who was handing out name tags a minute ago. And I want to thank Lori Canning and Nadia Clark, our who had just did. It was just phenomenal. It was an incredible event. And so thank you. And with that, I will see you next month. Thank you. I don't see we have the student advisors at the table yet. So I'll go to District Advisory Council. Good morning to the board, MADAM Chair, Doctor Hepburn and staff, I'm Brooke board, the district Advisory Council Communications chair dac met on APRIL 8th. We heard from Children's Services Council and we thank the staff that came to speak to us about redefining before and after school care, school clubs and enrichment. The dac Policy subcommittee met and discussed the Soc funding

204memo that was issued last month. Dac has significant concerns about this memo and that it contains many inaccuracies, primarily being that school advisory councils provide an advisory function regarding sac funds, when in fact school board policy 1403 and Florida Statute 1001 452 subparagraph two. Both state that sac votes to allocate those funds there. It's not an advisory nature, so dac will be providing a comprehensive written response shortly. But more importantly, there's just a sentiment that these funds belong to a school that allows schools to make progress on their specific programs and have kind of specializations. And this is what draws children to those schools for the district to sweep those funds against this board's policy and against statute just furthers, weakens our schools. An issue we will discuss at our next meeting is the non-renewal

205of school resource officers. The decision regarding Margate SROs came as a surprise to all stakeholders. Dac would like clarity today as to how that decision was made and whether that applies to all schools that currently have a municipal sro. This issue was already strongly opposed in Margate or just over this weekend, where the SROs are a part of the community with deep knowledge about all their students and the facilities that they serve and protect, it can be expected that similar opposition will arise in other affected municipalities, so it's important that we get clarity about the process of how this decision was made and how widespread it would be. Dac would also like to know what the plan is to have an armed officer on every school campus come AUGUST, and specifically whether the hiring and

206training will be complete in time to roll out to all campuses on that early AUGUST start AUGUST 10th start date. Dac would like to see a written plan for compliance with state Statute on this matter, and further dac would like to know how behavioral threat assessments will be conducted at district wide. Since long since sworn law enforcement is required to be a part of the pta team. Lastly, this issue of sro non-renewal should be viewed through the lens of the referendum. We all know that we need the referendum to pass, but if to the public, we're reducing the level of security that we're providing in the schools through this decision, it will make it harder for that referendum to pass if it in fact includes language referencing, safety and security. Switching gears, the elementary subcommittee

207continues to discuss testing and I-ready. We've really taken a deep dive into educational technology, student privacy and parental consent. Last week, we also discussed the 15 year longitudinal study of I-ready effectiveness and the fact that it found no statistically significant learning gains for students who used I-ready versus those who did not. We're going to continue speaking about this and can come back next month. During the discipline meeting this week, dac inquired about the parental consent being housed within the Student Code of Conduct. I personally found that really surprising that consents would be in the code of conduct. We learned that parents are expected to find the consent several clicks within the cps website, so it's kind of a disjointed process to figure out what parents are actually consenting to and how our children's information is

208shared. We urge the board to reconsider this method and try to obtain true, informed parental consent. School budgets remain a primary concern for dac. Florida Statute 1001 452. Subparagraph two requires that principals present and discuss school budgets with the school advisory councils, and this school board's policy 1.3 requires that software sign off on a school's budget. Budget training is essential to both of those requirements happening. It has to be informed and because we have major changes coming this year, we need a new training from the district. We can't train ourselves this year. Dacs budget training has been canceled three times now due to delays and lack of information regarding school budgets and not having a staffing allocation model for next school year. Dsc would appreciate some guidance on this issue. And lastly, we've heard the

209board reassured the public on many occasions that the necessary staffing reduction would not come at the school level and instead, our principals, just as of last month, were told to add a 10% reduction to their projected FTEs. On top of the reduction that the Office of Demographics has already planned for. This is going to reduce the number of specials teachers, increase class sizes, and reduce the number of guidance counselors available at our schools. Dacs next meeting is MAY 13th at 6:15 P.M. In this room, and will be following u uon many of ththe issues, inclcling Ss anand redefining.G. T Tnk youou. hanknk youNoNohh area please. Good morning. Our last meeting was on MARCH 11th. We had a presentation from the North Region Superintendents Office with an overview of the department's support model and the responsibilities

210of the directors. We appreciate the North Region's collaboration with our committee and in having these conversations, we have gotten a lot of feedback on how we can better work together. One consistent concern we hear is how parents concerns and emails are often circled back to the schools. Once they have reached the level of the Regional Superintendents office, which just kicks back the concern to where it started. As we continue to have conversations about how about how the regional directors and bcc chairs handle parent school level, school related concerns and communicates with the community. I will bring back to you our recommendations and concerns. Many concerns have been raised about school choice availability, with parents being denied choice seats to schools that are only enrolled at about 50 to 75% of their capacity. I spoke to

211Doctor Wanza, and I understand there MAY be some cases that were based on availability of the Esq classes, but that is not the case for all. I've been told that these are all being worked out, but it's concerning to hear anyone would be denied choice to schools with enrollment so low that they were being considered to close during last year's redefining conversation, there used to be a forward facing dashboard that showed in real time the open seats per grade. We would like to see that on the main page of the school choice site, with projections for the next year, so parents can make choices with reliable information. I want to give a special a special thank you to MISS Hixon for her persistence and advocacy in helping us to keep our accountability funds for the

212next school year. I will remind you that these funds have not been allocated by the state since 2021. And we have been carefully budgeting them every year to best support our our our school improvement plans. I understand that district wide we are being given a blanket 10% cut in projections for all schools. My question is, when schools come in above projections, will they receive additional funding for staffing? This week I had a parent call me with an alarming security concern. Her child was with a group of students that were left alone, wandering the school campus during a lockdown drill. I do not need to go into detail because she has reached out to board members that have already forwarded this concern to Chief Gregory, and I spoke with him this morning about this, but this

213has been a concern we have brought in the past. What is the protocol for students who are not in a designated space during lockdown? Are we including these scenarios in our lockdown training and drills to ensure students and staff know what to do if we have an actual situation and this situation? The students did not know where to go and I'm told that staff did not direct them. Over the last few days I have received many texts, phone calls and social media messages from concerned and upset parents, residents and city officials from the city of Margate about the non-renewal of their sro contract. I was among the many community members who sat here for hours just two years ago, to voice my opposition to expanding the Broward Schools police force. The community vehemently opposed the

214idea. They wanted to keep SROs from their local pd and their schools. I understand we have a tremendous financial loss since then. We have had a tremendous financial loss since then. However, these decisions should be made and discussed with the community before any final decisions and before being sent out to city officials. And a memo. The city officials felt the city officials feel blindsided and the community feels this is just another example of the lack of communication, explanation and transparency from the district. I think it would be meaningful to the community if the district had a community conversation or town hall with the municipalities affected by the non-renewal, and with those anticipated cutting ties with in the future. We understand that if this is. We're starting with three, then there's more to come. My question

215today is what will be the cost savings? What are you paying the Margate SROs? Who will be in their place and what will you be paying them? Thank you. Thank you very much. Central area. Good morning, MADAM Chair, school board members and Doctor Hepburn from the Central Region. Our last general meeting was on MARCH 12th, 2026, which included a presentation from the Mental Health Assistance Allocation Resource Team or Mart. Their presentation included strategies for parents and guardians to support our scholars with coping skills, wellbeing, ideas and resilience. Things that we can do on the home front to support the school mental health endeavors. We also had a visit who, along with the Central Region Office staff, gave us an overview of all the district offices, excuse me, regional offices, and also highlighted some of the

216things that the Central Region Office is doing, planning to do and will continue to do for our scholars, our parents and our guardians. Our next meeting will be this Thursday, APRIL 16th, 2026 at 9:45 A.M. Discussion during that meeting and within the region continues to surround transparency in funding decisions, particularly regarding student travel industry certifications and extracurricular activities. As stated by my fellow chairs, there are also other areas where funding is a concern, but this was particularly highlighted during our meeting because a parent brought up a concern regarding participation in competitions. When we have children who are going for their industry certifications, the theory is taught in class, but the hands on experience that they can get at these competitions is super valuable. It exposes them to more than just that classroom training. We have

217a case. This particular case was one where in previous years, they were able to offset the cost for the students, which allowed students who MAY not have been able to manage that full cost to attend something, especially in New York City or other other big cities. They were able to pay for those students to attend this year. And waiting for the funding to be released, some of the children had to drop out because they did not want to be on the hook to pay something that they knew that their family or their guardian could not afford to do. Although the trip is still occurring again, we have students who will not be participating in these events because they could not afford to go. We also had situations where parents were concerned about the course cards

218and the course selection sheets. Once the middle school or high school scholar submits that sheet, they do. Parents feel like they do not have a way to track that. That way, when the the excuse me, the schedules come out and students have the wrong classes. They honestly do not know what classes their children should have, and that's not for any fault of them, because these are parents who are just as. These are parents who are tied in with their children's education, but they are unable to track what their children should be taking. This is especially important for those in our accelerated classes, or those who are in different cte classes. There are certain classes you must take as a prerequisite to the other. We had one child who in her freshman year was put into

219a fourth level class, which is a senior class, and it took weeks for her to get out of that class. So the one thing that we would like to have is if the parents can see those course selection cards, some of the confusion that happens in the beginning of the year where people are in the wrong classes, we can actually deal with that prior to school beginning, maybe even before the prior term ends. The last thing would be data tracking on those career, those industry certifications and related student opportunities. If we have children, again, in this situation where the industry certification would have benefited from them going on to a competition, we need to have a way of taking account of what they're doing and how we can assist them in making sure that they

220get everything they need in order to pass their exams. Once it comes time for that. The same could be said for some of our a students, some of our ap students, our ib students. There are certain pieces of data that can be collected and be presented, maybe to the parents through focus or through canvas, where they can see exactly what where their child is ranking, what their child is doing. And then that way they can have good conversations with the counselors, the testing coordinators, and so forth. Again, we thank you from the central. Oh, lastly, an incident occurred recently in the central region where see something, say something came into account. I won't mention the incident, but what I will say is I want to congratulate those students, the friends of the student who actually

221had to deal with the consequences of their actions, and also that parent for seeing something, a parent, listen to their child. They said something and a situation was averted. So again, from the central region, we thank you for your time. Thank you very much. South area please. Good morning, chair, school board members and superintendent. Acting Superintendent Linda Ferrara reporting for South Area. We had the pleasure of having Doctor Dr Fulton at our meeting, our last meeting, and we were discussing the purpose and function of the regional office as parents, school and district support as a support hubs. Doctor Dr Fulton and I had examined the historical evolution of the regional offices. That was great reminiscing about that and hopefully we can get to where we once were on that. One of the issues that did

222come up was the inclusion of regional contact information in the student code of conduct, so that parents have an idea of where to go, how to transition from issues within their school, and how to work up the chain. We did discuss assessment and testing discussion, and we had LaWanda Wright provide information on the federal programs, department departments, and that's it. Thank you. Thank you so much. We'll now move on to Diversity Committee. Good morning. What was everybody saying. Board members superintendent good morning staff. All right. So the diversity and I had sent an email to the chair but she didn't respond. So the diversity committee met on MARCH 5th and APRIL 12th of 12, APRIL 2nd for our general monthly meetings. I was unable to secure representation from MARCH, so I'm providing the report for

223both months. Today I sent an email to chair Leonardi to allow an extra two minutes, but I'm going to try to see if I can fit it in the five. Oh, I got it. Oh thank you. Appreciate you. Oh, thank you very much. Okay. The committee has had 18 site visits this school year. We have observed facility academics, discipline programs, resource availability and safety and security protocols. The committee remains committed to the nine conditions and their indicators that we as we move through this school year, the committee will be evaluating last year's site visits simultaneously with the school site visits this year. We believe this will enhance the annual report with tangible findings. Our site visits of observation this year reveals community communicative issues with new processes across the board, safety and security issues that

224are situational with no conformity facilities in adequate shape. However, cleanliness and esthetics are an ongoing issue. Academics are within the instructional calendar standards, with some schools more proactive than others. We are still. We still see some challenges with Maximo and school facility managers with work orders. The committee had MR. Dorsett and his area managers at our MARCH meeting and that meeting, the facility team provided insight to work order backlogs, the implementation of Maximo, ibm, and a breakdown of the facility, department and roles. The committee got a better understanding of the challenges of the district and what is being done to remediate. What the committee is very concerned about is the fact that district is in a financial bind and has to surplus employees. The surplus of 3000 personnel over the next three years is disquieting.

225The district is already operating in a deficit in facilities and ppo. Back in 2010, the district stripped ppo personnel by half and I don't believe those employees were replaced. The conditions of our school is a testament to the lack of ppo personnel and facilities. The Committee strongly recommends that the district truly consider personnel on the impact that they make versus the definition of non-essential employees, that the government has. All employees that contribute to the education and well-being of children are essential employees. We hope that the superintendent and the board look at where to trim their where to trim. They consider their customer base, our children, and how equity will be affected when looking to provide exceptional education. In our APRIL meeting, we discussed the diversity response report that would be included, that would be included

226and emphasized. The committee appreciates the staff that accompanied us on site visits. The ppo staff are extremely knowledgeable and able to provide the committee with the responses right away. Tackle items observed that need attention timely. The technology person when at site visits was when at site visits because they didn't come every time, was able to provide the committee with insight and answer questions, however. Yeah, they weren't they didn't come all the time. Other staff that have joined us were not sure why they were there, other than to take notes. So I you know, when we do have staff with us, the expectation is, is that they're versed in their position and they're there to kind of provide some insight, but also give the district the diversity committee, a pathway on how to create or provide

227recommendations. And we can't do that if they're just there and they're like, well, we don't know. They just told us to come. We want to thank Dr. Holness for joining us at our APRIL meeting. Thank you so much for being there, DR. Holness. It was a pleasure to have him there listening and actively taking notes. It felt. It truly felt collaborative and we encouraged the rest of you to come. When you when your schedule permits. This is also extended to our superintendent, general Counsel and Chief of Staff. He's not even here. All right. In conclusion, as as a reminder, we ask that each board member check in with their appointees for updates and attendance. It is imperative that committee members attend monthly meetings and participate. The success. The success of this committee is capped at

228the level at its least effective member. So I implore you to encourage your appointees to attend the monthly meetings. We believe in having everyone participate in our goal of helping this district showcase its excellence in diverse, equitable education. We look forward to our continued collaboration in this quest. Thank you. Thank you, MISS Nani, and it was a pleasure for me to be here as well. Thank you very much. We'll move on to Esq Advisory Council. Good morning. Afternoon, wherever we are. Thank you very much for having us. And DR. Holness, you were at our last meeting too, so you've been busy. Thank you for coming along. Our last meeting focused primarily on transportation issues. This is something we had wanted to get to grips with for a while, so I was grateful we were finally

229able to get somebody along from the Transportation department and to Wanza kindly came along, too. We crunched down lots of issues with them that we had wanted to share for a long while and really start hearing about some solutions to. And one of those concerns relating to our deaf and hard of hearing community. We have just launched also last month, a Deaf and Hard of hearing subcommittee. It went great. We had a very productive and healthy meeting, great collaboration from Andrea and the s department. So between our Esq advisory meeting and dhhs subcommittee, we did talk a lot about transportation. No student, just because they are deaf or hard of hearing, should be being put on a bus for three hours, but some are to get to school. 5 A.M. Pick up for an 8

230A.M. Start kids arriving to school so tired there. No no fit state to actually then do any work. And students being co-mingled for elementary, middle and high on the same bus. So you imagine students who are being picked up right at the top of most of the of this district being transported down to the deaf and hard of hearing clusters down in plantation at South Plantation and Peters and Seminole. It's, it's not great. It's not equitable. And something does need to be done and has done for a long time. I was grateful for a meeting with the Doctor Hepburn and Doctor Dr Fulton last month. I would love for those to continue because customer service and behavior management and so many things that we keep bringing up just aren't making progress. We have another example

231yesterday of a nine year old who was slapped in handcuffs, put in a police car, taken off an attempted Baker act. Doctors said, nope. I make no judgment on the incident itself, but the preceding circumstances and the months, in fact, years of torment that this child and this parent have gone through with cps simply not providing the service that they are required to provide, not communicating, not providing transparency and accountability. This can't be the customer service experience that people have. And then we end up with cops saying, I'm going to teach you a lesson and saving it all up for a Baker Act incident. We can't be having incidents like that. We can't be blowing them off. We can't be having regional offices, not getting stuck in when there is a parent complaint and untangling

232every ounce and every inch of that complaint, and giving accountability and transparency and resolution. We're not getting it. And it shouldn't be on me to have to keep calling it out. I'd also like to welcome MISS Dupuy Bruno as general counsel. It's the first time I've sat across from you in a room since you were hired, and I'm very welcoming of your advent here, because I hope you're going to be able to help sort out some of the perpetual problems that we keep reporting here to. Some of those relate to public records requests and cps perception of what it does or doesn't need to release. What else do we have? Oh, going back to deaf and hard of hearing, we did hear as well from parents, and I've heard from others who have left parents

233who have actually literally left the district, moved out of Broward specifically because of the transportation problems with our students and have moved on up to Saint Augustine, where there's a deaf and hard of hearing school that that can cater to them and, and not be subjecting them to that kind of challenge. What else? So customer service report, I, I put together a big report with lots of us contributed to it. I handed it in with lots of great suggestions. I don't know what's happening to it. I would love for something to happen to it. It was made in the spirit of constructiviv progress a a ononofofhehe pblems being,, herseside m meaveenenoneded, this cclining bk k principles of issues that are escalated to regionals for a reason. We can't just keep passing parent complaints around in

234a circle. Likewise, we I handed in a very good report, I thought on elopement and various improvements that could be made to the district wide elopement plan. I would love to hear if somebody's doing work on that, that they are also able to work with us. Happy Autism Awareness Month, our next autism committee meeting on the 23rd is taking a sneak peek at esy extended school year. And one final thing I want to mention. There's a letter going around that's gone to parents of kids at Lakeside Cluster telling them that their kids are going to be moved out of the cluster to a different school. They're not being given a choice. And yet Lakeside is meant to be a receiving school. I think there needs to be some clarity around why that is happening and

235that parents be given the choice. Thank you very much. Thank you, MISS Carmen. Very informative advisor meeting when I went as well. Thank you. All right. We're going to move on to the Esol Leadership Council. Anyone from Esol? No. Okay. So we're going to move on to Facilities Task Force. Good afternoon to the superintendent, acting Superintendent and Acting Chair and all board members, facilities Task force met Thursday, APRIL 9th at Plantation High School. Our invited guests included Mario Guevara from Ada Compliance and L.O. Casada from Po District Management. During our our meeting, we addressed critical concerns regarding Ada compliance and procedure oversights. It was agreed that the Ft by Ft that any building modification, construction projects or architectural changes must be routed through Ada Compliance Department to ensure review guidance and full adherence to accessibility

236standards. Failure to do so creates unnecessary risk, inefficiency and additional costs to the district. And many of you might say, well, that's common sense, right? However, we discuss certain examples that highlighted these issues. One in particular, at Blanche Ely High School, the modification of the patio required correction after the fact to meet Ada standards. Also at Cypress Bay High School, an obstruction to an accessible pathway resulted in the need to construct a new Ada compliant walkway, so these are preventable issues when properly processed and are followed from the beginning. We. We wanted to make sure that we. We brought this to your attention because this MAY be the reason why we're. Because Ada is expensive. So this MAY be a lot of the reasons why we were lacking in funding. We also reviewed the Maximo

237system and the aging report, which we request every month, which raised an additional concern regarding accuracy, accountability and reporting integrity. For example, Coconut Creek High School reflected a low number of work orders in the system. However, based on the visible conditions of the campus, that data was widely regarded as inaccurate. The suggestion is that either under reporting, delays in processing or breakdowns in the work order system, which led to another question does every custodian and assistant principal have they been trained completely yet? While I do want to acknowledge that the community has stepped in creating a facility support model and with the assistance of the district personnel, including Nora Rupert. Mark Dorset and North Area maintenance supervisors, MISS Cartwell Caldwell, the progress has been made. This raises a larger concern. If the community had not

238intervened, where is the accountability for the condition of the school? How has the public school been allowed to a public school deteriorate to the point where if flex conditions that are unacceptable for any learning environment? Additionally, a major concern raised both within the task force and by the children today, the students today and also online is this conditions of the bathrooms on campus. So these are all quite, you know, the bathrooms that they're they're unacceptable. The the course of students should have not have to enter facilities that are unsanitary, poorly maintained, or degrading to the basic of their basic dignity. So we're just asking that we make sure that we take a look at that. Blanche Ely we, we actually went through a, an actual conversation with a custodian. I sent the information to MR.

239Dorsett and the former chief that his his attitude towards it was basically, if the children don't care, he's not making his staff do anything about it. So that attitude does not help the situation. And the question is, what is the district plan to do to address it? Because apparently it's an issue throughout the district. What systems of accountability are in place to ensure that bathrooms are routinely inspected, maintained and held to a standard that reflects a safe and respectful learning environment? Now, addressing a matter of governance and accountability, I wanted to talk about making sure that, oh, thank the superintendent for allowing me to be a part of the selection process for the next chief of facilities. However, after looking over the applications and the resumes, I think we should probably open it up again

240because we only had one that was semi. Qualified and we have a huge district, so we need to save money. We don't need to get someone in that's not qualified. If we're planning, if we're trying to make sure that our budget stays on task. So my suggestion or, you know, my thing is that everyone should get a chance to look at these applications knowing that these people are not qualified for the position of chief. They're qualified for other positions, but not the chief. Our next meeting is MAY 7th. I had asked for extra time. I didn't know if I was going to need it. She did email me back, but I'm sorry if I'm. Over my time. Just a few more things I want to bring up. Our next meeting is MAY 7th. We were.

241What I wanted to read is I requested the presence of the key facility leaders as early as AUGUST. That request was made in good faith and were reasonable notice. Although our MARCH meeting was rescheduled to accommodate the district diversity so that I can attend the District Diversity Committee meeting where the facility staffs were fully represented, the Facilities Task Force continues to experience a lack of consistency of participation from those same individuals. This raises a concern because under the principle of good governance, it is important that our Facilities Task Force, which is a large part of your budget, that the concerns that we bring are valid and they have merit. So we need to have our questions and our concerns addressed immediately, not after week after week or month after month. So we're just asking that,

242you know, I see that a lot of you are visiting the others and I and that's wonderful and I appreciate that. But we need that same attention. The facilities also, I would like to thank. Bulman member, board member Bulman for giving a new appointee. We sent her out a welcome letter. I hope she feels welcome to come and not just us being there as appointees, that our time is important and lately it's just been us just having a conversation. Not saying that the liaison wasn't there, he was there, his his staff member was there. But we need someone who is going to be able to answer questions and get things done. And that's the end of my report. Thank you. Thank you. MISS Moran, do we have anyone from Gifted Advisory? Okay, we'll move on.

243Green advisory. Okay. Human Relations committee. All right. Good afternoon. School board and staff. Nancy Frye, chair of human Relations Committee. First off, I want to just echo what we've all been saying about the bathroom situation. Thank you. DR. Holness, for really driving the conversation on that. Apologies if anyone else spoke to that. DR. Holness were the only remarks I heard driving in. But that is feedback we've been hearing for years about students avoiding the bathrooms. And it goes beyond the cleanliness factor. Again, I didn't hear the whole conversation, so apologies if this is redundant. It's also been bathrooms in disrepair, bathrooms blocked off because they are nonfunctional stalls with broken doors. Issues like that too. So it's beyond just the basic cleaning of them. Moving on. We held our last meeting on MARCH 23rd and

244we actually have our next meeting tomorrow, so we will have new information shortly. We are working on a policy review. Since the policy and bylaws have still been in limbo as far as what's actually approved, and we have not been able to get clarity. But since the last changes were voted on about three years ago, at this point, we're just going to send a fresh slate of all of that over. So we're working on our policy review tomorrow and then the following month. Once our policy is voted on and approved by the committee, we will follow with our bylaws review and then have everything sent back to district staff, hopefully for approval in a timely manner so that we can have we can all be on the same page with our policy and bylaws. As

245always, I want to uplift the work of the school culture and student support department and the work that they do on a daily basis is for our students is just incredible. I know that they're building relationships to support the Holocaust Museum. And yesterday they also held a documentary screening for Yom Hashoah, the Jewish Holocaust Remembrance Holiday. And hopefully I'll have more information about how that screening went tomorrow after our meeting. I do know that their work has been impacted by a number of their staff members taking on instructional positions at schools. I know this is a necessary thing to happen right now so that our schools can can stay fully staffed, but I'm obligated to say that our kids in the schools want to do more, and they're being held back right now because of

246these staffing issues. So whatever we can do to alleviate burdens elsewhere, to make sure that the department is still able to maintain their mission, one of the things that is really been a focus is needing staff to build capacity for our human relations councils and our other pro-social groups. These are not a nice to have. This is the boots and our staff members are the boots on the ground to guide these advisors and students. Our students need to feel like they're part of the school community. And this is one of the integral ways that this happens. Some of the feedback we hear about students that are moved over to charter schools is that they feel heard and supported. So for us to be competitive and to be able to keep students and bring students back,

247they need to have that same feeling when they're in a Broward County public school. And as we know, student experience leads to a better attendance, leads to better enrollment. And that's, that's our funding right there. Additionally, we want to we've created a new focus that we want to assist teachers and club advisors on how to access grant funding and other external funding sources. And we want to also maybe even extend that to the students on how to do funding, solicitation and ways that they can raise money independently for their groups, ways that they can raise money for their schools and kind of take part in that and not just wait for funding to come down and how they can be proactive about it and take a little bit of control over that. And that just

248feeds into our larger mission for the year, which was giving students experiences and instruction on how to advocate for themselves. So it all, it all kind of weaves nicely together. And I just want to close with a great quote that came up at our last meeting, that the best things are kept secret at Broward schools. And just to make sure that we are uplifting all of the amazing work that our students are doing and let the other students know what is available to them. I know this was a topic that was coming up during the student panel earlier too, but students knowing what opportunities are available to them, what their classmates are doing, what their peers are doing at other schools, and just making sure that we're uplifting our amazing students. Thank you. Thank you.

249Multilingual advisory committee. Parent. Community. Involvement. Task. Force. Good afternoon. Aaron Gold, chair of the Parent Community Involvement Task Force. I want to start with a sincere thank you for the strong collaboration around the parent university on the budget and district finances that took place on MARCH 31st. That effort grew directly out of the conversation at the last committee reports, and many people worked within a very tight timeline to make it happen. We are grateful to Superintendent Hepburn, MISS Johnson, MR. Sullivan and other district staff for their strong partnership. A huge shout out to the incredible face team, including Lori Canning and Nadia Clark for ensuring that information was accessible, family friendly and truly grounded in what our community needs to hear. That work is more important now than ever. I also want to thank Cynthia,

250Dominique and Mary Fertig for their partnership and to recognize the collaboration with dac and the audit committee. Having these three committees co-facilitate this program, I think, created a really powerful model for how we can align efforts in service of our students, families and community. As Mary mentioned earlier, the content of the session was incredibly valuable. But also we want to make sure that we extend the reach as far as possible. So the task force recommends that the session be reshared and more broadly promoted through principals, sac chairs, school websites and other district channels and prominently promoted on the district home page. And we believe district support of dacs budget training is a critical next step in the process to engage community in this dialog. This theme of amplifying and ensuring high quality communication with stakeholders

251carried throughout our meeting last night. We discussed the need for clearer, more timely communication around magnet and innovative programs and other school choice options, especially new ones, so that families can make informed decisions without confusion or missed opportunities. We heard specific concerns around programs that are just being announced now, after the choice window has already closed and preventing access for interested families. And some confusion. We also discussed how communication gaps are showing up operationally at the school level. So an important example that was raised was funding for essential equipment like walkie talkies. In some schools, PTAs are being asked to cover those costs, and in others we're hearing they're funded by the district. So really creating inconsistency in access. The task force believes that clear, system wide guidance on what is centrally funded versus school

252based responsibility is essential, especially for safety resources. And we've asked that Chief Gregory could provide clear, written guidance to principals to address this specific issue. To clarify. We also spent time on an issue we have been hearing consistently across the district for months, and it's the disconnect between families, schools and nonprofit service providers. There are families in urgent need of support organizations that are ready to help, but the systems to connect them are not quite there. Someone referred to our need to be a matchmaker, and to address this, we are exploring several solutions, including centralized, a central centralized resource database that would be both family and school facing. We think this could be a really critical resource, especially as we are in the budget crisis that we are in a nonprofit forum and some more

253immediate tools to help guide schools and families. We were grateful to have representatives from the center for Autism and Related Disabilities join us to think through what the challenges are and some solutions we might put into practice, and we're excited to collaborate with the Esq advisory on that as well. We recognize that the district is navigating very difficult decisions that are going to have significant impacts on people, schools and students. Our goal is to ensure that families are informed, schools are supported with clear guidance, and our community can engage as true partners in the work ahead. So continuing to have close collaboration with the advisory committees and district staff to keep the community informed and involved is essential. Thank you. Thank you. Broward County Association of Student Councils and Student Advisory student advisor to the

254board. Thank you. And I know this was shared in the beginning, but I also want to thank you for your patience and us running over this morning with our students. We appreciate your grace and allowing them to finish their conversation. So thank you. We've shared a lot this morning, so I will be brief and I want to recognize some really special people who are here. First of all, I want to recognize Jasir because Jasir often goes sitting here listening, and he MAY be quiet at times, although I try to force him to give presentations and to speak. But Jasir is the brains behind what we do with student leadership and student engagement. I think I sometimes get a little bit too much credit for the work that that Jasir does. So I hope you know

255that because Jasper is really the I would call you the strategist behind our strategy. So we thank you. And this will be my last committee report. We'll still be in office next month. I will be taking an ap exam, so I will not be ltitasking.Ut while I had the floloor, w wtete too recocogniz j Jasper. Jaspe alsls foun o outesesteayay that he will be attending Nova Southeastern University on scholarship. [Applause] For recognizing his service. So we're grateful for you and we appreciate you. I also want to recognize the future. Our next student advisor is coming in who were elected at our last month, Broward County Association of Student Councils meeting. As the new student advisor and alternate student advisor. So Lily Reed, please stand. Lily will be the incoming student advisor to the school board,

256and Mikhail Salko will be the incoming alternate student advisor. So they answered tough questions from their peers. There was a long conversation. I'm proud of them because they did not know the word succinct when I told them to be succinct. So they've learned that word, and we are really just looking forward to your leadership. I know that this board will continue to support student leadership. So they will be here learning as we begin to transition. With that all being said, I want to say thank you for creating these opportunities for us to have forums like this morning, and we're looking forward to another successful month in our role. Thank you. Thank you. And congratulations to Sierra. If I had known that, I would have also shouted you out. Congratulations again on your commitment to nsu.

257Small Business Advisory Committee, technology Advisory Committee. Good afternoon everyone. Linda Ferrara, chair, Technology Advisory Committee we've had two meetings since we last met, so I'll try to be quick about this. Our MARCH meeting, which was on MARCH 9th, we had a discussion on the autofill artificial intelligence initiatives. The district continues to expand its ai strategy, including the planned launch of Broward Schools ai as a centralized public resource for ai and immersive technologies. A student developed ai chatbot is planned to assist users with navigating public district, public district, and school websites. There is. It was determined that there was a need for clear governance, ethical standards and policy alignment. As ai tools scaled district wide. We had a conversation on the Microsoft copilot adoption that's increasing as more and more students and teachers participate in that.

258We had a discussion on the assessment, management and work order system. Focus includes mobile access and elimination of paper based processes. Part of the problem we're finding is that there are some schools that are using Maximo to log their work orders, and some that are not logging them in appropriately. We've had a discussion at Facilities Task Force about one of them having 60 work orders outstanding, not logged into maximum. We also said there's another pilot program that's going into effect using the digital devices. Prior implementation attempts were ineffective because they were not followed through. And hopefully, you know, we're correcting that. As always, we keep on top of the 1 to 1 laptop program. One of the problems we've encountered is career and technical education programs require higher spec devices not included in the standard

259refresh program. There was a waiver process that was put into place that was funded, but there seems to be no money in that. So concerns were raised regarding adequacy of devices for certification and industry aligned programs. They are unable to utilize the current technology as technology for those programs have increased. They're not able to ascertain those those types of equipments. We are seeking additional guidance from district leadership before formulating recommendations. Technology related rfp processes concerns raised regarding limited it involvement in select technology related procurements. As continues to be an issue. Recommended. Improved coordination between procurement and information technology during rfp development. That was it for the MARCH meeting. For the APRIL meeting, we had an overview from Plant Moran on the Enterprise Resource Planning rfp that's going out. The district wide erp requirements are finalized

260and prioritized with significant engagement from business process owners and internal evaluation committee nominated by district chiefs will score proposals, which we are assuming would include a tac member, an erp public information hub will launch with the rfp to provide ongoing transparency. It looks like that rfp is scheduled to be released sometime within the next couple of weeks. Okay. Let me something. Oh, the other issue we had was utilization of the smart metaclasses and wearable technology. There are certain standards that the district does use, but it doesn't seem to be explained to parents. There is no policy clarity, privacy protections and consistent district wide communication which needs to be elaborated on with parents. It's not in the. There's a certain blurb within the student code of conduct, but again, a lot of parents are now using

261these metaclasses with prescriptions a, c, t and s a t do not permit them, neither does the district. They follow the same standards as those two groups, so they are not there. We did take a look at items b one and b two from the last school board. Student screen time monitoring. Classroom monitoring is currently supported through line wise and class class wise, but that is through the teacher component of that. A parent facing tool, Custodio, is planned for rollout for 26 and 27 school year, allowing parents to monitor school issued devices and one personal device at home. There is a current app available. Microsoft Family Safety app, which the district was not aware of. Whether we had access to that or not is part of the Microsoft package, so we're looking further into that

262and just have like two more items. The committee received clarification on reports of device procurement limitations. We would appreciate that the supply chain risk, contract enforcement and long term sustainability also be addressed with tac. There is a shortage of device due to components for those devices. It hasn't affected us yet, and I know we're working with a second contractor which is under litigation at this point, so hopefully that'll be cleared up soon. Parents have raised the issue of Iready data privacy because of the lawsuit that was initiated with two states. We have been reassured by Richard Baum's office that that is not the case. Student privacy is enforced, and it is also stipulated within the contract. The committee emphasized the importance of proactively proactively briefing tac on major technology issues. And that is it. Thank

263you. Thank you. I'll go to board members. And just a reminder, it is up to the board member who has the floor to call on any committee chairs that they would like to hear from MRS. Alhadeff. Yes. Thank you. My question is to the superintendent, so I would like superintendent to address the issue of the SROs, the school resource officers, with their contracts not being. That was referenced today by by the reports, it has come to my attention that the districts had decided not to renew the sro contracts with certain municipalities without an in-depth, in-person, prior discussion with board members, principals or municipalities themselves. This really came across as a shock. We are collaborative partners in educating our students to make a safe environment. The schools impacted and the communities are deeply concerned because they

264do not understand the bc sro plan that was just rolled out. SROs are not just a security presence, they are trusted adults, mentors, critical bridge between schools, families and law enforcement. The SROs are a key connection between the community, schools, students and a part of the behavioral threat assessments. They are embedded relationships that just can't quickly be replaced. So I respectfully ask that in-person meetings occur with the municipalities and communities directly in person, that they're stronger conversations of why this decision was made by the superintendent. We cannot make these decisions in a silo. It needs to be collaborative. Doctor Dr Fulton, thank you. I know Doctor Hepburn definitely wants to address that question. I know there has been conversations since the letter went out on Friday, and there has been a plan of action. So,

265respectfully, I would like to allow him to address the question. So we can expect Doctor Hepburn back at the. Yeah, he will be back for the transportation presentation so we can address it then. Okay. Thank you, MRS. Alhadeff. Anything else, MISS Hixon? Thank you. Thank you. That was one of my questions, but I wonder. I know Doctor Hepburn was wanted to address it, but we have people that asked the question here. Is it possible to have Chief Gregory, maybe give some background on it? Sure. MR. Gregory. Michael Gregory, chief safety and security officer for the school district, thank you for the question. This goes back to approximately SEPTEMBER. So I'll say that we have we value the partnerships we have with the cities and the agencies that provide contracted school resource officers to the school

266district. We have a close relationship with them. We value that relationship and that partnership, and we're often in close dialog with them. Since last SEPTEMBER, we've been engaged in negotiating the upcoming year's contract with the agencies representatives. That dialog has been going back and forth since SEPTEMBER and as early as OCTOBER. The district provided that information to the municipalities and the sheriff's office negotiation team, members of the potential of reducing the number of contracted s arose from the current level of 201. We have 14 separate contracts in this one county for police sro services. And that represents, like I just said, 201 SROs that are contracted. So as we've gone through those conversations since last OCTOBER, it was well aware by the team that the district is considering this path. And based on the proposals

267we received, it became clearer and clearer that this needed to be. Transitioned into more of a full force, full fledged plan for the next few years. In discussions with them as well as internally. We ran the numbers and we determined that the cost today of an sro is roughly 18 to 20% higher than our cost of an internal police officer or sro. So the issue wasn't so much a matter of eliminating SROs. It was a matter of transitioning positions off of the contract to be so those services, as a full fledged law enforcement sro could be provided internally through the school police at a almost 20% savings to the district at this time that we're dealing with these financial concerns. As we looked at that further, we recognized that we don't want this to be

268a shock to the system. We don't want this to be an abrupt change in how we do business globally, or I should say countywide. So the approach is roughly a 1,213% decrease off of the number of SROs that we contract with for the upcoming school year, not 50, not 80, not 40, but merely 13% reduction of 201. That comes out to about 27 out of our 201 contracted SROs. We'll be transitioning to be provided internally as school resource officers. Full fledged State of Florida certified police officers providing school resource officer services. So that's a little bit of the history of how we got to where we are, why this is a strategy that we need to review. It won't turn into a a massive increase in the police department, the school police department overnight. This

269this process is strategically designed to take several years. We're looking at maybe 8 to 10 years, a roughly 12% transition annually. The goal again, being to reduce those number of the number of contracts that we have out there from 14 to fewer. So I'll pause there and give, obviously, Doctor Hepburn the opportunity to fill in from his perspective as well. Thank you. I just didn't want the community members to leave without some part of the discussion, and hopefully they can stay for the other part. The the next question Dak made mention of the district telling school principals, we actually heard it in a couple of places. Also North area 10% reduction of students above what demographics was projecting. So Doctor Fulton, can you address or or MISS Johnson why it is that we're adding another

27010% reduction above what we're our projection is and the question was asked if schools end up having more than than that number, what guarantee is there that we are going to make sure they're funded appropriately? So I can start and I'll allow MISS Johnson to fill in everything I. Anything that I MAY leave out, but with traditional way it does is when we get kids registered, it's really not a kid that you count on until they show up. So once they show up, that is counted. It's called a student in a seat. And then after the ten day count, whether you're over or under, adjustments are made to ensure that the students that are there, that we're actually getting the credit or the fte for the student. So I will let MISS Johnson share anything

271additional that I MISS Out. And that definitely has not changed right now. What we have made to ensure that with the school choice window, we are highly encouraging our parents to make sure they register once they get the notice, because that helps secure that spot. But again, until that student shows up, it's not considered a guaranteed enrollment because we have you registered. But once you show up, you're actually a student that is counted in the membership count. So, MISS Johnson, if I left out anything, please feel free to add in. Through the chair. Ramir Johnson's Chief Financial Officer Well, we get the count and the forecast projection from the state and the state in FEBRUARY saw additional reduction. Our count is done internally. Budget office doesn't do the count. That is done by our fte

272projection office. And they saw a significant reduction of 2000 students in FEBRUARY, which we are going to get a reduction from the state for the loss of those 2000 students. That entails. We have to take that reduction along with the reduction forecast from the state. It's not an artificial number, it's not made up. It's a number that we based on our forecast, we're going to lose those students. So the budget office has no we multiply. We don't do the actual count. Okay. So the 10% reduction above the demographic projection was because you've seen in the last few years that we have something above that. So you're trying to be proactive is that. No, this year was significant year. The fte office projected that we lost in FEBRUARY. We actually lost 2000 students. So it won't

273affect our money this fiscal year. But when we get our final calculation from the state, it will impact us starting the next fiscal year. That 2000 reduction? No, I get that. But the the question or the concern that was brought up is that principals are being told that they have to calculate an additional 10% reduction above what they were told was the projection, like a 10%, 10% less students than what the projection they were given for. Really, we didn't take the the for 2000 because the projection was around 7000 loss of students. So if you say 10% of that is 700. We didn't take the reduction that the state also, we actually lost 2000 students. So be on the safe side. We took a 10% started in taking the whole 2000. And we'll shore it

274up during count season. So what I will add to that we went through membership period. I want to say last month, and every school was given a projected membership count and the schools verified, well, this is a membership count that we are expecting. If they felt that they were over, there is an option to be able to say, you projected me at 700 kids, but I think I'm going to have 800. So as long as you have a justifiable reason to why you're going to get 100 extra kids, that is also taken into account. But because that is significant amount, you have to truly justify those things. Could be a new neighborhood is a new development has come up and we're projected to have 100 kids. So that actually makes sense. So those are the

275things that that go into the membership period. When you're doing an increase into your membership projections. But it is a joint collaboration between the district offices and the schools, because it's a numbers game to ensure that we're creating the correct enrollment count. So so budgets can budget based on that and schools can staff based on what they get for their membership count. I, I still think I don't think you're answering the question that I'm asking though. So I, I will ask the dac representative, can you explain to us because the way I understood what you were saying was the district sent the principals, I'm just school. A, you're going to have 800 students next year. But then came back and said, the district said, now we want you to do project for 10%. Your budget

276should be 10% less than that. So you're going to budget for 720, not 800, even though we gave yououn 800 number, iss amam underststanng what e concers?S? hat't's exalyly I Okay. Thank you.Ndnd the projections have been accurate. Even this last school year when we lost so many students for my school, it was accurate. Exactly. So to add another 10%, we're going to end up being understaffed, losing things. And and I'm not hearing that we're going to make up. Why is it that we are. Well, they did say I mean, I did hear that once the numbers come in and and they call butts and seats. Right. What do you want to say that. Yes. [Laughter] Once the students show up, they have to fund them on the fte. But what's being asked of principals right

277now is that they were given a number again, let's say 800. But now they're coming back and saying your budget is going to be even 10% less of that. So my question is why? Why are we doing that? If the projection from wherever demographics are, the state or wherever we gave original numbers from, why are we now? And this is for next year, not for this year. Why are we now asking them and telling them they'll get 10% less of their budget? Well, first we got the projection from the state and we started off with those projections. But we drew up. The fte count came in FEBRUARY when we got the calculation from the FEBRUARY count, there was an additional 2000 reduction of students across the system. We only took 10% because we didn't take

278the total amount that that was equate to that loss of students. So we just took we were conservatives with the schools. We only took a 10% reduction from the schools to account for those 2000 loss of students. This is the first year this occurrence is happening. Just like last year. The Esol kids from the immigration laws had changed and we, the state came back and said, you're going to have additional loss of 1500 students right now based on our numbers internally, we took a major hit in FEBRUARY count and we lost 2000 students. So we're spreading that out to make sure that we indeed, if those students already left us, then we need to account for those losses. Students above what the state had projected in the first projection. So it's a loss of students

279this year that we're putting into account for next year, because if they're not here this year. They're not returning. Correct. Okay. Thank you. It wasn't clear in the answer the first time. So thank you for that. The next question the North area asked about the school choice and the information being on a dashboard, and the idea that a school who still has seats is either denying or putting someone on a wait list. So can can someone address that? And whether it's possible to have a dashboard that enables people to see how many seats are left. So yes, to the question. We actually discussed that yesterday and having a dashboard that is forward facing so parents can see the availability across the school district. So when I'm making my choice, I can at least have a

280high likelihood of picking a school that has open enrollment. So that did come up. Apparently, you had a conversation with Doctor Wanza and that was shared yesterday. So thank you. Okay, great. Thank you. I have a question. Central area asked about how parents can track the courses that their students have signed up for. So I MAY say this wrong and Landon and just here, feel free to correct me. But do we still have Naviance? Isn't Naviance where they. So what is it? So thank you for that. There. What is it that parents can do? Because I know when I did scheduling it used to be in Naviance. Whatever the students signed up for and the parent could see because I did, I did the schedules. So where can a parent go to see what their

281students have signed up for? Is there a way that they capture it, either taking a picture or what program does that go into? Now that replaces is it zello? Okay. So it's focus is actually Naviance we no longer have that, but Zello actually came in as the next option from the state. So all schools for uniformity, all schools now in the state of Florida access. Zello. But to answer your question, doctor, I'm sorry, MISS Hixon it would be focus is where a parent would go in to be able to see the schedule that a student has. So that's not the question they had though. I'm doing course selection cards today for next year. How can a parent see what did my student sign up for so they can compare what the. When. AUGUST. Whatever day

282the first day of school is and they get a schedule, a parent can say, okay, these are the courses my student signed up for, or they signed up for a marine science one, but they're in ace Marine science two. So how, where could a parent go? Is that in focus what the students sign up for, not what the schedule is, what they register for prior their course selection card, basically. So go ahead. Go ahead. Ellen. Yes. Just to help out here. So through the course selection process, schools historically have a hard copy course selection card that goes home with the students and the parents sign the course selection card. So when you did bring that up, what made me wonder was, so the parent does sign the course selection card with the selection. So at

283that time the parent can take a picture of it, can write it down, whatever that is. And then what Doctor Dr Fulton was saying when school starts and they learn their schedule, they can compare what they signed in the spring off based off that course selection card to what the actual schedule was. So I think that's as I listened to your your statement, that's kind of what rang in my head. Go ahead. Hi. Thank you for the opportunity again. So just to explain, yes, because I have signed off on those. My daughter is in the 10th grade, so I understand that the concern is what's in focus. So let's say I handed it in this month or last month, MARCH. We get to MAY, we get to JUNE and 2627 will load. Now once that

284loads right, the parent can then see the classes that were selected, but they don't match. So now we have to wait until the schedule comes out to verify what the child has. We get to school, we get to that orientation day or that open house day however you want to, whatever the school calls it, right? You get there, you get the schedule, the schedule is incorrect. And now we're talking about accelerated courses. We're talking about honors courses and the children and the parents are told, oh, you have to wait two weeks. We can't change anything. So that's two weeks of instruction that is missed. Or a parent now has to take off work to try to get to a counselor, to try to get to an assistant principal, to say, hey, I need this change

285because my child needs this class to get their Cambridge diploma or their ap or whatever it MAY be. Those two weeks of instruction are vital and sometimes it takes a month. We had some kids who, I think by the time we were able to work with the parent to get the stuff changed, we were looking at mid-OCTOBER. So you see where the issue arises. There are certain things that if we have a little bit more transparency, if we have the time, we can get that fixed. When the let's say, when the ap is in the in the principals start coming back, the guidance counselors start coming back. So there's not this mad rush that first two weeks of school to get classes changed because it's a lot, you know, and we just want to give

286everyone involved the opportunity to be able to work these problems out before it becomes something where the child is missing class time. And I understand what you're saying. And as I'm thinking it through, there's a lot of scenarios that play in. Sometimes with schedule changes. It could be I wanted this selective. Now I'm changing. I want something else. Those are not considered emergency changes. So those MAY take because there's a period where they address those. There's some primary schedule changes where you are clearly in the wrong class. You are freshmen, but you have a senior class, correct? Those are immediate because you're right. You you can't sit in a senior class when you are freshmen. So again, it could be where we MAY have some systems in certain schools that are not responding quickly, but

287uniformly across our district, there is a process to ensure if there is a true wrong course that you definitely can't take. We do have guidance counselors that come in over the summer. They actually, their schedules start have them starting earlier to address some of those things. I'm hoping that maybe something that fell through the crack, but that's not a part of the way the system should operate. When there's a student that is coherently in the wrong class. But we do have, again, where I signed up for this elective or this course, I no longer want it when I want something else. So my friend is in this class and I'm not with my friend. We get a lot of that. Those are the ones that are. We put those secondary because we have other major

288concerns that have to be addressed first. Yeah. Doctor Dr Fulton and MISS Hixon, these are not elective courses. I would not have brought that up. These I'm talking about core courses. I'm talking about honors courses. I'm talking about ap, ib, Cambridge. And to lose that class time, it really creates a struggle for the child to try to play catch up, especially when you're already every day you're learning something new, but you still have to go back and try to learn what you didn't learn. So again, if there is a process, maybe there's something at the school level that needs to be, you know, re re communicated, but we really need to it's last year, it created a lot of stress and I had parents bringing it back up as we go into this next selection

289process, how, how is the school going to ensure that now that my child is in your school, because it was a lot of freshmen, now that my child is in your school, what are you going to do to not have this happen because I can't take off work again? No, and I agree and thank you for bringing that back up. And we'll address it because there is a system in place to ensure those timely schedule changes are done in a timely manner. But it sounds like we have some instances where it didn't happen. So then we have to address those. So thank you. Thank you. A couple more. Esq the committee chair brought up the customer service report and elopement plan that was shared with all of us. So can Doctor Fulton. You give us

290an update or some follow up on where we are with those and what action is going to be taken based on that information. So we do we we do have. And I want to thank missus for sharing that. And we still reviewing it to determine what are the next steps. I think we had the meeting a couple of weeks ago, so. Okay. Thank you. So that she knows that we received it and some action is going to happen. When can we expect to have that brought to the board? We can provide that in a follow up. Okay, great. Thank you. Hrc, thank you for something that you said, because I literally just had this conversation with a principal yesterday. Often people say we're the best kept secret in Broward County. And I always say, no

291one should be a secret. We should be screaming it from the mountaintops. There are so many amazing things. I think I mentioned this a couple of times, but I'm very excited to say it again. We were in a school, I think it was Chapel Trail that has dual enrollment, and their preschoolers sang a song to us in Spanish, I mean preschoolers. That was amazing. We went to Hollywood Hills, the Hollywood Hills, Sheridan Hills, had an oratorical contest, and preschoolers memorized the poem and performed it in front of an auditorium full of adults like they were on America's Got Talent. They were amazing. So those shouldn't be secrets. Which is why I'm repeating myself again. I mentioned it last week. So, you know, we've talked about this as a as a district. And we did ask

292about having posts and how we're marketing students and teachers sharing those similar stories. So, MR. Sullivan, I don't know where he went, but I've seen a couple of posts here and there, but there should be an actual plan on how we're rolling out these very quick social media things that are, you know, what we're doing on tv. I see magnet occasionally on tv, but what is the marketing plan? Because we always hear that, that we're having some issues in terms of marketing. I hear it every school I go to. So what is the the action plan on ramping that up? I'm going to think this is the second year of asking this question. Doctor Dr Fulton. Oh, thank you. So we I think it was a couple of weeks ago where we kicked off our

293district wide marketing plan where we all of our schools have a social media account, whether it's, I want to say x, Twitter x, Instagram, Facebook. And then there is a staff member that's tasked at every school to be their social manager expert. But we do realize that not all school leaders MAY have the expertise into social media. So when we provide a mandate, you have to provide support. So we we have had several trainings and have ongoing trainings to ensure all of our schools are supported in how they leverage social media. To me, social media is the one free tool that can have information travel at light speed, and it would behoove us not to use it for that ability. And the date that we launched it, every school we had a dedicated time that

294we all were launch our social media campaign. And then we did a follow for follow to make sure that we increase the engagement. And it did kick off very well. I don't know if your social media timelines were lit up. I know mine was with all the schools, and then we had to retweet. If you were on x or share, if you in Instagram that so that it can increase engagement. So we do understand when it comes to marketing and I wrote the term down and I, I smiled, whether it was a good term, but certainly not proud to know that the best kept things are kept secret at Broward County Public Schools. It's sad, but it's true. But definitely with that feedback, we definitely have to make sure that, I mean, great things are

295happening in our schools every single day, even right now as we're sitting here. And if we don't get that message out, it doesn't it doesn't get out. I want to thank you all for acknowledging that there are some great things in Broward County public schools. And so with our campaign of social media, we ask that, you know, when you all tag. I know a lot of you have advisory tags. And in terms of social media tag schools, when it hits my timeline, I push it out, I engage in it, I make comment, all those things just continue to increase engagement. And as a community in here, we can continue to help. But it doesn't stop here. We just need to continue to do everything that we can do to ensure that we keep the good

296news out there in social media when it when it comes to bcc, because bcc is a great place to be. Thank you. And I see MR. Sullivan is here. So if you could answer the question, we were going to do little clips of students and teachers and parents and start pushing that out as not just the schools. And I, before you answer that, I want to give a shout out to Stephen Foster. They did a cute little skit with full House in their. Saw that school. And yeah, so, you know, it's great when schools can do that, but some don't have that ability. And it was very nice. So but what are we doing district wide? I know 1 or 2 of them came out and then it kind of fizzled from there. Like just

297highlighting student experience on social media. Sure. And the deputy did a great job of describing what we've been doing. So I might not be able to outdo her. So our social media presence has actually increased tremendously. Our engagement on all the platforms has increased. We have a large following. And then depending on the audience for those different accounts, we try to target it for that. So Insta is typically our students are on there versus our employees are on x, and then Facebook is really where we reach our parents for the most part. Obviously, there's uniqueness to all that we do. We have done the student testimonials. We could always do more. So we'll continue to partner with our school leaders to really assist them, as a deputy said, to empower them to get some of

298this messaging out, the district obviously can do a lot more, but by empowering our school leaders, we can really amplify our ability to do even more. Okay, but my question is like the district, what are we as a district doing besides putting it on the schools? Because some schools. Yeah, we, we do a lot of our own. We've done student testimonials. For whatever reason. I'm not seeing them. So they might be Real's on Insta. So if you don't, I'm not sure. I think your platform might be more of the. Instagram, I promise. I'm like, how do I answer this? I'll get myself in trouble. [Laughter] I'm proud. That deputy, though she didn't say the Facebook. Facebook. We've been working on her. So again, we could always do more. So I'm not going to disagree with

299that. So I'll get with. The what I'm saying I would like to see us do. Yes, we could definitely do. More follow up plan for that. Thank you. And I think everybody now like tags us. That's what I think you were mentioning. Yes we try to. So it's not. a perfect for. That, but we try to make sure everyone. That's part of the educating the, our leaders to make sure they're tagging folks and they have a tag for their own schools. So we're in a better place. We could do more. So we'll continue to make improvements. Thank you. Nancy. Sorry, just real quick, I wanted to throw in that this is a great place to leverage our hq's that are in our schools and use those students to help either if they have the social

300media know how, if the staff doesn't, or to just utilize them within any kind of videos, photos, etc. Like we have the students, they want their voices heard. They want to be engaged in their school community. This is a fantastic place to, to tie that, to tie them in with that. And I also just want to give a shout out to my daughter's school at Tradewinds Elementary. If you look at their Instagram, they said, if any school is struggling with how to generate content, look at the Tradewinds Elementary Instagram. Doctor Ali does a phenomenal job. So she does. She is a. [Laughter] Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for bringing this up because I'm not. I don't have my head in the sand, but I didn't know anything about this. So might it be an

301idea like how a parent's going to. I see you making faces, MR. Sullivan, but I'm trying to help. If you have a certain number of people who have bought into this, you surely want to bring more into it, right? So those of us who didn't know, I think listen constructively to some ideas we might have. One being that if schools were to communicate to all their parents and say, hey, did you know we now have a Facebook page? Hey, did you know we now have an Instagram page? Parents might actually then find it. Also, we've asked many times for there to be a sort of communication plan because sometimes there's information gets put out on Facebook, but it's not put out by the school or it's put out by the school, or it's on a

302on, it's on a remind or it's on a this or that. There is not a kind of consistent rolling out of messaging from the district. It's great to have it across more platforms. And the other thing was we have asked many times as well if we can restore the. Or you can restore the process by which we are informed of things like this so that we can be helping evangelize too. I've got a Facebook page with 10,000 people on for ease. We can bee helpinggou to spreadd tt ssage. Soo it'ss not a a kd of rollingg eyeye momen Iss a,, it's a j just take on board that not everybody does know what you know. And if we can be helping to disperse the message, it should be a good thing. Thank you. Thank you.

303I have two more things. Oh. Just briefly, I've been running the Student Advisor Instagram page this year. Sarah Leonardi, MADAM Chair was on one of our TikToks and really got a lot of views on that one. [Laughter] But I would say that the main problem is there's too many. A lot of our schools have a school Instagram, then they have an athletic Instagram, then they have an activities Instagram. Then don't forget about sga and speech and debate. So certain information is going on certain pages instead of the general page that it should go on. And I would say the same thing for cps. We have the cps page, then we have another department page and another department page. So if I'm going to be looking for Esq stuff, I would have to go to directly

304to the Esq page instead of looking at bcc and seeing everything there. So it's more of about generalizing and putting everything on one space. So it's a one stop shop. Great. Thank you very much for that insight. Two quick questions I hope. I'm sorry it took so much time. Hrc also mentioned something about their bylaws. So through the chair, MR. Hill, can you even if it has to be a follow up, don't bylaws go through because it said it was legal then? No, it wasn't legal. It was through us. So whoever can answer the question, where are we with bylaws for our committees? So I think the process is it goes through the liaisons. And then we present that to General Counsel's office or we don't. So I'll let MR. Hill add to that. So

305it's correctly stated. Thank you, MR. Sullivan. So the bylaws, the committee chairs work with their liaisons and they review their bylaws and then give it to the liaisons and liaisons. Bring it to the chief of staff, who then places it on an agenda. So it does not get reviewed at this current time by our our general counsel. But that MAY change. Okay, because we haven't seen bylaw. No bylaws have come to us. And we've had this discussion for a while. So I'm just wondering where that sits because I she brought you know, they brought it up. So I'm just wondering. Yes. I just wanted to say that dac is finalizing 1070 because a lot of the committees are waiting on 1070, because that will dictate what goes into their policies and their bylaws. So hopefully

306by the end of the month, we'll be dac will be done with that review. And then we will sit down with MR. Sullivan, MR. Hill, and review that. MR. Bruno. I would recommend that the bylaws do be reviewed by legal. There have been times where there MAY be some language in the bylaw that is problematic. So if we can catch them beforehand, I would appreciate that. So if they have bylaws, should they be the liaison should be sending it to you. I think offline we can come up with a process and then share it. Perfect. All right. Thank you. And very last, I want to say congratulations and thank you to the Parent Community Involvement Task Force for the very informative budget university that you had the other day. I thought the parent questions were

307very good. The district did a good job explaining things, but I really appreciated they had a different levels. People asking questions because there's different parental involvement at different levels. And I would agree with you that we need to continue to share that out. So if the district could make sure I'm I'm sure we shared it afterwards, but maybe find the right places to put it in because it did have a lot of information. And although there were a lot of people watching it live, there was a couple hundred and we have 100,000 a million people. So more people could definitely watch it. And I think the schools should encourage their parents to to watch it as well. Thank you very much for the time. Thank you, MR. Cervera. First off, thank you all, ladies, for

308your reports and for your commitment to the district. I don't think it is a secret that I am very pro law enforcement. I've been that way for a very long time and will continue to be that way. I always will support the brave men and women who put on the the uniform, wear the badge and keep our kids safe, whether that's at a county level, a city level, or a school board, police department level. I was always support our great men and women of of law enforcement. That being said, I think the issue that we're running into here with this recent development, with the sro contract, specifically in the city of of Margate in Fort Lauderdale, was the lack of transparency, if you will, about how we got to this point. This was something that

309was disseminated to the public, to certain police task force and to certain elected officials. Late last week, incidentally, I learned about this when my phone started going off last Friday. When the letter came in, I did see that we got an email earlier in the day, but I hadn't seen it yet. This decision, for the benefit of the public, was not made by this board. This decision was done internally, and I'm not suggesting it was the right or wrong decision, but I think it's important to be transparent with our constituents and the public as to how we are, how we got to this particular situation. I would very much like to see, and I'm interested in when the superintendent comes back and is able to comment how we can get this back to either a

310workshop or a school board meeting, and put this back in sunshine, in which comments from the public can be made and there can be some participation from members of the public in determining what potential next steps are. I am I don't think it's any secret, a big advocate for transparency and public participation in things. That being said, I do want to clear up some misinformation that I read, excuse me, over the weekend and that I had to dispel on on various phone calls that I've been fielding on this. And Chief Gregory, I'm going to I'm going to call on you for this one, sir, if I MAY say so behind me. Okay. Excellent. There is insinuation and innuendo going around the bowels of the internet that we are taking away. Sworn law enforcement officers are

311great. S arose from schools and replacing them with Guardians chief Gregory. In all of the letters that have gone out. And of all of your plans thus far, is there any mechanism in which a school resource officer will be replaced with a guardian? Thank you for the question, Mike Gregor, Chief Safety and Security Officer The answer is no. The sro contract transitions are for sworn Broward County Public School police SROs. Thank you for that, sir. So for the benefit of the public, I want it to be very clear that we are not removing sworn law enforcement officers and replacing them with guardians. Now, for the record, I love our Guardians. I think they do a great job. But I want to be clear that our our law enforcement officials will stay at the school. That

312being said, I am a little desirous of doing a deeper dive into the data on this, reaching a full understanding about how we got there. MISS Morse, I'm going to call on you. If you'd be so kind. You ask three questions. If you can kindly read them back into the record. And I guess, MADAM Deputy Superintendent, I would like a follow up with the answers to these three questions, MISS Morse. Well, one of them was just answered. Who will be the replacement? Right? The other one was a request that we hold a community meeting or a town hall with the municipalities and the community, not just the city officials, but with the community to come and voice their opinion. And then what is the current contract? What are the the SROs being paid and what

313will be the cost savings? So what will the new contracts be? Thank you for that. And for purposes of the record, I too would be very interested in having a town hall or a further follow up on this with with the community. I look at the redefining process and what we did with with that. When we went to high schools where we went to our schools, we had open conversations, we had q&a, we had presentations. And I'm not necessarily suggesting this needs to be that elaborate, but certainly I always welcome and always encourage members of the public to be involved in this. And I think it's very important that we as a board and we as a district are very, very transparent in the moves that we are making. And actually, as I see Hepburn

314ready to sit down. I will repeat my question to the super and see if he'll be kind enough to put on record what he thinks. MR. Superintendent, we are talking about the recent development with the sro situations, specifically in the cities of Margate and Fort Lauderdale, where those letters went out later, late last week. My question to you, sir, is are we able to bring this back to either a designated to have as a designated workshop topic where members of the public MAY come in and comment and participate, or are we able to add this to a school board meeting agenda item to allow this to fully be in the sunshine and allow the members of the public to participate in some way, shape, or form and ask questions as to what our next steps

315will be with these sro contract situations. Thanks for the thanks for the question and comment first. First, I wouldn't suggest a regular school board meeting because we would bring contracts to the regular school board meeting for the for the board to vote on, and then I would ask for the workshop. What's the ultimate outcome we're looking for in the workshop? Is it to go over a specific plan of transition, which I know we've been talking to the negotiation team for the cities and also B.S.O and the crew about this, probably since I want to say SEPTEMBER or OCTOBER. So it's not no surprise to the negotiating team, right, about our our due diligence and wanting to transition due to the sheer cost and also some other factors that have nothing to do with money. Well,

316I appreciate that. And with all due respect to the negotiation team, I'm more concerned about my constituents and members of the public who want to come in and ask questions and figure out how we got to this point, at least have their voices being heard. You know, I know that there was some time ago I was not on this board where I believe there was the talk of potentially having a full time, fully staffed school board, police department with presumably hundreds of sworn law enforcement officials. I don't know what happened with that, but obviously that never came to fruition. And I'm also hearing these concerns out in the community about this, about how local cities want local cops from local departments in their local schools, which I can certainly understand and I can certainly appreciate.

317And this is in no way, shape or form is a knock on the school board, police department officers. But I understand that point. So allowing the public to come in at some forum and engage with the nine of us and with the cabinet, have their opinions heard, their voices heard, if you will, I think would be very beneficial in helping guiding us along this process, because I understand that right now it's only 2 or 3 departments, but this MAY spawn off into more departments as the months and years progress. So I don't want this to be seen as something that, you know, is it's being done behind closed doors and the public has no idea what the hell is going on. That's my concern. As with all things that we do. So how can we

318put this into the sunshine and allow members of the public, our constituents, to come in here and voice their opinions and concerns on this process? Yeah, absolutely. So we work at the will of the board. Of course, if there's no objection, we'll just choose a workshop date. I know we're we're pretty loaded, so we'll have to look at a workshop date to try and squeeze up men. But if there's no objections to bringing that back or bringing it to you for a discussion so the public can provide some feedback, ask some questions, that's not an issue. Okay. I guess I would ask the chair to maybe pull us then, obviously, you know, my opinion is I brought it up, but I can appreciate the fact that we MAY have jam packed workshops, but this is

319a pretty important issue. Who's keeping our kids safe at schools. So I would just ask that we squeeze in some time at the soonest available date to have this brought back. Before I ask for consensus, I just want to have a better understanding for myself before I give my, you know, where I land one way or the other is the purpose with the purpose of the workshop ultimately be to perhaps direct the superintendent to change direction? Or is it simply to get public feedback? I think it could be both, right. If we have, you know, 500 people come to us from our various districts and express their displeasure. Okay, that MAY be a good indication that this is not what the public wants. If we have two people come in and everybody's like, yeah, this

320is or, you know, or maybe a little more than two, we have some people come in and say, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Maybe, I don't know. The point of the workshop is to allow people to come in, express their opinions, get whatever is on their mind out to engage with their elected officials who represent them in their respective districts. And then we can make a decision after that happens as to whether or not we potentially want the superintendent to stay the course, or perhaps we revisit other issues. And I would also just like, if I MAY, chair, just put this out there and MISS Bruno, stop me if I'm crossing any kind of negotiation line. Okay. But it's my understanding we've gotten to this point because we can't reach a consensus

321from certain city departments as to a reasonable wage, if you will, for what the SROs are needing to be paid compared to what we can supply our SROs for on a yearly salary basis. Maybe we go through this, this this process of the workshop and some of these chiefs and some of these departments come back and say, you know what? Let us go back to our commission. Let us go back to our mayors. Let us see if we can get a grant to maybe make up some of the difference. But maybe this leads us back to the negotiation table, and maybe there is a path to allow city officers to serve in city schools, I don't know, but at this point, I'm going off of a letter that I saw in a text message that

322someone screenshotted from Facebook. That's how I became aware of this. Now, this session has been very beneficial. We've heard from the chief several times. I've also spoken to Chief Kevin about this as well. But the reality is I think this is this is too premature to figure out what specifically next steps will be. I just think everything needs to be on the table. And most importantly, I want the public to have the ability to come in and participate in the process. Okay. I didn't mean to upset you by asking the question. I was just trying to understand what the purpose would be. Because I think for me, what I found very helpful in terms of having conversations with the community and getting public feedback, is hosting roundtables. I hosted one yesterday at Sunrise Middle. So

323in, in order to get like really good conversation, I found, you know, roundtables and town halls to be more effective in getting that community feedback and then, you know, bringing items to, to direct action from the superintendent. But it is up to the, the entire board. So I don't know if MISS Rupert I'll just go around and gather consensus. If you'd like to do a workshop or what you would like to do in terms of gathering community feedback and taking action on this issue. MISS Rupert. I'm here. Yeah, I've been here at the time. I am open to any and all. You know, that was, you know, just to be very clear, I, I spoke to the superintendent and to MR. Sullivan and MR. MR. Gregory way before I even talked to a reporter who

324reached out to me. So I don't want it to be, you know, to seem like I was, you know, jumping the gun or whoever. But it was extremely important for me to reach out to the superintendent, and I did. I was very candid. And he can tell you that I'm not, you know, at this point, not going to support that issue. It was a a gigantic shock to to the Margate community. And I understand that doctor Hepburn says that it's not a surprise for any of the negotiating team, but I have to honestly say, yes, I'm sure it wasn't to them, but it was to commissioners, and we can do a better job that way. But I will definitely look at the opportunity to reach out in a workshop forum out in the community, just

325like you described. MADAM Chair, I agree it's a better process to do that and to get pretty valid encouragement and comments back and forth for us to be able to understand what what the community is, is thinking about. So yes, to a workshop for me or and yes to a board meeting, if that is what the will of the board is. MISS Thompson. Thank you. Chair, I have some questions before I provide my feedback on that. Is there any safety concerns to having a workshop on sro officers in an open format? Go ahead, General Council. There's no safety concerns so long as it's very generic and we're not speaking about our security plans and being very open on those things, those will be protected. But general conversations I think are fine in terms of a

326contract would be fine. And then is this is how we run our safety program, a policy issue that would be determined by the board or an operational. So Florida Statute 1,006.12 actually puts it both in the hands of both the superintendent and the school board. Thank you. I, I at least has one more board member have been aware that this was the direction we were exploring for quite some time now. I have concerns, as Chief Gregory stated, with 14 different policies determining what. How our students can be treated in each of our schools, I am still planning on bringing an item related to the pepper spray incident at one of my middle schools. I believe that Chief Gregory and our superintendenen have the s safy of ourtutunts at t theorefrontnt. A also wtt toememind our

327colleagues that in order to to work collaboratively with cities, they also have to be willing to work collaboratively with us. And because of the impending concerns about property taxes and how that's going to dramatically impact city budgets, they are looking for us as a way to cover extensive costs. So I think that background needs to be considered and thought about on this board. I am not interested in a workshop. I would agree with our chair that the best way to communicate is to go to the people and go to your community, and then bring direct actions to the board. Thank you. MISS Bulman. Thank you chair. You know, the the the issue that I have with this is finding out about this through a letter that we got emailed to us. So I would have

328appreciated. Better communication to be apprized of what we're what direction we were heading in. It wasn't clear to me from prior conversations, I know that that was. This has been something that has been suggested because of financial considerations, and I and I understand that, and I, and I don't object to looking at other options, but I, I would like to see the full plan. If we're planning on rolling this out over eight years and how that's going to impact everyone. I, you know, I don't have any idea what that looks like right now besides what's been said today and then what we have in that letter. So I don't know what the best way to address this is. But I think as people that are representing people in the community and having people call, I

329mean, I'm getting calls about this now, I'd like to be informed about what our plan is so that I can convey that to the people that are calling me. So I don't know if a workshop is the best way to do that, but I think as just internally, as a board member, that we should have a better idea of what the plan is so that we can talk about that, I will wait. I'm going to reserve I don't really have a strong opinion about whether or not a board workshop is the way to do that. I just would like the plan. MISS Hixon. Thank you. I have two questions for the superintendent because he wasn't here before. And then so quick, Doctor Hepburn. Hepburn, can you tell us what cities are affected this year? Yes.

330And correct me if I'm wrong, chief Gregory, Margate, Fort Lauderdale, Hallandale and Coconut Creek. And those are because the. Right now we only heard really from Margate, the other in Fort Lauderdale, the Hallandale and Coconut Creek. They're not when school starts. Right. That was some sort of. a correct. Sorry to cut you off. Some are starting at the beginning of the school year and some will be starting JANUARY 2027. So it's a transition to allow us to actually staff up as well and just have a smooth transition for some cities. Like I think Coconut Creek is not all it's it's several schools. And so Chief Gregory can speak a little bit more about this than I can, but it's starting with the, the smallest number of, of schools or smallest number of clusters of SROs

331that are serviced in certain schools. You MAY hear Fort Lauderdale and people think, oh, Fort Lauderdale is a huge city, but actually the majority of Fort Lauderdale schools are actually staffed by guardians. So they don't have a lot of their police officers actually in our schools. So that's the the strategy to start with as we transition over time. And again, this is not it's it also helps with cost savings, but also helps with standardization of policy, standardization of training, because you have 14 different ways of doing something based on the leadership in those cities. Thank you. And one other question. And then, oh, go ahead. I'm sorry, just to qualify to be accurate with what we stated earlier, obviously the schools that are closing. And those will be impacted as well. So they'll be a

332Pembroke Pines and Plantation and Miramar are impacted as a result of the school closings. Okay. Yeah, I think that's probably not a surprise to anybody. But my my other quick question and then I'll answer it is I've gotten a couple of texts. How would moving SROs from the city to the school board, if anything, how would that affect threat assessments? It does not actually probably enhances our threat assessment ability because we have more continuity because it's our school police department doing it. All the internal staff that assist with threat assessments from the school based all the way to the district base, so actually enhances that capability. Thank you. I just wanted to ask that out loud because so I, I agree with the Chair and MISS Thompson about a town hall. I think when you're

333in a place where that's all you're going to talk about and the community has more opportunity, but I think after the town hall, we should then have a workshop where then we can discuss it. I think the town hall is just us listening, the superintendent and the chief being able to explain first how they landed on this decision, because there are pieces that were mentioning that I think the community needs to know that there are 14 different agencies that determine how you react with pepper spray, how you decide when you're baker acting, all of those things. And some of the conversation has been about streamlining and making it consistent. And I think that they would understand that. I think the part is that they were not being transparent, and I don't want to say it

334that way. They don't feel as if they have enough information to understand why a change is happening. And so I think a town hall would be a better place to share that with them and let it just be about the public, and then come back to a workshop for us to shake out among ourselves what we think. But I to the general counsel, if the superintendent has believes in his role as superintendent, that moving to this direction is what makes the most sense, especially since we have tasked him with finding reducing things in the budget. That makes sense. And this wouldn't really change the safety of our schools. What do we as a board like? Because, you know, there's this line that feels like, can we cross it? Can we not remember we had grand

335jury and there were people removed because they went into operations that they shouldn't have. So can you kind of spell that out a little more on, you know, what, what's the role of the superintendent here and what's the role of the school board. So the school board is responsible for governance. And the superintendent as the chief executive officer, is responsible for the day to day operations of the school district. The interesting thing with Florida Statute 1,006.12 is that it's a little unusual in that it says that each district school board and and district superintendent shall partner to be able to come up with these different safe school officers. So that's why I said both together, if the superintendent is making a recommendation to the board based on the tasks that the that the board has

336given to the superintendent, both for budget and for safety, it is to the school board to make the determination as to whether or not they want to accept that recommendation. Thank you. I will go to DR. Holness. Thank you, MADAM Chair. And MADAM Chair, I'd like to when it's my turn to speak, to comment more on this. But in terms of your getting consensus, I would be supportive of the the chair's suggestion as far as a town hall, as well. As board member Thompson. I think the town Hall would help to at the very least address some of the misinformation and possibly disinformation, because, you know, I've heard that there are communities that are thinking that it's going to be guardians at the school, replacing the municipality police officers, and that's not correct. So I

337think the town hall Doctor Hepburn, would actually help to clear up some of the information that might be misleading, whether intentionally or not, so the public can understand, you know, that we're we're not having guardians replacing police officers and, and whatever other information is out there that MAY try to or intentionally negate the changes that you're making as far as utilizing our in-house officers. So I am supportive of the the town hall. I'm not sure beyond the town hall, I think that depends on the pulse of the public, whether or not we need to address any further discussion, because if the public is fully satisfied with the input from the superintendent and it is shown through their feedback and input, then I am not sure if it would necessitate having a workshop. I think we

338just need to clear up any kind of information that might be misleading to the public. So the town hall is where I would start. MR. Cervera, I have you as a yes for a workshop. If I MAY. If I MAY, chair. And first and foremost, you didn't upset me, Sarah. I don't think you've ever upset me. The entire time I've been on this board. You've always been a consummate professional, and I certainly appreciate that. As far as my $0.02, I think DR. Holness raised a good point. I think maybe the avenue here is having the town hall, having the public being able to come in and speak to us, perhaps at more hours that are a little bit more convenient to some folks who work and have children and family commitments. And depending on how

339that goes, we can maybe play it by ear to determine if a if a further workshop is needed. So DR. Holness. I like the idea and I think that would be my vote at this at this point, with the understanding that obviously, if the community is in an uproar, it's very, very apparent that needs to. This needs to come back to the board in a capacity in which we MAY need to give the superintendent some further direction than I would be in favor of that happening. But I think the town hall is is is in fact, a good idea. Thank you. MRS. Alhadeff. So the issue that we have here is how this was all rolled out and the lack of understanding of the plan in the lack of communication to all key stakeholders. I'm

340in favor of doing the town hall, but I think it needs to be done where there is a presentation, creating the plan and what that looks like, and then there being small groups and then having people speak. I don't think this should just be like one person coming up and speaking. It needs to be more of a workshop with the community so they can understand the plan. And then we have to have the workshop. And then I think there needs to be a school board meeting to, to vote on this. One thing I think that we're not taking into consideration is the the city's with them. Just learning about this now being very shocking. They didn't have time to plan within their budgets for, for this missing of the SROs and that funding, and then

341how they're going to have to backfill for their police. So I would have loved this whole conversation to, to happen in SEPTEMBER or much, much earlier to then be at the point we're at now. And then this kind of bomb just drops on everybody and everybody doesn't understand what's going on or they don't understand the plan is a problem. So that would be my suggestion to do the town hall workshop and then school board meeting. Okay, so I, I heard, oh, go ahead, MISS Bowman. I really appreciated Member Hickson's desire to have a townhall. And her arguments for that. So I will go with the townhall. Okay, so what I've captured here is that the majority of the board would like to do a town hall. I've heard MISS Hixon, MISS Rupert and MRS. Alhadeff

342say that they would like a town hall, then a workshop, and MRS. Alhadeff then suggesting a school board meeting after that, but I did not hear a majority of the board say that they wanted both. I did capture MR. Cervera suggesting the town hall and then playing it by ear, seeing where to go from there. So if anyone would like to add. MADAM Chair and then DR. Holness. Yes. So I think DR. Holness mentioned that also. So I think we would do the town. I would agree to do the town hall. Maybe everybody's okay with it and then it ends there. But based on the town hall, then making a decision whether we need to come back. And I don't care if it's a workshop or a meeting. DR. Holness thank you, MADAM Chair. So

343I would reiterate, yes, I that is my suggestion is that the town hall drives the decision to proceed to next steps. So if the town hall needs necessitate based upon feedback from the public, a workshop or and subsequently a board vote, then we proceed. But I don't think we'll have that information until we. We conduct a town hall and let that drive the next step in terms of a workshop and a board meeting. Okay, so I am hearing a majority of the board request a town hall or support a town hall, and then a minority of the board would like to for sure have a workshop. The majority of the board would I captured was they would like to play it by ear to to see where we go from the town hall. Do you

344have your direction, Doctor Hepburn? MADAM Chair. MISS Rupert. Thank you. I'm sorry I texted you and I didn't realize. We're moving on this quickly. And one more thing I just wanted to add to this part is that I think what upset the the city's was that the different letters went out with different names on them. And it was, you know, city of Margate got theirs. But the city of Coconut Creek didn't. And then it was like a second go around. So I honestly thinking, you know, really making sure that all our information is complete and transparent at the same time. It is an important aspect. So I just wanted to put my $0.02 in there because it's, it's almost like waiting for the other other shoe to fall. So I, I really think it needs

345to be complete and the information has to be accurate and transparent. So thank you, thank you, MADAM Chair. Thank you. And is DR. Zeman on the line? Okay. And if I can just add chair because the the timeliness is important. So the town hall will probably most likely be within the next two weeks. So that the city's have ample notice of the upcoming strategy. Will your staff work with the board members to figure. Out with. The board and. Figure out a. Good time? Yeah, and I think most of us would hope that it would be in the evening to accommodate everyone. And I also want to add, too, one of the crux of the issue too is communication. I haven't had a chance to talk to all the city managers who received the letters, but

346I did talk to one of the assistant city manager and profusely apologized of of how it was communicated. Some directions were given for communication with the chiefs, and I think some of the staff put a couple of steps ahead of a, an initial step that they probably should have taken to talk to folks in person and things like that. So, you know, publicly, you guys know who I am. I don't, I don't mind apologizing for any missteps that myself or my team have implemented. And I think that's for me, that's more of the crux of the issue is how it was communicated to the cities. And so when I get a chance to talk to the other mayors and city managers, I will do the same as well, because we should have talked to them

347verbally first before we sent out a specific letter, which didn't really detailed all the information that they needed to know prior to prior to receiving that letter. So lessons learned, we're always in continuous improvement mode for everything that we do, but we'll, we'll communicate with the with your assistance, because it's going to be probably in the next two weeks. Thank you. Smith Bulman. Thank you. So I have a question about the the status of where we are right now, and I apologize if this has been answered already. The letters that went out went to the Margate Police Force because I'm I have a call with the mayor from Hallandale that I have after this meeting. Have they received the letter or is it just. No, I think everybody has received a letter besides Coconut Creek.

348Coconut Creek will be. But Hallandale received a letter. Yes. From my understanding, Hallandale. We get a copy of that. I think everybody received a letter besides. Confirm they. Received it. That has gone out. Yeah. No, for sure. Margate for sure. So can we get a copy of that so I. Okay. And then I'll talk to you about it after. I need to be prepared to have that call. So thank you. MRS. Alhadeff. Since Coconut Creek didn't receive their letter, can we have an in-person conversation with Coconut Creek? Yes, we that was the plan to have an in-person conversation with them today before we actually send the letter. So that's the run of show is actually to have a conversation, explain to the Chiefs what's going on. I know we've had conversations with their negotiation teams,

349but don't know if negotiation teams have gone into the whole entire plan with detail, so they understand that it's not guardians, it's school police officers. What's the transition time? What does that look like? What do we need from you as far as the transition and whatnot, just to make sure it's done smoothly. Okay. Thank you doctor. Just to confirm that the conversation has happened with Coconut Creek, that was what the delay was for sitting there. Letter out was to make sure there was a personal conversation first. So that just occurred today. Okay. We're still on the advisories. So, MR. Cervera, I don't know if you had any more comments. You had the floor. I'm satisfied. Thank you. d d Holness thank you,, Mam Chaiai s s j just to conontinue my mmmmtsts regarding advisory, and

350I did have additional comments on the concern regarding police officers. So just want to make it clear that I know that that I am very supportive of our police officers. In fact, my brother is a retired police officer and I've also Ft. For on campus resident officers, and I believe majority of us do. So I have some questions. Doctor Hepburn, when contracts expires, do you normally bring those to the board? Typically for. Intent of non-renewal? Yes. So two things. When we're initiating a new contract, a new agreement, we bring those to the board when we're severing a contract. Or if a contract is has a end date, right. And it expires. We don't bring expired contracts to the board. They just expire. But if we need to sever a contract during the term of that

351contract, we would bring that to the board. Okay. But if the contract expires, what's normally the process? Not just for police contracts. But any contract that expires, they don't come back. So it doesn't come back if there's going to be any intent of non-renewal. Correct. Because it's it's it's not going to be renewed. It's just expired. So if the term is a year and that calendar year, let's say it's JUNE 30th and it expires, it just expires, bring a new contract for certain services to the board. Okay. So do you recall that as a board, we discussed the increase in use of our in-house police officers over time and to reduce municipality officers. Did we have that discussion? Yes. Okay. Did did the board direct you to save cost in terms of not just police

352officers, but district wide? Yes. Okay. How will in-house police officers prove more beneficial to us than outside municipality officers? The the first obvious thing is that we are training them. We can do reoccurring training. They're in a school or district setting the whole entire time. They're better oriented to our specific needs. There's less policy red tape that that is out of our control, so we can have better continuity and providing the level of service that we want to see with better control, because they are our employees as well. And also being able to do what we need to do when we have accountability issues as well, we can we can actually provide that level of accountability that's needed. If one of our officers is not abiding by policy or protocols. Understand? So is is there

353any advantage in using outside municipal municipalities, police officers, as opposed to using our in-house police officers? No, there is no advantage. All of them are sworn law enforcement agents. You know that that are that are armed. I think using our police officers provide greater advantage because you don't have the numerous amount of difference in policies and training standards and things like that. That is ultimately out of our control, right? So you bring back more control by the board and by the and by the district. Understand? So can you detail to the public the expertise of our sworn certified in-house police officers as it compares to outside municipalities, police officers? I'll let Chief Greg detail that. Mike excuse me, Mike Gregory, chief safety and Security Officer Just to set the the correct expectation of information, all

354of the officers in Broward County are certified law enforcement officers, including the school police. They all have gone to the academy. They've all been certified by the state of Florida. And they're at the same level of knowledge coming out of the academy. The officers who work in these in the cities obviously have a broader area of responsibility with dealing with burglaries and robberies and crimes, traffic investigations and the rest. The officers who work on school campuses, they focus on youth issues, youth concerns. They become specialists in that area of policing. When it comes to the the statutes that regulate interaction with students, the statutes that regulate how you can interview a student if they are the subject of an investigation. What can happen during school hours versus after school hours? And as Doctor Hepburn brought

355up earlier as well, the the participation in threat assessments, they become more of an expert in that particular area as well. Our existing school resource officers currently participate in threat assessments. Anytime that there's a new contracted sro, and they haven't completed their full array of training to participate in a behavioral threat assessment, our staff participates in that threat assessment at that school on behalf of those law enforcement officers. So again, you become more of a specialist in youth issues, youth services, mental health issues for youth, as well as where we want to really grow. The program is actually in the development of a light type of curriculum, where we have 10th graders that MAY be preparing for their restricted driver's license or their driver's license, and they we want to be able to prepare them

356with what is the what are the traffic laws in, in Florida that you need to be aware of? What, how should you conduct yourself if you get pulled over by the police, where should you pull over? How should you conduct yourself? All these extra things that we could do if they were under a single command, that we don't have that ability when they're when they're managed and or under policy and training standards from 14 different agencies. Okay. So, MR. Gregory, would you would you agree or would you conclude that in-house police officers with their expertise, more on youth issues or possibly better equipped in terms of keeping our students safe and understanding issues revolving around school matters? I want to be fully transparent. I don't think that I believe that every police officer in Broward

357County on one of our school campuses would do the right thing in keeping our children safe. What we're talking about is taking the next step and going to a higher level, enhanced level of service over what we currently receive. Okay, so let me ask a question another way then. Is there any evidence or research suggesting that outside police officers are more capable of creating a greater or better safe or safer environment for students, as opposed to in-house police officers? Are there any evidence or research existing that one group of police officers can necessarily ensure a greater safety of our students? As we compare in-house versus outside? I'd have to prepare a follow up for you on that. Okay. So my my last question. Doctor Hepburn, are there are they are our in-house and I'm asking

358these questions because I have to make a decision on this. And I, and I really need to understand if we move in the direction of increasing in-house police officers, if our kids are are less safe or if there's less expertise to guarantee our kids safety. So this is not. So pretty neutral on the on the issue. I just want to understand the facts. If I MAY, I would. So we have in-house program right now and that's our guardians. I would not say our schools that were that are secured by guardians who are armed. Right. And securing the school just like an sro, are less safe than a school that has a that has an sro. When I when you ask that question, that's the first thing that comes to mind. We have a program in

359house right now and they do an amazing job. They keep our schools safe. They're. They know all of our kids on their campuses. They're out there monitoring their perimeter. They. They greet guests, kids, parents, whoever showing up at the school. So I, i would not say that is a less safe environment versus what the municipality. I understand, but we are not renewing some contracts for our police officers from municipalities, which would be Margate, Coconut Creek, Fort Lauderdale and so on. And we're going to be replacing those should should we move ahead with our in-house police officers? Is that correct? That's correct. But for me, the question isn't about who's the most safe. It's what's the better option that provides the best value to the district and the best consistency to the district when it comes

360to accountability and certain standards you don't have as a board, you don't have control over the municipality police department, right? We don't set their policies. We don't set their training standards or whatever protocols that they abide by as a board. The folks that we hire here in this system, the policies that the board develops, the directions that the board gives the superintendent is what governs and operates this system. And that's and that's the control you have. So those are that's one major difference. The other major difference is the cost factor. We pay about $119,000 a year for the contracted SROs that we provide services to. According to the negotiation team for the city's. They say that the cities are still supplementing. That cost probably about 80,000 a year because they say their cost is about

361200,000 approximate per year. So they're supplementing $80,000. Our salary and fringe on average for an sro in our system is only $100,000, give or take a few dollars. So those are the two major differences as far as decision making, I would say I don't think either or is safer or less safe. It's more control, right, about policy and governance and operations, and also the difference in the cost factor that provides the same level of service, if not greater, because you have more continuity at a better value for the district. So those are the two key components. As, as I sit back and make that decision, it's not about who's safer because all of them are well trained, all of them understand. So for the sake of the public, because I know there's a lot of

362misinformation out there that the replacement of a one set of police officers will be replaced by another set of police officers that are in-house. Correct? Correct. That that our school, Broward County school police officers. All right. So I have another a couple of other comments. There were some concerns about lockdown that one of the committee chairs mentioned as far as staff not knowing the process. Doctor Hepburn, I know these are isolated cases probably, but I would hope that someone can get with that committee chair to find out which school this is and and who does not know the the lockdown process. Because if that's not being followed and kids don't know where to go and staff, that's problematic, especially when we should we have a situation that's actually real. So I would love for staff

363to get with that individual. I forgot which of the chair mentioned that about the lockdown process. Was it you, Nicole? It was me and Chief Gregory and MISS Hixon have been working with the parent in the school. My question was, so they've already addressed it, but I guess this. We have brought this before. How are we training in situations where students are in between class changes or in this case, it was a senior privilege. They were leaving early. So are we training so students know where to go if they're not in a designated space? Your classroom. We're doing drills in classrooms, but what if the student is in the hall? You know, just different. Are we training for all scenarios? Because in this case, it was a drill. The students didn't know where to go.

364And this parent says that staff was not paying attention to the students that were just wandering around. Understand? So so Doctor Hepburn, you'll address. Yeah, we'll address that. Thanks. Thanks for that feedback. No problem. And my last concern is MISS Luscomb mentioned an issue that came up in the meeting, the advisory meeting that I attended, that some of the deaf and hard of hearing students and other students with disabilities are on busses for about three hours or so, and I, I understand the issue, Doctor Hepburn, and it's it's a little bit more complicated, but I know we're going to talk about transportation later on. So I guess my question is when we start the next session on transportation, will it address this issue as far as. Specific kids having to be on busses very long,

365especially learning disabled kids. Know this. This is for choice programs and depot stops for choice programs. This isn't for Esq transportation or students who are zoned for their schools transportation. This is for cost savings, for creating depot stops for our choice students. So Doctor Hepburn can. And I know we had a lengthy discussion at the advisory meeting and Doctor Wanza was there as well. Can can we look into or can you look into how we can exhaust all options in reducing the. The time that our learning challenge students and students with deaf and hard of hearing are on the busses. Three hours is quite a long time so I don't know if. And are we talking about going to the plantation schools? That's. Yeah. So we'll look into that. I know I can tell you

366that's a complex issue. When you have one single program right to service a whole entire county. And if they're coming from every corner of the county, I've visited Vsee, I think like two years ago, we got we have elementary school kids that are traveling on a very lengthy bus ride to get there because of, you know, you don't have enough of those type of programs around the district. So we'll look at it. We'll have to look at also expanding that program somewhere else, right? I am sure it's a complex issue, but I, I believe that just looking at all options, there's, there's usually some solution that at least can reduce the times. And. And thank you for having that discussion. And I know Doctor Hepburn, you're looking at, you know, all kinds of regionalizing stuff,

367but in the interim, we have to have solutions. This is entirely inequitable and discriminatory. This is isn't a. Let's talk about it down the line and it'll. And the solution will come when we make the broader changes to Regionalizing services or whatever you might do. This is an immediate thing. You are losing kids. You have lost kids. You will continue to lose more. Those parents are having that conversation. We've called them back to a meeting on the 21st of APRIL for our deaf and Hard of Hearing subcommittee. They want answers, so it's not going to be a kick the can down the road. I get the difficulty, but there has to be some flexibility and some pivoting to make it equitable for these students. Three hours is, is, is everybody should be horrified by that

368and should be demanding answers. And I'm sorry that they're not. Yeah. And you got our commitment. We'll, we'll review that look at some transportation routing changes or whatever the case MAY be. We'll look at it and get some answers and see what we can do. Yeah. And Doc and Doctor Hepburn, I know Doctor Wanza was at the meeting, so I don't know if she has any added comments, if you don't mind. Go ahead doc. I don't have any added comments. We just. The next item is about transportation. We will potentially, you know, talk about it then. I know that we did look at. And we have MR. Sullivan and MISS Knowles looked at something for us too. Around. In years past, we would. The district would actually provide a mileage reimbursement, if you will. If

369parents wanted to transport their children, because at the end of the day. And you said it, Doctor Hepburn, when you go from Deerfield to Plantation on a school bus, and if there are other kids on the stop, and every stop is like a 15 minute process, it does add time. So we will bring it up in the next presentation, but it certainly isn't something that we take lightly. And you're correct, MISS Luscomb. People need answers and they need them forthwith. Thank you. And sorry doctor Hepburn just said it wouldn't be in the next presentation. So will it or won't it? Because if you if if you look at the last page, it talks about things that we're working on. And one of them is one of the call outs is the explicit riot time as

370it relates to some of our special needs population. So we we will touch on it. It MAY not be in depth, but we will touch on it in the next presentation. Thank you. Because people are looking for solutions, not a next year we'll do this. We need it now. Like if this was your kids, you wouldn't have them on the bus for three hours in the morning. You wouldn't. Thank you MISS. Appreciate it. Thank you, MADAM Chair. Thank you. Before I go to round two, would anyone else like to speak? I just want to flag the mention of the bathroom conditions from the Human Relations Committee. I just wanted to shout out MR. Dorsett and offer, you know, a solution to when these these issues come up about bathrooms with broken stalls and graffiti and

371all sorts of things. I was able to send MR. Dorsett and Doctor Hepburn some photos of a bathroom at Fort Lauderdale High School, and I wish everyone could see the before and after photos. They addressed it immediately. So you know, as these issues come up, please feel free to reach out to the superintendent. Feel free to reach out to your board members because that is something that you know can be addressed very quickly. MRS. Alhadeff. Yeah, thank you. So as this sro conversation is unfolding, I really see a bigger problem that we have here. Meaning that is this plan to eventually, in 8 to 10 years, have our own bc police force. Yes. The board discussed this, I don't know, a year ago it didn't go through, but it hasn't been discussed with this board

372currently. Now. So Before we even go to a town hall. I believe if that's part of the plan, it needs to come back to the board in a workshop for the plan to be presented to the board with what the cost savings are. How many SROs are in the different cities, what that costs are. What are we what will we be saving by doing this? Why are we picking certain cities to take their SROs away? Maybe you take one s-o-r away from every city. I don't know the answer, but I think it should be workshop first. Because by just going to the town town hall immediately. I don't think that that's not the underlining what we want to get to. It hasn't been decided by this board unless I'm wrong. I thinknk thehe c cmunication

373the'e' heardoud andlele prprobably over thasast tw years,spspecially this year, is to transition, not so much creating our full fledged own at, you know, tomorrow, but to transition and lower the amount of of dependency on sro contracts from the outside. Okay, so I just want to make sure all my colleagues are hearing this, are aware of that, that this is the plan that we are going to be going and moving forward because I don't believe they you guys understand this. I mean. No. I understood it, but we can go around again and see if there is consensus to do a workshop. Many people are not on the dais, so I don't know if people want to return, but we can go back again and ask everyone again if they would like to do a workshop. I'm

374a yes. Well. Maybe we can do this at the end of the meeting when everyone is back or. Yeah, maybe scattered. Okay. Did you hear me? Yes I did, thank you, MISS Rupert. Thank you ma'am. Hi. MISS Hixon. I would like to do the town hall first and see where the community. I'd like to hear them first. And then, like I said, decide after that whether we go to a workshop or a school board meeting. Oh. MISS Thompson, MISS Bulman. Until after the workshop. Or MR. Cervera. Repeat the ask, please. MRS. Alhadeff would like to do a workshop before we do a town hall. Can I just. But also, what I said was that I don't believe this board understands the plan. Meaning that the plan is over 8 to 10 years to eventually go

375to have our own police force. We that conversation that was years ago that we had this current board hasn't made that decision. Doctor Hepburn, could you just clarify because that's not what I. I didn't hear you say to have our own. Yeah. It's more about decreasing the number of contracts for better continuity. So we are not dealing with 14 different policies. 14 it's not so much about creating our own organically that MAY happen. But in the in right now, in, in our windshield is about how do we gain better control and continuity in also cost savings at the same time providing the same level of service, if not better, by reducing some sro contracts because the the cost are continuing to go up. I think they've doubled like in the past five years. And right

376now they're asking for more because they're passing on that increased cost to us. And there's only so much we can afford. And you know, with with the acts for additional compensation for for the contract, there are certain things that we can't even negotiate in because they have to abide by their own policy, right? They have to abide by their own training standards and things like that. So there's a lot of concessions that we won't get naturally because they don't work for us. We're we they work for their own municipalities or the, or the sheriff's office of the county. And so it's more about decreasing the number of contracts. So there's more streamlined approach to how we police our schools or keep our schools safe. I would I'd be in favor of the workshop. I just

377want I just want one point of clarification. One question. Was there a point in time where there were serious discussions by this board, presumably years ago, to create a separate school board, police department, like, for instance, Miami-Dade County has. Yes. Right. Was that was that a serious conversation? Did that ever get to a board vote? What was the status of that? And how long ago was that? Yeah, so about two years ago, i believe it was 2024, 2023, 2024. The board, the majority of the board actually asked the superintendent to pursue that. Then there was, you know, conversations in the community. It came to the board, I believe, in a in a workshop and the board reversed course. So this has been an issue we've kind of waffled on over the past few years. So

378the community at large, at least two, three years ago did not want an expansion of the Broward County Public Schools Police Department. Is that accurate? It was mostly elected officials who came. Yeah. So members of of the community. Okay. So now presumably Alhadeff, we're doing this to have a better understanding and sort of, I guess, retake the temperature of where everybody is, is, is now at as to whether or not this could be a potential option or whether or not this 8 to 10 year plan could come to fruition, I, I would be okay. I'm never against more open sessions. I'm never against more town halls. I do have just one one question. Are we at the point, MR. Superintendent, where and I hate to keep picking on Margate because I know this is I

379know there's multiple departments that we're dealing with. That's just a lot of what I dealt with over the weekend. Involve Margate for some reason. If if Chief Palma comes back and says, you know what, I've been watching the school board meetings, I've been talking to my constituents. I want to come back to the negotiation table to see if we can come to a mutually agreeable arrangement in which our Margate police officers can stay for. I just want to be 100% clear, Doctor Hepburn, and for the benefit of the public, we will entertain those conversations. Correct? Potentially. But it doesn't work like that. They don't negotiate city by city. They negotiate as a group of cities. Okay. So if the group and again, I apologize for for pointing out Chief Palma, who by the way, does

380a great job. And Margaret, if the group comes back and says, you know, we've we've heard this, we've listened to this, we're ready to come back and renegotiate. And MISS Bruno, tell me if I'm overstepping here. We will entertain those talks. Right. And we could potentially change course based on those talks. Right. And we'll entertain the talks. But it doesn't solve all of our problems, right. Like I said, another major issue too is you're dealing with 14 different ways of doing business. The reason I bring this up, Doctor Hepburn, is I want the public to understand that this isn't just like a lip service thing. Like we're just going to do this dog and pony show to show you or, or make it seem like we pretend that we care, right? That's not the case.

381First of all, I do care very deeply about this issue, but there's potential that based on how these workshops goes, how these town hall goes, that this could change the trajectory of where we're at right now. Correct? Correct. Okay. So I'm in favor. Thank you. MISS Bulman. Whether or not we are going to have a workshop again. No, I know the question I did. What did MR. Cervera fall on? He would like to do a workshop. Oh, workshop. Okay. And these two are doing a townhall. Townhall? I'm good with the town, staying with the town hall, with the understanding that there's going to be a plan presented at the town hall. Doctor Hepburn. Well, now that we agreed. But what their proposal is. There's a question. Yeah, I guess is there? The problem that we

382have is that we don't know what your plan is. Yeah, we can get you to plan. So in. Short order, you know, it's kind of like we could do a workshop, we could do a town hall, but if we don't know what the plan is, I, I'm having a hard time making a decision because I don't know what logically makes sense because we don't know the plan. Gotcha. So will a plan be presented? a plan to be presented will also send you the plan. And it's and it's. Yeah, we'll send it to you too. It's simple really, as we're sunsetting contracts and replacing those folks with our folks, but we'll send you a more detailed information about that. But that's the. Well, and also there's going to be presumably hiring needs, right. Which I think,

383you know, I, I guess, you know, when this was happening two years ago, and I know that I know that things have changed, obviously just in the, you know, just in the landscape of what we're dealing with. But my understanding was that there was a, you know, like a shortage of police officers in general at the time, which was one of the reasons why we didn't or why I wasn't on the board, but why the. Board decided not to do it because like Palm Beach, if I remember correctly, Palm Beach County has their own police force, but then they were having to contract out because they didn't have enough officers. No, that's not true. Those things I think need to be addressed in the plan. Yeah, we'll address those in the plans. And I was

384in Palm Beach County when they actually staffed up a a couple of hundred police officers in. Right. But when they were presenting the proposal in 24, there was a there were positions that were open and there was an issue with competitiveness and things like that. There's a lot of moving parts, I think, to it. We'll give you guys a plan. MRS. Alhadeff. Okay. The superintendent cannot present a plan to the community before the plan is presented to this board, and the board opines on the plan. If you do the opposite, then guess what? You lost all your authority. You cannot then say whether you agree with the plan or do not agree with the plan. We are the board. We are the ones that are supposed to be dictating. If we agree with the superintendent's

385plan. Yes. MISS Hixon. I had a question for the superintendent. Is there if we change to district Sro's as the discussion moving forward, does that affect any of the other positions and security? Like how does that affect the area security managers, the area? I mean, sorry, the security monitors, all of that does that. No, you're just replacing SROs. You're replacing SROs for municipal SROs to school district police SROs. Okay, perfect. Thank you. And I oh, sorry. One more thing. I would just say I appreciate what MRS. Alhadeff is saying, but I don't know how I feel about the plan till I know how the public. I want more information from the public because I represent the public. And so before I, we have like we sit down and decided as a board, I want to

386hear what the public has to say, because if we change our mind, then we're, we're wishy washy or we're, we're switching it up on them. So that's why my preference is to do the town hall and get information from the community first. Thank you. MR. Bruno. I have a question that I think is kind of come up over and over again, but is it within the board's authority to say, to direct the superintendent and say, well, actually, you can't cancel those contracts with x city? So if the contract is pending, then you would have to terminate the contract. But my understanding that these contracts are expired. So if these contracts expired, then you are looking at it either a renegotiation or a new decision with regards to how to move forward. The contracts expire JUNE

38730th, 2022. So let me ask the question a different way then. Is it within our authority to tell to direct the superintendent and tell him, don't let those contracts expire? You have to renew. Renew the contracts basically for specific cities. Yeah. So the superintendent will bring forward a recommendation if the board decides that I don't want to move with this particular recommendation, I want you to renegotiate or renew the contract. That could be an option that the board explores. So it's all based on how the board wants to direct. The superintendent is basically saying that I have a new plan on how to move forward based on this particular statute. The. It is up to the board to work with the superintendent as to how to move forward with that. I don't know if that

388answers. Yeah. I mean, I'm wondering so like if the if the contracts just expired and, you know, would the superintendent be even bringing an item forward with. You would have to because this is a contract that is statutorily required. So 1,006.12 says you must have a school safety officer, and you have four choices on how you do that. You can have a school resource officer, you can have a. I'm going to pull up to make sure I give you the exact wording. A school resource officer, a school safety officer. So I don't need you to read that because I saw you. I saw your email, but. So I guess I'm still unclear as like so x city contract is expiring JUNE 30th. The superintendent moves one of our school district employees into that position. Is

389there an item that we would vote on to move a current like school? You know, Broward Schools police officer into that school? I see what you're saying. You're saying without a contract, how would we be? Is there something that needs to come before the board for approval? I would say yes, just because of how the statute is written. It doesn't necessarily have to be a contract. I think the superintendent just advising the board this is my recommendation would be enough. I don't because there's obviously not going to be a contract if we're filling the slots with our own officers. I think it's just really the superintendent just advising the board that this is the direction that I would like to move forward with. And that needs to be a board item. It could be done

390in a workshop so long as the board gives, you know, a consensus approving. I don't think you necessarily need to have a board item, but the board needs to be aware and the board needs to approve either through an agenda item or through a workshop in a consensus saying, yes, I agree with this. Move forward. Okay. MISS Bulman. I'm going to change my position to agreeing with having the workshop first because I think. If we don't. I agree with MISS Alhadeff point that if you don't know what the plan is, then what are we even getting feedback on? I mean, and then that's just a free for all. And it's a kind of a wide ranging opinion about whether or not you want to use city or in-house officers. And, and we need to know

391what our, what the plan is first. So I. I'm hearing a majority of the board say they want to do a workshop now instead. Do you have your direction, Doctor Hepburn? Yes, we will schedule that workshop, hopefully in the next two weeks within the next two weeks, because just to give the city's ample time to transition based on whatever the outcome is. So yes, we have our orders. Thank you. Any other board member discussion on the advisories? MISS Rupert? Sorry, mine was to say workshop. You got me. Thank you. I'm talking about the advisories because we are still in the workshop on receiving the advisory committee reports. And so I didn't know if you had any comments on that. No no no no, not at this time. Thank you so much. Any other my colleagues.

392All right. Thank you so much for your contributions to the school district. Our next item is student transportation update. We will recess the meeting for two minutes. All right. This workshop is now reconvened. Our next item on the agenda is Student Transportation Update. I will now turn it over to staff for a brief presentation. Thank you, Doctor Wanza. Thank you, MADAM Chair. MR. Superintendent, board members. So I'm Valerie Wanza, I'm the Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer and I have the privilege of, in this interim period, serving as the senior leader for student services and fleet student transportation and fleet services. And joining me today is the Executive Director of the department, Doctor Simone Claus, as well as the manager for Transportation Operations, MR. Vincent Harrell. And what we will do in the interest of time,

393understanding that this is an important topic, we will do an abbreviated presentation and then ask, you know, obviously, allow the chair to entertain public comment. And then obviously, any questions from the board. But what I can say is what we are looking for today is really some feedback and direction on the implementation of the Smart Stops Hub model. And we'll talk about some other innovations and strategies that we're looking forward to implementing as well. So beacon, if you can. There you go. And Doctor Claus, I'm going to hand you this. And remember, we're going to do an abbreviated and then go to public comment. Okay. Can you guys oh, on my papers. I apologize. Hi everybody. Good afternoon. As as Doctor Wanza stated, my name is Doctor Simone Claus. I'm the executive director for transportation

394and I have the privilege today of introducing smart stops. The smarter choice it is going to be, we're going to discuss the efficiencies as well as our options for rolling this program out. It's based. I'm going to go quickly through the slides. There's like 44. If you guys have any questions though, we can stop and I can go over them. I do have a narrative prepared to explain exactly what Smart Stops is, but as Doctor Hepburn stated earlier, it is basically changing our regular routing patterns that we have from our corner to corner stops to a depot stop for our choice schools. So it includes six through 12 secondary and magnet high schools. Those would be the schools we're considering for depot pickups. So go ahead. Okay, so that's a little too small for me.

395So I need to go a little closer here on my screen. I apologize team. Thank you. Okay, so today the rationale for today's presentation is currently we transport over 52,000 students daily. The current routing methodologies have been analyzed to create greater efficiencies for our school choice programs in high schools and six through 12 schools. The implementation of a centralized smart stop transportation model will streamline operations and reduce routing concerns and improve overall efficiency. The request today we have from the board is to provide feedback and on implementing the Smart Stops transportation model at selected choice high schools and six through 12 campuses. Today's presentation again quick. Right. We're going to go over our staffing demands, the cost of transportation, the proposed model. Why it's important that we think about this model now and then go

396to board discussion. We can also discuss if you guys part of the PowerPoint includes the updates for Senate Bill 296 and House Bill 733. This is about bill time changes. If you guys are not familiar, I can go in depth about it. If you'd like to skip that today and just go to questions for that, that is available. But there are about five slides dedicated to a proposed model for the House bill recommendation of setting up middle school and elementary school start times at a specific time, instead of allowing the district to select what they would like to choose. Okay. So today, today we're going over staffing challenges, rising operation costs, inefficient routing model, and the need for centralized routing. Basically the transportation system. Right now, Broward County School Board continues to navigate ongoing operational

397challenges in student transportation, including driver shortages, rising costs, shifting ridership patterns, and the need for a more efficient and sustainable service model has become increasingly critical. i'm not sure if you guys know. Prior to 2022, we routed 90,000 students based on their eligibility. However, after going through our fte numbers and our ridership data, we discovered only 55,000 students were actually riding the bus. So we created an initiative called Register to Ride, which only routes students who register or indicate they would like to utilize transportation services. The proposed hub Transportation stop model represents a a strategic redesign of the current system aimed at improving reliability, maximizing resources, and enhancing the overall student transportation experience while saving 4 million with the registered to ride model in 2002, we were able to reduce our budget by 9 million.

398So here we are again, back at the table, hoping that we can come up with some more cost effective ways in helping the district save money, as well as decrease ridership time, as well as decrease the costs that it incurs to sustain our busses, mileage, etc. Currently, bkk operates under a three tier Bell system that maximizes bus utilization across staggered start times. While the structure has historically allowed the district to serve a large and diverse student population, it is now operating at full capacity with approximately 745 active routes that support support a fleet of about 1200 busses, but without sufficient drivers to operate them. The system faces daily service gaps. On average, 20 routes remain unfilled each day, compounded by an additional 25 to 30 driver absences due to leave or other factors. The ongoing

399shortage places significant strain on routing efficiencies and service reliability, particularly during the afternoon dismissal. This narrative I'm going, does not follow the slides in its entirety. Again, the slides are available for you guys to view, but this slide right here is is relevant simply because it lets you know that we are still transporting and driving the same amount of miles since 2015 to now. However, we are transporting less general ed students and we are transporting more special needs students. I'm sure you guys have heard that already before. So at the same time as we're transporting this, as we are transporting these students, and as the decline in student enrollment, but the increase in Esq transportation rise, we are placed under additional cost restraints. Every each additional bus placed into service represents an approximate approximate annual

400cost of $72,000. With a recent boundary and bell time adjustments, we've already generated nearly 2 to 2.5 million in additional transportation expenses. These financial pressures, combined with limited flexibility within the existing sorry within the existing tiered system, make it increasingly difficult to accommodate new initiatives without substantial cost increases. So the hub model, or our Smart Stop model, is designed to allow our redefining efforts and our school closures and things that are are set to enhance and entice, I guess, enrollment in the district. This is going to help offset some of the costs with those changes. The Smart Stop model is designed to bring savings. As I stated back to the district address challenges by transitioning from a decentralized, neighborhood based stop system to a network of centralized, strategically located smart stops. Under this model, students,

401particularly those attending choice magnet middle and high schools, will be transported to and from designated smart stops, such as high school campuses. These locations are staffed, accessible, and capable of safely accommodating students at higher volumes. The total cost of transportation right now is about 100 and approximately 103 million. As you guys can see, our Esq costs. As we've stated, it supersedes our special needs costs. I mean, sorry, our general education costs. However, with the Smart Stop model, the goal is it's going to allow us to reallocate some of those resources from the general editor choice schools and allow us to restructure the model of our special needs or our. Our routes that are are struggling with arrival times. So. From an operational standpoint, the smart model allows cps to move. To to. Sorry, from an

402operational standpoint, the Smart model allows cps to more effectively utilize its existing fleet and workforce by consolidating stops and streamlining routes. Busses can be reassigned across tiers, reducing the need for additional vehicles and mitigating the impact of driver shortages. The model is projected to generate approximately 3.5 million in annual savings, while also improving service consistency and system reliability. Importantly to stop, the Smart Stop model maintains the district's commitment to safety. Centralized hub locations were selected based on accessibility, supervision, and capacity to ensure a secure environment for students. In most cases, these hubs are located at high school locations, providing structure and monitors that monitored settings for students arrival and departure. We selected high school, which is open for discussion simply because the high schools open up at a earlier time, which means while the students

403are waiting, they're at the hub locations for busses or smart stop locations for busses. There will be the availability of possible campus campus monitors and staff on site. We are currently collaborating with those departments, though, to see exactly how that's going to look. The sets of the model is dependent on thoughtful implementation and strong community engagement. Families will need to transition from traditional excuse me, families will need to transition from transitional corner to corner service to utilizing designated smart stops, which MAY require adjustments to their daily routines. As such, proactive communication will be essential to clearly articulate the benefits of the model, including improved reliability, later pickup times, and enhanced system efficiency. Framing this transition as a modernized effect, rather than a reduced reduction in service, will be critical to gaining your support and stakeholder

404support in moving forward. Several key actions are necessary. Bell schedules must be finalized in alignment with start Stop model to support efficient routing design. Already in play, we have, like I stated, cross-functional collaborations between transportation, academic planning, regional offices. These are essential to ensuring alignment and success for the rollout. Additionally, detailed modeling and phase implementation planning will be conducted to identify priority schools and regions for initial deployment. The Hub Stop transportation, as requested by many of you, is a forward thinking approach to reimagining student transportation in Broward County by aligning resources with current realities and future needs, Bcps can build a more reliable, efficient, sustainable transportation system that will better serve students and families across the district. So in the slides, you will see that we did we did some research from other districts. We

405chose for states that that transport. Let's read clay, for instance, in Delaware, they transport about 13,000 students daily. Colorado Springs, 10,000 students. And then Austin does about 20,000 students. We just chose these four districts simply because they align closest to the way we route. And they have been highly effective in the hub stop concept for their choice schools. Now. I think the next two slides are really they they really tell the story. So as we all know, the Nova complex, we every child is afforded the opportunity to access transportation if need be. This is the district's only full k through 12 contiguous all assignment school and so currently for the two elementary schools, the middle school, the high school. We also mcfatter technical as well as the College Academy at Broward College Central campus. Utilize

406the Nova Complex busses, if you will. So for them, currently it's 684 stops. If we go down to hub stops by placing stops at each one of the high schools, we now take that 684 stops, down to 32 stops. And right now, as an organization, we spend on average about $2.5 million a year in transportation for Nova Transportation, with the 684 stops. Thank you, Doctor Wanza. So it's important for everyone to really look at this slide. This really gives you a look at the chaotic nature of picking up the students from the corner stop and how long they are on the routes. So if you're looking at it, the triangle is a stop and the line is the route. There's at least, you know, 15 to 16 triangles on one route. And you see it

407goes loop de loop, topsy turvy with the new model, with the 32 smart stops, you see how clean that design is. We're no longer cutting through neighborhoods. You're not. I'm not going to we're not going to receive as many emails about you guys are stopping in my community, but there's no kids here. We're going to be stopping at high school locations now while busses travel through certain communities. Absolutely. We still got to pick up our special needs babies, but they're also going to be pathways to the high schools. So we looked at the the macro level. Now I want to drill down to more of a micro level so you guys can see really what the difference is in routing. We took just a little subset of an area south of commercial, west of 95

408and north of Davie Boulevard, east of Florida Turnpike. And we showed how before there was an existing 67 bus stops with the Smart stop, which is Depot Hub, whichever. But it's smart stops. There's two smart stops created for that area. Now, it doesn't mean that the busses are going to reduce per se, right? Because if you have an example I always give is if you have 500 kids on a bus and they're separated by ten routes because we're going corner to corner, you still have 500 kids to pick up at the high school. So you're still going to have it's going to lower travel time. It's going to reduce the travel time for drivers and students. It's going to hopefully decrease the route time by about two hours and allow our kids to sleep in

409a little a little later and get home a little earlier. That's the concept and the model for the design. We also broke down South Broward High, South Broward High, believe it or not, had 119 bus stops with the smart stop comparison. It's 14, so we're already I in magnet currttoststsRighght n ne spddbout 5.5 to 6 million for magnet transportation. This will bring this down substantially as we show in slides further ahead. Okay. So return on investment. We've been speaking about that the whole time. You're going to have a reduction in route time, your fleet life extension, because we're not traveling as many miles over time expense reduction. Our drivers right now, they're contracted for 7.5 hours. However, they pretty much do about 10 to 12 a day based on the miles traveled and the stops

410that we make. This model will reduce that time by at least two hours. And our tiered our tier belt schedule benefits the fact that we are on three tiers, meaning and it's again, it's an appendix if anybody wants to know how we currently route. But the fact that we have our elementary, our high and our middle on separate tiers allows us to efficiently move our routes around seamlessly. So the cost savings for smart stops, that's also available. If you guys would like to dive a little deeper. But as I stated, we are, we're looking to reduce about two hours off of every route. That's about a savings of 3 million, a little bit close to $4 million. If you look at the second scenario with the overtime that's occurred. The next couple slides, they are

411going to go over what the reduction in busses looks like with the smart stops, and then also go over the cost benefits. So we just listed the estimated route reductions for middle schools that actually had busses removed. So I'll just name out 2 or 3. The biggest one. Let's look at the Nova complex. We had 121 busses. Now it's going to go down to 95 smart stops, which is 26 busses. Right. Then you have William Dandy, there's ten busses, seven busses after the smart stops, and then that's a difference of three. So that's just an overview of higher level. Highlight of what? Removing the corner to corner requirement and making it a depot. So the next slide. Oh thank you doctor Wanza that'll help. I apologize. Okay, so the the caveat to this is we

412are talking about the magnet high schools, but we're also talking about the magnet middle. The two have to be together in order to receive this $4 million savings. They are currently on our second and first tiers. And that's where you're going to have the most bang for your buck as far as saving money. So on this slide, it literally just shows you that we're looking at 3.36 million in savings. The next slide goes into, as I stated in my narrative, there are some. There are there is a cost impact to the refining initiative. So this slide lists that the boundary changes. In some instances they have a cost to them. Plantation high reconfiguring that there's a cost to that as well. We have to add a new bus on the road. You have Esq costs

413as well, but it's still with those with that cost impact of 2.2 million, you're still looking to save close to 3 million with this new concept. We talked about that. Yeah, we talked about the rest. I really covered all the rest of the slides with my narrative here, but I also wanted one of the conversations was, what are what is transportation doing right now? What are you guys doing to work on areas of improvement? So we have constant, continuous redefining of, here comes the bus. We have basically created this app from ground up. In essence, there's a company that runs it. However, because our district is so large, they would love to keep our business. They have worked with us to create kind of like an a la carte service for us as far as

414when we do bus substitutions, as I stated earlier, we have call outs, worker's comp, fmla. Currently we have 740 routes. We only have 730 drivers. So every day we start out at a deficit of-15. But with the here comes the bus app. It allows us to let the parents know what we've substituted and what route or what stops will be on what bus. We also are looking into opportunities to partner with Broward County Transit. We are rolling out or we've slowly started to roll out a pilot to test student ridership. We are utilizing the same. The id badges to scan the students on the bus so that the parents can now know where their students are, not where the bus is, which is one of the requests that we received from some of the advisory

415committees and also the board. We have an annual review of our magnet transportation zones. That's part of the cost savings as well. We were able to consolidate some of the magnet zones, as well as expand a couple that were needed, so we didn't have any gaps in services. We also have some additional strategies to reduce ride time, which was a conversation that was brought up earlier. We want to reduce ride time for special needs students as well as general ed students. We think it's a a great opportunity to discuss that because nobody wants their student on the bus for longer than an hour. But as Doctor Wanza stated, if you are traveling, if you live in Coral Springs and you're going to a school in plantation and it takes you 45 minutes in your vehicle,

416it's going to take even longer on the bus. Then you have traffic delays. You have, of course, our students need time sometimes at the end of the day to unwind. So there's a little bit of delay getting them on the bus. And then you also have there's sometimes students have been, I guess, quiet all day and want to erupt on the bus. So we have to pull over from time to time. So, so with that being said, that could increase our the ride time, but it is not our intention to ever have anybody or any student on the bus. I have two kids myself and I, when they're on the bus for an hour and a half, I'm like, oh, is everything okay? It's. So we are looking at ways to reduce that time. And

417hopefully with the implementation of smart stops, we'll be able to work better in collaboratively with our special needs department and bringing some of the special needs programs back to their home schools. That will reduce the travel time for these students. And then we're going to leverage ai on other systems. We're working on moving away from the well. We're working on creating a routing platform that really works to our needs, where we create it based on what the district needs, the customer service components, and the ask versus being pigeonholed to what the system can do for us. So this is just a quick update on the district's initiatives around Senate Bill 296 from 2025. As we all know, this was the bill that inverted start times around high schools starting later in elementary and middle school,

418starting earlier. And in case anyone did not know, the the bill was repealed just ahead of the start time for JULY of 2026. So now districts and charter schools obviously can implement strategies that work best for them. So what we're doing just as just as a quick oversight to the board, we are doing a survey out to our parents because we still have to document that. We did survey parents. We will get that survey done. It's going out this month, and then we will analyze that data. Obviously work on school start times for next school year. And then we did model some scenarios of what it would look like and what it would cost if the district were to implement the high schools with a later start time. So I'm not going to read these

419slides to you. These are the model slides model. We did three models on slide 32. Gives you that estimated cost impact depending on if we were to implement one of these three models. But the district does have the ability to implement start times that work best for the community and obviously for the organization. But we did want the board to see what that impact would look like. So we, as I said, administering electronic survey in the month of APRIL, we'll finalize the school start times because we know we have to get that out by MAY. And then we do have to submit to the Doe, our processes and what we are doing by the end of JUNE. So we're going to pause MAY take a little bit longer than you want it, but we're going

420to pause and wait for next steps. Got it. We'll go to public comment Latricia Greaves and then Jackie Lipscombe. Welcome. Okay, welcome. Good afternoon, school board staff, superintendent, colleagues, colleagues. I am a community member. I do not work for bcc. I feel like it though my tax dollars too. I just want to speak to the items specifically the Nova schools. And Nova is a k through 12 school. It's the only k through 12 school in Broward County Public school. And I want to start with the safety of the children. One size does not fit all by doing what the they plan on wanting to do will put children in harm's way and just want you to understand that forcing kids to walk further distance just to save money is placing them in harm's way. Broward

421has the most cases of children that disappear kidnaped. You have human trafficking going on, sex trafficking going on. And this is in in the state according to news and statistics. Again, human trafficking and sex trafficking are major issues going on right now. To target Nova students, you need to actually correct their routing habits that you have. So that's the problem. You have poor routing habits for Nova. Instead of targeting them and trying to redirect them, having them go there. Sometimes there's parents that actually stays with their children, so they have to go to the high school and the bus is not there. We don't want to put ownership on the school staff to be responsible, to make sure that transportation, make sure busses, they're, as far as I heard her say during the presentation that

422parents are calling saying bus are going through their neighborhood. I have not heard of that. I'm very active in the community. I've never heard of that. So I'm not sure where that came from, other than people who are still upset because their kids can't get accepted into Nova. To this day. If a. Also, I just want to mention that the. The community of Nova Schools is not aware of this, of what's going on. They never had input about this. This was just added to the workshop I made. I was aware of it by going to Facebook. That's how I found out about it. And even students and staff from. No one was aware that this was happening. So talk about transparency. Also, in terms of the transportation, you said it's for choice programs and magnet

423six through 12. Nova is not a magnet school. It's a k through 12. So so you're impacting kids, families who have kids in elementary, middle and high that goes to that school. So you're doing a split there in terms of Senate Bill 296. Nova's already in compliance. They do start after that school, the elementary, middle and high. So again, not sure why Nova is part of this. So just want to let you know that Nova's already in compliance. Bct routes. I stay engaged with them a lot. You might want to be concerned. They're always stopping routes, having issues, whether it's routing issues, construction going on. Also to compare Broward County to the tri county area, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach, they're set up totally different. Neighborhoods are set up differently. So thank you. Perception versus reality.

424Thank you Jackie. Thank you. Yes. And I'd like to acknowledge the really difficult job that Doctor Clough and her team have. I really don't envy juggling all these busses and students and drivers and all the challenges. So thank you for what you for what you folks do. I especially like the phraseology smartstop has been dreamed up. That sounds all very nice, but it's actually code for less stops and I echo some of the points that Latricia makes about the impacts that those will have on students and parents. There was one slide that went up there for about a second, but it talked about about the requirements for parents to change their routines and deliver their kids to further away spots. So I do think more community engagement is going to be needed. I agree, I

425didn't even know this. There's things buried in in 44 pages here that are quite regulatory. And I acknowledge there has to be a lot of innovation to. I do want to hark on again, if I MAY, to expand a little on the discussion about deaf and hard of hearing community, because the pathway was open to throwing that into this discussion here too. I can't emphasize enough that this can't be a choice by by the board and by the district as to when and whether the the problem of transporting students, particularly to the deaf and hard of hearing cluster, where they're on a bus for up to three hours, it shouldn't be a choice to resolve it or to kind of, well, let's leave it till next year and let's see what else we can do

426about, you know, regionalizing services and bringing services closer. This is an immediate problem. It needed resolving years ago. I can't emphasize enough. You have lost students. You are about to lose more because it isn't being resolved. So it would be easy to think, well, it's now only APRIL, whatever it is, and they've only got a few more weeks to suck it up. I think showing willing that you are going to preempt any more difficulty and hardship over this, and pivoting now to provide some flexibility of transportation for these students, or at least communicate with this community to tell them what you are doing, to acknowledge the the pain and to tell them what is being worked on would help preempt some of the problems that you are carving out for yourselves by not doing so.

427I also want to. Point out that it was in the Evergreen Report in 2014, which was an independent review of ease in in Broward schools that was contracted by bcc. It called out in 2014 that bus times needed to be tallied that were in violation, actually, of state Administrative Code six, a 3.0171, which says to plan routes so far as practicable. So no elementary student shall be on the bus more than 50 minutes or secondary students more than one hour. Thank you. Thank you. Board member discussion. DR. Zeman. Thank you so much, chair. I have a couple questions that I just want to share. Please. The first is really a comment and then I'll get into my questions, which is, you know, for Broward County Public Schools, our transportation system is a real differentiator for

428a lot of people that are thinking about private schools, charter schools and public schools. So it is a real strength. It's a great to learn that for gen ed students, the cost to the district is around $470 per student. And, you know, to MISS Lundstram's point, which is always appropriate in front of mind with me, you know, losing and gaining students is, you know, an important consideration when we think about what we want to do. It's interesting to me also that the cost for our Esq students to Broward County schools is $9,000. Net cost to our district. I would consider bringing that up when we get to our legislative priorities for next year. It sure would be nice if the legislature could help us out with those costs. I think that's really important. A question,

429chair, on this Smart Stops initiative, would this include any of our ese students, or would it be gen ed students only. Doctor Hepburn? It would just be general ed students. Terrific. So our big cost driver out of that 103 is our Esq students. And what we're proposing today is for the gen ed students only, which is the $470 per, I guess. Let me ask a couple other questions. You inferred toward the end of the presentation. I think that our Esq services MAY not be in the optimal place. When we look at our total cost, and the total services we want to provide to Esq, is that analysis going to be done in time to implement for next year? I apologize to the chair. DR. Zeman, can you repeat that question? Yes. Sounds kind of. The

430end of the presentation. I'm sorry about that. I got to the quietest place I could get you inferred at the end of the presentation. That part of the cost drivers for our Esq students is that we have their services where we have them. Now that we're aware of the cost, is there any analysis that could be done by the end of this year about where our Esq services are located? Can I. Go ahead? Okay. DR. Zeman, this is Valerie Wanza. So we we have been working with our Esq department. MISS Hollingsworth and MISS Egan, about where programs and services could be located. I think I believe what they are looking at is the need for services and where they can strategically place the different programs. And then obviously, we can do our analysis for transport,

431for for transportation. I would love to see that. It's a very it's an incredible balancing act between providing the exact right services they need and having the right therapists and teachers and teacher assistants and helpers in the right place. But we actually have a district with lots of capacity and lots of places. And it sure would be great to put all of that, including transportation in it together and make sure we're offering those services in the right place. The other thing that I'm frankly getting frustrated to hear about without a solution is this shortage of bus drivers. Can somebody in the superintendent staff do an analysis of what we need to pay bus drivers so that we don't have this persistent gap? If we start every day short 15 bus drivers, it just seems clear

432to me that we're not we don't we don't have the right package, you know, to get enough people to come and drive our busses. And so I'd love to know what our what the right package is, but I just haven't seen that analysis done. Is that something that we could do by the time this comes back. From my understanding, it's been done a couple a few years ago. And I know we last year, we just actually raised the bus driver minimum pay as well to be more competitive. Pretty sure the transport, not transportation, but hr can do a market analysis, but there is a lot of competition just for the sheer evolution of logistics. With packages such as Amazon ups where, you know, we're competing with those entities now that we didn't have to compete

433with in the past, but we can certainly do a market analysis and see what the competitive pay is currently. But last year we raised the, the, the starting pay slightly last year as well. I'll log that as a follow up for you. DR. Zeman. I appreciate that, Doctor Hepburn. I y y know, I iss not just thahat weave,ou know,w, sutititute bus d drivers coming in, but we also have a pretty significant overtime bill for transportation. And if we could figure out there MAY be a place where we can increase compensation so that both of those things get minimized or eliminated. But it's certainly part of the overall solution, I think, for what what the transportation system might do. A rather big question, chair, what what would it look like if we contracted out all transportation

434for Broward County schools? What would a contractor come in and do that is different and maybe more efficient than what we do? Doctor Hepburn. Thanks for the question. We can look a little bit deeper into that. I've been in districts where they have contracted out some some bus services just for the sheer volume of our transportation system. It's difficult to contract a whole entire transportation system. It's possible to contract out some. But we have to dive into the to those costs and see what those costs are now versus what we pay our drivers fuel costs, maintenance costs on our busses. I appreciate that there MAY be an opportunity at the very high end. Like, I know it's a $9,000 average for Esq students, but I'm also aware that there are some students who have very

435special transportation needs, and we still deal with those transportation needs, to my knowledge, with the school bus. And it MAY be that that is something that's perfect for a contractor. You know, that they can do a great job for our special needs kids and do it with different vehicles and at a different cost. So I would just ask if we can look into that because that's, that's a way that we can save money. Is that it? DR. Zeman. No, ma'am. I'm sorry. I have one other thing. Just my general takeaway from this. If I'm right, there's about $3.5 million of savings, but there's about $2 million of additional costs as a result of repurposing and changing boundaries. And I think that under this Smart Stops model, parents are going to be asked to drive further,

436and students are going to be asked to wait in in hubs in order to get to school. So I would like to see this when it comes back with kind of like a conclusion that has the pros and cons, all the costs put together. You know, making a change like this is difficult. It MAY be very difficult for us right now. We're doing a lot of things differently. And if the net savings is $1 million and we're asking people to do more on something that is a differentiator for traditional public schools like ours, I'm not sure that the juice is worth the squeeze. Now, if contracting out Esq students are the most expensive Esq students saves us several million dollars. That's a great thing we can do independently, but I would just love to see

437kind of a conclusion when this comes back. That puts all of these things together so that we can see the pros and the cons, if that would be okay, MR. Superintendent. Yes, that's that's okay. Thank you. I appreciate all the work that went into this. This is we're getting we're getting close. I just feel like there's some more analysis about these things, maybe a little bit broader thinking related to contracting out so that we can figure out, you know, what we want to do. Am I right, chair, that this is work that we're doing because we want to make changes for next school year for the 26, 27 year. Correct. I appreciate that. Thanks. Thank you very much. Thank you. DR. Holness thank you, MADAM Chair. Can I. Yes. Go ahead. I just wanted to

438re I wanted to clarify something doctor DR. Zeman said and I answered. So the Esq students that would be included are the ones that are at corner stops. No door to door services. I just wanted to make sure because I said no. The answer is corner stop. Special needs students would be considered in this model. Thank you, Doctor Clark. Okay, so. Doctor Claus. These are Gen z choice students. Correct. Through the chair. Yes. Okay. All right. So I know that students will be picked up from different hubs, which means there'll be quite a few students, right. So how will how do you plan or Doctor Hepburn how do we plan to address safety, considering that they're going to be quite a few students at these various hubs? Yes. So the hubs will actually be on

439school campus. So we address safety with security staff being able to supervise kids while they're at at campus. Smart stop, hub stop versus, you know, the usual while they're standing at a corner in their neighborhood. Okay, so there will be increased security staff to address these concerns. And doesn't that come with a cost? Because I don't think that was included here in the presentation. With the security staff at at that site, we can flex time, we can start security staff person's time earlier or later. So we have opportunities to really adjust, start and stop time for key security staff at that site. Okay, so. We will minimize the cost. Understand? So are you able to bring back to us even with a minimized cost, what that looks like for providing security should this move forward?

440Yes. Okay. So I know we have here comes the bus and my, my, my son rides the bus and he knows where his bus is. Sometimes he's a little late. I have to be driving a little faster than I should, but he needs to. Get up. Get up a lot earlier. So I was I had questioned before when when we were at the the meeting with the Esq committee and I. I mentioned Doctor Claus that oftentimes since we're talking about Gen z students here, oftentimes there are kids who. If you look at the. Not Troy students, but kids that we're picking up otherwise, right? They MAY not need a bus for a particular day. And there are many kids like that, right? There MAY be a few hundred, maybe a hundred for any particular day

441that they're not there at the bus stop because they're not riding the bus that day. But the bus still comes. So and I know we have the app, here comes the bus. But is there a could it be modified or could the company do some modification where a student can go on and says, don't need the bus for that day? So the driver is aware? Well, I'm only picking up one student over here. I don't need to make that stop, you know, is there any way that that can that the app could provide the option of don't need the bus, so it minimizes the number of stops. MAY I so we can definitely look into that. That's a great idea. Currently, we use the system of where the parent notifies the school, or the school

442notifies us that the child won't be riding, and then the driver would not go to that stop. But that is an option we can definitely look into. Thanks for the suggestion, right? Because we're paying for the app, right? Absolutely. And bus drivers have they have access to the app, don't they? Yes. Well it's a tablet on their bus. Absolutely. Yes. Right. So if a, if a kid, if I'm picking up Johnny at whatever location and the bus driver sees Johnny has don't need the bus, then I don't need to go to that stop. I can go to the next one. So I mean, wouldn't that save some time? I mean, I didn't I didn't want to throw you out there, you and Matthew out there, but it would definitely help you guys. Okay. You don't

443need the bus, right. But he wished he doesn't need the bus every day because he wants me to drive him all the way across town. But I'm not going to do that. Okay, so what pushbacks do you anticipate should we move forward with with having these topics? Because I'm assuming parents are going to have to drive further. Some parents. So what pushback do you anticipate and how do you plan to deal with that? As far as the community pushback. And I apologize, I don't know the public speaker's name, MISS Greaves. Greaves the points she made are valid. The pushback would be the parents would, yes, now be required to drive the students to the stop. There also would be the pushback would be how many students are going to be at the high school. Some

444parents might have concern with that. You're going to have parents that who normally can walk their kids to the stop before they get to work, to make sure they're safe and secure. They're going to be a little nervous that they're no longer able to do that, because the child is going to be at that depot stop or the smart stop a little later than earlier. So your community pushback will. Those are the three different things that we see could be a point of contention. Okay, so these are major changes, right? Because this is going to change the routine of a whole lot of families. Yes. Are we how are we planning on rolling this out? Are we going to have some sort of a and I know we talk about town halls, we don't want

445to do a whole lot of those. But I'm anticipating there'll be a lot of community concerns. So how do we plan to engage the community, to ease their concerns and to to help them to sort of accept the changes that are coming forward? So, so depending on when we would initiate, right, we obviously would have some conversation with some of our advisories. And then and then the schools that are impacted, we would have to have conversations at those schools that they're at, their advisories, at their sac meetings, at their area advisory type meetings. And just just to clarify. So even though many people MAY not think that it is, Nova is not a neighborhood boundary school. It is a choice school. People make application to go to Nova, just like they make application to go

446to a magnet school. So that is why it is classified as a choice school. It is a full district assignment school and and essentially for years, and some of you MAY remember in your time in other roles throughout the district, for years, staff has been asked to look at doing something to realize savings with transportation, not only to Nova, but to the magnets. And so we just wanted to clarify that, that we aren't just picking on, you know what I'm saying, particular schools or particular communities. Okay, so Doctor Wanza, I hear you in terms of the the sac and, and, you know, these regular meeting groups. But beyond that, let's just say you're going to inform sac. How do you how do you plan to ensure that parents are aware to show up at the

447sac meeting or whatever meetings, as opposed to having an independent meeting for parents to discuss this specific issue, as opposed to being part of the general agenda for a sac committee. Do you feel that it would be more beneficial to have an independent meeting that addresses one specific issue, or to attach this to some other agenda of particularly established groups? So it depends on the school community, right. And for some schools, it could be an independent meeting that we're just going to discuss transportation. And for some schools, because parents normally come to meetings instead of instead of requesting that they come to another meeting, we would add on to a, you know, an ask for a special agenda item. So it would be it would be unique for each school community. But one of the

448things that we have to do whenever we decide to do it is we're going to have to overcommunicate that these conversations are taking place. We need their, you know, we need parent input. We invite you to be a part of the conversation. We would have to overcommunicate that in multiple ways. So that and then we would probably have to consider having like a morning and an afternoon, right? Because you have people who have different working hours and different family situations that we're very open to having the conversation and making sure that they have the availability to get there. Okay. So can you assure this board that every single parent of a kid being impacted by these changes will be notified as to the meetings and where they these meetings will be so they can come

449and voice their input or get information. So we can ensure that they're notified. But I can't ensure that they're going to participate. But understand I am, I am, I am more concerned okay. With awareness. Okay. Yes, sir. So every kid that's impacted, we will make sure that those parents get that information regardless of whether or not they show up. Yes. Yes, sir. Okay. So I have another question. What negative impact besides the location should families expect? Is there anything else besides having to take their kid to another location and the safety concerns that we discussed, is there something else we're missing that would be impactful to families? Right now? I can't think of any right now. But you know, if I'm not thinking of something and they bring it up, we'll make sure that we

450advise you. But I can't think of any right now. It's it it's obviously, you know, I was a student who rode the bus to from third grade to 11th grade, but I was a student. We didn't do, you know, wasn't a choice type thing. Right. And so this isn't your, your children who are going to their neighborhood boundary to sign school. So that wouldn't be these, you know, those students, these are our different choice programs that people make application to that we will be having conversation with those parents around some potential shifts in transportation processes. Understand? So with these changes, we are obviously might we MAY be reducing the number of busses because we're reducing the the number of stops. Is that fair to assume? So you're going to reduce the number of stops and

451then and then what you what you'll reduce is the time on the bus. You, you, you will actually realize some fuel efficiency costs, probably some bus longevity costs. And then because we don't have to spend so much time on certain routes, we can reallocate those resources to. Now we are reducing ride times on other routes. Understand? But will these changes reduce the number of busses? You want to ask? So not necessarily. However. They will allow us to work with our current constraints. As I stated before, we're 15 drivers short. This stopped. The Smart stop model will allow us to align the resources to the appropriate places. It will not necessarily eliminate busses off the road, it will just allow us to rightsize our routing. And instead of some students getting up, as we stated earlier,

452they get up a little later and instead of our driver for driver retention purposes, right? Nobody wants to drive a bus for 12 hours. It would allow them to be on there for 7.5 to 10. So there's cost savings and benefits in that area, but not necessarily a bus reduction. Okay. So the reason I'm asking that question, because you did mention in your presentation that it would resolve some of the concerns in terms of shortage of bus drivers. So if we are going to resolve those concerns, I guess the question another way then is, will we need less bus drivers? No. No, you will not need less bus drivers. Okay. So how does it resolve the problem with the shortage of bus drivers? So transparently speaking, right now we're we're short about 25 bus operators

453for absenteeism, as I stated, right? You have fmla, you have worker's comp. So any given day, a terminal who's already short five drivers, right. We have five open routes. They're also going to be short, let's say five additional call outs or ten call outs. What we do in those instances for substitution is we double back. So when we double back we have to go to a corner, stop maybe 3 or 4 corner stops and get those children. Now we'll be able just to go to the high school location, pick them up and get them to school timely. So it allows us to instead of having students, unfortunately, wait sometimes for a bus 15 to 20 minutes, they'll be waiting 5 to 10 and we'll be able to get them to school quicker. Okay, that's the

454design. That's the efficiency in the model. I understand. So currently how many bus drivers did you say we are short? Technically. 15. 15. I was trying to get my numbers together. 15 so with these changes will we still need to fill those 15 positions? We will. We will need to keep our. We can we can sustain or we can we'll be able to sustain what we have going on at 745. If we keep our 745 routes, we'll have enough to cover even call outs. So we still will need to hire about 15 to 20 bus operators. And then we do need to hire about 30 to 30 to 35 bus attendants. Okay. So for the sake of the public and thank you, MADAM Chair, I'll be I'm almost done for the sake of the public.

455The cost savings is going to be based upon cost and fuel. And what else. Cost and fuel ride time for the students and the driver hours, operational overtime. Okay. So that those would be the areas where we would save money, not not by reducing busses or bus drivers. Correct? Correct. Yes. Understand? Okay. Thank you, MADAM Chair. Appreciate it. Thank you, MISS Hixon. Thank you. Excuse me. Thank you. I have a couple of questions on. I also was interested in something that DR. Zeman asked about, and that was about the Esq students, because we didn't really talk about how we're going to reduce the time. So have we done any research on how if we used private transportation, if that would save any money? So we'll have to bring that back to the table to discuss

456privatizing transportation. We did do this work up a while ago, but I would I would hate to give inappropriate numbers. However, the the key point you have to keep in mind when we transport special needs students who are door to door services. They also require an attendant and or a unique aide. And then they also required that door to door because your private transport does not have stop arms to allow to stop traffic. So you are actually, in some instances, limiting the amount of students that can get in, get on the get in the vehicle for private transport, and then you are limiting the amount of students they can pick up based on the time it's going to take them to get to and from. However, this is just me looking at as executive Director

457of transportation and what our numbers are, but I can bring back what the cost would look like if we did privatize. I don't have that information right now. And also like if we partnered with the county, they provide top service for special needs students. Like is there a way we partner with them at a, some kind of discounted cost? Because I know it costs a person $3 to use tops, one one way. And they're, you know, they're used a lot like my son goes to a day facility and tops is what actually delivers a lot of those students to the program. So just also another option, maybe to see how we partner with the, the county to use the Tops program since it's something already in place, it wouldn't have to be reinventiting thehehe, not

458I eve instcece,utut w whereee could. My other. Well, so I'm, I haven't been a magnet coordinator for a few years, but dealt with bus depots a lot as the magnet coordinator at South Broward. So I don't know if we still use this or not. It's kind of a backwards model to what you said, but for South Broward, because that's what I'm familiar with, students would be picked up at their home and brought to a depot, which was Broadview Elementary for the most part. And then all of the students would collect there, and then that bus would bring them to South Broward. So it's kind of a, a little different model than what you suggested. But in light of the concerns of safety and things like that, would that work in terms of a model for

459what would that save? I know you can't answer those questions right now, but is that something? Do we still use that? And is if we do, why couldn't we expand that? I don't know if we only do it for county wide, I'm guessing right. Only like South, there was a few schools that are county wide in that instance, but I, I just wonder if that would address the safety issue. So I can address some of that. We do. We currently that's a hybrid model and we call it a transfer student. We do practice that model in several instances. However, what usually occurs is you have to have the correct timing in order for that model to be as effective as you want, which means that when that first bus gets there and drops off those

460students there, or the parents get there and drop them off at Broadview, the next bus has to be ready and waiting to go so we don't interfere with parent pickup, the parent drop off traffic. So we do utilize that transfer model. We don't utilize it in every situation, but could we look into what that would look like a more hybrid approach. Absolutely. Well, and I would also suggest there are some cities that have little shuttles. Maybe there's a way to work in cities where the shuttle picks the student up at the home, gets them to the smart stop that we have. So I think there are ways because the safety is a concern. You know, if you have to have an elementary student or any student going further. But I think there's also a concern

461when a kid standing at the corner, right? I think it's safer to be at a school. So if there was a way for us to maybe partner with our municipalities or Broward County transit to, to kind of work that hybrid model where it would pick them up and then bring them to the depot so that they're being supervised across the movement. I think that would that might help with that. My other I think my last. Well, before I get to the last question, I just want to say thank you. We asked as a board that you bring us back less transportation costs specifically for Nova, because that's where most of our costs were. So my understanding of today is this is the first time you're showing this to anyone, including us. It's not written in

462stone. It is to have a conversation. Once we shake everything out and figure out what we as a board want to do moving forward, then you would go out to the communities and the principals and all of that. This is not a done deal. This was just a conversation. So I appreciate. Correct you very much for bringing that to us because we did give that direction. My last question, and I should probably know the answer, but I don't. On page 21 where, you know, I understand some of this redefining, but my one question is because I, I know we voted to have Hallandale and mechanical. Well, Hallandale become the four day. But there's a couple where it says build time change and that's in Olsen is also another one. There's two of them. So can

463you just remind us is that something we did we vote on? And I just didn't remember because I don't remember that in the redefining. So the build time change came with Hallandale, right? Because it's going to change because it's going to mirror the four day school week. So that obviously comes with the build time change because it's going to mirror somewhat the bell time at of pompano. And so mechanical sometimes most times they ride the bus with Hallandale. So we were just saying that. So mechanical may or MAY not be impacted because mechanical is going to stay on a five day week, but Hallandale is going to go on a four day week. But you are correct, there was a cost impact on that board item when it came. And then as we went through

464finalizing our redefining work, the Olsen item did not come as a board item, but it came up in conversation and direction that we receive. So that's why it is here, so that the board can see it. So what does the bill time change mean for Olsen? So right now, as you MAY recall, Olsen probably starts around 705 or 710 or somewhere like that in the morning. And it is a challenge for parents and for the employees. And they have been pleading with us for a couple years to have their time changed. I believe it's about 830, 8:00. Okay, eight, 8:00 would be they would go on that first tier, but that that's where that difference came. That's that's a pretty much that difference from what the total redefining item was at about that 1.6 or

4651.7 ish million that redefining came. That's where the additional came is with the Olsen change. Okay, so that Olsen time change will come to us to vote on. Yeah, it it will come when we bring final bill times in in late MAY for the board to vote on for next school year. Thank you. Because I thought I missed something. You didn't MISS It. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you, MR. Cervera. Thank you, chair. I want to address some of the concerns that we heard from MISS MISS Greaves, specifically the the issues with the the distance that some of these kids would have to walk further and potential exposure of being alone for longer periods of time for those kids that have to walk directly to the bus stop from their from their homes without a parent

466or guardian. I know Nova is very complex in the way that we get our students there, and that they basically come from essentially all parts of the county, right? Has there been any kind of any kind of data or any kind of input that we have that will show the average walk time or the average distance time that these students will have to now engage in in order to meet these, quote unquote, smart stop locations. In the event that we adopt this plan and take away the 684 current bus stops and replace it with the 32 smart stops. So, so there has not been a walk time, if you will study done. What I can tell you is for the majority of the students, it would be like my mom did drop me off to

467the bus stop on her way to work. And so that's why we would have to go out, have conversations, talk to, you know, communities before we brought back something final. And depending on what communities, you know, tell us and their feedback, the board MAY say, we're going to pause on this or no, we don't want staff to go forward. So that would be the intentionality in those conversations. Well, that's a good segue, Doctor Wanza, because that's where I'm going next. I appreciate the fact that we are implementing prospective plans of action, and we're being proactive and creative. However, this is a major change, especially for the Nova complex, which of course, as you know, falls within district six. So of course, is always going to pique my interest as I represent Blanche Foreman, Eisenhower, Nova,

468Middle Nova High Mcfatter and College Academy. So this is really in the heart of my district and of the utmost importance to me. So I'm very desirous to have this go out to the community and have parents, students, teachers, community members engage in substantive input and have sessions in which they can be fully informed and have all of their questions answered. Because I have no idea how my community is going to react to this. What I can tell you is that if I if they don't like it, I ain't going to like it. So it's very important that my constituents get the the full picture here and the full plan and the full understanding as to what we're proposing, because I mean, these these charts are cute and these diagrams are pretty with all the

469colors on them. But the reality is, I mean, if we're going from 684 stops to 32, this is a major, major overhaul. And I need to know what my community thinks about this. I need to hear every single concern. You know, MISS Greaves did a good job of raising the distance issue. I'm sure there's 100 other concerns that, you know, we're not even thinking of because we're hearing this for the first time. So I am very adamant about going into the heart of Davy, if you will, and making sure that everyone has an opportunity to be heard. Every question asked, every question answered. And if this is a viable plan that we can help come to fruition, fantastic. But I imagine there's going to be some parents. There's going to be some students who are

470going to have some questions about this. So I thank you for taking the initial steps, but I think we're a long way from anything coming to finalization. Thank you. MISS Bulman. Thank you, chair. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for moving the Alston start, for allowing the Alston time to start up. I will I think they'll be happy with eight. But you know, if we can get it up there even a little bit more because I think that will definitely help them retain and attract students. And so that's that's a great news. So thanks, MISS Dixon. So I, so I had a couple questions. The one from like the pool of money that we're saving from when we're looking at the savings, is that general fund operational or is that capital? That's general fund.

471Okay. So that's great. And maybe if you could maybe just walk me through. I know that DR. Holness did an example, but just for my information. So for example, my son goes to addicts as he as a magnet student. So he gets picked up down, down the street right now. So. Where, how does that look for him? Because South Broward is our high school. That's. But my but we're two miles away from there. So you get a bus to South Broward. So how how would that look for. For that particular scenario? For that particular scenario, his stop would no longer be on that corner in front of your residence. It would now be at South Broward High School. Okay. So I as a, if I want him. So if I want him to go to

472the magnet school, then I would have to get him to South Broward. Yes. But as MISS Hixon stated, and so did DR. Zeman. And it was kind of alluded to by MR. Cervera, we're going to look into what those options look like for parents who are not able to take their students to the bus stops. Maybe there is a shuttle or tops that we can utilize to help offset the cost. Go ahead. Or I'm just thinking, well, just because it because it's already the two mile, you qualify for the bus from where we live to get to South Park. I don't know if that would factor into it or if you're just making a decision to. I apologize, MISS Bowman. If you're boundaried for that school, then your stop will remain. The same. So we're

473okay for South Broward. So. But we're more than two miles away from South Broward, so my kids can get a bus to South Broward. So if South Broward is the hub. Right? So that it would be, it wouldn't include the magnet. Okay, so you'd have to get them to South Broward. Okay. I know I'm trying to get it to I'm sorry. So your child currently goes to addicts as a part of the magnet or as a part of. The as part of the magnet. As a part of the magnet. And you get a bus from currently your neighborhood right now to go to addicts. Go to. Addicts, right? So now the, the, the hub for the addicts boundary, I'm sorry, for the addicts magnet would be South Broward High School, right? So then the parent

474would either the parent would get the child to South Broward because the, the, the hub concept would be for magnet students, obviously not for kids at that certain neighborhood boundary school. Right. So I well, so I'm just thinking practically. So my next question is just, you know, like the practicality of shifting to that model and what that looks like in terms in terms of potentially losing students or losing magnet students. Because like I said, my so my South Broward students get a bus, so I'm not driving them to school in the morning. So that would put the onus on me to drive someone that doesn't go there to school while the other one's getting a ride so that, you know, the attractiveness of that then kind of diminishes based on that fact pattern. Now, if

475they were going somewhere much farther, it wouldn't be as big of a deal. So I, I would like to just, I, I don't maybe like a survey or whatever to kind of see what, you know, what we would be looking at it. It might be that people choose different programs and we regionalize it like we had talked about before, and we kind of go in that direction because I think that we do need to. I like the, I like the idea in general of like cutting down the routes and, you know, like making this much more efficient and cutting down the time that the kids are on the bus. But that's like a, that's just an example of where if my other kids are getting a bus to the same place, why am I driving

476this one? You know, so it just but there's going to be a million different fact patterns to look at for that. You know, that's going to. [Laughter] But if Olsen's starting at eight, then. I mean, there's so many different things to take into consideration. So let's see. And then when you're, when you're saying smart, stop, is this a concept or is it a program like a, is this like a whole? It's just a name that we use for depo stops. Instead of saying Depo stops. Okay. I thought there was like a whole like a logistical app behind this. So okay, so you guys have come up with all of this. Okay, well, we might need to, you know, we got to look into that copyrighting it. And then something else. So as we're going, I

477know you were looking at efficiency and I thought, I think I saw something here about propane and different things. Are we, we had talked about this last year a little and I think we were getting away from it, but I don't exactly remember why. Like electric vehicles. Is that not. I'll yield to Vince Vincent Harold, our operations manager. The district currently has 60 ev busses in service that we have acquired within the last two years. So how so how is that working in comparison? Are we. We are seeing. Them or. Are they. We're incorporating them in our routes. Our initial concerns was just making sure that they could hold the charge % based on our routes. So we started them out on routes that are basically closer to our hub. And we're expanding that, but

478we are seeing savings for those busses. Typically you're going, we're saving anywhere between 4 to $6000 per year on fuel and maintenance for those vehicles. Okay. So would we be looking at acquiring more of those. Right now? We're, we're restricted based on our capacity. So we're at the 60. We did acquire those 60 through a grant. We were able to leverage about $14.8 million through a grant. We had to put up about $5 million in the state allocated. So we purchased 18. And through the grant, we were given an additional 42. So to add on to what Vince was saying, we're currently limited in infrastructure. We currently don't have a place to store the electric busses, additional busses. But with this concept there will be a conversation for that in the future. Okay, because there's

479other potential savings, because the maintenance is also much less. That's also factored in. So that's also factored in. We can incorporate and, and then I'm a little bit confused and I apologize if this was answered already, but in the appendix, I know that the. The statute was repealed. But are we looking at do you have to take a survey of what the. Okay, so is it that would potentially really upend operations, wouldn't it? If everyone decides they want a different model, are we looking to do that or are we. So no. And thank you for the clarification. And it actually helps in making sure that when we disseminate the survey that we're clear with the intention or what it says. So House Bill 733 was what was up for debate. And the Senate Bill 296

480now gives the district the opportunity to decide whether or not they're going to go with the mandated change, or they're going to operationally choose the times they want. However, there's some caveats behind that. If we go to that model, we have to present to Doe that we talk to the community. We did a survey based on these two, the House bill and the Senate bill, and that we had community engagement meetings as well as dissemination of information. And then what other steps are we taking to ensure that we are considering the mental health and sleep of the students that the study tested? So it's not mandatory, but there's a whole bunch of hoops that we have to jump through to maintain. Okay. Yes, we have to document our process so that we don't have to

481convert to that required bill time change. So but is that still kind of in the law then? Is it a it's just. a little. Legal either legally. Either you can follow that the updated schedule or you can choose. So I would, I would definitely need to defer to John if he's available. However, from my understanding of the statute, you can choose. So Senate Bill 296 allows you, the district to now decide whether or not you're going to go with the recommended study changes, or your district is going to do different things to show that you're taking into consideration the sleep patterns of students. And is t ts something g at weavavto do everer yeaear,r is this a one t te. Onenetotop shop o Oka So tha a t that's what we intend to do. Yes.

482We plan on sending out the survey this month, as Doctor Wanza stated, to let the parents know what's going on and what their options are, and then drafting our PowerPoint for Doe and communicating to all stakeholders what it looks like. Okay, great. Yeah, I mean, I just I think that we need to get a better idea from, you know, the parents and students, but the people that are transporting to the hubs, how, what that looks like in terms of whether we're going to get people on board with this model or how you can tweak it a little bit. Okay. I don't I'm not opposed to having change and, you know, improving things and changing things because we have to, you know, and the world is changing. So it's just a matter of finding that sweet

483spot where it's enough change that it's helping us, but not off putting to our, our parents. So anyway, I, I really appreciate the presentation and I'll look forward to seeing the updated version. Thank you. Anyone else before I go? Me go ahead, MISS Rupert. Thank you. I just I might have missed it. I wanted to see if any of the student advisors are still there. And what did they think on this topic? MR. Spellberg. Thank you. Thank you. MISS Rupert, this is Landon Spellberg. We have not had an opportunity to speak with students about this, and we have not done any sort of listening sessions beyond Speak Up, Speak out with Nova High School. So I'm not able to give. Any student input on this, but we'd be happy to work with Doctor Juan's team

484and Doctor Claus's team to set up a student listening session or some form of something like that. But today we're not prepared to do so. Okay, thanks. I just didn't want to forget about Jeff. Thanks. I appreciate that, MISS Rupert. Thank you. Is that it, MISS Rupert? Yes, ma'am. Okay. All right. I just have a few questions and comments. To what extent have we explored? I saw it in the presentation there. It said collaboration with the county. But I'm wondering to what extent we've done that collaboration, what that looks like, what we're currently doing, what we could do. So I do have a couple contacts over there. And one, one of the things that my conversation was really with our high school students, right? You know how a lot of times we have we hear

485concerns about students not being able to stay after school because of activities and sports and things of that nature. So really looking to see if, if there's opportunities not just for bus passes, but really if some of their routes could be more along some of our high schools. So that that can be an option for students. I know that we definitely are going to explore more the conversation around how we can partner with them for services, for our esl opportunities, potentially for our Esq students. But I think that the the one thing that will definitely have to be fleshed out is when it's more than just the ride, but the services that we have to provide, right? So if we have to do a bus attendant, a unique aid, you know, what, what does that

486look like? And, and, and, and how is that operationalized? So we haven't gone deep into the conversation. You know, I just got involved a month or so ago. So just trying to do that forward thinking. MISS Leonardi. When can so for me, I see like two pieces, the Esq piece, but then also like our high school student piece, when can we expect like definitive information, proposals to come back to us on that, on those two issues? So I'm going to say at least probably about, I would say three weeks to a month, right? Because we're starting to wind down for the year. But yeah, about three weeks to 3 to 4 weeks. I would be very interested. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Have we is there a way to like do an analysis or any modeling around

487the impacts to enrollment and kind of like what MISS Bowman was saying that maybe instead, like maybe the magnet programs experience a temporary decrease, but then the homeschool programs experience an increase. Like is there any kind of analysis or modeling we can do around that? Maybe like looking at other school districts that have have implemented this and how they saw their enrollment changes? We can do that. We can look at doing some modeling around the the impacts of a hub model versus the. Okay. Yeah. I mean, just as a, as a teacher, I saw, you know, at the school, I did work at Nova High School and then even at Creek, a lot of my students were bussed. And so I just saw how important transportation was and what a barrier that was for them.

488If they didn't have an activity bus or things like that, that they couldn't participate in extracurriculars. And so that is like front of mind for me. Like, you know how that impacts enrollment. And I just be curious to see because there could be a positive impact ultimately, but I would like to kind of be clear eyed and have all the information possible. So I, I think when we do that, MISS Leonardi, one of the things that we probably want to call out is which districts don't even provide transportation to choice schools. If you're going to, you know, if this is an option that a parent wants, it is totally on the parent. And I see you bobbing and weaving. Doctor Hepburn. Was having a side conversation with the chair. And as a high school principal

489in Orlando, we had a very robust magnet, and the district did not provide transportation for magnet students. But that program was packed. Parents, if it's desirable, people will figure out how to how to get there. And so, yeah, we do have I don't know if that's still the case in Orange County, but at that time, it was. I just, I also, you know, want us to be cognizant of the equity piece there. Like, you know, the parents that are able to that have access to reliable transportation are then able to transport their kids. And that's why I think like the collaboration with the county is so important because if we can get kids, you know, city bus passes and things like that, you know, that can alleviate the the equity concerns. And I would just

490say, like to the communication, communication is going to be very important. I was having a side conversation with, with the superintendent saying that, you know, I think it's really important that when we move forward with this, that before the start of the school year, we sit down with elementary school parents, middle school parents, high school parents, Esq parents and talk about kind of walk them through all of it and then kind of figure out, get from them the challenges and barriers they see, any hiccups that could happen so that the first day of school is, is smooth and easy as it can be. So trying to get their input on how to make this as successful as possible, you know, just a different set of eyes, I think will be really important. And I just

491have to say like, as a side note, I remember when I first joined the board the first day of school, like the first week of school, we were inundated with emails, you know, transportation, like my transportation is a mess. And that has really dissipated. We barely I mean, I barely get any emails about that. So that's a kudos to your department and the work you do because it's really noticeable for me as someone who's been on this board for five years. So thank you. The the parent. Oh, back to the communication. I went on like a tangent there. Back to the communication piece though. So getting that parent input on like how to make this successful. Walking people through it, all of that I think is important. I think doing a parent university on this

492before the first day of school would be really helpful. And then I don't know if someone else asked this Question is there would there be a dashboard for a parent to say like, this is where I live? How do I like, how do I get my kid to school? If we implement this? So yes, that would be available. We there's currently a dashboard in existence if you want to know like whether or not. So let me backtrack. We could implement that. It's possible we don't have. There isn't a dashboard now that tells you whether or not you're going to get transportation. It just tells you whether or not you qualify for that, whether or not you're in the boundary for that school. But we can definitely work on that. That is a feasible possibility. Is

493it feasible? Like this MAY not be feasible, but so I understand it's not. Is it feasible to set to also create something that like this is what your current transportation like right now. This is what your current or for the 2526 school year, this is what your transportation situation looked like that year. When we move, when we transition, like this is how it's changed, or is that too heavy of a lift for us to do? What exactly would you be looking for? Like a map directions. Can you elaborate a little more so we can see what the lift would look like? Yeah, so like right now. So I'll give MISS Bulman as an example, right? Like she. We were confused on that one. I'm sorry. For this school year. Her son goes to addicts. This

494is how he currently gets to addicts next year. How will this like how will he get to addicts? Like how will that look different? Is that is that like too? [Laughter] Yeah. Yeah, we'll have. To work on that. We yeah. We'll see what we can come up with. Okay. I mean, I understand if it's too heavy, but I'm. Just. Giving people information is always beneficial. Now we like to overcommunicate. So yeah. But yeah, parent university, like small focus groups, dashboard. Cool. Anyone else? MISS Bulman. I appreciate you bringing up the equity piece of it. And I think that that's something that we really have to be focused on. So I appreciate that you brought that up. And I think that our transportation does provide that where other choices do not. And so we don't want

495to have a model where we're not providing that. That would I don't think we would be getting our job done if that's how it shakes out. So that's something just to keep in mind. So thanks for bringing that up. Yeah. Thank you. All right. If that concludes our discussion. Oh go ahead. Oh no. I said thank you. At the thank you so much for your presentation. All your hard work. Much appreciated. At the direction of the superintendent, the following agenda items are tentatively scheduled to be addressed during the upcoming workshops. APRIL 21st, 2627. Organizational Chart. APRIL 28th. Rural Development Information Systems five policies rule development for policies 5090 and 5100. Student Code of Conduct Rural Development Policy 4390. Childcare programs rfp owner's rep agreements. Please note that the order of topics and the scheduling remain

496tentative and are subject to adjustment at the superintendent's discretion. At this time. Do any of my colleagues have anything to bring to the future workshops or student successes to share, MISS Thompson? Thank you, chair. I have a couple for district two. I want to say congratulations to Flanagan's student, Jorge Andres Perez. Chuck k, who is the bca School South Scholar Athlete of the year. Also, Flanagan placed second in the worlds for their Color guard team. So we continue to dominate in district two for Color Guard. Also, West Broward jrotc placed first at the state competition and I, along with MISS Rupert, was able to attend the Craig and Barbara Wiener Holocaust Reflection Contest Award ceremony. I know one of my colleagues wants to shout out their student from their district, but. So I will shout

497out the rest. So the winners from middle School for digital and second place was Kristen Espinosa from Pioneer Middle School with teacher Jill Giancarlo for high school winners. First place was Danielle Elise from Marjory Stoneman Douglas with teacher Darren Levin, and then for digital high school winners, it was Katie Zangana from Flanagan High School with teacher Brian Lin. Thank you. Thank you, MISS Hixon. Okay. Thank you. I also to to continue on. Congratulations for the south South Central Scholar athlete banquet that was held yesterday or last night. Thank you to MRS. Brown. Sorry I had it up here and now it all moved to wherever for a great event. It was hosted again at Dillard Auditorium and I think everybody had a great time. So congratulations to the trainer of the year, MISS Valerie Smith

498Cooper from I'm sorry, MISS Valerie Smith from Cooper City High School, as MISS Thompson already mentioned, the male athlete of the year was Jorge Andres Perez from Flint. Yeah, from Flanagan High School. And the coach of the year was the track and field coach from Flanagan, which was Marvin Tatum. So congratulations to everybody and to all the scholar athletes. I think MRS. Brown said they gave away $55,000 to students, seniors for their furthering their education. Also, congratulations. Shout out to Lauderdale Lakes. I think that's right. Six through 12 for and the quest for having teams that made it to the regional Special Olympics that was hosted on Friday. So those students that made first place will have the opportunity to go to state in Orlando. The Hollywood Heat team has a conglomerate of of students.

499They come from. They come from where do they come from? Hollywood Park Elementary, Apollo South, Broward. And I think we have some from attics. So congratulations to all of those students. Thank you. DR. Holness thank you, MADAM Chair. So not relating to any specific school or students, but I, I have to say that a lot of our students and a lot of our adults, including myself, was so inspired by our astronauts that came back from circling the moon. And some of their codes were so inspiring to me and to many others. And, and I just want to, you know, hope that it inspires a lot of our students to be astronauts, to be scientists. And a couple of the quotes that stayed with me is one by Jeremy Hanson. He's a our astronaut friend from

500Canada. He says the purpose of humanity is joy and lifting one another up, creating together versus destroying. And then we have our very own Victor Glover who said, trust us, you look amazing. You look beautiful from up here. You look like one single thing. And no matter where you come from or how you look, we are one single people. And to me, that's very inspiring. And if all of us could actually have those kind of messages resonate, just looking at the earth from space is a beautiful thing. And we are privileged as human beings to be a part of enjoying the earth. Thank you. Thank you, MISS Bulman. Thank you. I had a winner with the at the Craig and Barbara Wiener Holocaust Reflection contest as well. From beachside Montessori village. Lisa Bowers won second

501place out of over 500 submissions for her poem The Significance of a star and her teacher was Teresa Moran. So congratulations, Lisa. Thank you. Anyone else before I go? I just wanted to actually shout out our marketing department. That took a little heat this morning, but I, I wanted to make these comments during the advisories and I kind of slipped my mind. But I have noticed like every time I get on Instagram, I see a new school doing a new interesting video. So that's very exciting. And I also was targeted for an ad for vpk. So I was glad to see that plan to come to fruition. I had asked for a follow up on that. So that was really exciting. And you know, I know that we need to do a balance of like

502district communications and school based communications. But for me, I really do think that when communications and social media and things like that come from a school, I think it's very powerful. So kudos to everyone who's putting in the work to to make that happen. Anyone else? All right. The scheduled order of business for the school board workshop or the school board of Broward County, Florida has now been completed. Seeing no objections, I will now adjourn the school board workshop.