School Board Workshop - Apr 28, 2026

001Welcome to today's school board workshop. This workshop at the School Board of Broward County, Florida, is now called to order, and I am informed that MISS Rupert is on the line 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. Board members will now introduce his school to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. DR. Zeman. I'm really. Proud this morning to to have this school. One of the things we love is schools that are

002consistently rated schools, schools that continue to pick up enrollment, and schools that continue to deliver at high efficiency. So thanks very much, CHAIRMAN. Can we all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance? Good morning. School board members, superintendent and staff. My name is Matthew Bianchi, the principal of West Glades Middle School. And before you stands a group of very special students in a very special teacher. The students are state champions and speech and debate. We have five state champions out of a possible 12 categories. Hi, my name is Brooke Pappas and I am the proud teacher and coach of the West Glades Speech and Debate Team. Hi, I'm Eric Kumar and I'm state champion in congressional debate. Hello, my name is Ellen Salome and I'm state champion in declamation. Hi, my name is Angelique Kramer and

003I'm state champion in dramatic interpretation. Hi, my name is Melinda Gordon. I'm state champion in Lincoln-Douglas debate. Hi, my name is Alyssa Erickson and I'm state champion in poetry. Please stand for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under GOD, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. You MAY be seated. Alright. As we begin, we reaffirm our vision 100%, 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. We will now proceed with the agenda. Today's workshop will operate in accordance with School Board Policy 1020, and the board will review the items

004as advertised and presented by the superintendent. You MAY notice that the room is set up differently today to accommodate maximum public participation, and to facilitate an efficient and safe meeting. As a reminder to everyone who is here to do public comment, please make sure to sign in so we can accurately capture your name. I ask that the audience maintains decorum during staff presentation, public speaking, and board deliberations so that we can conduct a respectful, safe and efficient government meeting. The School Board of Broward County welcomes and encourages public participation at our meetings. Our public input is an important part of informed decision making and supports our commitment to transparency. We ask that decorum be maintained and civility and respect be shown during public comment, which is expected when a government agency conducts official business. Our

005general counsel will assist the chair in maintaining decorum during this period. We also want to remind our public commenters of the rules and expectations regarding public comment portion of the meeting, as well as board policy attorney Dupree Bruno, please explain the rules of public comment. Thank you, MADAM Chair, and good morning. 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 comment for 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 directed to the board as a whole. The board will not respond to or engage with speakers during public comment, and no action

006will 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 or amendments, but there are no motions in a workshop. A speakers total speaking time MAY not exceed 12 minutes per meeting, with an additional one minute. If a motion is introduced, a visible timer will be used in. The microphone MAY be turned off when time expires. Speakers must limit their comments to matters related to school board business for agenda items must remain relevant to the specific item. Comments MAY not address matters that are pending in litigation. Quasi judicial proceedings, active investigations or administrative hearings, solicitation and lobbying activities must comply with applicable school board policies. Abusive language defined as profanity threatening or name calling is

007prohibited. In addition, clapping, hissing, booing, shouting, yelling or other disruptions from the audience are not allowed. Speakers who fail to follow proper decorum in 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 by law enforcement or the Sergeant at Arms. MADAM Chair. Thank you, Attorney Dupree. Bruno, the board wants to hear from you. We appreciate your cooperation in maintaining a respectful, orderly and productive meeting environment. Our first item is rule development for school Board policies, 1590 Code of Student Conduct and 5100 suspension and expulsion. I now turn it over to staff for a brief presentation. Thank you, MADAM Chair. Good morning, MADAM Chair. Good morning.

008Board in public. I'll turn it over to MISS Hollingsworth to initiate the presentation. Good morning. Simone Hollingsworth, chief student services Officer. And I have Doctor Jody Washington here from student culture and and student support, as well as Kathy Keith, our assistant director of management, to take us through the the deck. Good morning everyone. We also have our assistant director of expulsions, Deborah Kerns here right here in the audience. So beacon, if you can put the presentation up, it will be very brief. All right. So this year we are working on some very small changes and working with the discipline committee on a longer term, 3 to 5 year code of student conduct, so that we don't have to continue to bring it to the board year after year and really have a solid plan in

009place that that would work for three years, minimum, unless there are changes in statutory language that we would have to embed within the code of student conduct. So that is really our goal this year. You can see that section three b there in previous years was language in there regarding referrals for mental health services. Last year it was removed from policy as there was a, a, a mental health policy that was in the works of coming forward. However, that hasn't come through rural development and rule making yet. So the language was put back in the Code of Student conduct in order to comply with Florida statute. There were also some updates to the policy language for the attendance policy to accurately reflect current statutory language. So you'll see just a few updates there. The student

010privacy section as well as hipaa. There were changes to federal and state statutes that required some changes in the Code of Student Conduct for the Student Privacy section and working with the legal department. The district's privacy officer, Todd Susman, and the legal team determined that the hipaa notice is not required to be in the Code of Student Conduct. There is nothing that the board can change about the hipaa notice, and having it in the Code of Conduct prevents the district from being able to make changes to comply with hipaa law in a timely manner, because it would have to come back through rural development and rule making. So the recommendation is to just remove that notice from the Code of Student conduct. We are bound by it either way. And then in the discipline matrix

011we did make some updates to appendix b. It is now appendix a because I'm sorry, it was appendix c, it is now going to be appendix b because we are removing the hipaa. Notice there were some Scrivener's errors and there were some alignment issues when we changed it from being codes and letters and and matching the table. There were some alignment issues, whereas the first consequence MAY have been more severe than the second consequence. So we changed those things. We also with the discipline committee, we're looking at discussing alternatives to internal suspension programs. And then one of the changes that you will see in policy language that we are proposing is for our students who have been assigned or would be assigned to a behavior intervention program for recidivism of drug or substance use issues,

012when that is their only issue. If they have had recidivism of, let's say, vaping of thc, and they would be assigned to a behavior intervention program, but they have no other discipline issues, we are recommending that if their parents agree to have them complete a district referred substance use program from a community provider, which includes regular random drug testing and compliance with the counseling component, that they would be able to continue to engage in their education at their home school. But if they were to become non-compliant with the intervention program, then they would be immediately administratively assigned over to one of our behavior intervention program sites. What we're finding with those students is that many times when substance use is their issue, it is rooted in some anxiety issues. And then when we change their

013school, it actually creates more anxiety for them and more dependance on the substance. So we're trying to really meet their needs in the environment that would best support them, and that's their home school environment. Again, it would only be for students who don't have any other behavioral issues beyond substance use. When we looked at the data in late MARCH, early APRIL, there would have been 16 students this year that would have qualified to remain at their home school as opposed to going to a behavior intervention program site. And the other thing that this does is it it gives the parent a little bump to actually engage their parent or their child in substance use counseling. Right now, when they are assigned to a behavior intervention program, it is optional for parents to engage their child

014in substance use programing. In this case, in order for them to remain at their home school, not only would they have to engage in that counseling, but they would have to remain compliant with the program in order to stay. So we know that to address issues of substance use in our young people, that they will need some intensive intervention. And so this is one way that we can help parents get their children the help that they need. As far as the policy, 5100, the suspension and expulsion policy, we just updated language within that policy to make sure that it aligns with any changes to the code of student conduct. And again, you can see there in the general information section where it talks about the substance use infractions. And that is the overview of the

015changes that we're proposing for this year. Thank you. We will now go to public comment on this list. I have Dennis Waters. Okay. If Dennis is in the restroom or something, he can come find staff and we can come back to him. Board member comment MRS. Alhadeff. Thank you. So on page. Three, a two that section needs to be updated because it doesn't it speaks to safer Watch. And we have the crisis alert badge. You know, I maybe we put some generic type of language in there and not a specific company name. Page three she said. Page three of 138. Yes, we can make that update preferred probably to use something more generic that way over time, if crisis alert systems change, we can. We don't have to worry about a vendor name. Okay. And

016then I do have a, I don't know exactly where this would fit in, but just the conversation when a student is gets into a fight or someone attacks another student, and that student wasn't a part of the fight initially, but they protect themselves or they they fight back because they were being hit. The student that was protecting themselves gets suspended. But if they're protecting themselves, I think they should have the right to protect themselves instead of just sitting there and getting hit and attacked. But I don't think there should be consequences on that student, because they were protecting themselves from from being hurt within this fight. So is there a spot where this fits in there? Because I, I heard it was policy and I think it should be changed in some way. Thank you

017for the question, MR. Alhadeff. I turn it over to Doctor Washington. I think we have something in there to that point. Go ahead, Doctor Washington. Yes we do. If you look on page 30 of policy 5090, you will find where we define self-defense. And we specifically train administrators on when the definition of self-defense applies. We also consult with administrators. Anytime there is a fight to ensure that it is properly coded, and a student who defends themselves in alignment with the definition of self-defense is does not receive the. The same consequence as a fight. They MAY get a lesser consequence depending on what their involvement is, or they MAY get no consequence at all, depending on, again, the totality of circumstances. But it is on page 30 under d1a. Okay, well then I think that this

018needs to be clarified better with within the schools, because in the past, the student that was protect themselves through self-defense was getting a consequence. And that obviously is not fair and doesn't align with our policy. It's not. Is that it, MRS. Alhadeff? Okay, MISS Thompson. Thank you, chair. Thank you, Doctor Washington and all your staff. I know we had a pretty robust conversation about this last year. I just wanted to follow up because we talked about having a one pager for students so that it's an easily digestible document. And I just wanted to know what the status of that was. We actually had a canvas course for students this year where all that information was contained within the canvas course. And what was the feedback. So when we worked it through with the student advisor

019to the school board, he obviously with his group, went through it, loved. We got great feedback from them. It actually walked them through some scenarios so that they could better understand the consequences, as well as going through the most severe consequences that could result in their removal from school. Great. Thank you. You're welcome. Anyone else on this item? Okay. The next item is Rural Development Information Systems Division policies. I now turn it over to staff for a brief presentation. Yes, I will turn it over to MR. Davis and team. Good morning. Troy Davis Chief Information Officer Pleasure to present. For policy updates and one new policy from the Information Systems Division. Before I pass it over to Doctor Diamond Project Management Office. You haven't had an opportunity to to meet MR. Fabio in the rear.

020If you could stand for us. Fabio. Fabio is a director of information security and assurance. So he wasn't here at the start at the board meeting. So I wanted you to to see his face. And Doctor Diamond, if you could please take it away. Good morning everyone. We have five different policies to review with you today. Four of them are revisions and one is brand new. 8500 is our school and district technical. Can we have the PowerPoint up? Thank you. 8500 is the School and District Technology Usage policy. 8510 refers to the Technology Advisory Committee. 8540 is our student records transfer, retention and disposal. 8550 talks about wireless communication devices and their use and operational restrictions on district owned and leased property. And the new policy is our Student internet safety. If we take a

021look at 8500, you'll notice that we have deleted sections on pages seven through nine, which consisted of an overview, expectations of privacy and use as a privilege and a applicability. They were put into different sections sections one a through e, which is the policy statement, the purpose and the scope. We also revised our definitions to include more modern technology, language and vocabulary. Ai is now included in the policy as well, and we have some definitions of primary objectives of the district's technology and information resources. We added some verbiage regarding the smartphone and cellular phone usage, as well as minor grammatical changes. And section five, I'm sorry, eight b that mentions information, information security and Assurance Department, which is the new department in our Information Systems division for 8510, which is our tech policy. We have

022had some additions and some strikethroughs with revisions. We dealt with our technology Advisory committee to get some input from them in terms of changing some of the language that you'll see here in the policy, we have revised the membership to reflect exactly what we would have liked, what we'd like to see on the committee representatives and the resources that we have between the liaison, which comes from the Information Systems Division and the roles and responsibilities between the liaison and the chairperson. It also refers to some removal of tac members, the policies and practices regarding removal of tac members and election of officers. We also redefined quorum to make sure that we understood what it meant and how we could do that. When people are coming to the meetings both virtually and in person. And we

023also added some language regarding approved committee motions so that when motions are made by the committee, how we bring them to to staff. 8540 deals with. Our educational records and transfer, retention and disposal. And here we just really have some minor changes regarding how we transfer within and outside of our school district. And we really just collated some of the prior information into a more legible and more understandable language. And it also speaks to record keeping requirements related to request and disclosures as it pertains to ferpa disclosure logs and the like. Policy 8550 deals with what we now call wireless communication devices or CDs, and how they need to be utilized when driving district owned vehicles or being within district owned property. They here, you see, we just had some revisions and some additions. We

024added verbiage with. In accordance with Florida statute, we prohibited district bus operators to use w s with or without students on board while actively driving. And we identify district and school responsibilities regarding blocking of websites and the wrong one. Sorry. Stop there. 8570 is the new policy. And here what we did was take the state mandate that was given to all school districts to go ahead and create a student internet safety policy. We defined district and school responsibilities regarding blocking of websites and the establishment of guidelines for removal of devices and connectivity when there are safety and security concerns. TikTok is prohibited and any successor platforms would be prohibited. There are some repercussions for violating the policy. How parents are to be notified about the policy and where they can find it on our websites.

025So that's a very quick overview of the five different policies that we presented to you. And now we can open it up for discussion and guidance. Thank you. Public comment. We have Dennis Waters and Doctor Natalie Lynch Walsh. Okay. Board member discussion. DR. Zeman. Thank you so much. Chair one this is a really great, comprehensive set of policies. It's both protects our students, protects our staffs and makes very sane policies. I really appreciate the work on the Technology Advisory Committee, though. That is a committee. By the way, how many members total? I couldn't add them all up. I read through them and even even I couldn't add them all up. It's like 907, I think. Close. I don't offhand, I don't know, but I can do the additions for you. Yeah. And something to think

026about in the future. There's a rule that Amazon, which I love, which is you can only have a meeting with seven people or less. And we don't always follow that rule at Broward County schools. But having committees that are, you know, 30 or 40 members can be unwieldy for members. And it's hard for people to get excited about participating when they're one of one of so many. But the changes that are made are really impressive. I want to note one for future use, which is starting to grow in interest, I think, amongst our community, which is the protection of our student and parent data from any software that comes in and is part of our information ecosystem. It is something that we have kind of blindly followed for the last 40 years, which is we

027give up our data to other companies who use it as we should expect, you know, in the commercial interest of the company. And that system, I'm hoping will change. I hope it'll change societally, but I hope that Broward County schools can think a little bit about that, MR. Superintendent, on on what we expressly put in our policies next year, about the protection of our data. And we have a lot of software here. We have a lot of protections, and I don't have any risks that I can see in the entire information systems that we have. But Broward County might also think a little bit about being the first school district in the country that says, that's our data. And if you want to come here and and have our students and our parents and our

028staff use the data, that's great. But unless they expressly give you proactively permission to use their data, they own the data. And to me, that's a level of protection that the world's going to be going into. And it's one that I hope Broward County Schools thinks about next year. So I know we've talked about this, and hopefully we'll do some staffing on it and think a little bit about it and see what that would do to make sure that the data and the experiences and the metadata that's provided by our student staff and faculty and parents is protected to the extent that we can. And it's not being protected to the extent that it could be right now. So did you want to comment or react on that, MR. Davis? No, you're 100% DR. Zeman.

029I don't think we can understate the importance of of ownership of data. You know, and I know we have inclusions relative to disclosure of data in each of our legal agreements, but there could be a broader net, you know, there. And we've championed that. Even at my prior school district, I put forth a legislative priorities around student data privacy and the protection of that information. So we we constantly champion that. So I think there's some irony here with with MR. Norman's in the back there. He understands the level of discussion here. So we appreciate your feedback, sir, and agree wholeheartedly. Terrific. And to the general counsel, are there any restrictions in law for us to say that if you're a student, a parent, a staff member or volunteer in Broward County Public schools and you

030use any one of our software tools that you must give permission for that software corporation to use the data for anything other than uses during that software interaction. So there are some very broad sweeping laws. Of course, you have your student privacy law, and there's some very specific provisions in there with regards to sharing data. And there's also Coppa. So there are some different laws that will impact that. Terrific. I look forward to learning more about it. But this this is, I would argue, separate from those laws. Those are great. But I view those as very, very minimum protections. What I'm talking about is a real significant change in the way that software companies come here and provide services generally for educational, other benefits. And then they take that data and they go and use

031it for other commercial purposes. And I just feel like we've got to start thinking harder about owning our student parent, volunteer and staff data, because we didn't ever sign up for them to have that data. People think it's their data. And I think maybe education is going to lead the way on this so that we can fulfill the commitments that we make to the community. Thank you, chair. Thank you. Any other board member discussion? MR. Cervera? Just to piggyback on that point, which I thought, excuse me, was a good one. We just kind of saw this, right? We went through this with that agreement with the University of Florida a couple of weeks back. And I think this is fresh and ripe on everybody's mind. I'd like to do more than talk about it. I'd

032like to start actually doing something, whether that means coming up with with proposals or impaneling a whatever it takes, we need to get out in front of this. I don't want to kick the can down the road. Lord knows that's what that's done is for this board. On other things, I think we need to be trailblazers like this, just like we took on with the cameras in the cluster classrooms. We need to be out on the forefront on this. And if we start implementing some severe, severely strict policies about how this data can be used, right, it's going to set the tone for how these companies are going to want to deal with this. And maybe we'll lose a couple in the beginning, but I promise we're the sixth largest school board district in the

033country. They'll come back. They always do. So, you know, a great example, MR. Superintendent, that I can think of the judicial court circuit probably about a decade, a decade ago at this point, made some really substantial changes to privacy in filings within the court systems, you have to redact certain things. You can't disclose certain confidential information. There's this whole process about how you keep that secretive data or that personal data, if you will, personal when you're involved in the course of a lawsuit. And I think if the judicial court circuits throughout the state of Florida can figure it out, certainly we can figure it out. In Broward public, Broward County Public schools. Now, this isn't something that I imagine we're going to get a lot of pushback from the community. Nobody wants big tech to

034have all their sensitive personal information. I can't imagine that that's a scenario with many people. Big tech wants the information, but the community doesn't want to give that information or is not comfortable with others having that information. So, MR. Davis, I am going to task you with doing more than talking on this. Right. I would like to start to see some some plans of action start to be formulated in your brain and ultimately pen to paper on how Broward County Public Schools can lead the way in putting the proper safeguards in place to make sure that our student and our parents data is protected. And I'm thankful for ferpa and all of the laws on the books now. But we need to be more aggressive because we saw one almost slipped through a couple of

035weeks ago with an agreement we had. Fortunately, it was caught and it was discussed by this board, and we took what I believe to be the appropriate action to correct it. But I don't want that that situation to happen again. So respectfully, let's do then more than a little bit of talking, let's start putting together a plan about how we're going to do this and how we can protect this and how we can keep all this data safe. Thank you. Thank you, MISS Thompson. Thank you, chair, I would encourage my colleagues that are passionate about this to submit an item, directing staff exactly on what they would like to see, so that they are doing more than just talking and taking action. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else before I speak? DR. Zeman. This is

036a workshop. This is exactly what we're supposed to be doing at a workshop. And, and items are wonderful for very specific things, but this is wholly appropriate. And it's, you know, two of us believe in this strongly. It's open for discussion for anyone that disagrees. So we can learn about each other's thoughts and ideas. And then for us to ask the superintendent to work on this. And I would ask, you know, maybe MR. Cervera has a different pacing on this than I would, but, MR. Superintendent, is this possible that there's something that we could do with this year's policy, or is this something where we really have to study it to make sure we get it right and come back next year with a different policy? So just listening to MR. Davis and some of

037the things that he's done in the previous school district, it MAY be possible. I think the team and I, we need to go back to to the drawing board and see if it's possible based on policies that are already already exist in other school districts, to see if we can add it to current policy, or we MAY have to create a separate policy. And it MAY make some sense to talk to some of our big software providers and, and see, maybe there isn't pushback on this. Maybe there are other districts that are starting to talk about it from my research. And again, this is, you know, I've spent maybe 2 or 3 days working on this, not enough time to, you know, have my own thoughts about pacing and about where it fits. There are

038no other large urban districts in the United States that have anything like this. But to make the point very clear, Apple, Amazon, alphabet, Microsoft, and meta, those five big tech companies make more money than 198 out of 200 countries in the world. The only countries that make more money than those five companies is the United States and China. And they got there by using the data that people never gave them permission to have. And I just feel like, you know, for education systems, we ought to break that model. And we ought to say, if our kids and our staff and our parents and our volunteers are using these data, it is their data unless they give that permission. So if it's possible to look into that and bring it back, I think I think it's

039the right thing to do. I'd be I'd ask the board to I mean, this two of us have talked about this, but it might be useful for the staff to know whether you generally agree with this direction so that they don't waste a lot of time building something that MR. Cervera and I think is the right thing to do. Thank you, chair. MISS Thompson. Thank you, chair, and I do agree this is the right format for a workshop, but that would have staff have a significant amount of time. And we have talked before about what is relevant for this kind of discussion. And then what you can direct during a meeting and what should come as an item. So in my opinion, and I would like the superintendent's opinion as well, that item or that

040direction towards staff would take a significant amount of time and should come as a board item. MISS Dupree. Bruno. One thing I would want to mention to the board is as we move forward with Neola, we're going to have more policies and there are specific policies that will address your concern with regards to data and protecting student data. So policies will be coming forth. Just wanted the board to know that. Thank you, MISS Hixon. Thank you. I have a question and I'm trying to figure out where it goes in here. It might be already in there, but our bus drivers use here comes the bus. So you know this this is saying that they can't use devices while they're driving and things of that nature. So is there somewhere in here or if not, I

041think there should be where it's a an exception or a clause that they're using. Here comes the bus because that's part of their job. So they're inside the policy. It does speak to pulling over to the side of the road to be able to use any devices that they need to use. If there's an emergency, they are allowed to use the I'm going to say walkie talkie, but that's not the right word. They are allowed to use what what connects them to here comes the bus. That's in policy, but they are told to move over to the side of the road. If they have to use any kind of handheld devices. Okay. Is there a way specifically to mention here comes the bus in there or some kind of it could be more generic. I

042mean, not specific. I can look at. And to see whether or not we can put in the applications that they would be using in order to, to conduct their business. Yes. Right. Thank you. And I'd also just like to weigh in on the the discussion about the policy for data. Every time we have a contract that comes to us, we have this discussion about data. So I think it makes sense to have a policy so that as we're moving forward with contracts, everyone is clear what the board direction is on. On how we use data, how we share data, all of that. So if you want us to weigh in on that, I agree that we should have a separate policy specific to that. Thank you. Thank you. I do want to weigh in on

043that as well. And respectfully to DR. Zeman. It's I think all of us agreed to add a privacy piece to our legislative platform. So I think, you know, it's not just a few of us who feel strongly about this. I think all of us weighed in a few months ago to, to try to legislatively make sure that we can protect student privacy. But to MISS Thompson's point, I was planning on bringing an item around something called the Emerging Technology Framework in the coming months. This is something that was developed by Educator Circles Emerging Technology Advisory Board, which was supported by the National Science Foundation. And it it really provides a framework, and I shared this with the superintendent a few weeks ago, but it provides a framework around student data and privacy, but also procurement.

044And, you know, it looks at protecting accessibility, how this works for students with IEPs, how this technology works for safety and things like that. So I, you know, I'm not very eloquently summarizing what it does, but I think it by implementing some sort of framework. And I don't know if that's in a policy or some other kind of process that we can do that. I'm happy to share that with the board and in whatever way is allowable. But I think adopting a framework that looks at the broader use of technology and how we adopt it, how we procure it, and how we use it in our schools would be helpful. And again, this was done by professionals who, who look at this as as this technology especially I'm concerned around ai is emerging. I think

045it would make sense to implement that. Oh, Andre's actually passing that out. Thank you, MR. Hill, for passing out the emerging technology framework. I think it makes sense to kind of try to embed it in policicy 85050r lookining at a a ttt separately with regards to 85 policy 8570, I would really like to see clear language around a safety piece with ai. I think we need to implement regular testing, put it in our policy that we will implement regular testing, safety testing, specifically around any ai tool that we give students access to. I know that the ai Bill of rights was floated during this legislative session. I think a lot of it has to do with trying to protect minors or ensure the protection of minors in their use of ai chatbots. And in my

046conversations with students, they even recognize the dangers of that. So I would want to include elements of that ai bill of rights, and I would want to include something around safety alerts in a student's use of an ai chatbot. So if they're talking about anything regarding that, that could raise questions about safety. And I know that this technology exists, but I would also be interested in hearing from the superintendent or MR. Davis around what kind of safety elements we have. We have in place within the confines of what's allowable. I understand that we have to be careful about what we share in terms of safety. Go ahead, MR. Davis. So so we value that feedback. The reality is, is that each piece of software that we have, this is inclusive of, by the way, legal,

047you know, mentions and as well. But with regards to our security assurance department, MR. Norman's, you know, we do serious security attestation, both from a vendor level as well as, you know, software level. So we, we take that very seriously. It's also integrated in part of our technology request process as well. So you know that that is an important component there, not to release something in the wild without knowing if there are risks involved. Both, both for the user communities that we're speaking of. Some students to our own staff. Thank you. Just so I can hear from my colleagues, is there any objection to adding those safety pieces to the around ai to policy 8570? No. I don't particularly have an objection, but I just have a question because I thought in the discussions that

048we had, we had a discussion about bringing a policy specific to ai to the board. So I think it's important to know, are we doing our own and has that already started? Because I do believe that was the original conversation. Yes. The policy specific to ai student use, district use, ethical use is is coming, I think JUNE right.Com. Yep. JUNE 16th. MRS. Alhadeff. I have a question, something that you said and with the answer. So what we have in place currently. Now, if a student is looking up something about a school shooting, what our technology be able to detect that that student is looking up that information. I have our experts answer. Answer that one. If you heard the question from MR. Alhadeff about search for inappropriate, specifically school shootings. We do have an application

049called Line wise, which is being used by our schools. There is a portion of that application called monitor that can pick up things that students put down and say in electronically that could pertain to what you're referring to here in terms of school safety. Okay. So if a student was typing something about harming themselves, would it also detect that? And would we be alerted to then go to help that student? Go ahead, MR. Doctor Diamond. I'm sorry, I didn't hear the point. If a student said they wanted to kill themselves, hurt themselves, harm themselves, would we be alerted? Yes. These are the kinds of things that are picked up and being monitored for. I would like to see Doctor Hepburn a list of of, you know, in the past year what threats were detected, how

050often, what by what school. Go ahead, MR. Davis. So so I also want to comment on that as well. We do have examples of where we detected a situation relative to self-harm. And we're able to to act that with that student and family on that. So oh yes, I remember that. Thank you. MISS Hixon. Thank you. That's good to hear about. Who is that continually monitored? Who monitors that? It is monitored by the line wise company. It is part of our contract with them and they alert us. And then we act on that alert. Okay. All right. Thank you. DR. Zeman. Thanks, chair. This is a fascinating topic, and the types of safeguards that we have in place are fine, and they are not sufficient. Ai software is a living, growing, organic thing, and it

051does different things at different times. If it was static, the current kind of safeguards we have would work, but it's not static. And because of that we have to. We have to be better. And we've all read stories about ai tools and other emerging technology that do things that are not in the best interest of the users, and probably not in the best interest of a school system. So this topic is wonderful. I hope we develop a policy around it. The legislature doesn't stop us from doing better than the minimum standard requirement. The problem is that our our it safeguards were built for things that do not change. And this software changes daily. It changes every time someone uses it. It's trying to get better at returning things, and we have to figure out how

052to make sure that we're on the, on the bleeding edge about this. This emergency technology framework is a great way to start. Just if I could, I don't object to moving forward with this. I think you and the superintendent, if you get organized and tell us how we can, you know, participate in this, that would make sense. General Council, I have read things before that I wanted to share with my colleagues, and I have shared some things, and I've tended to share things that have no release of whether I'm in favor of it or against it. It's just a National Science Foundation study, right? What are what what I hope that we do that more. I mean, this is nine people and we are a team trying to do some team things. What are the

053general restrictions about sharing public domain research with our colleagues? Are there any restrictions on that? I know of no restrictions. Okay, terrific. And I just want my colleagues to understand that if you read something fascinating, it's nsf this week. It's Council of Great City Schools. Next week it's, you know, Arizona State University. After that, there's so much amazing work out there. We are free and clear to share that with each other. We can copy the superintendent and staff to the extent that that that that's useful. Right? Right. The only caveat is do not respond. If you're sending it in an email, do not respond. So you're not violating sunshine, but sharing it is not a problem. Yeah. One way, one way. Yeah. Yeah. Terrific. That's great. But to the chair thank you for all of

054your work on this. These things are these things don't happen by accident. And I appreciate all of your energy on this. I don't believe the legislative effort is going to be enough, though. I think that's a good step. I think our budget is a good place to look. I think policies that we have for Broward County schools, because that applies to our kids and our parents and our volunteers and our staff. I think we can lead the way on this because this is the right thing to do. And this board has worked very, very hard to kind of get ahead technologically. But I think we need to get ahead with the appropriate safeguards and the appropriate standards in place, including, you know, breaking this idiotic policy that we started 40 years ago with the internet,

055that you can use the internet and anyone's allowed to take your data and use it for any purposes they want. There's no way those five companies are, are worth more than 198 out of 200 countries in the world. If we didn't have what I believe to be a ridiculous internet policy, which is they get to steal our data and use it for commercial purposes, and they don't pay us back. And that's not even get me started about ai, MR. Davis, and them stealing all kinds of stuff and using it for for profit. So I feel like, you know, there's an opportunity for us to kind of set a standard. And I look forward to hearing back from you. And to the extent that you and the superintendent think you can do this sooner than later,

056I agree with MR. Cervera. What if what if we get just some stuff in now, when does this come back? Chair this policy. Doctor Hepburn. MR. Hill or or MR. Sullivan, when does this policy come back? This initiation of rulemaking. So there's some specific time frames. JUNE 9th. JUNE 9th. So we're. Oh, good. So there's there's some time and I know that, you know, we can bring policies back and make improvements throughout the year. It's not this policy isn't necessarily tied to an academic year, but I really look forward to, to doing more work on this. I'm really glad that both legislatively and without any objection from this board, there's been some clear guidance about moving forward. Thank you, chair. Thank you. And I just want to kind of synthesize the the consensus around some

057of this. I think there is if there is any if correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there is consensus that we would like staff to bring back either in this policy or in a separate policy or both, something much stronger around protecting student and family data. Is there any objection to that? Okay, that seems pretty simple. What I'm struggling with a little bit is, you know, I understand MISS Hickson's point about how we are going to be doing our own separate policy around ethical use of ai. But this is also the student internet safety policy policy, 8570. An ai is very much a part of that. I. Tend to feel that, like DR. Zeman said, like we we do something now and these policies are coming back in kind of a similar timeline,

058both in JUNE, but I don't see how we don't have something around safety and ai in our policy on student internet safety, in addition to a separate ai policy. So I'm wondering if my colleagues can help me work through that. But before I go to that discussion, I would like to request a follow up or I just I think when I'm out speaking to students and to families about, you know, the safety aspect of using ai in the alerts that MAY or MAY not happen. And I've gotten conflicting responses over the last year from staff about this. And that could be because, you know, the technology is changing and we've adopted new technology. So I want to give some some grace there. But I think for us, as we're communicating with parents and students, it

059would be really helpful if we understood like, if a student talks about self-harm to, you know, copilot 13 plus, what is the next step? So does line wise gets a notification, they notify the district. Who with the district are they notifying? Are they notifying the teacher? Are they notifying Dsoc? Are they, you know, what is the like the branch of things that happens? Yeah. Notification train that happens so that we understand like you can feel somewhat comfortable. I mean, I have my own feelings about this, but you can feel somewhat comfortable about your child using this technology and knowing that if they are talking about certain topics, you will be notified as a parent. So I don't know that we're prepared to share that information today, but if we could get that information, I think

060that would be helpful for us. I'm noting that follow up. Thank you. But yeah, I guess I'm wondering from my colleagues, like around, you know, including the safety piece around ai for policy 8570, in addition to the ai policy, where are we at with that? MISS Hixon? I'm okay with that. I don't think there's a problem with having it. You know, the safety piece and then having the ai separate. I just really wanted to point out, I knew that we were having an ai policy. So if they're already doing something, I don't want to repeat it necessarily, but it makes sense to go under safety if we're talking about safety. So I'm I'm fine with that. Any other comments? Objections? Okay. And I would just say like, I hope that as we go forward with

061these policies around responsible technology use, I actually heard Doctor Rebecca Winthrop, someone that DR. Zeman, I guess, got to meet and talk with, talk about how we need to kind of reframe the way we're talking about or who we're putting the onus on. So the onus can not only be on the user, the student to ethically use this, this technology, the onus should be on the people developing this technology and who are making lots of money on this technology and selling it, selling it to us for our students to use. So we really need to. And I think, you know, many of us have spoken today about making these businesses much more responsible for how what they're developing for our students. And we own that responsibility, too. It's on us to try to protect our

062students in every way possible, and that that data in every way possible, any other board member discussion on this? MISS Bulman. I 100% agree with that. And I think that we do that with our purchasing power. So we need to make. Very precise decisions about who we're purchasing these services from. And I think that that would help that. But, you know, I've pointed this out before, but the people that produce all of this software don't have their kids using it. And so I think that's something that we need to be thinking about every time we decide to purchase this kind of technology. Anyone else? All right. That concludes that presentation. Our next item is the capital program Organizational Assessment and Procurement recommendation. I now turn it over to staff for a brief presentation. Thank you.

063Chair. If it's the will of the board, we can go actually straight to discussion on this item. The only one change that's reflected in its presentation was the request from the board to combine the program manager and strategic advisor and, and the long and the long range master planner. Okay. I will go to public comment. I don't have the list yet. Chair. What time was this originally scheduled for? This was originally scheduled for 930, so we're running. 30 minutes, 30 minutes ahead. And I love that. That's great. I worry that members of the public wanted to come and talk, and. That is. My my concern too. You know, I'm happy to come back to public comment in case there aren't people here after, you know, in the middle of or after board discussion to accommodate

064the public. I'm also a little concerned about item four on our agenda, the sro plan, because that was originally scheduled for 1130. So I just want to make the public aware that we are running ahead of schedule, MISS Dupree. Bruno. Oh, MR. Sullivan, yes. Since you guys are ahead of time, I already reached out to the League of Cities to let them know to plan to be here by 11. Okay. Thank you. Any other board discussion on the agenda? Schedule? MR. Cervera? There's absolutely no way, no reason why we should start the sro plan discussion before the scheduled time. I know there's numerous members of the law enforcement community that have shifted their schedules around to be here, numerous elected officials that want to come and speak. We put at 1130. I'm very much excited

065that we seem to be ahead of schedule today, but I would absolutely 100% object to that, starting a minute before 1130, as not to have those members of the public that I've just rattled off having the opportunity to come and speak and be present for the entire conversation. Okay. I will rephrase. You are proposing that we start at 1130. Thank you so much for your input, MISS Hixon. I have a question for the general counsel. If we're I think this item is going to take a while, but if we are early, is it possible to start the special school board meeting and do some of those items and then come back like we did last week? You know how we opened the board meeting? And I'm just I hate to waste time. Special school board

066meeting has been noticed for 3 P.M. So we can't really start until 3 P.M. Or early. It says. The special school board meeting. If I MAY. So we advertised it 3 P.M. Or immediately after the workshop. And so I don't, you know, I'll lean on general counsel, but since it says after, I think one would lend itself to believe at the. If the workshop would conclude not recess. If it. If it's at. If we. I understand that we say that immediately after the workshop, however, members of the public are anticipating that it's going to start at 3 P.M. So if we start at one. If we start at two, I'm concerned about a potential violation. So the special school board meeting has been noticed for 3 P.M. And my recommendation to the board is that

067we start at 3 P.M. For the special school board meeting. MISS Thompson. I think MR. Sullivan was agreeing with your recommendation, MISS B Bnono I wouldust say,ouldeeceses th worhop if is befor 1130, so we stay on time. I believe that was MR. Cervera intended proposal. I misunderstood, thank you. All right. Is there consensus around that? Around starting at 1130 for the sro. So sticking to the advertised schedule. Okay. All right. So we are now oh let me call public comment. If they are not here I'll come back to them. Doctor Natalie Lynch Walsh Denis Waters and Michael McIntyre. Good morning, Michael McIntyre. I'm the program manager for the cip program with Aecom. I went through this presentation and I was a little surprised to see the incorporation of the master plan activities with the pmor

068over the last 5 to 7 years, it's been the opposite. Across school districts. They have been removing those two services, not combining them, but having them stand alone, separate as they are a collaborative working relationship not embedded in each other. There is an inherent conflict of interest when they are together. One creates work for the other. So across school districts in the nation, they are now separate. It's being separated at airports, it's being separated at higher ed. So I would just suggest that you look at that and reconsider whether there is a conflict of interest there or potential conflict of interest. I do understand the general counsel has highlighted that in the White Paper and and there might be a need to create a legal firewall separating those two activities if they were combined into

069one contract. The other item I saw that I thought was interesting was the cm services. I hear them called hybrid. They're pretty typical actually to have cm services, but standalone cm services are generally found on very large programs because of the overhead cost relationship to the service, not on smaller programs, which is what this is for. The next three years or so is a smaller program versus a multibillion dollar program that you see in the large cities. So, so that one is a little interesting in my mind with my background. I did hear that it might be staff org staff augmentation. If that is the case, I would suggest you might need to look at your internal staffing capacity for staff augmentation. I understand that there's three people left on on the org chart to

070manage a potential 2 to 3 cm firms and staff. Org. If it's not managed properly, you will not get the cost savings with the lower rates. So it's just it's just items to put on the table to consider as you move forward on these decisions. Delivery delivery processes are important and they should be selected for the benefit to the district. I'm not saying any of these are wrong, but I think they need to be looked at as a whole and how they how they work together. Thank you. All right. Doctor Natalie Lynch Walsh and Dennis Waters, they are not here. I'll come back to them after board discussion. All right. Which one of my colleagues would like to speak first on this MRS. Alhadeff. Yes. So for the record I'm against combining the Chief Facilities

071officer position with the Chief of operations. We had a grand jury to that made the recommendation to basically keep to have a identified person for facilities specifically, you know, based on the debacle of the smart bond program. I think it's very unrealistic to for the scope and size of our district to have one person do both jobs, they'll be burnout for that person. And, and instead of doing the two positions correctly, they'll most likely be failures in, in both the lanes. It's a very difficult position to have an expertise in both the areas in one person, and then there'll be reduced attention to each of the functions in each specific area. And, and we know that our facilities needs major focus and attention. So I for those reasons, I don't recommend combining the positions. Thank

072you. I agree. DR. Zeman thanks so much, chair. Great to get this back. I appreciate the deference you gave to the board in terms of decisions that we made when this or concurrences that we provided in the previous version. I particularly love the incentives approach. I think if we can, you know, follow best practices across the board, you know, incentives matter. And if you can line up everybody to what their contribution is to getting things done, I think that was great. The one thing that did not come through in this brief that we did talk about last time on slide six and seven, you have a bunch of goals for it, help stabilize the program, preserve project momentum, enable productive, proactive, long term planning, safeguard the district. All that stuff is interesting. What's most relevant

073in my mind, though, is Costco open schedule. Our job, our job to MISS Alhadeff point is to deliver a full scope within budget on time. This is my fourth year in the school board. I've never seen a project deliver full scope on time, on budget, never. I watched a playground in an elementary school take seven years. I watched it because it was my elementary school. My kids went through elementary school and never could use the playground. It's it's not. We are. We're not dealing with the reality. I think if what we do is just put lipstick on a pig, our system has not delivered and other school districts know how to do this. MR. Superintendent, how did Palm Beach County do in their construction performance? Could they build a school, for example, in 12 months.

074Full scope, on time, on budget or under budget? I think about that. I mean, I guess I'm a little competitive, MISS Alhadeff. I don't like it when a neighboring district is delivering an entire school in 12, 12 months. And, and, and we're not and it's and we're not in wholesale way. So I think the changes here are appropriate. They are significant changes. I'm very glad Doctor Lozano and others have been working hard on filling these positions. I just think that the goal needs to be crystal crystal clear. Deliver full scope on time under budget. And the rest of these words I just, I, I, they seem to be obfuscating things. We had a speaker here that came and talk about conflict of interest, but as a board, we continue to live with a conflict of

075interest that we should be aware of, which is this contract includes support inside the contractors for procurement support. Just think about that for a little bit. A contractor is providing support to the procurement system. Is anyone okay with that on the board? Is anyone okay baking communication staff into a construction management contract? I've been yelling about this for years. I don't understand why these positions are baked into this, except it was a convenient large contract that we could hide staff. I don't want to hide anything from the public. And so I would ask, chair, that you ask for concurrence about whether or not we strike procurement support and communications from this contract. If I could, chair, I'd like to ask the superintendent whether or not the seesaw contract is really going to be done as

076staff augmentation, or is it going to be done as a. Time and materials contract for specific deliverables? The latter, sir. It's going to be it's not staff. It's actually going to be time and materials, just like the current Aecom pmr contract. Correct. Terrific. Thank you very much. It's a big distinction. I'd ask you, MR. Superintendent, to think hard about your titles on the contractor side as well. Just for the record, what I hear Director of Construction like that sounds to me like a government job. I would ask our general counsel to think hard about that. Like, do we really want to confuse people by baking government sounding? I mean, are we going to have a superintendent inside a contract someday? Maybe a deputy superintendent or a principal? Like we wouldn't have a principal in a

077contract. So why would we have a director of contracts, director of construction and director of administration? We need to clean up a lot related to government and contractor responsibilities across the district. But I think this is a good place to start. I really am curious to, MR. Superintendent, about local firms. We've talked around this issue for a long time, but are the Seymour contracts have you decided what kind of restrictions vendors have to to live within in order to bid on the Seymour contracts? Are these going to be local firms that come in and do the, you know, carrying tools, doing schedules, you know, open fence lines, getting work done? Is that local firms, not local firms? That's correct. Local firms. This has been focused to really support our local firms here in Broward County.

078Well, I love that. I mean, we have 2 million people here. We have hundreds of successful construction management firms. To the general counsel. When we say local firms, what do we mean geographically? Well, I would imagine we're talking about Broward County firms. But then, I don't know. I'm sorry. I thought maybe I apologize for that. I do this all too often. I embarrass student advisor by asking hard math questions. And I ask you something that's very, very esoteric. Early in your tour, we have an agreement, to my knowledge, with Palm Beach and Miami-Dade, that when the three of us define local, we mean that. Is that still the case, MR. Superintendent? I am not sure, but I know many of our firms are Tri-County firms. They do work across the tri county area. I think

079it's hard to distinguish. They MAY have an office in Miramar, but they're. Absolutely in Palm Beach or working in Dade. Yes. Okay. If if if there's a different answer, MADAM General Council, if you could bring it to the back to the board, I'd appreciate it. But I think to my knowledge, that's maybe been a working agreement. Maybe we need to make it a little bit more than that. But I remember seeing it before. I actually am excited about these changes. You know, we have a system that we need to work right now, MR. Dorsett, we are going to go out and ask the community again at some point. I don't know when to to open up their pocketbook and give us more money. We have roughly $6 billion in backlog in our facility. So like

080all large urban school districts, we're going out and saying, look, these are your buildings. We would like them to be even better. To MISS Alhadeff point, though, we cannot get them to open their pocketbook if we can't show them, we can actually do our work. And so to me, the more information we can put out, the first time we actually deliver a full scope on budget, on time, I hope we shut the school board down and take a day off and celebrate or something, because one day we're going to turn the tide and we're going to start delivering like other neighboring counties do. But we have to make sure that information one that we do it and two, that that information gets out. And that doesn't happen in an org chart. That's because of the

081people that are in the org chart. But I feel like there's a real pressing need to make sure we improve performance and that we advertise that once we get there and then later go on and ask the community for, for them to open their pocketbooks. If we do it the other way, it could be the first bond in Broward County for public building that fails. And I don't want to be a part of that team. I really want to build their confidence, which is both delivering what they say and communicating it well. I just overall, though, there's a lot of of reflection of what the school board asked to do in this. Again, the incentives are going to be a big deal. I know there's still a little bit to be determined about what you

082ask construction managers to do and price and cost controls people do and more folks to do. But this is exciting. Last question, MR. Superintendent. Have you done a market analysis of building department staff and made any adjustments to their pay bands? We've done a market analysis, but we haven't made any adjustments in the pay bands. We're advertised right now. We'll see what the advertisements as far as the candidates that apply and the quality of candidates. And if we need to increase the pay band, we'll come back to the board and ask for that increase. I would ask the board to think about that with me then, because I think we're putting the cart before the horse, like to to do a market study and not change the pay to offer market salaries and then go

083out and advertise jobs and just see what shows up. I think we know what's going to show up. I don't understand why we don't do the market study and change the pay and then go advertise. So what am I getting wrong, MR. Superintendent? I'm just basing it off of history with the board as far as when we come. Yes, that's where we come and ask for more money. We get a little pushback. So I'm taking a different strategy. Let the evidence show that we need to pay these people more money to recruit them. Okay. But the classic way to do that is to go look at the 31 municipalities, all of whom have a building department say, what are you all paying? And then come back to the board. I think this board, you know,

084for marginal market salary based adjustments, would be compliant with that. We've got to have great people in our building department. MISS Alhadeff has railed about this since I've met her before I was even on the board. You know, the building department has to work or else construction doesn't get done. And so I hope that I hope we can bring something to the board. And if you've got a market analysis, at least give us a chance to say yes or no. I know it'll cost a little bit of money, but I want you to be able to go get great people. I want you to steal the best folks from other building departments, because we really need this performance to get better. So thank you very much, MR. Superintendent. DR. Zeman, could you just do me

085a favor? I know you asked for for consensus on some something about striking procurement. I didn't capture that fully. On slide. Eight. Yes. There's two things at the bottom. We've been given this and that teamwork contract for a long time is wholly, wholly inappropriate to to be buying, you know, construction contract. It's pmr, which includes the master planner and all that. And then we sneak these procurement support people in for MR. White to get people from a contractor to help MR. White do procurement. I don't want any contractors near you, MR. White. I don't want any of them there. I they're biased. They're they're just the perception of them being in procurement is just hurts my head. And on communications, unless it's about communications related to this program, I don't see why those should be

086baked in. Thanks. Okay. So that and then did you want something around the market study or. Okay. I'd like about people don't object to ask the superintendent to come back in and share that information for us in an action format. Okay. MRS. Alhadeff. Could I have the Chief Auditor opine on DR. Zeman suggestion? Ma'am, is that relative to the procurement communications component? Yes. When we were looking at that previously, I myself thought that there was a higher degree of that kind of thing, and I wasn't really sure what particular deliverables they were providing under that agreement. So I think that there's a consideration there, certainly, to look at whether that's something that needs to be a part of that agreement, but I wouldn't opine on as to whether it can or cannot be. But, you

087know, generally. I can opine on the communications part, and maybe MR. White can opine about the procurement part. The communication part has been very specific to construction. When we do the ribbon cuttings, the videos for those ribbon cuttings, updating information on us on, on specific websites. It's been very specific to the construction projects, nothing more outside of that realm. And MR. White, if you can opine on the procurement support you've received with the current contract, just so the board understands. Yes. Thank you. Specifically, DR. Zeman, you're looking at the current slide. If you look on that page, it says current. If you pop over to page ten. Yes, that's what we're looking to future. And in the future we would have an internal hire to replace that. Thank you. I my preparations were insufficient. I'm

088sorry I brought it up. I withdraw my request, chair. But you would still like the the superintendent to come back and share in an action format the piece about the market study. Correct? Yes. Thank you, MRS. Alhadeff. So as far as the the marketing and communication position, I'd be okay with cutting that. We all have the ability and cell phones. And just because we're putting stuff on social media and videos and ribbon cutting and pictures, that's taking away money from actually doing the work, or I'd rather see the money actually go into doing the work and making it happen, instead of just putting fancy pictures up in a website that probably no one really looks at. All they care about is does their child get to play on the playground? Thank you. Agreed. Any other

089board member discussion, MR. Cervera? Thank you. I just wanted to share some of my initial comments here. After reviewing this. First and foremost, this proposed. Combination structure in which we're including program manager, strategic advisor, the long range master planning, and multiple construction managers and representatives into one apparently is not industry standard. And in addition, it has created what we admit as a potential conflict of interest because the same entities could help recommend future work. And then they're managing the work. And surely on its face, it's creating this potential conflict of interest, which we recognize. And I think there's a section in which there's some analysis and saying, well, you know, maybe it's not an automatic conflict of interest, maybe it's not automatically prohibited. And so to me, we're already starting behind the eight ball. I

090don't know why that would be our first position in creating a structure that has already given the implication of a conflict of interest, and now us having to work backwards to try to potentially clear that conflict of interest. I'm not sure that sound business practice, and that's my interpretation of that combination of all these positions into one. Again, with this kind of starting behind the eight ball with this combination suggestion. In adadditi, this performanance sesedee ccept,eeavaven't defined performance metrics, a scoring system, district approved systems that would would justify withholding fees. And this is a lack of data issue that this board seems to struggle with on a litany of issues, on things that we handle on a regular basis. In addition, the pmr concept, I believe, unless I'm reading things wrong, is the predominant model

091that's used in k through 12 districts and major public sector type capital programs. This proposal, for whatever reason, shies away from that and does not recognize the pmr concept as the industry standard. There's no accountability in this proposal. When we're talking about smart, smart bond program failures, the proposal really fails to acknowledge or identify any district responsibilities for delays, overruns, cost issues, management failures of the Smart program, which, as we all know, the history of that and what's at stake in the future with that. And I don't believe that we're getting out ahead of it with this proposal as as currently captured. In addition, this proposal really fails to address the internal deficiencies that contributed to the Smart program delays and cost overruns of the past, many of which is, unfortunately, we all know are

092well documented in grand jury reports. So I think there's some issues with these white papers and this proposals as as currently petitioned to this board and currently outlined in what we're looking at. But again, I, I, I'd hate to see us setting ourselves up for failure like we've seen in the past. And I really think we have to be spot on in making sure that what we are coming up with collectively as a plan really has to be perfect. You know, I'm hearing these things from what's going on in Palm Beach and how apparently efficient they are. And, you know, I'm a competitive guy and like DR. Zeman, I don't like to hear that our sister cities and our sister counties are doing things better than us. I want to be the best. I don't

093want to be looking behind or up or down at what other districts are doing. I want to be the gold star. So these are some of my concerns that I just want to put on on record. And, and quite frankly, I, I am interested in, in my colleagues positions and thoughts on this potential conflict of interest with this combination of these procurement areas. Because again, this to me feels like we're already starting behind the eight ball and we're trying to dig our way out of a hole as opposed to doing things correct off the bat. Thank you. MISS Bulman. Thank you chair. I have to agree with MR. Cervera on this. This is something that's bothered me since this came before us at the original workshop, and I believe at the last at the last,

094the last time we discussed this, we. I asked general counsel about the conflict, and we've been provided with a memo which basically outlines the potential conflict and really says the onus would be on us to enforce a lot of protections to mitigate or avoid the contract, avoid the conflict. And I don't know how confident I am about our ability to do that. And so I would shy away from having this conflict. I don't think that we need to get into something that also already creates a problem for us, or a potential problem for us. We've had enough problems with our capital program. I don't think we need that to start to start off with. So I don't agree with having the long range master planner lumped in with the other eye. So I, I have

095a question. How how are the other major school districts doing this? Their programing right now is this is this project the new proposal that we have. Is this how our major districts are doing it? Yes. So you have various strategies. Some use the Singapore strategy. Some use what we're what we're recommending here with multiple construction management owners, rep firms with staff, with internal staff also supporting projects. So it's it's various. When I was in Palm Beach County, it was during that era that Doctor Zeman talked about. It wasn't a single, single pmr concept at that time. Do you know what it is right now? I'm not sure what it is right now, but. I think it would be important for us to to know because my understanding that Palm Beach, Miami and Orange County all

096do pmr. So MISS Kohli, is she in in the room. MISS Kohli know if you got any familiarity with the current structure of some of our school districts in the state? Good morning. Sonia Kohli Office of Capital Programs. They are I believe Miami Dade is using a p more but they have multiple multiple firms that are doing the construction managers. So they have a set fee for those those. Vendors. And I believe Palm Beach is doing a hybrid. I, I, I, we put in the previous presentation, I believe. I think, I think we need to know that before I'd like to know what our sister counties are doing. And I know that, you know, there's also the, the airports and other capital programs, roads and how the how they're doing it. I because like I

097said, my understanding is that Palm Beach, Miami and Orange are all using pe more. That again, Miami Dade, I know for a fact is using the p more with multiple vendors for their management. Are they putting the the master planner with the p more. So I believe as as far as the master planner, those services are separate. Okay. So what like an overarching theme, I think of our entire capital program that I, that I am curious about how do we moving forward? If we have a new contract, we do an rfq, we get new, we have, you know, decide on what our program is going to look like and we get a new contract. How do we reset the program moving forward? Because something that I hear all the time is this happened, this happened,

098this happened. There's a constant ability to kind of blame whatever happened before. As we move forward. And it seems to me that we need to reset the program so that there's a definite start. And whoever is doing the program going forward is responsible starting at this date. And, you know, like delays that are caused by inspections or adding to the scope of work, things of that nature. I mean, some of that's not avoidable. But if you're going back 14 years and blaming original delays, and then that continues to carry forward, no matter who the pmr is, is kind of muddying our ability to hold people accountable. So there. Is like, how are we going to do that? Yeah, there is a specific transition period for a comparable handoff. So there's no disruption and clear understanding

099for whoever the awardees are moving forward. I mean, we can always go back to history. There's a lot of culpability across the board, not just with the p Maus at that time, but also with us as well. But there's a specific transition period just to have a clear handoff with the understanding of of what projects are left over, what projects have been started, where all the things you just mentioned, what's caused the delays and being able to, to plan accordingly to address those during the handoff. And MISS Cole, if you got anything else to share, feel free. So we have captured lessons learned. And we've also, again, with the new facility condition assessment, I think we would. We are we will be in a better position to move forward and not have the challenges that

100we had with the 2014 program. So I think with those, again, with the the the new facility condition assessment, the lessons learned and being able to have more internal staff as oversight to ensure that we're meeting that scope, schedule and budget that DR. Zeman spoke about puts us in a better position moving forward. Yeah, and I definitely support and I've talked to Ernie about it, and I've talked to MR. Dorsett about it, the idea of actually paying a market rate so that we can attract people, because if we are going to save money, having people in house, it is going to be worth a few, you know, tens of thousands of dollars or a couple hundred thousand dollars to actually have attract the right people to do this work. So I 100% support that. And

101I'm and when I'm talking about moving forward, I, I understand lessons learned, but I'm, I'm really talking about if we hand over the reins to the new service provider, the new contractor, is there a way for us to hold them accountable moving forward without. And to reduce as much as possible the ability to blame what's happened in the past on their inability to deliver projects going forward so that we're resetting the expectations and the timelines and that. Yes, that would be baked into the contract. But if they're picking up a project in the middle of I mean, if we're handing it over, projects aren't done. So presumably you're getting a project that's half done. So then there's always that ability to go back. I mean, I would just like to see guardrails so that we

102can't always be blaming what happened before and creating lagging timelines and things of that nature. Chair, if you don't mind, I'll just answer her question on slide. Go ahead. DR. Zeman 13 of the of 12 of the workshop before this. Palm Beach is an internal external. A hybrid model like is being proposed for us, you know, managing contractors, sharing responsibility back and forth, as is Miami Dade, Duval, Central Florida and la. They're all in that model that the staff is is proposing to us. Board member Bulman are you finished with your comments? No. We're okay. I mean, I'd like to see it in writing because I'm getting different. Well. Presentation of the workshop. Yeah, it's page 18 on the slide. Internal. External. Are we talking about having in-house building department and then staff augmentation, or

103are you talking about having. Construction managers and a p more wrapped up with a master planner. So the p the program manager wrapped up with the long range planner. We originally brought that separate. And so we brought it together based on board direction. So if we're going to if we're coming to consensus to to break it apart again, we'll we'll work at the pleasure of the board of that. So, so we'll listen to the discussion and listen to the consensus on that. So we can actually move forward with how that solicitation. Because remember, we brought four separate solicitations, and then the board made the recommendation to us to combine those two to have the three solicitations. And so that's how we brought it back this time. Right. Okay. So but I just to clarify internal

104external. Yes. So we have a building department and we have a more correct. We have a build our own building department. Right. So I agree with that. What I'm saying is do we do they have a p more and a controls and a master planner and a construction a Seymour construction owner's rep. The way that we have it proposed right now. From my. Go ahead, MISS Coli. So previously, when looking at when looking at the other districts, they have a. Their cp, their cost and program controls is separate. They have internal and external staff managing construction when looking. Also the strategic advisor. Sorry, the master planner was also separate within those districts. They were. It was not coupled with the Program Manager. Okay. So they don't have that. I'm just concerned that we have too

105much going on and the and the line of command I 100% support enhancing our building, our internal building department. What I'm concerned about is that I'm concerned with the conflict between the program manager and the long range master planner. I don't agree with that. And then the idea of having a program manager plus a construction manager, I think we probably need one or we need one or the other. And then my question to that, I think we asked this last time, but what is our. What is our expectation for our local firm participation? The primary focus of the solicitation is to ensure participation by our local firms. Yes, that that was that's the primary goal, to ensure that they can participate in the solicitation for the construction managers. Okay. Board member Hixon. You want board

106member Bulman were you finished with your comments? Yeah, I so my I, I want to see separate master planner. The program manager. However, that's however, we're going to define that and then cost and controls. Okay. So board member Bulman I have here where you would prefer to see number one separate to separate long range from program management and separate master planner. And I believe separating the program manager and Seymour's. Yes. And then enhanced internal staff and ability to reset moving forward so that there's an ability to hold the new program manager accountable despite what's happened in the past. Okay. So, Doctor Hepburn, did you capture all of that? Okay. Board member Hixon, give me a second. Did you want to be on the list to speak? Okay. Got it. Okay. All right. So I am

107going to go ahead and take a pause with board member comments so the public can comment. So we have the first public speaker, Muriel Atlas. Okay, Jeff, can you also put me on the list? I've been waiting a while with my hand up. Yes, you would be. Thank you. Good morning everyone. My name is Muriel Theophane. I just want to start off by saying my daughter is currently a junior in high school, and I have been a parent advocate since she started vpk at Lloyd Estates Elementary. However, today is my first time coming physically to a board meeting because the changes being proposed are very significant in the consequences. So as far as capital programs go, I wanted to speak on the presentation. I appreciate the information on projects and the funding and appreciate trying

108to build strong facilities, but there is a concern at the school level. What is being reported does not always match what students and staff are dealing with every day. There are maintenance issues that have been reported and are still not fixed in some cases, staff say issues were reported but never even entered into the system. The. This makes it hard to know if the data being used is fully accurate. Students are dealing with things like locked or dirty restrooms and other building issues. These are not small problems. They affect students. Every single day. I ask that the district be more transparent about work orders, what is open, how long it has been open, and how it is being handled. There needs to be a better match between what is reported and what is actually happening

109at schools. For a school to be considered an aid school, the facilities must also meet an a standard. Let's please not forget that it's for our students and I'd greatly appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker will be Dodie. Keith. Can. I can speak at the end. Good morning, board members. Dodie, Keith, I'm here with Keith. Just to this topic, I know your staff's really hard to move this forward when you talk about these conflicts. I think it's actually more important where you define the roles of each contract. More contracts is not necessarily better because you get duplication. So you need to save, you got to look at the cost of these contracts because these management contracts get real expensive, and we should be able to save a lot of money, especially

110without a new program and a new bond coming through. Yet the dollar should be way less than the existing program. And so really it's more important is what's the role, the program management with the long term planning isn't a problem. If the roles are clearly defined within that contract, then what you need to pay attention to is you create a you create the system that. If you're on that team, you cannot be on the next team. You can't be in the program, you can't be in the cost controls, and then you can't be in the construction. So you actually create where even the Subconsultants, if, if my team ended up on the program team, I can't go be a subconsultant to the, the cost controls or thee constructiti m magement. So it cleaearl d dinin

111and it's d done ererayay in procurement iouour industry. So all you have to do is put that simple conflict out there. If you're in one team, then you can't be a sub even in the next team. So that way you clearly make more opportunity for firms. But define the role of that team that you're going to combine that planning group with the program team. It's okay as long as they're not actually managing and executing the work at the end of the day. So it's really how the contracts are written and they've done every day in other governmental agencies. And you can clearly set it where if the role of that team, that long term planning that and that project management team doesn't get into executing, if your construction management teams are executing the design and

112the actual construction of the projects, you get away from the conflict. So there's a way to do it without adding contracts, because I'm going to tell you, every big management contract you add costs big money, and it's a lot of money. You're looking at these numbers, there's duplication. There's no way to get around the duplication from multiple contracts. And we need to be spending the money on the schools and on the kids, not on folks like me. So really, let's, you know, pay attention and, and scale it back, pull it in. You're getting there. Thank you, MISS Alhadeff, I know you want to comment on the what the speaker said so you can go ahead, doctor. Heartburn when students are in school, are we locking bathrooms? Yes. Not that I'm aware of. But if what

113school, ma'am, because I can have staff talk to you one on one. Just to clarify, any concerns. I'm hearing. Is Coconut Creek. That is. Yes, I have MR. Toomer follow up with you right now. Thank you. Okay. Thank you so much. We are going to move on to the next speaker, Barron Shiner. Good morning, board members. Barron Channer, ceo of Barc. We have the great pleasure of being a sub consultant for your current emergency program management, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak here. A couple of points. The prior speaker made a perfect statement. More contract means more money. If you're doing the same amount of work because you always have overhead. So turn one contract, which you currently have into potentially 4 or 5 contracts, essentially means you're agreeing to pay more money. An

114essence of that is, as you've had single pmr for ten years during that ten year time frame, none of the sub consultants, which at some times was five firms were charging you overhead. We were all charging you direct labor, so you were getting the benefit of 5 or 6 firms working for you without additional overhead. I appreciate the point made by the superintendent that there is always a focus on local and certified firms. It's not obvious from the presentation that's been provided to you that more opportunities will be created for those certified firms, many of whom generally get opportunities by way of sub consulting or subcontracting, because by nature of their size and the stage of the company, they are not competitive in the fullest sense. With all of the top firms. Forbidden doesn't mean

115they can't do the work, but forbidden without any statement as it relates to the goals or things of that nature, it's not obvious that the structure that's currently being set up or being proposed will actually translate to more opportunities, so I would encourage that that be addressed. I believe I heard MISS Board member Bulman mentioned that her perspective was that there would be a single pmr, there would be a master planner and there would be a cost controls. It sounded as if in the confirmation that was sort of changed a little bit. So I encourage you to ask that. But the one thing that it did draw to my attention is every single school district that has been referenced in the presentation Miami Dade, Palm Beach, Duval County all have one thing in common that's

116also consistent with industry best practice. That's also consistent with the majority of the top 20 school districts. As board member Zelman had said in a prior meeting. And that is that they use a single program management team that enables the program manager to direct and have the authority contractually to direct the work that occurs at a project level. That's a important element because if you're program manager who's doing the planning and strategizing around how the program should be implemented, has a contract that is separate from the actual people who are doing the work. It leaves room for the program manager to say, failure is not on me, it's on them. So now you have people pointing fingers at each other, and the district is placed in the position with less resources, less staff of having

117to play referee. It is not a great idea to do that at this point in time. So I'd encourage you to get back to considering single p more team. Thank you. Thank you. Brian Shannon. Next speaker will be Alan Patterson. Good morning. Alan Patterson from Corradino. I'd just like to say that, you know, our firm has been in business for 55 years. And for 40 of those years, we've been right here in Broward County, working with Broward County School Board for much of that time. We implement big construction projects and infrastructure projects across the state, and we're familiar with both roles as construction managers and project managers. And we're also familiar with what it takes to deliver your projects on time, on budget, and importantly, with transparency. So I think we can meet all those

118goals for you. We're also we are we're not alone. We're here with a lot of other local firms that we have networked with and worked with in the past, and we believe there's enough talent in this community to be able to deliver your program and to meet your goals. The one thing we would request is that the rfq process be open and competitive. I think that's in the best interest of the district and for the residents of the county, and we just encourage you to do that as you consider this rfq. Thank you. Thank you so much. Is there any further public comment? No other comments. Thank you. All right. So we're going to continue with board member comments. It's my turn next, and we will certainly have a second round. DR. Holness. Yes. Through

119the chair I just want to make sure that something's very clear. The board is going to start enforcing board policy 1940, which is the lobbyist activities for Economic Gain policy. There were multiple individuals that have a specific financial interest in this particular topic. And we're going to require that you register, pay the appropriate fee, provide the appropriate statement to indicate that you are a lobbyist so that the board is and knows and the public knows who is speaking, and we have it on the record. And just to make sure that we are clear, a lobbyist is defined as any individual, firm, corporation or other business entity who engages in lobbying for the economic gain of a principal, regardless of whether or not that person is being compensated as a lobbyist or not. So there are

120very specific requirements. I encourage you to look at Board Policy 1940, review it, and be rest assured that the board will be enforcing that policy henceforth. Thank you. Thank you, General Counsel. So I do have a few comments, and I must say that I do agree with many of the feedback from board member Bulman, as well as board member Cervera, who mentioned that, you know, combining long range planning with program management introduces a clear conflict of interest. And, you know, I am wondering, why would we move ahead when something poses a conflict of interest if it can be avoided? You know, so I, I, I do support the feedback and concern mentioned by board member Bulman board member Cervera. In that regards. I also want to make my point very clear, and I know we've

121had this discussion many times over. I know we've spoken about it. I am very concerned with moving ahead with the current proposed structure. I've said it before that I believe it's experimental and that is concerning for me. I don't believe we we should not split pea more and see more single p more approach has been used by this district for quite some time. Most districts does a single p more. And you know, we've been receiving conflicting information where we're getting the understanding sometimes. And and I and I'm trying to sift through all of it to see who's right because I've done my own research as well, where this approach seems to be implying that other major districts are doing this. And then when I do my own research, that's not the implication. So some things

122can be misleading. For example, when you look at the term hybrid, nearly all public sector capital programs use internal staff as well as external support, which would then render the term hybrid to be inaccurate and misleading, you know, so I think we have to be careful how we are defining different terms as we move ahead. Now, if we've been using single p more and many major districts are using single p more, and my understanding is Dade County is as well as Duval and Palm Beach. And we're trying to move in a different direction here in Broward. If we've been using single p more all along, why change now? So I don't want to experiment at this time. I think we should embrace the single p more model as we've always done. Leading industries encourage single

123p more. Why? At a time when we are reducing staff, should we implement an approach that is against best industry standards? I believe I heard one of the speakers mention that we will be playing referees with trying to manage so many different contracts. Currently we have a single p more that report to us. If we go with this approach, we're now going to be faced with having to oversee many independent contracts, which lends itself to many more problems, many more people not holding accountability instead of a single entity. We will now have to referee quite a few different folks, and I think that is going to lend itself to greater problems. This is not what the best districts are using the top districts. So i don't think we should proceed ahead. And quite frankly, I

124don't know if we have the capacity within Broward County schools at this time to even proceed with the proposed model. So why move ahead when we can have significant potential problems over the next couple of years? The capital program will expend hundreds of millions over the next contract Cycle. There is a major financial decision that would be wrapped into how we procure services. Now, Florida statutes 1001.41 and 1001.42. Create a duty for the board to serve as the district's contracting agent and approve plans for maintaining or construction school property. Regarding these duties, Florida courts have recently defined neglect of duty as a failure to act, regardless of whether there is willful or malicious intent or mere ignorance. In light of all of this, I must express significant concerns about staff's proposal to split the program

125manager and construction manager roles into multiple separate contracts. This approach, in my opinion, will increase costs. It will increase delays. It will increase the contract administration without any compelling benefits. Pmr and Seymour should be. Should be combined, as we have done over the last ten years. And as is done by most of our peers. Now, my concern about the proposal to split program Manager and Seymour are based on research and various conversations that I've had with knowledgeable professionals. The district has over ten years of experience with a single pmr single program management team structure. Now is not the time to try new approaches without being clear. Benefits. We are constraining staff and we MAY reduce even more in future years. All the school districts, including included in staff's benchmark slide, use single p. More management

126teams with sub consultants. Miami Dade does that. Duval and Palm Beach. The same is true for most of the top ten districts. Broward schools will not benefit from trying an experimental approach, and I've said this in our last discussion of this, and I am concerned about moving ahead. I don't want us to move ahead and then look back in retrospect and said, what did we do? So Broward schools will not benefit from trying an experimental approach to management while we are reducing our constraining staff and deadline with fiscal challenges. Let's make it easy. Easier to succeed. The leading industry association, the Program Management Institute, recommends that the program manager be positioned to direct the efforts of construction managers and exercise oversight. A single p more single program management team with sub consultants is how this

127can be done. The economically prudent approach to our capital program seems obvious to me. Keep it simple. If we are already using industry best practices, do not undermine our prospect for success by diluting the authority of our chosen program manager. Do not create more administrative and compliance burden when we expect to have thin staffing. So those are my comments and I'm sure we're going to have a second round, but I support the model of a single p more with the sub consultants as we've always done. I believe we're going to have a whole lot more problems if we proceed with trying to manage so many individuals who will now be in the driving seat. So I'll go ahead and move to our next board member, which is board member Hixon. Now, doctor. Yes. Board member

128Rupert, you're next after board member Hixon. Thank you. Thank you. I have actually seen some of the concerns that DR. Holness had, but one of my. So I have two specific questions. One of the public speakers talked about the fact that some of our smaller companies, local companies, can't bid because they don't meet some of those requirements, but they do work as subcontractors now because he's leaving. Okay. All right. I'll wait till you're settled and I'll start again. Okay. So one of the public speakers mentioned about some of the subcontractors now can't bid to be the pmr because they don't meet the requirements, but they are working as subcontractors on there. And in the presentation, it doesn't spell out specifically how we're going to ensure that local certified companies, I mean, we have we have

129vendors who go through that certification process. And nowhere in here did it say how we were going to make sure that we were providing opportunities for those certified vendors? So if someone from staff could talk about will that be in the rfp or rfq? I get all the letters mixed up, but where how are we going to to make sure that they continue to have those opportunities, especially if they've gone through the certification process? Thank you. I'm going to turn it over to MR. White. John Wesley White, Director of procurement. We anticipated setting a fairly robust certified goal on the construction manager contracts. And again, we're not anticipating a small firm bidding on the pmr contract. It's for the construction manager contracts. And then if you're a certified firm, say we set a goal and

130I'll pull one out of the air, say 30% on the construction manager contract. If you're certified firm, you could then self-perform that work yourself. And so that's going to try and help drive people to be able to bid that and completely satisfy a relatively high goal. Okay, great. So it'll be in the contract. Yes, ma'am. Okay. In the solicitation and then the resulting contract. Okay, great. Thank you for that answer. Also had concerns that was brought up from a number of public speakers. And I think DR. Holness the cost savings, when you look at this presentation, indicates that by doing different contracts that we would save about $500,000. But my question on that is, does that take into account the fact that we're actually doing less construction? So I know, because if we we were

131on the smart bond, we're moving past that. So our construction will not be as won't have the same volume that it does now. And I'm based on that. I think the savings should be more than $500,000. So if someone could speak to when they gave us that, that cost savings was it included that the volume of construction would be less. And so if that's true, why is there only a $500,000 savings? Sonia Kohli Again, that was only a an approximate. We wouldn't know the actual savings until the until the solicitations came in. So the consultant just put together a rough order of magnitude estimate. And again, it was based upon the reduction of projects as well. So it did take into account the volume would be less. Okay. All right. Thank you for that. So

132I, I. Also agree that it doesn't make sense for us to put ourselves in a situation where we're already thinking maybe there's a conflict of interest. So I have a different suggestion on here that it still would be three different contracts. But to continue with the p more hiring the construction managers or the sub to subcontract out. And again, I think the public speaker made a great comment on there. If you have somebody who's developing, excuse me, the programs, and then you hire a completely different firm to do the construction part of it, how do you hold them accountable for meeting the program's expectation? So although I would say in the the things that we've had, what we've had in the last ten years, I wouldn't call that great management just based on where we're

133at right now. So I'm not saying because we've done it for the last ten years, we should continue to do that. But I do think it makes a point to say if s seoeo if we're hiring someone andndhehey'evelelopin the pla in terms of projects and what those projects should look like, you have a completely different person. You've opened yourself up to miscommunication, which I think we're already experiencing in some instances. So my suggestion isn't because we've done it for the last ten years and maybe it looks different, but I would put those together. I would take out long range master planning and keep the cost and program control manager. So you still have three contracts. They just would move the long range out and put the construction manager in there. I also wanted to ask

134Doctor Dr Fulton, I had the conversation with Doctor Hepburn, missus Alhadeff mentioned it and we had a speaker come to talk about this. It has to be abundantly clear to our principals in every single school because the speakers. Right. I've heard it and I've contacted Safety and Security and Doctor Hepburn every time. We cannot lock our bathrooms. If there is not enough security, then there needs to be something else. But we have already learned why that's important. And we we just can't allow it to continue happening. And to say to think it's only at one school is naive. It's at more than one school. So I think that we need to make sure we do that. And I think that that's it for, for now. But like I said, oh, and I just wanted to

135go back to something that board member Cervera said. You know, in terms of the smart project, we have closed that out. We have moved those projects on to capital, the smart project smart bond piece doesn't really exist anymore. So to fold that into whatever we're doing now, I think it's really important that we don't commingle those things because they're completely separate. So I think it's important for the public to know the smart bond. In OCTOBER of last year, we ended that, moved all of those things into the capital project. And we I don't think it makes sense for us to commingle those terms with a new contract moving forward. Thank you. Thank you, MISS Rupert. Thank you, MADAM Chair. I would like to say thank you to the people that came to speak on this.

136I appreciate your time, and I appreciate my colleagues opining before me. So what I actually the very first thing is my recommendation would be to not have the chief fire official and, and the fire official. They cannot report together that they need to be separate, separate, completely separate departments, as the grand jury has said in the in the past, one of our speakers also said. Kind of doesn't matter which part we choose because we can make, we could make it work either way, but we need a a full proof definition of what the roles are and what the roles will be. So that's incredibly important because I think that was a large part of our problem from the past. Moving forward. It was a little bit loosey goosey. And this this definition defining those roles

137I think will accomplish not us having to go through that again. And our, our business people as well as our community. So that is the thought for that. Hold on. I personally think that just the the one p more, I would recommend we would otherwise have have issues. It's just a matter of us actually seeing work done and getting work done on time that I believe will make a difference. Because let's just say there was a lack of transparency and accountability before, and this board won't put up with that, nor will the public. So it's and I appreciate so much that the public is held on this long. But, you know, this needs to happen and it needs to happen now. Thank you, MISS Rupert. I was going to say, I think that we will

138be discussing the organizational chart. So some of mine have to do with that consideration. So I will hold those that part of the conversation until we get to the the org chart conversation. Thank you. Thank you, MISS Rupert. Anyone else? DR. Holness. And DR. Zeman. Thank you so much, chair. Go ahead. DR. Zeman. Thank you so much. I appreciate the conversation. There's a always a challenge with the language here to get things right. And there's a tremendous amount of, of very appreciated comments from our vendor community that came here today. I will share from my colleagues maybe some of what I heard from them and see how you land on this. First and foremost, it's very easy to confuse programs with projects. So we have, to my knowledge, MR. Superintendent, a capital improvement program that

139has taken the place of Smart. Is that correct? Correct. And a capital improvement program is, you know, you've got $40 billion worth of capital, and you're going to make it better through rebuilding maintenance facilities, upgrades and the like. The way you think about a program is different than the way you think about a project. And our vendor community knows that because they have to live in that world every day. And so there's a long range master plan, there's strategies, there's capital improvement program thinking, and that is program management. And that ought to never be confused with project or construction management, which is guys with belts, supervisors, schedules, fence lines, safety and security, fire watches, you know, those kinds of things. There are firms that do construction management or project management, and there are firms that

140are do program management. But what has been proposed here about going back to the p more management project isn't isn't being discussed in a way that I think is very accurate. The choice is clear. You're either going to have a p more like we have now with a whole bunch of subs that do project or construction management, or you're going to have two different contractors do it. But the number of firms and who does the work is not going to change. They're either going to combine and work for one big firm. You know that that comes in and does this, which we've seen that show for the last ten years. I don't like it. I think you lose accountability, you lose performance, and you multiply the overhead by by a ton. The concept that we

141discussed and decided on last time, by the way, was to put the p more the program management and the long term strategy pieces all together. Because firms do that for a living, it reduces overhead and allows us to have very, very clear lines. Strategy by the p more cost and programs control which you always need independent, totally independent firm that can actually look over the shoulder of the project or construction managers and then separately, construction managers. And for people who get elected to these offices. I want to be crystal clear about this. The construction management being proposed by our staff is exactly what we asked for, because those could be local firms. Those are firms who live in your district. They are firms who grew up and worked and know Broward County. So when you

142put all that stuff together, guess who has the authority to hire those firms? A Jacobs, a Turner, a Chatham Hill, an Aecom. If you want to give up control about whether or not the firms that are being hired are the firms that we would, we think would benefit our community, then you can go to a single p more. The project management institute that DR. Holness talked about is a project management institute that is for all project management, whether it's construction management, contracts, auditing and all that. And what they recommend is exactly what is proposed by our staff today. A program management contract with strategic pieces put in a cost and programs control that's separate and separate from that construction management who get their general direction from the strategy. So that's kind of a very classic

143way to get these things organized in a management way. And I, I feel like we're going backwards a little bit. We're, we're rebuilding up, you know, issues we resolved when we brought this back up in, in MARCH. And I'm, I'm, I don't want the staff to feel like you get whipped left and whipped right and then whipped up and whipped down. These have all been discussed. We had lots of experts come and talk to us. We've had some great work done by our director of construction, who's actually worked in these construction models before and came and gave us recommendations for which there was a modest amount of adjustments, including incentives and things like that that make sense. I don't want to pay a ton of overhead. I want to focus on cost, scope and schedule.

144I want to get this district back in the same business as other adjacent districts are in terms of getting things done. I like what the staff has approved. The vendor community understands it. It's easy for MR. White to put together solicitations about what's been proposed, and there was also a great point that was brought up by one of our vendors. If you don't want conflicts, then just don't let the strategy guys bid on the construction work. And by the way, they don't do the construction management work. Aecom doesn't carry a belt. Right. Mike, where are you, buddy? A Aecom doesn't do that. Turner doesn't do it. See each to him. He doesn't do it. Jacobs doesn't do it. They want to do the strategy. They want to put it all together. And they'll hire the

145right people at that level. And I'm really excited about local firms being able to do the bulk of the work, which is going to be done through construction management under the current proposal. So a lot of this is a rehashing of of old things. I thought a lot of this stuff had already been decided, and we were kind of necking down to kind of a final proposal here today. But I, I really like the work that the staff's done, very modest changes to what you brought the first time, MR. Dorsett, but those changes made it a little bit better in my mind and reflect the need of this board, you know, to try and have local firms doing work in the local community, which I, I support 100%. Thank you so much, chair. MADAM Chair.

146Thank you. And just real briefly, since I haven't spoken yet, I agree with DR. Zeman and his his points that he brought up. I won't belabor the point, MISS Bulman. Just to clarify about the local firm participation, if we don't have the onerous financial. Provisions that we've had in the last two are use, then would we have a higher chance of having local participation? That is correct. At a top. Level, yes, that's that is correct. That's one example of ensuring that our local firms can participate in the solicitation, is removing that component from that was in the past too. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? DR. Holness. Thank you, MADAM Chair. So board member Bulman brought up an important point. And Doctor Hepburn, not only am I concerned about local and certified firms participating, but

147in the in in the same proportion or similar proportion to what it was in the past, is that looking at the new proposal, I am not sure that I am convinced that the participation of local and certified firms is going to be in the same proportion as it was. It seemed. The proposal seems to significantly reduce or eliminate certified firm participation requirements. So if you could comment on that. Yes. Thanks for the question, DR. Holness. I don't see anything that's going to limit or reduce the opportunity for local certified firms to participate. In fact, that is our primary focus for the construction managers to to be from a pool of local and certified firms. So that's our primary goal. And not replicating language of the past that's prevented those firms from being able to participate.

148Okay, so Doctor Hepburn e and I understand your statement that you don't believe it will limit your participation, but how will it impact the scope of their participation in terms of proportion? I expect the the same proportion or if not higher than as far as the number of local firms that are able to participate in the upcoming solicitation. Okay, so what about as far as a a similar portion of the pie, so to speak, as it was in the past? As far as the, the p more contract and the, and the amount of and the proportion of percentage. Of certified firm participation in in total contract amount. So I'll let John White speak to that. As far as the solicitation language. John White Director of Procurement. Again, I believe that we will have the same

149or higher level participation by the certified business community. As I spoke to earlier, if we set a very aggressive goal on the Seymour contracts and then a certified firm wins one of them, they can self-perform. And so you could end up having 100% participation instead of just, you know, a 40% or 47% participation, which is what we have on the current contract. So I think that you're going to have that opportunity to end up getting a higher level of dollars into the local community. Okay. So Doctor Hepburn, if you don't mind, MR. White, is it is it your intent to ensure that there is a fair participation of certified firms in a fair percentage, similar to what was done in the past? Absolutely. Okay, so I do have some more comments, chair, if you don't

150mind, because this is important for me in order to give my final feedback on the direction that we should go, I do notice that I believe I've seen. Acom representative Mike in the audience. I don't know if he's still here, but I believe I see somebody from Duvall and I, I just want to understand this. I want to know for certain because I've done my research and I've heard conflicting information. I want to know if I think there's a representative here from Duvall, I believe, and, and, and from Acom. Can they provide us with a feedback as to whether or not in those districts? It's a single p more with subs or multiple. Contracts. MISS Dupree. Bruno. The recommendation has been made to the board that we do not engage in questioning of those who

151are coming to make public comment. There's it's just best practice, especially since there's going to be negotiations. There's going to be a solicitation. It's my recommendation that the board get this information through the superintendent and have staff communicate with the vendors and come back with the answer. But again, it's to the board's discretion as to how you want to move forward. Okay, MADAM Chair, if you don't mind, General Counsel Bruno, if it's not diving too deeply into anything, that would be infringing on contract languages and so on, but gaining just factual information that currently exists, which is simply if those counties are using single p more with subconsultants or multiple contracts, those are just factual statements. That has no bearing, in my opinion, on the content of any upcoming contracts. I don't know if staff

152is able to answer the question for you. MISS Kohler. Again, after review, we did the those districts do again, use a single p more with consultants, various consultants. Okay, so those districts that I just mentioned, it's a single p more with consultants. Is that what you just stated? Correct. Which is what we are currently using. And we are proposing something different. Correct. Okay. So based on your statement, I referenced Dade County and Duval County, and your statement is that those two counties are using single p more with Subconsultants, correct. Okay. So again. I am I am here in many different answers every time I ask the same question. And I'm glad you you provided that response. So I am still where I am in being concerned about moving ahead. I believe the district will need

153to play referee with many, many different contracts, independent contracts. They'll be higher. Chance of mistakes, higher chance of failures. And I'm not sure what the benefit, if the benefit is significant enough. You know, DR. Zeman you always say you're not sure if the juice is worth the squeeze. And in this particular case, I'm not sure if it is. And so I don't want to experiment. I don't want to take chances. We are reducing staff. We have many problems ahead. We're redefining schools. You know, the last thing I want is a year or two down the road. We end up with significant construction and contract issues. We've dealt enough with those, at least enough since I've been here in 2022. So we just heard from staff that Dade County, Duval County is using a single p

154more with multiple subconsultants. That's what we've always been doing. So going ahead, we would not be proceeding in like manner as Dade or Duval. I just don't know if it's the time to change this. I, I, I think we are going to quickly into a space that I perceive as experimental. I also wanted to reiterate, MADAM Chair, that we should not have anything in here that poses any sort of conflict of interest if it can be avoided. So the longgange planning should be separatat and I. I pepe we canain consesensus on all l theififferent are tha wewe've spoken about You know, where I stand in terms of proceeding with the single p more and subconsultants as we've always done, because I think it's going to lend itself to a lot of unseen issues as we

155move ahead with a proposal that would now introduce multiple independent contracts. I'm just not sure that's the best way to go. Thank you, MADAM Chair. Thank you. Anyone else, MRS. Alhadeff? Yes, I have a question. On page 19, the Civic Initiatives Organization. Director Hepburn, is this the company that helped you create this doc? Yes, they help create solicitation, especially for for large dollar amounts. This is the core of their business is supporting government entities, not just school district, but other government entities to ensure that we get this right. And so they're the ones that came up with this proposal. Not okay. So what I what I have an issue with is. There are these, this is the experts. Let's just say that came up with this proposal. Even if you with board members bringing a

156different suggestion, which you're totally entitled to, but I just feel that we have to do something different. And Doctor Hepburn, you went out, you got this company and brought forward a new proposal. And and so what we've done previously, what we. It hasn't worked. Meaning that delays, cost overruns, projects not getting completed. So, Doctor Hepburn, you're trying to do something different. And so I don't understand why board members are going back to what we previously previously have done. That really hasn't worked. So for me I'm going to take your recommendation, Doctor Hepburn, that you're bringing forward on this. I do have a question on page 17. With the vacant positions and specifically with the chief operations Officer and chief Facilities officer position, another column here for me, which would have been helpful is what are

157the current positions being paid now? Because I see there's a pay scale and then the market analysis, and because based on some of my colleagues who want to combine the the chief operations officer and chief facilities officer position, what would what would we be, what would the piece what would we be paying them for the if we combined it? Yes. So that was a request to increase that to pay pay band t Doctor Lozano, if you have the the range for that pay band t. Pay band t has a minimum range of 164,800 and a maximum of 252,803. Okay. And when you look at the market analysis, it's obviously a lot higher on the higher end individually for those two positions. Anyway, I, i think we should still keep them separate. I, I don't imagine

158the board approving a $452,000 pay for, for somebody doing both those positions. My other. Question, Doctor Hepburn, is a lot of all these positions are being advertised. Obviously they're very important positions. You know, how are we aggressively getting these positions filled. Go ahead, Doctor Lozano. MISS Tyler is going to come and talk about the specific work her team is doing currently with all these positions. Good morning. And Gene director of Talent Acquisition. We are working directly with the ppo office to target industry groups to advertise there. We also have a social media campaign to ensure that we get out the word to as many individuals as possible, and our recruitment team is working specifically with the department to engage with other possibilities to source not only qualified, but talented individuals that have industry experience. Okay,

159so doctor, can you come back with what these positions are currently being paid now in this in this chart? And then also how long each position has been unfilled? Correct. So what I can do because they're vacant. So there's no pay for the current position. So I can have staff work on what the position when it was occupied, what was the last salary for the when it was occupied. Right. And and the date when it was last occupied. Thank you. Thank you. Before we go to the next board member, I do understand that we have another public speaker, Doctor Natalie Lynch Walsh. Good morning, doctor Natalie Lynch Walsh Plantation, Florida. I had almost decided to forego this item because I spoke to it the first time. The issue you're paying 16 million now to wrap

160up a bond program. The idea that staff would bring you a recommendation to still be paying 16 million when you don't have a bond program and are not going to have one in the near future. Yes, you have projects that always happen. That's the sticking point. They should be trying to reduce that. But this presentation all look like we were doubling down. Now we want to call it a white paper. It doesn't matter what kind of paper you call it. It's still bad. The priorities should be the long range master planner, which if you were on the board in 2021, that's when it was approved NOVEMBER of 21, the board approved getting a master planner and the needs assessment. These are companies, not employees. Cost and program controls is of course a priority because that's

161not a function the district does and your contract is about to run out. Then you get to do we do consultants or staff. They're adding staff to facilities, meaning now you're going to have a proposed executive director of budget. It's like they're doing the opposite. Whenever it's not general fund funded, how can we keep wasting taxpayer funds if it's capital or food and nutrition? So if you're going consultants versus staff, if you want to pay a consultant to run the district and based on the applicants you had for facilities chief, that might be the way to go, then you don't have and it's a bad idea. I agree to combine operations with facilities, especially when you have the building department, which each grand jury report cites the lack of independence the building department would have

162when you have them report to the same to facilities. Yes, they had them reporting to a an operating official back in 2004, but that was before the last two grand jury reports. So who knows what they would recommend now. So those two things should be separate. But the recruiting efforts this sounds again, very sophomoric. You're looking for people you can't afford. Who are you going to find that can run operations and facilities, meaning food and nutrition, transportation, procurement and facilities. These are humongous bears that no one person that you can find and are willing to pay is going to be able to do. They have to stay separate. But if you want to use consultants, I'm not vehemently opposed, but then get rid of facilities. Chief executive directors, director of this, director of that, and

163consolidate the department and bring in a firm to manage facilities. You can't do both. That's how this started with this bloated. Back in 2014, we had two internal and external. And it's going to cost too much. Thank you, MISS Bowman. Thank you chair. Just i wanted to follow up to some points that MISS Alhadeff was making and just look at it in a little different way, because I agree with the general premise that it hasn't been working great for us over the past time, but I don't agree necessarily that we have to restructure the entire structure, because I think when we're looking at it, we have things that are different from what they were originally. So, for example, we're going to have the different financial requirements for the firms, which will allow local firms to

164potentially do the bulk of the work. We don't necessarily need a giant international firm to do that. We will, which gets into having different players and having, again, like more local firms. We're increasing in-house positions, which should provide more accountability. On our end. We're using the civic initiatives, which is going to give us a better procurement process, I think. And we also have the facilities assessment that is much more robust than what we had in 2014. So I think there's the what we're looking at right now is quite distinguishable from what we were working with the last two contracts. So just want my colleagues to keep that in mind. Thanks. Thank you, MISS Hixon. Thank you. I, I had a couple of things. I also, and I said it the other day, have an issue

165with the chief operations officer and chief facilities officer being the same person. That's not new information. I said it when we were discussing it last time, for all the reasons that have already been said. I also, just in terms of the vacant positions and where we are with pay, I think the public speaker was right. We are not in a position to pay what people would like to be paid here. We can't get rid of a thousand positions and then say, we're going to increase the pay for for all of these other positions that we have here. So I, I just want to say that out loud, because I think it's really important to remember that we're going to vote on that in a few hours about people losing their jobs. And then in that

166same conversation, we're going to say why it's so important that we pay other jobs, more money. So I just we're, we're just in a, in a position that that's very difficult to do right now. I do I mean, I mentioned earlier, I do think for the last ten years we have not been on the right path. So I do think there needs to be some kind of changes here. I don't know exactly what that change is, but to ask that question, Doctor Hepburn, one of the board members, mentioned that this plan was developed with a consultant. Is that correct statement? So we did get some expert input and feedback and helping to analyze our current structure, give us feedback based on other structures around the country that have been successful, and then doing our own

167research to talking to other school districts and other entities about how they've been tackling this work and having a high level of success. So it's been various input and feedback to support what we're recommending. But the staff came up with this plan. There was no consultant because there's a consultant for the rfp, correct. There's a consultant for the solicitation. But as far as the recommendation it is staff based. Yeah. Using that backup to come up with the with the option presented today. Okay. Thank you. I did like the suggestion that one of the speakers had about you can leave the structure as is and just make sure you define very specifically in the contract who can bid on what to, to get rid of those, those issues. But you know, as been pointed out a

168number of times, there is the, the idea that there's a conflict of interest. And we have a huge issue with public trust. And if we're going to go into a contract where we're already identifying the fact that there could be some conflict of interest, I just it gives me pause. So we'll, you know, I'll see what my colleagues think. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad plan, but I do understand the concerns around it. And when we're trying very hard to earn back public trust, I think it's important to keep that in mind as we're having the discussion. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else, MR. Cervera? Because MISS Hixon asked just to make sure that my point was clear, because I know I was one of the first speakers on this. I cannot see

169how we are supporting a consolidation structure, which by our own. Internal determined determinations, creates an inherent conflict of interest that we have to work backwards on to find an exception or way out of. As I said before, this, in my opinion, puts us way behind the eight ball, raises significant questions as to why we're doing it this way. You want to talk about public trust. We're pushing forward an item that says, well, it's likely going to create a conflict of interest, but don't worry, there MAY be some ways that we can wiggle out of that. I think that's a terrible look, and I think we need to go back to the drawing board on this one. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? MISS Thompson? I thank you to my colleagues for all your comments during

170this. I think I said during the workshop that I didn't want these positions consolidated, but then the board directed staff, which is why staff brought this back. So I think it's unfair to say to really put that onus on staff when it was the board's direction, that that changed the plan. So I am glad my colleagues are agreeing with this conflict of interest. And if that's the direction, I think we just need to claim ownership of the changes in the whiplash that we give staff. Thank you. MADAM Chair. DR. Holness thank you, MADAM Chair. So I just wanted to find out, MADAM Chair, and I know you're going to try to gain consensus on some of these points that we've made, but is this the place where we're going to seek consensus on combining the

171chief facilities with the chief operating, or will that come later? When we discuss the org chart? I believe that would come later during the org chart. Okay. So we're we're not going to gain consensus on that here. Correct. Those were just statements as it's relevant to the presentation. The item where we can take action as the org chart on that. Okay, great. So just a couple of things, MADAM Chair. And I meant to comment on this DR. Zeman, but I, I sort of slipped my mind. I just want to say to the staff the intent here, and I believe this, these were the words of DR. Zeman is not to whip staff left and right, up and down. And we appreciate what you do, but as a board, it's important as well because we are

172continuously digesting information, interpreting information, and it's okay for us to, you know, to take a second look at information and to change our minds. For me, I didn't change my mind. This is where I stood from the beginning in terms of having a single pmo and Subconsultants. I've always been consistent on that. But nevertheless, even if we change our minds, it's okay to do that. It's not to negate the work that staff has done. We appreciate what you do, but as a board, we make very big decisions that are consequential, and we want to make sure that as we move ahead, we don't run into problems that we didn't foresee. So that's pretty much, you know, my statement, I just want to let you know that I do appreciate you and I don't mean to

173whip you left and right. As mentioned by DR. Zeman, it's really to we have a responsibility to always continue ongoingly, to interpret information and to make the best choices we can as a board. So thank you so much. Thank you. Anyone else, before we start going through MRS. Alhadeff? Yes, I just like some clarification on page 26. The procurement strategy, performance based fees. Can you explain what you mean by this. MR. White? John White Director of Procurement what we were proposing here was to try and incentivize the contractors to do a good job. And this is something that we've heard repeatedly back from the board. And so what we're looking to do here is to take a portion of their fee and essentially set up a retainage pool where they would not get 100% of

174the fee unless they excelled, and they completed contracts or projects on time, on budget, on schedule, because that's really what we need to get done here. And so this was just a strategy, and we looked at a number of different ways. We looked at liquidated damages, we looked at penalties, and we collectively determined that we thought this would be the best way to incentivize the contractors to get the work done. Okay. So there wouldn't be any increase in money. It's just the way they have. The existing pool. They have to meet certain metrics to get that money. To get the 100% of the fee. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? All right. I will try to capture the consensus on the different proposals. If I MISS Anything, please let me know at

175the end. DR. Zeman suggested having the superintendent come back with us. With the market study to share in an action format. Are there any objections to that? Nope. Okay, Doctor Hepburn, you have your direction on that. I heard a majority of the board request that we once again separate the long range master planner and program manager. Did anyone come away with a different understanding? I just. I, I also don'tgree and but we are in t the it looks likike we'r're in n the norityty d DR. Zema So let me e c clear. Isis I two separate. Yes. Okay. Which is the opposite direction we gave you at the last workshop. DR. Holness suggested maintaining the current structure with a single pmr and our sub consultants. I heard Missus Alhadeff explicitly argue against that. I disagree

176with that. DR. Zeman disagrees with that. Anyone else want to pursue maintaining the single pmr subconsultant situation? DR. Holness MADAM Chair, are you. Is your question seeking those who want to pursue or those who object? Both. So I you know I, I. Okay. So captured some objections for objections to that. But and one you proposed it is anyone else in favor of DR. Holness proposal to continue with how we've been doing it, MISS Bulman? Okay. There is no majority on that. What else did I MISS? I have, in addition to what you said, I have guardrails in the contracts to. To have a firm reset for accountability moving forward from when the contract is taken over by the by the new awardees. Does anyone object to that? Okay. Do you have your guidance on that?

177DR. Zeman there's one other point that. The superintendent clarified, which is that the construction management owner rep contracts were going to be local firms, or there could be some priority for local firms to do it. I don't think we need consensus on it because you just said that's the way he's going to do the solicitation. I just want to make sure that it's in our summary of the meeting. Okay. MISS Hixon. And so that I think it should have the word certification because we certify those vendors, if they go through our certification process, they should be somehow ensured that they're going to have work with us. You mean certified as local or certified as minority women owned? Well, we don't I don't think we do that anymore. But there's a certification process that they still

178have to go through. Yes, doctor. Or they can go through. I have MR. White confirmed for. John White again. Yes, the certification is for minority or women or veteran owned. And so we can certainly put that in as a requirement. I just want to point out that that's separate from local. Local is where is your where is your place of work certified is mwbe. And I think MR. White has said roughly 30% or some number. You're going to come back after the superintendent you talk to propose to the board what that certified total should look like for Seymour's. Yes, I need to get with edoc, and we need to look over the final scope because we have again changed how the solicitations will be laid out. So we'll have to look at what's the body

179of work that's going to be accomplished. What's the available firms in the marketplace to be able to do it that are certified? And then we can come up with a rational number that we can defend, and then we can certainly put in some sort of preference for local businesses, local being defined as a tri county area. And so I have a question because there's also the pre-qualification process. You know, you give. So is that what is that pre-qualification process that they go. I guess my point is, if you're going through a certification qualification process with the district, that should give you some priority to being able to get the work in the district. So are those two separate things? Am I talking about the same thing? Is certification and prequalified? Are they different the same?

180Are you referring to Cusack the Cusack process, or are you talking about the certification? Two different. There's two different two different things. Yes. Okay. So do we always require them to be pre-qualified to be able to work in the district? Like because we get those charts every month on our. I believe so, yes. Okay. I'm just trying. I'm not a construction person, so I'm trying to gather it together, but. Okay. Thank you, MR. Bruno. Thank you, MADAM Chair. Just to make sure we put something on the record and for the board's knowledge, we are going to be looking at the wmbe policies and programs. You MAY be aware of Senate Bill 1134 that was passed, signed by the governor. It does apply to municipalities and counties, but legal is in the process of researching to

181see if there's any implication to school districts, as well as some other laws and some executive orders. We just want to make sure that we are in compliance, and we'll be providing the board with some more information on that. Thank you. DR. Holness thank you, MADAM Chair. MADAM Chair, just a point of clarification so I can fully understand, because I know in the past how we've gained consensus, we've had a long discussion on this item. I did not I'm just I just want to clarify, if board members choose to abstain from gaining consensus because on one of the items which is single p more, we did not hear board member Cervera input or board member Thompson or board member Hixon or board member Rupert. So are they choosing to abstain from saying yay or nay

182or did we MISS Them? I believe I captured MISS Hixon is saying she would not want to continue with what we are doing, but please correct me if I'm wrong, MISS Hixon. No, that's what I said. Okay, MISS Thompson, MR. Cervera, MISS Rupert, would you like to weigh in on the maintaining the single p more structure that we currently have. a moment, please. I I'm sorry I didn't capture you. Okay. MISS Thompson. I think that there are pros and cons in both approaches, and I am willing to go with what the majority of the board thinks and what staff recommends for this proposal. MISS Rupert. Thank you. I'm with you on that vote. With with MISS Thompson. You're waiting. No. Okay. With no, with with you on on that though. You as chair. Okay. So

183you are not in favor of continuing the single p more. Yes. Okay. So that captures a majority of the board. DR. Holness. But MR. Cervera. Thank you chair I wanted to find my my notes and making sure I was speaking with accurate data on the single p more approach. It's my understanding that all of the major counties in and around us in South Florida, as well as Duval County, also utilize this approach with the single p more. Is that accurate, MR. Superintendent? No, that's not accurate, sir. Okay. What do our sister counties utilize as far as a single p more is concerned. The county to the north of us is doing the same thing that I'm proposing and the county to the south of us, I think, MISS Coley said they use some form of

184a single p more. I don't know if it's one p more or multiple p more. I'm sorry. I said. MISS Coley mentioned the county to the south of us using a p more. I don't know if it's a one single p more a multiple p more. Can I MISS Coley, if you're still in the room? Is she still still here? Or. I think she. She was outside. Oh not her. Just a sec, MR. Cervera, if you need to get on there. There she is. I'm sorry. No problem. MISS Coley. Can you clarify Miami-dade's structure framework for their capital program? I know you mentioned p more. Is it a single p more or is it multiple p more? It's my understanding that it's a single p more with multiple subconsultants. Yeah. So Dade. Yes. Palm Beach

185no. Correct. And Duval County, I thought one of I heard one of the speakers reference from Duval County. Can we confirm that. Is is Duval County a single p more. My understanding is that they're also a single p more. I'm sorry you said your understanding. That's a yes. Yes yes. They have a single p more. Okay. I'd be in support. Okay. So I still have a majority of the board not supporting pursuing a single p more like we have right now. Is there anything else that I missed in gathering consensus? Oh I'm sorry, what do we do about the communication to the material? I believe yeah, I believe because it was in the superintendents recommendation to take those out anyway. So if I can clarify that there was a for the procurement, we were going

186to staff up internally. The communications part was still in there, but I did hear MISS Alhadeff saying to take it out. So that would be one area to find. Okay. Is does anyone object to taking the communications piece out? You object DR. Zeman. No, I. Apologize. You are in favor of taking it out. Yes. I'll try to improve my behavior. Anyone else? All right. Do you have your direction on that? Yes. And I'll just add that we'll do this anyway. DR. Zeman mentioned about nomenclature or names for same roles within the contracts versus what we have internal. So we'll make sure those names are are different. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else? Before we end this portion of the workshop? Just a thank you to the staff. There's a lot of work, a lot of

187work to pull this together. Okay. We will recess the workshop until 1130. Thank you. Yeah, that's what nine people. The last item is the superintendents sro plan. I now turn it over to staff for a brief presentation. Thank you, MADAM Chair. Board members and also the public. First of all, I see a lot of our municipal partners in the room just want to express my sincere appreciation for the work they do to support their cities, and also Broward County Public Schools, and also our local law enforcement agencies around the county that support our schools. And the mission that we hold near and dear to our hearts as we support our students every day. First off, also, I know I talked to the city managers and some of the some of the mayors at the League

188of Cities meeting about a letter that went out. Just want to double down on that, just to let everybody understand that doesn't meet our standards when it comes to communications. You know, when it comes to shifting large scale decisions like that, we need more detailed conversation and discussion and planning with our partners. So also, there's no no plans for a full transition to a district school, policing services, all our schools. We really do appreciate the services that many of our municipality partners provide and also bso provide to helping to maintain security and also safety at our schools. I also want to remind the board, this is not this workshop is not a negotiation. We have negotiation teams for that which negotiations are continuing with both teams to ensure we can come to some common agreement

189of how we're structuring contracts to provide services in the future. Also, the workshop is more about just providing an update on current state of how we actually provide services to our schools, so that the board and the public understands a brief history of bcc police. And with that brief history, current state bcc police to really understand their current capabilities and if and if needed in the future, if any city pursues doing something different or have coalition of the willing that bcc police is ready to provide a level of support that many of our municipality partners and also bso, has been provided for for numerous years. And with that, I'll turn it over to Chief Gregory and also Chief Auschwitz. Good afternoon. Are we there yet? No. Almost there. Good morning, chair, vice chair, board members

190and superintendent, thank you for the opportunity to provide this update on School Resource officer services. This presentation is focused on the current status of the sro contract negotiations and the district's responsibility to evaluate all options. Negotiations have continued since last SEPTEMBER, with multiple proposals being exchanged. Future meetings are being scheduled. Our goal is straightforward maintain safe schools, meet all state requirements, manage public funds responsibly and ensure that our students, staff and campuses receive consistent, accountable law enforcement services. I want to pause, and I want to acknowledge our municipal police partners and the Broward Sheriff's Office. Their work in support of school safety is valued, and this discussion is not intended to diminish their services or our partnership. If we could put up the presentation, please. The purpose of today's presentation is to update the board

191on the status of sro contract negotiations and receive feedback as shown on the slide. The strategy under review involves transitioning approximately 13% of contracted sro services to the schools police. The rationale is based on three core responsibilities consistency, accountability and long term fiscal sustainability. The discussion is about how we provide sro coverage in a way that is safe, compliant, consistent and financially responsible for the district. This slide summarizes the current state of the program. The district currently works through 14 contracts involving municipalities in the Broward Sheriff's Office, with a maximum contract allocation of approximately $24 million. That structure also means the district is responsible for operating with multiple law enforcement agency policies, multiple training standards, and different operational practices across schools in this county. Negotiations are ongoing, and if some agencies decide not to renew

192Broward School police would be assigned to provide sro services at those schools. So the safety so that safety coverage continues. The larger objective is not to end partnerships. It is to strengthen accountability, manage the cost structure and ensure the district provides consistent services across Broward County. Good morning. I want to go into the evolution of the Broward Schools police. So back in 1988, the state authorized special officers in the school district with full arrest authority. Back then, the the unit was known as the Internal Affairs Unit. In late 1988, it transformed to the ciu unit, where it was investigating criminal and administrative complaints from their ciu expanded. Working closely with administrators, administrators and external police partners. Since. Since 2018, the school police department has transitioned to a school based policing model. This includes uniformed police

193officers with marked police units servicing school campuses within the district. As an example, our officers stand in to cover schools where SROs MAY be out and the city is unable to provide that coverage. Our officers. Our officers also provide behavioral threat assessment assistance to various charter schools within the district. This slide identifies the operational challenge in the current contract model. When 14 different law enforcement agencies service schools across one district, there are natural differences in policy, training, supervision, equipment and accountability. That does not mean the agencies are not professional. They certainly are. But from a district wide safety management perspective, different standards can create inconsistent student experiences and make oversight more complicated. The district has the responsibility to look at where whether a more centralized or more standardized approach would better support students, staff, schools

194and taxpayers. That is the practical issue we are addressing. So why district employed officers? Each one of these topics works hand in hand. Let me start with operational consistency. One it's a unified command structure. As said, we have 14 different agencies, 14 different sets of policies which will bring us to equity and accountability. This will be one standard across our district that we are setting those standards, for example, how we respond to Baker Act situations, how we deal with de-escalating situations, and even, unfortunately, use of force situations, financial management, direct employment reduces the per officer costs. Since 2022, the contract costs have exceeded what the district pays our officers. Risk management. So going back to operational consistency, equity and accountability, and fiscal management, they are our officers, our policies and our district standards. Fiscal impact

195of the sro contracts. This slide is important because it shows the financial pressure behind this discussion. The chart reflects a 290% increase in sro contract costs between 2017 and 2026. For 2020 526 school year, the contract sro cost shows shown here is approximately $24 million for 201 municipal SROs and municipal and deputy SROs. As a district, we have a duty to ask whether the current structure is sustainable, whether the cost growth is manageable and whether there are responsible ways to preserve safety while improving financial control. This is not assigning blame to anyone, it's just about stewardship. We owe the board, our communities and the public a clear eyed view of costs, service, accountability and long term sustainability. As you can see on the chart also, it reflects that in the last five years, the contract

196cost is doubled. And since roughly 2022, the cost of the contract service over exceeds the cost of doing the same. Sro service internally with school police. This slide compares the approximate cost of district school police sro to the current contracted sro billing rate. The district employed sro cost is shown at approximately $98,500 annually compared to the contracted sro positions currently billing the district at approximately $119,000. That difference matters when applied across 201 SROs. District employment provides greater transparency into staffing costs, training, investments, supervision and performance outcomes. Any savings should not be viewed simply as reduction. They represent an opportunity to reinvest in advanced sro training, campus safety improvements and stronger operational support. This slide frames the work ahead. If any of our contract partners decides to move forward with any changes, it must be planned

197carefully. It means maintaining strong communication and coordination with those partners. We would continue to work closely with them regardless of regarding coordinated emergency response, reunification planning drills, mutual aid. Internally, we must communicate clearly with our principals, staff, parents, and community stakeholders. The message must remain consistent. School safety coverage will continue, and any changes must be managed in a way that protects students, staff and school operations. Benefits and capabilities. Operational control and efficiency. We as a district, we're setting that standard for our officers. Unified policies and equity. It's even policing across the board for all of our schools. Integrated safety and prevention officers currently and have always worked with all of our divisions within the district as they have that vested interest, accountability, and risk reduction. Once again, we set the standard as the district. So

198I'd be remiss if I don't speak on the characteristics of our officers. All of my all of our officers here in the district are fully sworn police officers with full law enforcement authority. Our officers average 20 plus years in prior with prior law enforcement experience and come from agencies in and out of the state. And as you can see there, the majority of those agencies are within Broward County. Our school district. Thank you. And in conclusion, this presentation is not a criticism of our law enforcement partners in any way, shape or form. It is about responsible governance. The district must maintain safe schools, comply with state requirements, support our principals and staff, and manage taxpayer dollars with discipline. The current contract negotiation gives us an opportunity to review the structure, costs, consistency and accountability of

199sro services across Broward County public Schools. We will continue to engage with our partners to reach agreeable contract terms. We will continue to keep students and staff safe at this, which is at the center of our work, and we are here today to update the board, receive feedback and continue this process. Thank you. Thank you very much. We will now go to public comment. So just as a reminder to the public, you did need to sign in. So if there if you have not signed in to do public comment, please make sure to see someone from staff so we can add you to the list. I will call five people at a time. Please line up at the mic on the right side of your right side of the room. And please follow the directions

200of Staff Doctor Natalie Lynch Walsh, Denis Waters, Council member. Denise Harland, Cynthia Dominique and Commissioner Sandy Welch. Good morning doctor Natalie Lynch Walsh Plantation, Florida. I'm hearing the words internal controls, frameworks and governance a lot lately. But those are the words that I live by. If the district understood what those three words meant, you wouldn't be meeting about this item. So I actually went out and apologized to some of the school police members, because my comments are not a dig against them. There are people that are professional that do their jobs and including Chief Auschwitz, who. I'll start there. The superintendent made a comment that this is not how we communicate. When he sent, the memo was sent out and then they had to rescind it. These are not people that go rogue. If anybody

201understands chain of command, I would think it would be police officers. So this is how you communicate and you guys need to stop gaslighting people. Because itoesnsn look good.. So a littleisisryry until you do right by Debbie Espinosa by correcting your policy, which and the pba contract by by mentioning discipline, which it does not. And it doesn't mention it in policy either. You are setting everybody up for a repeat of that performance, which for those of you who are not here, led to a woman spending her 25th wedding anniversary being cavity searched and sleeping in a cell. She spent 27 hours in jail. For what? For nothing. Because you paid $1,500 for a review that said she did nothing. And until this board does right by her and by extension, by me. Because as the

202dac chair elect, I followed up on what was happening as far as that went and got accused of bullying one of the school police officers as if. And then your superintendent violated Florida statute. 83706 along with your chief of staff, by writing a bunch of nonsense in a report and removing me from committee. So until you fix that, I personally will not be comfortable with any internal school police force and you fix your policies, which you have not. And starting with the pba contract, I wrote emails, you had discussions. And then I think the former chair even caught your former general counsel spewing untruths about what was and wasn't in the policy. She even made her read it before Lady Batista would concede that it was not in there. You haven't fixed that. If you

203don't start with your framework, start with your policies. You're setting yourself up for a problem. So start there. And yes, cost is always a factor. But did you guys even have conversations with the cities before you told them to hit the road? Doesn't sound like it because here they all are. Thank you. Welcome. Good morning, chair, vice chair, school board members, and Superintendent Hepburn. I stand before you today as council PRESIDENT For the City of Plantation, PRESIDENT Of the Broward League of Cities, and an active Broward County Public Schools volunteer. I sent each of you a letter yesterday. Same thing as when we were here three years ago with sro contract negotiations. I'm not going to enumerate everything in my letter, but I have some questions that I would like for you to pose to

204staff because as someone who deals with municipal budgets, especially law enforcement budgets, the numbers just don't make sense. I'd like to start by saying, well, the introduction to the slide show mentions transitioning 13% of contracted sro services. And I keep hearing that this is not to move away from contracted sro contracts. What I'm seeing, that slide show clearly says to me that there is a move to move to more centralized police department within the Broward County schools, and I have a couple of concerns of that about that. I want to ask how the SROs are being allocated to the schools. Is it based on student population? Because I think we can all agree that there needs to be an equity in how these SROs are deployed to touch a couple of. On a couple of

205the items that I mentioned in my letter, does the $98,500 approximate cost of a district police sro include fringe benefits, or is that just salary? Does the number include the cost of vehicle acquisition and equipment, emergency lights, radio window tint, graphic wrap, prisoner cage? Those are all things that we have to take into consideration when we approve our municipal budgets. What is the cost associated with training? For example, armed officers will need firearm training at a gun range. What is that plan? Will you be asking to use municipal resources for that training? What are the plans and costs for property and evidence storage? If someone is caught with drugs on campus, how will that be handled? Where will that evidence be stored and who will be responsible for that? If there is a major incident

206to occur, would a school be waiting on response from district law enforcement personnel, with the expectation be that municipal resources would be required? Please consider the real communication issues that that could potentially pose the City of Plantation. SROs know our community, our SROs coach sports teams. They counsel, they mentor, they support. They lead community initiatives. They often take money from their own pockets to ensure a child's needs are being met. One of our highly respected SROs is a former teacher who has built a foundation of strong relationships within her school community. Another organized a shop with a cop at target for 15 underserved elementary school students during the holiday season. After many years of turmoil, the district seems to be moving in a positive direction with an improvement in academic achievement, the strengthening of partnerships,

207and the redefining of underused facilities and properties. And that is something that the City of Plantation, for one, has supported. Just these initiatives alone are enormous undertaking, so I do not wish to see public or municipal trust eroded by a plan that seems rushed and lacking in community input. Thank you for your deliberations. Welcome. Good. Good afternoon. Commissioner Sandra Welch from the City of Coconut Creek. And first, I want to thank you for the presentation. Up to now, we have received only two letters, one removing our SROs from our elementary schools. And then the second letter rescinding that letter. Not really conversation. So I'm hoping today will change some of that. From our stand. From the city standpoint, we haven't seen any details in the transition plan that is being proposed and proposed implementation as

208of AUGUST 2026. I don't need to remind you, we're at almost the end of APRIL and that's four months. It's a very aggressive time schedule. And the key issue is here is for us is not the why. That's not for us to decide. That is honestly for you to decide. But is the how we as policy makers and dealing with our fiscal funds that we're responsible for to our residents, we need to know the House. And in these regards, what is the implementation actually look like? The timeline, the phasing and the transition at the school level? And how will this model function day to day within each one of those schools in our city? And how will real time coordination with municipal police departments be maintained during any of the incidents that occur on campus?

209And how will the roles, the responsibilities and accountability be clearly defined between the district and us as a municipal partner? Because today, municipalities like Coconut Creek are 100% fully integrated into each one of those schools in our city, and why? Most of all, to ensure that safety at the highest level is delivered every single day. So at this point, you know, it's it's just not fully vetted to evaluate the impacts of this proposal. And it's such a huge shift in, in operations on our campuses and deserves. I'm a policymaker, as are you, very careful, deliberate and thoughtful information to make this very important decision that might affect how safety and others are evolved over all of our campuses, in all of our cities. So at the end of the day, I think we all share

210the same goal. And that was to, to me is to ensure that safety is paramount to all of our students every single day. So we look forward to having conversations to continue that. Not a letter. Thank you. Good morning. Board members, superintendent and staff, and members of the public. My name is Cynthia Dominique. I am a parent of four kids in Broward County Public Schools located in the city of Margate. I am asking that this board give direction to negotiate with the City of Margate. I'd like for you to negotiate with all the cities, but I'm here specifically speaking up for my city and my schools. We adore our SROs and they are an integral part of our school and broader community. They implement so many programs like Dare that help us as a society

211to combat the substance abuse epidemic that is ravaging our communities. They also help children to feel seen, loved and have their needs met. Margate pd exemplifies what it means to be school resource officers and community policing. They also ensure that lines of communication and collaboration within their department and other municipalities exist. The Florida Sheriffs Association states that school resource officers play an important role in schools by providing security, deterring criminal activity and offering mentorship, conflict resolution and education on legal issues. They help create a safer, more supportive environment that encourages learning while addressing security and behavioral challenges through positive relationships with law enforcement, educators and students. SROs promote trust and understanding within the school community. Our Margate SROs do all of this and more, and I know not all SROs are created equal. I've heard

212plenty from the community that are not satisfied with the officers that are placed in their schools, and I feel that this is where Broward Schools has an opportunity. We have an opportunity to create policies and procedures for contracted SROs. State statute 1,006.12 gives the school board this authority. It says school resource officers shall abide by the School District board policies and shall consult with and coordinate activities through the school principal shall be responsible to the law enforcement agency in all matters regarding employment, subject to agreements between a school district board and law enforcement agency, the agreements shall identify the entity responsible for maintaining records related to training activities conducted by the School resource Officer, which are part of the regular instructional program, shall be under the direction of the school principal. As I know that

213this was a concern that was mentioned at the previous workshop, and the fact that letters went out on the wrong letterhead with board members that are not even here, shows that what we lack are processes and procedures, and the fact that the district has chosen not to implement these, and using that as an excuse to get rid of SROs or do this transition is it's it's not okay. I understand the need to save money, but this will be a heavy lift and it will be more costly to set up higher background checks, screen and train all of these officers to be ready to go by AUGUST 11th. As board member Holness mentioned earlier, with the more discussion, I'll just finish up. Our children's safety should not be an experiment without clear benefits. Thank you. Thank

214you. The next five speakers. Theophan Attila's Zaira claims lunches. Don Decker, Jim Pullen and Adam Reichbach. Good morning. Board members. Superintendent Zara claims lunches. Deerfield Beach. I'm speaking in regards to the sro services plan, and I want to start by saying that I personally know and have worked alongside with the SROs and the city of Coconut Creek. They go over and beyond. It's not like watching police officers on videos, so I just wanted to make sure I said that their work is vital and our students deserve that caliber of protection. The facts, however, are that this district is currently in a state of fiscal and operational disarray. We're lacking a proposed district. We're looking at a proposed district run police department. While we still haven't cleared the fog, I call fog fear, obligation and guilt

215surrounding the mismanagement of referendum dollars and the smart bond program. History shows this district is not currently equipped to manage a police force when it's struggling to manage its own organizational chart and looming budget shortfall. In my opinion, using fear, obligation and guilt fog to pressure the public into supporting a district led police department is irresponsible, especially when the district is not ready to take on the liability and complexity of law enforcement agency. We're being told that this is about safety, but we all know it's about money and the community, I don't believe, supports this because the captain of this ship can. Can we we don't believe that the captain of this ship can handle a new fleet while the current one is taking on water? I would like to see the board maintain our

216partnerships and negotiate with municipalities. Better than you've been doing. Hall. Any move towards a district run police department until a full independent audit proves you have your act together and stop the fog tactics. Stop using student safety as a shield for poor fiscal planning. Let's focus on being a world class district before we try to be a police department. Thank you. Thank you. Muriel. Theo Vernetta. Parent advocate. So I am speaking on. Of course, as our. So school safety is very important and I respect and support the role our sro officers play. Salute to our officer Almanzar with Coconut Creek. But there needs to be a clear line between school discipline and law enforcement. It is not clear when a situation should be handled by school staff versus when the enforcement should step in. There

217also needs to be transparency. Real transparency, not what you guys call transparency. We should know how often students are being referred to referred to law enforcement, and what the outcomes are. As the district moves toward more mental health support, so-called mental health support and interventions, it is important to balance that with our law enforcement. Clear expectations and accountability will help make sure sro involvement is fair and consistent across all schools. And that's another thing. Everything needs to be fair and consistent across all our schools. Please. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, Don Decker, city manager, City of Weston. I apologize for my voice getting over a cold chair, staff, school board members. Superintendent, thank you for having us today. Just want to be very clear. We understand that campus security is your responsibility. Nobody's questioning

218that. Community security is our responsibility, and your campuses are in our communities. So we're simply asking, please, that you include us in this process. We stepped forward very quickly after the tragic incident in parkland, and we came forward and we started bringing SROs on a more significant basis into our schools in Weston. And we've been a partner ever since. Partnerships are two way streets, so we need to be part of this process and whatever way you're going forward, it needs to be proactive and not reactive. Just include us. We're happy to be a part of any process, any committees, so that this is structured and so that the community is safe along with your schools. Thank you. Thank you. And then I'll just read the next few speakers before you speak. Ryan Gallagher, Commissioner Arlene

219Schwarz and Vice Mayor John Brodie. So if you heard your name, please line up behind the podium. Welcome. Good afternoon or good morning, I should say Adam Reichbach. I'm the assistant city manager for the City of Hollywood, as well as the PRESIDENT Of the Broward County City Managers Association and also one of the negotiators on the negotiating team with regards to our sro contracts. So about three years ago, we were in this room working on a contract with regards to our SROs for the next three years. And we're actually about that point. We're in year three of that contract, and we've negotiated negotiations began back in AUGUST of this year, or sorry, of last year, on looking towards another long term agreement with our SROs. Now, I have to say that the presentation you saw

220today, frankly, I'm a little confused by because I certainly think that we have been acting and negotiating in good faith. The presentation I found to be more about a transition plan. And there's a lot of disingenuous information that was shared in that, and specifically in regards to the fact that you saw a 290% increase in SROs. I will, in terms of the cost, I will tell you that, frankly, we were very underpaid in terms of under reimbursed for what that amount should have been all those years. And so we are now getting closer to a more equitable and more fair reimbursement approach to this. And so I think you should look at that from the entire picture. Now, we are here paramount to a rated education is the ability to keep our our employees, our

221students, and our teachers safe. And I want to thank Doctor Hepburn for his continued willingness to have negotiation sessions with us. And I also want to thank him for rescinding the letters that did go out, because I think it's important that we negotiate with all of our cities collectively. Now. Bcma, the Broward City Manager Association, the Broward League, we are cognizant of the financial conditions that you all find yourselves in. Frankly, we are also facing those financial conditions as well. The $119,000 that we are proposed, that has been proposed, that is, in year three of the existing contract. We've proposed to keep that flat for for next year. Then after that, we do like to see some modest increases. Our costs have gone up technology, equipment, vehicles, all of those costs continue to go up.

222And we believe that it's only fair that we do get that reimbursement increase year over year. Now, I have to say that, you know, where I'm a little confused is where the math to me doesn't math. The presentation indicates that $98,000 is what you believe should be the reimbursement or sorry, should be the cost of an sro. And I assure you that when we look at our numbers in terms of the our hourly rates of pay across all of our cities, and you multiply it just strictly by the number of hours they're in school and the training that's associated with it, it is well in excess of $119,000. So I am unsure of where this $98,000 number comes from, because that is not the number that we're coming from. But putting all that aside, we

223remain committed to working on and negotiating an agreement with every single city that's currently providing SROs, because we think it's an important part, that we continue to have those conversations and reach a successful agreement. So we thank you very much. Thank you. Good morning. Ryan Gallagher, Deputy Chief of Police, Coral Springs Police Department. First off, I listen I am I go way back with Chief Auschwitz and I appreciate his vision and the leadership of Siu. I'm not up here to sit here and punch holes in this presentation. A lot of what's already been said. I feel like I'm going to repeat. I just think, listen, for some cities, and I'm only speaking on behalf of the city of Coral Springs, listen, potentially this solves an issue for them. I'm not sure. I know that in

224the city of Coral Springs, we are embeddedn the community ananhe schools. ThThiss a a relationshshiphate valueue. We geget to choose who goes inhehe schools. We're in charge of the training. When I hear about standardized training, I don't necessarily know what that is. I know who we are putting in our schools, and ultimately, school safety is the main thing. I understand there's a financial aspect to this, but when it comes down to priorities, I do believe that takes a back seat to the safety of the schools. So in essence, I'm you know, I'm glad to hear that we're going to continue negotiations. I think it's important. We do want to remain in our schools. It's an important relationship that we have. And I just thank you for your time. Appreciate it. Thank you. And I'm just

225going to reread the names that I've called that have not approached the the podium in case they missed it. Dennis Waters, Jim Pullen I might be saying that wrong, but it's you identified yourself as Dave Pee Dee and Vice Mayor John Brody. Welcome, Commissioner. Oh hi there. My name is Arlene Schwartz. I'm the city commissioner of Margate, and this is the first time I've been in this room since I retired quite a while ago as a 35 year employee. First, let me thank you for rescinding, at least for the upcoming school year, because I'm not foolish enough to think it's beyond that, but rather unprofessional letter Margate received terminating our contract to provide safety and security to our children and staff at our four schools. I certainly hope the next time this, this organization needs

226to contact any one of their 31 cities that a phone call might be considered better than a letter. At 215 on a Friday afternoon. I've watched your presentation and wondered why you have an issue working with 14 municipalities. You led the public to believe that city SROs ability to ensure safety in our schools is erratic and inconsistent. You list, and I quote that bc pbcspd supports threat assessment and proactive safety measures that reinforce student security and well-being. Are you suggesting that the City of Margate SROs don't. You mentioned, quote, consistent law enforcement across every campus several times. If you have a concern, then meet with all your city's law enforcement officials and city managers and set up minimum standards just as you have when you hire your teachers and promote them. Margate has been a

227partner with the Broward County Public School System for over 30 years without incident. [Laughter] Perhaps when money is the real issue, you have other places to find it, rather than starting with school security. We were the first police department to be state certified in the second to be nationally certified. We are more than willing to sit down and talk, as is evidenced by the fact that my mayor, my city manager, my assistant city manager, and I am here today. I suggest that you that with all of us who are sitting here, you have a meeting. Our SROs protect our children as their sacred job and their experience is Margate, not other cities than coming to Margate. With Margate students and staff. There has been rapport built. They have built trust, love of school attendance. I

228invite each of you to visit any one of our schools and judge for yourself. And finally, as a retired teacher and former school administrator, this is about money. Then I suggest you start looking at calendars. I worked on a 242 non vacation earning calendar for 17 years. You have people who work on 2442 days more and earn vacation. Why? In fact put them on a 216 and stick them in the schools so they actually see what goes on because that doesn't often happen. And I am in our schools, so I know that. Thank you for listening. I appreciate it, and I look forward to some conversations with our city managers. Thank you. I'll once again read the names of the individuals who have not spoken yet, Dennis Waters, Jim Pullen and Vice Mayor John Brody.

229Okay. With. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, vice Mayor. Well, good morning. My name is John Brody. I'm the vice mayor of Coconut Creek. And it just just seems weird that I'm standing here again after two years of having this discussion. I don't know what we're doing. We're all elected officials. What are we doing here? You are in debt and you're laying people off. And the conversation now is you're going to hire a police department. How does that make any sense? I don't think anybody's ran a business to understand when you're in debt, you don't hire. When you're on debt, you don't expand. Okay. If this was a business, it would have been boarded up 20 years ago. Okay. So understand what you guys are asking the public. The messaging is, hey, we're trying to fix problem

230a, but let's create another problem in b, okay? Kick the can down the road a couple of years till you get your butts out of debt. How about that? Can we do that? You're elected officials and you're rubber stamping budgets. How do you get this far down the road? Every year our city creates a budget. It's got to be balanced. It's got to make sense, and we pass it. Your names are on these budgets. You owe money. Just because you have checks in the checkbook doesn't mean you have money to cash them. And here we are talking about a police department. Our police are the professionals. You're supposed to be the professionals in education. Why don't we stay focused on education? The the state focused on what the school board is doing. You have good

231people in our schools right now, these SROs, we don't mind paying for some of it. We're helping. We're negotiating in good faith. Then we get these crappy letters sent to us saying, we're going to now take over something that you can't possibly handle. You can't. I'm not a police officer. These guys standing in uniform, they're proud of what they're doing, and they're good at what they do. And they keep our kids safe. What we're going to create when you create your own police department is the fox watching the chickens. Okay, now we're going to create a Stoneman Douglas because there's going to be a gap because these guys can put them in jail. Your guys might not be able to do that so much or be able to be reactionary so fast. So if I'm

232standing here and my tax money is going to, you guys make good decisions. I'm very weary of that. We need to make sure as elected officials and I see a lot of doctors up there. So I know you guys are smart enough to understand what I'm saying. Balance the budget first before we start taking on another adventure, because this doesn't seem right. This doesn't seem right and fair to our students. It doesn't seem fair and right to our teachers. You're going to create jobs. How about instead of creating jobs, we find ways to pay our teachers? Yeah, that's so hard to say. We're creating a fund to say now we need police. Now we need to raise taxes. We need more money. To what? To offset the money you already owe. Just hold off on

233this. Let's fix what's already broken and circle back once we're there. Once that budget is balanced, that's your job. To make sure that happens. Your names are on it. So let's make sure that we're looking at the right things here guys. Thank you, Anna Fusco. You say Anna Fusco. I did yeah. Thank you. Anna Fusco, Broward Teachers union PRESIDENT. So I'm in a position here where I love our cities and we love our SROs. And we have the Broward County Public schools. So we're going to put the onus on where the onus should be the superintendent and the chief. And that would be Chief Gregory, not Chief Kniaziewicz. Let's call it what it is. I need you, board members, to hear me loud and clear on that one, loud and clear. You hired the best

234new chief around, and he's here. He's tasked with a job that he wants to bring in great law enforcement and save the district money. Because that's all that you've got your staff telling you. Find ways to save money and scaring the hell out of you. I say, cut this, stop being scared, and we can work some other magic. But let me let me chime in to our school board police. Let's make it clear. Our school board, police, our police officers that are sworn officers, integrity, experience, show up and get the job done when sometimes SROs need to call out there. They're protecting our schools. When jobs need to get done, they're protecting our community. We're not going to sit here and act like there's some Barney Fife type of cop, because that's not what they're

235not. They are amazing officers. And let me tell you something, they've evolved a lot with me because when I started ten years as a union PRESIDENT, I was not liked, I wasn't known, and I certainly wasn't respected. It took me a long time to work it out and make it clear to like me, to know me and to respect me. And I've grown to know them, understand them and respect them. And when we get people under investigation, they know what they're doing. The job gets done when it's put in the hands of other people that have no clue how to investigate, throw spaghetti at the wall and try to figure it out. That's when all she goes to everything. Let me make that clear. Excuse my French. The point is, is that the way it

236was handled, I believe, is the the most largest problem out there. Is there a strong plan on getting it done yet? I think that's the large problem out there. I don't believe that our schools, our principals, I don't believe the board wants SROs gone. You need to understand there's a staff here that's incestual from the dawn of time that gets away and does whatever the hell they want. And that's where the problem lies. And when I feel that it's a board's problem, I have no problem saying it. And I'm looking at a lot of city managers and a lot of mayors and a lot of commissioners, and you all know me. I don't mince words. So let's call it where it is. Let's get it done right. And if you have a plan, come out

237with a solid plan, show it moving forward. But let's make it clear our school police can do the job. There just needs to be a strong plan. Our shows are doing the job. That's not the problem. You have a staff telling you we need the money and that's the problem. Let's call it what it is. Thank you. Thank you. I'll read the names one more time before we go to board. Discussion. Dennis Waters and Jim Holland. All right. I have MISS Bulman. All right. Thank you. Thank you to everyone for coming out today and for all of our speakers. I have a couple questions that I'd like to ask about the this plan. You know, one of the one of the things that was pointed out in the slides is that there has been a

238great cost increase. And I was wondering if someone could give me an idea of why the cost has increased, because I imagine it's not because the police departments are trying to price gouge us. I would imagine there's some nuance to that. No, thanks for the question, MR. Bowman. As one of the city managers pointed out, is they their costs increase, just like our employee cost increase over time, be it benefits, equipment, training and things like that. And we're paying them for service. So naturally, just like any other contracted service, be it personnel or actual items that increase in cost usually gets passed on to the customer. And we're and we're a customer for the services that, that they provide. And I know early on, just like most school districts across the state. Back in the

239day, it was like a 5050 and some districts stay high school. The district pays for one, the municipality or sheriff's office supplies the other. And then so that's evolved over time to really get to actually covering the majority of the costs, because the, the, the municipalities actually are covering the other portion of the cost. And as it increases, right, there has to be some middle ground about how they're going to make their ends meet just like us as well. Right. Okay. So I have concerns about the cost of the infrastructure if we're going to move in this direction. And, you know, we had the same conversation a couple of years ago, as everyone said, I was here in a different capacity. But the we're not we're not just hiring bodies. If we're going to be

240going in a direction where we're transitioning to having our own police force, presumably that would include vehicles, weapons, all of the equipment that you need to run a police force, which must be extremely expensive. So I for a $98,000 number, I, I'm just wondering where we're getting to that. When you take into consideration benefits and training and all of the actual physical equipment that we need. Yep. Correct. So before I answer that question, I just want to clarify for the board and the public. There isn't a plan to transition and, and have a full fledged force to go in and take over those services that all of our schools. And I want to clarify the purpose of the workshop. I know we talked about this before, but the purpose of this workshop is more about

241talking about current state. Get the board to really understand, you know, what do we pay for contracts? How do those contracts work and how many numbers of contracts? It's not about taking over the services. This is more about updating the board and understanding the current structure and the current state. And then for any other cities, their chiefs, their city managers, their commission, if they are in predicaments where they want to talk to us about pursuing, not renewing or, or not pursuing their contract in the long term, we stand ready to to address the needs of those schools. So this is this is what this is more about. This isn't about taking over contracts for cities. So I want to clarify that. And as I've told the mayors and city managers and going into their meetings

242in person that, you know, the communication that went out is not up to up to my standard. Like as everybody at the mic has said this, this involves a lot of discussion, a lot of partnership, a lot of understanding the details of a plan. If, if we ever pursue that. And obviously what happened does not support that type of transition. But to answer your question, the if that was an option moving forward down the line, that would be more on the capital side of the house vehicles. We purchased white white fleet vehicles all the time. Our school police personnel have school police vehicles. They they have the armory that they need to execute their responsibilities in their duties. So that would be on the capital side of the house. What we pay as far as

243personnel comes out of the general side of the House. But if we were to pursue expanding the force for those specific purposes, we would use capital dollars to purchase the additional vehicles, the equipment that that we actually need, and all the outfitting that the police officers actually need to actually execute those responsibilities. Okay. So I appreciate the clarification about the direction that we're going because it's been as a member of the board, I was very unclear of what was happening, though I have heard from my community that they were very appreciative of you coming to speak to them. So I do appreciate the outreach and hopefully we're messaging better now. So in in the in the same vein, are there because obviously there's a lot of different departments that are represented here today. Are there

244any municipalities that have indicated to you that they would prefer not to continue? And is that a direction that we could take if we're looking? Yes, there's a couple. I won't call them out because they need to go have conversations with their city managers and their commission. But yes, there's been some, some, some municipalities that have expressed, hey, we can work with you on this and do something different with the staff that we have in the schools. And so those are work in progress. But as I told chief and also Chief Gregory, that I need a letter from city managers just to make sure we're moving in the right direction together so we can start planning that out and seeing when that when the transition actually happens. So yes, there. But it's not the it's

245not the estimates that have come today to speak in favor. Okay. Thank you for that. And then, you know, I appreciate the, the leadership of the negotiations team. And so the these negotiations will continue then as if they'd never received this letter. Correct. And then we'll it'll be business as usual. Correct? That's correct. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Board member Bulman. Board member Thompson. Thank you, chair, and thank you to all of our municipal leaders for coming out and obviously, to our law enforcement who protect us every day, both in schools and in our communities. I, I think there's some narratives that we need to clarify. So one of the speaker mentioned that there was no notice. There was just this letter. My understanding has been there have been negotiations. And I want

246to tread carefully because we're still in negotiations. So could you walk both the board and the elected officials of who's part of these negotiations? When did they start, and when do elected officials typically get involved in this process? Yeah. So it's a in in Adam, if you go to the mic and call out your team, if you if if you can, for our team, it's Chief Gregory, Chief Non-switch. Doctor Lozano, and also MISS Jack Adams representing the legal side. If I forget anybody, chief, just throw that name in there. And we started negotiations in AUGUST with the hopes of ending this prior to the new year. Obviously we we're still going. And I'll give Adam opportunity to discuss who's on the other side of the team. Hi there. So representing the cities again, it's a

247collaboration between the Broward City Managers Association, the Broward League of Cities, myself, Adam Beck as the assistant city manager for the City of Hollywood. We have our director of public safety from also from Hollywood, Chris o'Brien, who former police chief from Hollywood. We have Brad McKeon, who's a former police chief of Coral Springs, now the deputy city manager, Mary Lou Ty, the executive director of the Broward League of Cities, Todd Drosky, the mayor of Deerfield Beach, and Jackie Waymire, intergovernmental affairs and strategy for the City of Parkland. I'm sure I messed up her title. I apologize. Those are the individuals who represent working with the team. I will say, for what it's worth, the negotiating team was not aware of any of the of the letters going out prior to the letters, the letters going

248out. Yeah. And that's correct. The letters, as I said before, not part of our standard of communication. Once I learned about the letters, you know, we tackled that situation, you know, immediately in sequence. But as far as and I don't know, I'll leave it there because I don't want to violate anything with our negotiations. So was there a conversations thathihi could be a possiblbl outcomee duringg t the nvnversations ththhehe negotiation teams? Gc and Bruno stop me. Yes. And stop me. My recommendation is that we don't go into the specifics in terms of the negotiations, because that's delicate. So I would not go too much further. I'll leave it at. I'll keep it. General. Everything was on the table for how we move forward, to try and close the deal, to make sure we provide the

249best services possible to our schools. So everything was on the table as we discussed from the onset. Okay, so potentially it wasn't surprised to the negotiation team, but it was to the city. Correct. It's just what I want to point out. Okay. Do we there was a comment about managing a police force. Do we currently manage a police force? Yes we do. I wanted to make that clarified that that wouldn't be a brand new thing. We currently manage a police force and as our union leader pointed out, they are not. Well, I don't understand her reference, but they are trained police officers that want to protect our kids and are not. I think a mall cop is. I'm guessing her reference and how many police. Broward school board police officers are currently at our schools.

250Chief, if you can get some detail. There's approximately 35 that support schools a regular basis, small contingent of that. A small squad also are part of the internal investigations we have on on staff members for policy violations, but the majority support schools on a regular basis with when contracted, SROs can't be there that day or there's a shortfall. There's things that need to be recovered from a school, other things that need to be placed in evidence. A question come from the speakers about building an evidence section. Well, those things are part of the core department. They already have because they've been providing these services consistently for several years now. And is it generally set up, as Doctor Hepburn mentioned, like one Broward school board police person and one city person? Or is it like, is

251there some schools that only have Broward police and some schools that only have municipalities? Like, what is that share? I know it's a small team. So currently the majority of our SROs are through contracts. We have 201 contracted SROs through the municipalities and the sheriff's office. And like Chief Gregory was saying, most of my most of my officers right now are supportive in the field. Typically evidence pickup, that the municipalities MAY or MAY not be able to take in. We take it in as property evidence. We also support at our charter schools behavioral threat assessments, where some of those charter schools MAY have guardians. Our officers have to do that because they're certified where guardians cannot be certified in that. But as far as a one for one, typically in the high schools, there's two

252SROs, and at those municipalities they would have those two SROs and not one of ours. Okay. And do our officers receive the gun training that another speaker mentioned, or what is the comparable training for our officers versus a city municipality officer? So under state requirements to maintain our our law enforcement certification, we have to qualify at least annually. We, we in our agency would like to try to shoot twice a year. And obviously, we do have time when school's out of session, which gives us the opportunity to go shoot. Typically, we will also use the Broward Police Academy police range. There's another municipality that has works in partnerships with us where we utilize their range. It just depends on availability. Okay. And then and again, this is waiting a little bit into negotiations, but so

253stop me. My understanding is that different cities pay their police officers different amounts. So when we are reimbursing our re reimbursing like an average amount, or do we reimburse cities differently? Because that's really talking about the term in terms of what we're going to be paying. I would hold off on that one. Okay. So that that is a concern of mine. It's a matter of public record. But I and I understand that, however, they're in the midst of negotiations, I don't I want to be very, very yes. I want to be very careful in terms of it's not a question of how much is being paid. It's a question of what the offer is and what that final number is going to be for the district. So then taking money off, are we do we

254reimburse the same to every single city, or is the imbursement different? Without saying numbers. There's a single contracted contract, negotiated amount and each city gets that same amount regardless of their cost. So it is possible that we are overpaying some cities potentially. Okay. And then I want to talk about the 14 different policies because I, and I, I want to say this with the utmost respect. I believe when we are dealing with students that are in the midst of crises or having other issues at home, we need a very trained approach. And we also need a very. Centralized way of handling disciplinary issues. Is that what we're seeing? If we have 14 different policies across the board? For example, does every single police policy have the same requirements for winning when to use pepper spray

255or tasers, or when to physically get involved with a student? Is that the same across all 14 different contracts? We have? Mike Gregory Chief Safety Security Officer For the record. No, the we have a decentralized type model, not a centralized model. And each independent police chief sets the standards for their organization. So each police chief signs off on the policies they want to enact and hold their officers and or deputies accountable for in their city. So we do have and there will be a different standard for the policies and the like. Likewise, for the training standard, each chief of police sets the training standards in in above what the state requirement is. So of course, every certified law enforcement officer has to meet the minimum standards set by the state of Florida to maintain their

256certification. Beyond that is within the control of each chief. To say, what extra am I going to assign my my staff to participate in and be trained in and get excellence in whichever area? And if we were to. And I want to recognize that this would be a very long process if this was even something we were going to consider, which I think is what this presentation is on. But if we were to eventually move to having our police force in schools, would we be able to regulate the policy of de-escalation, use of force, use of pepper spray, tasers, etc. Yes. I just as mentioned earlier, chief knows which sets the policies for the school police officers. So he offers those and gets them based on best practices across the International Association of Chiefs of

257Police and the Florida Police Chiefs Association, and they put those policies in place. Every school police officer working for the district would have to abide by those policies instituted by chief, as well as what training standards he implements for those officers that are under the direct control of the school police. I appreciate that answer. So I think this is a it's a challenging situation all across the board. I think I know at least people in my community really appreciate the partnership with the cities and having their SROs in their schools. I think there's also a lot of positives to expanding our police force, mainly just focused around this policy. Are the 14 different policies, because I want to make sure that students that go to Pembroke Pines are treated with the same care and respect

258that students that are in Lauderhill, that are in Coconut Creek across the board. Every student should have that that right in that respect. So I appreciate the the conversation. I'm looking forward to continued partnerships with our cities, but recognizing that it's not just a cost saving proposal, it's also a proposal to make sure that all of our students are treated fairly across Broward County. Thank you. Thank you. DR. Zeman. Thanks, chair. You know, I know the topic for today is SROs, but this is only relevant in the context of the safety and security of our students. This is a topic that we take incredibly seriously. We talk about it in the right tone and the right solemnity that it deserves. And today I'm going to talk to each of you that's here in the same

259way. I would talk to you if we were driving down a road together in a car, one on one. There's not going to be two speeches, not something I say in public, and then something I say in private. Our kids are your kids and our schools are your schools. And when we do law enforcement, we do it together. And the lines are very blurry. We also balance our budgets here. And we were given an unfunded mandate, and we had to figure out a way to pull it together. But our actions will always be done with the seriousness of keeping our kids and our schools safe. And to say anything other than that is just not true. We have made significant investments in safety and security. When you look at our unannounced inspections, we do extraordinarily

260well. If you compare Broward County Public schools to other districts, hard data suggests that we are either the safest or one of the safest districts in the United States. And so when you come in here and you want to talk to us about safety and security, whether it's about SROs or anything else, let's center this conversation on the success that we have built together. We are the safest district or one of the safest in the United States. We have ten 000 cameras. We have our own drones. We got new drones coming in. We've got tactics and procedures and policies that have that have been effective, and we did that together. And so I hope that we can take this conversation and make it a little bit back in terms of tone and off the brink

261a little bit. Our superintendent has apologized for a poorly worded letter and for a poorly delivered letter. And and that should be that, you know, we are partners. And when someone apologizes, you know, it's time to look to the future because this issue only deserves that level of focus. It doesn't deserve looking backwards and it doesn't deserve us creating distance between partners when we're only going to solve real problems by coming together. We didn't get enough money when the mandate came out to have a law enforcement officer in every school. And so we've been scrambling. I am very proud. People might not like the chart that says we've gone up 290%, but that is a fact. And I'm proud of what we've done to get to the $119,000. I was on the board when we

262voted to go from 62,000 to 103,000. We did it in five minutes. It was very, very proud of Lori Alhadeff and other people on this board that looked at us and said, this is the right thing to do. And we voted nine, nothing to do it. And we put our money where our beliefs were, okay. But there's a point to where we have to, as a group and as partners, figure out the best way to do this. Looking forward our police force to our assistant manager in Hollywood cost 95000. It isn't an offer for you to cut the price that we're paying sro. That's our internal, fully burdened cost, fringe training, all that it it's just it's we have to figure out the right balance of our police force and SROs and guardians and oh,

263by the way, teachers, principals, guidance counselors, and, and our Siu and our chief of police and our Chief of Safety and security, of whom we are very, very blessed to have. So, Chief Gregory, thank you for joining this team. And you make us all feel safer because you're here. So thank you very much. But I'd like us going forward to treat this conversation with civility and with grace. If you type Allan Zeman cell phone number, you will get my number. Any one of you can call me. We will have this same conversation that I'm having with you right now, because this is too important for this to be about letterhead or about an inappropriate letter, poorly timed, poorly worded, whatever you want to call it. This is about our kids. They're your kids. They're our

264kids. And we have to find the best solution going forward. I think the way we do that is get back to negotiating. Do it city by city. Follow the superintendents lead on reaching out if you would like him to communicate more. I don't think it's hard to get in touch with you, Doctor Hepburn, is it? Yeah. You know that that street runs both ways. And we will continue to try and overcommunicate. We will keep, you know, trying to make sure that you understand how important this is to us. We are under very, very ugly financial times. My general counsel is going to yell at me for even saying that, but that's a fact. Like, we have lost 25,000 students over three years. That's $225 million. And we are, you know, digging into the couch cushions

265looking for change. So that's, that's the that's the fact. And that's going to color kind of what we do going forward. But nobody in Broward County has cheated on safety and security. We have invested in it over and over again. We have built an incredibly safe district, and we did it with you. And I want to make sure going forward, we stay working with you so that we can get great solutions. Our kids deserve that, and I'd like that to be the tone that we carry in all of our meetings going forward. Thank you chair. Thank you, MISS Hixon. Thank you. And first, I'd like to say thank you to everyone that came out, the city manager's city commission, mayors, and also our school police force and the city police force for coming out. This

266is an important topic, and I'm glad that we're doing it. As DR. Zeman just mentioned together, because I think that's really important. And to to answer just briefly, MRS. Bowman's question about the increase in price, it was alluded to earlier in 2023. Actually, I actually brought an item forward to have this discussion because the police had come. I'd had a conversation with some of them when they were doing negotiations, and they were concerned or beforehand to say that they were concerned that the the percentage was off. They the cities were paying much more of the percentage than the county was. And so in 2023, as DR. Zeman mentioned, we did as a board balanced that out and maybe we balanced it too high. But so, you know, we're working on now, maybe there's a way

267to balance it evenly so that it doesn't seem like it's such a burden for either one of us. But I have a couple of questions. But before I ask those, I do want to say I think it's important to say out loud as many times as possible, the people who work as the Broward County Police Department now, or the police force, the Broward County Public Schools police, they are police officers. They are very much similar in the same, requiring similar in the same training as other police officers. And for anyone to come in and make the innuendo or suggestion that having them in the school is any less safe than having a city police officer. I just don't think that's fair or accurate statement. So I think it's really important that moving forward, that's, you

268know, we change the tone of what that sounds like. We love our SROs. Students love our SROs parents. Do you go we go to schools all the time. SROs remember us. We see them working with the students. I don't think this is about job performance in any way, shape or form. So I also want to say that I think that, you know, a letter came out, it was it was not good timing. It wasn't worded great and people weren't expecting it. And so everybody's kind of defensive. But I do think that we as a board appreciate everybody who participates in safety in our in our district. So I just wanted to start with that. So, Doctor Hepburn, I have a couple of questions. The $98,000 that we in the presentation does that include. So that's

269what we're saying the cost of an officer would be to us. Does that include benefits. Yes that's correct. So that would be the total fringe and all of that. Does it also include. So if we're putting SROs well our own our own SROs because SROs just mean school resource officers. If we were to use our own police department, would they? What about uniforms? You know, their firearms, would they require cars? What what's the other infrastructure that we would need to be able to increase what we have now? So it would depend on the number. Right now it's. Chief Gregory said we have about 35 sworn officers that would be ready to go and deploy if, if needed, to provide services to schools. Now, if you expand beyond that, there is a cost for cars, equipment

270and things like that. That specific number I don't I don't have at the moment. I can provide a follow up to the board for that. Okay. Because I do remember when we had the conversation about our own police force, the reason that we unanimously voted no, even though we asked the superintendent to bring that item to us, is that it was just cost prohibitive? Yes. For full fledge across the board, absolutely cost prohibitive because there's a lot of investment that has to happen at one time. But if you're trying to do something gradual, you can pace it out and do it in a more fiscally responsible manner. So but as far as the specific cost, I can provide that in a follow up, unless Chief Gregory or Chief has any information they can provide. So

271this goes kind of ties into that question. So. If right now we have, let's say it's a day in in one of the Broward County police off Broward County public schools, police officers in school and an incident, an incident happens. What's what what's the procedure? Go ahead, Chief Gregory. Mike Gregory, Chief Security Officer Depending on which which method of sro deployment we have at that particular school, it generally plays out very similarly. There's an sro on campus required by state statute. We haveve one officer o o meme p psonnel on everery cpus. If it's a I incident that requires additional assistance, that that person on that campus would communicate to their local jurisdiction, whatever municipality they're in for a request for assistance, and % additional officers respond to address the matter with the officer who's

272there. That would be the case if it was a officer x, as the sro operating in municipality x, that is their home municipality, or if it be the same if it was a school based police sro asking for municipal municipality x to come and assist. I've never seen a situation where. And I don't believe any of the. Any of the agencies or chiefs in Broward County would not come and assist. Another request for assistance by an agency. It just doesn't happen. So the protocol is the same. We use the same radio system in Broward County. All the agencies are on the Motorola Broward County provided Motorola radio system. All the channels are available. Our SROs are operating in any particular city can go to that channel and speak directly to that dispatcher to get assistance

273and or to provide them information as to something playing out on a campus. Thank you. Because all of those pieces were the rest of my questions, so I appreciate that answer. So we already have a communication system in place, and it doesn't matter if it's a guardian, if it's a municipal sro or a Broward County Public Schools sro, the process is still the same today. That is correct. And if I could just take the liberty out of respect to the folks that made time to come through here, if all the Broward School police officers in the room could just stand up for a moment, please. Yes. [Applause] Thank you. Thank you. So as you can see, they're all armed. They all have weapons. They've all been trained. They're all state certified. And I think they're

274due the same respect as any other officer or any other officer from any other agency, in spite of some of the commentary that's occurred already, they would be the same people that provide security to our school board meetings, our workshops, some of our advisory board meetings. They're the ones who are attending those and assisting with that. They're the ones who respond to the schools and pick up evidence, assist with behavioral threat assessments. We've had a big challenge since the state's gone to a state portal. They require you to have a p number, as we're familiar with in school district lingo, an employee id number to access that state portal. When we have people who are not employees and don't have p numbers, it creates a big challenge getting them into the portal for the state

275of Florida. So when while the it department works diligently to to make that happen, it's taken months and up until just a month or two ago, we got the last law enforcement officer added to the state portal. Because of those technical issues with bringing people who aren't a part of the school district into that process, so that the schools that the officers, the SROs that we contracted couldn't access the portal. Well, then our school police officers were handling those behavioral threat assessments at those campuses. Same thing occurs in our charter schools. We assist them, and those officers are the ones that respond. Just a few weeks ago, we had an incident, a threat that played out at a local charter school, and those officers responded to that incident to support the local police department, police,

276sro at that charter school. So they're very engaged, they're very active, and they have an infrastructure in place today. Thank you. And the next question I have is if someone were needed to be arrested, can you explain what that process would be, whether it's our sro or if it's a municipal sro. Depending on the circumstances, we can utilize the local agency for that investigation, depending on how complex it is, if it's something that's minor disturbance or a fight or something of that nature, the school, police officers, school police officers that are employed by the district have full authority to make an arrest and process that arrest through the traditional probable cause affidavit that need to be filed with the state attorney, as well as with the sheriff's office for detention purposes. And where do they

277take them when they arrest them. To the Broward County Jail? And it doesn't matter which sro does the arresting. It does not. Okay. Thank you. So again, I, I think the biggest issue here is that most people don't understand about the Broward County Public Schools police Department and, and you know, what their training is and, and what they are already doing. So I think we definitely need to have those discussions so that people understand it's not a less than it is equal. It's just different in terms of, of who they work for. And I'm not advocating one way or the other, to be quite honest. I'm just saying, I think, you know, some of the comments we heard today really proves that the community, just because they've just been doing it and nobody's really paid

278attention to it, and now it's come to light. And I want to thank all law enforcement for everything that they do. And I think it's important that the community knows that they are just as qualified as anybody else. My other question is, can you tell us now, superintendent, what is the cost share right now? What percentage do we pay and what percentage do the municipalities. That would be different per city, but we pay 119,000. The as far as cost share what the cities are incurring, that that would be different per city. We, the negotiation team, negotiate on behalf of all the participating municipalities. And so we pay one specific amount to to all. Okay. Thank you. So I, I don't know if it would make sense instead of the flat fee moving forward and in

279your talks, if there was percentage, if that would make sense. But one thing and someone mentioned the calendar concern, which I heard from a couple other people as well, so do we take into account in the contracts that we have now that the SROs don't work for a couple of months? Yes, that's correct. We actually pay more to cover summer school. So we have a set. You'll see separate summer school contracts come through probably in the next board meeting or two for to cover summer. So we only pay them for the usual spring, fall and spring term and not summer. Okay. Thank you. And I just I heard you say this, but I just want to I'll end with this to reconfirm, is the plan that you're showing us today or any. Do you have

280any plans of trying to develop a Broward County public School police force? No, that's not what this is for. And as you stated, MISS Hixon, this is more about an education for the board and for the public to really understand our current state and the capabilities of our of our current district police force. Okay. And as was mentioned right now, in some schools, there are Broward County police doing the sro job. Yes. When I'm needed, if a contracted officer is out, we plug in our staff to support. Is there any school that has a Broward County Public School police officer assigned to it? No, I don't, I don't I don't think is that the case? Can you correct. Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think we have. Go ahead, chief. As you stated, Mike

281Gregory, it depends on the the agency we. During this current contract year, we've had a couple of agencies that we've needed to provide officers for extended periods of time over a month. And the Broward School police officer covered those schools during that period of time. And then the officers MAY come back from their home jurisdiction later on. So we are there to fill in the gap currently during that process. Okay. Thank you, because I think it's important to know that. And I, as someone else mentioned, the cities are experiencing financial issues just like the school board is. And there MAY be come a point where they don't have the police officers to fill in. I know that's true in some of the cities already, so I appreciate the fact that we're preparing in that instance.

282But I you know, I think there's a good way to to have the hybrid system. And I look forward to hearing how the negotiations continue forward. So I'm not taking a stand one way or the other. I just think some of that information was really important to say out loud, especially because it's very clear that I don't think most people understand what our police department does. So thank you. Thank you. DR. Holness. Thank you, MADAM Chair. So I want to thank everyone who spoke today, all of our police officers as well. I can tell you, I appreciate the work that our police officers do, regardless of whether or not you are a Broward County Public School police officer, you're a municipality officer. My my brother is a retired police officer as well. So I fully

283understand the scope of your work and and what you face. So this is not really about supporting police officers because this board does. It's really looking at which structure would be best for students and best for our schools. So Doctor Hepburn, I do have a few questions and I did hear one of the comments mentioned that this is just about money. So I guess I'll ask that question because I did hear benefits from Chief Gregory of having an in-house or supporting an in-house approach to our police officers. And then I also heard from MR. Ryback, I hope I said that correctly, as far as the benefits of having municipality police officers. So, Doctor Hepburn, is this just about money? Yeah, it's not just about money, sir. Okay. So with that being said, MADAM Chair, just

284for the sake of the public and for others who wish to listen to the direction in which the board MAY end up going, I would like to ask a few questions to Chief Gregory and Chief Nazarewicz, as well as to MR. Adam Ryback, since he is representing, I believe, the municipality police officers and MR. Bruno. You can stop me if I need to be stopped. Okay, so Chief Gregory, what would you say? And if you could reiterate in a very concise way, are the benefits of having Broward County Public School police officers? Mike Gregory, chief safety and Security Officer as as illustrated in the presentation today, we certainly see the fact that they're a centralized structure with fewer sets of policies would be more efficient. Having a centralized structure where they, with less training standards

285across the district, less equipment differences. Whether one agency authorizes tasers and pepper spray and another agency doesn't. They have another set of tools, or whether an agency has a high level of training on. Mental health for students and youth, or whether they focus merely on tactical. Those things are the decisions of the current chief Chief of police with our. And and the sheriff with our 14 agency contracts. So having less than 14, having 13 would be less exposure to all these differences for our students, our students, and our staff on campuses. Having a smaller amount, I think, is the is the objective not necessarily changing the structure? That's not the conversation we're having. That's not negotiation that we're discussing. It's having a smaller number of contracts than 14. And then if I can clarify DR.

286Holness for you in the in the board as you give comment, this isn't about choosing either or. We're not making the decision to transition our services to schools. This is, as I said before, this is more about understanding the capabilities of of our of our school resource officers to understanding the current structures of contracts and a number of municipalities. This isn't about transitioning. A transition would happen if one of the cities so sees it fit, that they don't want to provide those services to the school, and would like the school district to do that. We stand ready to, to, to take that that initiative over if they see fit. But this isn't a choice of, of for the board to, hey, we want to move in this direction or that direction. Just I just want

287to clarify that as you ask questions and give comment. Understand and I appreciate that, Doctor Hepburn. The presentation did, however, highlight benefits of utilizing a Broward County police officers. Broward County public Schools police officers. So I let me just ask this question then. Is there an intent to. Based upon the the cost that's mentioned for in-house police officers and intent to expand the use of in-house police officers as we move forward on a yearly basis. Now, the intent is more to working with our municipality partners. As MISS Hixon mentioned, I know there's going to be financial concerns across the board, school districts, any government entity as we move forward, and they MAY make some decisions in the near future or in the distant future, that they don't want to provide those services anymore. And for

288people, the board and the public to really understand the current capabilities so they have a clear understanding of what we're capable of doing if we take over those services. So communities understand what we have, how how well trained our officers are held to the same standards as any other officer in the municipality or sheriff's office. It's just more of a clarification of that. Okay, so I'll just ask a few more questions based on the presentation. And Chief Gregory, were you finished with your comments? Yes. Okay. So, MR. Adam Rybak, did I say that correctly? Okay, okay. So as it pertains to because our presentation indicates some of the benefits of having our Broward County Public Schools officers, can you reiterate for the public, what would what are the benefits of the municipality officers throughout our

289schools? Well, I think you heard a lot of that today. I mean, in terms of the fact that our municipality's officers have grown up in these in these communities, they work with these schools and these students for years. There's a sense of community when when it comes to a municipals, municipalities ability to provide those police services, right. We we intend to ensure that our students in particular, feel comfortable around police. They feel comfortable around the police that are in their community. And there's frankly no better way to provide police services than at the local level. And our localities, the 14 that are committed to providing that level of service and ensuring that our students and our and our schools are safe. And that starts at the local level. Okay. So so, MR. Rybak, could you

290could you let us know in terms of what is your current role in terms of, you know, the negotiating and all of that? What is your current role as far as representing municipality officers? So three years ago, we took on the role from the Broward City Managers Association and the Broward League of Cities, working collectively to negotiate on behalf of all 14 contracted municipalities to reach an agreement that was uniform across the board. And we intend to do that. Frankly, it's a it's an ease to your you and your staff to have one agreement. We provide the numbers based on what we believe is the accurate reimbursement amount. We pull all the cities to ensure that we are capturing all the costs. I will tell you. And again, I'm. I really would love to see

291where the 98,500 number comes from. I can assure you that when you look at all of our municipalities and the police officers and the costs for providing that service, when you add in salary, benefits, vehicles, equipment, training, technology, you're close to $200,000 per officer, and that number is going to continue to grow as our costs continue to go up as well. Understand? So there's been conversation regarding sort of the different school resource officers from the municipalities sort of working in isolation as opposed to a suggestion of a centralized approach. Right. So for my knowledge and the knowledge of the public, do the municipalities, officers, is there any sort of collaborative effort among all of them with regards to being effective as school resource officers? Well, I can assure you that all of our police departments

292are accredited. I can certainly I would, you know, the police folks that are in the room who are obviously much more well trained to answer this question than I am. But I assure you from a central from a standpoint of centralization or decentralization, as we look at it, all of our police are trained to be professional, have professional standards. I don't see there being a difference in level of between one city and another. When it comes to our police officers, they are all to the hell to the highest standard, and they provide the highest level of service, whether they're in the schools or whether they're patrolling our streets. Okay, so, Doctor Hepburn, let me ask that question another way. So we have municipality officers in each and every school. And I know that there are

293school related specific concerns that MAY be outside of a municipality officer training in terms of their cities and so on. Do we currently have any sort of structure in place where the all of the municipality officers meet for, say, a general meeting monthly or bi monthly or whatever it is to sort of collaborate on issues that are similar to schools so they could do their jobs more effectively. And if not, can that be a part of the approach in terms of negotiation? And you can stop me, MISS Bruno, if I'm going too far. Sure. So you met MR. Bruno. I know what you meant. I just want to understand the question you're asking. DR. Holness. Are you saying that all the all the SROs from our partners and all of our schools, do they come

294together at a at a, you know, frequency during the year for for common training? Is that what you're. Well, do we have any sort of collaboration with the school district as it is specific to schools, because municipality officers are trained separate from, say, for example, our school resource officers that we have in-house. So is is it possible? And I don't know that in order to understand school specific issues that our municipality officers have some sort of a coalition or something in place or structure, that they can come together quarterly to understand policing schools betterr so thth n serve the n neeff s sdents in Bwawa Couyy schools bebetter ee c can bri thahatoto t the negotiation team, but I can what I can tell you, every last one of the officers, be it if it's

295a municipal officer, if it's bso or even bcc officers, all of them are well trained to keep our kids in our schools safe. As far as some of the nuances about schools, we can talk talk about that during the negotiation teams and see what that looks like. But as far as being trained to do the job, yes, absolutely. Every last one of them are. So we'll have to sit down and talk about some of the nuances and kind of tease that out to see what specific nuances we need to add or discuss further. But, you know, I'm confident that everybody knows what they're doing and know how to respond when there's a crisis or an emergency, regardless of who they're who, who they're hired by or who's books they're on. Okay. MR. Bruno, did you

296were you trying to say something? I'm just listening to the conversation. But again, just being cautious in terms of the road that we're on. Understand, understand, I, I just feel like the Broward County Public schools, we have specific school issues that relates to student. And as someone who have had experience with, for example, the discipline matrix in our schools and, and working in the schools, you know, I believe that some sort of a if it's not in place, it doesn't have to be frequently collaboration with the different municipalities to understand specific school related issues would probably be beneficial to our students, because my goal is what is best for students. And so that's why I made those comments. But Doctor Hepburn, currently we have a hybrid model. As board member Hixson mentioned. Correct. I wouldn't

297call it. I want to call it specifically a hybrid model. It's it's outsourced contracted model with support from our officers as well. Okay. All right. So that's it for my question. Thank you so much, Adam. Appreciate it. Thank you, MR. Cervera. First and foremost, I want to thank all of our great law enforcement officers around the county and certainly in the crowd, for everything they do for our students and their staff. We appreciate you and the board member from district six will always have your back. I also want to thank our city officials from around the county who came in today and spoke, letting their voices and opinions be heard on behalf of their respective cities. Nice to see City COUNCILWOMAN Denise Hallen from the great city of Plantation. Thank you ma'am. MR. Decker from

298the great city of Weston. Thank you, sir, for coming in. Vice Mayor Brody from the great city of Coconut Creek. Thank you sir. I appreciate everybody who came in and spoke. Folks, we must understand that our core mission, what our core mission is when it comes to the school board and our law enforcement partners, keeping our kids and our staff members in our schools safe, period. Full stop. And I want to be clear, this exercise is not about ending partnerships with our local city police departments. It's never the objective. I also will be the first to say, and the first to admit that the letters that some of our city partners received on a Friday, close to happy hour, was not the best, best practice of this district, and I certainly want to apologize for

299any angst and confusion that MAY have caused some of you. However, I believe that we took the appropriate corrective action in rescinding those letters. In somewhat of a timely manner. And now that we are all back to square one, I want to urge all of our cities and all of our police departments to continue to negotiate with us. Let's get this right, because we all know the stakes are too high to screw this up. And I want to be very clear every officer in here is a good cop. It will make an excellent school resource officer should they choose to take on that position in any of our schools within this entire county. That being said, we do have to listen to our citizens, our city officials, and our officers. Let's get back to the

300negotiation table and find a reasonable resolution to resolve these sro contract talks. We can get this done. Failure here, quite frankly, is not an option. In closing, I want to briefly address some internet rumors that I've been hearing over the last couple of weeks. There is absolutely no scenario in which a single school resource officer will be replaced by a guardian in any of our schools. This will not happen. Every one of our schools in this county will have at least one sworn law enforcement officer serving as their sro, and in some schools, it MAY be more than one. We love and respect our school resource officers, no matter what department they come from. I still remember my resource officer from J.P. Taravella High School, Mark Officer Calloway from the Coral Springs Police Department. What

301seems like at this point, like 40 years ago when I was in high school, I remember the relationship that I had with my sro, and I remember looking up to him and the amount of respect that I felt for him on a daily basis. I feel a lot of our kids share it with their SROs in their schools, no matter what department they come from. So I am urging my department and every city police department to get back to business. Listen to your community, listen to your constituents, and let's get a deal done one way or another. Our kids deserve nothing less. And MADAM General Council, I'm going to say this and tell me if I'm stepping out of bounds any way that I can be a resource, any way that I can help, call

302me. Email me. In fact, for those of you know who I live, come to my house. I'll help out. I want to get this done. Any way that I can assist. I will always be there for our law enforcement officers and our sr and our SROs. And I thank all of you again from the bottom of my heart. Thank you, chair. Thank you, MISS Hixon. Thank you. I just want to make mention of something. The Chris Hixon, Aaron Feis Scott Beagle Guardianship Program is a valuable program that provides armed guardians to schools. We do have them in our schools, mostly in our elementary schools. We do not have SROs at every single school. We do have guardians. They are valuable. And I would have never allowed my husband's name to be on that program if

303I thought it was less than. So thank you. Thank you, MRS. Alhadeff. Chair, if I MAY. I certainly did not intend my comments to disparage Guardians. I would never do that. What I was concerned about were rumors that were floating around the internet, in which people were suggesting that it was the school board's intention to remove our SROs from our schools, the schools that qualify, obviously, by the way, I understand how the elementary school parameter is set up, but to remove SROs from our schools and replace all of them with guardians. So I want to be very clear to the public that that was a rumor and that was not true. And in no way, shape or form am I disparaging our guardians. I just want to make sure that every member of the public

304fully understands that our SROs are here to stay, and that will continue as long as I have a say on that. Thank you. MRS. Alhadeff. Thank you. So we came today because of these letters that went out and the lack of collaboration and communication with our our cities. And that's really unfortunate. I pushed really hard today to have this workshop because this is a very healthy conversation for us to have these discussions, for the board members to be on the same page and our cities. So the one main thing I want to get out of this meeting today is that these conversations and this collaboration needs to happen more often, and that's how we make our schools safer, is this we cannot be in silos. We cannot have the the school board, police and the

305city police and the school board. We have to have more robust conversations. And and so in regards to the training and and I would like to see all the policies pulled from all. 14 city municipalities and see what we're actually talking about. Maybe there is some common training models and policies that are occurring. Doctor Hepburn, I don't you know, I don't know. We we aren't we don't have you of of what that is and what that looks like also. There needs to be a more collaboration with in our schools, with our SROs, whether it's the city SROs or the school board, SROs, but also with our security staff on campus. There cannot be silos. We all have to be working as a team. And and when one of us is not doing what we're supposed

306to do within policy, then that's when we have tragedy, when doors are unlocked and nobody's there watching. And so we need to continue to, to push for more policy, more training, and then more accountability. Florida has been a leader in the last eight years since the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. This state has is a blueprint for the the country as far as laws that we have passed. But those laws, they have to be followed with fidelity and accountability and Doctor Hepburn holding our security team accountable. And then the city is holding their SROs accountable. You know, a lot of times I go into schools and and I tell I tell the principal, I said, hey, take me to the sro office. Why do I say that? Because I know the sro is

307sitting most of the time in his office, and that's a problem. We need to have our I'm not saying everyone. I'm saying sometimes this happens and we need to have. Whether it's our school board, police, whether it's the city police, we need to be a team. We need to be actively walking the campuses and making sure that a threat doesn't come into our schools. Unfortunately, the guns are continuing to possibly get into our campuses, and we need we have the things like our weapons detection system, our law enforcement, they're our guardians, all there to protect our students. And so. I go back to policy training and accountability. And if we become complacent as a school district, as as cities, we're going to have the next msd. And I don't want to see that ever, ever

308happen again because our families, the Cixin's family, was impacted in 17 families were impacted because people became complacent, swept things under the rug. That cannot happen. So, Doctor Hepburn, we need to get these negotiations done. We need our city SROs in our schools, and we need to collaborate and work together so that we have training and accountability. Thank you. Thank you, MISS Rupert. Thank you, MADAM Chair. The benefit of going almost last is that that my colleagues have asked several of my questions already, so I will not, you know, take extra time to do that. I think our Broward County school board, police and our municipal police, bso have and will always have our communities and schools at heart. I have a mix of municipalities, and I also have those who have SROs from bso

309and some of our municipalities, their police officers and all the schools that are within that municipality. And for me, it's not a conversation of to be either or or both, but the feeling of family from our municipality to our city officers who have grown up in the very city that they're serving, who know the families multiple generations. I know SROs who, when they heard about the letter, burst into tears. And my neighborhood, because they were completely bereft, thinking they were going to not be able to work at the school that they love and the children and, and the staff that they really feel, well, they are they're a part of our community. There's also signs that have gone up in my neighborhood and in some other municipalities nearby. That have signs on their their yard,

310their yard. And it says, one closest to me says, Keep Wally as our sro, please, and has like tears and stuff on it. So understanding that I have, I have a few questions and it was I'm I'm not going to belabor the part about the letter, but the SROs, who I know wound up crying for loss of their family is what they were thinking. That was a huge mistake. Okay, let me ask the questions that I have first to make it go a little quicker, I can. If we already have a. Just let me know or just put it to the top of my my email. MAY we be given the breakdown of costs by municipalities for. So for the 118119 and understanding that the sole officers there. Some of our municipalities would be getting

311a little bit more than the other municipalities. So a good price, while some are only getting really a fraction of their cost. So I, I think it would be interesting to see exactly what that breakdown would be. How are our SROs allocated to each school? When the issue came up about two weeks ago, there was a presentation from Chief Gregory stating that they would transition. At about 12% each year over an eight year period. Is that still a plan? No, that's not a plan. Miss Rupert also, for the first question, as far as cost breakdown for for the cities. Yeah, yeah, we're in negotiations and as as the party negotiating for a specific amount of the contract. The only thing I think we can give you is just a 119 or whatever the price that

312we would pay moving forward as far as what the cities pay their officers or the cost breakdown, that's not our purview. No. And that that would be fine. I basically want to know with that 118 or 119, whichever that amount of money that, that we that, that I guess it's our cost. Is that what the breakdown is? Yes. Or that's how that's our cost. Yes. We pay. To where that to where that actually leads to including the fringe benefits retirement. Et cetera. Et cetera. So I think it would be interesting because that would be variable for the municipalities. And I understand that you don't have that. I can answer that question for you right now, MISS Rupert. We just like any other contract, that service that the board is used to, if we contract it,

313people to install certain things in our schools, we we pay a flat rate. We pay one $119,000 currently this year, a flat rate For all the cities and also bso. Gotcha. Yeah. It's just a flat rate to contract the services that they're providing at our schools. Does it cost is there any differential between a guardian and a a police officer. Any cost benefit change. That's all I'm asking. So the Guardians are hired by us Broward County Public Schools. So we pay them a salary just like any other employee that's hired by us. So yes, Guardians, the cost to the district is is less. Yes. The service is not. I'm sorry. Repeat that. I said of course the service is not not less. No, the service. Is not. The service is not less. They just don't

314have arresting powers. And some of the things that the sworn police officers can do. Right. Okay. So with I. Didn't really hear the explanation. As to it. It was. Stated as a plan. And now it's it's not a plan. Correct. So I think I need to understand how that happened. It is not a plan. The plan is if a city. She's asking a question for current state right now. Right now. That is not a plan. The the current plan is if there's a transition of of city or bso services to a school, there's going to be. If they pursue that change and we'll. And we're we're we are willing to work with bso or any city official to make that transition as they see fit moving forward. Okay. One one Rupert MISS Dupree, Bruno wants

315to add something. And if I could just add to what the supupintendent s sai I I terms ofof Guaians b being plployees t t d disicict, i ththk k it's a alsrereally poportant to understdd what the statute requires for Guardians. It's not just somebody that we hire, and then we just put them in schools. The statute also requires that the sheriff's office create a program, and that those individuals are trained with like 144 hours fire safety, de-escalation. So I just want to make sure that was clear. Oh, yeah. I'm sure it's clear to everybody, but I appreciate. The the little reminder for me and. So lost my train of thought now. Sorry, that was that was the, the important part of it. But I think moving forward, it would behoove us and the municipalities to

316actually continue at the negotiation table, but also to work together on some ideas for cross training. And I and cross training by, I mean, is really a nod to my colleague, MISS Thompson, that our Broward County School Board police are very cognizant. If there is an issue between with a child on the spectrum, with their de-escalation, but also with some behavior techniques. And I know that bso has has had people there to actually do that as part of it. So as we talk through negotiations, not me talking because that's, that's you guys to, to make to make sure that we do that option. I think that would help every, every child in Broward County, especially with a, a rise of mental health issues in our community. So for me, I think 14 municipalities, we don't

317really need to be fighting across the board on this particular issue with our our municipalities that are running out. I believe we have and correct me if I'm wrong, Doctor Hepburn, I believe we have at least 2 or 3 expiring JUNE 30th. I think all of them expired JUNE 30th. Okay. Yes. What happens? We can the we continue the services and we pay for the services until we come to an agreement about what the future of the next contract looks like. Okay. My suggestion would be that for these municipalities that truly want to keep their own local. Officers in their schools and their city, and they are not wanting to to pull them out, that the the preference would go to the municipalities as to, do you want to be a part of this, this

318plan? That's not a plan that moving forward. So that's that's an important aspect. And it might be an easy ask because we certainly have many things to, to discuss right now. And I don't really think we need to be doing this at this moment in time. So I would I would hope and I can't give direction as one board member that those 14 municipalities of whom several or perhaps all of them want to keep their their their police in their municipalities for our schools, then that's that should be a, you know, a one year extension if you have to do that to actually be able to, to move forward with actual negotiation time. And as we are concentrating on. Reimagining our schools where, where we are financially having difficulty with many parts of that, and

319if we could actually come together on this one thing, I think it's a win win. So try to honestly work from that perspective. That's that. That's my position on that. And I support, you know, any of my cities that want to keep their their officers and their schools. So, and, and I, I respect that. And that's something that I won't change my mind on. So thank you. Thank you. I'd like to just give some brief comments first, like many of my colleagues, I want to thank all of the law enforcement in the room. You all serve our students and our community incredibly. And I had the privilege of working with Officer Almanzar at Coconut Creek High School at ten years ago, and I think he's probably the most famous person in Coconut Creek. Sorry, Commissioner

320Walsh and Vice Mayor Brody. I've also had the pleasure of getting to know our Broward Schools police. A little over a year ago, I did a ride along with Officer Rosario and was able to see the love and joy and safety he brings to our schools, and I know that the same can be said for all of our Broward Schools police. So I just want to echo DR. Zeman sentiments. There was an error in communication. The superintendent has repeatedly apologized for that. And in order for us to all move forward to do the most important work we've been tasked with, which is keeping our students safe, we have to do just that. We have to move forward. We need to support the superintendents ability to negotiate, direct him, to engage in open, consistent, frequent communication

321with all stakeholders and work collaboratively with our cities to ensure that we have the safest schools in the country. I really appreciate the information that was brought forward today, but I really do think that moving forward again, we need clear, consistent, frequent, transparent communication with the necessary stakeholders. Do any of my colleagues have any comments for the second round? I have a question. I have a question. Thank you. How many negotiation meetings have we had this current school year to date? At least once. Or probably what about 4 or 5 six something? We have quite a few and we're keeping it going. So roughly around five. Yeah, give or take a few. Yeah, I'd say five. Okay. Thank you for that. Thanks. That was my that was my last question. MADAM Chair. Yeah. I just

322want to verify Doctor Hepburn, when they spoke of the 98,500, does that include fringe benefits. Did you say that. That is salary and fringe. Salary and fringe. Okay. Thank you. All right. Anyone else? All right. Thank you to everyone who came out to to share o DR. Zeman. Okay. Thank you to everyone who came out to share their feedback and participate. And we look forward to being good partners moving forward. That brings that workshop to a close at the direction of the superintendent. The following agenda topics are tentatively scheduled to be addressed during the upcoming workshops. MAY 12th Advisory Committee reports 2026 regular Legislative Session recap Redefining our Schools update. Os Quarterly Report 2025 2026. Quarter three Rural Development Use of Service Animals Diversity Committee Annual Update, Rural Development, cep policies, Rural development, use of

323Broward County school facilities for non-school purposes. JUNE 16th Advisory Committee reports preschool and vpk programs. Updates deployment of ai and attendance update. Please note that the order of topics and the scheduling remain tentative and are subject to adjustment at the superintendent's discretion at this time. Do any of my colleagues have anything to bring to the future workshops? DR. Zeman. Thanks, chair. I note that in our. We. We appreciate everyone who came up to speak. We ask if you need to have a conversation, please exit the board room so we can continue conducting our meeting. Thanks, chair. I just note in our MAY and JUNE workshops, we're not getting information about budgets, am I? Is it handled? Is there a workshop between these two workshops or are we flooding our school board meetings with budget items?

324But we've we've got a lot of work to do. MAY and JUNE on the budget because it's due JUNE 30th. What I'm just curious, should we. DR. Zeman could you speak into your mic a little bit more, please? Thank you. Sorry. It's a little thrown off here. I'm wondering if we want to add budget to the MAY 12th and JUNE 16th meeting. It's coming to the end of the year, and we have to make some decisions about what we're going to do. Go ahead, MISS Sullivan. Before I speak. I was just going to say we also are waiting on the state to finalize their budgets, and we don't expect them to do that until JUNE, mid JUNE. I appreciate that we have a really good idea of where the state's landing. The House and Senate

325version are awfully close to each other, and the governor has cut a deal, so I'm not worried about that so much. I'm worried about the $225 million we got to take out of the budget, you know, due to student enrollment. And those are those are just big changes. We did part of it with this, you know, staff reduction. But I, I just can't in good conscience, like settle on a workshop thing that doesn't have a budget every month as we're wrapping up the year. And I just, I'm one of. Nine but that's the way I would like to deal with things so that we're prepared. When it comes down to the last day, we've got to make hard decisions now. Good point. DR. Zeman let MISS Johnson and myself get together and plan out what

326the cadence would look like for MAY and JUNE. I noticed a lot of important decisions that need to be made and a lot of important updates as well that the board needs to be abreast about and give some feedback on some next steps. Yeah, I continue to be worried that we're talking about the allocation of the referendum. That isn't until 27 to 31. We haven't done the spade work, the normal spade work on the 2627 budget. Nor have we completed, you know, all of the negotiations, the actual negotiations, not I wouldn't call what we do with with the a contract with SROs the same thing as a collective bargaining agreement negotiation. But we haven't finalized those yet either. And there's some big items outstanding. I just feel like that sequence puts us at risk. And

327so we need to do more work, not less work. I have another topic if that's all right, chair. Can I keep going? The general counsel suggested that we not start our school board meeting until 3:00, and I appreciate that advice. I'm curious, general counsel, are we allowed to start before 3:00 or is it just your general advice? So because of the fact that you did notice that the meeting could begin immediately following the workshop, I won't say that you're not allowed to do it. Thanks, chair. All I'm I'm suggesting is a compromise, which is if there are any items that a member of the public has signed up to talk about, that we hold those in abeyance until 3:00 because that's really where that issue comes up. Right. We we said three or earlier. There

328are some people that will interpret that as three that MAY want to come and talk on a specific item. I would just offer a compromise that in the interest of time, there's a lot of items this afternoon to cover a couple of big items I would like to do, the ones that don't have any public speakers signed up before three, and see if we can then pick up at 3:00 with the balance. MR. Bruno. Now, if I could just add to what I was saying. DR. Zeman, my analysis is always what's going to happen if somebody does file and we go in front of a judge, I think the judge would say, you advertise for 3 P.M. Even though we have that disclaimer. That's why my recommendation was that we move forward with starting at

3293 P.M. But again, this is the board's discretion in terms of what risk you want to take, because it does say immediately following the workshop as well. And the advertisement. I will follow my chair's advice. Thank you, chair. Thank you. I have MISS Hixon. Thank you. I have a question. Because we don't we don't have the script that you're reading to see, but it seems to me you read a lot of things along with the. The redefining update. And I have some concerns, as I do all the time about putting too many things on one agenda. So I don't know if the superintendent could maybe look at. Are there things that we could move from the agenda? That includes the redefining update because that's. I just think there's a lot of. So to MISS Hixon's

330point, there's eight items on the MAY 12th workshop, and I believe four items on the JUNE 16th workshop. Just because the redefining, I'm going to guess, is going to take a long. A lot of time. Yeah. If you can allow the team and I to look at it and we can move some things around. Okay, perfect. And are we doing student successes now as well or just okay, perfect. The best time of the day. I happen to be watching channel ten this morning. And they were shouting out Village Elementary for winning and being recognized as the Panther Reading Challenge winner. And they got a party from the Florida Panthers. And it was a challenge for reading 15 minutes every day with their family outside of it. And they had the most number of students that

331were they had the highest number of 15 minute readers. So congratulations to Village Elementary on that. So, and also, I'd like to say I'm very sorry that I missed the rotc cadet of the year and pass and review event last week. I was at the ptapta pat you on the back award. So I'm sorry I missed it, but I do want to say congratulations to Steve Joseph from Everglades High School for being recognized as the jrotc cadet of the year. Thank you. Thank you, MISS Thompson. Thank you, chair. MRS. Hixon stole one of my student successes. That's fine. We can all celebrate him. I did have two questions. One, when is the meeting where we will be discussing principal placements happening? Doctor Bolton MAY. Do we have, like, the meeting date because my community would

332like to speak to that. So I can't give you a date now because it's contingent upon the org chart being passed. So it's it's almost as if that has to be done first before I can give you a clear date. Okay, so after the org chart, hopefully passes. Okay. And then last week we passed an item about resolving student meal debt. How is that being communicated to students? Because I met with them this week at sga and nobody knew that was happening. So what is the process to make sure that students can attend events and they they know that they can attend events and that parents know. Doctor Dr Fulton. So I'm going to turn it over to Doctor Wanza in terms of. Have we reached the clarity? Because I know we haven't started communicating

333with them yet. We did speak of MAY 1st because the seniors last day is like the end of MAY. So we did have some time to make sure the communication was clear and then it'll be communicated with them. But if you allow us, I would say about MAY 1st, which is Friday, we'll be able to ensure that that is communicated clearly. And I'm fine with the follow up. I just want to make sure that there's a process in place to let them know. Thank you. And then, is student success. So thank you. Anyone else? DR. Holness. Thank you, MADAM Chair. So I just have a question regarding the time for the special school board meeting at 3 P.M. And I guess this question is for MISS Bruno. You know, if the meeting had ended even

334earlier, then we would have been waiting a long time as board members to have the 3:00 special school board meeting. I know this is the way we've always done it in terms of, you know, the time as it regards to, you know, contingent on the workshop. So I guess my question is this if it had been phrased a different way, where we started the workshop earlier, let's just say the workshop was scheduled for 2:00. And in the notice, it says 2 P.M. Or later, contingent on completion of workshop. Would that have made a difference? So it's not necessarily a question of making a difference. The law requires that these meetings be properly noticed, which means that you give the proper time and you give the proper location. In my experience, if there is a workshop

335is finished earlier, we would wait until it's time for the next workshop to begin. I know staff does its best to try to make sure that we maximize the time and not allow these lull times, but they do happen from time to time. My analysis, because of the fact that you do have the extra language in there that says that immediately following the workshop, if the board wants to move forward, however, my opinion is if this were going to be challenged and there was a suit brought forward, I think the judge would say that you actually noticed this for 3 P.M. I understand, but I'm speaking if the if if another scenario occur where the workshop actually was scheduled and the workshop is running over time, let's. And we had, say, the special school board

336meeting scheduled at 2:00, but the workshop is running over that time period. It's 215 and the workshop is still going on. If we had noticed that the special school board meeting starts at 2 P.M. Contingent on completion of workshop, and the workshop ran over the 2 P.M. Time, would we still would we be okay? Or we would have to stop the workshop and start the meeting at 2:00? I would recommend that we stop the workshop, open up the special school board meeting just so that we can have it opened up, and then we close it because you want to be very precise and specific when you are adhering to the Sunshine Law. Okay. Thank you. Would anyone else like to either opine on DR. Zeman suggestion or share any student successes or policy policies to

337bring forward? I do. Go ahead, MISS Rupert. Thank you. I keep putting my little hand thing up, but maybe. Maybe it's not working for you guys. We can't see you, MISS Rupert. Or I can't at least. So. Okay. Sorry. All right. I actually wanted to share some some good news and and ask for, like, a 15 minute kind of addition to a workshopbout the sucucceff fallyetetng SpSpace Florida int our schools. I do not know the other two schools, but I wanted to proudly announce that Blanche Ely High School will be starting it in the fall. So I'm super, super, super excited that they're going to have these Space Florida curriculum there. And I think it's going to be a wonderful addition to, especially for, for our, our neighbors and, and Creek and, and Pompano, Deerfield,

338everybody, it'll be open for everybody. But I'm just calling a few high schools out. So I'm super excited. And I, you know, I work pretty hard for this, but I want to appreciate my, the superintendent and staff to kind of, you know, work with everything to give us the opportunity and to make sure that we can get money from work workforce Florida. So that was that was pretty exciting. So if there could be an update, Doctor Hepburn or is it Doctor Fulton? I can't really see you that we can just sneak something in at 15 minutes at at another another time. So the board can kind of get quickly updated then move on. But I, I know everybody should be as excited as I am because you know what? Space is back baby. And here

339we are. It's going to be with that within our district. So I'm very happy. Thank you. MISS Rupert, this is Doctor Fulton. We actually will be able to provide an update. You are correct, Blanche Ely was added to the list. So we'll be more than happy to share the good news and the path forward. Perfect. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Anyone else? Before I go? I one would still like to gather consensus about when we would like to start the special school board meeting, but I also wanted to see if there was any objection to bringing back, I believe it's policy. 1401 the naming and renaming of school facilities. I know many of us are interested in perhaps honoring our beloved Nancy Mateo, and so I just wanted to see if we were okay

340bringing that back for rule making. Yes. MISS Hixon. Oh, sorry. I didn't know if you wanted to say anything. All right. I'm a yes. Okay, great. So, Doctor Fulton, you have the direction on that. Thank you. And then, does anyone object to Doctor Zeman's proposal to start to dispose of some of the other items before you know, now and then go to the special at 3:00? Or would we like to follow Council's advice and start the meeting at three? MISS Bulman. I would like to follow Council's advice and start the meeting at three. Three. Okay. I also would like to start at 3:00. Okay. Good with me. Great. DR. Zeman. I want to thank you chair. You've done a lot of great things, but this idea of sharing documents with each other, research papers, critical

341chapters of books, these are the kinds of things that great executive teams do so that we can read when we have time, you know, to learn about new and different things. It turns out there's 14,000 school districts in the United States. 81 of them have more than 50,000 students. So they're, you know, big enough that they deal with the same kind of things that we do in the Council of Great City Schools, Florida School Board Association. There's a bunch of different groups that that, you know, do interesting research and write about things that that we have to learn. The more we know about these things, whether it's emerging technology or artificial intelligence in general or, you know, exceptional students or, you know, diagnoses for spectrum disorders and things like that, I think the better we're

342able to come to this board and have really good, meaningful discussions and make better decisions, you know, about it. So thank you for, for so many things that you've done. Chair Leonardi but, but also just for maybe you, you've primed the pump a little bit and we'll share more information with each other in a way that that really allows us to have even deeper conversations. Thank you. Thank you, MISS Nixon. Thank you. I, I understand why we're waiting till three, but I just want to make a point that we know we have at least one, if not two bigger items that MAY take time. So I appreciate that board members want to wait till three, but I would ask that when we have to extend the meeting that you don't vote. No. Thank you. Thank

343you, MISS Hixon. DR. Holness thank you, MADAM Chair. So, MADAM Chair, I'm just thinking of. And I appreciate General Counsel's advice, but I'm just thinking of subsequent meetings and future meetings in order to work efficiently with time. I would strongly suggest that staff in the future, and I understand that we are sort of moving in a different direction. But in the future, if we could schedule if we have a workshop and a special school board meeting that we should schedule this special school board meeting earlier. And if we have to stop the workshop, we do. That way, we don't waste time because we can discuss in the workshop at as priority the the items that are major, like what we've had this morning. And then the items that are not major, they don't attract a

344lot of public input. We can have those discussed last. And if we have to come back to the workshop, MADAM Chair, then we come back to the workshop. But I would much rather we move this special school board meeting up and get through the priority items on the workshop, and then stop the workshop if we have to, and go into the special school board meeting and come back. So I'm hoping that that would be a much better direction. So it could potentially be that we're waiting here two hours for the special school board meeting if we're done early. So I don't want to have to waste that much time. Thank you. And I want to take ownership on the timing of it. I did request that they be spaced out, because I thought that the

345workshop agenda items would take much longer, given our history. So I don't want staff to own that. I want to be clear that that I asked them to start the special earlier and start the, the start, start the workshop earlier and start the special later to accommodate because, you know, we did have some substantive topics. So we will continue to try to do our best in anticipating the timing of each agenda item. And I definitely take your feedback seriously. Thank you. And MADAM Chair, I appreciate that. And it actually wasn't necessarily any sort of criticism. And I know you didn't take it that way. I just know that we normally, based upon our prior process, we normally have the. It stated that we would start the special school board meeting right after the workshop, but.

346So I think none of us really knew we were going to proceed in that direction. But, you know, I think I think it's if we move it up closer and we have to stop the workshop, then we would make use of the time. But certainly the way you proceeded was what we've always done. But we are going to we have different input that we are adhering to. We appreciate. Taking into account. Thank you. DR. Zeman do you plan to bring job descriptions and then the org chart first and second? i'm. I'm interested in MISS Hickson's point about, you know, there are going to be some of us that have to leave at some point for other engagements tonight. It seems like if we could do job descriptions first and then the org chart second, that

347would at least allow us as many people as could be here as possible. MR. Bruno. I don't see any problem with that. Oh, you like that idea, but you don't like starting on time? I was going to read some law, but I won't. MISS Thompson, you have a. I'm just confused, because when we have to discuss the org chart and then job descriptions. The other way. Descriptions. We have to do job descriptions first. You got one hour to get ready, MISS Thompson. Oh no, I, I also just appreciate the chair. And I do think that our timing is always very hectic. And the fact that this went so quickly was not on my Ouija board. So thank you for your your planning and just your leadership during this tumultuous time. And can we please recess?

348Well, we're going to adjourn the workshop. So does anyone else have anything else to. Okay, the scheduled order of business for the school board workshop of the School Board of Broward County, Florida, has been completed. Seeing no objections, I will now adjourn the school board workshop. Yay! Oh!