School Board Workshop - PART II - Apr 21, 2026

001[Music] Thank you. I welcome you back to our school board workshop. Next up on the list is MISS Hixon. Thank you. And most people are gone. But I will say thank you so much for everybody who came today and who sent emails to share some of their thoughts and concerns. It's important for us to hear from everyone. And I always say, you know, time. As Doctor Hepburn also says, time is a gift. So whether you emailed or came today, thank you so much for that. There are a couple of things that were mentioned in the public speaking that I'd like to address first before I go to my tons of pages across here. So first we heard from someone about a contract violation, about having to follow, like how much time someone's been in the

002system. And also a comment about disabled veterans retention. So can General Council weigh in on that, please? With regards to the veteran topic, that's something that right in the meeting that I have some additional research that's being conducted by a member of the team. So we'll have some more information on that and we'll guide hr. Okay, great. And just to be clear, today, today we're talking about boxes. I mean, I know that it's people, but we don't have any say in the people part. So if the General Council could also explain that we got a very long memo on what our role is and what the superintendent's role is here. So I think that's also important for the public to hear. So both the school board and the superintendent have very distinct roles when it

003comes to reorganizations. And the school board is responsible for the positions, the job descriptions, the qualifications, the responsibilities. The school board is responsible for the funding. So as you have seen, they have been going through the particular boxes. That's well within their purview to do in terms of the positions that they would like to have in the organization. And then the superintendent is responsible for the implementation of that plan. He's responsible for making recommendations related to hiring, transferring, and listening to what the board wants him to do with regard to those boxes and bringing it to fruition. Thank you. One more thing, if you'll explain. So what we've what we have today and mostly wasn't really discussed by people in the audience, but we are discussing is the organizational chart or what we call above

004the line. There are most of the concerns today and the issues that we heard are from positions below the line. So can you also explain to the school board, do we engage? I don't know how to say this. I don't want to say we don't have a place in it, but under the line is really the purview of the superintendent. Although we can give our thoughts on that. Is that correct? So the school board is responsible for jobs, job descriptions, the parameters of those jobs. It's been a tradition in Broward County public schools that those that are on the chart, which are those administrative positions, are the way you have done it in the past, is to go through and have the school board make determinations on those boxes. If the school board decides that

005they don't want to have a particular job that falls under the line, that's that's within the school board's purview. However, the superintendent is the one who's clearly responsible for the operation of the school district and the statutes. Very clear, 1,001.49 and 1,001.51 as to all personnel fall under the direction of the superintendent, as well as the management of the school district, and to ensure that the students are being served. Okay, thank you for that. Also, I heard someone who is an instructional tech tech facilitator say when they had this conversation with their. Our district staff, that someone said to them, welcome to the 30 club. I would hope that the superintendent would please look into that. We. As you stated, clearly, we realize how difficult this time is. We want to be as compassionate as

006possible. And that really didn't sound very compassionate. I totally agree. I think a board member or constituent called me sometime last week about a concern. And so if anybody has those type of concerns, please get them to me. I will handle them personally because it is my expectation and also the chief's expectation as we've gone through this run of show, the scripts and everything to treat people with a level of compassionate, demonstrating their value to this system and to our kids. So we don't take that lightly. Thank you very much. Also, someone that was public speaking said the changes that we have in some of the counselors, PBIs, things of that nature, we're then going to add now to the teacher's plate because the expectation was the work that they were doing will now fall

007on the teacher. So can you please address that? Is that the expectation? No, that's not the expectation. Pb. PBIs is an initiative that is school based. I've been in two two districts and one as a teacher, school based administrator and pb. PBIs was always a function led by the school leadership team on their campus. As far as supports and building capacity of how to actually implement the strategies of PBIs and helping you create monitoring systems. You know, that's some function of, of, of supporting those leaders. But as far as PBIs as a whole, as a school based function for dealing with issues with kids and providing interventions to decline some of the unwanted behaviors that teachers are on campus, behavior that they don't want to see on their campus. So if we eliminate the PBIs

008positions district wide, how does how does that affect what happens. In that support can go through regional offices and other roles to help build leadership capacity. There should not be an expectation that an external person is going to come on a campus and deliver services or interventions associated with PBIs. That is a whole school initiative. When you talk about PBIs and the in the interventions or strategy that go along with it, it's a whole school initiative, not just a one person coming in that has that has the least amount of impact on, on changing student behavior. Great. Thank you. And the last one I have from student, I mean, public comment was someone came up and talked about ISPs. Are we based on this plan that we're looking at today? Are there any ISPs that

009are being cut? There are district. There are roles that are within that group. I'm trying to find it. I see here it says reduction filled one reduction vacant two reduction prior to fiscal year 26 for. So reductions are seven. So what are those esp positions. I guess they're on here. So that's the behavior tech community job coach. So most of those are actually vacancies. There is only one person that's that's only one position that's actually filled. The actual rest are actually vacancies. Some have been unfilled prior to this fiscal year and only two are vacant during this current fiscal year. And there's only one position that's actually filled. Thank you for clarifying that, because the impression was that ISPs are being removed. And, you know, those are very important positions in our school. I also

010want to say, you know, this is obviously a very, very difficult time. But as we've mentioned over and over again, happening across the country, my son 14 months ago got a promotion and two weeks later got laid off and it took him 14 months to get a job. So I do know personally how difficult it is when you think you're pretty secure in a job and something happens. We really wish that we weren't here, but to something that Doctor Holness said, I think is important for all of us to know because we do keep talking about in schools every year when our enrollment goes down, there are less teachers in a school because that's how it works. We have to to lose them. And so that happens all the time. If you're not part of

011the school system, you might not understand that the problem is everywhere else didn't necessarily decline. Along with that, as Doctor Holness pointed out. So unfortunately, here's where we find ourselves. And it's it's not an easy or a place that we want it to be. So here go my couple of pages of questions. So first of all, I asked and I didn't get it. So I'm hoping that there's a follow up and someone else did also ask it, whether it's by department or by org chart page, if we could still have please have the financial impact. So in other words, how much money based on people you're reducing, would we save if you added something? How much does that cost? And then there'd be a total net cost. My preference is on each page. I think

012it would be much more transparent that way. So that, you know, we as been mentioned a number of times, we're throwing out a total number, but it's not really clear exactly where that number is coming from. I also agree with the idea about the m g t that I the presentation was fine. The problem is, is that they didn't explain the data on where they came up with that information. So for as I know that they worked with the superintendent, but this is the first we're interacting with them and it was a lot of money. I think that the report should have had some backup information to it. So I hope that that also comes to us with some of the information. I did ask for some of the changes about the. The esc specialist,

013the social workers, all of that. And thank you to Doctor Hollingsworth for MISS Or MISS Hollingsworth for sending that. But there was it was missing about mental health. And I have a question on that in particular, because on the other there's too many pages here, but on this one that had the chart. So this document I. A lot of people emailed us about the mental health services, but on here I only see and I don't want to say it in that term because it's still important. But mental health services coordinator where there was one vacancy and that's being. So where. And here are the mental health, specifically mental health people being affected. Like what page of the org chart or is it only under. And is that the only person. Go ahead, MISS Hollingsworth. So

014thank you, MISS Hickson. On the org chart that would probably predominantly be on page. I believe that's nine under the student services. But do know that those job titles can be utilized in other departments. So for instance, social workers were a large component of that reduction, which was in the follow up that we provided. There were 15 individuals impacted and seven vacant positions that we provided to, you know, reduce. Then looking also at trying to get my list. We have just to think about mental health pieces, 11 counselors that were district counselors that were supporting schools. So, and I think we heard from some of those individuals that, you know, that we would deploy them when there was a school that either didn't have a counselor or was down a counselor or a new counselor

015to support them, to obviously provide that modeling as well. As we had a case manager from our s Senate division, we had three family counselors that report to you school culture and student prevention. And those individuals were and I believe we heard from them as well. Here. They had the title of family counselor, but they were doing more prevention programs. They were not seeing students. So, you know, that service could be continued on through other individuals. And then we had 17 vacant school psychologist positions because that is a critical shortage ea. They've been v vact f f ququit some time.E. And lkiking a at,, the onl iact t there I is th w obviously want to continue to hire and look at our interns. So they're, you know, obviously in many different facets, but the

016vast majority of them would be in that student services. And then obviously some in s okay. But there, there was not the mental health serve, like just a title of mental health. There is only that coordinator, right? Only that coordinator because that term is interchangeably used. Okay. And my question to that is, is because we're by law required to have a mental health coordinator for the district, right? We have that that that was not impacted. So we had seven mental health coordinators. That one has been vacant. It has to be. I know we have one. It's MISS It's MISS Winter. Who's the director. Okay. I just. Know I know thank you. All right. Thank you for that. So I agree actually it's right here on my thing with both MISS Thompson and MR. Silveira about

017the ai assistant director. Actually, I understand the reasoning behind having an ai department, but I wonder, like, does it make sense to have it as its own department or if we're going to be infusing it across, it just doesn't settle, right, to have a department just about ai when we don't even like have it up and running. And I know that's part of the the issue, but I don't know the ai department's not I don't it's not settling well with me. If I could add, MISS Hickson, it's not a department just solely focused on ai, ai, digital learning. So there's a lot of other applicable. Instructional strategies, student engagement opportunities, student enhancements and all of that. So it's not just about ai. It's more than just ai. It's about Stem, it's about digital materials, digital

018learning and other innovations and, and also leveraging ai. So it's a, it's a little bit more of a composite type department that has a lot of different applied and innovative learning opportunities for students and teachers in the department. Okay. So my suggestion then is to just call it director digital learning. But I, again, I agree with them. I don't think you need an assistant director on there. You have ai in different places under here and they only. So anyway, I would agree with getting not having that box. So there's that. My suggestion for page two. I appreciate what Doctor Holness said, but I do believe we were very clear that we wanted a chief facility officer to report directly to the board because of the issues we had. So I have an alternate suggestion, and

019that is to move the chief operations job underneath Chief Financial Officer So it's a similar thing, but two different jobs. We used to have a deputy superintendent, which would be that t level that did the cfo and the operations together. And in some of the conversations with the chief financial officer, they are directly impacted because they're the ones that are doing the the budgeting along with that and stuff. So instead of facilities moving into Chief Operations officer, I would rather move Chief Operations Officer into the Chief Financial Officer and my suggestion would be to make the Chief of Student Services and Executive Director of Student Services under academics, under the chief academic. I don't agree with getting rid of Chief Academic Officer. That is our sole purpose of existence, to be educating and academics is

020what we do. So it doesn't make sense to me that we would be doing anything to to lower the academic. MISS Dixon, can I just ask you to I want to make sure that I've captured that correct, both of those recommendations correctly. So you want to move the chief Facilities officer under the Chief Financial Officer? No, no. Chief Operations officer underneath. So I want the chief. It would be the chief operation and financial officer. And actually, I would call it a deputy. You're you're saying combined not a reporting structure. Correct? Correct. That they would the similar to what Doctor Holness suggested, but instead of doing chief operations and chief facility, I'm saying to do chief operations and financial. And the t level is a deputy basically. So you would call it the deputy of operation

021and financial. Whatever. Okay. Hold on. So. All right. And then. The chief student services, you want that to be. Executive director. And it would they would report to the Chief Academic officer. Okay. On page you have that on page seven. My pages are all messed up. Oh, I did that already. Page seven. And actually, the reason to go back to the assistant director is listening to m g t. What they suggested was we had too many assistant directors and assistant managers. So that's where some of these suggestions are coming from. So on page nine. Where it says Assistant director for student support, and it's just kind of hanging out there all by itself with no one reporting under them. I don't see the need for the assistant director. If I MAY, MISS Hixson, before you

022make that suggestion, just to give MISS Hollingsworth an opportunity to be specific about what that role is for. I know it was a role we created last year for a specific purpose. Go ahead, MISS Hollingsworth. Thank you. So the assistant director for Student Services was directly going to be reporting to the Chief Student Services Officer, and that role was really put together to help compile and really cohesively put all the different departments together so that they could then funnel that out to schools and work with schools, along with some customer service issues, with some of our student services initiatives. So really trying to continue to have that collaboration with our school departments as well. So what do you mean by school department? So our school, like at our schools. So working as the because the

023regionals have assistant directors, we were utilizing our assistant director for ease and for student services to work collaboratively with our schools and our regional offices. And that pre hub model to make sure that we are meeting the needs of our students more directly with the school connection with the leadership team. And we have, you know, we get those emails, right, but there could be way more emails. But, but due to this position having some sort of a point person being able to, to, you know, do some troubleshooting with schools and parents and whatever to identify the issues and be able to correct some of those things. We're enhancing those capabilities with regionalizing some efforts, but this position has been key. When we introduced it for a specific reason, and it's definitely helped to make an

024impact on some of those issues. Just an fyi, before you move forward with your recommendation. Okay. Well, and some of my question was about explaining better the regional hubs because it sounds like we want to get that closer to the schools. And it could be a follow up to explain to us exactly who would be the personnel that are making up the regional hubs like we have. So I think Doctor Simon asked about who was the personnel there now. So we keep hearing we're going to make that better. So if you could give a comparison then to what we have now and what we're going to add there, and then maybe we could make a better decision about that. But I again, I'm just throwing out there that we heard assistant directors and assistant managers

025are that extra layer that we have that other people don't necessarily have on page, oh, on page three. Sorry, I don't mean to jump around. Is the executive director of communications new. No, it's not new. It's repurposed. Again, just to emphasize from the board constituents our advisories about our shortfalls with communication. And so it's just a repurposed position, changing the job description and all of that, just to make sure we can do the things that we need to do to communicate better as a system to all of our constituents, be it internal or external. Okay. Thank you. On page 13. Executive Director of Budget I, we have a director of capital budget, a director of construction, director of pre-construction, and it looks like executive director of budget line is only going to capital. So I

026wouldn't, I don't agree with adding an executive director. So if if I MAY, that's actually. So if we go to the chief financial officer's page. Team helped me out there so I can get there quick with. 17 okay. If we go to the Chief Financial Financial officer's page 17. That's actually the executive Director of budget under the Chief Financial Officer. And so those dotted lines are to budget functional areas in different divisions. So there's continuity across the board with the budget. So we're breaking down walls of isolation. Having an executive director that can communicate with directors and the like for budget and finance issues in different divisions or different departments. So there's no isolation. One of the things, and, you know, MISS Johnson MAY not talk about this, but she she's chasing a lot of

027information, right, from Division of Division, Department, Department. This brings more continuity. It's a repurposed executive director position that we took from a different division. And then it just it brings all the information under one umbrella and also an outflow of guidance to those other budget budget directors. So we can look at budget in a more holistic way versus in isolation and chasing information around and things like that. And then she doesn't have a clear number two either. Right. So and that's another aspect as well. Okay. All right. Thank you for that. Page 16. You have director professional practices. And then underneath there you have two assistant directors. I don't and then they're I mean, this isn't a very big department at all. I would say, why do we need those two assistant directors? Again, I'm

028focusing on what mgt said, which was we had too many assistant directors and managers. So I think that because underneath there this says assistant director, manager, professional standards and then underneath says specialist human resources, then assistant director, employee and evaluations. And they have a coordinator for evaluations and a research specialist. So I don't I don't know why you need assistant directors underneath it. I know there's a lot of specialized functions in hr. I give Doctor Lozano an opportunity to kind of go over some of the details of those functions. And then also after Doctor Lozano, if we could hear from mgmt. Where's that data you put for the number of. For? Well, they pull that up. Can I say a couple things about. Yes. Absolutely. Not to speak for them. They are on the line.

029The decision for them not being here in person, I thought it was okay for them to be on team. So I'll own that decision as it relates to some backup data. They will be having a written report for the board early MAY to mid MAY. They you know, we were racing against the clock, but that work will be shared with the board. Some of their work can't be shared just by the nature of some of the the work that they do, but they're on the line for any questions that the board has on their presentation or anything else as it relates to to their work. Appreciate that. But if we're supposed to vote on this next week, having the report mid-MAY doesn't really help make those decisions, but thank you. So as you look at

030the two assistant director positions, they play defined roles that are clearly separate. The assistant director of employee evaluations supports the employee evaluation process for every employee in the district. And we did reduce the coordinator position there by one individual. That is a very small department that does a great job in handling every employee evaluation process, which is a year long process, and not just a one time process where you receive a final evaluation. So in terms of training our supervisors and providing training, you need clear leadership in ensuring we're implementing our evaluation process with fidelity. And along with the collective bargaining agreements, the Assistant Director of professional practices is responsible for. We've had 1384 cases that resulted in that department supporting supervisors with corrective action, not to mention the thousands of calls they get for

031support that don't lead to an official corrective action document or meeting summary. So that assistant director is very consumed in the work of professional practices as they work % alongside our collective bargaining leadership groups and our meet and confer groups. So for the work that's in both of those lanes, the assistant director position is appropriate to lead that work. So what does the director do? So again, the director is meeting actually with the collective bargaining group leadership putting together the resources, preparing language that MAY need to go in collective bargaining agreements. They are supporting the the work having four specialists for corrective actions is, is very small with the number of work. So they're also supporting the actual work and leading that work. Okay. I, I still don't know that we need two assistant managers

032there, so we'll see what other people think. But that's my. I'll make a note, MISS Hickson, just to review as a group later on as a cabinet, just to capture your your feedback. Page 19. Again, assistant director, we have director before, after care, family and community engagement. Then you have an assistant director, family and community engagement, then a specialist family engagement specialist, community community engagement. Again going to ask why do we need an assistant director there? And I'm. Just I was typing, what page are. You on? Yeah. Page 19. Assistant Director of Family and Community Engagement. The. It's pretty. I don't know why we need an assistant director there. So that's that then I have. So again, if you could do the follow up about the regional hubs and give. I know the. You gave

033us some information, but if we could have more what the positions are and what your vision is for moving forward, since they're supposed to absorb some of the issues that have been brought up today. There's a lot of places on here where it says Ng, which means not general funds. So could we also, when you're giving us the financial impact, telling us if it says ng, what fund? I know it comes from grants or it could come from different places, but I think it's important that we have that information on there so that the public knows. On page six, I got a question from somebody that asked me if we're let me go to page six. Sorry. Okay. So on page six, we're getting rid of or the boxes are being changed for professional development.

034So the question was, is there going to be money for professional development from title two next year? As that money was not available this year? As it stands today? And I repeat, as it stands today, there will be there will be money for for title two, we haven't gotten any word that there's going to be a decrease. You know, of course, some of this stuff fluctuates based on the number of students that we have in our district. But as far as the money, we've. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Someone I think the concern was if you're consolidating that, that program that was there, was there money for that to go back to my colleagues? So MISS Thompson suggested on page nine about eliminating the suicide prevention and some student supports, and I would support her in whatever

035we can do to increase the number of social workers that we have, because we know that when we hear from our students, we've heard it every single time they for mental health, all they want is someone to talk to. They don't need the programs. They don't need all of that stuff. I had a town hall yesterday, and the students feel as if they're getting more of that, that they know where those. As we heard in our our student, you know, our student data chats that they feel like they know where people are now. So I the idea of scaling that back doesn't also sit. Just a clarifying question for you, MISS Hickson, and also MISS Thompson. I have it recorded as. Utilize the funds to support school social workers and school counselors. Is there a

036priority for one over the other? Not for no. Okay. Wherever the need is bigger. So listening to MR. Saavedra had a couple questions. So how he mentioned about things have to start in this building. So super Doctor Hepburn, can you tell us how many positions were cut that are in this building? And when you say in this building, I'm just going to say admin buildings, because we have people spread out all over the place. So they're not particularly just housed in this building. The cuts, man, that's a actually a difficult question to answer because we have people spread out all over the place, including below chart on chart directors and above. So maybe you could just get back to us on that. And I kind of wanted to point out, we keep talking about this

037building, but some of the mental health rvices arere In. This building. You k kw, sosome othee mntenencece is inn this building. So Ihihink we need to be really clear when we talk about k, c, w that. And I think to Doctor Hepburn's point earlier, I said this to people also proportion percentages are are confusing sometimes. And I say that when we talk about the referendum, because if you're only have 100 people and you're taking 18%, that sounds like a big number, but it turns out to be 18 people. If you have 5500 and you're taking 10% of that, it's less percentage, but you have 550 people. So it's important. The proportions are important. We could say lots of things up here, but we gave a directive to to eliminate a thousand positions. You're not going

038to find 1000 positions in this building. You're just not it's not. And then another thousand in the next two years. 3000 people don't work in this building. So as much as it's difficult to to do what we're doing, I think we also have to be realistic. And I, we can have theatrics all we want, but the facts are the facts. So it's not. I do think there's needs to be some some more cuts at the higher levels. As I've mentioned, the ones that I just suggested to you, but the idea that most of the cuts are going to come from the top, there's just not you could cut everybody, you'd have 100 people. So I just want to be really clear on that. Also, we talked about a teacher hiring freeze. So my question there

039is because actually this came up at the student town hall yesterday, if there's a school who needs to fill a teacher position right now, are they able to do that? So right now we're leveraging a couple of strategies. We have filled teacher positions that we can't leverage. Our current strategy of placing a district person in there. So we have posted and hired teachers for those positions. And the hard hiring freeze that will continue hiring teachers will be exempt from that, because we have to start staffing up for the upcoming school year. So just for the public, I don't, don't, don't want them to worry about our, you know, putting a barrier in the ability to hire teachers because we're the hard hiring freeze will be for other positions that we strategically look at and use

040our metric to figure out if it's a dire need and it's essential and going to prevent, you know, district operations functioning properly. But for school based positions, as we staff up for the next school year, because we're just ramping down right now, it's testing season. But as we start ramping up for the next school year, we'll teacher positions will be allowed to be hired. We'll be placing the ones that you know from the district and also have to go out and recruit and hire at recruitment fairs as well. Okay. Thank you, I appreciate that. And, and another question. I think that needs to be explained a little better. So we have teachers who have subjected teaching certificates. In other words, elementary learning, secondary learning, biology, chemistry, English language, all of those things. And then we

041have people who have Florida doh certificates that say social worker or MAY say family counselor. So can you explain, I guess, to MR. Lozano, Doctor Lozano, explain those differences. And we mentioned that those people who had subjected certificates would probably find a landing spot because we have teacher positions open. But what about the people who have a certificate, which is from Doe, but it doesn't have a teaching subject on it has social workers. And at any part of this conversation, did we say we were going to replace them with ai? So I'd like you to address those things. Before I turn it over to MISS Rockman. No, we're not replacing anybody with ai. We're actually trying to teach people how to utilize and leverage ai for better effectiveness and efficiencies. Ai is not going to

042replace anybody, but the people who know how to utilize ai will replace people who don't know how to use it efficiently. So go ahead, MISS Rockman. Good afternoon, board members. So yes, there are 15 social workers on the list. So when you are a when you're hired to be eligible to become a social worker, you need either have a Department of Health license issued by the Department of Health from the State of Florida and or the State Department of Ed did issue social work certificates. So in either case, you would be eligible for that certificate or license does not qualify you to be a classroom teacher. However, if they are interested in being a classroom teacher, we would guide. We would gladly be able to assist them in determining what subject area they MAY be

043interested in teaching, and be able to maybe transition them into a classroom position and give them an opportunity. As you all are familiar with, you can be out of field for a year and we could work with them. And adding something to a Department of Ed certificate, if that is so their desire. And so the 15, the 15 have been hired since 24. There's about ten that were hired the 2024 school year and five were recently hired. So those 15, we would definitely love to work with them if they're interested in going into classroom positions. Also, let me add that through attrition through the remaining social work positions, I do expect some attrition. So as vacancies do occur due to attrition, we would call them we would certainly welcome them back into those positions. Okay.

044Thank you. Thank you for the explanation. And I'll just say, you know, we we've said we're going to try to find a landing spot, but it's important for people to understand until the school year is over or people have given intentions. We honestly just don't know what spots are going to be open because people often don't retire or tell you they're leaving until they have secured something else. So I appreciate that. And the last thing I just want to ask, and I again, appreciate MISS Hollingsworth for sharing the the information I asked. But the you know, the public hasn't seen my response. So to the superintendent, please explain to us how the changes that you've suggested in terms of the social workers and, and the family counselors and things of that nature, how is it

045not going to directly impact student services? Because that was our directive was we did not want student services to be negatively impacted, impacted. And so how how do you see that? How do you reconcile what we've heard today and what your vision is? Yeah, absolutely. So I guess the family counselor's we've taken that off the table. So it's a moot point now for for that group, but for school social workers. And then I'll, if I MISS Anything, MISS Hollingsworth, just fill it in the school social workers we looked at. So you have right now 72 that are actually assigned to individual schools, more so for secondary. You know, you have more of those type of issues at the secondary level. So they're actually assigned to a individual school. You have a remaining 68 that will

046be assigned to about 140 schools. That that ratio before was about 1 to 3 schools. Now, the ratio now would be 2 to 3 schools. So for some they MAY get an additional school to support. But we'll be very strategic in placement for certain caseloads just to make sure we're not overwhelming a social worker with the support that they're providing and being very strategic about a lower ratio for for schools that are in need and the actual. Multiple assignments is more. So at our elementary schools, we usually put a signed individual school social worker at a high school or middle school, just because it's your numbers and needed to be on that on that campus every day. Okay. Thank you. And one last thing. So the public perception is that we have taken counselors out

047of schools and that this is going to be detrimental to the students. So we just need to be clear again, the people, the the positions that are being reduced are not directly sitting. They're not positions that are assigned to a school. I'm not trying to diminish anything. And I want to say to everyone, none of this is about work performance because we have the best people working for us. For sure. I just want to be clear in what we're saying to the public. So if you could again, just reiterate, this is not from school budgets, correct. Where they're assigned to a particular school. These are district people who do go into schools to support the schools. And, you know, the concern is obviously about the caseload. So if you could just. Know that is absolutely

048correct, MISS Hixon. These are not positions that are on a school's budget. These are all district budgeted positions that actually provide a level of support and supplement support at schools. And being very strategic because we're between this year and next year, we're going to be 20,000 total students down within two years. So we're being very strategic about how our services that we're going to provide to our kids, and also some faculty and staff members for building capacity purposes is directly aligned to our realities when it comes to enrollment and being very strategic about caseloads. If you're going to if you're going to have a slightly higher caseload, we're going to try and make sure it's not a school that, you know, have a lot of risk issues. We're going to have a smaller caseload for

049the folks that are dealing with schools that have a lot of concerns that need to be addressed. So using some of that methodology, just to make sure that we're not overwhelming folks as we make these revisions as far as support to our schools. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Doctor Zeman. Thank you. I want to start. We had a lot of great speakers today, and I appreciate them and I appreciate. So many things here in Broward County. But I also want to really thank the superintendent and staff. I've been through many, many, many budget drills in my life. That's one of the things I did in an earlier career. And they're difficult. They're really hard. You're compassionate and caring about the human beings, while at the same time recognizing that we've got to do the right

050thing. The school board asked you, MR. Superintendent, to cut 1000 jobs, and we did that after you volunteered to do that reduction as well. If my numbers are correct, and I checked this with the cfo yesterday, there are 25,000 students from last year, this year or next year that we're losing. That's $225 million of lost revenue. It is a compelling argument that we must change, and this is a good first step. Unfortunately, 1000 positions seems very difficult. It is going to be the first step of a series of steps, because this does not get us $225 million. This gets us 75 if we're lucky. Right now we're around 40, and some of that MAY not be reoccurring savings that MAY be savings this year that we can't bank again against next year. But the truth

051of the matter is that this organization here kick the can. For 25 years, this has been a long, long, long, long, long drip of lowered enrollment. And I'm going to create something new for one of my favorite colleagues. It's going to be called Hicks and Hicks. Onomics is if you're spending all your money on administrative positions, how much do you have left to pay? The people are working in schools. You got nothing. And every year, MISS Hickson says, why can't we pay the people that are doing the hardest work, the ones that parents and students will vote with to come to our schools? And the answer, MISS Hickson, is very evident today. We have been out of balance for a long time and this is one one way, but not the last way that we're

052going to get back in balance. So thank you, Doctor Hepburn, for the hard, hard work. It is bruising, difficult, ugly, late night all weekend kind of work to do this. And I think that the proposal you put on the table is worth further consideration. So I appreciate your focus on efficiency. My concern is, and I have some recommendations that I'll ask the board for their either lack of objection or consensus on is where do we land? Like, does this plan really get us to the point where we're achieving our two biggest goals, our number one goal? And the chair says it every time 100% proficiency 100 excuse me, achieving 100% potential of everybody in Broward County schools. And that's a that's a huge goal. I think an equal goal though is winning back students. How

053do we win students back from public charters, home schools, private schools, people who live in Miami-Dade, people who live in Palm Beach, people who live in Jupiter and move down here. If we really offer them something in schools that is absolutely remarkable. And I want to just share some information that you guys don't have, because I just got it at a conference last week, but I sat down with 20 very large public charter school managers, and I asked them what their out of school numbers of positions was, and the consensus was 7%. Ours is 32%. Is it apples to apples? No, but it is a difference with a distinction. When mgt gets hired to come in and tell us something and it comports with evidence like that, I think we have to take it to

054task and we have to recognize, again, this is one year of several years of change. But Doctor Hepburn, what I'm curious about with your proposal, are we landing in a place where we can win in the public square? Yes. I think the plane is like the tires are that much off the runway, right. This is, as I said before, this is a the the org chart is a fluid document and it's continuous review. And, and just sitting down with the team and looking, looking at how do we innovate and iterate? Did we knock it out of the park at one shot with this, I'm going to say no because it's a continuous improvement process. We're a large organization. We're continuing to identify great people to do great things. We're continuing to realize areas we can

055combine and and consolidate. So it is a fluid document, right? As we move forward, past the approval, as people leave, we MAY not fill those positions. Right. That's what I mean by fluid and be able to say, hey, these are this opportunity to combine to be more efficient, more effective, and see if we can win back parents hearts of parents and students and all the efficiencies that we want to gather. So the if the tires are right, they're off the runway. They're not touching the runway yet. Terrific. Let me let me try and ask it another way, because this is really important. In your best estimate, does this proposal or something with some modest amendments that I've heard from my colleagues, does it get us to the best place we can after losing 1000 positions

056and some sum of money, maybe 75 million might be less? Does this get us to the best competitive place where we can win back? Yes, it. Private schools and homeschoolers. Yes it does. Okay. You have the right people. And that's important to me because you're the systems guy. And so the board's supposed to help you, you know, with policies and budget. I view this as probably one of the most strategic things that we're going to do as a board all year, which is to help do the one thing that is not fluid, which is the org chart. I mean, the org chart is a fixed number of positions. It elicits a budget that we'll see later from the cfo. And I appreciate that the people, the incumbents in those boxes will change. But the but

057the boxes themselves are a big deal. And I think that that's a strategic question. Is this going to get us to where we want to go? Efficiency, but also to some of the points that MR. Sverre brought up. Are we going to win in the marketplace when we land at the end of this proposal? I have, unfortunately, chair 15 ideas, and I apologize for taking time. Some of them are very, very quick, though. Doctor Hepburn, I don't think I need consensus on this, but can you by next week add the 200 ish positions that you've referenced that get you over the thousands so that we can see the costing for that, which should be closer to 50 million instead of 40 million. Yes. We can add the position group that we're currently reviewing, and we'll

058provide as much information because some of this is dependent on just the routine attrition that we experienced during a couple of months also. And so we'll look at that information to kind of project out what we expect for certain positions to. I appreciate that, and I think the number that we'd like to see is equivalent to the charts that we have in the proposal of, you know, you've talked about 200 positions. If you can just describe the jobs and and average fully burdened cost for those, we can add those together. What I like about that is it gets us to 1000. And that was the task that you offered that you volunteered for, and we gave right back to you. I believe deeply we've got to make some cuts at the cabinet level. I'm very

059struck by the way, by the Miami-Dade model. I don't know if you guys have ever gone to our neighbors to the South and watched what they do, but they have four committees. They have a people committee, they have an ops and facilities committee. They have an academics committee, and they have a finance committee. And those, to me, form four chiefs that you need to have in every school district. And if I had a chief of staff and a deputy supe and four chiefs for people, academics, finance and ops, I would be done. That is a span of control that a superintendent can get to and hold on to. I don't want to see anything more about that particular idea, but I'm just telling you, my colleagues have brought up some ideas about collapsing from what

060I think of as senior executive positions superintendent, deputy superintendent, chiefs and regional superintendents. Those are 18 positions. I will I will vote next week for something that has less than 18 positions, and I look forward to your ideas. I prefer Doctor Holness idea to MISS Hickson's, but we'll go around and we'll talk about that. I think operations and facilities are very closely intertwined, intertwined, and that certainly has worked well. And I also know that if we don't put some big dollars on the table, we're not going to get a great chief facilities officer. We don't get a great chief facilities officer. We're not going to win the bond. And i really, really want to get a bond to do its next rounds of schools. Another idea that I'd like the board to weigh in on

061chair is, is centralizing custodial support. That is something that's been around for a long time. The superintendent did not pull a trigger on that with this proposal, but it does save resources and it's an area where we MAY get better service with less dollars. Second one that I'd like to hear the board's view on is centralizing budget support. I'm tired of this hybrid model where we let some schools do it with their own bookkeeper, and then we have a. Excuse me, Adam, a BSc. If we can save money and have a single way to run accounting in our schools, it makes auditing so much easier. It allows us to clear our books faster at the end of the year. And I think it's time to pull the trigger on that as well. Fifth idea to

062my chief auditor, I would love to see and again, this is going to require board consent. I'd like to see what it would look like to save 10% of costs through contracting less through staff reductions. In my view, it's time for the office of the Chief Auditor to contribute to the funds that we need to save. Nobody likes taking risks anywhere, but I feel like that's also part of the managed risk that we're going through today. This is a oh, sorry, I don't mean to interrupt. You said that that was your fifth, but I have only captured four. So could you just briefly. I didn't need the first one because I said yes. He was going to. Okay. Okay. Got it. Yeah, that was. Just consolidating. I have the consolidating the Chiefs, centralizing custodial support,

063centralizing budget support and then directing auditor. Okay, cool. Yeah. Thanks so much, chair. Sorry, my numbers are a little off. The first one wasn't a real ask of the board. This one is though, and I, I'm likee Doctor Holness, I,, have a buness and can do this. I have zer overhead. Excuse me. Over time in all of my companies, not not one person works overtime. You know why? If I need someone else, I go hire another person. And the way we do that is we pay market wages. And I'm frustrated that our solutions so far in overtime have not followed the model we had for SLPs. Y'all remember what we did for SLPs. We figured out how much we had to pay them to hire enough, and then we had a contract for anything that

064was left over. And that has worked very well. And I just feel like we've got to make radical cuts to overtime. And the reason that's part of this proposal is that would add jobs. But if we have to add government jobs in order to reduce overtime, that's great. I will point out to this board, and I cannot justify this to anyone that I talked to. We had a bus driver that earned $107,000 last year. That is not right. It's not right for the safety of our kids that they were working that many hours. It's not right for our budget and we need to fix it. Or someone explained to me why it's right to have a bus driver make $107,000 in one year. We were we were killing them. We were absolutely killing them. And

065that's not the right thing to do. I have another add. I'm sorry, Doctor Hepburn, but we have 40,000 students and I believe we need an executive director for those students because if you don't have a seat at the tables where decisions and policy and money are being made, if you're not at that table, you're on the menu. And I do not want those students to be on anybody's menu. And so in my my view, I would like to see that added back. We had a very clear speaker for 60s today that shared some information about before school and after school. So I looked up a little bit of information about that. That operation in Broward County is $55 million. It's applying every year for $2.75 million of grants it needs. MISS Hixon remembers this when

066we flipped over from csc when I was on csc on board for a year, we worked to increase the management cost that csc paid us for after school and before school when MISS Hixon was on the board. Because she's a better board member, I am. They actually did it. I complained she got it done, but that was done in conjunction with that staff. I'm very worried about a $55 million operation that actually pays for itself, being on somebody's cut list, if that is really on the cut list, Doctor Hepburn, I'd love to see why. Biggest change Zieman's old song superintendent, deputy superintendent, cabinet, regional superintendents, directors. Hold on way down here. Principal's. We just can't keep doing it. We've got to this year, make the courageous decision to eliminate at least one layer of management.

067And Doctor Hepburn, you can pick one. I've told you my favorite, but we cannot run an organization when the superintendent has five layers of management to the primary people that make us money, which are our school based leaders, and I don't know where to cut it. I'll tell you, I'd be happy to be in responsible for making that recommendation, but I'm not. But I just believe we. My recommendation, chair, is that the soup come back with eliminating one management layer and all of the staff associated with that layer. That's the kind of change that I think is going to allow us to be more competitive with the with the other choices that are have Doctor Hepburn, 503 of the 862 positions on your list are vacant positions. Are they all funded? So not all the

068vacant positions are funded? No. If the team has the exact number of positions that are not funded due to absorption of those cost savings early on in the year. Okay. Note note to self, next time we ask for positions, we're going to add the word funded in front of the positions, because cutting an unfunded position doesn't give us any savings. And that's why we're here. I believe that that we have to be very careful with vacant positions. They're vacant largely because I think Doctor Hepburn resignations, retirements, people who moved on to other employers. Right. Some of that is true, but a lot of situations just have been unsuccessful in actually filling those vacancies for quite some time. And so the work yeah, we can't fill them in. The work has already been distributed across the

069department. So hence the lack of need for the position anymore. Terrific. Are you confident that these 503 positions, which is 60% of your reductions, are those kinds of positions where the vacancy is not a required, doesn't represent a required amount of work to get done. Correct. Because we've already redistributed that work. And I have no I have no number ten chair. All right. Let me flip the script a little bit. Doctor Hepburn, did you think about enhancing revenue at the same time you thought about reducing positions? Yes. How's that going? It's it's a work in progress, new programs, looking at different strategies of how we can address the needs of, of families that are doing different things other than our taking advantage of our public schools, providing them different levels of service, being able to.

070Enroll in one course to instead of just not getting any fte at all that mom or dad who's homeschooling MAY not be able to teach ap psych. We're open for business for for that specific course. So we're looking at all kinds of opportunities to bring in revenue to the district. Terrific. I'm going to ask you, when you bring job descriptions back, which senior member of your staff you're going to assign to increase revenue to Broward County schools? I would love to have a member of your senior senior staff who raises their hand and says, I'm going to try and do what Dallas does. Dallas raised $300 million a year for public schools from the private sector. It took 20 years to get to that point. It was a long, long slog to get there. But

071they made that commitment. They did it. I will ask that obviously not something we need to agree on today, but I just thought I'd give you a heads up on ai. We got to be really careful about this because I think I might disagree with the superintendent. Ai is a huge efficiency efficiency opportunity. It'll eliminate some tasks that are done within jobs. It'll eliminate the need for some jobs for government organizations. It's a wonderful thing because if we can use ai to eliminate some clerical jobs, some other jobs that have high replacement value by ai, we can take that savings and we can invest in jobs for which ai can never replace. Fabian. I would call those things teachers. I would call them plumbers, like, you're not going to ai, you know, the blue collar

072guys that are out doing the ppo work, you're not going to ai teachers. Even though ai can make teachers better, you're not going to get rid of them. But if I can use ai and we don't need as many people and we don't have to print as much paper because of all these things, and we don't have to have as much, you know, offices to pay for that every year in computers and things like that and overhead costs, I can take those same resources and pay it out. In government, we always have fixed resources, and so whatever we can save, we are. I would like us. Doctor Hepburn, this is one of my ideas, chair, to come back and give us a page or two about the ai positions within academics, because I think we

073really, really need to understand what we're talking about. Are we trying to prepare students to enter the ai economy, or are we trying to use ai to help teachers or both? But to me, I think if we understood more about those positions, we MAY actually grow them and not shrink them. I talked about ceo and cfo, last points about MR. Civera. My my ask Doctor Hepburn would be that you bring back 2 or 3 feasible options about how we can organize around academics. You are a national expert in academics, your deputy superintendent. She might know more than you. By the way, Doctor Hebert, she's amazing in academics. Our academic officer top notch. We have. Unfortunately though, as MR. Sverre pointed out, we have six chiefs that can use the word academics in their job title.

074I just would like 2 or 3 feasible options for you about if we had to streamline academics. What are some feasible ways? That way, if we look at them and the we might be able to decide whether our current structure that you propose one of these feasible ones. Doctor Hepburn, could you do that or should I ask my colleagues to support me? I'm making a note. Thank you sir. Appreciate your time, chair. Thank you. And we'll probably have to come back and make sure I captured everything when we. And at the end. At the end, I'll come back because I think some of them are like more like follow up requests. Yeah. Thank you, MRS. Alhadef. So I'd like to first look at the report on page three. So beacon, if you don't mind, if

075you can put that page. Up with the approach and process, it speaks to looking at other school districts, analyzing and reviewing data from hr and finance data, gathering information from division leaders. Also. Talking to chiefs and and then it kind of stops there. So my first question is, how many schools did mgt go into? How many teachers did they speak to and how many principals did they also speak to? And how many unions did they talk to? As far as going into schools and talking to school based personnel, they didn't do that. That's not particularly to ask from from them. They could do that, but it's a whole lot more money than what we're paying them for. The the work that we've asked them to do to help us benchmark really understand the systems as

076large as ours or slightly smaller, and also the ratios between student and non-instructional personnel and really understanding where we're, we're light and understanding where we're actually heavy in certain areas. So we can decide on what areas to start tackling as far as reductions. So that's what I have a problem with this, with this process. I do see on page 11, they do make these suggestions while getting stakeholder engagement. And and it looks like that they would go into schools and have conversations. You know, I think it is low hanging fruit that our strongest resource we don't connect with to help engage and make these decisions, which are our, our teachers, our students, our principals. And it doesn't cost anything. It's a conversation. And, you know, I believe that we still need to do that. I

077think there's still time, whether it's it's our, our staff doing it or mgt doing it. It's a huge part of this process that I think is left out. And that's why we had hundreds of people here today upset. They weren't a part of the process. They were left out. And not to say that it it's going to take get their job back or their box back. I'm not saying that necessarily, but it's about us being more efficient as a as a school district and us all collaborating, weighing in and helping you. Doctor Hepburn to to make this very difficult decision. My next point would be to my colleagues. At one of the last meetings, we made a decision to vote on cutting 3000 positions over three years. i was I was not voting for that.

078I know that it was a63 vote, but if somebody on the prevailing side, I would recommend that you bring that back. My point is this, as it was that day, is Doctor Hepburn is doing the work. He is looking for cuts. And so to force this number upon him over the next three years, I think it makes his job more difficult. It makes the people that are working for Broward County Public Schools feel on edge. And and so I think that is a very important motion that one I feel one of my colleagues should bring back to this board. And then in regards to one of the recommendations by my colleagues to bring to eliminate the Chief of Facilities position, I'm strongly against that. The grand jury report that came out, that the grand jury

079report recommended stronger leadership structure and facilities, clear accountability at the top, better qualified management, overseeing capital projects and improve coordination across departments. And so I do not think we should eliminate that box. I think that we need to have two distinct boxes with the ceo, which will be focusing on the daily operations of the entire system, that it's running smoothly, and that the chief of facilities can focus on our facilities, which we've had so many issues with in the past. My next question is to general counsel. I think you talked about this, but I didn't hear your answer in regards to veterans with Florida state law. And how does that work with veterans receiving priority consideration for their jobs. Through the chair. That's something that my office is currently researching. So I don't have that

080answer right now. But we will make sure that you get an answer. Okay. And more importantly, that Doctor Hepburn gets that answer. Yes, yes. And the next thing is, I think it's really important that we bring back the social workers, that we eliminated. The social workers play a very critical role in our students mental health and their ability to succeed in school. One of the things that the students have on their computers is the talk app. And so when they connect with the talk app, they're able to connect with resources, with social worker, mental health counselor to be able to get the help that they need. And so my next question is in regards to what is the current ratio of mental health counselor to students? Go ahead, MISS Hollingsworth, because I know we that.

081So we don't have mental health counselors. So for right now, for instance, social workers, we have about. Right now the ratio is 1.7 or so to a school. When we look at the counseling that is provided for students that have that on their iep, they have about 30 students for their caseload. So and then family counselors, I'll have to give me a second. I'll have to look. And those are through our program, the family counseling program that we have with the community. Yeah, it's a multi-layered. It's a multi-layered, it's not. So you have your school counselor or whatever school based positions that focus on academic counseling or mental health counseling. Your school counselors are doing a lot of that work. Then there's an additional layer of support. That's MISS Hollingsworth talking about from the district

082office that we fund. So there's no per se mental health position because it's a multi-layered approach from various jobs within the school and also within the district. Okay. But we know that the ratio is extremely low of the amount available people to help our students. For the number of students that we have in our schools. And so I think this board should strongly consider keeping these school social worker positions, because to reduce that ratio, 1.7 to a school of how many students? 1000. 3000. Right. It would be dependent on how large the school is. And then that would go up if they needed additional support. Right. And and we all know that is not an acceptable ratio. It needs to be a lot more social workers, mental health counselors, psychologists per students for school safety

083reasons, we need to be able to reach the root cause of the issues that our students are having. And these counselors are greatly supporting and helping them succeed in school and creating a safer environment. All right. Those are my comments. Thank you. Thank you, MISS Pullman. Thanks, chair. I'm going to try not to be redundant. So and I have a lot of papers. So I also would like to thank everyone for coming to speak today. I took a lot of notes and I really appreciate the way that our community engages in the process. I think it's very important that we understand what's happening out in all the different places in Broward County, and your opinions have been heard and noted. So thank you very much for that. And today, as we've said before, but I

084think, you know, the the overarching task before us is that we have to protect this school system that serves so many of our students and is the largest employer in Broward County and really impacts everybody in the county. But we're at a crossroads right now where we have a lot of difficult decisions to make, and we're in a position that's unenviable. But I do like to thank the staff, because I think everyone has worked very hard to put this initial draft of the org chart together, and it's not clear if there was a if there was a perfect answer that we would come to it. But obviously that that's not the case. So it's a good exercise that we're working on this right now. I just, in my approach when I'm looking at this, is

085that we have to, as has been noted by some of my colleagues, you know, looking at it as a business, even though it's not a business, but we have a product which is school that's, I guess, a service, but our product is a high quality education for all of our students. However that looks. And so that's the focus. How do we continue to maintain that while we have to make these changes? And if we don't make the changes, we're not going to have a school district anyway. So that's, I think, kind of the driving factor. So that's how I'm looking at it. And you know, when we're going through all these different papers and reports and or pages of org charts, it's, it's so difficult to fully understand the complexities of the system that we

086have here. It's difficult for me to understand. And so I think what we want to do here is the least amount of harm when we're making the changes that we need to, to get. Into a more stable financial state. So and I, and I think the staff has been faced with a nearly impossible task. Honestly, I think this is just it's not easy to, to make these decisions and you're never going to make people happy having to do this. So I do thank you all for that. I guess my first my first question is to Doctor Hepburn. I think Doctor Zeeman kind of hit on this, but do you feel like we've cut enough in this iteration of the org chart? You feel. In that we are going to be able to provide high quality

087services and programs at the school level? Yes. The way it looks right. Now, yes. At this point in time, in this iteration, yes. As I said, it's fluid and there's more to come during the summer. The great thing about this exercise I that t team, especily leadership t team, had an oorortunity to really dive in deep into our system. I don't think that's been done for quite some time to really understand how we're providing services to students, staff and and departments to departments. I'm being able to look at how are we providing services. Let's reflect on some of the complaints we're getting from our own personnel at schools and other departments, and also external stakeholders, and really dive in and have a very objective look and a purposeful next step of enhancing those services and

088changing the service model. Because we don't we're not just cutting. We also have to change the service model as well, because it's going to be different with less people and leveraging the technology that we have at our disposal right now. So realigning and. Correct, it's been a great exercise to really dive deep into how we do things. Well, thank you for that. I wanted to go back. My colleagues have hit on this a little bit, and I have just a slightly different kind of question for page seven, again, for the director of ai and digital services or digital learning. So based on the way that it's titled, okay, so my understanding is that this is taking innovative learning and applied learning and putting it in here. And so I guess my concern and it's been

089stated as you've answered multiple questions to Doctor Cohen. I personally have worked directly with Applied Learning quite a bit over the past years, and it's not digital. It has nothing to do with ai. You know, we're doing like food, forests and recycling programs and speech and debate and mock trial and all those things. So where is that in the digital and ai digital? I can't really see it. Yeah. And I'll toss it over. Doctor Cohen, you know, one of the things that we were answering back and forth is the team is the name, right? So I think the, the name. The name is too. It was very long and we wanted to shorten it because we were trying to capture everything that you just said, plus the ai plus the digital learning, plus the applied

090learning opportunities with Stem and all of that and those components. So we can go back to the drawing board while before we come back with the name to kind of be a catch all for all those services, but I'll kick it to you, Doctor Coleman. That's a good idea. That's a great question. So if you actually take a look. So when we collapsed applied learning and innovative learning, not all of those functions are work actually landed in this one department. So if you go to page six you'll actually see the electives were moved to secondary learning and elementary learning. You see where civics were integrated into a repurposed supervisor position of called writing, civics engagement and interdisciplinary studies. You'll also see pe and educational programs under elementary learning and then under secondary learning. You'll also

091see where we move music and performing arts and art. Under those two. The the other department that stayed under integrated learning is the supervisor of. Stem plus c, and we actually redefined that role to be Stem plus c plus Aicar to be all encompassing. So that's how those departments kind of moved around based on that because the electives are k-12 standards aligned. So we move them up there. Okay, because I don't want to see, I personally think this is some of the best things that we offer that make our our programming distinguishable from other choices. And so that's something I don't want to see lost here. I know there's great people that work very hard and do a great job in those departments. And so I just would like your. Affirmation or your assurance that

092that's not going to go away. I mean, I think in fact, I would like to see these things developed more strongly because I think that is what distinguishes us. If we lose that, then we really, you know, don't have, you know, we're not offering as much as we could be. So have your assurance for that. You do. And the whole idea was to ensure that it is part of the k-12 space, and that you can integrate it into the classroom experience without it being seen as something separate. Okay. Thank you. So on. I don't remember which page this is. MR. Dorsett, where's the the building department page? I, I should have written. That would be page 12, I think. 12. Okay. Actually. Oh 11. It was moved to. 13. Well, actually on. 11 sorry about

093that. Sorry about that. It's under on page 12. Okay. So on page 11, Doctor Windsor, I, we spoke about this yesterday, so I. I've got a question on the boxes when we were talking about growth management being removed. But I see two boxes that say something about growth management. Were those going to be renamed to asset management or is that the what we were talking about? So the growth monitoring one is one that oh can I I'm sorry. Oh go ahead. Feel free. So the growth monitoring one as well as there's another one that is not here on the chart. It's below the chart. It's real. I think it's real estate analyst. Those were the two positions in that department for now. As the superintendent said this is a working document. And in my opening

094comments, I did advise that we are going to capitalize on whatever opportunities we can to partner potentially with Broward County government to see where there could be some collaboration of efforts and potentially opportunities in the staffing arena. But for for now, we also know that each and every board meeting, you know, we, we have reciprocal use agreements, we have the lease agreements, we have a lot of things that still have to go through policy type protocols. So all of that is handled through this office. Okay, so perhaps we need just a different name. Okay. We'll get back with all these renamings of the boxes here, but okay, just because it's a little misleading, I understand that we need to do the work, but since as we had discussed, we're not really growing real estate wise,

095but we're asset managing, I think. Okay, so MR. Dorsett, so I, I wanted to follow up. MISS Thompson touched on this with the maintenance. The maintenance workers and were eliminating 39 and. And so I. So my first question is, how do the. What fund do the maintenance workers get paid from? It's a ppo. It's a combination. Correct me if I'm wrong, MR. Dorsett is both capital and some. On general. Yes. General fund and capital. So how about these that are losing their positions? Okay. So. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead, MR. Dawson. Okay. My apologies. So the out of the 39 positions, 29 of them are funded capital and ten of them are funded. General fund. Okay. So does it really help us to decrease maintenance that are funded out of capital? If our real concern

096is maintaining our general fund? No, it does one thing for the board and public to know many of our capital positions are actually funded general out of general budget. And then a capital transfer happens to cover that cost. So when you do cut the positions in the future, you won't need to do that capital transfer. So in a sense, initially it's saving you money out of your general for the initial, you won't have to worry about capital transfer to kind of cover some of those expenses. But right now it's coming out of the essentially it's coming out of the capital fund. Correct for for some of the positions. And then I, I'm having a hard time understand, like kind of wrapping my head around the idea that we're going to cut maintenance people and somehow

097be proactive and be figuring out what needs to be maintained. I just don't see how that works. In fact, I, you know, when when we go around to the facilities, that's one of the main, you know, concerns, I think, and probably one of our biggest challenges that we have at the school district. So to me, it just would make more sense that we would have more maintenance people than less. So I. Know to do the work when it breaks and to do the preventative maintenance. And I have MR. Dorsett kind of provide some details, but it's more about changing some of the structure, developing more nimble teams with specific roles within those teams. So when they're actually responding or being proactive, they have the team to do the work that's necessary to either prevent something

098from happening, from preventative maintenance or actually responding to it to an emergency. And like I said, the exercise was good for us and really diving in and seeing how across the system in certain areas, how we're functioning, what are some of the gaps and some of the barriers based on the information we get all the time from constituents internally and externally too? So it's helped us to revise some of the structures to make sure the right team members are within the different zone groups. And MR. Dora said, if you want to add any additional information. Thank you, Doctor Hepburn. So, so we did establish a Tiger team crew and basically that's definitely helping us with the the routine maintenance. And I by no means are these cuts are going to impact your safety and security

099work orders because those are paramount. We make sure that we take care of those on a regular basis. So if there's anything that's going to impact the school functioning for the day, those things are responded to immediately and that's going to continue. I think we're going to get better once we integrate Maximo fully with the the, the mobile platform, which I think should be ready sometime in JUNE. We've already started a pilot program with that. We're seeing results, positive results with, with return On, on, on response time and so forth. So I think that's definitely going to going to going to be a positive move once we roll that out. And I appreciate that. I think that's great. And i wasn't suggesting that we were going to skimp on safety and security. I, I think

100two things can be true, Maximo. Integrating Maximo can make us more nimble and more responsive, but also having enough people to do the work seems to be, I don't know, I for for me, this doesn't. Isn't a place where I would be looking to cut. Based on the demands that we have for facilities right now. And then I. So one thing that's been brought up multiple times and I just wondering if this was given consideration is the retirement age of some of the people that have. Have been notified that they're losing their position, particularly those that are so close to fully vesting and being in retirement. Was that something that we. So I don't think we like specifically targeted, you know, people at the end of their career. I think the people that were here

101and spoke right are the ones who are at the end of their career, just based on the amount of cuts. We have people along the spectrum of their career, some as hired as like six months ago and some that are, you know, throughout that whole entire spectrum. And I know for some groups, there are some contractual things that we do have to follow as we notify or people being able to have recall rights and bump other people and things like that. So we have all kind of complexities when it actually comes to collective bargaining agreements and what's entitlement, what entitlements certain employee groups actually have. But I think most of the speakers that were here are those who at the end of their career, but we have a lot of people who are along the

102spectrum. And not not that you were targeting people that are of retirement age. I wasn't suggesting that. It's just that it seems. A shame that someone that's given 28.5 years to the system is now going to be discontinued with their work, just as an example. Yeah. If it's a and this, this is not probably true for all the employee groups, but if it's a group of only four people in that department and we cut three. Right. And it's a veteran staff, that's going to be an impact to a veteran staff. Right. Versus if you have a large group of people within a department, it's a little bit different. But if a if a employee group or a certain part of a department is small and we're, you know, reducing those services, it MAY have an

103impact like that. So it just depends on the department and what, what service category we're reducing, how many employees are in that service category. If it's a small group and they've been doing it for a long time, it's going to impact. Yeah, I mean, I would as we're going back, if there's positions that become available, I, you know, would like that to know that we're looking at those people that only have a little bit of time left to fully retire when we're looking at positions because, you know, they've this isn't the private sector. And so there's sacrifice that's been made getting paid less and different things, working with our children, working under difficult conditions for a lot of years. And so I think that that needs to be respected and really paid attention. To it

104is and completely understand for sure. MR. Bruno. Yeah. So I just wanted to make sure that we also understand that in addition to what Doctor Hepburn said regarding language in the collective bargaining agreements, there's also some statutes that guide us when we're looking at these types of decisions. So we want to make sure that we're completely legally compliant, and all of those factors have to be taken into consideration. Yeah, I wasn't suggesting we weren't legally compliant. I'm just talking about compassion towards people that are almost at the end of their career and just have a little bit more to go. I agree with Doctor Hepburn in terms of the before and after care for the same, the same doctor. I'm sorry, Doctor Hepburn, I do not agree with you for that. Thank you Steven. Sorry

105so many doctors up here. Doctor Zeman because of the revenue generating aspect of it. I mean, it's like when you're paying for yourself, then that's a position that should stay in my in my opinion. And so I would I would support putting that back up there. And then I think that's the only thing I, the only other ones I had and you know, I, I kind of defer to MISS Thompson. Her wheelhouse is the social workers. And I, I really appreciate the exercise that was done in terms of making the tough decisions to figure out how to cut. I think that it was done with a lot of thoughtfulness and a lot of analysis. And really like, if you want someone to get in there and do it, I, I, I really appreciate the excellent,

106but I am, I am concerned, as others are about, you know, what services are being provided at the school level. And so I would support MISS Thompson's proposal that she made when she started about the the social worker structure that she had supported. Thank you. Thank you, MISS Rupert. Your chair. If you can I want to truly thank everybody that came out. I'm. And the heart to really share their concerns and suggestions. It means a lot to us. And we were and are listening. A few of the ideas that I've jotted out, jotted down, excuse me, when people were were speaking and then in my prep before, you know, coming here is, you know, sometimes you, you don't know what you don't know until it's brought forward. And I didn't know that there was a,

107b, c cares data central to be able to get into. So I tried to, but I couldn't get into it on my work phone. And the reason I, I asked that is. That the data in there would help us see a much bigger picture of how our employees and families feel. The level of customer service that's available to see if their performance is working, or do we have the correct frameworks that MAY be warranted to ensure that our organization values and long term objectives are actually what we want them to be? It also shows that the level of leadership and how their their concerns are addressed. I hearing the superintendent give us those statistics about having, I'm sorry, three years worth. How many students did you say? I would think it was 25 to 30.

108Right? 25 to 30,000. So I think that would be an important aspect. And I did see with with mgt, I think that's what it was that they will be moving forward with the customer service, I guess kind of a thing. But I thought you know what, goodness gracious, we have this here. This has been done forever. And obviously if we can use some of this, this to align it because it just the data is already in there. So I'd be curious to get that. And another part that I wanted to discuss is to get answered. Not today. You can get a follow up from me. How much does the district currently spend on consultants? And I'd like the breakdown by department. So instead of hiring more consultants upon consultants, let's look to our own potential

109layoff people at our employees. The people who are have their heart and soul here to o fill t tse neeeeds y knknowwe nd torow w ourwn. Wealalk about it, but somehow it just doesn't get exactly done. So I would really highly recommend that and especially that. And I believe he's gone. The nice young gentleman that was here, that was a plumber. And it didn't go unnoticed that, you know, for one year he's having to refix things that consultants came in to do. And that's, you know, we need to truly make sure that that we're actually promoting our own. And additionally, that instead of laying off, I'll just say it, you know, if you look at the, the organizational charts from 2009, ten, ten, 11, you can see where the deficits come in with our facilities.

110I mean, it was I, I believe the please correct me if I'm wrong, about 40% of that workforce that we had was decimated. And I'm not being theatrical about that. That's what happened. And, and of course, it was to help us be solvent, but also it really eroded what I think is a boon for government. And that's job security. You know, I would much rather we beef up our apprenticeships. I would love to spend more money doing that because guess what? It's always a win in Tallahassee. They love workforce dollars. So just a thought for for my colleagues to think about for later. The ai position. I, I think that it would be an important aspect to kind of wait on that, especially in the light that Sweden, who was very ai front facing, is

111now pulling back on their digital platforms to help raise their students reading scores and literacy. And that's a that's a wake up call. And I meant to print it out, but I forgot Doctor Zeeman because I know that you'd be interested and you probably already read it because it was like from three days ago, but that was a tremendous wake up call for me. And honestly, as somebody who accesses computers, goes through stuff, I still prefer to have my own notes, pen and paper and be able to look at my documents because I can comprehend better, because I'm a visual learner. As a mom, teacher, foster adoptive mother, suicide prevention, mental health services, foster care. Those are big. Those truly can make and break our students and. I'm curious about the coordinator, suicide prevention. I

112didn't know where we landed because I had to run to the ladies room on that particular box, let's just call it. But my my concern and it is not just mine, but when I became a board member, I did not understand back then because nobody told me that there were various areas in Broward County that were higher risk for suicides than other areas. And that's just the gosh darn truth right there. And I do not want to see a pulling back of that. So the area of great increased risk, we know them now, Deerfield Beach, Pompano Beach, msd, can they still be given that extra support that they need? And I think it's important for the public, but also the board members to understand what does that look like that they're getting now to for

113me to be able to support anything like this, I need to know that because you never want to go to another funeral. As many as I've done in district seven for mental health issues. So I'm not a fan of reducing our mental health counselors, suicide prevention, our family counselors, our psychologists, our social workers. And it's increasingly important to be able to have those services because you cannot quantify. A child's life. So the three coordinators, I really want to see much more backup with that. But like I said, it's an area of great concern for me. You know, as as a mom who adopted a ten year old child from foster care, there are a lot of issues that those kids go through in school, at a school. My son was in 17 foster homes before

114we adopted him at ten, and those people that kept him going. Wilton Manors Elementary School, kudos to them. They had what they needed to serve those students, and I would not support anything that reduces any of that impact there. I talked already about the ppo department. We need to scale up our tradespeople, not downsized. I want to be very clear on this before I support an outside vendor for trade positions. I want our labor groups to be brought in to see how they can help us. It's a win win for our students, our our employees and our community all together. And in the vein of being a community, all of us, I think we need to have some skin in the game. Everyone. And I'm going to start by saying board members, 10% of your

115salary for the next year will go towards school services for our. Our children will go for teachers. We will not reduce them. I'm willing for that. And I wouldn't I would just go on and say, anybody that's above the. The line 10% has to go and fill this hole. We MAY not want it. i personally financially can't support it, but I emotionally can live without doing that because that's skin in the game and that's putting it right where it is. Because when we have employees coming in here, losing their jobs, not being able to lose their to, to pay their mortgage, they feel that we all feel that in this room because we hear them. So I propose to do that for school board members and anybody above the the line, I don't know. I'm

116sure that MADAM Council will probably have something to do with that, but. I think that should happen. I also propose to address MDGs findings that were heavy middle managers and a nod to MISS Thompson's gauntlet to trim chief positions as well to impose a 10% salary cut for all those positions on the chart and above. And I said, including all board members, I had a question about most of the unfilled positions were unfilled all last year, and this year they're not included in the current adopted budget. Or were they? Yes, they were included. But the the cost savings were absorbed early on during the summer for those positions. And then we have vacancies throughout this year and many vacancies happening through our hiring, our hiring freeze, which resulted in attrition, but not hiring for that

117position. So you have those a lot of those vacancies too. Okay, so a little bit more information in writing about the finances of that. How does this translate into the savings? And I think now the rest of them were specific. And my colleagues have asked for that. Those questions, they already did it decline enrollment of children with disabilities. I knew that was wrong. I was going to bring attention to it. So absolutely none of the above. And thank you to the superintendent and to the board for hopefully approving that these will not. The esc positions that we discussed are off the off the list right now. And I truly, truly thank you for all that. I want to make sure that we're covering statutory requirements and I'll I'll end once again by saying not in

118favor of losing counselors, psychologists, social workers. I know what we have right now is not enough by statute and caseload is crazy. We have to find another way. And I'd love to hear everybody's. Response to the 10% cut. And if that's possible, what kind of a difference would that make physically to the chart positions with people who were to be laid off, if that could save people's jobs? Do it. That's all I've got for that. But I don't want to also see any educators leaving the field, any mental health people. We need to put our money where our mouth is and also. How are we going to. Which is one of the reasons why I brought up cps cares. How are we going to address that tremendous amount of people that we need to, to

119get rid of moving forward? So. That's an important aspect. So I think that was it. MAY I MAY have gotten another page or two in here, but I tried to coordinate as well as much as I could. And I know it's not easy. It's. It's part of the job. But we have to have a plan to bring back those students that we're losing. And I don't see an actual plan to do that. So when we bring back the the org chart to make sure that specifically, what are we doing to bring those students back? I don't think we're doing enough. I agree with Doctor Zeman, the rest of my colleagues. And if we're talking about that and we have the best thing in town, people need to come back and we need to show them

120that we care. So thank you. Thank you. I just want to, if I MAY. So I want to prioritize follow ups. This is next week. So we have a lot of other follow ups from past board meetings that are coming due. And so I just want to just let the board know I'm going to have the staff put those on pause to prioritize this. So you guys get this information sooner. So just just an fyi. Yep. Thank you. Before we go to round two, I'd like the opportunity to speak and to MISS Rupert's point. MR. Rupert, I believe you were at the fsb conference in DECEMBER where there was a pretty big presentation about the demographic changes happening throughout the country. And, I mean, a lot of there are going to be fewer students coming

121back because there are fewer students in general. So I think we've talked a lot, at least in my five years on the board about plans to to recruiting and retaining students. But there's just fewer students in general. So I just wanted to clarify that. I want to thank everyone again who came out to speak and who took the time to write. I hope that, you know, with the superintendent's recommendation to put back those esc positions, some some of our staff and some of our community advocates can feel heard. I know that, you know, not everyone is going to be pleased with the organizational chart moving forward, but I just want people to know that we are listening. We are taking these these issues seriously. And it's it's really not easy to to hear all of

122the heartache that's happening, but that's part of our job. And, and I really respect everyone who has used their voice to speak up. I want to again, thank the superintendent for hearing that esc voice and bringing back those positions. And I want to thank my colleagues who brought solutions to the table. Doctor Holness, MISS Thompson, MISS Hickson, Doctor Zeman, MRS. Alhadef, MISS Rupert, I you know, I appreciate all of the suggestions that were brought forward, really looking at boxes and trying to instead of just saying like, I don't like this really saying like, here's a solution to what I don't like about this. So thank you to my colleagues on that. I'll just reiterate the concerns that I've heard, and I appreciated MRS. Alhadef specific proposal to bring back the school social worker positions, that

123that's something that I support. You know, I was not a social worker, but I was a teacher who would often have to write referrals to the social worker. I understood how how loaded their caseload was, and I just can't support any cuts to counselors, social workers, dhhs positions. We are in a mental health crisis. Not that dhea is a mental health piece, but I just had to add that in there because it's a school based position. So I would ask that those positions be brought back. All of the mental health pieces. I support MISS Thompson's recommendations around that. Those specific positions that I will, will reiterate at the end of this. I do have some some questions about how logistically some of this plays out, specifically our hiring freeze, because I feel like as I

124go to schools, there is maybe a misunderstanding or a miscommunication. So if I am a principal at a, b, c, elementary and my, one of my, my first grade teachers retires or resigns, what are my next steps? So their next step is to look internally. First. They MAY able MAY, they MAY have an instructional coach on campus that can assume those duties. They MAY have a very small class size across the board due to attrition of students throughout the year. And they can make some of those shifts the next. If there is no opportunity internally, then the next step is to talk to the regional and regional director, and then that is brought to a committee that reviews the need, reviews the budget and all of that. And then it's either depending on the position,

125if a permanent sub, right, that's have the credentials or whatnot. And the skill set to support that class can be used, they'll use a permanent sub. If not, we will advertise the position. The angle of going with the permanent sub is that if it's a maybe projected to decline next year, and if you hire this person now you got to let them go. And then one other thought I had about that, that I just bless you that I just completely lost. Yeah, let's leave it at that. I think your question sparked what I was going to say. Is there a scenario in which. Well, I'll just you remember. Yes. The thing about posting and hiring, especially this time of the year, you MAY not have that person on board until until after the school year.

126So we try to look at other areas of how we can address that need right now, today. Right. I guess the concern that I have, and it's like anecdotal things I hear out in the community and this is coming from like teachers who do not come to school board meetings, parents who are not emailing us, they like, they feel almost uncomfortable saying anything to me because they don't want to, you know, they don't want to like cause trouble, which it's not trouble. This is part of our job. Right? But these are just like regular people who, who are living the Broward schools life every day. You know, I know of a fifth grade class of one of my constituents that is at about 28 students, an ap language teacher in my district that has 38

127students, a first grade class with 24 students, a second grade class that started off with 20 students and now is up to 28 because one of the teachers left and they merged that. They split the class. And these are having been a first grade teacher, that's a pretty large class size. And I think this is something that we hear a lot every year is about class size, class size. And it feels kind of counterintuitive that we have enrollment declines, but class size continues to be an issue. So help me understand like why that's an issue, why that continues to be a challenge that we have, but also like how we are going to address that, how that the org chart, the, the changes that you're proposing, how that impacts the class size issue. Yeah. So

128inherently, the strategy that has been implemented probably about ten plus years with the high school block scheduling cost a lot of money. That money, right? It's one pot of money. So if we're putting a lot of money on extra periods and to afford a block, schedule that money. Traditionally, over the past ten years, elementary schools have succumbed to that. And as a result, they have higher class sizes than our neighbors to the north and to the south and across the district. And so with the proposed allocation of how to of doing what we call a plus one, add an additional kid to a class at high school or secondary schools, adding two additional. And you add here you take away class students here to to decrease class sizes. So that's what the team has looked

129at. They've gone the most conservative route possible to not have such a shock impact on the system. But in the same vein, trying to reduce class sizes at the elementary level,s I stated before, itit's somethingng thatt we're goingo hahave t t tklee wiwith the hh schchoolchededulgg r really t tackle tha work since I've been here, since deputy superintendent, that's one of the things I've asked the question like, why is why is our class size this size? In Broward County, when I started diving deep is because we're a block schedule and all the extra period supplements at the high school level cost a lot of money. And that's one of the main reasons why. And so we've been trying to tackle that by massaging the allocation model just slightly to reduce. But we've got a lot

130a lot of work to do ahead. And like I say, doing it more in a more intimate way, a communicating with external and internal stakeholders about the block schedule and see what we can do to tackle that. Okay. And what about like the ap language teacher who has 38 students in her in her class? You know, if that school, right, you go back to your schedule, let's say you have 1 or 2 teachers that have the ability and the credentials to teach that course. And you have more students that need that course than teachers. But and this is a school based right issue. You MAY not have confidence that the the honors English teacher or the regular English teacher can teach that curriculum. So for, for most principals, it can be like, hey, MISS Leonardi,

131you're doing an awesome job. But I got some kids that right that I need in this class. They're demonstrating that level of success and potential. Are you willing to take, take, take that on. Because as a principal, I MAY have understanding that this teacher right now doesn't have that skill set and capability to do that. Or in addition, what principals do to for that same teacher is give them extra period supplements so they can spread it out in more than just five classes in 6 to 8 classes, if possible, to make sure the class sizes are comparable. But it all depends on the credentials and skill set of that teacher for a course like that. Ap lang ap ap chemistry you know, all your high level accelerated courses, and then those are difficult positions for

132us to hire also. Okay. I'll just briefly reiterate, I think MISS Bowman's concern about, you know, laying people off who are, you know, months away from retirement, if we can take a look at that and, you know, try to not impact someone's retirement that way. And I guess I'm wondering too, if I know like they do this in the private sector, if there's any way to like, encourage, you know, an early retirement and things like that. Have we looked. At we have for us, we can't afford it. We did. Those are all the strategies many of you talked about, especially that one, because teachers actually emailed us and asked us, hey, I'm ready to retire if you guys are able to do this. And cfo and her team looked at it and we in the

133in the financial situation we're in, we can't afford it. Okay. Yeah. I also just want to uplift the comments of our our fob. Fob representative. I cannot support the privatization of, you know, the people who are working in our schools. You know, it's hard hearing from one of our plumbers. I think his name is Cisco. You know, who made a demonstrable difference in his school, in the facilities, in his school. And, you know, so if we have to make the tough decision to eliminate that position. You know, I would I cannot support replacing it with a, you know, a contract. a private contractor. I agree with you too. We're going to look very closely to make sure we're not in that predicament where we have to outsource because we this plan is not about outsourcing

134those type of positions. We're, you know, trying to downsize appropriately. And yeah, I agree with you and the sentiment on the board on that. Thank you. I feel very uncomfortable with the ai and digital learning positions on on page seven, at least at the moment. I think it MAY or MAY not shock some people to hear that. I think like a focus on classical curriculum is important. But I would, you know, I understand that ai does play a role in digital learning, does play a role in in our education, and we have to make sure that our students are prepared for, with, with the appropriate digital skills. But I would feel much more comfortable talking about and revisiting those positions after our workshop in JUNE. That I think is really going to provide us a

135framework for digital learning and ai. So I would, you know, that's my proposal, is that we wait on those positions until after the workshop in JUNE. I know you've said that this is a fluid working document. Help me understand to the gt piece, I believe we were told that we were going to get a report early MAY, but then we're voting on this next week. So help me understand. Go ahead, MR. Sullivan. Yes. So my work was really to guide cabinet, ensuring that we were benchmarking and validating the cuts that were making. So that was really the focus. So for them to generate the report, it would have taken away from from that work and given the timeline, aggressive timeline that we had at the point that we did bring them on. But they will

136be again, providing the board with with their findings, which will include some of the work they did for this, but also some work on how we can continue to rightsize going forward. So we'll be will the report be? Is it more of a forward thinking document like what we're going to like the roadmap roadmap for the next, I believe it was 2 or 3 years. Or is it kind of a reflection on this. It's going to be some of both. So a reflection on the work they did do and a more contained within that report of what they've done up to this point. And then a look, a little bit of a look forward as well, what they recommend our next course of action as it relates to the continuation of the need to rightsize.

137Okay. I don't know if there's any way to get that sooner. I mean, next week is end of APRIL. There are going to be able to provide some materials before that vote next week, but it won't be the entirety of the report, but they will be able to provide some of the information they relied on to benchmark. Okay. What would be I don't know if you have this information now, but if we eliminated cabinet, all of cabinet, what would be the cost savings associated with that? Yep, I actually have that. So just a reminder, we spent about $1.9 billion of our general fund on personnel. If we eliminated all of cabinet, that would be about 3.8 million, which is salary and fringe, which is less than 1%. I think it was like a 10th of

138a percent that we spend on personnel. I would just ask the audience if they need to have a private conversation, they can enter the Pre-function room. We all sat here and listened to all of the public comment, and I would ask that any side conversations happen outside so that we can focus on the conversation at hand, and we can all be respectful. Doctor Hepburn, what would be the cost savings if we eliminated all positions above the line? All positions on the chart, which includes band b through e and pay grades 2537, total salary and fringe is about 74 million. That's about 4% of our $1.9 billion general fund for all employees. Do we know how many? So for each, for cabinet and for all positions above the line. So and I didn't you might have

139to to give me a follow up, but how many positions would we be eliminating if we eliminated cabinet? Actually, I have that just a second. If we eliminated all positions on the chart you said. On the chart and then just also just cabinet. Okay. On the chart, that would be all positions on the chart. Before cuts 581 after cuts.-91. A little bit about call it 490. Directors. And above that I don't have just cabinet but directors. And above that will be 110 positions. Take out 18. About 90 something into. Okay. If we eliminated all of cabinet. Cabinet, I have nine direct reports if you include the chief financial, not chief financial, but Chief Facilities Officer as it is on the proposed org chart. So you'll be getting rid of nine positions. How many? Including myself.

140Ten. Okay. Do we know how many of the positions above the line we were expecting to retire or become vacant by JUNE 30th this year? Go ahead, Doctor Lozano. Historically, that would be about 25 on the. Got it on the chart or above. Were there different scenarios you looked at that cut certain positions and not others? Yes, we did a deep dive since DECEMBER collaboratively as a group, going through each division, going through each department, setting some goals, looking at different scenarios. As I said, it was a great exercise and like really reviewing the service models for departments for different functions within departments. So we looked at all type of scenarios and settled on the ones that we thought was going to give the greatest value to the district and to the students that we're

141serving in our in our schools and everybody in between. And I believe Doctor Zeeman asked for you to bring one of those scenarios back to us that that cut an additional 200 ish positions. So we can expect that. Yes. Okay. What process can we put in place or are you planning on putting in place to analyze the impact of the org chart changes to measure whether or not they're effective? Yeah. Great question. So there's various KPIs or key performance indicators within each division. Most of those are often tied to the evaluations of senior staff. So we review those. We have specific dashboards associated with those and the priorities that match those. So we can see how the workflows, making sure we're meeting our outcomes over time, and then specific goals within departments. So it kind

142of cascades down and also your Strat plan too. So our Strat plan kind of guides the work as well. That's ultimately based on student performance. But the, the key performance indicators that are associated with divisions and priorities within that division cascade down into the organization. And as you get to different layers, they're building their goals based on that. And also the, the strategic plan so quickly, because we monitor this almost on a biweekly basis, we will be able to see if we're having an impact with the change or if our impact has waned because of the change, and we can pivot as a result, because of the frequency that we review and leveraging insight with copilot and instruments like that to give us the quickest amount of insight and the quickest amount of time. So

143we can be more proactive than reactive. Okay, I think maybe next year, you know, moving forward with the every time we do the org chart, having that just a review of the changes that were made in the previous year and, you know, the impact and all of that would be helpful. Absolutely. I wanted to ask our general counsel a few questions. I know MRS. Alhadef had mentioned someone being on the prevailing side of a vote, bringing back the the directive to to Doctor Hepburn. But if I'm if I'm remembering correctly, in previous years, we. A board member doesn't have to be on a. On the prevailing side of a vote to bring an item back if it's in a separate meeting, am I correct? So because it's not in the same meeting, we'll be looking

144at a different type of motion. We're looking at at the motion to resend or to amend something previously adopted. And we'll go through that process. Okay. So and I'll send the board an email that explains that process. Okay. So could any if I was on, I was on the losing side of that vote. Could I bring that item back? Yes. Because this is going to be this is not a motion to reconsider. Got it. Okay. And then to MISS Rupert's question, our board member salaries governed by the board or by state statute. The salaries are governed by state statute. Okay. And I shouldn't say state statute. It's by the legislature. They come up with a book that give all of the public officials their salary. Okay. And can't we already voluntarily reduce or forgo our

145salaries? Yes. Okay. I want to. Thank you. Can I just add one more thing for the chair and just to make sure, having a 10% across the board is something that we'd have to really dive into, because there will be some legal consequences. So we really have to look at that very carefully. Okay. Before we go to round two, I know there is a member of the audience who was here for an item in our special meeting, our special school board meeting. So I don't know if we want to go to that special school board meeting, or if we want to go to round two and go through all the. Also go through all the board member suggestions and gather consensus. MISS Rupert. If we have somebody waiting for the special school board meeting, then

146I would say, take that. MISS Thompson. I guess I would like to see how many people have comments for round two, because I just have a question on what are we doing next. With MISS Hickson. Wanted to be added to round two. I don't know if anyone else. And then I have to go through each of the proposals that were given. So we have. I agree with my colleagues, whatever they decide. MISS Bowman. Yes, please. I'd rather finish this. We've had people here all day for this that are still here. So. Doctor Holness. Oh, MADAM Chair, do we have an idea how many people are waiting to speak in the special school board meeting? And on how many items. MISS Bowman? It's one person, one item. One person, one item. So I would. And MISS

147Board member Bowman. Do you know they've been waiting all day for. a few hours? I believe. a couple hours. Okay, so I don't mind temporarily go into the special school board meeting to discuss that particular item for that person and then resume the workshop for. MR. Rivera. I'd like to see the individual who's been waiting for the special school board meeting be given the opportunity to speak, and hopefully there'll be a lot of their full three minutes on that agenda item. Thank you. MRS. Alhadef. I'd rather us put 15 minutes on the clock and finish this item and then go to the school board meeting. Does anyone object to MRS. Alhadi's suggestion? No. That's fine. Okay. 15 minutes on the clock for this. So 345. We should be done with this conversation. And we will

148go to the special school board meeting. Thank you for that solution, MRS. Alhadef. MISS Hixon. Thank you. Quick couple of questions. Doctor. Doctor Hepburn, are there any classroom teachers that are released from the proposal you gave to that we discussed today? Classroom teachers. Yes. That are in our schools. Correct? No thank you. I agree with the before and after care being added back in with some of my colleagues. Just wanted to also point out to everyone that the superintendent from the beginning has said that this plan would include those vacant positions. So I think, you know, fussing about the fact that this includes vacant positions was is a moot point because he always has said it would be part of that. Doctor Hepburn, can you explain to us, based on what you've heard from many

149different board members here today, what is the direction about social workers? From what I've heard, the consensus is to bring them back. Thank you so much. Y my other question why are we eliminating the d h-h position? I heard go ahead, MISS Hollingsworth. So thank you. The one Rd position that we are eliminating is really not being eliminated. We're moving it into a Rd monitor so they can do evaluations because it is a critical shortage area. And we have a very hard time trying to find people that are certified. So they'll kind of be able to do a multifaceted approach. All the Rd interpreters that are at schools, no school services have been impacted. And their ratios, if you give me two seconds, are give me one second. We have that. Sorry. They have about

150there's 11 staff that are itinerant teachers with 30 to 40 students. And that's been the case for the last several years. So we've been able to continue to maintain the services and supports. Okay. So we're not losing a Rd. No we're changing it into a monitor position. Okay. Thank you. I would like to suggest that we have another workshop. I do not think we will be ready to vote on this next week. There's been lots of suggestions given to to the superintendent and I, I think it will be another five hour school board meeting if we try to squeeze it in next week. I don't think we're ready for that. So I'd like to hear my colleagues thoughts on that. And then just finally, I'd like to say when I was explaining the percentage issue,

151I wasn't saying that I agreed with the reductions that were given here. I was just simply trying, as MRS. Leonardi was just trying to do, to say that there are not a thousand upper level positions to be reduced. So to be transparent to the public, we and we, I think we all gave some ideas on how we could still reduce upper level management. But you have to be realistic. There are going to be positions below the line because there are more of them. Did your doctor Hepburn did the 5500 that you mentioned include any classroom teachers, or was that beyond classroom teachers? That is all district positions. No classroom teachers? No. No school based positions on school budgets. Okay. Thank you. And to MRS. Rupert's suggestion about school board pay, I don't mind, but I

152just want people to understand our pay is not that much. It would be like $5,000 a person. That would be $45,000. That would be maybe one position. And I'm if that's something we want to do, I'm perfectly fine with that. But I just want people because we keep getting emails that we make a lot of money. And I. I just want them to know that reducing our pay would not really do a lot for the district, but I'm happy to to join in if that's the will of the board. Thank you. Thank you, MISS Thompson. s myy fst we make aut $50,000.Ndnd for some people that have three kids at home, that's actually a lot of money. And we work just just as much as our teachers, not just as much, but in a different

153capacity. This. So I think that is a little alarming for for one board member, that makes the least amount of the entire board. But my question was really about the setup for what we're doing next. So Hixon covered it. Doctor Zeman. Thanks, chair. I just have to make a comment about this mgt contract. We were approached last week to add a significant amount of money to this contract. If I had been told that this contract was going to be restricted to supporting the staff, I would have vehemently opposed it. We are part of Broward County Schools as well, and if a contractor comes in and does an analysis of something, we have to make the decision about, which is an organization chart, I find it offensive that the report goes to the staff and not

154to us with great speed. So that was not made clear to us last week that we were approving a contract that would be written to serve the staff and the superintendent and not serve us, but we actually have statutory authority over org charts and budgets. And that whole report was about org charts and budgets. So I don't understand why we were not a primary customer of that contract. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else for round two? Before I start, MR. Doctor Holness. Thank you, MADAM Chair. So, Doctor Hepburn, a suggestion was made regarding not only a 10% reduction in board members compensation, but also in specific staff. Can you, for the sake of the public in terms of reducing existing staff by 10%? How this impact in terms of bargaining units and so on and

155so forth, what the process would involve and what the potential sort of pushbacks would be if we start to reduce existing staff pay by 10%. Yes, absolutely. I know there's some bargaining that has to take place for some of those staff. And as well as the general counsel mentioned, some legal ramifications for just blatantly doing so. Okay, so there would be a process involved, right? And in terms of taking these specific staff and start to look at reducing their pay. What anticipated pushbacks do you would you expect to receive from, from, from staff? And which staff would this impact? I think you'll get another line in another board and another board meeting for another topic. To be honest, and from what MISS Rupert said, it would be about 500 plus employees that are actually on

156the chart. Okay. And would that potentially bring those staff members below? What would be considered market pay, market rate pay for those particular positions? Yes. Our market analysis for many of these jobs, the market pay is significantly higher for many of the positions that we have right now. Okay. So what do you would do you believe this would impact our ability to attract. The best qualified individuals, considering that we are already seemingly below market rate and are possibly reducing staff pay again by an additional 10%. Yes, I do think we will have a hard time recruiting to fill certain positions. We just talked about, you know, raising the coo or whatever combination to a different pay band just to make sure we can recruit, recruit high quality personnel. And how would this impact, in your

157opinion, student achievement? You know, we already have an impact on morale with what we're the morale of what we're doing right now. I think, you know, just it'll just compound that impact. Okay. So I guess my concern is I don't want to and I understand board member Rupert's and I suggestion, and I know it's coming from a great place and I appreciate it. But at the same time, I'm looking at the bigger picture to see the greater impact that it would have, you know, district wide on, on morale, on student achievement and so on and so forth. And so while it MAY seem like a good gesture, the consequences have not been evaluated to determine how grave they will be. Should we try to reduce staff pay by an additional 10%? That is already below

158market rate? So I am concerned about that aspect of it and the long term effect, even though it looks good in the present. I did also hear board member Thompson concern regarding, you know, I run a business, but there are some board members who are here and they're doing a a phenomenal job. They're working very hard. It's it's a lot of work, a lot of responsibility. And they pay for a school board member is a beginning teacher's salary. And there are some board members that we have here that this is their only income. They have children and so on and so forth. So listening to board Member Thompson's concern, and I'm sure she's not the only one, it would be it would be concerning for me to I would have to think seriously about that.

159It MAY not impact me, but 5000 to another board member MAY be significant because this is their only source of income and a board member. And I've seen it and I, I heard board member Hixson mentioned that she's seen comments regarding school board members in terms of compensation. A school board member is paid a beginning teacher's salary. A school board member does not get an executive director pay or a director pay. It's a beginning teacher's salary. And for the magnitude of and responsibility that's given to board members. You know, I just don't want the wrong information to be out there. And so I'm concerned about that aspect as well, board member Rupert, because even though some of us could afford the 5%, we have others with children and this is their only income. And I'm

160also concerned about the bigger picture. If we reduce staffing pay, which is about 500 staff by 10%, how would that impact your morale and how would that impact our ability to attract great staff? And how would that impact student achievement? So on a bigger picture, I'm, I'm concerned about that suggestion, and I would have to think a lot more deeply about it. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Anyone else for round two with five minutes left? Okay. So I will try to get through this as quick as possible. If we could eliminate the commentary. I will. I don't feel comfortable with the thumbs up. Thumbs down. MR. Bruno, is there an issue because we don't vote in school board meetings. So what I was going to do is ask for if anyone objected to something. But

161if MR. Bruno, if you're okay with doing the thumbs up, thumbs down, I will do that. I just, you know, I don't want to run afoul of sunshine. Yeah, well, the thumbs up. Thumbs down is okay with regards to consensus. But with that said, I am not a fan of thumbs up, thumbs down. I prefer the whether or not there's any objection. Okay. All right. So I will go through all of the board member suggestions that I've captured. And then if I missed anything, you can flag me down, but I'll just ask for any objections. And if you could just say that into the record. So I have a Doctor Jones's merging the Chief Facilities officer into the ceo position. Are there any objections? Alhadeff. Objection. Hickson. Objection. So, MADAM Chair, just for my clarification,

162because I'm recording our next steps that we need to talk about in review. What does that mean? Is it. So if a majority. Or is there an objection means that it doesn't. If the majority objects, then you will not you. Would not. Move forward with that. Chair. Just for a point of clarification, though, it is entirely within the authority of any school board member. When this comes back to a school board meeting to make that same motion. Correct. And so I'm understanding that formally presenting it would not make sense. If there's any objection, I'd ask my colleagues to be careful with their objections, because we MAY want to hear the staffing of some of these ideas because it could come back in a motion. So I'm not exactly sure if that's clear as mud or

163not, but any of these things that in this particular case, anybody could bring that idea back as a motion. Once the item is brought back to a school board meeting. Yeah, that was clear to me. We have three minutes left. So I have four people objecting to that, but three people having made in their comments, affirming, merging the Chief Facilities Officer into the ceo, MISS Thompson. Oh, sorry. I meant to say out loud, I object. So, MRS. Alhadef, MISS Leonardi, MISS Rupert, MISS Hixon, anyone else object to that? So that is something that you want to go ahead and present. Doctor Hepburn, do I need to go through MISS Thompson's consolidation of of positions in favor of hiring more social workers or. I think we heard everyone's voice. Yes. MISS Hixon. I'm just going to

164say MRS. Rupert had an objection to some of the changes of the suicide prevention, so I. Did anyone else have any objections to MISS Thompson's recommendations around those positions? Nope. Okay. So you were going to move forward. You have your direction on that. MISS Hickson's suggestion to go to another workshop. I know, Doctor Hepburn. You wanted to speak to that. Yes. I also suggest going to another workshop if we need additional time today. I just want to remind the board that these are people also that are in these positions, and we want to give them the most amount of time to help them transition if they're going to be impacted. I think adding an additional workshop adds actually two weeks to almost three weeks to this process. And we backed this up to this point

165just to make sure that people have the time to get the support they need to transition into something else, helping our staff, identifying vacant roles that are still on the books, that we can help people understand that they can transition into those. I think that is important. We need the time today to, you know, go through additional things. We have all the follow ups that that, that the board asked for. We're going to prioritize that information, like I said before, to get it to you. You can add three more minutes because I'm talking. I'm sorry, I'm taking up some of their time. And we have all the follow ups were prioritized, all that information, and put a pause on the follow ups that were coming. So we can get this information to the board. And

166and the chair is going through all the, the consensus items. Just to clarify that. So the two mental health coordinators that oversee cis and the cis positions are going to be cut. Everyone that was there was no objection to that. Just clarifying. But I do need to come back to one of your recommendations. So I don't I haven't forgotten about that. I skipped one by accident. So can we finish on MISS Hickson's? Who else would like to go to another workshop? Or is there any objection going to another workshop? Doctor Simon? MRS. Alhadef, I object to going to another workshop. Anyone else? MISS Thompson. What does Doctor Hepburn recommend? I do not recommend. I want to give the. For the purpose of doing this meeting earlier than normal, to give our employees the opportunity to

167get the resources and support they need to transition. So just vote yes. Just vote. Next week we have the follow ups for the information desk, and the chair is going through consensus items. And so we'll be ready because we're going to prioritize this and put a pause on some of the other things that are in the queue for follow ups. Then I would like to go just to vote. MISS Bowman. Will we have time to talk about it next week again? And then can we have assurance that the we will be talked to before so that we. And we see it in a timely manner. So we're. Yes. And. MR. I'm sorry to cut you off, MISS. You can finish. I apologize, and MR. Sullivan is going to go over run a show the timeline

168when we're done. And if I can add something real quick, sir, and I think to make the board more comfortable, what you're voting for next week, if we have that vote is org chart in the boxes. So it doesn't have to do with reappointment of people in those boxes. And it has nothing to do with the people below the the below the chart. Those reappointments would happen in JUNE when the superintendent presents his reappointment letters or list to the board. I just think if we have enough time to talk with the people that are making the the proposals, then we'll be prepared for the meeting so that I don't object. Doctor Holness. MADAM Chair, I'll go with the superintendent's recommendation. MISS Hickson. Thank you. I just want to point out something, though. We wouldn't have

169known about what was under the line unless people reached out to us, because the org chart itself doesn't have those under the line. So the discussions we all had with the superintendent and and staff didn't include any of those positions. I mean, that's why I asked, you know, for us to have all of them given to us in the documents. So I appreciate that you heard when I asked for that. But that's my concern, is we're going to rush to a vote next week when we've asked for all kinds of different changes here, and you have a week to to talk to all of us, get it situated and let the public have a chance to look at it. I have huge concerns with that, but I just want to point out, if you're talking

170to us, I'd like to also know what's all included under the line. Thank you. All right. Just real quick. And I'm sorry to disagree with you, but we have every authority in the world to go below the line when this comes back up next to us. So I heard very clearly from the general counsel that that's within our authorities. And if we bring it up next week, we can act. All right. I have the majority of the board not wanting to go to another workshop. So you have your direction on that. I do want to go back to one of MISS Thompson's recommendations on page seven, the consolidation of the director and assistant director of the Digital Learning and ai. Does anyone object to that? Doctor Zeman. Anyone else objecting? I have MISS Thompson, MISS

171Bowman and myself in support of that. Yes. And you said that as well, MISS Hickson. Support. Okay. So the majority of the board supports consolidating those two positions. Combining the. So MISS Hickson's recommendation to combine the ceo and cfo, I guess that would be moot because the majority of the board supported. Doctor Holness. Well, we didn't we didn't gather consensus on that, did we? We did, we did. We did. So the majority of the board supported merging the ceo and Chief Facilities Officer. Okay, sorry about that. All right. MADAM Chair. Yes, MISS. Doctor Hepburn, speak to that. That's no speak to the advantage of of combining. Or the disadvantage of. Combining the disadvantage. Well, just to for the board's history lesson, we had it combined before with our previous ceo. She had the duties of

172ceo and chief Facilities officers. Due to her expertise in both areas. We then. And then there was. The board wanted us to have a Chief Facilities officer separately, so we broke it out and that's. Chief Facilities Officer was to report directly to the ceo. And then the board told us that they want the Chief Facilities officer to report directly to the superintendent. So, yes, with an increase in pay, you'll be able to find and recruit somebody who can who has the skill set to do both. But yes, it's the market analysis for that position. The pay grade is is definitely super high. Yeah. Okay. I just need some clarity on that. And I think I misread MISS Hickson's suggestion. So MISS Hickson's suggestion was to move the chief Facilities officer to report under the ceo.

173No. Was to combine the ceo with the cfo and make it a deputy deputy. Okay. And keep the. Yeah. Sorry, the Chief Financial Officer and keep the Chief Facilities officer under the superintendent. I was in support of that. MISS Hickson, is anyone else in doctor Zeeman objects? Alhadeff object. MISS Rupert. Anyone else? Anyone else want to weigh in? Because we have seven people weighing in on that. Okay. All right, so we'll do the majority object to that. And then MISS Hickson recommended that the Chief Student Services be moved to an executive director, reporting to the Chief academic officer I support that. Does anyone else does anyone object to that? Director. The Chief Student Services move the Chief of Student Services to an executive director position. Reporting to the Chief Academic Officer. Did I capture that

174correctly, MISS Hickson? Yes. Or could go directly to the Deputy superintendent. I just. Yeah. Okay. Do you have your direction, Doctor Hepburn? All right. Doctor Zeman's proposal consolidating chiefs. Does anyone object to consolidating chief positions? That was that was just. I think inherently. We just. Did that with the previous discussion. So I don't know if okay. Centralizing custodial support. Does anyone object to that proposal? Centralizing custodial support was how he worded it. Which would be centralizing school custodial support. Would we? MISS Thompson I think. I think I need more information and to hear from the schools on how that might impact them. So could we ask for more information about what it would look like to centralize custodial support and centralized budget support, since that was another, does anyone object to asking for what that

175would look like? All right, Doctor Hepburn, do you have your direction directing the chief auditor to save to deliver 10% cost savings? Does anyone object to that. Aleph object? All right. The majority of the board is objecting to that. Cuts to additional cuts to overtime. Does anyone object to that? Yeah. And just a quick note, we did. We're leveraging our insight using c cilot. 365. A And to d date have yeaear ov year, we have cost savings of about $12 million in overtime to date. So we predict that overtime will be significantly less next year. So the cost savings will be a little bit less. All right. Doctor Zeman recommended an executive director for ease. Does anyone object to that? And he doctor Zeman recommended doing an executive director for ease. Which would be bringing

176back the position that we cut. Bringing back the position that was cut. Does anyone object to that? Nope. Okay. So go ahead, Doctor Hepburn. Okay, we'll figure it out because we just talked about the chief of Student Services with the executive director actually reported to her, and now we're talking about bringing back the executive director. It's a little. Executive director of student instead of a chief. It's the executive director of Student Services. No, but we're talking about Doctor Zeman's statement about bringing back the executive director of esc. That person reported it was a direct report to the Chief of Student Services. So that's what. MISS Thompson. I object because we heard from advocates that that extra layer of bureaucracy wasn't needed. And then I also want to note that I object to moving the student

177services under the deputy superintendent, because we've done that before and it didn't work. Well, sorry. MR. Spielberg and MR. Leon. Thank you, MADAM Chair. I just want to weigh in. We've been pretty quiet today. Want to weigh in on the student services aspect. We've seen significant and it's data proven significant improvements for our students and being able to access resources with a dedicated focus in that division. So, you know, we definitely have a perspective in terms of the work being done in that division and the sole focus on student services has gone a long way. There's also much work to do when it comes to student feedback programs. That's something that lives in the student Services division and needs to be expanded, right? So just want to provide, you know, some context to that and

178what the impact that would have on on our students. Okay. MISS Bowman. Yeah. I do not support changing how it is right now. Okay. I'd like to just say that. You mean the executive director of esc or the student services. Piece I keep? Yeah, the student services. I keep it the way it is. Okay, so let's go back to that. So it was the recommendation to change the chief Student services to an executive director, reporting to either the chief Academic officer or the deputy superintendent. So who objects to that, MISS Thompson, MISS Bowman, I will object to that. Now, MISS Rupert, anyone else? So that leaves us. So do you have your direction on that? Does that make more sense now? What's the direction? I didn't count. So to leave the Chief of Student Services

179alone. Gotcha. I'm about to delete that right now, so. Okay, so and then let me go back to the executive director for ease. So we would where do we land on that? I object to the statement. I also objected. All right. There's four of us objecting to reinstating the executive director for ease. And Lori does too. MR. Spielberg. Did you? Okay, sorry. Would you like me to object, MADAM Chair? No. You just gave me a lot more power than I had. No, I thought I saw you texted me, and then I was like, my. Face. Anyway. Okay. You have a lot more power than all of us. So that's that's for the best. The bringing back before and after care. That department was another one of Doctor Zeman's recommendations. Where do we land on that,

180MISS Hickson? She agrees. MADAM Chair, can I just comment on that? We didn't eliminate that position. Yeah, it's still a function under. So it's still a function. It's just who's in that? Who's in that box that the superintendent is? Okay. Does I have a question? Because what was the department before besides the director? Who else was in the aftercare department? Because that now you have aftercare and family engagement and no box underneath there says aftercare specifically. Not the ones. What is. There currently on the current org chart? There is a director for before and after care, and that's all that's there. That's on the org chart. There are positions below the line that are within that department currently in the Family and Community Engagement department, which reports to MR. Sullivan. Currently, there are those three

181positions that you see the assistant director and the the two what what do they call those. So those three lines under the director currently and the Family and Community Engagement department. So the. The realignment basically combines two departments into one. And before. And I'm going to go back probably maybe three years. There were those. Those departments were together. Granted, there was an executive director and a director. So I'm sorry, my proposal was to make that director as it is right now. I, I clearly understood, yes. But so because that's the confusing part. If, if you make a director of. Bringing it back. Out, you're breaking it back out. So that's my question. What would be underneath? Like, what would be the difference between what's being proposed right now and putting it back the way it

182is? Because we don't see under the line position. So it's very confusing. So currently below the below the line, which you don't see on the chart, there are, I believe it's four, three program specialist, two instructional facilitators. There's bookkeeping services. Is there a computer systems person? There is a, it's a, it's a small department. It is. And they do a lot of work. And then on the family and community engagement side, I think they're about nine staff members in that unit as well. And correct me if I'm wrong, MR. Solomon, because they currently report to him. So. So that work would merge. It would come together as one department. There still would be some staff in before and after school care, and there would be the staff in family and community engagement that would report

183to the director of before and after care and family and community engagement. And again, as Doctor Zeman said, his recommendation, what he's proposing, obviously, to his colleagues, is to and correct me if I'm wrong, is to keep two standalone departments. Okay. Can I have an alternate to that book? Go ahead. So what if if instead of making a director, you made it whatever is under assistant director so that you have a separate person in charge of before and after care? Because I think that's what you're trying to get to. And all we're doing today is asking you to bring it back. And so the idea. Your mic. The mic dot. Bring it back as it was, we can decide next week kind of levels and things like that once we get the whole package. Okay.

184Does anyone object to bringing it back as it was, as Doctor Zeman is recommending? Because if if you do or if you want to make changes to the org chart at the at the meeting with motions and things, then you might want to keep it the way it is. But does anyone object to bringing it back to the way it was? MISS Thompson. I'm fine with how it's been. I. I like the superintendent's proposal. Doctor Lozano. So if it goes back to current org chart, now you have an executive director of family and community engagement that was under the. Chief of staff. Yep. And then Eric Anderson's position that before and after care position stays under Doctor Wanza. That's how it is currently in 2526. The position is as an executive director or director. It's

185executive director, family and community engagement under the Chief of Staff on this. 2526 org chart. And the senior person who's solely responsible for before and after calls at wide level. Director. That's all I'm proposing, is that for a $55 million a year operation that makes money for us that that that senior role for before and after care be a director. He's asking to add director to the to delineate direct and not be too. It's what I. Said to. You said it exactly right. Do you have your direction, Doctor Hepburn? He's not saying to put it back the way it was this year. He's saying have two directors. Yes. In the role of before and after care under one director and the family community as it's. Listed both, both both as directors. But to stand alone,

186I yes. Okay, I that's a consensus I just want to make. I mean, there's only two objections to that. So Doctor Zeman's proposal to eliminate one layer of management and all staff associated with that layer. MISS Thompson, you object, MISS Hickson? You object, MISS Bowman, you object, MISS Rupert, you object? Wow. MISS Bowman. I mean, is this something that's practical? This is going to come next week. He's going to remove a layer of management and we're going to vote on it next week. I mean, is that in in any world happening in real life. I'm going to go ahead and object. So that's five no votes or no objections. Member of senior staff in charge of increasing revenue. So adding that role to a member of senior staff, does anyone object to that? Okay. No

187objections to that. Hold on chair, slow up. Let me. And what was that last one you just mentioned? Adding the role of increasing revenue, adding that role to a member of senior staff. And then you I don't know if you captured the follow up on coming back to us with ai positions within academics. I have that as a follow up. And then Doctor Azeem and I have this. I'm not sure if I miswrote it, bringing back 2 to 3 options on how we can streamline. I don't know if there was an academics. Thank you. I knew I was missing a word there. Yes. Just bringing back these options. To see what they might look like. Does anyone object to that seeing no objection. All right. And then finally, this is what I have recorded. So

188we MAY have to add some things, but MISS Rupert's suggestion on reducing board member salaries. I have MISS Rupert and MISS Hickson. Before we go any further on that, general counsel, is that legal? Can this board vote to reduce my salary? Your salary is set by the legislature. Okay, so I'm confused about why we would talk about this. This is not the purview of the board. It's just not. I think there was a recommendation to voluntarily reduce if the board was inclined to do that. But and we already have the ability, as the chair pointed out, to anybody, can voluntarily forgo their salary, which means that money would go back to the general fund. Yeah. So I, again, I'm, I'm just I don't know why. I don't know where we go with this. I guess.

189It's not I mean, it's not really in the purview of the school board because it is set by the legislature. You can just voluntarily. I think the other part of the question was the 10% for everybody on the chart. I believe it. Was. Oh, 10% for everyone on the chart. Did I MISS That? That's it. So reducing the salaries for everyone on the chart by 10%. MADAM Chair. Yeah. I just want to clarify, are we allowed to be discussing reducing salaries of staff without going through the proper process? MR. Bruno. So again, I think Doctor Hepburn said that and I'm saying it as well. We have a lot of legal considerations. That will be the collective bargaining agreements, contracts. You have just other legal liability that MAY come with something like this. So I would

190advise that if the board is inclined to get more information, then you can direct us to get more information or just just say yes or no. Whether or not you want us to move in that direction to look into it. Okay, but does this board have the right to discuss reducing a large number of employee salaries by 10% without following the formal process? No, I mean, that's why I'm saying that you would have to there's lots of legal exposure and liability. All right. So for those two proposals, I would just like to have a yes or a no move even exploring it. So for reducing the salaries on the chart by 10%, does anyone object to that? Yes. MRS. Alhadef, doctor Zeeman, Doctor Holness, MISS Hixon, MISS Bowman, MISS Thompson, myself. Okay, so and then

191I think Doctor Simon's line of questioning kind of mirrored my line of questioning. I don't know that we can really legally like it's not in our purview. We don't set our salaries probably for the best. And we can already voluntarily reduce our salaries. So I don't know that we need to have that conversation anyway. Okay. Was there anything I missed? Yes. I'm sorry. So on page, I had made the suggestion on page 16 about the two assistant directors under director Professional Practices. And then on page 19, my suggestion was to eliminate the Assistant director under family and community engagement. Okay. So could you reiterate the first one, please, MISS? Page 16. Under Director Professional Practices, there's an assistant director for professional standards and then another assistant director employee evaluations. And my suggestion was to eliminate

192those boxes. Does anyone object to that? I'll object. Anyone else. So page 16, two assistant directors. I didn't capture the MISS Thompson. You. So, MISS Thompson, MISS Alhadef object to eliminating those two positions. Anyone else? Can you be more specific. MISS Hixon? Can you say those again, please? They're the two assistant directors underneath the director of professional practices. Doctor Zeeman objects. We have three objections. Does anyone else object to eliminating those two assistant directors? MISS Bowman? Anyone else? That's four objections. Is this the one that Doctor Lozano talked about earlier? Page 16. Yes. And then page 19. The assistant director of Family and community engagement. All right. We're still on the page 16. Because directors. Sorry, there's a I just want the board to understand there's consequences for some of this because there's a lot

193of work. With a small, already small team. All right. I will go ahead and object to that. So that's five objections for the recommendation for page 16. Page 19. It was again, the the assistant director of what MISS Hixson. Family and Community engagement. MISS Thompson objects misses. Object. Does anyone. MISS Rupert objects. Object okay. And MISS Bowman objects. Okay. Anyone else I know? I missed some other stuff. So, MR. Server, I had you on the list. And then Doctor Holness. Thank you. Chair. The majority, if not all of my suggestions were skipped, so I'd like to go through them again. On page three. The combination of the media and Community Relations Manager and the District Relations Coordinator suggested those positions be combined. Can you restate that? I couldn't hear you. Media and communication. Paragraph three.

194Page three. Page. Paragraph three. Page three. Middle of the page. Directly under the Director of Media Relations manager, Media and Community Relations coordinator, District Relations. Combine those two positions. Does anyone object to that? Doctor Zeman Doctor Holness, we're on page three. Three. MISS Thompson. Small team. Just want to remember the communications. I'd use the nice word sub par. So the MISS Hickson, MISS Bowman, MISS Thompson, Doctor Zeman and Doctor Holness. Did I capture it? And I will object to that. Go ahead, MR. Page for Assistant Superintendent, chief Academic Officer, suggesting that those roles be combined and. Quite frankly, I don't care how that work gets divvied up. I just want those two roles combined. Does anyone object to that, doctor Zeman. Only because I asked the suit to bring 2 or 3 feasible options of

195combining academics. And so that would be kind of all mixed up in that. I'd rather see what the options are rather than just, you know, approve this. MISS Thompson objects, MISS Hickson objects. Just want to remind us our key mission is academics. Yeah. I just want to say that out loud. So MISS Rupert objects. MADAM Chair, I object, and I just wanted clarification. The assistant's superintendent. This is in reference to the ceo. Yes. That's cool transformation. I significantly absolutely object to that because this district is where it is in a large part because of the sdo. Okay, so majority of the board objects to that. Go ahead, MR. Rivera. Page six. Under Director of Leadership Development and Teacher Support Specific Positions, supervisor, leadership development Coordinator, Leadership Development. I think these two positions should be combined.

196Does anyone object to that or Doctor Hepburn? Do you have any? I would just say you said Supervisor of Teacher support. I'm sorry. MR. All the way to the right under the Director of Leadership Development and Teacher Support, underneath the principal coach, first position, supervisor, leadership development, second position coordinator, leadership development, the supervisor and the coordinator I believe should be combined. So there's four total positions there. Correct. So you're saying combine it into two. C Crect. So reducuce the two. So o one correct. One position per per role is what you're. Saying correct. Thank you for the clarification. Does anyone object to that. Doctor Cohen. Yeah. That's going to significantly impact our leadership pipeline across the district and in school support as well. So I mean, I would ask to reconsider that, but we can

197come back with a follow up to explain why that would be a significant impact. Not going to reconsider. So I'm interested to hear what my colleagues have to say. MISS Thompson, anyone else objecting to that? MADAM Chair? Doctor Holness. Can I just hear again from the superintendent the impact that that would have if we remove two of these leadership positions? Yeah. So, you know, building the capacity of our school leaders is vitally important to doing the work at our schools. Right? They have a lot of autonomy and making sure they have the ability to carry out those roles. But I'll also ask Doctor Cohen to add any any additional additional information. Remember, we're sixth largest school district at scale. We've got 230 plus schools. That's 230 plus principals and assistant principals. And so with leadership

198teams. So building school leadership capacity is an essential part of what we do to give them that level of autonomy, to carry out the functions that they need to do day to day. Okay. So, doctor, before you comment, the suggestion is to remove two out of the four. Correct. So you instead of having two per box you would have one. Understand. So if if one is removed out of the four would that still be significantly impactful. It still is a significant impact. We will do whatever the board is directing us to do, but it would be a significant impact because the supervisor leadership is all leadership in the district, from the bus level to the food nutrition, it's all leadership in the entire district. It's just not school based. Okay. I object. Doctor Simon objects.

199MISS Pullman, MISS Hickson, go ahead. I just want to point out on that chart, though, the supervisor for teacher development has two people. There's way more teachers than there is any leadership. So reducing leadership to two still gives you way more people to cover leadership than teachers. So I, you know, when we're looking at equity here, I think that the suggestion isn't as detrimental as maybe we're being told. And just to add, MISS Hickson, the work of building capacity for teachers is, as it's all embedded in the functions under the director of Elementary learning, the functions under the Director of Secondary learning. A lot of teacher development, especially secondary, is very content based. So it's embedded in there. And that's why you don't need so many positions in the teacher development area, because we're building

200teacher capacity across the board in all those other areas. Science. All of those other functions. So it's embedded in there. That's why you that's why you don't see a lot of positions there because it's the building capacity is, is embedded in those specific content areas or level areas versus in leadership. Leadership is leadership. We don't have math teacher, math, right? Math principal and all of that. So that's why you see it like that. Just an fyi. Any other objections? All right. There are only four objections to that. So do you have your direction on that. Next one? MR. Last one, chair, page 13. Under facilities directly under the Executive Director of Budget. If we go down to pay band c and b, there is an assistant director of capital budgeting who reports to the director

201and then the executive director. Underneath that assistant director are multiple analysts. My suggestion would be to remove the assistant director of capital budget. Are there any other any objections to that? Doctor Zeman MISS Thompson. MISS MISS Bowman, you had a question. Are you object? I'd like to hear from MISS Johnson about what that would look. Johnson. There's that facility. Sorry, MR. Dawson. Yeah. From someone. Well, that that position. That position not only deals with capital budget from the facility standpoint, it deals with maintenance as well. So it. And we are in constant contact with the assistant director, laying out plans, putting establishing the five year capital plan, all of those things. So that's a huge undertaking to, to, to leave to one individual. So I would strongly recommend that that position stay. Just want to

202make sure I'm clear on my ask because it's not one individual. Okay. You have the executive director of budget, you have the director of capital budget. I'm suggesting you remove the assistant director of capital budget, keep all the analysts, keep the director and obviously keep the executive director. So. MISS, MISS Johnson. There's a twofold what's going on? The executive director is only going to cover the financial portion because we need oversight of the financial as well as food service and transportation. So they got it courtside. They doesn't it's an indirect reporting structure. It's not a direct reporting structure to the executive director. That is on my org chart on page 17. So it's not a direct. If you see the executive director, the position is more the assistant director budget and of the BSc in

203the grant is reporting all to the Executive director, and there's an indirect reporting structure of the capital program, food service and transportation. From the financial standpoint. The Director of Capital Budget reports to the Executive Director of budgeting, correct? No, that's not correct. The report to the executive Director of Capital Program. That dotted line means an indirect report. So we have the executive director, which sits under the budget office but has a dotted line to capital program, dotted line to the finance folks in food and nutrition, dotted line to the finance folks in transportation for better continuity. So we want to chase data around and really give some insight about next steps. Okay, so here's my suggestion. Have the analysts, there's multiple analysts under this line have that work of the assistant director completed by the

204analyst. The analysts report directly to the director of capital budget because that's a solid line. Right. And modify the dotted line to a solid line and have them either be a direct or indirect report to the executive director of budgeting. All right. So I have MISS Thompson, Doctor Zeman, me. I object to real quick. This has no savings. This is a capital funded position. And that see chief Financial Officer already eliminated 45 positions. She took the biggest cut of any division. I think she did a great job scrubbing her numbers. And I just can't take more. And Doctor Holness and MISS Bowman objecting. So I believe that was your last one, MR. Sabara? Yes. Thank you for the opportunity to verbalize all of my objections on the record, I. Yeah. And I just wanted to

205note you had asked questions around those positions. You didn't make formal, you know, proposals. And so I wasn't trying to skip you. It was just that I only noted questions and general statements about those things. So in the future, if we could all just when we're making these proposals in workshops, if you want more consensus on an item to just flag that. Thank you for the opportunity to bring it up again, chair. I appreciate. It. Doctor Holness. Thank you, MADAM Chair. So I did make a suggestion that the superintendent look at. Because part of the concerns, especially from the public to was that we we are not looking at the upper leadership. So one of my suggestion was to have the superintendent look at up to two of the chief positions and record those as

206executive directors. I don't think that was mentioned when you went through my my suggestions. And also I just, I, I just want to confirm, MADAM Chair, that we did support bringing back the director of aftercare. Did we do that? Yes. Okay. Got it. Okay. All right. So looking at two chief positions and turning them into executive directors. Up to. Does anyone object to that? MISS Thompson? Or Doctor Holness suggested is proposing that we, the Doctor Hepburn, look at look at to sorry. Up to look at up to two chief positions and making them executive directors. So I don't know. Okay, so MISS Hickson apparently suggested that exact thing, and. I suggested making a chief an executive director. Correct. Didn't get consensus. So. MADAM Chair, I just want to clarify. Board Member Hickson had suggested making

207the Chief of Student Services be an executive director. My suggestion is more general, that the superintendent look at all the chiefs and to bring information back to us that we can consider of of changing up to two of the chiefs to executive directors. So it's not a it's not a, a, a direction to do it. It's more of a direction to bring the information back. And then we can, as far as a suggestion of up to two, and then we can vote on it at the next board meeting. Any objection to that? Doctor Hepburn, you have your guidance on that? Yes, Doctor Holness, anything else? That's it for me, MADAM. Did I MISS Anything else from anyone else? Sorry. Just one quick thing to clean up. I had proposed that the superintendent bring back, like,

208a very clear one ish page kind of summary about the ai positions. I think we've decided already, though, that we would like to see that removed from the org chart. Doctor Hepburn, is that what you captured? Remove the ai positions from the org chart. There were positions about digital learning. Were you directed to bring back org charts without those positions next week? No, you were not. Terrific. Thank you chair. It was it was the assistant director that was removed. Do you have that? But the assistant director that there was no consensus for that one. Yeah. MISS Bowman. I think we were renaming that. Yeah, I have. That. As a note for us to rename the capture. Thank you. That's perfect. Okay. Anyone else? All right with that? Many, many, many minutes after our 15 minute

209deadline. It's still a good idea. At the direction of the superintendent, the following agenda topics are tentatively scheduled to be addressed during the upcoming workshops. APRIL 28th. Rural Development Information Systems five policies Rural Development for policies 50, 90 and 5100. Student Code of Conduct Rural Development Policy 4390. Childcare programs, rfp owners, reps agreements, sro Transitional Plan, MAY 12th Advisory Committee reports 2026. Regular legislative session recap redefining our schools update oss Quarterly Report 2526 quarter three Rural Development use of Service Animals Diversity Committee annual update, rural development, cep policies, rural development, use of Broward County school facilities for non-school purposes. Please note that the order of topics and schedule remain tentative and are subject to adjustment at the superintendent's discretion. I will do the board, you know, discussion after the special so we can get to

210the special. But. So I will ask you to share any student successes or anything like that at the end of the special, the scheduled order of business for the School Board workshop of the School Board of Broward County, Florida has been completed. Seeing no objections, I will now adjourn the school Board workshop. Okay. And we will go to our special school. Board meeting for that. Five minute.