Special School Board Meeting - Apr 28, 2026

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

002justice for all. As we begin, we reaffirm our vision 100% proficiency for all students. As an a-rated school district, we remain committed to sustaining this achievement and supporting every student to reach their highest potential. Our theme this year is believe, empower, achieve one. Broward. Today's Special School Board meeting will operate in accordance with School Board Policy 1020, and the board will review the items as advertised and presented by the superintendent. The superintendent released a revised agenda with certain changes for this meeting and published it on the school district's website. The chair finds pursuant to section 120 .525 Florida statutes, that good cause exists for such changes and accepts this revised agenda. MAY I have a motion and a second to close the agenda? So moved. Moved by DR. Zeman, second by MISS Hixon. All in

003favor of closing the agenda? Let it be known by saying I all opposed. Say no. The agenda is now closed. We will soon hear from our registered public speakers. We ask that decorum be maintained and civility and respect be shown during public comment. Our General counsel will assist the chair in maintaining decorum during this period. We also want to remind our public speakers of the rules and expectations regarding the agenda, public comment portion of the Special School Board meeting, as well as board policy attorney Dupree Bruno, please explain the rules of public comment. Good afternoon. Thank you, MADAM Chair. Public comment is governed by School Board Policy 1020 and is intended to provide input on the board's duties, decisions and the overall operation of the school district. The school board is viewpoint neutral during public

004comment per school board policy, 1020 speakers must state their name, city of residence and whether they are lobbyists. Before beginning their remarks. All remarks must be redirected and directed to the board as a whole. The board will not respond to or engage with speakers during public comment, and no action will be taken unless the item is on the agenda. During the agenda speaking time, speakers will have up to three minutes per item and up to one minute on motions, unless it is part of the same item. A speakers total speaking time MAY not exceed 12 minutes per meeting, with an additional one minute if a motion is introduced unless it is part of the item, a visible timer will be used and the microphone MAY be turned off when time expires. Speakers must limit their

005comments to matters related to the school board business. The agenda items must remain relevant to the specific item. Comments MAY not address matters that are pending litigation. Quasi judicial proceedings, active investigations or administrative hearings, solicitation and lobbying activities must comply with applicable school board policy. Abusive language defined as profanity threatening or name calling is prohibited. In addition, clapping, hissing, booing, shouting, yelling or other disruptions from the audience is not allowed. Speakers who fail to follow proper decorum and the chambers will be ruled out of order by the board chair. Failure to comply MAY result in the microphone being turned off or recess being called after a warning. The chair MAY also direct removal from the meeting and the building by law enforcement or the Sergeant at Arms. MADAM Chair. Thank you, Attorney Dupree. Bruno, the

006board wants to hear from you, and we appreciate your cooperation in maintaining a respectful, orderly and productive meeting environment. When it is time for public speakers, I will call five speakers at a time. When you hear your name, please line up behind the podium on the right hand side of the room. Please follow. Start with one person at the podium at a time. Please follow the staff's directions when lining up and approaching the podium. When your time is up, please yield the mic and exit the podium and follow staff's direction. Please be advised that any individual who disrupts the meeting refuses to to follow the chair's directions, or interferes with the orderly conduct of this meeting will be given a first warning and then MAY be asked to leave the boardroom or removed from the

007building to ensure safety and integrity of the proceedings. MAY I have a motion and a second on item one and item two as they are companion items. So moved. Moved by DR. Zeman. Second by MISS Thompson. Public comment on items one and two. For both items one registered speaker. Doctor Natalie Lynch Walsh. Doctor. Natalie Lynch, Walsh, Plantation, Florida. I signed up to speak to this item because I keep seeing Hvac filter installation services. This one's a piggyback. When the new. These are. You're hiring a company to install filters when supposedly. That's what ppo is doing. But a couple of years ago, the diversity chair took pictures of filters that. Some new. Some old piled high in a number of high schools, and we still never really got an answer until as to why and how

008they got there. So it would be a great idea to audit what you have going on as far as Hvac filters, who you're paying, whether it's ppo or piggyback contract, because this seems to be getting out of control with Hvac filters. And it would be interesting to see if those mountains of Hvac filters are still in existence. I forget which high schools, but I do have the pictures. Thank you. That concludes our speakers. Board member comment on items 1 or 2. Missus Alhadeff yes. Are we documenting the filters in our system with the iPads yet? MISS Dorsett? Good afternoon. Board. Mark Dorsett, chief operating officer, task assigned. We're not documenting them with iPads yet. We are documenting them by identifying the dates that they were changed and and it is placed in the system. So

009we do have a database that capture all that information. As you know, we're still in the process of getting the iPads up and running. And so we can do the filter checks with the iPad to install them in the system. And what was the name of the system again? That's Maximo. Maximo. t Thank y y, MrMr.Ererra.. I just want to make sure I have a clear understanding as to what exactly we're paying this $225,000 for, MR. Superintendent. Is this company supplying us with these Hvac filters and going around, hopefully at least once a month and replacing them in our various schools and buildings? MR. Dorsett? Yeah, absolutely. That's the service that we purchased. This particular item, the item number one was a piggyback and it expired. Instead of going back with that piggyback, we went

010and researched other companies and got a better rate. So we're coming. We're coming with a piggyback, which is item number two. If I can. MR. Superintendent, do we know the differential in this proposed contract as to what exactly the costs of the installation service breaks down to, as compared to the actual net cost of the Hvac filters? Go ahead, MISS Dorsett. If you have that info. Know that that is a complete project. It encompasses the purchase of the filters and the installation all at once, and the price depends on the size of the filters as installed. Well, I'm wondering, has any analysis or questions been been asked about how much could we save if we just bought the filters and had members of our custodial staff just install them on a monthly basis? Would that

011save us, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars, or are we getting just some awesome rate on the Hvac filters because we're also paying this company for the install? Yes, we are getting a great rate to do this. We used to install these. We had the custodial staff installing these filters before during Covid, we we had to do a filter blitz where we had to go through the entire district to determine which school to change out the filters of the schools. You actually had some schools with no filters in them. So we wanted to make sure that when we changed these filters, they're identified with the dates on them, and they're changed at a frequent basis. So the district used to entrust its custodial staff with changing the Hvac filters. And after Covid, we started

012paying a company to install them for us because we could no longer apparently trust our custodial staff to do this. That was not the the the comment. What I said was because we it's not that we didn't trust them. There were some schools that did not have filters or some schools that filters weren't changed for in excess of a year. So what we wanted to do is we wanted to make sure that the filters were changed in, in, in accordance with the time frame time frame that it was required. So we moved to that option. MR. Superintendent, I can't support this without knowing how much we're paying for the installation service and how much we're paying for the actual filters, because we have great custodians in our schools, and they're very capable and they're very,

013very hard working. And if we're paying basically like hundreds of thousands of dollars just for an installation service, I probably wouldn't be okay with that. So my $0.02. Thank you, MISS Hixon. Thank you. I have a question. Or I guess just clarification. So item one is a contract that actually expired in the request is because once all the invoices came in, we were short this money, is that correct? Correct. Correct. Okay. Then item number two is for the new the new contract. Correct. That is correct. Perfect. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify that. And I MISS Doctor Hepburn that we've had this discussion before. And I know that you said we would start seeing the changes. But this continues to state to say spend authority. And we've had the discussion on where spend authority

014is really confusion confusing. And we were going to say budget authority moving forward. So when can we start to expect the items to move from spend authority to budgeted? We've already made that transition for the for to start in MAY, so you won't see it for. Well, this is the last board meeting in APRIL. So the next board meeting. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Any anyone else? All right. All in favor of items one and two say aye. Aye. All opposed? Say no. No. Items passed unanimously with one dissenting with one dissenting. Oh, sorry. I shouldn't have said unanimously. Items pass 8 to 1 with one dissenting vote. MR. Cervera, can I get a motion and a second on item three. Moved. Moved by DR. Zeman. Seconded by MISS Hixon public comment on item three.

015Yes, MADAM. MADAM Chair. We have four registered five registered speakers with the following individuals. Please proceed to the podium. Doctor. Natalie Lynch Walsh, Melanie. Berkin, Vanessa Matute, Nadine Martinez, Jackie. Luscomb. Doctor. Natalie. Lynch. Walsh. Still. Plantation, Florida. I'm a little confused because in looking at the job descriptions, which are supposed to dictate where people report to, what are the minimum qualifications, there's an executive director of budget, and it says that it reports to chief financial officer. Maybe there's two others, because you can also find an executive director of budget under the chief operations officer for where food and nutrition is. And then there's another one. This MAY be capital. Oh no. That says executive director of budget. These are on pages. Actually, this might be the old version, but maybe page 11 and 13. So

016do you have multiple job descriptions or just one? And then you don't because someone actually asked me this last week, how do you know how many of a particular position you actually have in the district? This would be an example if, and it would have really helped with 100 pages to put page numbers like a table of contents, so that you're not trying to hunt for these job descriptions. They made a list of them, but no, no, no page numbers. The thing that would have made everyone's life easier. Point being, if you have executive director budget and you're going to which you're going to have two new ones, one for food and nutrition, which I disagree with, and one for facilities, which I also disagree with. You should either have. You need to have three

017and show that they report so that the board knows that it's being recommended, that they have three executive directors of budget. And then whether you actually need these when you're shrinking the district, these are new positions. You did not have these before. So the job descriptions, which you're being asked to approve today and you didn't have last week or whatever that was when you first started this discussion, the job descriptions today, how do you even you're going to approve them? But what are you approving because you haven't seen them before and you don't know if you're approving one, three, six. So please get some clarity on that to ensure that the job descriptions match the org chart and they're not hiding. You don't have one job description, and it pops up multiple times in the

018org chart and you lose track. It just says Chief Financial Officer. But that's not where these actually report to. There very well could be one under Chief Financial officer probably, but the other two are food, nutrition and facilities. Thank you. Hello. Good afternoon. My name is Melanie Burkin. I am from Davie, Florida, and I am here today to speak to you about the. I want to address the proposed Director of Wellness and Mental Health job description. The issue before you here is. The title is not just the title, it's the substance of the role. It seemed to me that the. This job description is supposed to encompass both the responsibilities of the current student Prevention and Wellness supervisor as well, but it completely omits the responsibilities of the former Director of Mental health services, including

019the district wide mental health systems leadership, clinical oversight, suicide prevention frameworks, and compliance with state and federal mental health requirements. If this position is intended to be a combination of both roles, then the job description should clearly include the responsibilities of both as written, it does not. At the same time, the minimum qualifications are being expanded to include areas that are not mental health related, including Ed, leadership or a related field. While Florida certification as a school social worker and or certification in an area of mental health has been moved from a minimum requirement to merely a preferred qualification. Mental health is not a related field. It is a licensed, regulated profession. Lowering and broadening the minimum qualifications while removing mental health specific responsibilities creates a clear pathway for Non-mental health leadership to oversee suicide

020prevention, crisis response and statutory mental health services. It also should include all of the current job duties, which I think some of it's included, including supervising the social work program, the homeless education program, the combined foster care and child abuse, and now the removed attendance coordinator position as well. So there's a lot that should be included in this description. But I understand it was a maybe short term turnaround, but there's a lot of omissions in here as well as broadening the requirements, which should it's a mental health position. How can Broward support having a district mental health coordinator without any mental health background in its. Just doesn't make sense. I would assume we don't make education certification optional for the director of academics, so I would assume we would not do so here as well.

021I respectfully urge the board not to approve this job description as it's written, and to require qualifications and responsibilities that clearly reflect both roles and protect the integrity of mental health leadership. Also, it would be great if you could fix the typo because that thing makes me crazy. It says Pan. It says pan and monitor the effectiveness. Thank you. And we'll have decorum in the audience, please. Thank you. Next speaker. Good afternoon board. My name is Vanessa Matute. I am a licensed bilingual mental health counselor in the state of Florida. I specialize in trauma as well as suicide. I work in the cis role, serving approximately 90 students on my caseload, many of them which are high needs, high risk identified through referrals, behavioral concerns, failing grades, as well as srus. These students are students

022who are struggling the most every day. I work directly with these students in crisis. I de-escalate situations before they become emergencies. I support students experiencing suicidal thoughts. I provide a safe space so that they can stay in school, stay regulated, stay on track academically without this support. These are the students who fall through the cracks. This is not occasional contact and this is daily consistent interventions with students who need it the most. Right now they are watching these decisions unfold. They are coming into my office in tears, asking if they're going to lose their support system. That fear alone is already impacting my school, as well as my students and my parents. Eliminating ssi positions does not remove a title. It removes direct daily support for the highest need students on campus. It removes a

023layer of protection, prevention and support. If we are truly prioritizing the students, then we must protect the positions that work with them every single day. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Hi, my name is Nadine Martinez. I'm a licensed clinical social worker in the state of Florida, and I specialize in child welfare and trauma. I currently work in the cis position, serving a caseload of about 90 students. I serve as a frontline resource to students, providing crisis intervention and immediate emotional support. I work in a fluid and collaborative environment with school counselors, social workers, support services, teachers, ap security personnel to create a seamless, interdisciplinary ecosystem for our students. Removing this position, this department and its leaders dismantles a critical pillar of support that students rely on daily. It disrupts trust, stability, and access to

024care. At a time when student mental health needs continue to grow, as evidenced by them requesting more mental health services. Our students deserve consistency, continuity, safety, and access to the support and resources that help them succeed academically, academically, emotionally and mentally. Thank you. Hi Jackie. I had an observation to make, first of all about the role of Assistant Director for transport operations and special needs transportation. This is going to be an important role for oversight of transportation of students with disabilities. That's not just about being able to read on a piece of paper what they need and carry it out. It goes far deeper than that. There needs to be a knowledge of of s and of the world of disabilities, and I don't see any of that in the job description. I think that's

025a major omission because, for example, written into the new job description we have that this person will oversee the compliant delivery of transportation services with a focus responsibility for s, and then later as well, again, monitor and ensure compliance with all federal, state and district regulations, policies and procedures, particularly those related to s transportation and student safety. And yet, nowhere in the minimum qualifications and experience is s mentioned. And it can't just be a job about, you know, can you identify the wheels on a bus and run a run a fleet? It's it has to have some Esq grounding. I'd like to respectfully suggest there be conversation about adding that in. I also echo all the points made by MISS Berkin about. If you're merging two roles. If the director of Mental Health Services and

026then the new Director of Wellness and Mental Health, seeing a job description for that that kind of merged or new position being weaker than either of the two were before is dismaying. I do think that you have a public relations exercise here to consider as well. If you're going to be having the the begging bowl out again, rightly for new referendum money, we can't be cutting mental health. And at the same time, with the other hand outstretched, saying, give us more money for mental health. And at least if we're going to weaken the job description and the job requirements, I think as well, that needs redress here. And then just generally, I wanted to make an observation, if I MAY, that where we talked about or whether it was talked last week about the elimination

027of jobs and redefining job descriptions and swallowing one job into another and rewriting the role we keep hearing about, well, this will make us more efficient. And no, this person can take over that role. Why don't we just be honest and say, this is actually going to be darn difficult? This is a stretch. It's actually not going to be easy. Yes, there are going to be holes and gaps in services and we are going to need to see. I feel, job descriptions that match that pledge. So we can't be saying, well, this person can now do that person's job and we'll get rid of person b over here, unless we're seeing that in the other person's job description. Otherwise, it's a kind of unofficial just posting somebody else's job on the rest of the office

028with nobody really sure who's going to be doing it. Thank you. Our last public speaker, doctor. Sorry, PRESIDENT Anna Fusco. Anna Fusco, Broward Teachers union PRESIDENT. So I'm asking you guys to vote this down. There's jobs on here that they did not come to the Broward Teachers Union and negotiate the change names, pay grades. And if you pass it through, we will be suing. End of story. That's a fact. Two, you had an opportunity to save some money on the last item and you chose not to. I'm confused. Natalie, what does that word malfeasance. What are those words we used all the time? Just saying. So number three. The next referendum that comes out, let's just leave out mental health. We don't need it. We don't need to pay for it. It's all right. We'll

029just have another Nicholas Cruz. We'll have more suicides. I wasn't there one this this weekend, one of our students. So I mean, we obviously don't value that. We have educators that want to help our students be productive in the mindset. So then they can come in to continue to be an a rated district. But you have this group here that lead you and guide you with the superintendent. So I'm asking you guys, since the power is with you to vote this down and do not cut any, however you want to word it potato, potato, tomato, tomato, stop with the semantics that they're feeding you and understand that there's different varieties of an educator that molds the student, our sis, our family therapists, our counselors, our school counselors, our psychologists. There's all different names that fits

030the bill to what meets the need of a particular student, a kid. Am I having a crisis of a trauma that he wants to kill himself? And there could be a different trauma that they're getting beat up at home or they've been raped. Or I'm addicted to drugs. I have a behavior problem. I don't know how to not throw a rock at a teacher's face that I just got a call this morning. Do you know that your students throwing rocks at teachers faces, but you want to cut back any and anyone that can meet the needs of a student because you keep crying about money. So I'm going to ask you again, pay attention to these jobs that are added in here. Vote it down for now. Bring it back. And this should have been

031spoken about after the org chart, because now you're going to be compelled, if I don't vote it through, what are you going to do with the org chart? I already know the games of semantics. I brought the popcorn again today to sit here and watch that. You guys are just going to all let it pass through, and then you're going to reap the consequences next school year when everybody's overworked, overloaded students are going to be in so much trauma that it's not going to be in a district anymore, and I don't care about it. Thank you. That concludes our public speaking. Board member discussion. MISS Hixon. Thank you. I have some questions and some motions, but I'd like to ask the general counsel if she could speak to a couple of the items that were

032just mentioned. So first of all, is there a legal requirement o o should we havav dononeomething withth the u uonon befefor t ts item ca t us? So I' goi to just double check the language in the cba. But I can say that hr did forward the job descriptions to to the union, to the various groups. But I'll go back to that specific question that you asked. Okay. Then my second question to general counsel or I guess the superintendent, I'm not sure who, but we have been told over and over again, we must pass the job descriptions before we pass the org chart. So can you speak to that? Go ahead. Normally you want to have the job descriptions established so that you can formulate the org chart. Okay. That was said normally, but we've

033always been told we had to. So. Is that is there some kind of statute or something that requires that or best practices? I'm not familiar with a specific statute. That's the run of show that Park County is implemented. And in any school district I've been in, it's usually job description then org chart. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that. So I appreciate all the speakers coming. I have a couple of questions. And then I'm going to go through my motions here. So Doctor Hepburn in in our org chart we have supervisors managers, executive directors, directors, assistant directors, chiefs, all of these things. So everybody who I'm going to just start with assistant directors, everyone who's an assistant director, are they on the same pay band? Yes. Doesn't matter what department you're in, you're on the

034same page. Unless hr tells me differently that they are on the same pay band. Correct? I think they're confirming, but there MAY be some specific situations, such as a chief that was pushed up to a pay band. T right. So there MAY be some some anomalies there for a couple, but for the most part. Okay. So in general. Yes. Yeah. In general, yes. So my emotions kind of speak to that because as, as we went through all of these new job descriptions, my concern really was you had some assistant directors that needed a master's, some that needed a bachelor's, one only needed an aa degree. And I, I have concerns about the. Being, you know, the continuity of that. So based on that, and I'm going to add something in here based on some information

035we got. But so. My. Chair I'd like to make a couple motions if that's okay. So the first one is assistant director, enterprise Project manager, which is actually page 30. In the item I moved to include the specific. So in this one, let me be specific, I. I moved to include the specific job direction for the reports to. Right now that item just says it reports to executive director. It doesn't say executive director of what I did ask hr about this, and thank you for getting all the answers to me so quickly, and I understand that it will be on the org chart, but personally, I would like the org chart and the job description to match. So I don't know, you didn't really mention who that's supposed to. So that's why I don't have

036which executive director. But I think if you just say executive director could be of budget, it could be of anything. I think the job description has to be specific. So could you tell me tell me who that executive director like, where would they what executive director would that person report to today? That person would report to the executive director of Enterprise Analytics, analytics and intelligence. Okay, so that's my motion. Then I move to include Peter. Oh, this is the other executive director. If I MAY, sir. Go ahead, MR. Sullivan. I think the challenge is those there's two of them. So one is under will be under my division, and the other one will be under Doctor Wanza division. So that's why it was probably left the way it was because there are two different. They're

037the same job description for two different individuals housed in two different divisions. So maybe there's either to the point actually of, of one of the speakers. Then each job description should be different because they're, they're reporting to somebody different. And that's part of your job description is who you report to. So you would have to create a new job description. Everything stays the same besides the reporting. Two. I would guess. So. I mean, I don't. Know, I don't. Work in that position. So I can't tell you that. But if they're working in one position and doing something different in another, then probably there's other pieces that MAY also be different. I don't know that answer. So they're they're project managers. That are reported, but these two project managers report to two different people in two

038different divisions. So it's the same job, same responsibilities and tasks, but the reporting in two different divisions in two different departments. So if it pleases the board, we would have to just replicate this, this job description and have one reporting to the executive director and the one department and the other in another department. The only the only thing that would change would be to report to. If that's the case, like I said, I don't know what their jobs are, but I just don't feel comfortable having a, a job description that doesn't specify who you're reporting to. Or I was just about to say that. Or you can just add both executive directors and put. More in the middle. That's probably the best way to go. The other way. But I, I'm okay with that. So

039I guess my motion is to include. What are the two I'm sorry, what, what. Would be reporting to the executive director of enterprise and analytics? And the other one would be reporting to the Director of Performance. Strategic Initiatives and Performance Management. Could you say that louder? Doctor Wanza. The Director of Strategic Initiatives and Performance Management. Okay, so that's my motion. Second. Public comment on Hixon motion. Natalie Lynch, Walsh Plantation, Florida. Can you repeat the motion? It got a little garbled. Okay, so my motion is to to change where it says reports to executive director and add in reports to executive director of. Enterprise Analytics and intelligence, or. Director of strategic initiatives and performance Management. Okay, I agree, obviously, MRS. Hixon, that it should be specific, but this also raises the larger question of if they're

040in two different departments, how could they possibly be doing the same exact thing, reporting to two different people? So while I support your idea that it should be specific, if they're doing the same exact thing and and just to be clear, it seems that we've pulled a function out of strategy and innovation. If you think about the words, because I actually searched searched them the first time, enterprise analytics and intelligence is something you would expect to find in strategy and innovation where there is one position, but not something that makes any sense under the chief of staff, or you would because you want to have that centralized. Now you're creating silos again. So I support the motion, but I think it needs to go deeper. Thank you. Anna Fusco, teaching and PRESIDENT. I don't support

041any motion unless you take out anything that has Broward Teachers Union in it. I don't care what that general counsel told you. It is not the way we do business. You don't just send us the job description, which they did not. Let me make that clear. So I'm asking you to take out anything that has Broward Teachers Union that were changed without my knowledge, or I guess you'll see what happens because I get I hear it, general counsel is like, do whatever we want. We'll take our chances with the law. We'll take our chances with court. And that's not how I thought any of you were. So don't let her do that. And I have a problem with any jobs that are being put together. And you're going to make people do the same work

042or more work. Take away the title, take away their pay, but expect them to do the same work. You do realize that's what's happening. I cannot imagine that any of you are okay with that. I cannot imagine one of you are. Please put this more in depth and do not do anything on this as a vote. Take it back. Thank you, MR. Bruno. So just to be clear, because I know the question was asked with regard to the collective bargaining agreement, and it does address it in two sections. Article six specifically says that job descriptions shall be established by the board for all bargaining unit positions. And it is also noted in article 31 that lists the board as a management right to draft the job descriptions. Right board member discussion on the motion. All

043in favor of MISS Xin's motion? Say aye. Aye. All opposed? Say no. No item passes or motion passes. Motion passes. 6 to 2 with two dissenting votes. MISS Rupert and MR. Cervera. 7 to 2. Oh, sorry. 7 to 2. Okay, okay. Thank you for. Correcting me. Next is along the same lines. So I moved to have the reports to on page 36 for Assistant Director Teacher Development support, say Executive director, leadership Development and teacher support, because that one also just says executive director. Although in the org chart, it does say leadership development and teacher support in the job description, it does not. And I think they should match. Second public comment on oh. You mean director. That's the reporting structure, correct? Yes. Director. Sorry. Yes, director. I'm sorry, not executive. I was trying to do

044this quick. I'm sorry. So say direct not executive director, director, leadership development and teacher support. Sorry about that. Okay. Second, public comment on MISS Dixon's motion. Board member discussion on the motion. MADAM Chair. DR. Holness. I'd just like the superintendent feedback on that motion. Doctor Hepburn. No, MISS. We we're fine with the motion. Okay. Thank you. All right. All in favor of Miss Hickson's motion, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Say no. No. MISS Rupert. I'm sorry I got stuck. No, please. All right. Item passes 7 to 2 with two dissenting votes. MR. Cervera and MISS Rupert. Okay. Number the third one on page 40, the Assistant Director, operation transportation operations. Again, in the conversation that I was having, this is a assistant director, and the requirement right now is only an aa degree. So I

045would like to move to change the minimum requirement from aa degree to a bachelor's degree. And I'd like to add to also include ese expertise in the minimum requirements. So I move to change the minimum requirements from an aa degree to a bachelor's degree and add e s expertise in the minimum requirements. Second. Oh Doctor Lozano. Go ahead doc. So I just want to pause for a second on when hr looks at what degrees we add to job descriptions. Different job descriptions. While a title might be the same of director, each position is not uniform in scope. There's a different technical complexity or required expertise. So when you're looking at the academic instructional side, you MAY look for a specialized content degree or area. When you're looking at operational job descriptions like facilities and food

046and nutrition, experiential experiences play a larger role than a degree. And I can historically, with transportation, with getting applicants to apply who are qualified. It's been very difficult with when certain degrees are elevated to certain levels, where a lot of those roles the person develops experientially with years in the role. So when you look at a minimum requirement in isolation, you have to look at all three requirements or four, all the requirements in the minimum requirements, because you're going to see the degree balanced with years of experience, and you can have somebody who's done that job in that role for a number of years and step into that advanced role and do a phenomenal job with the degree versus someone with a bachelor's degree. So we look at multiple characteristics. When we develop the minimum

047requirements for each job description, besides just the degree in isolation. Thank you for that. And I don't want to minimize the experience that they have. I do think it's important, but I this is an assistant director position, and I just feel on that pay band, you know, we have teachers who have 37 years of experience and they don't just automatically get to a higher pay band because they had that experience. They don't have that. And I know operations is different than academics, and maybe it's because I'm a teacher, but I have a problem with someone that high up. If you're sitting on the org chart in those levels, I just personally have a problem with it only being an aa degree. So that's why I'm making the motion. Okay. Second, public comment on motion. Doctor

048Natalie Lynch Walsh Plantation, Florida. Not that I think you should be voting yes on these job descriptions. Overall, they still need further baking, but I support your motion. I'm looking at the minimum qualifications. And in the 14 years I've been dealing with this district, I totally disagree that it's all about experience. You have to have a starting point, a foundation from which to build the experience, and you're going to get that if you get someone that has. I have a friend that I think is a transportation engineer. There are fields of study that you never that are totally germane to a lot of positions in this district, but we keep shoving our friends into them, which could very well be what this box is about. So if you're expecting the minimum qualifications earned associate's degree

049from an accredited institution, but look at what you're asking them to do. So I agree should be at least a bachelor. Thank you. Next speaker. I have no preference about whether anybody has a degree or not. I just want them that if they're going to be over Esq compliance, that they even know what's is and have some kind of a grounding in it. If there was appetite to not make s experience part of a job whose title is partly special needs transportation, then we are admitting that we're not really going to put anybody in charge of anything, and it's just going to continue being a hot mess. So if we're going to say somebody's got to be in charge of special needs transportation, they need some special needs experience. If they haven't got experience, you.

050An alternative would be to require them to do some training. But I'd like to point out that 8 or 9 months ago, Esq advisory actually passed a recommendation that we have a special needs training for special needs attendants on special needs busses, and we're still waiting for any news on that. And when we've asked, can we see the curriculum? We're told no. So my concern, I think, is legitimate and guided by by our historic experience. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Terry Lopez. Terry Lopez Price, vice PRESIDENT Of the Broward Teachers Union. I just want you to know that I understand that money needs to be saved, but this is not the way to do it. Wanting to be lowering the expectations. It's just not the way to do it. We do get complaints from

051our people that people who are supervising them are often not having the expertise needed to direct the department that they are directing. So I definitely think that that's important. And also, your attorney mentioned that you are allowed to draft job descriptions. That is true. The word draft means you get to write it. It doesn't mean you get to just move along with it. Historically, you have gone to the different bargaining units and spoken with us, and we have gone back and forth on things. So I'm asking you to please not rush because this needs to be worked on. This is not how you do it. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Anna Fusco, our teachers union PRESIDENT. Again, we want to mince words, but I'm telling you right now, I've been here forever and we

052know what we do and we know what gets done right. So I'm asking you to pull out anything that's Broward Teachers Union. And these are these are actually job descriptions that have been in place, have been talked about, agreed upon, negotiated, voted through the board, and they're just arbitrarily changing them. Nothing's gone through perk. There's a lot of pieces here that is not being followed. So I'm asking you to not just rush through it because of the we we have to get the org chart done. I've seen it year after year after year. Oh my gosh, we can't start it without an org chart. But then they figure out the last minute, give you all the paperwork at the end of the day, try to get you to figure it out, ram it down your

053throat. You feel compelled because you get somebody that gives you some type of information that's usually not forthcoming. And then it's just thrown in people's laps. So I'm asking you to vote this down. Thank you. Any other public speakers on the motion board member discussion? DR. Holness thank you, MADAM Chair. So I do have a couple of questions. And Doctor Hepburn, I do appreciate Doctor Lozano's comments. So I guess my question would be because we're changing this from a an associate degree to a bachelor's degree requirement. What what challenges would this create in terms of recruiting, attracting. Staff to fill this position? Should it be vacant? And I know Doctor Lozano spoke a little bit, but if he could reiterate so I can better understand. But first, if I can, Doctor Lozano. MISS Ruckman, there

054is there is no proposed change in degree requirement. Correct. This. This isn't. Itt says. It't'myototn.N. t Tt't's ootioion. Yh. There'soo r requirentnt in deeeee change. So yeah my. Motion on your motion. Okay. Gotcha gotcha. I'm just. To change it from a a to bachelor's. And to also add either Esq or special needs, whatever you want to word it. No, I was referring to how we brought it to the board. Right. We didn't bring it as a change of degree requirement. I understand. So, but to answer your question, DR. Holness I, I in agreement with Doctor Lozano for when it comes to operational type roles, that experience matters, especially when we talk about transportation facilities and things like that. But we do have preferred qualifications if we are if we are interviewing or advertising for this

055specific position. If the preferred qualifications are met with the experience, of course we're going to go with the most highly qualified individual. But when it comes to a person in this role who spent a large amount of time in a large transportation system like ours, gaining a level of experience over numerous years, understanding the operations of a school district and how we transport kids experience does does matter versus somebody who's coming with a degree. Without that level of experience and not being able to, to support the operational functions that we need in that department. Okay. So I fully understand that, and I'm sure that anyone being hired for this position would come with at least some sort of relevant experience. But, but the question that I have, though, is, and I hear your comment feedback,

056Doctor Hepburn, but if we move this from an associate degree to a bachelor's degree requirement, which would also be inclusive of experience, then how will that change in terms of having an additional requirement? Because I'm sure they must have experience, right? Correct. So to have an additional requirement of a higher degree other than associate, will this create challenges to recruiting and hiring individuals for this position should it become vacant? Yeah. My initial answer to that is yes, due to the the specific job functions for transportation. Okay. And if this is if this requirement is increased to a bachelor's degree, would that necessitate an increase in pay? Now the pay band would stay the same. Okay. So can would you confidently say that someone can perform this particular job function with required experience and an associate

057degree? Yes, absolutely. Okay. So board member Hixson, if you don't mind, MADAM Chair, did you mention Esq experience or Esq certified? What was your what was your motion for the Esq portion? The second part was to add Esq expertise in the minimum requirement. However, the district feels is the best way to word that. I understand. So. So that's somewhat generalized. So when we say yes, Esq experience, is there any way for that to be more specific? Well, Doctor Hepburn, do do we have requirements, for example, those who work with Esq students to be Esq certified? Or what are the different options for Esq experience that. We have when it comes to for the academic realm? Yes, you need to go through some form of receive some form of professional development or certification around Esq. I

058do agree with the last speaker on if for this operational position, they don't readily like the academic people do have to go through regular certification renewal, have to take specific courses for specific areas such as Esq. So I do agree with the last speaker about if they don't have Esq experience, that we can provide training. So they have a clear understanding of the students that they're going to be serving for setting up the transportation and things like that for, for that population of students. Okay. So is there any existing Esq training that would be relevant to an assistant director of transportation operations that can be documented in some form or way that it was completed? I don't think there's any state pd, but I'm certain that with our staff, we can we can enhance what

059we have or create a curriculum to support the needs for this, for this type of position. Okay. So even though there's not a state per se guideline, you could develop a district sort of requirement for this position. As far as Esq experience. Yes. Okay. So MADAM Chair, for this particular motion, I am supportive of the Esq experience. Part of it. I am not supportive of the associate degree moving to a bachelor's degree. I believe this will create challenges in attracting a pool of applicants. Should this position be vacant. I'm not sure how relevant having a bachelor's degree is if they have substantive experience. This is not one of those sort of theoretical type positions where you have to have immense knowledge. I think experience seems to matter more. So I would not be supportive of

060moving to a bachelor's degree, because I'm not convinced of the relevance of that to performing the job duties here. I do, however, understand the relevance of significant experience, practical experience to do this kind of work and also be essential to have some sort of Esq experience that's documented to ensure that our ese students are being properly supported. So that would be my my take on it, MADAM Chair. Thank you. DR. Zeman thank you so much, chair. This is really a difficult to assess right now. I like the idea in general of leveling up, you know, education. And at the same time, I'm fascinated with the Wall Street Journal article this week that said, you can finish your bachelor's degree in six weeks. And not just from Florida State. Thank you very much. I appreciate that

061little snide comment, my friend. But literally, Western Governors University offers you a degree in six weeks. It costs $4,000. So you get your bachelor's degree and you can apply for all the jobs you want. It's it's, it's I hope this isn't the long term answer, but to DR. Holness point, you know, the requirements here don't stop somebody with a bachelor's degree from applying and competing and winning. It's a preferred requirement, but it does require a whole bunch of work. And in the operations space, I don't believe that the degree requirement is nearly as important as the years of experience and years of leadership. And then you then that just means you can apply the minimum. You know, after that, you still have to win the job. Right. And so my suspicion is that there are

062some great leaders out there. The last part that really makes it difficult is I just worked on a project with the Department of Defense, where they changed enlisted pay scales to equal junior officer pay scales, because what they found is the degree is irrelevant to getting a job done. And so I'm just going to lean toward the staff having done this work, if I could chair Doctor Hepburn, to what degree does your hr staff assess these jobs to make sure that we get, you know, minimum and preferred requirements on education done the right way? MISS Sakuma? Good afternoon. Susan Rockman, Executive Director, Talent Management. We review each of the job description requests with the manager, the hiring manager of the position to ensure we understand the responsibilities. Then we do a study to comparable jobs

063as well degree requirements, and move forward with that information that we locate. Thank you. And my suspicion is operations jobs like in transportation are very different than jobs in education, leadership and things like that, where there's much more of a component of the job of your academic, you know, foundation to one of our speakers talking about in something like transportation. I just feel like you guys have done your job well, and I would like to open this pool up. Not that the person with an a is going to win the job, but i just like them to think that they've got an opportunity. If they're the world's greatest manager and they've got decades of years of doing it, and everyone appreciates their contributions, they wouldn't be denied an opportunity to apply. And I don't want

064them to run off to Western Governors University for six weeks and 4000 bucks just to get a check in the box. So I like it the way it is. I am with DR. Holness though. On the ease. I don't like the word expertise because that's like very, very qualitative. But I think if it said ease either experience or ease something you could measure. Yeah, like completed, if you haven't completed it, you have to complete it within six months of getting the job, something like that. Then I would, I would prefer to have some ease, measurable qualification, not when they apply, but at least within the first six months or something, you know, easy to measure. Thanks. Thank you, MISS Bulman. Thanks, chair. I agree with my colleagues, I think, and DR. Zeman kind of alluded

065to it, but one of the greatest or the greatest logistics machine on the face of the earth is the us Army. So you don't have to have a degree to serve. And you could be doing that for 20, 30 years. So I would not want to disqualify someone that has that kind of experience just based on a, on a degree. And it does say in the job description already that they, that the applicant would participate in the training program offered to enhance the individual skills and proficiency related to the job responsibilities. So I would assume that that would be or we could add something maybe to that that specifies that there's Esq specific training. Maybe we can make a. Would that be already contemplated in that Doctor Hepburn, or is that something that we need

066to add? We can add it to be more specific. If, if we want to just codify that in this in this specific job description. So so the applicant understands the expectation to. Yeah. That would be good with that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, MISS Thompson. Thank you. Chair. I would agree with my colleagues about not needing to increase the make it a a bachelor's level and then also to put in the ease requirement. I like experience because I think as one of our speakers mentioned, the training hasn't come to fruition yet, or at least we haven't seen it yet. So to be more specific about saying yes, experience, and I just wanted to take a pause because I think the, the concerns that our union leader is bringing about the job descriptions, I just want

067to make sure, again, that we are following the process that we are supposed to, with the job descriptions, that we are compliant. And if someone could walk me through those concerns and the process that we are supposed to be taking, I would appreciate it. If I if I could, through the chair. So there's two things, and I do want to clarify something that I said earlier. The articles that I was referencing was btuep collective bargaining, but there's also the btutsp, which has similar language with regards to new job descriptions, but slightly different language with regards to a change in job description. So I don't know if Doctor Lozano can add a little bit to that. Go. I just added the negotiation paper. Right there. Yeah. So in article 182 it talks about changes in job

068descriptions. And it said the board the board shall discuss with the b2tsp the proposed change of job descriptions. So we're having that conversation right now. And then it says. Please let's have decorum in the audience. And then it says when changes result, when changes result in a request for a reclassification, the parties agree to negotiate the impact of the changes that they MAY have with respect to wages. So my recommendation, if the board is willing, the 3tsp positions are below the line. They don't impact the org chart. I'm fine with if Doctor Hepburn wants to pull those and have us go back and discuss those three tsp positions, they won't impact the org chart. I don't mind pulling those back and having further conversation on those three positions. I would be more comfortable with that

069if that is the process, because I, I mean, we're getting conflicting information and I want to follow the process that we historically. Go, this is your first warning. Please don't call out from the audience. So if if it's not going to impact further discussion later, then I think just to make this the best process possible, pull out that. And then if there's any other btu positions that would fall under that to pull out them as well. Okay. We're still on MISS Hickson's motion, so I just want to keep us on track for that. MR. Cervera. Not on Hickson's motion. I'll reserve my comments for. Okay. When she sees the floor. Anyone else on MISS Hickson's motion? DR. Holness. Thank you, MADAM Chair. So, board member Hixson I I, I believe I can count to five

070and I'm not sure if you will have support with having the degree change, but I would love to support the Esq experience. So I don't know if you're willing to modify the motion because I am. I would much rather win some than lose all. So I can also count. So I was thinking if this doesn't pass, I would make a second motion. Okay. Any other board member comment on the motion? All in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. All opposed. Say no. No no. Item motion fails with one vote in favor, MISS Hixon. Thank you. Okay, so I'd like to make another motion. Then I move to change the minimum requirements for Assistant Director Transportation operations to include Esq experience and or training in the minimum requirements. Second motion made by MISS Hixon. Seconded

071by DR. Holness. Public comment on the motion. Doctor Natalie Lynch Walsh, Plantation, Florida. I support the motion and please consider that experience and education are not mutually exclusive. When you have one doesn't mean you don't have the other. But with a experience alone, without education can become problematic. But I support the motion. Thank you. Yeah, I was going to support it. And then it's a good point. How many hours training or what does that training need to look like? Unfortunately, again, if I hark back and thank you, MRS. Hixon, this is a great motion. I just want to pin it down because as we know from our experience of trying to get training for Esq bus attendants, there's just been obfuscation about it, and we're told there is training, and when we ask to see

072it, we're told, oh, well, you can't. So we need to see a specific curriculum or, or maybe pin down a certain number of hours or something more specific. And maybe MR. Lozano or somebody in Esq can advise what that wording should be. But if we just say Esq training, they'll get a PowerPoint that takes an hour and that's not going to cut it. But thank you. If we can just pin that down, I think it would be great. Thank you. I'm sorry to be distrustful, but we've learned to be. Thank you. Any other public speakers? Anna Fusco First, I'm in the audience and I'm correct. Just pay attention. I'm correct. And look, in article four and nine, there's multiple articles in the contract that clearly says what's happening is not okay. And I'm really asking

073you to please don't take them out. You you got. Board member Thompson said conflicting information that ought to be a red flag right there. Trying to figure out the answer. That's another one. I'm I'm correct. And I'm texting my attorneys right now. They're watching and they're drawing up paperwork as we speak. And I'm not bluffing. I love you all. But if you want to continue to allow the staff to continue to put you in this position, then that's your fault. I am genuinely trying to ask you to not just have things pushed through. And experience and education are not the same, but experience is monumental, obviously, but lots of careers make people get extra education. With you. MISS Dupre. Bruno. I just want to make sure for the record that we're clear. And if I

074could, through the chair, ask Doctor Lozano, just for clarification. The positions that we've been talking about, that MISS Hixon has been bringing forth, are those positions that fall within btu, tsb collective bargaining agreement. No, those are positions. Okay. And then are there what other positions fall within that collective bargaining agreement for btu? Tsb. So there are three positions in this item that fall under. Tsb is the coordinator Emergency management, the Fire Safety Inspector one and the specialist Graphics printing services. Thank you. All right. Board member comment on MISS Dixon's motion. DR. Zeman. I'm just a little confused because I what MISS Thompson asked about and I think MISS Bulman had addressed, was there is a line in the job description about training that would happen after you're hired, and I think that the motion is

075a minimum qual, which means if you haven't done it, you can't apply. Is that correct, chair? MISS Hixon? So I think we've had. In other minimum qualifications and experience where we've added. They had to have training, but I in fact, I think general counsel was one of those job descriptions where we said, if you get hired and you don't have the training, you have to have it by a certain time. My preference is just to say exes experience, but someone else had mentioned the training part to it. So again, I leave this to what I what the district and, and it was asked to have a specific training. So I don't know if staff has any suggestion into that. Maybe we add they have to have this specific training to do it. Yeah. I can

076add to that conversation. We've we've done that before. We've had in the minimum qualifications, a certain time frame to complete that training. I think for the chief of Safety and security, we actually updated the amount of time to get the I think it was the fdle certification. I think we said six months or up to a year. So we've had that in the minimum qualifications. Just just to add to the conversation. I appreciate that. And what I'm I'm curious is if in your motion that you want to have a certain amount of time so that there's something definite otherwise a minimum qualification to an applicant might look like, oh, I don't have it. I can't get it. Yeah, that's fine. And I mean, again, based on the conversation, if staff could give us a suggestion,

077I, I think it makes sense to put a specific training in there that ties to this and say, within six months, I'm happy to, to amend my motion to include that. Thank you so much, MISS Hixon. And if, if if we want to go one step further, we might just kick this one to the side to like the tsb onene and ask e staff t tbring it back withh the threretsb p positns,, ey hahave to comombackck a andivive the the me t to me e su t they can be specific about the training and the timing and things like that. I'm just a little worried from the dais kind of making. These right. So changes. The superintendent is this on the org chart. This the other ones aren't. So that's why we could kick them.

078Go ahead Doctor Lozano. So this is a revision not a new job description. So when you approve the org chart the current job description will remain until we bring it back with revisions. Which means if you had a couple of weeks you could bring it back. And it doesn't cause any consequences. Yes, sir. Yeah. I mean, I would just rather get it right. Two weeks isn't isn't much time. And I'd kind of like to identify some form of like Esq certification, how many hours it takes and things like that. That's fine. So. Would you like to withdraw your motion? Yes. I guess I'm going to make a different motion. Okay. So I'll withdraw my motion. So does somebody who's seconded have to withdraw. You're good. Oh I'll also. Okay. I think it was DR. Holness

079actually. Go ahead. Yes. That's fine. Okay. Just so to solve some of the other problems here, I'd like to make a motion to pull the job description for Assistant Director transportation operations. The coordinator of. What was that you said? Coordinator, emergency management, fire safety inspector, inspector one and specialist graphics printing services. Thank you. I move to to to remove those four from this item today. Second. Second motion made by MISS Hixon. Seconded by DR. Zeman. Public comment on the motion. Doctor Natalie Lynch Walsh Plantation, Florida. I support your motion, but really you should be pulling all of them and have this discussion at a workshop so that you get out of here today. I handed you last time we were here. Paul Carlin's a former general counsel like three general councils ago. The org chart

080should come simultaneous or after the job descriptions are changed or created. So you're trying to fix the plane, you know, fly and fix the plane at the same time. You should have had time to breathe and discuss these. I support, but you need to pull them all and just take a breath and discuss these job descriptions at a workshop. Then do the org chart because that's not ready either. Thank you Jackie. I support the motion. Thank you. Board member discussion on the motion. Oh, go ahead, MISS Fusco. You didn't think I was not going to comment on this motion. Come on out. I just would like to clarify. I believe that you pulled the two tsp. Three jobs. Well, thank you very much for listening. Any other public comment? Board member discussion. MISS Rupert. Thank

081you. I just had one question, MADAM Chair, which was the Coordinator of Emergency Management that was pulled correctly, right? Yes. Okay. Because I, I had a comment on that. So I will wait till we bring it back. Okay. Any other board member discussion on the motion? All in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. All opposed? Say no. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. I'll move along. I, I so my next motion is on page 75. Executive Director of Communications. Again same discussion. And I'm not minimizing experience, but an executive director is one below a chief. So I moved to change the minimum requirements from a bachelor's degree to a master's degree. Second motion made by. Seconded by DR. Zeman. Public comment on the motion. Board member. Discussion on the motion. All in favor of the

082motion, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Say no. Motion passes unanimously. Okay. Next one again under the same idea. Executive director, Enterprise Analytic and Intelligence, page 78. I move to change the minimum requirements from a bachelor's degree to a master's degree. Second motion made by MISS Hixon. Seconded by DR. Holness. Public comment on the motion. Doctor Natalie Lynch Walsh, Plantation, Florida. I support the motion. Almost always support creating a stronger foundation from which to build your experience. Any other public comment on the motion? Yes. What I was trying to say before the mic got cut off, I got through the minute. Lots of careers out there and professions do on the job training. Well, I mean, you guys, your staff hires people with a pulse and can pass a background check with no teaching experience to

083come into our classrooms and teach. Did you know that? That's a fact? That's a fact. So that's one two. I'm going to go back. Lots of careers have experience, but they also require to move up and to be supervising and to run a department. You must increase your education, whether it's through whatever credentialing of some type of licensing or a degree, they might expect you to move from a associate's to a bachelor's, or a bachelor's to a master's or master's to a specialist or a specialist. It doesn't matter. So it's not unusual. And having more knowledge and education while you're working in a public school system is not a bad idea. Thank you. Any other public speakers? Board member discussion on the motion. DR. Zeman. Thank you so much, chair. MR. Superintendent, I wonder if

084this job Executive director, Enterprise Analytics and Intelligence is the kind of job is a very high level job to mix the hickson's point. But is this a field in which the education as a minimum requirement is appropriate? Or is this one where somebody with lots of great experience doing enterprise analytics and intelligence with a bachelor's degree in, say, computer science or data science, wouldn't be a really good candidate for this relatively high paying job, but one that is also very technical in nature. Now, we don't disagree with the with the with the motion. You don't disagree with. It, then. Great. Let's go. Yeah. DR. Holness MADAM Chair, I am good if the superintendent doesn't disagree. Yeah. Anyone else on the motion? All in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Say no. Motion

085passes with one dissenting vote, MR. Cervera. One more thing. Sorry. So, page 71. That is the wellness, the Director of Wellness and Mental Health. So we didn't really have. And I guess if we had more time, we could have compared what it looked like before to now. So can someone address the the statement that the new responsibilities don't include because we merged those two jobs together. So can you speak to that particular statement that was made? If you can refresh our memory with the statement? So the concern was that the responsibilities don't include both of those original job description responsibilities. There are things missing in the job responsibility for mental health, because we merged wellness with mental health. Go ahead, MISS Brockman. Hi. Good afternoon, MISS Hixon. You are correct in the. The audience is

086correct in that. Unfortunately, due to the lateness of that coming in last week after the meeting, the other job description was not merged onto this one. So that one will need to be redone and we can bring that back the following at the following meeting. So my question to that and I have something to add to that also that's on the org chart. So how is that going to affect the vote on the org chart today. Well I would defer to our general counsel. I'm not I would need some clarification that if the job description has to be approved in order for a position to be listed on the org chart. And if so. And this is just merging the two positions. Correct. Merging two director positions into. One into a new job. Description. a

087new job description. Can we reflect that on the org chart so that when the board votes, it's reflected on the org chart with the understanding that the job description is amended? You know, we'll bring that back as well. Yes. I think that's that's how I would handle it. So my, my second concern on that, and I appreciate that because if we're merging them, unless unless someone else is picking up responsibilities, and then we would get a new job description for whoever was getting new pieces. But also to the speaker's point, I think it's really important to be very specific about mental health. It's wellness and mental health, and I feel like we diminished the mental health part of this job. And again, it was, I know you, I'm not trying to say you did it

088on purpose or whatever, but not having some kind of licensing or certification and understanding the response that you gave me, because I did ask this question before the the speaker did that. It's more of a leadership position, but they're leading people who have to do have to be licensed for something. So it's, again, that same theme that I've had all along. It's very hard to have somebody be responsible for other people below them if they don't have at least the expertise, if not more for that job. So I don't know what my colleagues think, but since it's going to come back anyway, I guess my motion will be to remove this job description as well. Do we need a motion to pull this job description if we're not going to vote on it today? Okay,

089so I, I moved to. Excuse me. Oh. I move to remove this job description for the director, wellness, mental health. But when it comes back, I think it should also have some additional minimum requirements. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by MISS Thompson. Motion made by MISS Hixon. Public comment on the motion. Doctor Natalie Lynch, Walsh, Plantation, Florida. I support the motion, but just as a reminder that the org chart should come simultaneous with or after the job descriptions are changed or created. So again, this becomes problematic if you start pulling job descriptions and revising job descriptions. You can't then go and unanimously just approve the org chart as is today. That would seem to be a problem. You need to nail down your job descriptions. And this is coming. Guidance related to 1,001.42. So

090I support pulling it out. But then MRS. Hixon identified the problem is how do you go about then approving the org chart? There's no rush. I mean, there is kind of. But if it's not fully baked, you don't yank the bread out of the oven. I mean, you do. Yeah. Because then you'll have that. It's half baked. Org chart and job description. Jackie. Thank you. I support the motion, but I just want to add, what if we hadn't been here? Like it makes me worry. Now what else I we haven't looked at in all these papers, some of which tumbled out at very short notice. So for everybody out here, we've been up day and night looking at what's been now put on the board agenda that we thought, you know, it's going to be

091last Friday and then more gets added on on Monday or whenever it was. I do think this makes the case for there being a more orderly presentation of board documents and more thorough oversight of what is put on a board, on a board agenda before it gets to this point of having to pull it. Thank you. Good afternoon. Melanie Burke and Davie, Florida. Thank you very much, MISS Hixson, for bringing up this motion and for supporting it. As Jackie and Natalie both stated, I'm I am ocd. I went through this, but only because this is going to be the boss of where I work. So how do we know that there aren't other errors in other areas? And it's very concerning. I know it was quick. I'm not blaming anybody, but you know, you're taking

092two positions and just copying like wordsmithing them together. Clearly it's a copy and paste job because they missed the typo, which is like one of my ocd things. Like it just makes me crazy. So I mean, I would be really concerned about all the other job descriptions unless somebody has gone through it with a fine tooth comb to ensure there aren't any other errors. Accidental. Absolutely accidental. And especially I'm not going to the the job, the minimum qualifications. I mean, I'm a school social worker. Master's level, should I I'm certified, should I be a principal? Thank you. Next speaker. Victoria Trujillo, Hollywood, Florida. I'm almost speechless. Thank you for bringing that up. Thank you for speaking on it. I'm quickly just reading through it. I have questioned job descriptions before, to me, some of the

093job descriptions when I was looking for a job in Broward County, schools in different levels seemed antiquated. So I'm glad that we're having this discussion. But if we're going to choose someone and hire someone to lead others, especially in mental health, which it's just a worldwide, worldwide situation now and concern, we really need somebody that leads by example. That's it. Thank you. Next speaker. Terry Lopez, Vice PRESIDENT, btu I'd like to say thank you to Debbie Hixon for going through this item with fidelity and understanding the pitfalls and trying to rectify it. It's a little bit difficult watching you guys go back and forth and asking the attorney and, you know, us knowing different things about the contract and things being brought to you before they're ready to be brought to you, it's it's not

094okay. So thank you for taking the entire motion away because it's not ready. And how can you later vote on an org chart? These are kinds of things that someone said might be a mistake, but are they? I'm not always sure. Thank you. For teaching your PRESIDENT. Thank you. School board member Hixon, I know you worked hard. I can tell looking through every single job. I mean, maybe, I mean, there's a lot, but again, I'm asking you guys to not approve any of it unless you really, really understand what's coming forward. And I know that it's it's a, it's a big ask because we should depend on superintendent directing the proper staff that be to make sure things are done with fidelity and in the right in the right format, which I clearly pointed out

095what happened with some of our jobs with our esp unit. As MRS. Price said, is it a mistake or isn't it? That is the question of 2026, but that's the question we've asked multiple years. So I know in here you hear my position voted down. Thank you. Any other public comment board member discussion, MISS Rupert. Thank you. And I actually pulled this item specifically. Yeah. For this particular job description for the Director of Wellness and Mental Health, the job description needs to keep the minimum qualifications and experience to emphasize this professional who can directly provide license, clinical mental health education to our social workers. But it must be clinical expertise right now presenting mental health, mental health challenges. It's a very, very intense time for many of our students and not an exactly someone that

096could have just a leadership educational degree. It you need someone that works in the field that has actually lived through this. This is not okay. And not when we still have deaths by suicide in Broward County. And our most precious children and students are still affected. You know, I talk about this all the time about certain area codes and how it does happen. And I hope it never becomes okay that we just gloss through when we lose another child. This past week, we want to get our student enrollments back up. Then truly, we need to make sure that when we hire people in the mental health field, that they have clinical social worker experience and that they are the front line and the and of facing our children. So I was going to make a

097move and I don't have to because it's already pulled. So I will continue that conversation. And I appreciate that. Debbie Hixon did what I was planning on doing. So I appreciate everyone up there. But this one was definitely a MISS. So thank you. Thank you, MISS Thompson. Thank you, chair, and thank you, MRS. Hixon. I think a few of us are definitely going to talk on this position. I just want to also recognize that the board made several changes to the org chart during the workshop. This was one I. I talked to several of the staff over this department, but I don't think hr knew that this was going to be something that I was going to propose. So I just would like to give them a little grace. I don't think it was intentional.

098I do want to highlight the importance, like my colleague said, about having someone with mental health experience. Doesn't necessarily have to be a social worker, but school counselor or school psychologist, someone who's who's been in that field. But I look forward to staff having the time to, to fill this position out. And thank you again for pulling it. Thank you, MISS Bulman. Thank you. I support the motion and appreciate you also bringing that. It's been brought to, I think, most of our attention. So I'm glad that you handled that. And I, I had a question in just in general, if in the event that there is a typo or some kind of an error in one of these job descriptions, what's the procedure for us to correct that? Or is this a fatal error. MISS

099Dupree? Bruno. Technicalities can always be corrected. Substantive things would have to come back to the board. Okay, so typos can be corrected on their own. And if and if we in the course of looking at this, after we approve the job descriptions and approve the org chart, that would be the procedure. We just bring it back to the board and we can correct whatever. Yes there is. If there's like a simple typo, I'm sure hr would be able to correct those. But if it's something that's substantive in the nature of the work and the requirements, those things that havee toome back to theoard. Iean, thihiis a v very volulunousus andnd kind of Herculean effort every year. And I personally make lots of mistakes when I'm writing things and, you know, discover them later. So to

100have the ability to correct it, I think is important. And I think that we will be doing that as if, if and when that's brought to our attention. And I really appreciate the people that have come to speak today and have helped us in this effort because it's, you know, it takes a village and it's nice to have everyone's eyes on it so we can get the job done faster. So thank you. Thank you. Any other board member discussion on the motion? All in favor of the motion. Say aye. All all opposed. Say no. Motion passes unanimously. I'm done now. Thank you. Great. Next up we have MR. Cervera. Thank you, chair. I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this. Where I sit right now is reflective of what we heard from some of these

101speakers. I think the org chart, and this is kind of getting bundled in as a a package deal. And I'm not comfortable approving this job description. I'm not comfortable with the org chart as it is. So. I guess we can say I'm just a little troubled for a litany of reasons. I do want better clarification on this legal aspect, and I don't know if this is I don't think it should be a follow up thing, MADAM General Counsel, but I'm confused on this as to whether or not we've run afoul with any collective bargaining agreement. And not to toot my own horn, but I think when someone is a member of the bar and they're confused, maybe some others are confused too, and they just don't feel comfortable saying it. So that being said, I

102really want and I really need a definitive answer as to whether or not what's been proposed and what's been put in front of us today runs afoul with any potential violations under the collective bargaining agreement, the state statute, anything of that nature, because I do not want any more lawsuits to happen or grievances or anything of that nature, to have this district get roped into. So I I'm hearing things from you. I'm hearing things from Doctor Lozano. I'm hearing terms that, you know, I'm just not comfortable with as opposed to what we can draft as opposed to what we can approve as a board. And I really need and I'm going to insist on a definitive answer and ask for your professional legal opinion as to whether or not the any of these items that

103are in here run afoul with anybody's collective bargaining agreement rights, or are we potentially subject to litigation or grievance or anything of that nature? MR. Bruno. Thank you, MR. Speaker, for the question. Grievances can be filed doesn't necessarily mean that they have substance in them, but they can be filed at any time. Oh, come on guys. I would say that with regards to btu, the sp collective bargaining agreement does have different language than the other collective bargaining agreement. The eap collective bargaining agreement is pretty clear. It's a management right to create the job descriptions. What the sp states is that for new job descriptions, there's it's pretty much similar to a management, right? But of course t sp needs to be notified. But with regards to job changes, job description changes. That's a different process.

104Now, my understanding is that we've removed those three job descriptions, and that will go through the normal process for that. I understand we moved those three. I'm concerned about anything else on here, whether we can be subject. And listen, I get anybody can file a lawsuit for whatever they want in this in this, quite frankly, in this country, not, not not just this state, but I want to know or I need to know whether or not in your professional legal opinion, if we are facing the the potential of a, a legitimate good faith grievance or a good faith lawsuit or a good faith complaint in any way, shape or form based on what's on here. Because I will tell you, I'm not supporting this, and I'm probably not supporting the org chart at this point

105unless something else changed my mind. But I want to be on record knowing that at least one board member called this out, sought the advice of you, and was given some form of clearance. MR. Bruno. I will repeat what I said with regards to btu to the tsp collective bargaining agreement. It's pretty clear that there's a process that we need to follow, and those three positions have been pulled. I can rely on hr in terms of what those positions are, that they've been pulled, and they'll go through that process. Regarding the other agreements, the other btu bargaining agreement, it's a management, right. Okay. Go ahead, Doctor Lozano. None of the other job descriptions listed are under a collective bargaining group. They're all under our meet and confer group. There we go. Our record. MR. Silva,

106are you finished? Okay, MISS Rupert. MISS Rupert. Yes, I we I I'm I'm okay because we're we are. We just did the job descriptions. We haven't gotten to number four yet, right? Correct. So. Okay. I'm good. You don't have any additional comments for this particular. Okay. This particular one. No problem. Board member Bulman. Thanks, chair. I have a general question. So what happens in a situation where a job, an existing job description is expanded to include additional responsibilities, tasks, duties, but they remain in the same pay band. So basically you're staying in the same pay but getting more work. How how do we address that. Doctor Hepburn. Your duties and responsibilities expand to what's in the job description. Now you MAY get additional support below the line, such as if we consolidate. So if we,

107such as we consolidated some leadership roles, the below the line teams consolidate under that too. So you still have the people who are actually doing a lot of the legwork to execute the tasks and responsibilities for that department, for the combined department. I mean, is that a guarantee that that's going to happen? That's the intent of yes. For instance, the the job description that we just pulled is a merger of two departments. So all the people under that department just merged into into two different departments, merged into one. So the people who are actually doing the work are actually still there. Oh. So we didn't we didn't we didn't reduce the people within those departments. It was direction to merge the two director positions into one, but not to get rid of the people or

108the boxes under that department. Is there any opportunity to revisit the pay scale or anything? There's always opportunity. Getting more work. Yes, there's always opportunity to do that. Yes. So how does that work? Normally we would bring that back and suggest a 5% increase. Is that generally the policy. Just practice not policy. So that would happen at the beginning of the year when the new. If that's the will of the board. Yes. Okay. That would come to us as an item. Yes. It usually when we do a pay increase, it will come to the board as a, as a, as an item in, in an item. Okay. Thank you. DR. Zeman. Thanks. Is this the last one? Chair you are the last person on. Well, when your name is even, you get used to that.

109DR. Holness. So there you go. I'm glad it's a relatively small item that I have. It's something that I've thought a lot about, did a little research on with other districts, and I feel that the cost doesn't really justify the change. The position I want to talk about today is the executive director of Exceptional Student Education. We last week saw this change, you know, of having a chief for student services and an executive director of Esq. And it came back that the the chief would have three directors and not have an executive director. And I just want to tell you why I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze here. This is a $10,000 savings. I apologize, I didn't write down the page, but this is the page. That's on the org chart. Yep.

110It's an org chart. But the reason it's here is you know what. And that's a good point, chair. Should I talk about this in the next item instead of now? I believe so, yes. Wonderful. MAY I go first? Whenever you take names or add me to the. List, we already have one person on the list. I will add. You're not even on the item. I will add you to the list. Well that's wonderful. I don't need to be first, but I look forward to talking to you at that point. Thank you. Chair, you won't be last any other any other board member discussion on this item. All right. All in favor of item three, as amended, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Say no. No no. Roll call please. School board members. Alhadeff. No. Bulman. Yes.

111Cervera. No. Sir. Hixon. Yes. Holness. No. Holness. Leonardi. Yes. Rupert. No. Thompson. Yes. Zeman. Yes. Five. Three passes. All right. Thank you. Can I have a motion and a second on item four. So moved. Second moved by DR. Zeman. Second by MISS Hixon. Just again to reiterate the procedure for public comment, we do have over 30 public speakers, so I will reduce the time to one minute per speaker. I will call. Come on. I will call five speakers at a time. If you hear your name, please line up. The speaker will be at the podium, at the microphone, one person at the microphone at a time. The rest will line up as directed by staff on the right side of the room. So I'll call my first five names, Cassandra Jackson Brown, Scoville, Sheena Newton,

112Cindy Burdick, and Lacuesta Derico Adams. And my apologies if I'm mispronouncing any names. Chair to the the microphone. You MAY begin. Chair, I'd like my objection on the record regarding the time reduction. Just like last week, I feel these people have taken time out of their day. They should be given their full three minutes, regardless of how many people are lined up to speak on this very important issue. So I'd like my objection noted on the record. Thank you. It's noted. And again, reduce the time to a minute so that everyone here has an opportunity to speak. But I know your objection. Thank you. Go ahead. Good afternoon. My name is Sheena Newton. I'm the assistant director of the Business Support Center, and I have been dedicated. I have dedicated 29 years of loyal, reliable,

113consistent service to the organization. I started at a young age. I earned my degree to work my way up in different job capacities such as payroll, title one, transportation, auditing, and etc. And I was. Task assigned in SEPTEMBER 2025 to assist with the superintendent Special Project direct negotiations. Throughout my tenure, I have remained committed to supporting the district mission, contributing to its growth and upholding the highest standards of professionalism. When I was asked to assist with the superintendent. Thank you. Next speaker. So this is your first warning, please. All right. We are going to go ahead and recess the meeting for five minutes. Thank you. I have dedicated 29 years. Of loyal. Thank you. So we're going to do a reset. I again respectfully ask the audience to maintain decorum as board members are maintaining

114decorum while each speaker is speaking. I will amend the reduced time to two minutes per speaker. Once your two minutes is up, please yield the mic. If you do not yield the mic, we will have to recess theheeeting. S s withh Sina, Newtoto apppprohed t theicic d d uanan gee h t two minuss please. T Thank you. Welcome. Thank you. I was asked to assist with the superintendent project, and I was excited and willing to do everything to make the project a success. I was recently non-renewed due to changes in the organization chart. While I understand the restructuring can be part of an organization evolution, this decision is difficult. Giving my long standing record to dedication and performance. I have always taken pride in my work and in the relationship I built within the organization

115and the community we serve, which everybody on this table I have dealt with, you know, numerous of times assisting you all. I respectfully ask that my years of service, contribution and commitment to be fully considered as this decision is reviewed. My goal has always been to support the success and stability of the district, and I remain deeply invested in its mission and future, and I really thank you all for letting me finish what I had to say. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Hi, my name is Cassandra Jackson Brown. I'm a I do have a master's in social work as well as a professional certification in social work, and I've been with the district for 19 years, 13 in clerical four as a counselor and two as a ssis on behalf of ssis. We have

116a direct impact on students from the time we hit the the campus. We're supporting our students, whether it's in the bathroom, it's in the hallway, the patios, the lunchroom. We're giving that support. We do have a direct impact on students and this should be taken into consideration. We work collaboratively with every staff member at the schools, so please reconsider your decision. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Good afternoon. My name is Petoskey and I hold two master's degree in mental health and school counseling. I currently serve as a ssis supporting two schools. Prior to this role, I worked as a school counselor, but I was intentionally drawn to ssis position after witnessing its impact firsthand while working in West Palm Beach as a mobile response supervisor, I saw ssis professionals and actions boots on the

117ground supporting high risk students, families, schools and the community. That experience solidified my passion for this work. I was truly excited when Doctor Licata and Doctor Hepburn introduced this initiative to Broward County Public Schools. Knowing the difference it could make for our students, I personally witnessed the critical role ssis plays during mobile response calls. One statement from Doctor Licata has always stayed with me, raising the floor without lowering the ceiling, meeting students where they're at. This philosophy reflects exactly what this position is essential. We ensure students receive the support they need while maintaining high expectation for their success. We are often the consistent, trusted adult students rely on. There have been concerns raised. That's sis staff are too new. Lack experience or do not conduct sras and Tas. However, many of us fully qualified experience

118in completing these assessments. Like I said, I used to be a school counselor and I was drawn to this ssis position because we are preventative first hand, working with the kids. We're out and about. We are viable, visible, and reliable to the kids because we are wearing these shirts that they see us each and every day. They know who we are. We're not scheduling appointments for them to come contact us. We're in a cafeteria. We're in every place that the kids need us. We're visible, viable, and accessible, and we are qualified. We can do what you ask us to do. If you change the job description, we are qualified. We are here for the children, and we should not be removed because we are impacting not only the children, we are supporting the staff, the

119family and we are giving them a wraparound service. So please reconsider removing the department. Thank you. Next speaker. Good afternoon. Lacuesta. Derecho. Adams. Pompano Beach, Florida. During the workshop last week, there was a proposal eliminating the ssis supervisors as well as the entire ssis position in less than 20s and without discussion or warning. 39 of us watched as our jobs were being recommended for elimination. A remark was made that our position is a catch all and a loophole. Because many people do not know what we do, as it is a fairly new position in the district, I would appreciate an opportunity to share what it is exactly that we do every school day. We work directly with students. We all have a caseload of anywhere from 65 to 100 students, but all students have access

120to us when they need us. When we introduce ourselves to parents and students, we explain that the role can look different for each student, which is what I like best about my role. We talk and I get to find out what they need to be happy, healthy, and successful, then help them get where they need and help them stay there. We help them secure the bag behavior, attendance, and grades. My middle school's sis sent me a list at the beginning of the school year to make sure that I connect with the students that she was working with in the previous year to provide them with tlc, because they were under her care at our feeder middle school. We are the boots on the ground that gets everyone where they need to go. We offer a

121calm space and non-judgmental ear. I refer them to social workers, family counselors, school counselors, administrators, base advisors, whoever can assist them with whatever issue it is that is above me. For the record, I am a former administrator, literacy coach, teacher, mental health professional, certified medical assistant, and mother. So I understand a lot about helping our students feel safe and secure in the learning environment, channeling their emotions, and being in tune with their mental health and well-being. To sum it up, ssis is a strong team that consists of 37 mental health professionals. Thank you. Thank you. Before the next speaker, I'll call the next five names Jackie Luscomb, Lynne Boveri, Jenny Boyd, and Thomas Sandberg. Doctor Cindy Burdick, Pompano Beach, Florida boots on the ground. That seems to be what everybody's saying today. Or is it

122going to be fat off the hog? Okay, let's start with the real problem. Families are leaving Broward County. Instead of asking why or what it would take to bring them back, we hear complaints about about vouchers and see more upper management positions. Added this won't bring students back. What will? Boots on the ground. Families want real programs and services in school, not lip service. Cutting support services is harming students. I recently experienced a real lockdown. Students were terrified you could see the early signs of trauma. What support do they have to process that flashing lights and alert systems won't help them. Now licensed mental health counselors, school counselors, and social workers will. Every one of those students should be checked on. But instead, resources were spent on reactive system, not proactive care. In fact, this

123centric system caused the chaos with an accidental activation. And so now there are at least 40 students in 20 parents who. I stayed in a bathroom stall with for at least 15 minutes and watch them cry. Who's looking up on them? It would be these individuals and you're getting rid of them. I'm very concerned with the trauma that these kids experienced. It was not if you saw their tears, you would not get rid of these people. We need them. We need them to survive. I believe in them so much that I went and got I'm working to get my license. Clinical license. It's not going to do any good now because you're getting rid of all these positions. So please, please understand that many of us stay here, not because of the money. I'm not

124getting an extra 5% for sitting in a bathroom stall with people. Other people are. We care about students and we care about their well-being. Please don't get rid of these people. Thank you. Next speaker. Good afternoon. Good evening or good afternoon. My name is Jenny Boyd Lauderhill, Florida. I am a sp community liaison with the heart program. The heart program, as you all know, stands for Homeless Education Assistance Resource Team. For two years we have been working with two less employees. We used to have six community liaisons and we were sectioned out by twos in the South, the central and the North. We have been working short staffed for over two years now, and that has impacted our ability to to everything that we want to do. However, we have made concessions and have gone

125out to the schools. We cover each other whenever we can in the south, North and central. We have just found out that one of our ESPs community liaisons is going to be let go at the end of the school year. So now we're down from six, we'll be down to four. And one of those four is part time because we split them between heart and title one. We affect we deal with the students that are very vulnerable because these students are coming in, they're sleeping in cars, they're homeless, they don't have stable anything. And we still fight every day with the schools that we have to go into because we still have. In 2026, Broward County Public Schools still have schools that refuse to let our students in. They refuse to let them register for

126crazy reasons because they're not following the Mckinney-vento law, which is a federal act that we all know that we have to comply with each and every day. I have to go to a school, or I'm called out to a school because a parent cannot get their student registered. If we continue to lose our staff, how are we going to be effective? How are we going to keep these students in school? We need to keep all of our staff. We're losing the esp community liaison, we're losing a social worker, and we're losing our only clerical support. I ask that this be reconsidered because we need to be able to have full impact with our students. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Thomas Hamburg sunrise. The reason for cutting essential staff is declining enrollment. But enrollment isn't

127really declining. The students are still in the system, and we're still paying for them in charters. Instead of one large school with one principal, we have seven charter schools, each with their own principal instead of one overpaid superintendent. We have 30. This is the duplication that we need to cut. This fragmentation is killing the school system and it's for nothing. Charters have less services and stability than our public schools. Their mission is not to serve students, it's to maximize enrollment. They are paid a flat fee and every service they provide is an inefficiency. The Esq population in public schools is rising, and that's because they are often more expensive than that flat fee, so charters do not want them. Their charters won't stop until they have extracted every dollar into private pockets. This board has

128been given power precisely to deal with these big problems. You need to build coalitions and act, not give us a plan to die gracefully. We need warriors, not bureaucrats. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Hello, Jackie Luskin. I'd like to make a suggestion about the Chief of Student Support Services that that position be named the chief of Esq and Student Support Services, so that there is a clearly identified home in the cabinet for s it was a position that was created last year that put higher oversight over s personally, I see that as a good thing, and I do just think that having that clearly identified would be a good thing. I can't support removing any boots on the ground. These front line troops positions, and yet also try to save higher ups. We have

129people here with student caseloads. So we're hearing from student support instructional specialists. There's 36 of them with caseloads of between 80 and 100 students. And we don't see a plan for where those 80 to 100 students in that caseload would be transferred. Also, I'm troubled by the removal of two suicide prevention specialists, 13 behavior support teachers, and the positive behavior intervention specialists. I feel we need to be strengthening behavior support. It's certainly an area that I'm seeing vast weakness in. I'm often sitting here in the room, and I am right now dealing with parents who are on the receiving end of failure when it comes to behavior support and management in the schools. We need these people. And for all the headlines, there are the subtext of people who are really hurting and are going

130to be losing their jobs. So I just want to acknowledge those as well. Aftercare. I'm shocked that you would make any cuts when that's one revenue producing area of Broward schools. Please don't. And then finally, I would like to see more battle. Instead of us keep saying we're losing 10,000 kids this year and we predict another 10,000 next year. Where's the fight? Let's get out there and fight for every single one of them. And don't accept that it's going to be 10,000. Let's get out there and ask them why they're leaving. Thank you. Before the next speaker, I'll read the next five names. Chef Terry Price, Anthony Matranga, Victoria Cortelezzi, and Tracy Chandler. Welcome. Good afternoon, Lynn Boveri. I'm a registered nurse. I'm here to speak about student safety. The district has eliminated key nursing

131leadership positions including the director, supervisors and clinical nurses. These roles are not optional. They ensure safe oversight and legally compliant medical care in our schools and our clinics. In the proposed staffing, there are only three supervisors who will oversee more than 300 nurses, most from agencies. This is not safe and the risks are real. When our own supervision is stretched too thin. Every medication, every treatment, every doctor order must be verified by a nurse. Without strong nursing leadership, that safeguard weakens and student safety is put at risk. Students with complex medical conditions and needs are increasing. Every year we have more and more. It is not declining like enrollment. This is not about restructuring. This is about whether a child is safe during a medical emergency at school. One of the board members mentioned earlier

132we. Why? How can we have someone with certain skills and licensure report to someone who does not have those same skills, if not more. Without a nursing director, that's what we're doing. We are decimating the leadership here. This is a question. This is not a question of whether or not we can afford nursing leadership. The question is whether we can afford the consequences of not having it. I urge you to restore adequate nursing leadership before a preventable incident makes this a crisis. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Terry Lopez Price. MADAM Chair, thank you for increasing the time. We appreciate it. I just wanted to say it's very difficult to see that this is even discussed today, because I was here last week when the whole melee was happening of let's do this or let's

133do that, or let's add this or let's take that. And I don't understand how you would possibly think that this is ready to be voted on. I don't know who puts it on the agenda. Exactly. To say, yeah, we're going to we're going to vote this in today, and this is what it's going to look like, because it doesn't it doesn't look like you're ready. And it's hard to watch that. In addition to that, one of the things that have been said over and over again is we're not going to touch positions that people who affect children, we see here how many people are here who affect children, and what were they feeling like when they were sitting in their offices or at schools and heard, hey, yeah, your whole department is going to be

134gone. This isn't how we used to do business. And I know things are changing. And I know because I've been warning since 2011 that the billionaires are coming after public editor. I've said it so many times, I got tired of saying it. Let me say it again. The billionaires are coming after public editor, and you shouldn't be making it easy on them. Like the gentleman said, we need warriors. We don't need to die gracefully. We know what's happening as people with money. It's people with big pockets. They're making the laws. They're funding people to say the things that need to be said to give the money to charter schools. We had a public education system in this country that was fine. You want to privatize everything because you can. You need to stop it and

135help us and talk to departments before you cut them. Stop getting these consultants to make these decisions for you. We pay you a lot. All of these people here, we pay you a lot. Why do you need consultants? I MAY as well run the district then if I can hire a consultant every time I need, please step up. Thank you. Next speaker. Shafi. Zainab, thank you, chair, for increasing the time. We greatly appreciate it. I wanted to talk to you about the statements that the school board made to the community and to their educators. They promised the community and the educators that they would start from the top and then go down, not from down. And I don't know where you're going to the top, because no one here is in the audience from the

136top. Just a little fyi to you, the school district and the board as a whole is constantly talking about how they care about student success, how they value their educators. And I'm using the words educators very broadly, teachers Esq, guidance counselors, everyone in a school, you're not showing that you care about your students nor your educators in your schools. It is very disheartening, as an educator myself, to see this happening in our school district. A lot of us here have put in years and years into the school district. We have dedicated our lives to ensure that our students are successful, that this school district stays afloat. And instead of you following your word and doing what you said you were going to do, you are doing the direct opposite. You are hurting our students in

137the school district. You are hurting the educators in the school district. You are not keeping your word. And that is very disappointing that you are not doing what you said you would do, what you promised this community, that you will do what you promised the educators in this community that you would do, and what you promised our students that you would do. Thank you, thank you. Next speaker. Hello aga,, Victoria Trujillo Health safety, mental wellness, mental stability. It's a foundation of being able to learn. I was in the classroom for a very long time, both in Miami-Dade and here. I've worked for free. I've done other jobs. I've made pizza, I've dressed up as Barney. I'll do it again if it takes a student to learn, because safety is the most important thing in the

138classroom before you can teach them math, before you can teach them anything, you need to provide safety and mental wellness. Social workers are a staple. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to guidance counselors and social workers because I am. That teacher can pick up on student behavior right away and know there's something going on. I'm usually right. I'm at an sto school. I can't tell you how many classrooms I've walked into and go, something's going on with this kid. And I'm right. And they bring in rbts and whatnot. They need to feel safe. You want students to come back to Broward County. You need to show parents that you care about their children's mental stability and their wellness. You need to allow them to eat. It's the only place they get food.

139Sometimes our community needs you to be courageous right now and make those hard decisions. It's not easy to be on the cutting board right now, knowing that I just left a school where kids were crying because I told them tomorrow's my last day with them. But I went, you know why? Because they're my why. They're my why. They brought me joy. They got me through the day. And just like all of these people that sit in front of you and you, so many of you have been teachers. You all have seen me in schools on many levels, in gardens, teaching sel, teaching math. Thank you. Before the next speaker, I'll read the next five names Doctor Natalie Lynch, Walsh, Michelle Bonfanti, Melanie Burkin and Muriel Theophan Atilis. Tracy Chandler plantation, Florida. They tell us not

140to bite the hand that feeds us, but what do we do when the scraps we are thrown leave us hungry? We're expected to make a dollar out of $0.50. Please make it make sense. Fat always rises to the top and that is where the trimming needs to begin. Instead, the same county that has mismanaged taxpayer money is counting off the number of teachers they are ready to fire. This should fire everyone up. We are in an abusive relationship. Each year teachers are given less and less and expected to do more less money, but double the students, less benefits, but more accountability. The success of this district rests on the backs of the teachers and the staff who are in the trenches. Yet the ones in the Crystal Palace have more job security and even get

141cost of living rises. But at what cost? While the highest paid in the district still referendum money meant for teachers, public distrust increases and public school enrollment decreases. Higher ups are lining their pockets and we in the trenches are turning ours inside out, searching for change. Have I mentioned that we are in an abusive relationship? The time is past due for change. There used to be a time when the job opening meant school leaders had to interview the top ten applicants, the top applicants for a position. Now, schools are finding themselves in a position where a warm body beats having a t, b a. To be honest, the ones who are suffering the most are the ones whose futures are. We are supposed to be molding. Students are walking the halls of schools that are

142lacking security. Clerical counselors, janitorial and qualified teachers. Instead of trying to attract students, Broward County's response is to close schools because that's where the answer. That's the answer to maintaining those with six figure salaries. But those of you making the decisions are not asking the right questions. Understand that victims of abuse eventually grow tired. Thank you. Before we go to the next speaker, excuse me. Before we go to the next speaker, we I do need to take a vote to extend the meeting. I would ask that we extend the meeting by two hours. All in favor of extending the meeting by two hours, say I. I I. All opposed? Say no. Oh. Motion passes with one dissenting vote. MRS. Alhadeff all right. Welcome to the next speaker. Hello. Good afternoon, members of the board, colleagues

143and community members. My name is Anthony Matranga and I live in Davie. I'm also a teacher for Broward Schools. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak as a teacher in the district. I understand the difficult financial decisions you are facing. None of us are aware of. I'm sorry. None of us are unaware of the budget pressures or the need to secure long term stability for our schools. Responsible stewardship of resources is essential, and I recognize that downsizing MAY feel like an unavoidable part of that process. One of the things I have noticed when I looked at the jobs that are being cut are social services to the weakest members of our school district, people with emotional mental issues, people with problems at home. I have seen the difference in outcome between school systems

144that provide those services and school systems that do not. And we are talking about the difference between children who grow up to become responsible, taxpaying citizens with strong families, careers and jobs, and students who are put on the school to prison pipeline. And when you remove school psychologists, school counselors, social workers, that's kind of what you're doing. We really got to spend those resources to help out the neediest students, the ones that have, the ones that have problems at home and really, really rely on state and school services in order to become successful adults. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Doctor Natalie Lynch Walsh Plantation, Florida. Part of being a leader. And I say this as someone with a Phd in leadership is having some self-awareness, taking feedback and knowing when to switch course instead

145of escalating your commitment to a failing proposal. I don't know how many more people have to stand here and provide concrete evidence that you are cutting from all the wrong places and adding to all the wrong places. Last time I was here, I suggested cutting the deputy superintendent, regional superintendents, assistant or whatever that one is getting rid of of excess executive directors. You're adding two, not one executive directors of enterprise analytics and intelligence don't need to streamline. Do one if you must, but you're not. I also talked about internal controls where you do not create a potential conflict. You maintain separation of duties by not putting purchasing and payments under the same chief. Not to be outdone, you guys then did what every last grand jury report said not to do. You then put compliance

146in with facilities and threw them in under a chief called Operations and Facilities, as though you have not been told and should have learned to not put the building department and fire with the same chief that does facilities. But that's what's now on the org chart. Wasn't there last week, so it wasn't a concern of mine. 1997 2002, as cited in 2011 2021. What's the next grand jury report going to say? It's like you guys are trying to get removed while destroying the district and the assistant director of the Business Support Center, I see you. Thank you. Next speaker. Leaders Eat Last. That is a great book that I think everyone in leadership should read. The main message of that book is that true leadership is about responsibility. It's not about rank. It requires sacrificing

147one's own comfort to protect and empower team members by creating a circle of safety, a culture of trust, empathy and security leaders. Allow employees to thrive and innovate without fear. There is no circle of safety for teachers. As an Esq specialist for the past 24 years, I have seen an increased need on hands on assistance in the schools by cutting positions in the schools that help our students day to day, we sacrifice the future of the incoming students. Every position you put cuts puts more pressure on the teachers who are barely getting through the day. Morale is low and they are burnt out. Teachers are working 2 to 3 jobs to support the passion of teaching. Cutting from the foundation of schools will only destroy what you're trying to build. In the past two years

148at my new school, I have increased the students by 100% and have been 100% in compliance, meaning that our budget was not cut in our school because every dollar was accounted for. And do you know that I didn't even get one? Thank you from the director. She was more concerned that I might have worked remotely while I was having chemotherapy treatments than the future of the students and being a decent human being and making sure that her school got the funding that it needed to keep going. District personnel come to the school and they sit in the conference room and they criticize teachers. The kids need to learn, and they don't know how to learn anymore. They're being rushed through the next subject before learning what they do. Please state your name for the record.

149We speak. Yeah. Oh, I'm Michelle Benson, I'm the Esq specialist from Hollywood Central. Thank you. Next speaker. Good afternoon, Melanie Birkin, Davie, Florida. You know, I don't envy any of you for being in this situation. This is actually turned. I feel like it's turning me into somebody I'm not where I feel like it's pitting us against each other. Really. I don't want to say, oh, cut. I'm going to say Michelle just because she was just before me and I'm friends with her. But cut Michelle, not me. I mean, it's just that's not how we want to be as human beings as as Broward County employees. We want to be proud. We want this to be a family. We want to stand united. And it really feels like we're being divide and conquer kind of thing.

150And it's just, I know that the that there has to be budget cuts somewhere. But I really urge and encourage you all to maybe take a step back if there were errors in that one job description, who knows what other errors there are. And it's, it's we all do so much for our kids, our families. And I was really feeling a little defeated on Sunday and one of my parents texted me because they had moved and they needed their heart, their home or her car broke. That's what it was. And she needed me to. She asked if I could set up the homeless transportation for her, and she texted me on Sunday. She's like, oh, I'm so sorry to bother you. But in that moment, I remembered why my job is so important because the

151parents aren't calling everybody, whatever. Whoever doesn't, they don't have their number. I'm not going to say they're not calling somebody in particular. But the point is, is that I know I'm available. And many of us social workers, psychologists, cis, all of us that are building relationships with our students and families, that's what matters. And I really hope that that's what is taken into consideration when these final decisions are made. And again, I really don't envy any of you in this position right now and or anyone in this room. It's it's difficult. And, and I thank you so much for your time and your consideration. Thank you. Thank you. I'll read the next five names. Zaira climbs lunches, Cynthia, Dominique, Chris Nelson, Susie Gluck and Marjorie coach Malcolm. Welcome. Muriel. Theo. Parent advocate. I reviewed this

152proposed organizational chart. This plan reorganized the leadership, but it does not clearly show how it's improving. Student I'm sorry, improving support for our students. When we look at areas like counseling, mental health and student services, we see titles and layers, directors, supervisors, coordinators. But what we don't see is more people actually working directly with the students. And that's the problem. A big problem. Students don't interact with an organizational chart. They interact with counselors. They rely on social workers, and they need real access to support when they're struggling. Right now in our schools, staff are already stretched thin, students are waiting, and in some cases, not even getting the help they need in time. So I ask you, where in this plan are the additional counselors? Where are the increased mental health support for students reorganizing

153departments without increasing direct support does not solve the problem. It just shifted around. Our students need more than structure. They need access. They need support, and they need it consistently. Can you please ask the super oh, Doctor Hepburn, can you share explicit changes in staffing allocations? Because can we consider aligning public records to the office of the General Counsel? This would ensure better compliance and remove layers of delay. If this plan cannot show how it puts more support in front of our students than it is not progress. It is just paperwork. And like MR. Cervera did last week, I will you know, it's just paperwork. Shred it. Thank you. Next speaker. Cynthia Dominique, Margate, Florida. I am a parent. I don't know what to say. For all of you who showed up today. Kudos to

154you all for having the courage to come here, because i know that there is a very real fear of retaliation, but I guess you're losing your jobs anyway, so there is none. I, and I want to empathize. I know that this is extremely difficult decision for the staff making the cuts, making the changes for the board, who has to make the decision. So I absolutely don't take that lightly. However, we hear every single day that we see the amount of people who have been cut that are directly interacting with our students. I between this morning, I can't tell you how many parents I've spoken to that said, oh, I'm losing a social worker. I'm losing this, I'm losing that. We're losing two teachers. We're down three going into next year. We're losing staff at the

155schools so the staff can come here. I don't know, the superintendent can say whatever he'd like, but the fact is we are losing staff at our schools. And I know there was a. Trying to change the staffing allocations to where high schools are increased to 26 and elementaries are decreased from 21 to 20, but it doesn't realize an actual change. We're still going to have classrooms with 25 kids in a kindergarten classroom and 30 kids in a fifth grade classroom. That's where my kids classes are right now. And with losing two teachers next year or more, they're going to go up. That doesn't make parents like me happy or want to keep my kids in Broward schools. So, I mean, I have a ton, tons of things. There's not enough time. But, you know, there

156are so many places we could look trim the fat, consolidate even more. It's not going to be comfortable. We have to do uncomfortable things if we want to move forward. But we need to preserve the staff who are directly supporting our kids. We're supporting their mental health, who are supporting their clinical health. The nurse just spoke. We had a situation before. Let's do the right thing. Thank you. Next speaker. Good evening everyone. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Zaira Sanchez, Deerfield Beach. MADAM Chair, superintendent, board and staff. Here discussing the org chart is to discuss taxpayer business. So I'm going to use a little bit of plain talk and I hope I could do it in two minutes. Please don't take it personally to $5 billion school district. And we're not on a playground. So

157okay, the 2627 organizational chart looks like look, looks less like a management plan and more like a script for a reality show we're all forced to watch. But your constituents aren't tuned in for entertainment. They're looking for their money and ensuring minimal impact on students and educators. I heard the cfo recently compare the district to the Titanic. She said. The comment was taken out of context. I have some context for you. You guys are busy rearranging deck chairs while the water is at our ankles. This memo proves it. I don't even know how many positions you're you're doing and how many millions. 40, 45 million, 300 plus positions. But these are real people. Most are student facing. Also the thousand positions every year. I think that should please should come back to the board. You're

158asking the public to fund a luxury cruise where only the the only things being downsized are the lifeboats. And let's be clear that the parents and the press aren't making the district look bad. Your. Your decisions are. And with this organizational chart in zero oversight, the referendum will be doa. Stop protecting this mismanagement culture and start over. Start protecting the students and teachers. Otherwise, the only thing unthinkable here is the ego at the top. Thank you. Next speaker. Hello, Chris Nelson. I live in Fort Lauderdale and you see the cameras back here from all the news stations. The guy that was just over there taking the pictures, they're here to report on the fact that this org chart is not satisfactory to the public. That's what's going out to everybody sitting in their homes tonight.

159And that's because you're doing something that should be completely off the table. We're in a cash crunch right now as a district because of declining enrollment. And you're talking about getting rid of mental health professionals, teachers. That should be absolutely out of the question. Okay. Why are people leaving the district? It's because they see these massive brawls going on between students. No, no, no, we need more people boots on the ground there to make sure our schools are safe. Now, the people that you're letting go, you're not having to come into contact with them. So it might be easier. The people in this building who make some $220,000 a year,r, m msive psions, t cut,t,hehe c css should begin right in this building and really should stay right in this building. The solution is you've

160got people working in this building that have one year contracts. It's not like the superintendent where you have to sit down in a room and hash it out with the attorney. Like we went through it the last one, we can start with a clean slate. On JUNE 30th. You're going to have to fire some people that work in this building, and I'm sure they all tell you that you couldn't get by without their without their position, but it's just going to have to happen. It's not going to be fun. It's going to be a little bit cold, but firing teachers is out of the question. And firing the staff is out of the question. Okay. We could save taxpayers $34 million by cutting the fat in this very building. And that's what you need to

161start with. Thank you. Thank you. Before the next speaker, I'll read the next five names, Liliana Ruido, Dana Parish, Anna Fusco, Nadine Martinez, and Dan Reynolds. Welcome. Hi. Hello, board members and superintendent. I'm a little short, so I'm just going to lower this more. Some of my colleagues have already provided a comprehensive overview of the position, the roles of the s, sis responsibilities. So let me be direct. Students have shown up at my door because they did not know where else to go because I was. Their lives were saved. That is the hands on ssis role you are considering eliminating. My name is Susie Gluck. I am the ssis at Monarch High School. I have spent 25 years in this district and my entire career before this role was dedicated to at risk youth and

162Esq students. I didn't stumble into this work, I chose it, I pursued it, and I've committed decades to it. In addition to carrying a caseload of 80 to 100 students, I'm also the person students find when they are in crisis. When a teenager is in danger, they don't walk into an office with an appointment. They go to the adult that they trust. I have been that person. I have recognized the danger in real time, provided interventions or gotten students to safety. You don't recover from losing that window. Eliminating this role does not streamline support. It removes the one adult whose job is to be present and accessible. When students need help. Immediately before you take that presence away, I ask you to pause because once it's gone, the cost will not appear on your spreadsheet.

163It will appear in the moments when no one is there and a student has nowhere left to go. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Margie Malcolm, and I'm an educator and a parent of Broward County Public Schools. Emily. Eliminating educators job will not only put strain on the teachers who are left to pick up the slack or to pick up those positions, but it will also affect students. My son is 15 years old. He's in high school, and so many of these services, him and his other and his friends use without these services, I'm positive that we have a lot. We'll have a lot of teenagers, a lot of students, not just teenagers, because we have these kids in elementary school kindergarten who need the services. So please be

164mindful when you cut. Think about the students. You want to keep our students who are here now, but instead what you're doing with this, you're actually pushing who we have away. Be mindful of what you do because whatever you do will affect you later. So before I go, I want to say thank you. MR. Cervera, thank you so much for taking the time to think about teachers and the students of Broward County Public School. Have yourselves a good day. Thank you. Next speaker. Good afternoon, Danita Parish, Lauderhill, Florida. I want to speak on the importance of keeping ssis positions within our schools. These roles are not extra support. They are essential support ssis staff help identify students who are struggling emotionally, socially or behaviorally before those struggles turn into crisis. They provide early intervention, de-escalation

165and consistent check ins that teachers alone simply don't have the time for, or most times training for to manage. When we reduce or eliminate these positions, we are not just cutting jobs, we are removing a layer of protection for students who are quietly struggling. That means more behavioral issues in classrooms, more disciplinary action, fewer opportunities for students to get the help that they need. Early schools today are dealing with increased mental health needs, not fewer. Cutting ssis positions moves us in the wrong direction at the exact time we need more support, not less. We can't expect better outcomes for students while reducing the very resources that help them succeed. Thank you. Thank you. And I'll also call up Nicole Maust next speaker. Hi, my name is Nadine Martinez, licensed clinical social worker, plantation, Florida, speaking

166on behalf of the ssis department. We have a wealth of resources that we provide to students. We host monthly wellness clubs, provide monthly wellness themed bulletin boards, host wellness fairs, drive the trusted adult initiative, attend rti m t, s, s and t and s sra meetings to offer insight and support to students in need. We are an additional body on campus who can provide support in any way possible. To sum it up, ssis is a strong team that consists of 37 mental health professionals from diverse backgrounds, with two supervisors, including 21 master's level staff, 13 bachelor's level staff and three licensed health professionals. And we all have a background and experience in mental health, including our supervisors. We are in 44 schools, and as of last week, we've made 28,300 interactions to date, and we've

167made 1892 mental health referrals. Please reconsider the elimination of the ssis position. Please take the time to read every single email you received on our behalf, or meet with every student on our caseload and ask them about their experience to truly make an informed decision as members of the board. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Hello, Nicole Morris, Coral Springs. As someone who has been in this district and parent advisory said on parent education group meetings, attend pta meetings across the district, I will say that one of the things that we hear consistently is that students are not getting their needs met when it comes to their IEPs. They're not getting their evaluations done. They don't feel that they're getting that they're able to get access to their guidance counselors, their mental health counselors. I've

168had two students who have gone through this district who, when they were stuck, it was the guidance and the family therapist that were able to assist us. And I would say that whatever cuts we are making, we can't do it at the school level. We are not losing students to charter and private school because the academics are better. We are losing students because they're not able to get the services that are due to them. I was with a parent yesterday and a meeting at a school, and she wasn't able to get the services that were due to her on her iep because they didn't have the staff. And she withdrew her child. Her child hasn't been in school in three weeks, and she's going to go to a private school. I would say that whatever

169we do today, we need to make sure that we don't remove any student support services, safety, mental health, Esq anything that is in our school, we have to make sure that these services are there for our students. Thank you. Thank you. Next, speaker and I'll just reread the names that I that haven't come up yet. Liliana Ruido, Anna Fusco, and Dan Reynolds. I guess I'm out of order. MADAM Chair, vice chair, board members and superintendent. I'm Dan Reynolds, PRESIDENT Of the Federation of Public Employees. We represent most of your Non-instructional personnel in three different bargaining units food service, clerical, and one unit that contains transportation facilities, maintenance and security. You got a tough job in front of you. It's not your fault that we have declining enrollment. But what I'm going to tell you about

170the people we represent is they're the frontline workers who keep the schools running. You can't have education without a clean, well-lit workplace, without kids being fed and without them being transported to the schools. We took our cuts. Most of you weren't here during the Great Recession. The bargaining units we represent were cut anywhere from 50 to 30%. You can check these numbers. We have about half the maintenance people today that we had in 2010. We had about 30% less facilities people than we had in 2010. We have many less clerical. It didn't affect food service and transportation as much, because you've got to have those positions filled. During that same period of time. All those levels on this org chart that you're looking at grew while we were taking those cuts. So. We don't have

171any more room. And when you need a plumber, you don't need any of the six people in the org chart above them to show up. You need a plumber with a bag full of tools. Thank you. Next speaker. Liliana Ruiz. I want to start by saying, if I were you sitting there, I would not vote on an org chart that is all over the place. Just saying. Also, I'm here to ask you to keep the ssis team. They are the superhero. If you think about all the things they do for the students, I mean, it's it's obvious that, you know, you should not let them go to begin with. This is a team of professional okay. For you to be in this type of team is because you went through so many processes to educate

172yourself so you can service the students. That will be one thing. The other part I will say, you gotta appreciate the professionals. You gotta appreciate the experience. There are people in that department or in that team that's been for 25 years, 20 years, 15 years. Do you know how much it takes for you to get to that level and have that type of experience? So you always say, oh my GOD, we love our students, but you don't show it. I want you to show it. You know, being you here, sitting in this podium, having people coming to you saying fighting for the job. I mean, seriously fighting for the job, saying, you know, I've been in the system this long, but yet you want to let me go. So this sends a message to everybody

173out there saying that you don't value them. And you know very well that teachers aren't value unpaid. I mean, unappreciated and everything. So I will ask you to take that into consideration that I will say another one. So when we walk to schools and you keep saying we are losing students, I don't see how I'm going to be honest to you because the classrooms are overcrowded. The teachers are like having 50, 60 students in the classrooms. So how is that? You are you are losing teachers. As a matter of fact, not a students. I will. Say thank you. Next public speaker. Anna Scarborough, teachers union PRESIDENT. So we've heard it all here today that people are saying, I work with students. I impact their lives, whether it's I am the actual educator of instruction or

174mental health. I'm going to say it again, like I said it a couple weeks ago, and I said it to the news, every single capacity is a different type of educator. When we're meeting with students that have behavior problems and we're helping change their being, that's an education on how to act appropriately. I just told you earlier today, I got a call that students were throwing rocks at a teacher's head while she was going to her car, and then throwing rocks at her in the classroom. That's behaviors that we need different type of people to help the teacher and the classroom. That's things that we need. You've got people saying, I work in schools. They might be under the district budget. Everybody's under the district budget. Every single employee of Broward County Public Schools is

175under a district budget. It's just budgeted differently in a building or in a school. Reallocate the money in the schools for our students that are there. It doesn't matter if they're under enrolled, those students matter. And when we start seeing changes in our schools, better behaviors, better mental health, you're going to see better academics. We have we have epidemics of things going on with behaviors, with vaping, with acting out, with not showing up to school, or I am showing up to school and I'm hanging out. Those are all different components that not just a classroom teacher needs help with. So I'm asking you guys again to follow the strict direction you said do not impact our students, do not impact our schools. I don't care if they want to tell you that they work at

176Lauderdale Manors, Arthur Ashe or kcw. Those are educators in some form that gets sent out to schools, and they work with our students to improve whatever they're going through so they can sit down and be educated and be productive citizens of our county, our state, our country. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes public speaking. We'll go to board member discussion. MISS Thompson. Thank you. Chair. So first, I just want to reiterate and ask of our general counsel to make sure that we followed all necessary bargaining units when we brought this org chart. Up. Mainly article 14 a of the b2t sp contract, which talks about. Prior to implementing a reduction in personnel, the superintendent or his or her representative will meet with representatives. So with regard to the actual org chart, that's all above the

177line. I don't believe any of those individuals will be members of btu t sp, but I'll ask Doctor Lozano to confirm. Go ahead, Doctor Lozano. Yes. Some of the individuals on the org chart are t sp and we did meet with all the collective bargaining groups to discuss the number of positions after last week, the day after the workshop we met with fop right here in the boardroom. And then after that we met with the btu to go over names, positions and next steps. Okay, I have a couple questions and then I have some some comments and some motions. We had a speaker talk about the Department of Coordinated Student Health Services being cut. Can we have staff explain the impact of that and how that services MAY be impacted? Go ahead, MISS Hollingsworth. Good

178afternoon. Simone Hollingsworth. Chief Student services Officer That was eliminated. The director has been vacant since JANUARY. We realigned it to specialized instruction and Esq to assist with that collaboration. We did reduce from 5 to 4 clinical nursing supervisors. One had been vacant since JANUARY and then reduced to a line, and then all the other nursing services would fall into that same department. Okay. And then we've had some some emails about the dual language facilitator positions being cut. If those are cut, how will the 36 dual language schools be supported? Go ahead.Com. So we have a plan. Those that were cut were specific to schools, but based on that, it's also title three funding as to why those are cut, because federal funding also got reduced. So that was impacted. Employees will regionalize those employees. Those

179are part of the regional plan. So those schools will still get some input. Those schools will get supported by those individuals. Okay. And then I want to talk about the changes to the mental health department. And I also want to claim ownership for that because that is a motion that I made. It wasn't from the superintendent and staff, and I just believe in taking ownership of of things we do. So throughout this process, we've really had to evaluate what to do with a limited budget. And it's really difficult because there is value in everyone's position. I would I would argue that everyone here and in our schools are impacting students, some in a more direct way than others. And so when I saw that 16 or 24 school social worker positions were being cut and

18011 school counselors being cut, and our Esq, which happened quickly. Took back. I was trying to think of ways to best serve our students with limited funding. And it's difficult. And I feel the pain in the room and I feel that we are pitting mental health professionals against each other, saying that one is more qualified than the other to do these services. And and as a social worker, I have really been reflecting a lot on the recommendation I made and its impact to our students. Being someone who has had students come to me saying that they wanted to kill themselves, ororhahahere were aictimf rapepe, or t tha thehe paren werebubusing t tm.M. Know the burden that you guys feel in yoyour schools every single day. And I don't I never meant to minimize that. So.

181At the same time, we are continually told that we are in a budget and we are. I don't think that's that's a lie or a misdirection that we are in this budget crisis where we have to figure out the best way to use our limited funds. So I have two motions. One being our discussion on the suicide coordinators, because when I had previously asked about these positions at the boardroom, it I was told that they weren't curriculum, they weren't direct student. Impact facing. And later I was told that they did. Compliancy in reporting and made sure that our sre, our suicide risk assessments were done correctly, which I think is very important. So I would like someone to very clearly state what these suicide coordinator positions do. Currently there are well, currently there's none on

182the org chart, but there were three. So I think the whole board needs more clarity on these positions and the potential impact of losing these positions. MISS Hollingsworth. Good afternoon. Again, I'm going to have MISS Veronica Winter come in and speak to that specifically as the director of mental Health. She's out in the Pre-function room. She'll be in in a second. Thank you. Hi. Good afternoon. So the suicide prevention coordinators do a variety of responsibilities. They oversee the suicide risk assessment process in terms of ensuring that all of the procedures are done correctly at the school site and assist with supporting students. They also provide consultation to schools daily. So on average, they support about 1000 support calls per year for schools that call and just want guidance in terms of how to navigate at

183risk situations, and then they are responsible. Our coordinators are responsible for training the mental health professionals each year on suicide risk assessment procedures and suicide prevention. So on average, they train about 700 staff members and mental health professionals each year. So the coordinators play a vital role when it comes to suicide prevention initiatives and ensuring that we are not just reactive, but that we are proactive in how we are supporting our students. Thank you. And currently, how many suicide coordinator positions are filled? There are two filled positions. There's one that's vacant that they have been sharing that region, but typically it was three positions, one per region. And right now there's two that are filled. So I would like to make a motion to restore the two suicide coordinators positions. And then just splitting it

184how staff sees fit. Second. Second motion made by MISS Thompson, seconded by MISS Hixon. Public comment on the motion. Doctor Natalie Lynch Walsh, Plantation, Florida. I support the motion. And when someone says, but how will we pay for this? Remember the positions I suggested you eliminate that are from the top deputy superintendent, Stray executive and extra executive directors. Regional superintendents start consolidating there. They are many layers removed from kids. But if you're going to have increased mental health needs, then it seems like you need to support the kids for those purposes nobody wants. They have to have somewhere to go. And you can use technology to better support staff so that they can work smarter, not harder. All of that should be a conversation and should be part of a discussion about how you want

185these recommendations framed. So you can avoid having repeat performances where the entire community comes out and tells you that your org chart is a dumpster fire. But yes, I support the motion. Thank you. Next public speaker. Cynthia Dominique, Margate, Florida As a nurse of over 20 years in a nurse practitioner over 13 years who's worked primarily in mental health and have seen the impacts in the long lasting effects of not having prevention and support early on. I definitely support this motion. Hi Jackie, just stating the obvious. I'm in support of this too. I do think that this makes the case really for there to have been a second workshop. I think this is a thoughtful process, and I'm grateful that folks are considering proposals being put forward and making those proposals. Thank you. But I,

186I fear there are so many other layers as well here that we might be missing, but for this one, I support it. Thank you. To you, PRESIDENT. I appreciate the motion. And the second, and I hope that everybody supports putting these positions back. And quite frankly, every single position that I know that my people are emailing everybody to show you all the layoffs that they prepared, that are educators that work directly with students, whatever semantics names that they want to give you or call you and say their district budget, cut it out. The whole district is budgeted with the district budget. It's just allocated differently. And you can reallocate funding properly to the schools. So every student is taken care of with wraparound services whenever it is needed, whether it is on a schedule, it

187is in a case or it is a walk in every single day, our educators and staff walk into school. We never know what is going to be thrown at us from a student, a parent, or multiple. It is really important that we keep everybody employed that are impacting students. Muriel Theo, parent advocate. Students today are dealing with a lot. They have stress, anxiety, depression, and in some cases, thoughts of harming themselves. Some have actually even tried harming themselves on school property. And so with when that happens, they need immediate help from someone who is trained to handle those situations. Suicide prevention staff are not extra. They are essential. They are often the first line of support when a student is in crisis. They help identify warning signs. Early step in when something is wrong and

188connect students to the help they need. Teachers and administration already have a lot on their plate. They care, but they are not trained to handle mental health crises the way these professionals are. Without proper support in place, situations that could have been handled early MAY turn into something much more serious. And then if we are serious about student safety, we have to look at it. Thank you, thank you. Please yield the mic. Thank you. Next public speaker. Gerry Lopez Price, Vice PRESIDENT, Broward Teachers Union I would just like to say thank you to Representative Thompson for rethinking and reevaluating her thoughts on what went on last time, and I'd like all of you to take the opportunity to rethink all of the things that were discussed last week, and understand that this is not ready

189to move anywhere. Thank you. Thank you. Any other public speakers board member discussion? MRS. Alhadeff. Thank you. Can you tell me the financial impact of this motion? So originally, this wasn't part of our downsizing. So the removal of this is an additional cost savings. So the three was it three positions. Two positions two about 100. And if we do an average of 75,000, about 150,000. Okay. So I, I support the motion. But when we continue this conversation and there's going to be other motions, I'm assuming coming forward, I'd like my colleagues to know what the financial impact is, and then also where you're going to suggest to be cutting from, because obviously you can just add, but you also need to cut because it needs to be balanced. Thank you. Any other board member discussion

190on the motion? All in favor? Oh, DR. Zeman. I'm just curious, Doctor Hepburn, you suggested this did not come from you originally to reduce these positions. Where did it come from. MISS Thompson said. She. Decorum in the audience, please. MISS Thompson just opened up saying that she's the one that made the motion or the recommendation for last week. Yes, Dynamite. And I, I think this is a good redo and I appreciate the humility of of doing so. Thank you so much. Any other board members discussion on the motion? MR. Cervera? Good first start, MISS Thompson. I'm hoping we can keep this momentum going as long as it takes. Thank you. Obviously, I'm supporting the motion. Thank you. Anyone else? All in favor of the motion? Say aye. Aye. All opposed? Say aye. Motion passes unanimously.

191MISS Thompson. Thank you. Chair. So I think in mental health, at least when I worked in nonprofits, we talked a lot about prevention versus crisis intervention and that the state and the federal government always will fund crisis intervention, but very seldomly funds prevention. So I think it's interesting that I'm sitting here and advocated to fund crisis intervention. And these ssis positions really are a more preventative position. So can I get clarity? How many filled school social workers are there that we were proposing to cut? Go ahead, MISS Hollinworth. You MAY be you MAY be faster than I am. I'm pulling that information. Good afternoon. I believe I know it was 14 from my department, but in the social workers there could have been from other places. So, MISS Ruckman, I double check with you. Sorry.

192For social workers. I believe it's 16. I have 16. Eight were vacant. So there was originally 24 positions. And then I heard 16. So I just want to, before I make this motion, clarify how many filled social worker positions we have. 16. I thought it was 16. Yeah. So my. I'm hearing a lot of people say 16. So I'm going to go with. 16 and school filled and then school counselor positions are. 11 correct. The family counselors that were on there. That is correct. And then there are 36ssis positions. Filled, right. Filled 37 filled. 37 okay. Thank you. So I recognize the budget crisis, and I recognize that there are going to be other board members making motions to add positions back in. And I also recognize that I caused this. Again, I'm taking full

193accountability for the recommendation I made, but I would like to motion to keep the 16 filled school social worker positions, the 11 school counselor positions in the 37ssis positions, which would amount to around $4 million. Second. Motion made by MISS Thompson, second by me. Public comment on the motion. Doctor Natalie Lynch, plantation, Florida. I support the motion. And again, this is where you tell your superintendent to go and start cutting from the top. There's no avoiding it. Like people keep saying, look around at who's in kcw at the top in other locations and, and try to consolidate. And you do not need all these executive directors. I don't should I start crunching numbers to see how many executive directors you need to consolidate to pay for the 4 million because you need social workers. So

194I support the motion. I guess I'll get out my calculator. Thank you. Next speaker. Sorry, Cynthia Dominique, Margate, Florida. I do support the motion. I thought the social workers were there was a consensus to put them back in last week or when this came up. It's it's all blur. And also I would just say to consider the vacant positions as well, because just because a position is vacant doesn't mean that it's there's not an impact of that vacancy. And additionally, in looking at the org chart and some of the savings, I noticed that there were considerable amount of positions that were grant funded. And so when we cut those positions, I don't know the length of the grant funding. What do we do with that funding? If we eliminate certain positions, do we put it

195in the general fund to pad the fund balance? I don't know. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Good afternoon again. Melanie Burke in Davie, Florida. [Laughter] I'm a little I mean, I'm just confused about if we were losing social worker positions or not. Wait, did I, I didn't, I just started. Restart our time please. Okay. Thank you. I'm a little confused. I support the motion in the sense that we need all the mental health we can get. We should all be working together as a team though, and I do have a difficult time with people that are kind of trying to pit each other against each other. I don't understand exactly the emotion, but I also want to say that it wasn't just the s, sis, but it was also their supervisors. And so and

196I don't want anyone being cut from mental health. I just think it's important that we look at the funding sources too, including the mental health referendum as well as the mental health, mental health assistance allocation funding. I don't even understand where these positions are funded from, when they're supposed to be funded from referendum and mental health allocation. Thank you. Thank you. Next public Speaker. Muriel Theophanous, parent advocate. I am asking that you amend the motion because you said 16 social workers, 11 school counselors, 37ssis. But those are the filled positions. We need to count the vacancies as well. When you make your motion of what we're going to go ahead and put together. So please consider that. So give us a total number of exactly what we need or what what we should have support

197to support. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Terry Lopez Price, I'd like to again thank Representative Thompson and all of you for what I'm about to see. I'm sure, which is more reflection. And remember, we don't want to touch the people who are touching students. We want those people there. That was always the ask. Also, I would ask you to think about other ways that you can save money. It's not just about cutting people, it's also about stopping. With all these programs you're buying the licensing, the stuff that teachers don't want, the things that you think are teaching students when the teachers are the ones who are teaching students, there's a lot of stuff that's being bought, a lot of programs and just things, just people over products, people over products. The vendors are going

198nuts with you guys and all the things that they're trying to sell you telling you that teachers need it because they can't do their job. No, we can do our job. We were doing it before the vendors and before the computers and before all of that. We can do it. Yeah. Yes. Awesome. Hey, Jackie. Thank you. MRS. Thompson put me in the confused column about the social workers. Because the consensus was reached among all of you. You reached consensus at last week's workshop, and you agreed at the end, when the superintendent was asked, could he summarize his position on the social workers? And he said, well, you've given me consensus to reverse that proposal to ask the social workers. So I think that acting social workers was already off the table. And then the third.

199I MAY be wrong, but that was where you left it last week. Thank you. Any meetings before last? This is my sorry. Good afternoon. My name is Patricia Veal from Tamarack, and I am a ssis. And I want to say thank you because I teach the children every day about accountability. And when you're in trouble, own it. Because that's what my mother taught me. If you was able to do it, you should own it. So thank you so much for owning that and for putting that in the forefront. Also, I just want to kindly remind you, we were never placed on the org chart. The financial restraint was not from our department. It was placed there. And I'm happy you guys are reconsidering and putting us back because we have to think about the children.

200We are in a major crisis each and every day. I know in my school alone, in the middle school and high school, each and every day, we're doing at least 2 to 3 crisis mental health, dealing with kids with their behavior and risk at risk of not graduating. We want to remain at a school. We have to focus on the students. We have to be boots on the ground if we want to bring students back to Broward. I'm originally from New York City. I moved here and I have my raising my child here. So let's keep all the support staff, nobody against each other, but work together collaboratively, putting hands on the ground to work with the kids. Thank you. I. Anna Fusco, be to you PRESIDENT. I think multiple people are confused. If you

201can restate the motion in the second, you could do it after. I'm going to stand on my position where I where I stand. Everybody should be brought back. That has been labeled that they impact students. Again, don't listen to the semantics that they're in a district position that we've heard from Hollingsworth. Just she's just stating the the position that she's in and they work in her district position. This is these are students that need these educators. I use the word educator all the time to describe everybody, everybody, erybyby that I impacts a stududt t isoo imporntnt. So I asking you g gssoo make sure that everybody's included. Whenever you make a motion in a second, if you have to double check each other, let's do that. So we can make it clear because it's not

202just a group sitting in here, it's everybody else that's watching. No matter how we're feeding it out there, it's really important that we bring it back. Vendors need to go high. People up here need to go. There's lots of ways you can fund it. Next public speaker. Board member discussion, MISS Thompson. So I wanted to clarify what I did last week since there seems to be some confusion. So last week when I discussed these changes to mental health, they were discussed in order to save the school social workers and the school counselors. Like my colleague MISS Alhadeff said that she wants to see the trade offs. If you're going to bring back a position where you cutting in a different position. So that is why I had originally suggested that the ssis be cut so

203that we can maintain the school social workers and school counselors. So the motion on the table or floor, whatever that language is right now, is to be abundantly clear that I would like to maintain the 16 filled school social workers, the 11 filled school counselors, and the 37ssis position. So I hope that clarifies for the audience and the people at home. Thank you, MISS Hixon. Thank you. I'm still a little confused, and I guess I was confused last week because I, I, I understood we were giving consensus about the supervisors, but I missed the part about the ssi, as did the superintendent. When I originally called him, he said he didn't understand that to have happen either, so I was very confused last week also and was going to bring a motion about ssis today.

204So thank you for that. But I I'm still confused because I do also remember last week that you said all of the school social workers, which would lead you to believe that they were all. They're there on the chart that we received a 12 page chart, which was the last attachment on the item. The only school social workers that are on this chart of being eliminated are eight vacant seats. So I this chart that we see is superintendent. If you can chime in, did you already in this chart a account for the social workers that. Were those. 16 social workers that are being talked about right now. Not Lozano and MISS Ruckman. You brought it back. So those positions were brought back. And so what you see are the eight vacancies. Okay. So that's the

205only it's already account, right. So this chart we have already did that. So I don't think you need a motion for that because you made a motion. I just need it to be abundantly clear what's happening since there is some confusion. So it happened last week by consensus. So I would like to vote on it right now for these positions or not right now. Talk amongst yourselves. Okay. Today. So I. If I MAY, MISS Hixon, sorry to interrupt or just Doctor Lozano. MISS Ruckman, are the ssis positions also on this chart as being reduced? Yes. Mr. Reduced by 38 positions. Yes. They are pulled out as well. Okay. On that list. Okay. Thank you. And according to this list, because I remember last week it was also stated about school counselors, which is very confusing

206because there's a bunch of school counselors. It's not just one line on here. There's a bunch of them. And so I believe the number 11 matches with elementary school counselors, which aren't really elementary school counselors, as I learned through the many emails that we got. And I did want to say thank you to everybody who sent emails. So can you also clarify from last week, what were the positions that were. I know. That happen. To have. Yes. So at the beginning of the workshop, doctor, Doctor Hepburn brought back the. 21 family counselor. S that was 21 positions. Then he also brought back the six s program specialists. So it was those two positions that Doctor Hepburn brought back at the beginning through consensus. We brought back the 15 school social workers that were on the

207list for elimination. Okay. So because there was a conversation about counselors, but that wasn't accounted for in here. No. So now today. So today we're talking about the 11 elementary school or how that's worded on this paper. They. 11 elementary school counselors and 37ssis positions. Okay. That's our current conversation. All right. Great. Thank you. Because it was confusing and I wouldn't have given consensus last week if I had understood that a whole department was going to be eliminated based on that discussion. So I appreciate that it's coming back. I, I'm interested to see what my colleagues have to say. I had a different motion around this. That was kind of a compromise. So I guess I'll wait to hear what my colleagues have to say. Thank you. Thank you. DR. Zeman. Thank you, MISS Rupert.

208I have you. Doctor Hepburn. There's been a number of speakers that have talked directly about cuts that affect kids in schools. The 16 social workers are back in your recommendation today, so I don't want to talk about them. Are the 11 elementary school counselors in your recommendation to be cut or not cut today? No, they're in the recommendation to be cut. Terrific. Do those elementary school counselors work in an elementary school full time? I'll let MISS Hollingsworth kind of give the the specifics on those positions. I'm going to let Danny Shapiro speak to that because he's here. Thank you, Doctor Shapiro. Okay. Thank you. Good evening everybody. Danny Shapiro, director of school counseling. These 11 school counselors provide direct services, individual counseling, group counseling and classroom lessons to to students at all grade levels. So

209four of them are elementary school counselors, although all of them are coded as elementary school counselors. The other seven are secondary school counselors. So these counselors have multiple schools where there are vacancies to ensure that the students get services. When there's no school counselor in that is hired at that school. Thank you. And what I'm curious about is why are those why were those people put up on the original cut list? Those 11. Oh, come on guys, don't do it. Please have decorum in the audience. Go ahead, go ahead. MISS Hollingsworth. Good afternoon. Simone Hollingsworth because of the, you know, ask of the 15%. We strategically looked at that as a division, knowing that we have statutory requirements, legal requirements, things of, you know, compliance and knowing that we couldn't lose everything we looked at

210strategically, how could we provide support to our schools and to our students, as well as contribute to the district solution? So we looked at that in a very strategic manner so that we didn't lose something across the board, but we found the best that we could find and do the best that we could. Terrific. And I'd ask you the same about ssis. These are all school based staff, is that correct? Correct. They are typically in one school. Some of them share two schools, but they report to that school daily. Yeah, I understand and I'm wondering if the reason they are on the original cut list was for the same logic you just described in terms of statutory requirements, compliance, and then you have to manage risk thereafter. So if I MAY, they were not actually

211on the original cut list. They were added last week. So when we were looking at also numbers, we were trying to be, you know, equitable so that we didn't take away any specific program. That's why they were not on the original cut list. I'm sorry, were they added? That was added at the board's request last week. From last week to this week, these 37. Correct. That wasn't on our original list. And Representative Thompson, I'm curious, you have. 11 the net effect, I think, is that you would like the. 37sissis added back in because we already have the 16 and the I'm sorry, even I'm getting a little lost here I think. Are the counselors Doctor Hepburn on the cut list or not? The 11. They are currently on the cut list. Thank you. So then

212your motion is for 48 people, 11 counselors, 37sis in a net effect because we already have the 16 back in. And yes, could I ask Doctor Hepburn that's around $4 million. Do you have a better estimate of the cost? Just a second. Minus the 16 people because I just took. Yep. Minus the 16. But it's 48 positions. That is if we do an average of 75 that's 3.6 mil. So 3.6 mil. And I appreciate that. I'm anxious to hear more from my colleagues. I, I liked the principle that we had, which is people that are in schools that are helping our kids. We're fenced from this from this reduction, but anxious to hear more from my colleagues. Thanks, chair. Thank you, MISS Rupert. Thank you. I'm wanting to make a substitute motion, but I would

213like to vote on MISS Thompson's motion first. So that would just be another motion, MISS Rupert. So if we vote on MISS Thompson's motion, then you'll just make a regular motion when we come to you. Okay. MR. Cervera. MISS Oliver. Thank you. Chair, thank you for the motion. And I also want to acknowledge and thank all of our student support instructional specialists who came in and took time out of their days to come and speak with us. I guess at this point this evening, I feel like this is one of these things where MAY have flown under the radar if the public wouldn't have come up and and brought this to our attention. So thank you for that and thank you for all you do. I was very encouraged to hear the level of support

214that these professionals bring to our kids. All 37 of you apparently managing 90 to 100 kids each. So kudos to all of you folks and the work you did to the thousands of kids in your day to day. I just need a bit of clarification on the motion, and perhaps this is ripe for Doctor Hepburn as opposed to Representative Thompson. MR. Superintendent, if I MAY, I'm trying to follow. And this is on page 35 of 66 of the org chart package. And I'm following along here on the line items. And I see in the Student Support Instructional Specialist column 3712 for a total of 40. I'm trying to figure out are these supervisors of the 37. How are we getting to this 40. Can someone give me some some clarity or shine some light on

215this? How we're getting to the 40 number. Yes, sir. I'm trying to get to the actual. Page 35 of 66 on the pdf presentation. So yeah, so looks like the first column is field positions. The second column is positions that are vacant. So there's three vacant positions. Correct. a total of three vacant positions is how we get to the 40. But the actual boots on the ground student support instructional specialists. The number is 37. I just want to make sure we're capturing everybody within the motion. Yep. There's 37 field positions with people occupying those positions. Thank you for the clarification. I'll be supporting the motion. Thank you. Anyone else? MRS. Alhadeff? Thank you. I support the motion. However, I would like the maker of the motion to also tell us where we're going to get

216the $3.6 million from. I don't have it. That's why I made the original suggestion. I don't I understand this department well, that's why I made the other suggestions. So I don't have it. So if Doctor Hepburn has some suggestions, I know the audience has brought some suggestions, I'm guessing, and I'm hoping my colleagues have found some. So if I MAY, MISS Thompson and the board, here's what I would prefer. Instead of going through finding positions and, you know, saying, let's trade this for this and this for that, make a motion. If the board agrees with it, allow me and the team to go back. And even this out. But I would say here's what I would ask. Parameters, right? What are the parameters that you want me to work in as far as making that

217decision of what positions? To cut to so-called offset the, the cost or the impact, the cost savings. That's instead of just sitting here and saying, hey, let's get rid of the job coach to do to bring this. I don't think that's prudent, right? In doing that here in the public eye is that our staff. Please have decorum in the audience. Let our staff go back, sit down, go through positions. I would ask the board to give us parameters or specific criteria of what you don't want us to touch or impact. You mean like at a workshop? No, we these are below the line positions. So these are positions we would not renew. We're this what the board is going to vote on. And at the end of this is the org chart. As far as

218these below the line positions, these are essentially positions that we would not renew. And you would like that tonight so that you can bring it back if possible. Correct. If if the exercise it sounds like or the discussion we're having is bringing back certain things, folks are trying to find a trade off and to lessen the impact of startling people who are listening right where their positions MAY be impacted because of a discussion. And we come back to the drawing board. I would rather prefer doing it differently. If you're going to make a motion to bring something back, give us the parameters of what you don't want us to impact, and we will go back and find those positions to offset. MADAM Chair. One second that. Substitute motion. One second. MISS Rupert, MRS. Alhadeff has

219the floor. Okay, so I agree with you, Doctor Hartman, that that works. I think that we need to look at any technology that we have in regards to in that we're using in the classrooms. That could be possibly stop using that and could be cost savings. I also I think that if there is duplicative positions or people doing the same type of job, we should look at that. That's all my suggestions for now. Thank you, MISS Hixon. MR. Cervera, I'll add you back to the list. Thank you. So I'm frustrated a little bit because I think that, well, first of all, I did ask for an additional workshop because I was afraid of what's happening right now is going to happen. And I appreciate what MRS. Alhadeff said. You know, if you're going to cut,

220what would you if you're going to add, what are you going to cut? And actually, that was like I said, I had a motion with that in mind, but we did, to your point, ask for job descriptions for us to go through, and the superintendent could tell us, when are you I believe you said you were going to bring us back those job descriptions and look and see where there was duplicative, where there duplicates, and how we could reduce some of the job. That would have been, I think, really important before we got here. But I just want to sort of state the obvious at this point. I don't know how we vote on the org chart. If we're going to give you a list of things we want to save under the line, it's

221going to impact this org chart somewhere because there's no way you're making these cuts without making additional cuts on the org chart. So I appreciate, you know, if you want a list to see what else people want to bring back. But I'm really concerned about voting on an org chart that isn't going to have enough changes in order for us to be able to make the cuts. So. And if I can, if I. Can. MAY I go now? Doctor Hepburn was responding to MISS Hicks. Yeah. If if I can add MISS Hicks. And I'm not expecting you guys to, like, bring back hundreds of positions. We're talking about, you know, a few a few positions. So it shouldn't be a, a tough task for us to go back and, and see what the trade offs

222are for those few positions that you're bringing back. So I appreciate the answer. But just in these numbers that we had, it was $3.6 million. And we we've continued to say we don't have that money. And I now it's like, yes, we can. We can figure that out and bring it back. So I just, I think I agree with some of our audience, our public speakers in terms of, I don't know that we as a board are ready to vote on, on the org chart because I just think it's too big, first of all. And one workshop just wasn't really enough. We we had discussions. I think we needed another workshop to be able for you to come back, show us what you had, shake it all out and then get to a better point.

223But that's I know, MISS. If I, if I can add again, MISS Hixson, for the positions you guys are talking about, technically you are bringing, you're trying to bring back 11 positions. The. Just a reminder, the cis positions were not part of our original cut. So technically the positions that were part of our original cut that that wasn't brought back in the last workshop are the actual, the, the label of the elementary school counselor. So we're talking about 11 positions, not 48. I would say 16 and 11, because the social workers were on the original cut. And we've we've captured that already in this particular update. I hear you, I just it's it's it's very confusing. I'm. Anyway, missus Rupert wanted to say something. MISS Rupert. Thank you. My substitute motion is to postpononhe enenti

224organationanal chahart too th next p possiee w wksksho It nes s to b be looked at from top to bottom. We gave direction about that. I don't believe it was followed. This is not the way really good governance looks, the way we're doing it right now. And as one board member, I don't want to actually be part of any sort of carousel of crazy coming back. And why we're doing this is more like the Kentucky Derby version of of Carousel of Crazy. So for the best part, for our community, our students, our employees, and for us at, we need to bring this back to another workshop. That is my substitute motion. MISS Rupert, do you have a date? When is the next workshop available? We have a workshop on MAY 12th. I know that that

225we had a discussion earlier today that that workshop agenda was quite heavy. We have. The next workshop, I believe is JUNE 16th. Correct me if I'm wrong. So. MADAM Chair, can we can we make a workshop on another day? Doctor Hepburn. No, I disagree with the workshop. I think we can make these decisions right now for the org chart. Excuse me. Okay. This is my first warning. We're this this particular meeting is about the org chart. We have below the line positions that we've added as attachment for the courtesy of the board, understanding what the cuts are and if there's motions to bring back certain positions. But as far as pushing the org chart back, I think we need to move forward and do what we need to do to address the org chart right

226now. As far as positions that the board I don't expect, we're bringing back hundreds of positions. We're bringing back very, very few positions. And what the task that we're going to do, if it's to offset any additional cost that we feel like we need to offset, the first thing we're going to look at is vacancies. We still have vacancies in our below the line positions that. Are substitute are. Funded. That are funded. Is there a second for MISS Rupert? There is a second to MISS Rupert's motion. Motion substitute motion made by MISS Rupert, seconded by MR. Cervera public comment on the substitute motion. Doctor. Natalie Lynch Walsh, plantation, Florida. I support the motion. I knew that's what MRS. Rupert was trying to do every time she tried to speak. I hope you guys will support

227the motion as well, if for no other reason than you'd like to get out of here tonight, because you have two other items on the agenda, and one of them is going to take a while, supposedly. So I totally support the motion. It's the responsible thing to do. There's a lot more work, and your superintendent needs to learn to read the room. Read the room. It's a bad idea. Everybody has issues with it. Read the room, please, please. The rest of you support the motion. Help him. Help himself. Thank you. And let me just remind everyone, MISS Dupree, Bruno and I read the guidelines for public comment in decorum in the audience. There is no shouting out. There is no clapping. Okay? So please be respectful of everyone who has the opportunity to speak. Welcome.

228Thank you, Victoria Trujillo Cortelezzi forgot part of my name there. Hollywood, Florida. I'm reminded of a couple of things. One, many of you have been classroom teachers. And when we have assessments in our classroom, sometimes it's not the fault of the student if they fail, sometimes it's the teacher and we need to take ownership that's been brought up in this meeting. I support the motion. There is way too much confusion, and if my board members are confused, you can only imagine how we feel. We need to take a look at this again. My concern is you're going to rush it. And those of us that are on the cutting line, how much time will we have before JUNE 30th to find another position or to get notified? What's the process for that? This is reminding

229me of when we were we would get a plus money, and all of a sudden people that were very important during the year and we gave presents to we're not that important and we didn't want to give them money. Please take time to really think about what you're doing. This is important. Melanie Burke and Davie, Florida. I support the motion it again, everyone saying the same thing. There's a lot of confusion. It sounds like there's a lot of information that needs to be clarified. It might also be helpful to look at whatever positions are open and where people qualify to be put, rather than just cutting them like was done last week. So thank you for your time and consideration. I support the motion. Tracy Chandler Plantation, Florida. I do appreciate the job that you

230all have and the things that you do for the district, I really do. You're not the enemy. We're not the enemy. We're supposed to be working together for the common good. It is dismaying that the board speaks amongst themselves. We're confused. The board has met, has said several times different members that they are confused between what was said this week, what was said last week, what was accepted, what was this? What was? If there is confusion, doubt means don't. So if there is confusion, we need to pull back. You need to pull back and make Things crystal clear. We talk about being a district that is transparent. This is as transparent as mud. Yes. Jerry Lopez, I hate to be up one more time, but I just wanted to say that I'm wondering if any

231of you want to make a motion to adjourn and take this up at a workshop so that we don't have to continue watching this, because it's very troubling to watch. And let's find out who are the people who are bringing these things forward before they're ready, because I've been coming here for years when I was still a teacher, before I was elected, and I've never seen this kind of mayhem going on at a board meeting where it's not ready. Let's motion to adjourn. We can all go home. Thank you. Nicole Morris, I support the motion. I would say that with the cuts that are happening at the schools, the the new allocation models, the uncertainty that's happening right now at our schools, we need to be very strategic and make sure that the plan is

232solid so that our schools are staffed appropriately sooner rather than later. Thank you. Muriel. Theo, this is very emotional, very emotional. I mean, like, I need a counselor at this point. I mean, it's been stated multiple times that this this chart is confusing. Where are you know, Doctor Hepburn. You keep saying job below the line positions below the line positions. Yet we've been speaking about the the other positions the top positions that need to be cut as well. But nonetheless, where are the job descriptions that we ask for from last week? So at this point, again, I support it. Let's go ahead and just adjourn this meeting tonight because Doctor Hepburn, it's a lot of stuff that you did not come with that we asked for. So come on, let's get ourselves together. And when

233we come back at the next workshop, have everything in front of us, please, that it's asked for so that we can then seriously decide on what we're doing. Because at this point, like, seriously, y'all need to give me a counselor. We can't afford it. Sorry. I'm back. This is the fog. I'm talking about the fear, obligation, guilt. We have to have an org chart. We have to do these things, but we can't do things out of fear, obligation and guilt. Let's get out of the fog, please. Thank you. Cynthia. Dominique, Margate. I support the motion. There's just so much confusion. And I keep hearing, you know, that we need to move this along, move this along. These are all positions below the line. This sounds like an excuse to push this forward, rush it and

234cut the positions at the bottom and save the positions at the top. And that's not what we signed up for. We need to look at the staffing allocations. We need to consolidate the regional offices and sto a little bit more. Get rid of some of the director positions. Everyone's on a one year salary. Cut salaries across the board going into their new. With the new contract going into the next year. We need nurses. We need we need prevention. There are a lot of layers of administration at the top that need to be cut. We don't need to be cutting at the bottom. And if there are positions that are grant funded, referendum funding funded, what do we do with those savings? But there are plenty of positions you can cut on the chart. I support

235the motion. I just want to add, shall I say remind the s, sis positions were never originally on the chopping block. I just want to throw that in. And oh wait a second here. I'll wait. Thank you. Anna Scarborough, teachers union PRESIDENT. Well, you know where my position is. I mean, it was clearly said on the show my position. And then the following week clearly said from Superintendent Howard Hepburn and I, hey, I respect when we take a position and you stand strong. I'll give you I'll give it to you. But let's call it what it is. I don't see anything that's happening in this org chart. That was a direction from board members. So that's your decision. But I support the motion. However you want to call it, table it to a workshop, but

236it cannot be voted anywhere that this could come into place. Because I'm telling you right now, you will be hurting schools. You will be hurting students. That is a fact, and you won't realize it right now, but you're going to realize it next school year. I'm telling you, this is not a work that is ready to go out. It's not just confusion right here. It's confusion everywhere. And if anybody's confused, let's just table it, whatever you need to do and let's move it on. Thank you, MISS Hixon. Thank you. I have a question for the superintendent, and I appreciate what you said earlier. I understand that this chart and the things that we're talking about aren't on the chart. My point, though, is that I think you've heard a number of places there are going

237to be changes that are going to be suggested to, to balance out the differences here on the chart, and maybe to even do more. So I don't know if it makes sense to hear all of those. Or if you ask board members what their thoughts are. And like an individual meeting and get back to it. But I, you know, like I said, they're tied together. I understand what you're saying. And my, my question, which I asked last week when I asked to do another workshop, was, you know, what's the implication if we or what's the issue if we didn't vote on this today? And I believe the concern was about letting people know about their positions. Right. So I know that that still stands. But and I know we started this earlier than we do

238typically so that we could give them more time. So what, what, like, what's the final deadline in terms of having to pass an org chart? I would say every week we push this back every week. The employees who are impacted by reduced by delimiting their position on below the chart on the chart, we're we're impacting transition services to make sure they land in a good spot or help them with their next steps. I think delaying creates a level of uncertainty and hope for positions that we won't bring back, right? So we're talking about 800 and something positions, but we're talking about 300 or so people in those positions. And so to create that level of uncertainty for those individuals, which we know, many of those positions will not be coming back. That's why I said

239today, I don't expect the board to say bring back 300 positions. We just talked about bringing back 11 positions. When you talk about Net, because the 30 the 37 were never part of our cuts, right? So the 11 is what we're talking about bringing back, which is which is a fairly small number that we can balance out. And that's why I say asking the board for parameters as we go back, because the first thing I'm looking at is vacancies. We still have a large number of vacancies on below the line and a few above the line. So I'm starting there. I'm not I'm not looking to cut individuals that are filling a specific position. Right. So that's the strategy as going back and looking at it that way. And just as far as in the

240chart, the board gave direction last week about certain positions on the chart, bringing back certain positions, getting rid of some certain positions, consolidating certain positions. We've done that and we've brought the org chart to reflect those positions. And so that's why I say I think as far as the org chart is concerned, we're ready to, you know, move forward with that. As far as the positions that we're discussing that are below the line, those are things that we can take back based on feedback from the board, and look at how do we offset any cost for bringing back some positions. Okay. Well, and thank you for that. And my, my other question, because a speaker mentioned that tomorrow was going to be her last day, which was confusing all of the positions like this org

241chart that we have and anybody who's has a job and is JUNE 30th. JUNE 30th. So I just wanted to be clear on that. I'm not sure. I mean, everybody has their own situation. I'm not sure. I just want to be sure that, you know, these cuts aren't like immediate. Earlier than normal. This process is usually done late MAY early JUNE. We intentionally started this process earlier to ensure impacted employees get the right type of support to assist them with their next steps. I think creating an era of an aura of uncertainty where people are wishing and praying that I'm going to be the person that gets my job back because the board is going to bring something back. I think that's not great for the system. I think we need to make some hard

242decisions, move forward, let the team work with those impacted employees and assist them with also with career source, so we can move forward and do what we need to do to move the system forward for start planning for the upcoming school year. Okay. Thank you. And I appreciate because, you know, we did give a directive to to eliminate 1000 positions. So I do understand that the idea there excuse me, that they have to come from somewhere. I, I just don't know. If all of this is, is where I want to land. So I'm still not sure I understand what you're saying. So I, I will weigh that as I listen to my colleagues, but I, I have a lot of concerns. Thank you. Thank you, MISS Thompson. Thank you. Chair. I think I also played

243a part in making this so confusing because the ssis workers were not on the org chart. So I'm going to claim ownership or responsibility for that as well. I do think it's important that we pass the org chart today with the understanding that these aren't the lower positions. These are people who have been waiting to find out if they have a job. They are real people in this building. And the director, executive director, assistant director, we have, there's just people waiting for these decisions. I also want to remind people that we also closed several schools, which means our principal placements are also waiting on these decisions. We are waiting for. Once this is set to see where people filter out. So like Doctor Hepburn said that people whose position has been eliminated, maybe they can

244find another role in the school. I think we should just buckle up and pass the org chart. If my colleagues have read it, it incorporates most of the recommendations that we had from last time. And there is a difference between the upper level and the under the chart. So that would be my recommendation because there are several things that are dependent on the org chart passing, including taking care of our close school community, which I promise to take care of as well. So thank you. Thank you, MR. Cervera chair. I support the motion. We, quite frankly, could not pass this dumpster fire tonight. Not at 7:00 at night, not at 2:00 in the morning. It's not going to happen tonight. We cannot be stuck with this for an entire year because we're being told we

245have to make a rash and apparent immediate decision on something of a level of importance that's, quite frankly, too high, because who suffers? Our students, our parents and our teachers, those are the folks who are going to suffer if we pass this in its current form. How many times do we need to hear from our constituents that they don't want this in this current form? How many times do we need to hear from our teachers and our parents that they don't want this? Send this back, let's workshop it. Let's figure this out. Let's get it right. And let's keep our promise to the public. Let's do the things that we said we were going to do. Start from the top. Work your way down. Thank you. Thank you DR. Zeman. Appreciate that. Chair. I think

246this motion makes sense. And unfortunately, it you know, it's kind of split the baby. We're not going to make anyone happy by postponing this a couple of weeks. And to be clear, chair, this motion that school board member Rupert made would delay this to a workshop on the 12th of MAY. Is that correct? Sorry. Repeat that. I was distracted by the behavior in the audience. Yeah, I can understand that. It's really important that we have like a very professional and serious discussion tonight. So I appreciate that very much. But the motion that MISS Rupert made was to delay, excuse me, to postpone this item until MAY 12th for a workshop. That's correct. Thank you. I appreciate that, and that's perfect. Just for the record that there were two more org chart changes I wanted to

247propose tonight, one of which would save $7.7 million and cuts 41 administrative kinds of positions. We don't need, you know, in a pure efficiency mode. It's something that we studied for two years and it's time to pull the trigger. And so there are things that we can do to save the positions. I will remind my colleagues that we directed the superintendent to find 1000 jobs equal to $75 million. We owe him parameters. We owe the staff parameters. I agree that our first direction was a good direction. Cuts outside of schools that don't affect educators in schools. A a that isisyou knonow,o me, aery apappealin stregegy becsese we, asee learned from our consultants, have more overhead and administrative than other districts. And guess what? Those districts, even the baselines that we were studying, they're going down

248and administrators and overhead because they have to due to declining enrollment. So we're I think on a very wise strategy, I just want to give us credit for, you know, asking for that. I will tell the superintendent I really do expect to land at 1000 positions. I hope that we can get to that point. There are some things that that we might suggest that you study and bring it back to us within the parameters, but I'd like them to be in the parameters that the board set. And that from the very beginning was outside of school education. And it was to make 1000 reductions because we know that that the loss of funds due to declining enrollment is severe, $225 million is not a joke. I'd ask everybody to to support this for, for a

249whole bunch of reasons. Also, chair, just as a matter of process, if we postpone this to the 12th of MAY, we can still finish up the last agenda item on our special school board meeting this evening. We have two more agenda items. I apologize for those two meetings. One seems quicker than the other. Maybe, I don't know. We'll have to vote to extend the meeting again at 715. Yeah, or else we'll just truncate our speeches, one or the other. But I think that this this makes sense. It's really I don't agree with the characterization of many of the speakers tonight. This is a lot of hard work. I will also tell MISS Hixon, in government world, this almost always happens on the day before the end of the fiscal year. So if we get it

250done before the 29th of JUNE, we're breaking records. So that just natural motions that happen with these things, because it's so hard. You're looking at people who, in this case, these are people who are most likely going to change jobs, not lose jobs. But it's still a strategy that we have elected. We're 200 positions short. We're $35 million short. There's still some work to do. I would like us to to end the year meeting the goals that we set for the superintendent, 1000 positions and $75 million. I know we can do it. One other question, chair. There are also things going on with the budget that will save money. We have not broken out of the position way of saving money. Right. 1000 positions take 75 million. That's not going to balance the books for

251us for next year, when if we postpone this to to two weeks from now and we get to that $75 million, will that be the starting point for setting the budget for next year? Doctor Hepburn. MR. Johnson. And then why MISS Johnson's responding? MR. Sullivan, if you can let the board know what is the actual regular school board meeting date? Following that workshop? That is correct, DR. Zeman. I appreciate that. You know, we we this is really hard. It's a thousand positions, a lot of money, a lot of, you know, we want to build a system that wins back students, not one where we just go in and rip off, you know, positions that are that are the critical delivery elements for why why people choose very rationally choose our school. Remember, 80% of of

252parents in Broward County choose traditional public education. We're not the losers in this game. We're 80% winners. But we have to make sure we don't lose what makes it special. And that's why this is hard. But we're not done. We still have to set a budget that's going to include cuts that go way beyond the $75 million for us to get in balance for next year. So there's still a lot of work to do. I appreciate MISS Rupert's motion largely for, you know, pause, regroup. Maybe these recommendations come back with slightly different presentations to Doctor Hepburn there. There are some things that were in the thousand cuts that we said there might be some slides put together to show us, you know, very clearly, that these positions are not educators delivering to our students in

253schools and that for the thousand positions are totally outside them, I think I think we might be able to win over more people if we kind of present them in a way that's crystal clear. So I think this is a good idea, but I'm also looking forward to when we get back together at the workshop, or even between now and then, to work on, on ideas where we can reduce further positions and save more money. Thank you. So the regular next regular school board meeting after the MAY 12th date would be JUNE 9th, which I'll remind the board that's also the timeline to our reappointment process would be that day as well. Hold on, because we've got a list of people who want to speak on the substitute motion still. You have the information about

254the regular school board meeting. DR. Holness. And I have you, MRS. Alhadeff. Thank you, Doctor Hepburn. Regarding MISS Rupert's motion for the 12. We do have a workshop. I see that it's scheduled from 9 to 5. Should we add this item? Do you think we would have enough time to discuss this on the 12th, as well as the other items that are on that workshop? MR. Sullivan or MR. Hill, can you go over the workshop agenda for the for the 12th? Sure. So right now we have eight hours scheduled. We have our advisory committee reports, legislative session recap, redefining our schools, update student mental health awareness. I'm sorry, not not the student mental health awareness. The quarterly report from safety. We have a rural development for hr diversity Committee annual update, and another rural development

255for safety and security. And then another rural development for what the board asked to bring back 8020, the rental of our facilities. Okay. So, Doctor Hepburn, do you anticipate those items taking eight hours. In in addition to this added it'll be more than eight hours if. Yes. Okay. So are there any items that are on the workshop that could be delayed for later? Anything you feel, MISS Sullivan, that could. Be delayed? Committee reports have to happen per policy. Legislative recap, I would suggest is somewhat time sensitive because all the new laws would become effective JULY 1st. Redefining our schools. I think it's also important. The quarterly reports, I believe, are statutory in nature. The hr policy MAY have to. Oh, actually, no. That's also urgent because it's in response to recommendations from the Office of

256Civil Rights, the Diversity Committee annual update. I believe that's also in policy and then rural development for safety and security. I believe that's also important. And then the 80/20 is at the will of the board, because they're the ones who directed us to bring that back. Okay, so Doctor Hepburn, it doesn't seem like we were able to adjust much for that day. So I have another question or possible suggestion. I know on the 13th we do have as a board a meeting at 4 P.M. On on the 13th, which is Wednesday. So if we added a workshop, three hour workshop on the 13th prior to that meeting. Would that Doctor Hepburn, would that help with with the time constraints for the 12 and adding this item. MR. Sullivan, what's the what's the meeting on the

25713th? We're I'm looking now, I'm not sure if that's a public hearing. Oh, that's the impasse. Yes. That's the. Well, I don't know if it's the impasse or the textbook adoption impasse. Okay. So so if we have, say, an additional three hour workshop prior to that meeting at 12 noon, would that would that help to remedy the problems we're having in terms of getting this item added to the 12? Because here's a concern, if we add this item to the 12 and we have so many items to discuss, we it MAY be eight, 9:00 at night and we're. We're still in the same situation, but if we if we have to as a board meet on Wednesday, which is the 13th, then would a three hour workshop prior to that meeting help to remedy this

258concern? That would be at the will of the board right now, the impasse is scheduled at 4 P.M. It is at Dillard. So we would have to either do it here prior to that and then move to Dillard or have it all at Dillard. But it's at the will of the board. I would suggest more than three hours. Okay, so Doctor Hepburn, we because Dillard is is closer is in Fort Lauderdale area. So we could we could have the meeting here for how much time would you think you would. Need, say, a minimum of four hours if we're going to have speakers minimum of four hours. So if we have an 11:00 workshop here at the kc, right. And then the Dillard meeting is at 4 P.M. Would would that provide sufficient time? Would you

259think. So, if I MAY, superintendent. Yes, I'm just concerned. And maybe Doctor Lozano can jump in the org chart is hr heavy in nature. And so with that 4:00 meeting I think that meeting is important for them to be prepared. So I'd be concerned about their ability to do both at the same day. But I'll refer to Doctor Lozano on that. I agree we would have to leave and prep and prepare for the impasse to present to the board in that quasi judicial meeting. Could I go ahead and suggest that we do it on a different. We have a separate workshop on a different day, like on the 11th. Yes, yes, yes. Okay. With that motion. Yeah. So it would be an adjustment to the motion, I guess. Well, I asked MISS Rupert for a

260date. She didn't have one. So the it still stands true, a future workshop that we can schedule at some point. Okay. I had thought she had 12 as a date, but she didn't have that in her motion. No she didn't. I think DR. Zeman. Suggested that change, change my motion to the 12th. To the 11th. To 11 to the 11th. Sorry. Motion yet. So okay, so MISS Rupert made her established that MAY 11th as her date for the next the future workshop. MRS. Alhadeff. I was just. Going to I it's not going to happen, but I was thinking that maybe on the fifth before school board meeting, if we could be fast, we could workshop it. And then on the fifth vote on it. Did it. No, that's not good. It's just not going to

261happen. There's nothing fast about this one. Anyone else on the substitute motion? I think the other part I'll let you finish on chair, is the regular school board meeting to. Yeah. So the regular school board meeting, MR. Sylvan, you said was the ninth. And that's when the reappointments happen as well. Yes. JUNE 9th. Sorry. I would not recommend doing that if you guys. The motion passes for the 11th, then I would suggest the 19th special school board meeting. We add this. I wouldn't I wouldn't suggest passing the org chart and reappointments at the same day. Okay. Well, the substitute motion is just speaking about doing another workshop on the org chart. So hopefully on the 11th we are able to workshop this again and then it'll be brought to us on the 19th. Any other

262discussion? MISS Hixon. Just a question for all of us, I guess to help the superintendent and maybe our workshop be a little more streamlined. Do you do you want us to are you going to meet with us individually to get some of the feedback? We're not going to have the opportunity on the org chart to give today so that you're bringing back an org chart in that workshop that reflects some of what we wanted to see. Like, is that allowable? We can meet, but without consensus from the board. You know, everybody MAY have different level of feedback. So without consensus for the board, that would wouldn't help the situation. So that's where the workshop has to be about more about consensus to bring back something to vote on. Okay. Yep. MRS. Alhadeff. I just wanted

263to ask my colleagues, did you have many more changes? I know I had one motion, but everybody knows what that is. With the chief of operations and facilities. But does do you have a lot more changes? I, I know MISS Thompson already spoke. That's. I would like to understand. DR. Zeman says. Yes on the org chart, not stuff below the line. It's different on the org chart. DR. Holness says he has. Yes. MADAM Chair, can I comment on board member Alhadeff? Yeah, I listen with the audience. If there are more. If there's another outburst, I'm going to recess the meeting. So please let us conduct the business respectfully. Thank you. DR. Holness thank you. So the only other suggestion that I would have, because we're we're we're putting positions back, is that Doctor Hepburn, you

264take a second look at from top management, down to middle management, down to lower management, and see if there's any further opportunities for cuts in those areas. We will. But I know the board has made recommendations to bring back positions on the org chart as well from last week. So those are some of the things we have to weigh. Right. Do we have some board members that have brought things back. And the consensus was to bring those things back. Director. Before and after care is one. I think it was a discussion about executive director today. I don't think we got far enough to get consensus on, on, on anything. So. Right. We've made a lot of cuts starting at the top 60% to be exact. And we've also made an additional cut through the consolidation

265as well. But one thing I want to be firm about is that at at a certain point, this the recommendation here, this is the org chart that I recommend. Right. So at at a certain point when you start veering away from what I feel is going to move the district forward and the priorities that we have to, to maintain the quality of academics in our schools, support the operation and functions and facilities. Right now we have to have a discussion about what do we hold me accountable for. If it's not my recommendation that we're moving forward with? So I want to be clear on that. When we come back for discussion, there's one thing of chopping things and whatnot, but there's another thing is getting so deep that it's not mine anymore. It's not. What

266I'm saying is, is the organizational chart that's going to help move this, this district forward. And what are we going to hold me accountable for versus right? So those are discussions that we need to have to when we bring this back. Anyone else on the substitute motion? Anyone else? All in favor of the substitute motion to postpone the org chart? Well, to bring the org chart back in a workshop on MAY 11th and for us to then vote on it, the special school board meeting, I think I MAY 19th say I. I all opposed say no, no no. Roll call. Roll call on the motion. Bowman. Yes. Cervera. Yes, sir. Hixon. Yes. Holness. Yes. Leonardi. No. Rupert. Yes. Thompson. Zeeman. Alhadeff. Yes. Seven two. Motion passes. All right. So this item is now postponed to

267the MAY. We have to notice a MAY 11th workshop. I'm going to say, MADAM. MADAM Chair, I would suggest 10:00. Sure. 10:00 well, do any of my colleagues have any objection to 10:00 on MAY 11th? That's great. Okay. All right. We do need to take a vote to extend this meeting. I'll make a motion to extend the meeting by one hour. Second. Seconded by MISS Hixon. All in favor of extending the meeting by one hour, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Say no. No. Motion passes with two dissenting votes with MR. Cervera and DR. Zeman. And MRS. Alhadeff. You're voting yes. Okay. [Laughter] All right. Could I get a motion and a second to move item five to the floor? Second. Moved by DR. Zeman, seconded by MISS Hixon. Public comment on item five. No comments. Board

268member discussion on item five. All in favor of item five, say aye. Aye aye. All opposed? Say no. Item passes unanimously. We'll take a brief recess because I. Yeah. Five minutes. Thank you. Good afternoon. We will now resume our special school board meeting. MAY I have a motion? And second on item six strengthening board office operations move by DR. Zeman. Second by board member Alhadeff. It is moved and seconded to move item six on to the floor. We're going to have public speaking first and before we have public speaking, I just want to state that it will be three minutes per speaker and you're speaking on item six. There are several motions. In item six, you will be allowed to speak three minutes on the motion on the item in general, and then on each

269motion, the board member will have discussion. So if you are speaking as a public speaker, be sure to include all of your comments in the three minutes that you will have as item six is on the floor and board members. Feel free to make general comments on item six, and then I'm going to move into the individual motions thereafter. So any public speakers. There are four registered speakers MAY please proceed to the podium. Doctor Natalie Lynch Walsh, Zaira Lynch's. Jackie Luscomb PRESIDENT. Anna Fusco. Good evening. It's been a long day, doctor. Natalie Lynch Walsh Plantation, Florida. I'm hoping some of you guys make substitute motions on these things because there's like what six of them. So last week ironically was Administrative Professionals Day. When you're a leader you got to take responsibility for your actions.

270And it's not a good look to throw the lowest person on the totem pole under the bus, which is what's happening here. And to be clear, when I started asking around, this is not the first time there's ever been a flier like this. It's not the first time there's been a flier with a bcc logo and board member faces on it. It's just the first time that the Republicans found out and decided to make a case, because they're proven they can do petty better than anybody in here. So it is not the first time. So this is being characterized as though somebody committed a crime. And the reason that the biggest problem here is that you didn't have a preexisting policy for school board logo use. That's one of the motions in here to develop

271one. I think it's motion number two. But if you'd had one, I believe that everybody would have followed that. But you don't have one. Now, whose responsibility is that? Who's been over legislative affairs and communications? Whose responsibility would that policy have been? Chief of staff. Just saying. So you don't have a policy that would have prevented this. And then in a panic, we're throwing the the secretary under the bus. And then anybody could have mistakenly used a p card. An audit will tell you if it was a one time mistake or a habit. And then all of a sudden there's a resignation because somebody's got to be held accountable. If you don't have a policy, there's no policy to violate. The first motion to in the rebuttal in the statement to the commissioner, there was

272something about having the secretaries report to the chief of staff. No, because the problem was a lack of policy. And I'm thinking this that one's not going to fly with you. Should there be a should there be a policy, absolutely appropriate training. They're all trained on p cards every year, just like everybody else, because they're all all the board secretaries are subject to all the same rules. All the other employees are. So that's sort of redundant. Number five auditor to audit. That'll happen. Retain a law firm. That's a waste of money. Thank you. There's no mystery lack of. Thank you. Next speaker please. Jackie, I'm not here to make capital out of this and particularly not political capital. And it's a shame anybody is. If there was an honest mistake, it was a clumsy one,

273but it was a mistake. And if we're going to make political argument out of a few hundred bucks that was mistakenly spent, I think it needs taking seriously. But I just I'm just not all for the hoo ha about it. The point that I wanted to make is that the standard that has been set in dealing with this needs to be the standard that parents can expect when we are seeking transparency over matters affecting kids. The process that you have followed here, MADAM Chair, is, in my view, the right one, and it's a process. We're not getting out here, though. There's really wonderful people in Broward schools, but there are also people who are using their roles to throw in obfuscation, evasion, delay, secrecy, non-transparency, non-accountability, sidestepping of public records, law, law, breach of students,

274procedural safeguards, and so on. When we seek transparency, when things go bad in situations out at schools, we want this standard for us and our students to accidental or not, we need the mindset and the process that does this that says, well, sheesh, what happened here? Let's review what happened. Let's provide some transparency, take responsibility, provide remedy, and prove that there is a learning curve. And not only take corrective corrective action, but be seen to be taking correction, corrective action. I do find a lot of what I do, as some of the regional superintendents know, is standing by parents when they can't have this standard of transparency and accountability. When things go wrong, I bring egregious situations forward and walk alongside parents. And instead of us providing those parents the transparency, there is then an

275operation that goes into play to not provide that. So I commend the process that's been put in place here. And I would just urge that all of you, where this is done, served you well to be seen to be putting this process in place, please let it serve us well and extend this process and this system and this level of accountability and seriousness and the hand-wringing and the transparency and the and the statements and the mea culpas. We need that when things go wrong with our kids out at schools too. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Zara Sanchez, Deerfield Beach I had to write this a couple of times. I didn't realize till late that the staff member resigned. So a resignation might provide a convenient political exit, but it does not provide accountability.

276We have to look at the fog again. It's often and how employees feel and how they would handle these types of situations, especially when they have to look at their immediate superior and have to explain certain things. They MAY feel like this is what they have to do. And I don't think in this context a resignation does. Somebody does it because they want to leave. I think they do it because they feel like they have no choice. It happens when an employee realizes that leadership is not going to have their back. And I believe the executive secretaries don't just go rogue, and they're not brand managers for their supervisors or superiors. And I believe the responsibility falls on all of you to manage your assistants and secretaries, whatever the job title is. And to let

277a staff member walk out the door while the person who should take responsibility remains silent is a failure in leadership. Thank you. Thank you, MR. Hill. Any other public speakers? PRESIDENT Anna Fusco. How are you doing? Anna Fusco b to you, PRESIDENT So I appreciate that this item has come about. And, you know, as a PRESIDENT Who has dealt with so many types of situations that our members have gotten into with purposeful or accidentally, you know, we all have to first and foremost be what I've always said is be human and care. And there's no doubt in my mind that our chair, Sarah Leonardi, and her assistant. Took a took a position to hold themselves accountable for what? I'm going to make it clear it was a freaking mistake that I'm sure every one of

278us sitting in this room has done some type of mistake like that of misusing something. It wasn't egregious. It wasn't purposeful. And when a particular person decides to resign, that that that's an adult that takes that, that ownership on, on their rationale. And, and Kelly knows why she resigned and other people sitting up on that dais and other people sitting in this room that know why she resigned. Nobody forced her. Nobody made her. It was her decision. And for whatever other reason. And I state that it was more than just this one little mistake. This flier has been going out for the dawn of time. People have been sitting in this school board for decades when our board members have not. So let's call it what it is. Okay, so we're right. We're not going

279to have a political piece come in and act like that. They're going to, you know, play that their self righteous and they do everything so perfect because everybody's done something on either side. This is about we have a school board, we have a chair that is with integrity and decency. Was an amazing teacher. And I will not stand by and watch any anybody sit here and make it more than what it is. And I'm asking every one of you sit up there to back her because as I say to everybody all the time, you never know. We're not sitting in someone's shoes. What would it be like to be in that shoes? I've learned for over a decade, it's hard to do. But when it needs to be done, it needs to be done. First

280and foremost, being a human and caring. And then that leads the way to give an open mind and understanding of what happened, how it happened, and what to do and move on. I believe that there hasn't been policies that could have led this to not happen, and there could have been policies, and it could have happened. It's a mistake. I know we're going to hear great conversation on what this board wants to forward, to make some things happen that can be informational, can change the path and can have pieces in place that it it MAY not ever happen again, but it MAY. And people are human. Let's not forget that part. And I'm asking you guys to stand with your colleague and make sure that everything's done right to make things go forward in a

281positive way. Thank you. Thank you, MISS Fusco. MR. Hill, any other speakers? No comments. We we have one additional speaker. Okay. Go ahead. Nicole Morris. Nicole Morris, I just want to say, I think this is much ado about nothing. I have known MRS. Leonardi for a long time. She has always led with integrity and held herself as a professional to the highest standards. And I respect her. And I think we have made a big deal about nothing. Thank you. Thank you, Nicole Morris. So before we continue with board discussion, each board member MAY feel free to give general comments on item six, and then I will be going through each of the motions. So you'll have an opportunity to speak on each of the motion. And also, before we begin, I'd like for the chair

282to provide her comments. Thank you. DR. Holness. And it was it was not acknowledged, but I did hand over the gavel to DR. Holness for this item since it was an item that I brought. So thank you DR. Holness, for chairing this. I want to take a moment to address an issue that has understandably raised questions in our community recently, an advertisement connected to a political event included the Broward County Public Schools logo in a way that should not have occurred. This use was inappropriate, and it's important to say that plainly as it relates to my participation, I want to be equally clear about the facts and will address what is already in the public domain. My intention, as it has consistently been, was to personally cover any costs associated with my attendance and participation.

283After the fact, I learned that a portion of that expense had been processed incorrectly by my administrative office. The moment I became aware of the error, I took immediate action. I self-reported the issue. I reimbursed the full amount of $150. I discontinued use of my district issued purchasing card and relinquished it to the superintendent. As elected officials, we often rely on the assistance and support provided by our administrative office and staff. They are a vital part of the overall function of this board. We are responsible for implementing policies, policies and processes to ensure necessary oversight and appropriate conduct. Consequently, I am requesting that this board look carefully at all of our protocols and determine where they need to be clarified and strengthened. This is not just about correcting one mistake, it is about making sure

284our policies are stronger, our expectations are clear, and our staff has the training and guidance needed going forward. I am bringing this item forward to request that this board ensure a full, fair and transparent review of our standards and protocols. Just as importantly, this item is intended to bring forward policy recommendations for the board to consider, including strengthening guidelines regarding district branding and logos, separation between district resources and political activity staff and board training on financial compliance and ethics approval processes for expenditures and reporting structures to ensure errors are avoided. We teach our students that mistakes can happen, but what defines us is how we respond. In this case, my focus has been on transparency, accountability and immediate corrective action. That remains my focus. I will continue to lead with integrity. I will continue to

285ensure that facts guide how I serve this community. Thank you. Thank you. Board member Leonardi. Board member Hixon. Thank you. And just to ask, do you do you want us to go through our comments on the motions? And then you're going to go back and vote on the motions? Is that the idea? No. If you want to have a general statement or. You know, you go. Back through, we're gonna go through each motion individually. Perfect. Thank you. Just wanted to clarify just a couple of things. I think, you know, it's really important. It was a mistake. It was it was not a good time to mistake, unfortunately, in terms of the p card. And I think all of us up here believe that we have, you know, we want to take ownership as well on

286on things that we MAY should have known, didn't know. You know, I don't know. I'm not trying. I don't think any of us are trying to lay blame someplace else. I will say that when my assistant came on board, the first thing she complained about really was not having training, that there was no onboarding for the board. We've complained about that as board members, but especially for the assistants. And she started to create a a book like a handbook, so that as new assistants came, at least there was something that was there, and they've really taken it upon themselves to do through the sba trainings. And they've looked for their own trainings. So I think it's because a lot of people don't know what the board assistants do. And I think each board assistant does

287something different because each board member has a different expectation for them, as is part of the job. So, you know, I they do have training. They, they've done a lot of it onheir own. S So t t too justt makeke a a s stamementhatthehey needd morerarainin I I don't know that I necessarily agree with that in this particular item. I know that they crave training. They like it. There's opportunities. They go to fsb, fsb training similar to us, although they can't go this year because we have limited the ability to do out to do travel for staff. So I, I appreciate very much the chair Bringing the item forward. I want to say to you as as a board member that, you know, appreciate you taking action right away. It is $150. And I, I

288don't think that it's something that we have to worry about. Someone from the outside looking in, we know exactly what happened. It was fixed as soon as you realized it. And I appreciate you continuing to be transparent with issues as you find them and serving us in the county with integrity. So thank you. Thank you very much. Board member Alhadeff. I was not a participant in the ad in the gala book. I publicly and equivalently denounce the use of the district logo in connection with any Partizan political events and reaffirm a commitment to political neutrality in the operation of the school system. My focus remains on serving our students and community with accountability and transparency. Okay. Thank you, board member Alhadeff. Is there any other board member who would like to just make a general

289statement? I would have on the list. Okay. Board member Rupert. Okay, thank you and thank you. DR. Holness. And, and super thank you to to chair. Leonardi. It's not easy sitting there and it's certainly not easy with a, a spotlight on you. And I appreciate everything that you've done. It has been above board. So I you know, you self-reported. Et cetera. Et cetera. Et cetera. So I just I just wanted to thank you for that. I was part of that, that flier that went out and. But all I'm going to say about that, but I did want to say that I, I support MISS Leonardi stepping up, stepping forward and taking responsibility. So thank you. Board member Zeman. Thank you so much. DR. Holness. There are some really thoughtful ideas here to consider as we

290talk about this. I just want to ask one factual question though. DR. Holness my read of this is that the Florida Department of Education Inspector General has announced that they are investigating. Is that correct? Doctor Fulton? General Counsel, I'm sorry. So there is a an active investigation. That's about all we can say about that. But the Florida Department of Education Commissioner said that that the Florida Department of Ed ig is investigating. So it's in the public domain. I just want to kind of make that out there. It makes it me think a little bit about number six. Yes. I don't necessarily think layered investigations are necessarily great. And I know we're going to talk about these layered these things one at a time, but I just want to get that out. And the second is

291I think it's important to think a little bit about the. The remedy has to fit the causes. Right. And so I think they're very important to react to this. Very important to do a whole bunch of things that make great sense. And I look forward to hearing from my colleagues about whether or not all of these things make sense or a subset of these things make sense. Thanks, Doctor Holtz. Thank you. DR. Zeman board member. Cervera thank you, chair or Vice chair? Excuse me before I I say my comments here, MADAM General Counsel, we are, as we just heard, under an active investigation from the ig's office within the Department of Education, are we not? And I just want to make sure this is on the record too. Normally, we would not confirm or deny

292an investigation, but the investigation is out there in the public. It's been shared. It's in the public domain. So we will acknowledge that because it's already out there. But we we won't talk about anything else related to it. Well, that's where I'm that's where I'm going because I, I certainly want to stay in bounds here. And I certainly want to follow the law. And, and somebody was kind enough to point me to a certain portion of the Florida statute, specifically. 112.3188 dealing with matters such as this involving the Inspector general. So I. I want to be really careful in, in what I'm saying, not only in, in my, my opening right now, but as we go through the motions. And certainly the same for my colleagues, I want to make sure that nobody up here

293on this diocese is running afoul of any of the law. Can you just summarize or explain to me or us what exactly that statute stands for and what exactly can be discussed in a situation like this? This is still very much a fluid situation. The investigation is you've confirmed, I guess, is very much alive and well. And, you know, a mere few days we're up, a few days later, we're up here talking about this. So I do not want to jeopardize the integrity of that investigation. And I certainly don't want to do anything that would run afoul of the requisite statute. So in your professional legal opinion, can you give us a a summary of what is permissible for purposes of these conversations that we're having now as an opening? And we'll continue to have,

294as we discuss these six motions? Thank you for the question. MR. Cervera through the Chair We really should not be discussing anything with that relates to the investigation. As I said earlier, we would not even confirm or deny that there is actually an investigation, but for the fact that some of it is already in the public domain. My advice to the board members is that your conversation really should just be on the motions, whether or not you agree, whether or not you have other thoughts with regards to how to improve policies, trainings, or anything with regard to the board office, without going into the specifics of any of the allegations. Florida Statute 112.3188 is a subset of the whistleblower statute. It deals with the Office of Inspector General for all government agencies and their obligations

295to investigate, and the nature of the confidentiality that also is related to that investigation is very serious pursuant to the statute and actually can be a criminal misdemeanor. So my recommendation to the board, you have some motions that are brought before you. These are processes. These are standards of operation. These are enhancements. I think you can have that discussion without going into any of the details related to any allegations. And I certainly appreciate that. And I'm always one that will heed to to counsel's advice. So I'm going to give a general comment just so it's clear where I stand on this, I am very much in favor of the investigation, and I and I fully support it. And I will cooperate. Fully with everything that is going on with the state. And I look forward

296to a detailed, comprehensive, thorough, independent review by any and all of those individuals from Tallahassee who will be conducting the investigation. I want to be clear on that. I also want to just make a general comment about some of my my thoughts when I heard this news. And again, I'm just talking in generalities here. i'm not talking specifics. I was disappointed to learn what happened. I am a big advocate for doing everything that we can to restore public trust and make sure that all of our constituents believe us, trust us, want to work with us, support us all that good, all those good things as we strive to return Broward County to greatness, if you will. Org chart is. There will be plenty of more time to talk about the org chart. The. The reality

297is, the reality is that we're at a time now where we watched a former board member in Miami-Dade County have a similar situation to this, and I realize, and I'll be the first to admit, it's certainly not on the same scale, but this is in the proverbial news when this hit. So timing wise, this could not have been worse for this district. And I was disappointed to learn of the expenditure. I was disappointed to learn of the timing, and I was certainly disappointed to learn that this now is another potential issue where the public is going to look at all of us as a whole, as a district, and scratch their head and say, you know what, can I trust these guys? So that being said, those are my comments. And MADAM General Counsel, I

298appreciate the opportunity. Excuse me. I appreciate your explanation of the law and all of the work that you've done for us to get us to this point. Thank you. Board member Cervera board member Thompson. Thank you, Vice Chair. I will also keep my comments. General, I really appreciate the chair bringing this item so swiftly. I appreciate the leadership that has shown here. As I mentioned earlier, when mistakes are made, accountability should be taken. I think the public looks worse on the fact that we can't pass an org chart, that we continually go back and forth about if we're changing scheduling or not changing scheduling, that we go back and forth about graduations. I think there are a lot of things that us as a board can do better. I think, to look at this mistake

299that is, that's not the thing. And I think we are all humans. Humans make mistakes, and I think we should treat each other with grace and appreciate that. So I'm a little disappointed in some of my colleagues responses. Thank you. Board member Bulman. Thanks, Vice chair. I to echo MISS Thompson, I really appreciate the swift swiftness with which the chair brought this item. The measures that she's taking, and I would invite any amongst us who hasn't made a mistake without intention of malice or anything else to step forward. I'll be sitting in my chair here. So, yes, there are places that we certainly could improve. But this. Is not should not be the focus of where we need to be putting our time and attention in terms of improving our school district. And so thank

300you for your leadership, which is appreciated, particularly at this time. Thank you, board member Bulman. So I'll just make my comments quickly. And then we're going to move into item number two through six, and we'll go back to one at the end. So I just want to say that I appreciate the public's comment. And what I can tell you is, and you can just listen in to the public. You can also see that there is a, a significant degree of understanding that we are all human beings and all of us is prone to mistakes. You know, I, I am very appreciative of Chair Leonardi in her quick response in terms of bringing this item, I believe that exemplifies great leadership in order to recognize a concern and to move so swiftly to address it. So

301what I can tell you is, I believe, regarding the flier, I believe all of us as board members, we have the same intent we see. The school board of Broward County as an opportunity to, to, to bring awareness to the community by having presence, whether in person or otherwise. By doing so, families will certainly have greater awareness of Broward County schools, and we hope they can see us as the best choice. You know, my office sends out requests to many different groups to to speak to many different groups regarding school updates regarding just bringing information. We've sent out requests, regardless of political affiliation, religion, race. We've sent out requests to Republican groups, Democrat groups. We send out requests to Muslims, Hindus, because we see it as an opportunity, because Broward County Schools has a diverse

302student population, and this is an opportunity for us to bring awareness of our school district to any families, regardless of their affiliation, religion, race, and so on. So this was one of those things that we saw as an opportunity, and I believe the board, the rest of the board members shared that as well. So, you know, again, the intent was pure to bring either information or awareness regarding Broward County Public Schools. And just working with all of my colleagues, I strongly believe they all have the same intent. The intent of our chair was pure. I can tell you, just working with our chair that she's an amazing individual who is compassionate and caring about students. This was a mistake. And the item today is to remedy any future concerns. You know, intent and process must

303align when process supports intent and intent is a reflection of process. You know, then we we tend to not have these issues. So yes, our process was a little faulty. And, and then we have the perception of intent becomes more skewed. But perception unfortunately can be seen as reality even when it is not. So in this particular case, we are going to look at our process so we can remedy this concern. And again, chair, I thank you so much for your leadership in this matter. It certainly is impressive to me that you've reacted so quickly and, you know, regarding regarding the concern, and again, this was simply a mistake. So we're going to move on to motion number two. I need, I need. I need a board to. I need a motion for id for

304two. Direct the general counsel to develop policy board policies governing the use of district's name and logo. Direct the superintendent to update the administrative guidelines for use of the district's name and logo. So need a motion chair? Actually, you need number one. Yeah. We're going to discuss number one at the end. DR. Holness would you. Address me? I'd like to make a motion to direct the general counsel to develop board policies governing the use of district name or logo. Direct the superintendent, update the administrative guidelines for the use of the district's name and or logo. Second. Okay. There you go. [Laughter] Okay. Motion by DR. Zeman. Second by Thompson. Okay, we'll have board discussion. Board member Thompson. Thank you. I appreciate this motion. I think it's incredibly important to recognize that our logo needs to

305only be a nonpartisan things, as has been stated, and I'm happy to support it. Okay. Board member Hixon. Yes, I agree, we we do have something in policy that talks about political campaigning, but not specifically in terms of using the logo, but nothing specifically related to to this. So I also agree and appreciate the motion. Okay. Any further board member comments? Board member Cervera. MADAM General Counsel, this is state statute, is it is it not? Isn't there a portion of state statute that frowns upon using, in this case, a district's logo for something like that? So the statute that would be applicable is the one that discusses using resources for political activity. So that's it's not specifically with regards to the logo, but it's about just generally using district resources. So this this motion, if

306passed, will put us in compliance with the statute, which of course, I think everybody up here wants. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Any further board member board member comments. Okay. Those in favor of motion two, say I. I chair, we didn't take public comment. Okay. In the beginning, I had mentioned that we're going to give three minutes on item six for the public to comment, and then we're going to have board discussion on the individual motions without public comment. Got it. Okay. So those in favor of motion two say I, I, those opposed say nay I. Okay, okay, we need a motion DR. Zeman. I motion that move that we direct the general counsel in collaboration with the superintendent to develop appropriate training and standard operating procedures for the board office. So moved. Okay. Motion

307by DR. Zeman. Second by board member Thompson. Board discussion. Hixon. Thank you. I appreciate the motion. As I mentioned earlier, there was there is some concern that there's not. But I don't want this to come across in any way that it's a punishment for something that the the board assistance did wrong in this particular instance. And you know how we got here. So I believe training for a lot of different things is important, but I. So I don't necessarily disagree with it, but I just want to be sure that it's not in as, as a consequence of something, I just I'm concerned about what the, the optics of r of it are. So I do appreciate the, the motion, but again, it's because they needed it before this happened anyway, it wasn't just because this

308happened. There is, as we've said many times, even as the board. We. There's not there's so much to know. And we sometimes you don't know what you don't know until you find out. You don't know it. So thank you. Okay. Thank you. Board member Hixon. Board member Leonardi. Yeah. I don't think there was anything, any kind of punitive language in this motion. The reason I included this is because it was clear, you know, in the past.Nd and what wee all needd somee addiononraraining,ee all would like s somelelear expectations and guidelines around a few different issues. So this was not a punitive motion or a trying to enact a consequence against any one or any group of people. It really is to just ensure that we are very clear and we have, you know, solid expectations

309of all of us, not just the employees, but the board members as well. And I actually asked for some of this training a few years ago. So I think it would be appropriate to do that. Now, I'm not concerned with the optics. I'm concerned with, you know, enacting training and policy that helps us get better. Thank you. Board member Leonardi board member Thompson. Thank you, Vice Chair. So as probably the only board member that's also been an assistant, I it's crazy. I do think this is lacking a lot of what gets done upstairs is through the historical practice of what's been done. So I think this would be incredibly helpful. And I know I think maybe MISS Bowman, myself and MR. Cervera are the only ones that got training from MISS Batista for as onboarding.

310And that's something that the board previously pressured or motion. Something happened that that started happening. So I, I support this, I think it really makes sure everyone is on the same page. And there are clear expectations of these, both our roles and their assistants. Thank you. Board member Thompson, any other board member? Okay, so I. Have my hand was up. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't I didn't see your hand. Board member Rupert go ahead, board member Rupert. Okay, I have a question to general counsel as a governance board. We will be actually asking two direct reports to make appropriate training and standard operating procedures for the board's office that would would encompass board members and their assistants, or just the assistants and staff. General counsel. So the motion is for the board office. And we

311had talked that perhaps there MAY also be a need to have some training with the board with regards to some of your protocols and some of the things that you wanted to accomplish. So that's that's a whole different topic. This is specifically for the executive secretaries and the board office. Got it. Okay. I appreciate the clarity. Thank you. Thank you. Board member Rupert any other board member wishes to speak? Okay, so I'd just like to ask a question to our maker of the motion or the item rather, does motion three imply any supervisory or authoritative role over board secretaries? From the from the superintendent or any of the any of the motions that are here. This one does not I one motion one would, but this one does not. And correct me if I'm wrong.

312MR. Bruno. That's correct. Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. Those in favor of approving motion three say aye. Aye. Those opposed, say nay. Okay. Motion passed unanimously. Need a motion board member? Thank you. Chair, I'd like to make a motion to direct the superintendent to provide training to board staff on Pcard standards and procedures, including a review of related training materials, guidelines and standard operating procedures. Second. And further, direct the General Counsel to Review Policy 3810 Purchase Card Program and initiate rulemaking as appropriate to update the policy and strengthen the accountability, enforcement and compliance. So second. Okay motion by DR. Zeman. Second by board member Bulman. Board member Leonardi. Yeah, and I know that we had comments that there is already p card training, and I am aware that the instance that this is

313not an isolated incident, that this these mistakes happen outside of the board office. So I think it's important that, you know, I, I did the p card training on canvas. I think it's important that we review to see if there's anything else we can do to improve that training and to improve compliance with our policy. So that is why I brought this motion. Thank you. And I'm sorry. Seconded by board member Thompson. It's 8:00. We're on 12 hours. Right. Okay. Board member Hixon. Thank you. I, I do appreciate the part where it says, direct the general counsel to review the policy and initiate rulemaking. But as was mentioned a number of times, there is already p card training. But on that note, I'd like to ask because we have a p card, but I don't

314think our assistants have a p card. So Doctor Dr Fulton, do our assistants or board staff have to take that training with the p card? If they don't have a p card? Deputy. The name of the who's the holder of the p card, meaning the name. Which would. Be the person that should have the training. Right? That's what I'm asking. So it's only the board members. It's not the board staff. Okay. So in that regard, then that makes sense because we get the training but not necessarily our staff. So I'll say that I appreciate motion for. Okay. Any other board member wish to comment? Board member? Alhadeff. So the assistants and the board member will be required for this motion to do the training. Okay. Would they make of the motion clarify motion for. So

315it says board staff. And then also to review the training procedures and to direct the General counsel to review policy. 3810. Okay. But it's already required. If I MAY. Doctor Dr Fulton John, go ahead. Yes. So the the issue at hand is the current the way the p card training is structured, you only take it if you're issued a p card. So if someone has. Just speaking generally an executive secretary and they're using their supervisors p card, they wouldn't necessarily be required to take the training because only those named in the p card would have to take those training. Got it. Okay. Okay, so I have a question regarding the p card. And I don't know if this is a general counsel question. If the p card is in the board member's name or secretary

316is permitted to use the p card. So this is going to instruct me to go look into that to see what exactly we're doing, our guidelines, our policies, and then come up with an action plan with the superintendent. Okay. Because I guess the reason for my question, if they're if they're not permitted to use the p card, then this particular motion would, would not be applicable because. I, I would say from my prior experience that a lot of times the secretaries are assisting and they use the p card to help with whatever needs to be helped with. I need to look at and do a deeper dive to see exactly how Broward is doing it. Okay, so I have another question. Should we proceed with with getting a vote on this motion or should we

317wait for that information? What would be the best way to go ahead? I think that we should proceed with this motion because regardless, I think that there needs to be some training just to make sure that everybody's on the same page and understands, while I'm going through the process to review everything. Understand? Is there any further board member comments? Okay. Those in favor of motion four, say aye. Aye. Those opposed say no. Okay, good. We're moving on to DR. Zeman motion. I move that we direct the Chief Auditor to conduct an audit of the p card use in the district for the last year. Okay? Okay. Move by DR. Zeman. Second by board member Thompson. Any board discussion? Board member? Hixon, then board member Leonardi. Thank you. I just wanted to point out that on

318JANUARY 16th of 2026, we actually received an audit from an outside audit firm on the p card usage. So I tried to look through there to see exactly what time period it the audit was for. So I don't know if the the chief auditor could maybe speak to this. If you can look at it, we we used Anthony Brunson p a and and basically it said there were no real issues with the p card, just so you know. But they did look across all the different. Oh, here it is. So they used it from they looked from JULY of 2024 through JUNE of 2025. So I just wanted to clear. So if this is saying in the last year, you know what we want to we would want to probably start. Then in JULY of

31920, right? JULY of 2025, just in terms of we've already audited up to, to, to JUNE of 2025. Okay. MR. Understand. MR. Magli, you can go ahead and comment. Yes, sir. Thank you. I did want to make note of the fact that we did bring that forward to the board. It was actually presented to you on MARCH 10th, I believe. And I think there was some preliminary follow up on that relative to the, excuse me, the policy that was being worked on. I believe that procurement and logistics had had indicated that they were going to be working on a refined policy as well. So the audit itself did look at general overview of all the processes. Obviously it's a sample limited sample. So it didn't encompass everybody in the district. It's quite enormous the amount

320of transactions that occur. But it was more in line with their the way they were going about reviewing individual approvals and, and all the various steps that would be involved in utilizing a p card. So if. And again, we would have to limit whatever that scope would be because, you know, essentially that's how you would conduct an audit of this nature unless it was targeted and it was specifics and guidance to say that that would be what was wanted. Okay. Board member Hixon. So that's kind of my point is we're saying an audit. I think we have to be really specific as to what it is we want to have audited and dates since we already went through through one. So I think that should be part of, of the discussion. Okay. Board member Hixon,

321did you want to adjust that motion? Did you want to make a substitute? Well, I don't know if it's substitute. Well, I guess it's substitute direct the Chief auditor to conduct an audit on the p card use in the district for the last year, starting in JULY of 2025. Any second. Second, second. Second by board member Leonardi any board member. Discussion. DR. Zeman another way we might do this, if we're being serious about this, is to acknowledge that you don't audit 100% of all transactions, right? And you don't audit every year the same thing over and over. You know, we just had a big audit that ended not ten, nine months ago that demonstrated that for the district, we have no recognized issues that came up, no exceptions, no findings on on p cards. Why

322don't we do this for a subset of of the population like school board members, maybe senior staff, if we want to make sure that it's like, you know what band makes sense given what happened so that we can make the public very confident that maybe senior leaders, cabinet and board members, you know, have been audited and they were found, you know, to whatever the findings are. But it normally in an audit world, you wouldn't do it every year of the same thing. And if you did it every year, you would change what you're looking at so that you actually learned something new. We audit usually in public accounting, like 5% of transactions a year per organization. It's not, it's not like you do a big sample at all. So one way to do this would

323be to where it says as well as well. That's actually not part of the motion. Right. The motion direct chief order to conduct an audit for use of the district. One way to amend that would be to say for. You know, cabinet members and and school board members or something, so that we can say, look, all the people that make the most money or have the greatest influence, they've been audited. And we've looked at it over the past year. Board member Hixon, did you want to add any of doctor board member comments to your motion? Yes. Sorry. Yes, that's that's fine. And and just on a side note there, I, I take a little offense to the idea that what happened here is in any relation to what happened in, in another county, because that

324was with mal intent and they knew full well what they were doing. This was truly a mistake. But with that being said, I do. I'm fine with adding what DR. Zeman said. Okay. DR. Zeman, could you repeat what you wanted to add to the motion? Direct the Chief Auditor. I'm going to offer a amendment. Direct the Chief Auditor. Conduct an audit of p car use in the district for the last year for school board member and members of the cabinet and above. Okay. And cabinet and above. Correct. Yes, sir. Okay. And board member Hixon, you have starred in JULY 2025. Is is that. No, I don't I think you can just leave the past year then just. Okay, so that's taken out. Okay. All right. Chief auditor. Has MR. Magli. As a point when you

325say the last year we we would want to define a little closer if we wanted to say from JULY 1st, that would be something or, you know, obviously we're not complete with this year. It involves reconciliation up until these last couple of months that maybe hasn't even occurred yet. So when we say the year, are we talking from today? You know, last year. Maker of the motion loves brevity. So last year today is APRIL 28th. You can start on APRIL 28th, 2025. Thank you. Board member Hixon, are you okay with with APRIL 28th, 2025. Okay. All right. Any other discussion on that motion? You guys are amending stuff and not taking public comment, right? General Council, in the beginning of this item, we did state that we're going to take comments for three minutes on

326the item. In general, am I able to proceed ahead without any further public comment? You're amending. Your your policy does require public comment if there's an amendment. Okay. So I think you have to for this one. Not a problem public comment. Go ahead. Doctor. Natalie Lynch Walsh, an amateur parliamentarian. It's like we've been doing this this way forever. So I support the motion and DR. Zeman additions because yes, you do need a defined period. And again, the the mistake was in using the p card. The way you find out if it was a mistake or a habit is to do an audit of the board member p card activities. The reason I was giggling earlier is I can't recall exactly what's in the p card policy, but I would have thought that the board member

327assistance would have authorization to use the board member p cards, and if that's not the case, then you. You have yet another wrinkle of problems. So. And which begs for a solution to give them p cards or not, but I support the motion for specific period of time and 100% of the transactions. Any further public comment? Yes, you. Anna Fusco, Broward Teachers Union I love it that you guys are wanting to, you know, look like you're gaining the trust of the public majority, the mass majority of the public trust you. It's the just the little small groups that are intertwined all the time. And this should not be the subject that you think that the public is not going to trust. It was a mistake. A p card was used. There's probably thousands of p

328cards in this district being used, I'm sure, and a mistake could happen. An audit can show the the mistake. That doesn't mean that it is something that needs to be just beating a dead horse. So I'm sure the audit will show that it has not. None of them have been abused and that a mistake has happened. And can we just move on from this and let's go let's go home. Thank you. Any further public comment? Okay. Board Member Hixon, can you restate the motion, please? Yes. Thank you. So the motion is to direct the Chief Auditor to conduct an audit of the p card use in the district for the last year for cabinet. Oh, from APRIL 28th of 2025 to APRIL 28th of 2026 for school board members and cabinet and above. Okay. Is

329there any further board discussion? Okay. Those in favor of the motion say aye. Those opposed say now. Okay. Motion passed unanimously. Motion for six. Thank you. Chair, I move that we authorize the General Counsel to retain an outside law firm to investigate the matter and provide recommendations. Okay. Moved by DR. Zeman. Second by board member Thompson. Any board discussion? Board member? Hixon. Thank you. I don't think that this would be a good use of our money. There's already an investigation happening at the the highest level possible. And so I, I don't agree with this motion. Okay. Any other board member comments? Board members? Cervera. This is stupid. The oig at the Department of Education is coming down here and will do its thing with a lot more resources than any private law firm, that we

330would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to come in and do. And in addition, whatever the state says, that's going to be the law of the land. And if the state conflicts with the law firm, the state's going to win. So and if the state says the same thing as the law firm, what the hell do we waste the money for? Let's let the state do a thing. Let's all cooperate. But I'm not in favor of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on an independent law firm to get results that the state's going to give us. Okay. General counsel and then board member Alhadeff. I do want to just say one thing that when the chair made this recommendation, there was not an investigation at the time. So that does change the landscape a little

331bit. Stupid. Okay. Board member Alhadeff. I concur with MR. Cervera. Okay. All right. Any other board member comments? Board member Hixon. I just would like to I know it's late and we've been here a long time, but someone wrote these motions with intent and trying to do something. So to just say it's stupid is, I just think, really disrespectful. So I just wish moving forward we would word things differently. Thank you. Thank you. Board member Hixon all those in favav of motionix. Ayeye. T Those opsesedayay n no. No motio motion failed. All right. We're going to move back to motion one. Sir, I'm sorry to interrupt. You need to extend. We've passed the. Hour one motion. One motion. Okay. Motion to extend. Meeting for 15 minutes. Second. Okay. Those in favor say aye. Aye. Those

332opposed say nay. Okay. Meeting extended for 15 minutes. Good. DR. Zeman. Thank you. I move that we direct the superintendent to bring back the job descriptions for the board. Secretary. Positions for board consideration. Moved by DR. Zeman. Second by board member Thompson. Any board discussion? Board member? Hixon. Sorry, I don't agree with this, I have I, I understand what some of the suggestions were, but I think trying to change who the the the executive secretaries report to doesn't make sense. It would give them two bosses. I, I don't think that that's necessary. There is also already in the job responsibility about training in here. So I don't think that needs to be added. And we did actually just update this job description. If we look here, the last time we upgraded it was in AUGUST

33321st of 2024. So I don't really think that there's a necessity to do that. I would say in that regard, though, if there there are things like ads or, or newsletters or things of that nature, I do think that they probably need to go through communications because there's Ada compliance and, and in terms of something that's going out on behalf of the board, I wouldn't mind looking at at that, having to go through another set of eyes and communication, just like anything else that comes through the school district. But I don't agree with changing anything on the job description. Thank you. Board member Cervera and then board member Bulman. MAY please to. Okay, okay. I'll let MISS Like she's not getting a fair shake in a lot of things that we're doing. Okay. Rupert. And

334then board member. Cervera. So thank you very much. I don't agree with this motion. It it muddies the waters when it comes to governance. So yeah, not a fan of this one. Thank you. Board member Rupert. Board member Cervera. I'm satisfied. Okay. Board member Bulman. So this general, I guess this is to general counsel, do you think by doing this that this would be an exercise in best practices moving forward? The experience that I have had, the board secretaries have basically reported to the superintendent or their designee, but it's definitely to the board's discretion. It's just it's just a practice that has occurred just because that, you know, for the supervision aspect of it. So. Is that the best structure to ensure that we have accountability? You know, there's a couple things I think that

335we definitely need to have, which is, you know, a second hand set of eyes, like they're saying this should be approved, financial things need to be approved, communications should be approved. Is there a way to do that and use the Office of Communications without, without directly reporting to the superintendent? Or is this the best way to do it? Because I agree with sorry, I'm getting a little sloppy over here. I agree with having the the policies and procedures and making sure that there's accountability, not because of anything that our assistants have done. I think that's actually the best thing that we can do for them, because that that helps all of us make sure that we're doing the best job that we can and making sure that we're following all the rules and everything. So

336how do we accomplish that the best way? This is this is more of a less of a legal question, more of an operational best practice question for the board office. The only thing I would recommend is, however, the board decides there needs to be some collaboration between the chief of staff's office and the board office to ensure that things, when they go out there, they're reviewed because it's going off out on behalf of the entire board. And the organizations want to make sure, and there's probably some other things that would be helpful if there was some collaboration between the two offices. But again, it's more best practices in terms of what some of the other districts have done, but it's totally within the board's discretion. So if we bring it back, that's a discussion that

337we could have. There's no harm in bringing it back. If you bring it back, then you can delineate those lines and add it to your job description. Okay. Board member. Given the list again. Thank you. Okay. Board member Thompson and then board member Rupert. So I would just say when I was assistant, I thought that I did report to the superintendent and that my task supervisor was my board member. That's at least when I got on boarded, that's what I was told. I think that adds a level. I'm interested in this motion because I think it adds a level of continuity, because I know a lot of people bring in, bring on their own assistants when they're hired, but sometimes they don't. Or when we've had appointed people, they just get the assistant that's already

338there. So I think it can't hurt to have this oversight and this support for our assistants. I also think when there might be some issues between a board member and an assistant, having another line of supervision is helpful, which is not the case with my assistant. But I think just in general. Right when I was an assistant, maybe. [Laughter] Okay. Board member Rupert. We we are still constitutional officers, right? Yep. Yes. Yes. MADAM General Counsel. Yes you are. Article nine, Florida Constitution. Yeah. I'm just trying to think, you know. We we do not. Nor do our assistants report to the superintendent. They're actually classified as our confidential executive secretaries, which I would actually like to be calling them assistants instead of secretary. That's just me. But their reporting is to us. Do I believe there

339should be another set of eyes for an ad or working on the having a format that is legal and it's approved by legal, and this is what we do in this situation. When it happens and it's neutral, I think that's a better way to do it because it it otherwise, you know, the executive secretaries assistants would have, you know, it wouldn't be very clear to them who they're trying to listen to. And I just don't think it's a good look for, for an elected constitutional officer to have. So I, I personally say yes to second look. That's fabulous. But no reporting change. Okay. Any other board member? Board member? Seaman. Thank you very much. In three we talk specifically about procedures. And so there's an opportunity in number three to change the procedures about. If

340we have a communication, we want the chief of staff or someone else to look at it. We could do that in four. We talk about updating policy and strengthening accountability, enforcement and compliance. That's what we're talking about doing. But I think that it's a little bit confusing to get involved in, in, in who they work for or require a, another reporting chain. For all the points that Nora Rupert brought up, which I think are very germane. So I don't think we should do number one, even though I made the motion. Okay. Any other board member input? Okay. General counsel, I have a question. Does any of the motions from motion one through six include anything pertaining to the the general counsel reviewing any materials that go out for school logo, district, logo, district name or

341district intellectual property. Not in the motions with the exception of the training, but not for everything that goes out to be reviewed. Did I MISS Something? Number three talks about procedures, and if that's a procedure that will be reviewed as part of number. Three. I understand. But not for my office to review everything that's coming out of the board office. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. All right. So we're going to go ahead and vote on motion one. Those in favor of motion one, say I. I motion one. Direct the superintendent to bring back the job description for the board Secretary. Those in favor say I. I those opposed say no. No. Okay. Roll call please. Roll call. The motion. School board member Cervera Hixon. Holness. No. Leonardi. Yes. Rupert. No. Thompson. Zeeman. Nope. Alhadeff. Yes. Bowman.

342Yes. Fails. Thank you. Okay. Motion failed. By how many votes? John? Four five. Sorry. Motion failed. Four. Five. Okay. That's it. At this time, do any of my colleagues have student successes to share? I remember Leonardi. Yeah. I just I had a few thank yous. Thank you to my colleagues for your kind words and support. It really means a lot today in the running of the meeting. And it was a very long, very hectic, very emotional meeting. So I just want to thank staff for capturing all of the public speakers who were signing up to speak. And again, thank our safety and security staff and our officers for helping us run an efficient, safe government meeting. So thank you guys. Thank you. Chair Leonardi. Chair, Point of order. You didn't vote on the item as

343a whole or as amended, number six, as amended. Okay. You are so right. Thank you, board member Alhadeff. So we're going to go ahead and vote on the item as amended. Okay. We're voting on item six, as amended. Those in favor of approving item six, say aye. Aye. Those opposed say no. Okay. The ayes have it passed unanimously. And we'll continue on with any board member comments. DR. Zeman. Excuse me. I'm sorry. Board member Rupert. Motion six. That was the law firm one, right? Yes. Or did you mean item six? Motion six six, item six as a whole? Yes. Item six as a whole, as amended. With with the amendments included as amended. Okay. So that's that's item six, not emotion six. Item six. Yes. Okay. Got it. Good. Thank you. All right. Board member

344Cervera and board member Alhadeff did you want to speak? Board member Cervera. Thank you, chair. Congratulations to J.P. Taravella High School. Yes, they are not in district six, but that's where I graduated from. And I'm very proud of my alma mater for winning the Miami Heat. How low can you go challenge? This challenge is a Broward County Public School initiative, partnering with the Miami Heat that test schools with significantly reducing energy, water and waste over a three month period. J.P. Taravella High School had a 34% energy reduction. They saved over 429,000kw. And perhaps most importantly, because saving money is never stupid, they save $38,000. Congratulations to J.P. Terrible high school. We love the Trojans. Thank you. Board member Cervera. Any other board member comments? Okay. This schedule order of business for this special school board

345meeting of the School Board of Broward County, Florida has been completed. Seeing no objections, I will now adjourn the school. The special school board meeting. Thank you. Thank you.