001Welcome to today's special School board meeting. The special School Board meeting of the School Board of Broward County, Florida, is now called to order to ensure a safe and productive environment. Please note the clearly marked emergency exits do not block exit doors and all attendees must be seated except for media. Once the room reaches capacity, attendees will be directed to the overflow area. If the fire alarm sounds, exit the room calmly continue outside the building and remain there until e authorities give clearance to return. Thank you for your cooperation. All. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under GOD, indivisible, with liberty and justice
002for all. As we begin, we reaffirm our strategic plan goal 100% proficiency for all students, guided by your vision. By our vision. Educating today's students to succeed in tomorrow's world. As an a-rated district, we remain committed to sustaining this achievement while empowering every student to reach their highest potential. Our theme this year is believe, empower, achieve one. Broward. Today's Special School Board meeting will operate in accordance with School Board Policy 1020, and the board will review the items as advertised and presented by the superintendent. The superintendent released a revised agenda with certain changes for this meeting and published it on the school district's website. The chair finds pursuant to section 120 .525 Florida statutes, that good cause exists for such changes and accepts the revised agenda MAY have a motion and a second to close
003the agenda. So moved. Second moved by DR. Zeman, second by MISS Thompson. All in favor of closing the agenda? Let it be known by saying I. I any opposed, say no. The agenda is now closed. We will soon hear from our registered public speakers. We ask that decorum be maintained and civility and respect be shown during public comment. Our General Counsel will assist the chair in maintaining decorum during this period. We also want to remind our public speakers of the rules and expectations regarding the agenda, public comment portion of the Special School Board meeting, as well as board policy attorney Dupree Bruno, please explain the rules of public comment. MADAM Chair, point of order, if I MAY, before our General counsel speaks. Go ahead. There's been a lot of disappointment over the last few days
004in the actions of this board in changing today's setting to a former school board or special school board meeting, when it had initially been set as a workshop. I was hoping if MADAM General counsel would be gracious enough to explain the legal ramifications and the permissibility of what was done at the last meeting of this board after hours, if you will, and just explain to the public why they are not getting the workshop that they overwhelmingly sought on this very important matter involving the organizational chart. Thank you. Through the chair. Basically, the school board special meeting will allow the board to take a vote, but they will also have the opportunity to fully ask any questions that they MAY have. Staff will be able to present. There will be public comment. So it's it's not
005much different aside from the fact that they will be allowed to vote at the end. I apologize. I appreciate that, but that wasn't the question. The question was the legal ramification, the legal permissibility about what this board did in changing a scheduled workshop to a school board meeting, which was a vote that was taken. What I again will quantify is after hours, the last time that we met was that legally permissible, and if so, under what Broward County School Board policy and or state statute? Thank you. So 286.011 is the statute that governs notices. And this meeting was properly scheduled. And notice, pursuant to what is required by law. And the board always has the opportunity to cancel, change, move meetings at their desire and their discretion. That is completely within their purview and statutorily
006allowable pursuant to 286.011. So I appreciate that. So I guess the best way to frame it is despite the overwhelming majority of the public wanting the workshop to be taking place today, as well as this particular board member wanting the workshop to have taken place today. What the board did was statutorily permissible in your professional legal opinion. Yes, sir. Regarding public comment, thank you, MADAM Chair. Public comment is governed by School Board Policy 1020 and is intended to provided 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 public comment procedures require that speakers must state their name, city of residence and whether they are a lobbyist before beginning their remarks. All remarks must be
007directed to the board as a whole. The board will not respond to or engage with speakers during public comment, and no action will be taken unless the item is on the agenda. The chair MAY adjust the order of speakers, recognize speakers and enforce all time limits, and the chair MAY reduce speaking time or establish a total time limit for public comment when necessary. To ensure all speakers have an opportunity to be heard as to the it's to the chair's discretion. Speakers must limit their comments to matters related to school board business and for. Agenda items must remain relevant to the specific item. Comments MAY not address matters that are pending litigation. Quasi judicial proceedings, active investigations or administrative hearings, solicitation and lobbying activities must comply with applicable school board policies. Abusive language defined as profanity
008threatening or name calling is prohibited. 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 a recess being called after a warning. The chair MAY also direct removal, removal from the meeting and the building by law enforcement or the Sergeant at Arms, MADAM Chair. Thank you, Attorney Dupree. Bruno, the board wants to hear from you, and we appreciate your cooperation in maintaining a respectful, orderly and productive meeting environment. When it is time for public speakers, I will call five speakers at a time. When you hear your name, please line up behind the podium with only one person
009at the podium at a time. Please follow the staff's directions when lining up and approaching the podium. When your three minutes is up, please yield the mic and exit the podium and follow staff direction. MAY I have. Oh, and I just for the record, MR. Spielberg, our student advisor, is online. He's listening in is available for questions. If anyone has questions for him, MAY I have a motion and a second on item. MADAM Chair, MADAM Chair, Lori Alhadeff is on line two. Thank you. MRS. Alhadeff MAY have a motion and a second on item one. Superintendents, 2026 2027 organizational chart. Moved moved by DR. Zeman. Second by MISS Hixon. It is moved and seconded to move item one to the floor. I will name the first five speakers, so if they could please approach the
010public speaking podium. Melanie Birkin, McKay, Henry Delvin King, Brandon Monce, and Victor Hernandez. Welcome. Good morning. Good morning, chair and superintendent and our board members. My name is Melanie Birkin. I am from Davie, Florida. Wow. A little nervous. Didn't want to go first on this item. For the org chart. It still seems a little top heavy, but I am grateful that it appears that many of the mental health positions have remained. I know that's below the line and we've got above the line items items here for the org chart. The one question I do kind of have is I know that the job description is the next item for the director position, but I did have a question for the name. I'm not sure under Director Wellness and Mental Health that covers child abuse, foster
011care and homeless individuals, as well as social work in family therapists. I'm just curious where child abuse and foster care fall under mental health or wellness. I mean, sometimes names are important. We've always been the Department of Student Services, and we are there to support student services. And I don't I feel like sometimes when parents are looking for the help they need, when we change the names to names that are the buzzword of the day, it is difficult still to find out where exactly to find the support or ask the questions that that they were to direct the questions and find it on the school board's website. And I do feel that that name is MAY not be the necessarily most appropriate name with regards to the mental health positions, though. Thank you again for
012keeping a majority. And it is important, even as I've mentioned before, even as enrollment numbers have declined, mental health is always going to be an issue, unfortunately, and we do need all the supports we can get in order to address our students and our families and staff the way that they need to be handled. I thank you for your time and thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Good morning board. Brandon Montz, Coral Springs 33071. I'm going to address a probably a less addressed area of the org chart than some of my colleagues here. I think I've been a proud district employee for 20 years, most of that time as director of vocal music and the Performing Arts Department chair at Western High School, and also for the last few years as one of our stewards.
013According to publicly available district data, 50% of o our elementary s schls no longerer ve designateted art teaer,, 30%% have n n m music tchch,, 11% have neither. In middle school, less than 10% of our sites have an orchestra program anymore, and less than 10% have a designated vocal music teacher, although they do have facilities. I'm here today because the org chart seemingly does nothing to recognize the unique programing needs in the fine arts. Our organization should reflect the robust programs we should be offering and to staff administrators appropriately to implement them. Music and art reductions didn't happen overnight. They keep happening because there seems to be no one empowered at the right level of the organization to prevent this. Music, like the other core subjects, has fantastic curriculum specialists right here in this building.
014Extraordinarily knowledgeable and subject matter experts. But there are districts in Florida facing the same exact challenges we are. But because their charts, staff positions like senior fine arts administrator and have district administrators of visual arts, elementary music, secondary vocal, secondary instrumental music, and so on, their programing remains robust even as they're facing similar adversities to us, such as enrollment loss and school site closures. So I asked the board to consider whether there might be a connection or a correlation between these ongoing program deficits and the enrollment losses driving this entire conversation. As we know, parents and students have more choices than ever before when they don't see rigorous arts offerings in their neighborhood school, why wouldn't they seek them elsewhere? Interestingly, tomorrow's workshop will include more thought exchange survey results from redefining schools and the
015top student priority. I think it's on page six is, quote, maintaining rigorous programing and electives. Where will these students go if we don't respond? The superintendents own rationale for his reorganization, excuse me, states that certain departments require dedicated oversight because they serve, quote, highly specialized and distinct functions. Music and arts also do. And under Essa, music is explicitly included as part of a well-rounded education. Our students are in honors credit ap Dual Enrollment Cambridge Credit it's an academic subject, not extracurricular, and our organization chart should treat it that way. We need administrative supervisory oversight commensurate direct reports to ensure robust programing. 100% proficiency for all students includes these subjects. Thanks for your time. Thank you so much. I'll read the next five speakers Tracy Chandler, Vanessa Matute, Nadine Martinez, Ruth Martinez, and Maria Podesta. So
016if you heard your name, please approach the mic. Excuse me. I'm so sorry. I was I was part of the five from the first. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Hi. My name is Victor Hernandez. I'm from Miramar 33023. Good morning superintendent, board members and district leadership. I'm here today to speak about the value and necessity of Beacon School Services Department and the immeasurable impact it provides to the district every single day. Our department supports instruction, operations and safety across the entire district while already operating with limited staffing. Further reductions would not eliminate the work. We would simply see slower service, higher costs and increased disruption to schools. Our technicians maintain specialized training across the full audio visual electronic technician scope, allowing us to provide an average 24 hour turnaround for classroom technology
017repairs, audio visual systems, iptv infrastructure, as well as installation and training on school television studio equipment. When equipment fails, instruction stops. Our team ensures teaching can continue without prolonged interruption. Equally critical is student and campus safety. The Beacon School Services Department services and maintains over 18,000 security cameras district wide. Every repair completed quickly helps prevent surveillance, blind spots and ensures campuses remain protected. Reduced staffing directly translates to longer response times and unresolved safety risks. Keeping this work in-house is also financially responsible. Between last year, JULY and this year of APRIL, Beacon School Services saved the district nearly $450,000 by completing services internally, rather than relying on outside vendors, which are consistently more expensive and slower to deploy. Beyond repairs, our technicians train school staff provide rapid on site support to district leadership and schools, coordinate
018projects, and manage a high volume of service requests that keeps classrooms functioning daily. Closing or reducing. This department does not reduce need. It increases outsourcing, raises operational costs, delays instruction and shifts technical burdens onto teachers, administrators and school budgets. The Beacon School Services Department represents efficiency, safety and fiscal stewardship. Maintaining and supporting this team protects instructional time, safeguard students, and and saves taxpayer dollars. Thank you for your time. Hi, I'm Maria Podesta from Daniel Elementary. I'm a 34 year veteran teacher. I love what I do, I'm trying to keep loving what I do. Please listen to all these people. We're they just have such great ideas on how you guys can save money. I don't know what else to say. Everybody keeps saying the same thing. I hope you're listening. Very disappointed with me having
019to pay insurance, but I know that's another thing. Palm Beach County seems to have it together. Can we ask them? Maybe. Maybe we can collaborate and see how they're able to give their teachers a 3.5% raise. Again, we need to look at the top, not the bottom. I'm in the front lines. Listen to your teachers. Listen to us. We're right there. We're in the classrooms. We're touching the kids. We don't have a guidance counselor. I need a guidance counselor at my school. We're so desperate. We're trying to get a media specialist. Everything is falling apart. School is not fun anymore because we don't have all these nice things. These clubs and art and music and and all that. So if we want to keep the kids here, we got to make learning fun to write,
020testing, testing, testing. I love that we're in a my kids are more than a scale number, more than a test score, but yet I keep having to say, but I really need you to make progress. I really need you to go up two points so I can make this bracket. And you know, it's a lot of pressure. I'm sure you you understand that. I hope you do. I really don't want to keep taking days off to come here. I MISS My kids testing just next week. Please do the right thing. Listen to these men, women teachers in. There's just so much great advice. Are we listening? I appreciate that you're looking at me. We need to start from the top. Nobody in here makes over 150, 000 or 100,000 or 90,034 years. And I'm not
021making I'm making like 65,000. And that's because I'm doing summer school, which I don't want to do, but I have to do. Please do the right thing. I am trusting in you. I'm putting my faith in you. I'm trusting in you. After this, I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen. You know, you want our teachers to stay here, right? I'm hearing all these principals leaving the Texas and they're able to do all this stuff. It's my focus is in teaching, and that's all I want to keep my focus on. And instead I'm having to like, come here and talk about organizational charts and what I didn't know. So many people were out of the classroom making all this money. It's just shocking. I thought, I'm going to stay at one school. I'm
022going to stay at Broward County. I'm going to give it my all. I'm going to be this great teacher, which I am, but I can't afford it. I love my house. I've been in Broward County all my life. How am I going to survive? Please do the right thing. Okay? We have faith in you. I know you could do it. Hands in, hands out. All right. Thank you. Nice. Good morning. Tracy Chandler Plantation, Florida. The thing that I love about math is that it's supposed to make sense is a core school. It is a core subject in school. So the school system. Should be doing it correctly, but the math isn't mathing. Our state has calculated a set amount that each student is worth. But public education isn't about treating kids as though they were
023nothing but imaginary numbers. Our state has been formulating ways to privatize education, but since when is it legally okay to transfer public money to private enterprise? Charter is for profit. Private is for profit. Kids are not for profit. Despite what many politicians seem to think. Math is not magic. You cannot defund public schools and expect to a wand to produce results where we are expected to make a negative times a negative equal, a positive, but lack of money plus lack of resources equals a negative outcome. See how the math isn't mathing. Meanwhile, the school board and governor keep hiring temporary superintendents, letting them mismanage money and leave with a hefty severance package. Then they purchase unnecessary items like Polly cams and expensive cheap no-no's, and only allow contracts from the highest bidders, all just to
024fatten their paychecks of those in charge, making sure teachers and staff don't ever see the cost of living increase. It gets worse. While teachers see a fraction of what they're worth, their class size multiplies, leaving parents divided over whether or not public schools remain the correct answer. This is not the right order of operations. Remember pmdasas we should all be yelling, penalizing, educating educators, massacres, data and success. Those on top making decisions don't want the public to realize that they are the denominators in this formula. The numerators are supposed to be the students and the staff who work miracles every day without a wand. The top paid Crystal Palace workers who scramble to justify their salaries are remainders. And sometimes we need to round down instead of up, but never on the backs of the
025people actually making a difference. We could start by offering a teacher and staff a minimum of 3.141 3.14% raise, because they're the ones who deserve the biggest piece of the pie. Thank you. Good morning board. We need to stop meeting like this. But in all seriousness, my name is Vanessa Matute. I am a licensed mental health counselor. I specialize in trauma and in suicide. I am here because of the cis positions. The ssi s positions means eliminating some of the staff members who work directly and consistently with high risk students every single day, while many mental health professionals are on campus. But they're tied up completing assessments, 504 plans, compliance tasks, paperwork, cis are the door that is constantly open for the students, not only for the students that are on our caseload. When students
026are overwhelmed, anxious, failing classes, struggling at home, or experiencing suicidal thoughts, they come to us. We are the people students see throughout the day for check ins, de-escalation, course recovery, emotional support, prevention services. My office is rarely empty because students know there is always someone available to listen and to talk to. I currently work with approximately 90 high risk students, but like many cis staff, I support far beyond my caseload. We interact with students all day, every day. We build trust relationships with students who MAY not otherwise seek help. Removing cis removes one of the most accessible layers of support for students on campus. Again, if we are truly prioritizing students mental health and safety, we cannot eliminate the positions for the people who have their doors constantly open for the students. Thank you. Welcome.
027Hi, my name is Nadine Martinez, licensed clinical social worker specializing in trauma and child welfare. As a student support instructional specialist, I'm here to advocate against the elimination of the role as an Sis. I work directly with students in crisis. Daily elimination of this role impacts the access to care for high risk students. The Sis is a gateway resource at the forefront of crisis. To reemphasize elimination of this role dismantles a critical pillar of support students rely on daily. It would disrupt our daily and direct work with students, impacting their ability to trust, build stable and consistent connections with trusted adults and impacting their access to care. The Sis role works in collaboration with aps, the mental health staff at school security and teachers to ensure that we can provide wraparound support, our department supervisors
028have carefully curated our team. They are an invaluable resource to our team, the students and the schools that we serve. Their leadership provides next level support, insight and opportunities and encouragement for growth. Our students deserve consistency, continuity, safety, and access to care, support and resources that help them succeed meaningfully. Thank you. Before the next speaker, I'll read the next five names. So Nick Watkins, Henry Smith, Ernestine Ramirez, Alan Abramowitz, and Michelle Benson. Welcome. Good morning. I'm a little nervous, so please forgive me. My name is Ruth Martinez. I live in Tamarac and I work at Coconut Creek High School. I've been in service to Broward County Public Schools for 21 years. Regarding the proposed organizational chart, I strongly urge you to vote no. Your directive to the super. As I understood it, your directive to
029the superintendent was to reduce staffing while minimizing the impact of that reduction to teachers and schools. Meanwhile, principals are informing sac committees that there will be reduction in positions, even at schools that are that are at or above enrollment. This means that at the elementary level, there could be a 28 to 1 person ratio. At the secondary level, a 45 to 1 person ratio. Most classrooms can't accommodate that many bodies without serious safety concerns. Facilities and cafeteria staff are being mandated to do more with less, and are also experiencing layoffs. The organizational chart shows cuts and delineation of positions, but only at the salary band and above. There's no transparency to the full scope of this chart. What will happen to positions whose tasks were reassigned to administrators with hefty supplemental payments? Will those positions
030be reopened or eliminated? If they're eliminated, will those administrators continue to receive those supplements, sometimes in the excess of tens of thousands of dollars? I understand that some of you are teachers once. So I ask you to please think back to your first five years of teaching. Did you feel valued? Did you feel supported? Did or did you or did you feel, as I feel today, undervalued, disrespected, and unappreciated? You say you want to empower each student to reach their full potential. What about empowering your teachers and your school staff to reach their full potential? As we close out the 2025 2026 school year? In a political climate where the average voter has lost faith in government, you have the opportunity to rebuild trust with transparency and accountability throughout all levels of this district. I
031strongly urge you to vote no to this organizational chart and take the step to rebuilding your employees faith in you. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Alan Yablonovitch. I am an indie special needs teacher at Maplewood Elementary and a school. Okay, my, my rhetorical questions last time got me a lot of feedback. So I'm going to give you some again today we have a multibillion dollar budget, and yet there's no money for staffing or raises. Many of you have businesses. Rule of thumb in a business is that when you are losing money, or in our case, losing students, which is money, what do you do? Well, you add more staff, you do more things to spend more money. That might not have been the smart way to go the last several years, since we
032lost 50,000 students. What do you do? Do you keep adding people? Do you keep automatically saying no. When contract negotiations come up? I'm not getting into that, but understand that it's an automatic no, there's no money, there's no money, there's no money every year. But don't worry, your members this all the teachers and ESPs and sps, they're used to it. And that's not right because we're in a district and you want to keep us being in a district. So how do you do that? By keeping the people. And they're going to be leaving slowly but surely. They're leaving. Why are they leaving? Because of the budget. And that's where we come up to this organizational chart and looking at what we can do to save the jobs, to save it, you have to do that.
033This is not this is serious, right? Everyone's nervous. I'm a btu steward. I'm a part of btu executive board. And all I keep hearing is people are nervous. That's not what we need to do. We're in a district. Keep it. We have to stay focused. And if we stay focused on what we want. And that's simple. We teachers prevail. The ESPs prevail. Why? Because we love our jobs, we love our kids, and we want to do better. And we will do better. But we have to. The organizational chart is something that we have to think about the money and where are we going to get more money. Okay, please think about it before you start voting on it. Think about it. We're very dedicated to our craft. We really are. Think about it. Thank you.
034Good morning. Good morning. Ernestine Ramirez, Miramar, Florida. My name is Ernestine Ramirez. I am a program supervisor for the before and after school child care department. I am here for the secoco time todvocate fofor my sisition. Our d deptmtment oversees and supportsvever 240 programs across the district, ensuring safety, compliance, and quality for our students and the families we serve. With the current staffing model, that's about 60 schools for one program supervisor. Cutting two positions means that workload would literally double, leading to poor quality and inevitably burnt out from the remaining employees. Reducing our team does not reduce the number of schools, students or expectations for the county or state. It reduces the district's ability to effectively manage them. With this recommendation, the department cannot effectively service all the schools in the county and maintain safe,
035compliant and quality programing. This is not just an operational concern, it is a major concern for student safety and our before and after school child care programs. Before and after school. Before and after school care generates millions of dollars for the district, supporting working families and provides students with a safe place before and after school hours. I respectfully urge you to reconsider this recommendation for our department and develop a plan that is safer for our students. There are millions of dollars at stake, and since the before and after care department generates their own revenue, it should not be a department that is reduced. Our income pays for ourselves. I heard many speakers behind me speak about facilities getting losing their jobs, and then getting more work added on to that. Many of these programs before
036and after school programs pay for these positions, cutting our positions. Two out of the four program supervisors again reduces our ability to manage quality programs, running two us delimiting those those programs at those schools, and in turn, those facilities losing their positions because now they don't have an aftercare program. So again, I urge you to please reconsider my position and to please take another look at the before and after school child care department. It is always something that is left on the side and not looked at. And I really urge you to do that. Thank you for your time. Good morning, Henry Smith, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I'm here today with one purpose to bring clarity and transparency to a situation that, despite other efforts, has not been fairly addressed. I am facing unemployment not because
037my position was eliminated, not because of performance concerns and not because of lack of experience, but because a staffing decision tied to another role entirely. What makes this situation especially difficult to understand is the inconsistency in the reasoning behind this decision. Last year, the foster care and child abuse programs were merged into one. At that time, I was selected to lead the newly combined program. I would like to believe that my knowledge, skills, and abilities related to child welfare had something to do with that decision. The previous district attendance coordinator, who had approximately four years of attendance attendance experience, was not renewed and another individual was placed in that position. Now, less than a year later, I am the one not being renewed. Despite having nearly two decades of experience. The explanation given to me
038was that retaining my replacement would allow the department to preserve the benefit of that individual's nearly one year of attendance experience. I respectfully ask that this decision be viewed through the lens of fairness, consistency and professional value. It is difficult to reconcile how nearly 20 years of institutional knowledge, leadership and service can be outweighed by less than one year of attendance experience. This is bigger than one position. It is about ensuring that decisions impacting people's livelihoods are made with transparency, equity and sound reasoning. Excuse me, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak and simply ask that this situation receive thoughtful reconsideration. The staff and the most vulnerable students deserve stability. Thank you. Thank you. And before the next speaker, I'll read the next five names. Robert Casale. Kathy Maher, Liga, your doctor, Natalie Lynch Walsh
039and Zaira climbs Lynch's. Hi, my name is Michelle. I'm from Davie, Florida. I'm sure you're tired of hearing from me, but I will have to say that we started an aftercare program. And unfortunately, through my chemo, it all got messed up. And if I didn't have Ernestine come. She's a hands on work. Like she helped get that program running. She helped me through the darkest days, and I am kind of sad that when we look at the organization chart, we cut the people who helped the schools. Like last school board meeting, I was getting texted by teachers, MISS Benson, can you take so and so? He's running around the classroom cursing, screaming. And that's what I do while I'm working. I work in a fine arts school that is supposed to be competing with a
040charter school. We should have. Like, if we're reimagining like that, money needs to go to, hey, we're going to have the best vocal teacher, the best band director because we're competing with a charter. But there was a hiring freeze. The principal was teaching, the assistant principal was teaching, the counselor was teaching, the reading interventionist was teaching, and then couldn't take all the groups. The the re the literacy, like we're working so hard and there's no support. It's really difficult. And I know that absenteeism. I mean, I've never worked in a generation where teachers go, that's it, I've had it. I'm leaving and they leave. They leave. Like that's not how it is. I do not want a kid to go home. I'm going to take that child. I did five iep meetings, was teaching five
041kids at the same time. I told the parents, kids come first. I, you know, we got to make sure our kids are a priority. The organizational chart is not going to help the foundation of our schools being able to service the children. They're addicted to technology. I mean, I can't believe I have five year olds begging me to get on a computer. I'm like, no, we're not getting on a computer. Cut out some of these programs, let the teachers teach, put the money with teacher assistants. We have a pre-k program with 12 children. No assistant. There's a hiring freeze. But you know what I told the district? You could say, let's hire 12 people because nobody's coming for the jobs. So that's the reality of it. But you have to put more money in the
042schools so that the community wants to come back to public school and not go to a charter where their kids are in smaller groups. They have excellent music programs, excellent electives. Please think about this before you make these decisions. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Nikki Watkins Davie, resident parent staff chair at Western High School and Central Area Advisory Council legislative representative. I'm here today because I'm deeply concerned that the district keeps looking outward for answers, while failing to fully value the expertise it already has within Broward County Public Schools is filled with highly educated, highly experienced professials, including Phd level and master's level specialists and school based leaders who understand our schools, our students and our communities. And beyond that, the district already has a district advisory council with representation from students, parents,
043educators, administrators, staff, and community members. These voices are not theoretical. They are informed, current, and connected to what is actually happening in our schools. Yet too often these recommendations are overlooked and treated as secondary. Even though the district's own advisory structure is designed to surface exactly this kind of guidance, the District Advisory Council has been discussing enrollment, staffing allocations, budget and programmatic changes already. As a highly involved parent, small business owner, taxpayer and community member, I can tell you this clearly families are exhausted by empty promises, by being shuffled around and by being spoken to as though their advocacy is inconvenient. And if someone like me who knows how to navigate systems can be treated dismissively, then I worry deeply about the less connected families, what they are experiencing. Like the parents of the 4500
044homeless students served by the heart program, who already only has ten staff, being cut to seven staff, we are not an interruption to this process. We are the reason this system exists. Parents, students and communities are why these jobs exist at every level. And if trust is low and morale is low, it's not because people care too much, it's because too many people feel unheard. While decisions keep being made farther and farther away from the classroom. Which is why I thought this poem was very relevant. The Cold Within by James Patrick Kinney. Six humans trapped by happenstance in bleak and bitter cold. Each one possessed a stick of wood. Or so the stories told. Their dying fire in need of logs. The first man held his back for the faces across the fire. He noticed
045one was black. The next man, looking across the way, saw one of not his church, and couldn't bring himself to give the fire of his stick of birch. The third one sat in tattered clothes. He gave his coat a hitch. Why should his log be put to use to warm the idle rich? The rich man sat back and thought of the wealth he had in store, and how to keep what he had earned from the lazy, shiftless poor. The black man's face bespoke revenge as the fire passed from his sight. For all he saw was. His stick of wood was a chance to spite the white. The last man of his forlorn group did not accept for gain. Giving only to those who gave was how he played the game. Their logs held tight, and
046death still hands was proof of human sin. They didn't die from the cold without. They died from the cold within. Leadership must be willing to share sacrifice, not protect status, while others absorb the risk. Thank you. Thank you. Before the next speaker, I just want to remind everyone who is here to speak publicly to please make sure to sign up as a public speaker with staff out front. So please make sure you do that. So you're on the list to speak. Good morning, MADAM Chair. Members of the board. My name is Lisa Yergin. I'm representing the Federation of Public Employees today. I've got a little a little story. You ever go out to the Everglades and you see the birds flying up there, and then they dive into the water and they pick up their
047fish and they go back up and they go about their way. Right? And that's how they survive. Well, this org chart reminds me of that because the folks on the top of the org chart here are the birds and all the rest of us, especially the Non-instructional instructional. All the rest of us are the fish just waiting to get plucked up and carried off. You know, think about it. That's what's going on. But let me tell you this about that, okay? Carol Brady, who's a business representative for the federation, did a chapter 119 record request on vendors. And what she found is over $10 million is being poured into vendors on it that are working remotely. Orlando, California, Volusia County, they're not here. Okay. We got supervising people here when they're not here. And this
048is just one example of vendor palooza. And this vendor palooza is costing hard working, dedicated employees their jobs. And they can do it better, more efficiently and more effectively. We heard from beacon. All that beacon does shout out to beacon because they have valuable jobs that no one understands all the dynamics. You don't really realize what is under there and all the things that they do and how they sustain this district. Let me say something about transportation. Y'all are cutting underneath this org chart. The fish in the water, the Esq folks that handle transportation, the attendants, the Esq attendants for transportation, they're being cut. Oh my GOD. Well, you'll say, well, there's too many of them. Well, now really, is there? That's always the answer. You know, it's always the answer. Always short. Folks in
049transportation, we all know that even though you're cutting lines, we all understand that. Let's hope that's not leading to some type of privatization situation, because we absolutely will oppose that, because we have outstanding drivers and attendants that take great care of our students and have direct contact with students, direct contact with students. I don't know, you know, we get tired of being the fish. We really do. Some of us are floating dead on top of the water like it's been a red tide. Don't you all feel like we've had a red tide? We got some kind of red tide happening here. While those birds fly off, make their nests and do what they do and have some, you know, big old time. And I think it's time to take some of them out. Let's take
050a better look at this org chart. Get some of these birds grounded. Let them find another job, maybe Houston. Good morning. My name is Stacy Ma. I live in Pompano Beach. Teacher, Broward County, almost 15 years. I'm here today on behalf of the ips, the ISPs, the sps, all these groups notified of their potential layoffs. Your organizational chart. These layoffs were decided upon without following established procedures and will directly affect our students. Instead of announcing layoffs among the top heavy administrative staff here in your Crystal Palace, the board has chosen to eliminate positions with direct student contact. This is not only fair, but is dangerous. You're attempting to pit teachers against teachers instead of supporting the educators who keep this district running. While we appreciate the 39 Esq and social worker positions you saved a
051couple of weeks ago, let's be clear 39 is not enough. I witnessed your PowerPoint shuffle. You claim we aren't top heavy yet. We spend millions on consultants in high stakes testing the very things driving students out of our district. The directive was supposed to be start from the top and work your way down instead. The directive has been ignored. We are tired of the silence. We're tired of the lack of respect for our profession. Lee County, they're trying something different. Will it work? I don't know, but at least they're trying. We need a real plan. Maybe the answer is to start cuts from your salary, from your positions, from the people in this room. Stand up for your teachers. Stop the layoffs. Protect our schools. Thank you. Good morning, Robert Kozol, Oakland Park, Florida 33311.
052I've been a Broward County teacher for over 20 years, and I have seen many changes, usually at the expense of teachers. However, this new organization chart is now aimed at all district employees. So I ask you to please review and proceed carefully. I don't want to see anyone lose their job in this district, especially with the current economy in Broward County. Still, I understand that changes must be made. Reducing employees seems like a temporary fix rather than a viable long term solution. I consider it similar to putting a band aid on a bullet wound. Instead, I urge you to look for substantial changes and one suggestion that I have come to offer you is a three year plan to change all schools to a four day school week, starting with your high schools. Savings on
053food and transportation alone would be significant. The school day would only need to be extended by one hour to make up for the core class time being lost by eliminating a day five. And I would also suggest that the eliminated day be Monday instead of Friday, since that is the day most holidays fall on. So I offer you to consider as part of your innovative options for repair in this district to look out and find other solutions. Thank you. Good morning doctor. Natalie Lynch Walsh Plantation, Florida. So you keep hearing the public doesn't trust you. And the reason people keep bringing it up. Because I'm pretty sure most of you know it is in the hopes that you will start doing things you've never done before. And that involves saying no when you should say
054no, and saying yes when you should say yes. And if you wanted to find out who failed to learn this lesson, go back to 2017 and watch the removed board because they had a history of saying yes to all the wrong things and saying no when they should have been saying yes. And as a result, five of them were recommended for removal and you don't see them here anymore. In contrast, notice MRS. Rupert is still with you because she was saying no to things that you should say no to. There's no mystery as to why she survived the last grand jury investigation. She was not playing along. So I appreciate that. MADAM Chair loves protocol and decorum and all that. But you know what? I love compliance with public records law, compliance with procurement law.
055Even I do not have the mgt documents, but I do have the emails that are made for very interesting reading because I went through them all that I did get. So and we'll get back to that in a second. This org chart is the board's responsibility, and you should be using data and best practices to create a framework for the redesign. Part of controlling is establishing standards for your superintendent to follow, which has not happened. Just for fun, I sent you guys a handout on what my expectations would be if I were the board or advising you, and it was actually my job to do that. I don't know how you're going to make recommendations. You don't even have the salaries, or at least they're not being shared with the public. H h are you
056going to knono what you'u're cting? Uu donon have ththjojo deririioionstttthehed totodasstetems So mgt recommended investing in ai and other automation, but not at the expense of necessary functions. It'll be very interesting to get the actual documents to see the disconnect and misinterpretations between what they were saying and what they're actually doing here. They did recommend 15% cuts in each department, which shed some light on some of the random seeming things. And I'm going to point out a couple of pages here on page three. They mentioned the communications department. I'll make no bones that your chief of staff is one of my favorite targets these days. All he did was add the word communications with marketing, consolidated an executive, but didn't actually consolidate. And then on page nine, they mentioned consolidating assistant directors and directors. Why
057do you have a random assistant director of student services not reporting to the director of student support? It makes no sense. Say no. I'll read the next five speakers before the next speaker approaches the microphone. Thomas Handwerk, Kameka Newman, Lorraine Maurice Vachon, and Cassandra Jackson Browne. I could go on. Welcome. I could could I speak or wait? [Laughter] Yeah, no. Go ahead. Okay. I'm sorry. I didn't know what was happening. Okay, Zaira. Deerfield beach. I'm hot. It's hot in here. Okay, so I was struck a little bit by. Oh, MADAM Chair, board members, doctor Hepburn. Hello. I was struck by your comment, Doctor Hepburn, when you asked the board about the organizational chart and saying, if you guys change it, how are you going to evaluate me? Well, you're not evaluated on how well you
058make an org chart, sir. You're evaluated based on student outcomes. And Florida Statute 1001.42 tells you. So we don't evaluate how many deputies you have. Chiefs deputy superintendents. They it's really on student outcomes, teacher retention and fiscal sanity, claiming you can't be held accountable unless you're specific or chart remains untouched. It's like a captain saying he can't be blamed for hitting an iceberg because the board suggested he hire fewer deck officers and more lookouts. The chart isn't a personal staff list, sir. It's a public budget. If you feel that the superintendent feels he can only lead by protecting administrative bloat. While the district faces a $90 million shortfall and possibly referendum not passing, then he's given you the evaluation you need right now. Pay attention, board members. You aren't here to manage his vision. You're
059here to manage the taxpayers money. And we want to know where it is and why y'all keep spending it the way you do. Don't let the Rio Games distract you from your fiduciary duty. You set the goal. He manages the resources you provide. If he can't do that again, that's his evaluation right there. Fix the chart and put the focus back on the children and teachers. Thomas Hamburg sunrise. It's already been established that these positions are valuable. Schools do not function without them. So today the question is no longer whether these cuts are harmful. That question is settled. The question is whether the board will address the problem that is actually driving this crisis. This is not an efficiency problem. It cannot be solved through cuts. It's a political problem imposed from outside the district,
060and it will only be solved through sustained political action. Broward is not unique. Districts across Florida face the same math. As a result of the same policy. Charters, vouchers, so-called choice programs are pushed aggressively by the governor, are draining public districts, funneling students into segregated scam schools that allow student funding to be laundered. Conditions will only change when districts stop covering for the governor and start forcing accountability upward. You must act immediately and decisively. Stop describing these layoffs. As enrollment declined, adopt a formal resolution stating that the service cuts are the result of state level charter and voucher expansion. Silence allows Tallahassee to frame this as local mismanagement, shift responsibility, responsibility where it belongs, coordinate with other affected districts and stand openly with teachers, staff, parents and students. You're blessed with a workforce that spends
061its own money, absorbs impossible workloads, and is deeply discontented because they see the damage every day. Their anger is an asset. Escalate beyond this room. Use the press, mobilize parents and teachers, launch media blitzes, invite expert testimony and cameras, file lawsuits, turn meetings into battlegrounds. Your sole duty is to ensure that children receive a fair quality education. You have no duty beyond that. When state policy undermines that duty, it is your ethical responsibility to confront it as aggressively as possible. Administrators manage damage. Leadership acts to stop it. This is your moment. Thank you. Good morning, board members. My name is Tamika Newman from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I'm here to speak for all voices, big and small, who feel silenced by contracts, obligations, and fear of retaliation and cannot speak for themselves. Many board members here
062today have forgotten that you are elected officials. You work for the public. The public does not work for you. While saying this, my dissatisfaction in this board is evident. I'm asking for a refund of my tax dollars. Will it happen? Probably not. But everybody in this room can understand why this board made a decision back in AUGUST that has left a severe financial impact for the Food and nutrition department of the Broward County School boards. And I'm going to explain why the Food and Nutrition Department of Broward County School is a self-sustaining department. That means that no taxpayer dollars, no general funding from the district pays for anything in that department. The money from that department comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the reimbursable meals from each school. Therefore, I cannot understand how
063they are being strong armed into doing what this department wants. When none of your funding pays for anything over there, it is from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. With this being said, those funds help to purchase food support operations, pay employees salaries, and ensure that there is enough money to repurchase food so that we can continue to feed the children in this district. The employees of this district are expected to feed children when they come there, but many of them go home unable to feed their own families and their own children, asking hard working employees to absorb rising insurance costs, shrinking paychecks and withheld raises is unconscionable. I said, thank you, but you can't get a raise. Also, we raising you on insurance, and we know that you sustain your own money, but you can't
064use that money to give your employees raises, even though you can, because we made a debacle on our side. So it would look bad if your employees get raises and we don't have the money to give our employees raises, so we can't look back. But those people, they worked for that money. Do you know what it's called? When people work for money and then someone else dictates what they can do with that money, they have a name for that. That is financial exploitation, rooted in systematic inequality. That is definitely what it is. It's not appreciation. You can't appreciate somebody for the money that they worked for. I want every one of you board members to take a test. When you get paid next Friday, take your paycheck, give it to somebody else. Let them manage
065your finances for the money that you work for, and then you come back at the next board meeting and tell me how that worked out for you, because that's basically what you're asking the food and nutrition department to do. At the last board meeting, the former director of Food and Nutrition, along with the director of finances, try to explain to you what your wish would do to people. Thousands and thousands of employees. You heard them because everyone in this room can hear. You did not listen to what they were trying to tell you, and that is your fault, not theirs. This board needs to figure out how they're going to accommodate that. Thank you. Excellent. Hello, I'm Lorraine Maurice Vachon of Sunrise, Florida, a 35 year vet teacher and also a proud graduate of Plantation
066High School, class of 86. Good morning. District leadership. Respect. I am here to tell you what this means to all of us that are here. We all want you to do for us. What we want you to do for us is to give it to us here at home. Broward County Schools is respect. Can we get just a little. I stand here today on behalf of the Broward Teachers Union stewards and the educators and staff members who show up every single day for our children, even when they they're tired, they're overwhelmed and uncertain about their own future. And today I came with one word in my spirit. And that's respect. Not just respect as a slogan, not respect as a talking point, but respect in action. Because behind every position listed on an on this
067org chart is a person, a teacher, a counselor, an employee who stayed late, brought supplies out of their own pocket, answered emails after hours, confident children in crisis, and carried schools through some of the hardest seasons we have ever seen. So when layoffs are discussed, when restructuring is proposed, we need this district to remember that people are not disposable. Our educators and the rest of our bottom org chart friends are not just numbers. They can be moved that can be moved around. On paper. They are the heartbeat of our schools. And what our members are asking for is simple talk to us with transparency. Lead with compassion. Handle this process with dignity, and give educators the respect they have earned. Because respect sounds like timely communication. Respect sounds like honesty. Respect sounds like making sure
068employees are supported before decisions are finalized. Our members understand that challenges exist. We understand budgets. We understand enrollment changes, but understanding the challenge would never require silence about impact. And the impact is real. There are educators finishing this school year while quietly wondering how they will provide for their families, where they will work next year, or whether their years of service truly matter. So today we are asking district leadership to see the human side of these of these decisions. The Broward Teachers Union will continue to stand beside our members, advocate for our members and fight for the respect every educator deserves. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry. One second. Could you repeat your name for the record? I didn't capture it. Lorraine Morris hyphen Vachon. Thank you so much. Hello. My name is Casandra Jackson Browne,
069Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I've been in the district for 19 years, and I'm here on behalf of the ssis who up until three weeks ago was not. In this position of being eliminated two weeks ago. Thank you. Thompson board member, Thompson, for putting into motion to say our whole department. But once again, we're still here and on the chart has been eliminated. We are first responders at our schools. We're accessible to all students, even though we carry a load of 65 or more. We have access our accessible to all our schools. We work with our colleagues, the social workers we work with, the family counselors we work with, the school counselors, the a p s. We are there when they can't be there. So once again, I ask you to reconsider your decision in getting rid
070of our department. I heard DR. Zeman mentioned at a board meeting that he has ways that you all could make cuts and keep the budget intact. Please explore it. We are here for the whole mental health team. We're part of that team. We have direct impact on students. We see those students every day, Monday through Friday. As soon as we touch down on our campuses. We consider. Thank you. And before the next speaker, I'll just read the next five names, Doctor Trudy Germanovich, Judy Trunzo, Venice Jackson, Anna Fusco, and Liliana Ruido. If you could please approach the mic. Welcome. Go ahead. Good morning. My name is Patricia from Tamarack, Florida, and I hold a master's degree in mental health counseling and school counseling. Once again, we're here, unfortunately, still in a state of confusion and
071chaos and with no clear understanding what direction we're going. This is a public meeting. If you want people to believe and to have the power and to achieve greatness, you have to lead with that. You have to give us the guidance to understand where we're going, because Doctor Martin Luther King says the ultimate measure of a person is not where you stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where you stand at times of challenge and chaos and confusion. I work for the mental health department ssis we are here to provide support. This is Mental Health Awareness Month and we're not doing okay. The teachers are not doing okay. School staff members are not doing okay. District staff members are not doing okay. We're supposed to be providing support to the kids. We're in a
072crisis. The kids are in a crisis. If the adults are in a crisis, where do you where are you leaving the kids? How can we provide good support to the kids? How can we actually come in and achieve these goals that you want us to achieve? To maintain an a rated school system where we're in chaos and confusion, the leaders are not leading. Yesterday was Mother's Day and today I'm coming in. I'm getting messages, emails from students. You're like a mother at the school for us. And if you're not here, how are we going to move forward? How are we going to be successful? We work with the team. We not only support the students, we support the staff. We're here for the staff because when the staff is burnt out, the school counselors right
073now testing, I should be there supporting them because they're doing testing. Some of them are proctors. So when there's a crisis, who they're calling, who's part of the text train like, hey, MISS Ville, you're going to be the front person because we're proctoring today. But instead of being there to support the staff and support the school to maintain an a rated school, I'm here and I'm not doing okay. And we need to make this right. You need to make sure we can believe in you all have the power to do what we signed up to do and to achieve greatness and to get that a, we're not here for the money because if we wanted to, we could all leave. Other districts are paying us. I came from New York City and I decided to
074take a pay cut because I wanted a different lifestyle for my child. But trust and believe me, the money I was making in New York, I'm not making it here. So we're not here for the money. We're here for the well-being and wellness of our children, our personal children, and the children we foster when we go into these school system, these teachers. We're not just teachers. We're not just bodies. We are people that are here to provide support to and be able to achieve, to believe the power that we could achieve greatness and success from our children. Please save the s, s, I s and supervisors position. Thank you. And I'll just call the next five names as well. Terry Price, Sheena Newton, Rochelle Safer, Erica Hanson and yeah, go ahead. My name is Doctor
075Trudy Germanovich of Fort Lauderdale. So many issues. But I have to address the fact that written comments were a problem. Also, this weekend I received frustrated private messages from people who tried but could not get the Granicus system to work. The beginning of the year, I spoke out about how the entire website had several glitches and nowhere for anyone to report problems. People who cannot come in person need a place which works to have their public comments considered by this board and the public. The public should have had access to make a written comment up to 8 A.M. Today for this very late notice special school board meeting, because that's what's in policy. And you're going to eliminate many lower level jobs that are critical to this organization. They only had till 2 P.M. On
076Sunday on Mother's Day. Why didn't they have till 8 A.M. This morning? Please direct the superintendent to follow policy. As far as written comments, I made sure the board saw the comments by sending each of you a long email, which I hope you got with the comments that were submted. In comparing the positions that are being eliminated on this org chart, I can only point out that too many critical positions of counselors, ESPs, teachers, and support staff that have been working directly in the schools and yet they are listed to be eliminated. I ask again, why can't this superintendent follow the lead of Lee County Superintendent? She found over 23 million. By eliminating upper level administrators. That's not what's happening here. This superintendent seems to believe that the upper level administrators are indispensable. There were
077a minimal number of eliminations of those above the line in the district positions. There have been a h htory of having high lelel p pple gontntchools an simply tetell oths wtt they'reoioing w wngng.Oo p I it simply, this is where micromanagement of teachers and principals and other staff begins. And that should stop right now and searching. I was able to find and compare an organizational chart from the early 2000, when Broward School District had not yet lost students. That was not top heavy organizational chart. It was a very short organizational chart. They put the resources into the schools. This org chart should not be passed in its present form. You need to keep the people that are doing the work. Thank you. Next speaker. Good morning, Liliana Ruido btu. And I want to start by
078saying I trust you. I trust you to do the right thing today. I trust you that you are going to consider all of the people, all of the employees that work one on one with the students, those who are putting down fires out there. I do know that the majority of you who are sitting up there were teachers once, and it's things have changed. Things are not the same. And it's very concerning right now for some of the teachers thinking, okay, I have a job today, but I don't know if tomorrow I will. I say, I'm going to say again that I do trust you. I do trust you to believe in what we do out there. I do trust you for you. Before you cut or eliminate certain positions, look at certain positions that
079probably are not as needed in the directive area. I will say and reconsider those who are in the front that I will say that part. But the other part I will say is I am kind of concerned because you keep saying that you are going to cut teachers. But when we go to schools, classrooms are overcrowded, and it's concerning that when you see a classroom with 50 students, 60 students, at times you think, okay, we always say, and we always preach that we care about the students and we want to do the right thing by them. But it's kind of impossible when you have 50 or 60 students at once. So I'm going to ask you again to reconsider what you are doing. And before you make any cut, don't forget also those who are
080straight with mental health, like guidance counselors, social workers, ssi. I will say you, you gotta see how you do it. Because we live in thriving times, things are not the same. Our students need lots and lots of support and guidance. And by you cutting this type of position, I will say it's you send a very strong message that, you know, we say it's about the students, but you will let go certain positions that are directed to help our students and keep our students, you know, in a, in a, in a way that they feel comfortable, they have somebody that they can trust and they can speak. And that's why, again, I'm going to say I do trust you because I understand sitting up there is not easy. But at the same time, you you have
081a duty to represent us. You have you. You are the voice. You have the final decision when when you vote. And everybody here knows that teachers out there are struggling and they should not be touched. Again, I trust you do the right thing. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please state your name for the record, please. Judy Tronzo. Judy, is there a Judy? Is there a Judy? They're out of order. Okay. She was called already. Okay. Go ahead, state your name for the record, please. Venetia Jackson. Okay. Go ahead. Okay. Venetia Jackson from the training department. All right. I'm going to start off with a couple of things. First, I spoke during one of the first meetings, and at that time it was brought up employees that have been here for over 20 years, such
082as myself. Within five years of being able to retire. Now, I've seen somewhere in the contract where it says that you're not supposed to eliminate somebody. That is, within a few years of being vested. So how do you decide not to eliminate somebody that's within a few years of being vested, but you'll turn around and you'll eliminate an employee. There's a few years from retiring who has dedicated their life to this department, to this organization, making little to nothing peanuts. And now here we are at the end of our career. Possibly. And then you'll say, okay, never mind that. She has 25, 28 years. You know, whatever. We'll go ahead and eliminate that person. Somebody please help me make that make sense. The second part of that is I know that you have to make
083cuts and it's hard, a hard decision to make or whatever. And you said that you wouldn't touch anyone that was directly responsible for the children transportation. We're the first ones that they see those bus operators and those bus attendants. Those are the first ones. They're saying, okay, without the proper training, this can make or break their day. Okay. When they come in with those bus operators and those bus attendants or whatever, then they have to be trained in order to know how to respond to crises. Students having bad days, Esq students, students that can't speak. They have to be trained in order to handle these type of things or whatever. So how on earth in a transportation department, do you have a training team and no training supervisor? That would be me. All of that
084training comes through my department, every bus operator, every bus attendant, if they need to be retrained, if they need to go back through training again because they're lacking management skills, if they're lacking communication skills, if they're lacking passenger management skills. All of that comes through my department. So I'm trying to understand how do you have trainers that are out on the road, and that's their primary responsibility to be out there on the road, teaching these new people that are going to start working with our children. Okay. How do you decide that you're eliminating these? Okay. How do you decide that you're eliminating bus operators or whatever? Now you have students on side of the road for extended periods of time because we don't have enough bus operators. Or how about this? Now you have them
085on the bus for two and three hours because the route is extended, because you don't have enough bus operators. Now you're going to start to get phone calls from the parents because their child is urinating themselves or something on the bus because they've been on the bus for so long and they didn't get a chance to go to the bathroom before they left. Or how about this, that parent that's about to get reprimanded because they're late for work every day, because the bus operators are doing so many different things, and all of these additional routes are being attached to their route so that they can get these students, because we can't leave any students left behind. So while I understand you have to make cuts, the sacrifice has to be worth the reward and the
086transportation is not. Thank you. Next speaker, please, please state your name for the record. Hi, my name is Erica Honsinger. Good morning. School board members, superintendent, district leadership, and members of the community. I'm a parent, an educator, btu steward, and proud City of Sunrise residents. I'm here today because the decisions on this organizational chart are not just boxes, titles, and budget lines. They are children. They are families. They are the adults who know how to step in before a crisis becomes a tragedy. This weekend I witnessed a child have a serious mental health break. I will not say her name because she deserves dignity and protection. But I will say this it was bad. She was overwhelmed emotionally, up and down, physically aching, repeating herself and trying to survive feelings that no child should have
087to carry alone. And in that moment, I was reminded that schools cannot run on luck. I am one person. I am one parent, an educator in the City of sunrise residents. I know how to research. I know how to ask questions. I know how to call agencies, email the right people, push through red tape and advocate because advocacy is in my blood. But I keep asking myself, what happens to the families who do not know where to start? What happens to the grandmother raising a child who does not know what heart is? What happens to the guardian? Who does not know which office to call, which forms to sign, which agency to contact, and how to explain that a child is in crisis without being ignored, blamed or bounced around like a basketball. This is
088why these positions matter. Because trained counselors, social workers, family counselors, family psychologists and mental health professionals are not just helping children, they are helping families navigate systems that can feel impossible when you are scared, exhausted, working two jobs and trying to keep a child safe. Because we cannot hope the right adult happens to be nearby. We cannot ask teachers to be counselors, social workers, crisis responders, case managers, trauma specialists, and classroom instructors all at once. Teachers love children. We show up. We make the call. We stay late. We do human things. We. We love. But love is not a system. A hallway conversation is not a mental health plan, and a child in crisis should not have to wait for the system to figure out who is still on the organizational chart. Programs like heart
089and Mckinney-vento matter. School counselors are vital. They actually have boots on the ground. Family counselors, school psychologists matter. There are. These are not extras. These are not. These are safety nets. I also want to publicly honor people like Melanie Taylor. Melanie was a was one of the kind counselor who became a light for families, including mine. During one of the hardest seasons of my life. She helped my own children feel seen and supported. That work does not always show up neatly in spreadsheets, but it shows up in children who stay connected, stay hopeful, and stay alive. And yet, after 13 years of serving the district, you let her go. So when we talk about eliminating, absorbing redistricting, or realigning these positions, I need us to speak. Thank you plainly. Thank you, thank you. Next speaker,
090please. Hello. Terry Lopez, vice PRESIDENT Of the Broward Teachers Union. I don't even know what I'm going to say or what can be said at this point. It's a bit horrifying to see that with all that we have fought as a society that I'm looking at billionaires just bilking us, and I'm talking not just to you guys, because what you have to do is difficult. I'm talking to the public who are not aware of how these things are working, of how laws are being made by people who are invested in charter schools and private schools and vouchers, who are making decisions up there. And in Tallahassee, someone spoke earlier about how we lost many people in our board. Yes, we did, and it was filled with others. And those others have made some of the
091decisions that you are dealing with now, and the people who are against public education, the people who are guiding these decisions are the same people who are breaking up unions. Oh, and not all unions. No, mostly the ones where the teachers and the nurses are, I don't know, maybe people with ovaries, I don't know. How can they carve out the police and the firefighters and say that only our unions are going to be destroyed? Well, let's not pay them. And in the meantime, we'll just destroy the unions because the unions are the ones that are fighting for the people. Every year we're told there's no money in. Every year we find a way to get a raise. And this year, even our forensic financial people, as well as yours and all of the bargaining unit
092agents, have known there is no money. Well, I've been hearing since 2011, since I started coming here. When I was appointed by Representative Murray to the District Advisory Council. I've been hearing how you don't budget, not you necessarily. This board has never budgeted for the employees at the beginning. No, you don't budget at the beginning. [Laughter] That just doesn't make any sense, does it? It's the biggest expenditure. How many times did I have to hear Nora Rupert Robin Bartleman say, why aren't we putting money aside for the teachers and our employees? First people over products, too many people with grubby hands who already have a lot of money are making these decisions, are paying off. People in Tallahassee, here in all of our government. And if the public doesn't wake up and smell the roses,
093I don't know what to say, because we found out that 12 to 20% of teachers vote unless they're members of the union, then there's about 60 to 90% vote. Well, of course, then they're going to destroy the unions. So we don't have any teachers voting on these kinds of things that are happening here right now. There's no money. It's going to testing billionaires. It's going to vouchers, billionaires. It's going everywhere except with the kids. And I've been saying, and PRESIDENT Fusco has been saying over and over again since we were elected in 2016, people over products. The Nordic countries have figured that out. They're not using computers anymore. They said, no, those Americans are nuts with all their computers. We're going back to paper and pencil and we're going back to books. Get the message?
094Thank you. Next speaker. Rochelle silver Coconut Creek, Florida. I'm glad I've got some eyes on me today. I don't have to ask like I had to ask last time. So some of you guys greeted us with good morning. I really wanted to say back, who is it good for? It's good for you all. Not so much those of us here who should be with our kids, teaching and instructing. But we're taking time out of our own day to appeal to you guys, to save the jobs of those who we work with. So I know that some of you finally got the message. So last week when I said, I don't trust you. Well, that's changed. I trust some of you. You're building trust, but we're not quite there yet. See, those who are elected up
095here. I'm trusting you more. Okay. I'm feeling a little bit more love, but I'm not feeling the love for those who are in the schools in the district directly with the children, the bus drivers. You heard their plea, or maybe you didn't because you were too busy with your cell phones. The ssis we heard their pre did you were you on your phone or did you actually hear us? Here's the thing. I'm a little feisty again, and I'm tired of being so feisty with you guys. But I'm here to save the jobs of my colleagues as well. So when we're offering a company, a vendor up to $150,000 to recruit kids to come back to a local middle school, can't we offer that to a school social worker who might be cut colors? At 850
096a head comes out to about 118 kids. That's two social worker jobs, my friends. Why do we have to go to a vendor? Why can't we keep our own employees employed and offer them the same? See, this is where we keep swinging and missing. We had someone say to me, well, I'm not a soccer parent. I'm a baseball parent. Well, stop striking out, guys. Stop striking out. Stop away the money to vendors. When we have employees who could be doing it ourselves, I see again, eyes are anywhere but on me that is so not appreciated in a classroom. I would always be going right up to you on your desk, because I don't know why my words are less important than what's in front of you. Just looking. Watching. Because it was abundantly clear last
097week on my speech who was paying attention, who was not paying attention. I defended most of you, but the one who was not paying attention. The camera said it all. And I hope for those who are here in the audience that were panning and seeing who's not paying attention, because I want it to be known. Rochelle Sofer, Coconut Creek, you hear the name. I'm not going anywhere. Some of you might. Next speaker. Hi, I'm Judy Trunzo, and I'm. a microphone. All right. Like this. Yeah. Yes. Right. Because I'm short. Thanks. Okay, so I'm still nervous. This is the second time speaking in public. And I'm only doing it because we matter. And most importantly, our students matter. Who's your grandchildren and your child? I know the school board screwed up the budget. I understand that,
098I know we're paying for several superintendents now, some of them working in another state making more money. I know that I don't think we can control that, so I'm trying to let it go. It's kind of challenging, but. I just don't. It's hard to put into words. I don't know why we have to be here. I don't know why we keep we keep coming. But in my opinion, I don't know if anybody's listening now. Hopefully I'm wrong because there's times when I really want to be wrong and this is one of them. But. We need the referendum that's important. We shouldn't have to pay for our health insurance at all, because it's not like we make a lot of money, but Anna Fusco, if she says something needs to be done, then I trust her.
099She's the best. And it's a shame that you guys don't listen to her because if you did, this place would be running really well. [Laughter] But anyway, is not. And that's how it is. [Laughter] So I just think that we should not cut people at the end of at the end, all of us are working with the students. We see them, we know them, we work overtime. I don't know if there's a person in this room that hasn't worked hours on their time, because it affected it, because it impacts the child. I'm supposed to be testing right now, but instead I had to do a tda to come here to speak. I would rather be helping these students graduate, but I can't because if I don't do that, there could be many people in this
100room, including myself, without a job. And then how do we pay our bills? How do we put food on our table? How do we keep a roof over our head? And why do we have to have those questions? Most of us, I've been in this school district for 24 years, 25 years, something like that. So I just never fathomed the situation. Now I understand there's a budget cut, but construction people are getting paid per job and not per hour, which is why they're off taking a nap. Thank you so much. Can you can you excuse me? Can you state your name again for the record? Judy Trunzo. Thank you. Is there any more registered speakers? Go ahead. Can you state your name for the record, please? Hi, my name. Is Sheena Newton. I'm the assistant
101director of the Business Support Center. And I'd like to say good morning to everyone. Board members. Superintendent. I kikindff upset and depressed right now because this is happening to me. I've been very loyal to the district for 29 years. I actually prepared a speech. I can't even read the speech because of how I feel right now. I've been here for 29 years and I gave my all, my all to the district, to the students. I did everything possible. I never been written up. I've been a good employee, don't have an attendance problem, but unfortunately I did receive a letter to be non-renewed not so much my job being cut off to our chart. It's just that I'm being non-renewed due to someone that's going to take that position who got cut off the org chart.
102And I just think it's unfair because I show so much loyalty to this district, and I don't feel that I'm receiving that loyalty back. And it really hurts me to my heart because I graduated from this district, class of 89 at Dillard High School. I worked my way up in this district. I went back to school and got my degree and I moved up. I'm one of the little babies that started in here and moved up in this district. I worked hard to get where I am today, and I feel like everything has been stripped away from me in 29 years of service, and I just feel it's so unfair to me. And I'm saying this from my heart. Please look at this. I just don't see why someone who's been dedicated to students i
103was over internal funds account. Every principal in the district called me. I give them advice what to do and what not to do. According to state statutes, I am a stickler for following the rules and anything that keeps the district out of trouble. I was there to do that. I was an auditor in this district. I served in many different capacities and I worked my way up, and I just feel like my life has been taken away from me. I have two kids in college now. I have to tell them they won't be able to go to college anymore because I won't be able to afford it. Unfortunately, that's what's going on in my life right now, and I just felt like I needed to share that. I didn't want to do it, but I
104just feel like you need to know because it's things that you do not know what's going on with people who pour their heart out to you all to make this district to be a, a district, and to be successful. One of the best districts to work for. But the way I feel, I don't know that anymore. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Is there any further speakers? Yeah. One second. Yes. Oh, wait. Wait. No, no, I go to the left. Go ahead. I thought you said I had to go now or else. My name is Michael Henry of Davie, Florida. I was a student from Nova High School. I graduated in 2023. My mother has been a union teacher for nearly 20 years. I think the measure on this, on the
105on the table is really detrimental to our students, to our staff. The board is largely concerned about budget cuts and the nature of the amounts of money in the general funds budget, but we have to understand if we're going to cut. Hundreds of teachers from from our staff, we're going to cut hundreds of educational professionals. We are going to be doing a disservice to our students. We are going to be doing a disservice to our county if we're concerned about the number of students in our schools over the long term, we are going to be dismantling public education in this county, because if parents know that the people who are going to be taking care of our kids, keeping them safe aren't going to be employed in our district anymore. We are going to be
106dismantling our confidence in those in our institutions, right in consider under this operational plan, there are 57 campus monitors who are set to lose their jobs. There are nearly a dozen elementary school counselors set to lose their jobs. There are nearly, I believe, three dozen who are set to lose their jobs under this organizational plan. I think we are doing them a disservice. This will only serve to dismantle public education in this district, because when parents start to lose confidence in this district, they won't be willing to send their kids to this district. And if we're really concerned about keeping keeping students, keeping enrollment here, then this plan only hurts the people we are most concerned about. I think, frankly, as it's constructed, it's an anti-school safety agenda. If we're getting rid of those campus
107monitors. This is the same district where parkland happened, and we said, never again. [Laughter] We can't allow this to happen in our communities. My name is Mickey Henry. I'm running for school board in district six. Thank you. Son of Broward at son of broward.Org. Thank you so much. Next speaker please. Just a point of order. There's a delay because people are in that other room. They're not hearing their names. PRESIDENT Fusco is definitely speaking and some others probably as well. Thank you. Okay. General Council, can you go ahead? Point of order, chair. Hold on. Can the general counsel speak on policy? Board member Alhadeff. Campaigning board member Alhadeff. I just called on general counsel to speak. Thank you. Thank you very much, MR. CHAIRMAN. I just want to make sure that the the public is
108aware that there is no campaigning during public comment. There are very specific laws, both state and federal law, that prohibits political activities during a government meeting and other government matters. So we would appreciate that you are in compliance with state and federal law as well as board policy. Vice Chair Point of order. Thank you. General counsel, board member Alhadeff. No, that was me. Thank you. Okay. Board member Thompson, did you have something say yes. Could you just reread the list of names? That's what our chair usually does to make sure no one's being. Okay, so we have one more speaker, which. But she usually reads the names that weren't checked off. Okay, so Ana Fusco and Delvin King. Okay. Ana Fusco, go ahead. Ana Fusco, Broward Teachers. Union PRESIDENT I was hoping you all would
109have caught that last one. So you heard it from a lot of people today. And again, Ana Fusco, our teachers union PRESIDENT, represent three groups here that all of them are affected on the org chart. And let's call it what it is. We cannot MISS The message that you guys gave. Do not affect employees that directly impact students. How many more times is that going to happen? So I'm hoping you guys fix that today. It's on you. Don't let that little tactic. You can't get it into everyday operations. This is not everyday operations. As I said at the last few board meetings, you're not going to see the impact now because they're here. What you will see that impact will happen the first week of school. Mark my words, you guys make sure you got
110that on video. It's going to come back because I will be the one to say I told you so. So I suggest you all follow the lead of Nora and Adam, who have been steadfast on making sure that nobody gets impacted, that work with students. Jeff, I really hope you bring back that call to not have 3000 employees laid off jobs, cut positions gone. It's it's not going to work. I'm telling you, we are at skeletal in our schools. I don't know how you don't know and see it. I challenge you to walk a week with me. Really walk a week with Anna Fusco and get the real stuff that's going on, not the dog and pony shows you get because everybody's afraid. And I'm not trying to insult my admin. We have grown together.
111All working groups are working together. 100% of the working groups, the 9010. Thank you for that. That is huge. That referendum is going to win in NOVEMBER. It's going to be big. We were hoping when you did do this decision to cut these employees and fix up the budget, that you still wouldn't come at us with the insurance, but yet you still are. And I need you to speak openly about really where the budget is before you do this org chart of why you're doing it, really where we're impacting of why you're coming after employees to pay into their insurance. There's multiple reasons why the Broward Teachers Union took that position to be the less impact for the employees of Broward County Public Schools, because your attorney and your superintendent wouldn't push back the impasse.
112So if we don't ratify tomorrow, we're at Impasse on Wednesday night. There's that. I'll be standing before you as as our judges, which we we know what you're going to do, what you think you have to do. I'd hope you could change your minds with this impactful of a thousand people being let go. It's going to impact our schools. I'm telling you over and over again, do not pass this org chart with making significant changes today. Thank you, MR. Hill. Is that it? For speakers? That concludes our public comments. Thank you. I now turn it over to the superintendent. I'm sorry, General Counsel. You MAY go ahead. Thank you. I just want to make sure that those that were called that did not come to the mic, that they we make sure that perhaps they
113didn't hear us. So I just want to make sure that we put that on the record. Okay. So we only have one speaker, Delvin King. Is Delvin King here? Okay. Very good. So I now turn it over to the superintendent for remarks and a quick presentation. Thank you. DR. Holness, and thank you, chair, school board members, staff, public. Today's item is more than an organizational chart. It's about operating an operating framework required to lead Broward County public schools with clarity, accountability, and discipline during a period of significant financial and enrollment challenges. As Superintendent and Chief Execive Officer of this district, I'm accountable for the framework, strategies, and execution of both district operations and teaching and learning. That responsibility requires an organizational structure that clearly defines leadership, aligns resources to priorities, reduces duplications, strengthens coordination, and
114ensures that every major function of the district is connected to student achievement, school support, operaonal effectiveness, and long term financial stability. The proposed organizational chart is an important component of that work. It reflects board feedback, which is highlighted in yellow shading on the org chart, and a deliberate effort to align staffing and leadership responsibilities with current conditions while preserving our core mission. High quality instruction, safe and supportive schools, essential services, and meaningful support for students and families. These decisions are not easy, and I recognize the human impact of any staffing reorganization. However, responsible leadership requires that we make difficult decisions in a thoughtful, transparent, and student centered manner. My my commitment is to continue leading this work with accountability, compassion, and focus so that Broward County Public Schools is structured not only to meet today's
115challenges, but to operate more effectively and sustainably for the future. You have beacon. If you can pull the presentation up for me, please. And so we can dive right into slide two. Thank you. So just want to remind the board of, of, of why we're here and how we got to where we are as far as the difficult decisions that we've had to make. I, we've heard about a number of students that we've declined by a reduced by in the past ten years, but I want to make it more recent. In the past three years, we've declined by approximately 25 to 25,000 students, which equates to about $225 million in revenue loss. Every student that we receive, we get revenue. For every student that we lose, we lose revenue for. And as a result, some
116things that have not happened in quite some time is also aligning our staffing as we've aligned some of our school or facilities reductions to meet the to meet the reality of our declining enrollment. And that's reducing by 1000 positions. Next slide. Also, as you've heard from the public and myself, especially, that this is not a unique problem to to Broward County public schools. This is going on across the state and also across the nations. And depending on where you are, many variables contribute to this. South Florida, we have affordability issues, immigration issues, and also for national. That's common amongst all school districts is the decline in birth rates across the country. As you can see, this is survey two. To survey two, we actually collect student enrollment data in OCTOBER of every year. And so
117this is OCTOBER of 2024 2025, compared to just this past OCTOBER in this current school year. And you see the decline in enrollment for seven of the large school districts in the in the state, with Miami-Dade having the largest because there are about 100,000 students more than us. So not a unique problem to us. We also continue, as with all of these districts, continue to lose enrollment throughout the year after that OCTOBER count, which equates to our number of 10,000. And so that's how we we get a projection from the state. We look at our numbers that we steadily lose throughout the school year, and we. And we create a good prediction for the upcoming school year. Next slide please. Also specifically on the timeline, there's a my initial initiative and also board direction of,
118of reducing our positions by 1000. We took that to heart and ensuring that we're not impacting our school sites. And we did a extensive analysis, also working with a third party assurance vendor, just to make sure we're on the right track and understanding how our benchmark looks compared to other systems, our size, and getting some comparative analysis and examining our risk and reward. During that process. We also had a workshop, that initial workshop where the school board gave some discussions and also some directions that we've embedded into the current org chart. That's before you today on the agenda. But today is a final decision point for this recommended recommended plan. And as you as you've heard from most of the speakers today, and I've heard throughout some other constituents is that uncertainty? Uncertainty is real.
119And so we need to make a final decision so we can move forward, contact any newly impacted employees, and start revving up the system to support our impact employees, just to make sure they land in a comparable employment opportunity that's going to benefit them, and also start our our process, which usually starts this time of the year, all leading leading up to the start of the school year as well, all the personnel components that need to happen. That takes some time to do it the right way. Next slide. Also, as I said before this, this initiative has not concentrated on school based positions at all. It's concentrated on district funded positions. And we've kind of put the district positions into two separate buckets, central office and central operations. Central operations are key components to ensure
120that our district is operating and and high functioning at the operational level. Those positions in central operations, they do not reduce one for one like a central office position or even school based positions when when you have a decline in enrollment. So it's easier for us to mitigate the risk on central office positions because you you can't mitigate that type of risk in central operations. When you lose a bus driver or you lose a food and nutrition staff, or you lose facility staff because many of those key components still have to function even in the midst of declining enrollment. Because we still have the buildings, we still have the routes. So we concentrated many of our efforts on central Office because we can mitigate that risk, we can ensure the services that are being provided
121and operate in this district can continue with less positions in the central office realm, and as a result, total reductions in central office are 22%. Only 9% of those 22% reduction is actually with filled positions with people in those positions. For central operations, only 11% and only 1% of central operation positions are actually filled with current employees, school based positions. We have not touched those at all with this initiative. That is 000 with this initiative. Next slide. Beacon. Also, just to emphasize central operations and how it functions does not it does not reduce one for one with enrollment. I transportation. If we have 50 kids on that bus today and there's 35 kids on that bus next year, we still need a bus driver. So we can't reduce many central operation positions that that, you
122know, correlate to a reduction in students. So we were very strategic in ensuring that we're mitigating the right amount of risk when it comes to central operations. And that's why you're going to see fewer cuts or reductions in that area versus others. And this just goes over, you know, we have 61, 6100 employees that are funded from the district and not on school based budgets in 3000 of those positions are central office. The rest are central operations. And again, just emphasizing that only 9% out of the 22% that we've that we've reduced in central operations actually are filled positions. So the positions carry the least amount of risk risk so we can continue operational success across the district and doing what we need to do, you know, our priorities and principles in this whole entire
123strategy was about protecting the classroom and also ensuring that we can manage the risk versus the reward. Next slide. Beacon. And so the as we did our analysis, you know, we can't just evenly across the board implement reductions, we really have to step back as a team and also myself and actually analyzing the risk and reward and knowing that it's not even and several questions that we asked ourselves, the operational risk, what's what's the capacity needed to keep our schools successful in the midst of declining enrollment in the midst of reducing staff at the same time, what's the cost reward? What reductions create the best recurring savings while mitigating risk across the board? And then for vacancy opportunities, right. That that was forefront in our minds for positions that we're going to have to reduce
124that are have employees filling those positions. What reductions can can equate to the least amount of employees being impacted by, while also ensuring that we have positions in recurring vacancies that we know of year to year that we can staff those individuals in, and also just maintaining service continuity across the board. We're trying to minimize disruptions as much, as much as possible with this inititiave. N Ntt sli. Again, so for t the t tususdd positions that were reduced, only 300 of them actually are filled with current employees and 700 of them are vacant positions. This goes back to our hard hiring freeze that we implemented in around DECEMBER, just to ensure that we're not bringing in new employees that we ultimately have to cut at the end of the year. So we were very strategic
125in that, knowing that we're going to have some vacancies and, you know, not impact as many employees as anticipated. With that said, all across the board of Bcps, all of our staff, all of our employees, the current employees that are being reduced, that are in positions that are filled, are only 1% of the entire organization. For Broward County Public Schools, 80 to 90% of those impacted employees will qualify for projected openings, and they can take advantage of those openings if they see fit. I mean, currently it equates to a $54 million in savings for the district. Also placement strategy. We are prioritizing our employees that are impacted through this initiative to ensure that they have priority to be placed in positions that are vacant or currently open. And I know the hr team has already
126placed some of those positions, and they're continuing to work with those impacted employees as well, just to offer the opportunities for positions that are available now. And we know that will be available in the near future as well. And so looking at qualification reviews for certification experience and matching them up for those projected vacancies, and also if, if, if there's an instance where a person doesn't qualify for a position that we offer, We have a strong partnership with Careersource have been working with our hr team since JANUARY to prepare themselves to assist us in this initiative, just to make sure our staff have comparable employment opportunities as we move forward. As I said before, MAY 11th, today is the decision point for the recommended reductions. There's a lot of next steps that happen starting tomorrow.
127If there's additional impact and employees, we need to notify them immediately. But we also need our entire organization to have a level of certainty about what what is going to happen after tomorrow, and how we're going to support our staff and also principals and school leaders knowing what projected openings they're going to have with the employees that will be available to fill those positions moving forward in all the the tangible things that the hr division does, starting now all the way to the beginning of the school year to fill positions across the across schools and across the district. Also, I know we're going to discuss some org chart shifts and even probably some positions below the line as well. One thing I asked the board is, one, if there are recommendations for certain shifts to
128bring back employees or to delimit positions that you give the opportunity to myself and my staff to, to really discuss those so we can examine those operational risk or organizational risks just to make sure we're not diminishing capabilities of doing certain services that we need to complete. Also, to remain cost neutral, you know, these thousand positions in the in our reduction is for a purpose. And that's to align our staffing to our enrollment realities now and also in the future. And so asking that if we do the limit of we bring back positions, that it is cost neutral for for the duration of the discussion and staff can help help you out with understanding the cost for those positions. As we have a, a robust discussion. With that said, I, my recommendation is we're protecting
129educators at the school level. We're protecting our core operational services. We've we've heeded the board's direction in a thousand positions, and we are working steadily to implement next steps by notifying any newly impacted employees, making sure they're aligned to current vacancies, and preparing our organization to to start the next fiscal year and also the next school year. That's all I have for you, MADAM Chair, and I'll turn it back over to you. Thank you. DR. Zeman thank you so much, chair. Appreciate the. Opportunity to speak today, and I appreciate the public sharing so articulately. Thoughts and ideas, other ideas about how to save and and the like. I want to make sure, though, that we in this room are aligned around like the central problem. So over the weekend, I looked up what the four
130states close to us pay for public education and compared it to Broward County. All five states have a dominant political party in their state legislature, but they have wildly different funding for our kids through public education. I'm going to start with Alabama, the one on the far left. If Broward County or the state of Florida funded education the way we do in Alabama, we'd have 1.3 billion more dollars in Broward County. If Florida funded education the way Mississippi funds education, we'd have 380 million more dollars per year. Even Alabama, with Alabama's per capita funding, we'd have $200 million. And Georgia, who funds it quite well compared to the two to their west, we'd have another $540 million. MADAM Chair, we've lost 225,000 students over the past three years, equivalent of $225,000. If an average person
131in Broward County schools makes fully burdened $75,000, how many positions is that? Doctor Hepburn? 225 million. That would be almost 3000. And DR. Holness. I can't ask you a question directly, but I understand a little bit now why you brought that item, because the decline in revenue just over the past three years would be equivalent to 3000 positions. And what this board said was, Doctor Hepburn, I need you to bring us 1000 this year. And Doctor Hepburn did that. I think that some of the work that's been done needs to be noted. And the hard part in my mind is really shown on. Sorry about that. Slide four. Here we talk about the board giving the % superintendent direction. We talked about it for a long time. DR. Holness brought an item. We made it
132formal. We said, please bring us a thousand directions positions. The analysis period, though, I think is undersold. What's difficult about identifying a cut is that you have to say, hey, how much do I need to do? And then the second is Doctor Hepburn and his staff had to do the analysis phase, which is where are those positions? And they did that hard work. The Florida School Board Association came here and gave us some training not long ago, and they told us we were supposed to tell the superintendent what to do, not how to do it right. And this analysis phase is very difficult. In some cases, he had to go to his head of hr and say, sorry, Doctor Lozano, but I need 20%. And he went to academics and he said, I need this
133much Doctor Cohn, you know, go, go work with me. Let's figure this out. Those kinds of decisions, those surgical decisions on where the cuts were taken have resulted in what most of these cuts are taken out of central office staff. Some are taken out of central operations today. They are not taken out of schools. Does that mean that we have eliminated the the lack of revenue that we have? No. This is one third of the decline in revenue in Broward County. So just think about that. When you stand up and talk about these cuts. These cuts are the beginning, not the end. And these cuts came because Florida does not fund education according to the constitutional rule that says they'll fund high quality education, plain and simple. Remember, we'd have 540 million more dollars if
134we just funded education like they do in Georgia. They don't do that in Florida. We are at the point where we have to make cuts and there are legitimate cuts. They're hard cuts. They will cut services that we think matter. And I just wanted to kind of take a minute and say that as someone that's done a lot of budget cuts in my career, the hard part isn't standing here at the end and saying, is this right or not? The hard part is coming up with a thousand positions. What else do we know about those 1000 positions? 700 of them are unencumbered, which means there is not an employee in those 300 left are encumbered, and 80 to 90% of those jobs have people in them who are fully qualified to apply for jobs, for
135which we know there's going to be a vacancy between now and AUGUST 11th. So out of 25,000 positions in Broward County, 1000 positions were closed, 300 had an incumbent and 10 to 20% is 30 to 60. People don't right now have a job for which they're fully qualified to apply. And this happened because Florida does not fund education properly, plain and simple. And so this board has to make some very hard decisions on how do we make a silk purse out of a sow's ear? How do we do some kind of magic to continue these things going on in Broward County? So, Doctor Hepburn, I appreciate the analysis that you've done. I don't think that everyone appreciates how hard it is to look people in the eye and have them. Either you tell them that
136their position is being eliminated, or that they work in a staff of 12, and it's going to become a staff of nine. These are really, really hard decisions Doctor Hepburn did not enjoy. I mean, I could ask you, doctor, but I'm just going to skip that step. Doctor Hepburn did not enjoy looking for 1000 positions, but 1000 is the beginning. Remember, it is one third of the loss of revenue that we got when we went down 25,000 students in the last three years. So, Doctor Hepburn, I think your conditions are reasonable. I do believe absolutely. Today is decision day. MAY 11th is decision day. We owe it to those 300. We owe it to that 30 to the 60. Those human beings that are affected by this directly today and by all the other people
137who work around somebody that's affected today. We deserve they deserve to know about this as soon as possible. The second rule, I think, is also wise. You know, we're in the this is going to save us 50. I'm sorry, is it $54 million? Doctor Hepburn thank you so much. So 54 but still that's not the 225 million that we're behind. So it's part of it. But there's there's more to come. And we have to be smart about this. So if somebody wants to change something here and I do not, if somebody wants to make some changes of it, then, you know, dollar in, dollar out, dollar in. I think that makes sense. We need the money. Doctor Hepburn, there have been some comments today about positions in schools lost. And there's a point in your
138deck that says that this did not reduce any positions. Why are some positions in schools being reduced for next year? Yes. So that's correct. DR. Zeman this this initiative here does not have anything to do with schools. Schools naturally, naturally fluctuate in funding based on student enrollment. We're expected to lose up to 10,000 students next year. And school leaders, even some of the teachers, are used to understanding, hey, you're 100 students less for the upcoming year than you are this year. You're going to have you're going to have equivalent funding less, which equates to positions at the school level. So yes, when you have up to 10,000 reduction for the upcoming school year, there's going to be some impact on on staffing at schools. But this initiative, we put guardrails around schools that this initiative
139is not going to impact schools because there's going to be a natural impact from the fluctuation of student enrollment, as it's always been in the past. Thank you very much. And again, just for public consumption, this cut covers one third of the reduction of the past three years. How did you cover the rest? I mean, this is 75 million. We had to find 225 million. What other things have you done over the past three years to reduce the cost of Broward County? Yes. So we've gone through many contracts over the past three years or two years since I've been here. You also have that natural reduction that goes on in schools. I know we're general council cut me off if if I'm speaking too much. Also negotiating health care concerns as well. And then some
140things that we're going to tackle for the upcoming school year as well and continue to monitor over time. So there's many, many strategies that we're implementing to close that gap. And in all those strategies, Doctor Hepburn, did you follow the board's direction, which has been, I think, to summarize what the board has said for the past few years that cuts in schools are the last place cuts. Is that the strategy you've continued to. That's the strategy we've continued to implement. And last question, Doctor Hepburn. If we needed to find more cuts than what this is projected, next year's enrollments could be down again. Are you going to continue that strategy of avoiding at all costs reductions? Yes. Well, that's our priority. We will continue to prioritize district staff and not touch school based staff. Terrific.
141And chair, I have no changes to recommend that meet rule one and rule two, and I appreciate the need today to make some decisions just for the humanity of the people that work for us. Thank you chair. Thank you, MRS. Alhadeff. Thank you. So I know that this is very hard, and the people in this room care about the district and conversations about structure and staffing are never easy when we're talking about people we respect. But that care is exactly why we have to act. Our enrollment is declining. That's not a projection. This is our reality. And when enrollment declines, resources decline with it. We have a responsibility to make sure our organizational structure reflects the district we are today, not the district we were ten years ago. The superintendents reorganization does exactly that. It
142reduces redundancy. It puts decision making closer to where learning happens. It is leaner. It is not a flaw. And that is the point, because the alternative is not the status quo. The alternative is a state takeover. If we drop below the 3% fund balance, and that is not an outcome any of us can accept, we can make the decision now thoughtfully, with care for the people affected, or we can delay and make a worse version of this decision later under more pressure. I choose now, and I support this plan not because it is easy, but because our students deserve a district structure to serve them for the long term. I do, however, would like to make one amendment to separate the Chief Facilities Officer and the Chief Operations Officer into two distinct positions. I believe
143the scope of the responsibility is too critical to consolidate. So I move to separate the chief facilities officer and the chief operations officer into two distinct positions. Second motion made by MRS. Alhadeff, seconded by MISS Hixon. Public comment on the motion. Wow. Doctor. Natalie Lynch Walsh Plantation, Florida. No surprise. I completely support this motion. One of your standards should be if a grand jury made a recommendation ahead of finding or concern, you should not accept an org chart that tells you to do the opposite. So what MRS. Alhadeff is proposing is to separate so that because what's been consolidated is both the people doing the work and the people tasked with the compliance for that work. And those two cannot go together. Every every grand jury report has cited this as a problem. So this
144is a fix and I hope you'll be in favor of fixing it. Thank you. Any other public comment? Board member discussion, MISS Thompson? Thank you. Chair, just in following the rule one and rule two that Doctor Hepburn suggested, where would this to Doctor Hepburn, where do you think this falls in line with your plan, and how will we counterbalance the savings cost? I'm listening. The board discussion. So. Do you have a suggestion? Because I'm not comfortable voting on it. If there's not a counterbalance to that. I think some board members might have recommendation. Excuse me. Sorry. MR. Bruno. We are not in public comment right now, MISS Fusco. MISS Fusco, please yield the mic. Please yield the mic. Excuse me. Point of order, MADAM Chair. Go ahead. We are not in public comment at this
145point. Please. They're in the middle of discussion. MISS Hixon. Thank you. To MISS Thompson's point. I'd actually like to make. A suggestion. This is your first warning. I was literally okay. We will now recess the meeting for five minutes. [Music] Thank you. We are back. Just as a note, we're going to be changing the procedure. The waiting rooms for members of the public who are waiting to speak were changed around. So there are some rooms that are on a delay that I was not informed of. So what we'll do moving forward today is we will just wait for two minutes for we'll set a timer for two minutes after each motion is made to wait for any public speakers who are on a delay in this building to come and speak, and we will just
146wait for that that time period. I just do want to reiterate screaming, yelling from the audience is not appropriate decorum for this public meeting. So I think we can all see that that we want to hear from our public speakers. We've been very accommodating, but we will not tolerate the behavior of screaming and yelling from the public. So with that said, there have been several minutes available for everyone to have heard the motion. I will again call for public comment on the motion to separate out the coo and Chief Facilities officer position, and if staff could set another timer for two minutes, just in case. Anyone who is in a room in this building, who is on a delay to go ahead and make their way to the board room to deliver a public comment.
147So public comment on separating out the cfo and coo position. The motion made by MRS. Alhadeff. My name is Doctor Trudy Germanovich, and I want to make sure that anyone in the other rooms that might not hear. Here's what's being said so that they can come and make a comment. I'm glad you listened. You need to listen and that's why people get upset. But I do agree with the separation. You now you just need to find out where you're going to find the money. It's all about the money. So find the money. Thank you. Anna Fusco, our teachers. Your present. First I apologize. I was not trying to be loud and rude. I'm naturally loud, and I was. I ran here, so I was out of breath, so I was catching up to my breath.
148So maybe me even louder. I appreciate you acknowledging me. I would say go forward with the motion if it needs to be done to make sure it's done correctly so nothing comes back that could, you know, potentially give some backlash. And we you have your attorney, I'm sure she can lay it out. I think Jack Adams is still in the audience is still down here too. So with collaboration of your two attorneys, you'll get the best possible answer to either vote, the motion to a yes or vote the motion down. But I think if it's going to be something that is put in place, that it has to be done, that would be the best process. Thank you. Any other public comment? We'll wait for the timer that was set for two minutes to run
149out. So anyone else in the building can make their way to the boardroom. MISS Hixon. Thank you. I would like to make an amendment to MRS. Alhadeff motion to add and combine the Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer with operations to be called the Chief of Strategy, stat Chief of Strategy and Operations. Second motion made by. Seconded by DR. Holness. Public comment on the motion. And I'm again setting a timer for two minutes for anyone who MAY be in a different room in this building, to be able to make their way to the boardroom. Doctor Natalie Lynch Walsh, Plantation, Florida. I'm sorry, I'm still recovering from the two rules. I had to read up on what those were. I don't know how you can propose. Like now, MRS. Hixon is supposed to explain how the costs
150would work. You weren't given the cost. The public wasn't given the costs. I support the idea of what you're doing, but we then all have to frantically look at everything that falls under those two departments to make sure that you didn't create another potential problem. I, I, if you separate strategy and, and actually ten years ago, strategy and operations were the same department. But what falls under that box has changed so much that I'm not sure you would be back to where we were, but it was strategy and operations. The word innovation came about from your last superintendent. Even though strategy and innovation are kind of redundant. So I think either one could work. Thank you. Next speaker. My name is Doctor Trudy Germanovich, and I like this proposal. However, again, this is why it
151would have been better if this was workshopped. And I understand you're in the timeline and people all of that. However, we need to think about these things more than you have time for when you're constantly trying to figure out, all right, I still haven't heard where the money's coming from. So, you know, you all of these things need to be explained more clearly. I don't understand where you think you're going to get the money from, and that is one of the things. In other words, I want to know, are you moving these things around just to satisfy the fact that you need to keep these two separate, but then you're going to there's always going to be more money if you're going to keep them separate. So anyway, I don't understand it probably because it
152hasn't been explained very well. Thank you. Hi. Zaira claims. I'm not sure if I support the motion or not because as a two other speakers have stated, this really should have been a workshop and I get why it isn't, but I, I, I'm just not certain that it's the right thing to do money wise. And I just hope that we do the right thing today. Thanks. And Anna, teachers union PRESIDENT Again, this is another. I'm not I didn't care either way if you workshopped it or school board meeting and it it doesn't really matter. We knew either way it was going to happen. I know you guys are being rushed by the superintendent to get this done, because there's this fear that people don't know if they have jobs or they're going to keep their
153job, or are they going to whatever it is. And I think that that is that ship has sailed. Okay. So out of 2000 employees, we're only looking at maybe 300 because that's Alan Simon's words. It's only 300 to me. One person matters. I'm never going to take away that position when. And I'm going to make it clear also, when this org chart you are taking away from students, you can use the word district all you want. You want to get that that mega feeling out there that I say, whatever I say, and it's just going to be heard in the universe. I'm going to believe it. We're going to leave. We're going to believe it. Please don't do that. I'm telling you right now, everybody is hired under the district and people that work in
154schools, work in schools, no matter where the building is. Do what you want with this piece. Just do it right so it doesn't come back on you guys. Thank you. Next public speaker. All right, MISS Hixon. Thank you. Just wanted to explain why. MISS Hixon, I believe there are other public speakers. This is only. Hi. So I wanted to speak to where he made a couple of points on the slideshow, speaking that he's not eliminating people that work in the schools. That's not true. Ssis work directly in the schools. Every day we report to a school. I understand the titles logistically. Oh, we're district employees, but every day we report to a school, we don't report to a district office. And being sent here? No. Every day I report to Nova Middle School and high
155school. Every day I'm there as a staff. I might not get paid under their school budget. So that's what we need to break down for people to understand the finances of all this logistical aspect and titles and labels. Yes. I MAY not be a a Nova employee, but I go there. I report there every day. So yes, you are affecting people that work directly with kids. So just because I'm a label district employee, but I report to Nova High School and middldl school every day. So I directlyy work w wh childldre So w warar gettining a aected. Any other public speakers on the amendment? MR. Hill, I already said I set the timer for two minutes to allow people. So that that went off a little while ago. MISS Hixon. Thank you. I just wanted
156to explain why I made the amendment to the motion. It's no surprise that I agree with MRS. Alhadeff on this. I've agreed with her since we've been talking about it. It. There are three grand jury reports that tell us that chief operations and facilities should not be one position, so I just don't think it makes sense for us to put it together, although that's how it ended up on here. So first we I feel we need to separate them. Second, the idea was if you're going to add another chief back, which is what this does, you have to find a chief to consolidate. And so the Chief Strategy and innovation officer is the newest one of the chiefs that we have, along with student services, which I did bring up last time, and that was
157not voted to to be able to reduce that. So, as was mentioned before, operations and strategy used to be a department together. So that was why I made the amendment. So if we're going to add a chief, we have to reduce the chief. And that's what this does. So it should balance out the cost. Thank you. Thank you. DR. Holness thank you, MADAM Chair and board member. Hixon, I appreciate you bringing this amended motion because, you know, I was the board member suggesting that we reduce the number of chiefs, and I'm happy to see this come forward, because we're splitting. Ceo and Chief Financial Officer but we're removing the chief of strategy. We're consolidating that with the chief operating officer. So we're in a in essence, we're still reducing by one of the chiefs. So
158I think this is a good move, and I appreciate board member Hixon and I will be supporting it. Thank you. DR. Zeman thank you so much, chair, on this amendment. To the speaker, to the presenter of the amendment, would the. I feel like this is a strong option, like a very strong option. One of the reasons it's important to do this is not just the grand jury, which I think took on the entire facilities infrastructure, not just the fact that what the chief did, but what the facility staff and some members above them did. But chief facilities officers have become very expensive in the last ten years. The last ten years, the United States has doubled the under construction projects by scope. That has come with a doubling of the price of construction over the
159past ten years. Right. And so it's not surprising that the person we need to to, because of everything the grand jury said, to come to Broward County and lead an organization that has 6 to $8 billion worth of facilities backlog needs to be someone who's paid well. And so we can either kick the can and wait till we get applicants at that we don't think are really equal to the task. Or we can leave this at Papen t, you know, the highest pay band below the superintendent. Is that part of your amendment to leave it at t? My my amendment didn't change anything in the pay part of. It MISS Hixon. So if that's it is, I guess that's what it would say. I just want to make sure because Alston is. I think then
160what's shown on page 12 of the org chart, things all of that would still report to the Chief Facilities Officer only and all the things that are shown on page 19 under Strategy and Innovation would now report to Strategy and Operations Officer. So I I'm going to defer to the superintendent because I believe we're going to actually take a recess after the meeting for them to hash out what goes where. Yeah. So those type of changes, we'll take a recess and staff and I will make the shifts for those specific pages for chief strategy and ops and also chief Facilities Officer and bring that back to the board. So it should take no more than like 30 minutes of us going through a quick session and getting the updated chart back to the board. And
161with that recess chair, happen before we vote. So Doctor Hepburn suggested that we get through all of the the motions that pass or do not pass so that they can take the entirety of the the changes and during that 30 minutes and make their adjustments. Thank you so much, chair. So I like MISS Alhadeff idea. It's nice because there are two really big chief jobs ops with all the business lines. They have to run an area, by the way, which we still haven't explored all the efficiencies that we're probably going to have to explore going forward. So it's going to be a big job for the next several years as well. And operations is what we do, right? That's the that's just so essential. So I like this amendment to the motion. I think it's
162going to make us a better school district. But part of that is because the chief facilities officers could be at a pay raise that we can really recruit, you know, a world class chief facilities officer to lead this team. And I know the superintendent is working really hard to fill project manager jobs and other building department jobs and things like that. Right now, we're at about 50% staffing. Is that roughly right, Doctor Hepburn? Yeah. Correct. Yeah. So 50% I don't care what you're leading. If you've got one out of two jobs fill, you're not going to do as well as if you had those full. So I'm looking forward to those changes. But this is a is a good amendment. And to DR. Holness point, it still keeps us down. One chief, which I think
163is really, really important, probably a beginning of, of, of what's going to come in the future. Thank you, MISS Hixon. Thank you. Any other board discussion on the amendment? MISS Bulman. Thank you. So just to. Look at the pay bands again, the when we did some changes the last time we put together the Chief Facilities Officer and the Chief Operating Officer, and we put that as a t band. Correct? Correct. Okay. So if we're taking if we're taking them apart, are they both staying at t band or are we putting. The cobs in the chief facilities would be t okay. Yes. And we will be removing one chief from the original make up that you had. But it's not really removing one chief from how we had it. No, from the original. Okay. Thank you.
164Thank you. Any other board discussion, MR. Cervera? Thank you. Chair. Seeking some brief confirmation here, the operations chief and the facilities chief were both funded for 2526 school year, correct? Combined, they were funded as the as from the direction of the board of the first org chart. But for the 2526 school year, they were funded, correct? Correct. Correct. And the Ops chief was, of course, one Wanda Paul. Correct? Correct. Is she still getting a paycheck? Doctor Hepburn. I have to follow up with you on that one. I'd love to know the answer to that, sir. Thank you. Any other board member discussion on the amendment? DR. Holness. Okay, so, Doctor Hepburn, I just have a question. A follow up on board member Bulman. I know that in our last discussion, we had combined the Chief
165Facilities officer with the Chief Operating Officer, and we changed the pay band for the Chief Operating officer to a t. So with this moving forward to having a split, can you explain to us what the pay bands are going to look like? And so we can determine if we need to revisit that and change the pay bands. So from listening to the board and the discussion with the split, the chief facilities officer would remain a t, all the other chiefs would remain s. So there's only two t funded positions under my purview. And as the deputy Superintendent and the Chief Facilities Officer. Okay, so I, I believe the last time the chief Operating officer was moved to a t, correct. In the combination. In the combination. So with this split, what will the chief operating
166officer be. An s? Okay. So the chief operating officer will be s, and the Chief Facilities officer will be a t, correct. So voting on this motion, that would be the understanding going forward. That's my understanding, yes. Okay. Thank you. Any other board discussion on the amendment to the motion? MISS Rupert. Doctor Hepburn, why the differentiation between t and s? Yes. Great question. We're moving into the next era of our capital program. And in order for us to move in the right direction, we're great implementation, stand within scope and on budget. We need to find the best talent possible. And so we need to increase that band to a t. I can tell you right now, most folks in that role in the private sector probably make two times as much as what we pay.
167And so in order for us to be able to be successful, have some success in recruiting, great talent to move our capital program forward. And we know the results of the past with our capital program, and we need a great leader to move it forward. Okay. Thank you. Could you also remind remind us about what salary level is a t? What's the range? Yes, doctor. Lozano and a s sorry, snt. I have it up Doctor Hepburn. Okay. So for an s the minimum is 123,000. The maximum is 224,000. The mid range is 173,000. For a t it's 164,000. For minimum middle is 200,000 and maximum is 252. Okay. So when you go into your bargaining, when you're looking at people for that position, then you're obviously, I would assume going in at the middle price,
168even though I would kind of want you to go in at the lowest, but I understand and to actually recognize the need that we have for capital, I just wanted to be very clear on the actual salary that we're talking about. So yes, absolutely. I appreciate it. Thank you. Any other board discussion on the amendment to the motion? All in favor of the amendment to the motion, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Say no. The amendment passes unanimously back to the discussion on the motion. I'm sorry, I'm a little confused. I'm I'm happy to vote for it. Subject to Doctor Hepburn coming and show us what would fit under there. But I don't want to vote on the final item until we see that. Doctor Hepburn. So you don't want to vote until you see the
169whole entire structure under those chiefs. I just think I mean, our job is to approve the org chart, really to approve the job descriptions that are memorialized in the org chart. I think it's only responsible for this board to see where the functions fall under those two roles before we make a final vote on this item. Would that be okay? So I think the way that would work that, and I don't know if MISS Dupree Bruno wants to weigh in, but in you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but logistically then we would have to reassess after each motion so that they could, you know, bring back the, the changes that would. And I'm kind of interpreting it just like MISS Leonardi similar. So you're voting on the Chiefs when we bring it back for
170the direct reports under those Chiefs, you can easily make motions to change anything. Okay. That's fine. So I just need you to understand we're not approving the final org chart with this vote. Correct. Vote before the recess. We'll get that at the end. Correct. Thanks so much. So the motion, as amended, is to separate out the coo and Chief Facilities officer position and turn the chief facility, the Chief Operations Officer position. Combine that with the Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer, and I MISS Hixon. I know you renamed it right. So it would be called the Chief of Strategy and Operations. Chief of Strategy and Operatio. So now the motion, as amended, is to we have a Chief of Strategy and Operations and a chief of facilities. Any other board comment on the motion itself? I
171know, MISS Hixon, you had the floor. You're good. MADAM Chair. MISS Rupert okay. I'm sorry. You would ask to speak on the motion. No, no. I'm okay. Okay. DR. Holness. Yes, doctor Hepburn, with the renaming mentioned in motion by board member. Hixon. Do you see any concerns with that particular name, or would that be appropriate for the combining of both? No, I think the the name is appropriate. I don't see any issue with the name. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Any other board discussion on the motion as amended? All in favor of the motion as amended say aye. Aye. All opposed. Say no. Motion as amended passes unanimously. We are still on now. We're on item. We. MRS. Alhadeff, I believe you still have the floor. Nope. I'm good. Thank you very much. All right,
172MISS Hixon. Thank you. I have a couple of questions, and then I have another motion to make. So to the superintendent. Can can you just I know you explained it a little bit, but can you explain how we ended up with not just the org chart, but the list of positions that is. And I'm going to give you a little leeway there too. So this is not something that came to the board. This is something that we directed you to find the positions, and you then went to the chiefs and told them they had to reduce their their departments by a certain percentage, if I'm not correct. And this decision was made by the chiefs of the Department based on what they believed would be the less impact to their department. Is that correct? Yes.
173Thank you. So I just want to be clear on that, that it wasn't just arbitrarily that this happened. And I believe you started in JANUARY, correct? Actually, DECEMBER, a lot of deliberation since DECEMBER to where we are now and a lot of analysis, a lot of looking at service models of how we service certain departments and service schools, a lot of planning of how those of how the new models would look as we start preparing to open schools and, and start communicating with our school leaders about how certain services will look different and how they will work and operate. So a lot of meetings and push pushing throughout since DECEMBER. Thank you. I appreciate that. And also just there was a a public speaker who mentioned Lee County. So I just kind of want to
174truly compare us to what happened in Lee County. So Lee County eliminated 50 positions that were what they called executive and director positions. Broward County Public Schools Limited eliminated 62 executive level or director positions. So we are very in line. If you actually look at what was removed in Lee County, they also looked at their central office and deleted some of the mental health services in some of those things. So I just want to compare apples to apples. So here in Broward County, based on the org chart that we're talking about right now, we have nine chiefs and 14 regional offices. Lee County will have eight chiefs and four regional offices. So they're much smaller district than us. So I just want to be fair. And when we're discussing things their superintendent did, I believe,
175a similar job to what our superintendent did based on on the enrollment that they had. I also wanted to address some of the things a couple of the public speakers said that you are correct. As DR. Zeman mentioned, we do not get the funding that public schools should get from their state legislature. Voting matters. We. Someone said it was up to us. It was ethically. Our. Our job to. To tell the state that and to ask for more money. I can promise you that we do that. As MISS Thompson has mentioned a number of times, we go to Tallahassee, we go to Washington, dc. It's on our legislative platform. We ask everybody to share that. So we we agree. We would love to not be in this position. I can tell you how how hard
176it is. It's it's been very difficult to even sleep thinking that there are people on here, as you've all mentioned, you all have everyone who's on that list has a personal story. It is their livelihood. This is this is not easy for anyone. But unfortunately, we find ourselves in a place, as many businesses do. I mean, you all saw what happened with Spirit Airlines. Poof! One day all those people just lost their jobs. We don't want to do that. The superintendent has been really intentional about people who are going to possibly lose their jobs, setting them up with career source. He's been on tv saying, hey, if you're a company and you need employees, please reach out to us so that we can we can do this together. So I just don't want it to
177go unnoticed. Understand human side of this. This is heartbreaking for all of us as it is for you. And we wish we weren't here, but we are based on that. I have a question for the superintendent. There was an employee that came up to speak to us, and we've actually gotten a few emails about it. What are we doing to make sure our employees of 27, 28, 29 years who are close to retirement land in a place that allows them to reach that retirement? Yes, absolutely. As I said before, we're prioritizing staffing for all impacted employees, for our vacancies and for our openings and in constant, constant discussions with Career Services to make sure that happens to I know if Doctor Lozano, if you want to add any additional information to that, but we've been
178very focused on ensuring that all of our employees are taken care of, especially if we have the data to, to know what vacancies normally happen year after year after year across the whole entire district, just to make sure we can place employees in those anticipated vacancies throughout the summer. So I like to do a directive, I don't know if it needs to be a motion, so I guess I'll I'll ask, but I'd like to direct the or make a motion to have the superintendent make sure that any employee of. 25, any employee close to five, five years or closer to retirement has an individual plan with the district on either finding a job here or at another governmental institution that allows them to reach their their retirement. Second motion made by MISS Hixson, seconded by
179DR. Zeman public comment on the motion. I'm setting a timer for two minutes to allow people in the building to come speak. Doctor Natatie Lynch, Walshsh antatati,,lolodada. I suprt th motn.N. Tss wldld have helped the audit department not lose an employee who was, I think, a year away from retirement a few years ago. It certainly would help people now when their boxes are being inexplicably. Actually, no, their box wasn't inexplicably eliminated. They were. Someone else is moving, planning to move into their box. So I support the motion because it's been a real witness protection program around here where people you like, you find you. You kick the person you don't like out of the box and all kinds of foolishness going on. So I support the motion. It's the humane thing to do, and it
180should be something that they can actually do until retirement. Not like giving them a bad option. It should be done with fidelity. Thank you. Hi Sheena Newton, I just want to say I support this and I really thank you all for thinking about us who's been here a long term, long time serving you all and trying to make this a successful district. I'm greatly appreciated at this moment. Thank you. Melanie Birkin, Davie, Florida. I support this motion and I thank you. Echoing those that came before me. I thank you for honoring and respecting those that have served this district loyally, and to ensure that they are able to at least continue out their years until retirement. So thank you so much. Terry Lopez, vice PRESIDENT Of the Broward Teachers Union. I support the motion and
181would also like to thank you for thinking about these things. We've gone through some grueling honesty from the people who are losing their jobs. What you're doing is not easy. I recognize that, but this shows that you care about those of us who've been here. So thank you. Zara Sanchez, Deerfield Beach I just wanted to share a quote with you because I do support the motion. It's a Simon Sinek quote, and he says, leadership is not I'm sorry, I have the wrong one up. I have the wrong one up. Wait. [Laughter] And my time is running out as I look for it. Can you imagine? Simon Sinek says leadership is not about those you have in charge, but those that you lead. So it's really important that you care for the people that work here.
182Some people don't feel like that's happening, and I know you have to do a hard thing, but the people that remain are going to want to know y'all have their back too, you know what I mean? Because if they don't feel like that, they're going to walk. Also. Thank you so much. Doctor Trudy Germanovich. I support the motion and I want to point out that often in I've seen this happen many, many times. Teachers, as they get to be older, they often are pushed out of the system. They're pushed out because if they're on annual contract, they can be fired. So I know what these people are going through, and this is not right. And it has happened for years, and I wish you'd put it in policy that you can't do this kind of
183thing, because I don't think that anyone that's given that kind of time to this organization should ever be pushed out. And they it happens all the time. Sorry. Tracy Chandler of Plantation, Florida. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You heard the pain in her voice, not just her voice. She was speaking for so many other people. As a veteran employee of Broward County Schools, as are you. It means a lot at the end when you think you've reached the pinnacle or you see the light, and then someone turns that light off or threatens to turn that light off. There's everything that you have given your blood, sweat and tears to. So thank you. I support this motion. Hi again Judy. Obviously, there's not enough time in the day to say everything. So the school, the
184people in the schools are being impacted because all the principals have been told to let go. I think 10 or 11% of the people in the schools, and these are the people that are working with your children, your grandchildren. So yes, we are being impacted and I don't know if you know or not, but you do know and you can check. You can see that it's real. The other thing is instead of cutting people at the end, at the bottom, why not cut the salaries at the top? I don't even think they would notice. If you come into this world with nothing, we're going to leave with nothing. So I think they'll be okay. And I think that's the main things. And then just like you're cutting things, I understand, but not let it be
185people. Victoria Trujillo, Hollywood, Florida. I am in support of this motion. Debbie. Thank you. Thank you so much for bringing that up. It is very polite and decent thing to do, and thank you for considering so many people's positions in the district where we have put in so much time. I know that these decisions are not easy. We are all listening and I truly understand what needs to be done. But there are right ways to do things, and this is one that is the right way to do things. So I am very grateful for you bringing this up. Luis Machado, Margate. Well, I appreciate that the board is taking a measure to protect teachers who are getting close to retirement. That affects a lot of us. And it would be a horrible thing, a horrible
186thing for some of us to be pushed out when we are close to that time in our lives. So thank you for that. And I would like to echo something the superintendent said earlier regarding the other position. They were discussing that in order to attract the best talent, you need to pay them accordingly, which is true. I agree with that, but I would hope that that same sentiment would be applied to all the teachers, because we are the ones who make this place work. Everything else is to support us. So if we are not paid well and respected, then you will not have the best talent. Thank you. And PRESIDENT, I appreciate the motion and I hope it gets passed and support it. And not a bad idea to make something in policy, because people
187also look to get into education. But no matter what position you're in, in, in public schools as a career, you know, we MAY have some that come in and out and say, I'm just a stepping stone, I'm moving on. But the mass majority, especially the educators who work in schools with students, this is a career. They look forward to it. It's no different than a firefighter, a police officer, a nurse. We're all civil servants, and we all come into it as a career. We want to give back. We want to nurture, we want to help. And then when they start seeing it that well, you know, you got a couple speckles in your hair, you're up there in age and you're out. You're already out anyway, you know, just retire early. People paying attention to
188that. I've been saying it for a long time. It's not the first time you heard me say it. Yohad a couple people come last past few meetings. Everybody knows I have six months to retire. I'm going to. Not me talking about people. So please pass this motion. You got. Any other public comment? Board member comment, MISS Hixon? No, I just I guess I'll reiterate what I said. So the motion was to direct the superintendent to either find a position in the district for someone who's 25 years in or, you know, has five years left to retirement or less, or to find help, find them a government job that would keep them in the frs system. So I just wanted to make sure I was saying the whole piece. Thank you. DR. Zeman. Thank you so
189much. And to MISS Hixon, as always, thoughtful change here and I appreciate it. I just want to ask chair, whether or not making a plan for people with more than 25 years as any conflict with our collective bargaining agreements. MISS Dupree. Bruno. So I, I was going to say just a caveat that whatever is decided, of course, it has to be in compliance with the collective bargaining agreement as well as any relative statutes. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Thanks so much. And thanks again, MISS Hixon, for bringing this. This is going to mean a lot to the people that are affected. DR. Holness thank you, MADAM Chair, so that I better understand the motion. So board Member Hixon, is the motion implying that the superintendent will either find a position within the district
190or a position outside of the district. So if those two conditions are not met, then what happens? So find a position in an agency that allows them to remain in frs. Because that's the point is if they're that close to the frs. So it could be another governmental agency, you know, whatever. But to help them find either something in the district or an agency that will allow them to remain in frs. Okay. So it's, it's a definitive direction that he must find a position for someone who is 25 years or more in, either with the district or another entity that offers frs s. So I wouldn't say it's him finding the position, but making a plan to help them find a position either in the district or with another government agency. Okay. And and I
191support the motion, but I, I guess I'm trying to look at what if there is an anomaly where there's a particular staff that he just couldn't place in a government entity, and there's no position that he could place them here, would, would, would he be going against the direction of the board? Doctor Hepburn, what's your interpretation? My interpretation is to create a plan to assist employees that are five years away from normal retirement date within that plan, ensuring, if possible, at the greatest extent to place them in a role here at bcc. If not, I work with our external partners that are in frs because not all government entities are in frs to work with our external partners in frs to see if there's any comparable openings that fit their skill set and qualification that
192we can assist in helping them get employed. See a problem with. Do you see any obstacles with that? No, I don't, I don't see any. Well go ahead Ernie. If. Doctor Lozano I'm sorry if. I know MR. Bruno wants to add something as. Well as I just process. I don't see how this is different from what Doctor Hepburn directed hr to do already. We're already working on plans with every employee. Again, once we finalize all the positions, we're able to see the available vacancies. We're currently working with our government partners to find vacancies, so our team is currently working with each impacted employee throughout the process to ensure we can support each employee and landing in the next best place for each individual. Okay, so MADAM Chair, because I want to I guess I'm just
193trying to clarify if it's a guarantee and general counsel seems like she wants to comment on it. And if that guarantee is not met, then is there a liability that that we are we have concerns with? I would just I'm sure Doctor Hepburn would agree to the extent that this particular review is in compliance with the current collective bargaining agreement and of course, all applicable laws that MAY be in existence. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Any other board member comment on the motion? MISS Bulman. So I appreciate the motion. I we had talked about it, I think, at the last meeting as well. So they're doing everything that they can to place employees, I think on the slide, you said that there was a 80 to 90%. Correct, 80 to 90% of the employees
194will be placed in vacancies based on their qualifications. So it's an opportunity that would be presented to them as a placement, and it's up to them to actually take advantage of that opportunity. Okay. So I guess the only question I have is if we make it a direct, is there any there is no real difference from what's happening already. And if we can't, if you're unsuccessful in placing somebody, is there going to be some kind of repercussion for that? Do you see. There should not be any repercussions for that. I mean, as Doctor Hepburn and the team are trying to find placements, it's a gamble when you're looking to see where somebody's going to fit, as well as what you can do with your outside agencies. And again, we want to make sure that whatever
195we do is in compliance with law and our current collective bargaining agreement. But we basically be using a standard of good faith. There's no guarantee that this is going to go through. So. Correct. Which is the same thing that's happening right now. Correct. As long as we're using good faith and making our best efforts to reemploy the employee, then that should be the standard. There's no guarantee that we're going to be able to do it. That's correct. Okay. MADAM Chair. DR. Holness okay, so, MADAM Chair, just for the record, I want to be clear that the maker of the motion understand the interpretation given by general counsel as well as the superintendent. So when we vote on this motion, there's not concern with liability. That's correct. Everything i've heard is what. Is what you are
196implying. Okay. Thank you. MISS Bulman. And if everyone could just make sure they speak into the mic so that everyone can hear. So I guess the other question with this, just as a follow up, if we're using a good faith standard and to DR. Holness point about liability, are we creating liability for ourselves right now by doing this? If this is what we're already doing and how are we? Will there be a, you know, a, I guess a rubric or of set of steps that have to be taken for each employee? And if we can demonstrate that we've done that, then we've. I just don't want to open up a lot of liability. I know. Someone says that you didn't do you didn't try hard enough. And then, you know, how are we fixing that
197now? So we can create a rubric and criteria that's standard and consistent across the board. Yeah. Because their standard of what they expect is probably totally different of what we're capable of doing. We can't force an external entity to, to hire you. And we can't force qualifications and skill set that you don't have upon you as well. So. Right. And you know, another, just another potential issue that I see is if you are losing a position, position x and position y is available, but you're getting paid less for that. Correct. And is someone necessarily happy with that? So. Correct. Yeah, I know, I see where you're going. Yes. I don't know, I just I, there just seems to be a lot of potential issues that I see with that. So this is why we're going
198to make sure that whatever it is, is going to be in compliance with the collective bargaining agreement and all relative law that is applicable. What I'm hearing is direction. If this motion passes to the superintendent to utilize and plan, have a good faith attempt to try to help individuals who are very close to retirement five years and above, there's no guarantee that positions will be provided, but there is going to be a good faith attempt, which is what is already happening now with all of the other employees. So that is my understanding of the motion that is pending on the floor. DR. Holness again. Thank you, MADAM Chair. The maker of the motion board member, Hixson, based on that comment just made by general counsel, is that the understanding of your item? Yes. I want
199to put into to. I understand. Into a motion where we vote on it and it's procedure now that everyone understands that anyone five years or sooner close to retirement, the district is going to take steps to help you be able to secure a job either in the district or an outside entity. As Doctor Hepburn, someone might not like the job. I mean, we can't control that, but I want to to just put it in writing that we are going to make every attempt. I understand we're doing that now, so I think that's why the superintendent doesn't have any concerns about it. But I just want it to be something that we put in writing. No, I understand and I appreciate the motion. I just I just wanted a yes or no on General Counsel's comment
200just now. Is your motion aligned with general? They didn't. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else any other board comment on the motion? All in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. All opposed. Say aye. Motion passes unanimously I still have sorry. I still have a couple more. I have a question. But before we do that, MR. J came up and mentioned something and he talked about that. Teachers and ESPs, they love their jobs, they love their students. And I just wanted to make a comment that tied into the the pay that happens. So here's a conundrum that happens with educators because the state gives us less and less. But we do love our students. We do want to be successful. So we still continue to perform. We still are continue to make sure our students have
201what they need. We take it out of our own pockets and we still get the a, but then the state says, look, you are still able to do all this stuff with less money, so you don't need it. And it's I'm not even saying it's good or bad, it just is what it is. So unfortunately, we find ourselves in a circle where the state continues to give us less money. We continue to do a fantastic job with our students, but that's because that's who we are. So I wanted to say thank you to everyone for doing that. And I've been meaning to say that for two two meetings.S. NoNow, a cououplf otherer p public commtstsi j just wahe supentendedent to cle upp ctctor Hepburn, the the consultant for bringing students back. Is that just for
202one school or is that for the whole district? That's for the entire district. And then just a reminder to the public and the board, they only get paid if the student is successfully recruited and stays past the first fte count. Thank you. I believe there was a newspaper article that gave the impression that it was only for one school, and so I wanted. Then we also heard from the public that we're paying for more than one superintendent. So can you address that? I hope not the only paying for one. That's me. Right. So the the payment that we had for our previous superintendent, that's long. That's long gone, gone. And we're only paying for one superintendent. So thank you. The other thing is about charters having better music programs and electives. I would like to
203say that as a countywide school board member, I have been to to every school more than once. And I will tell you that there's nowhere that touches the electives and the music programs that we have here in Broward County Public schools. So I just wanted to say that in public. Alright, two more things, page nine of the org chart. There's an assistant director of student support who has no one that reports under them. So can you explain that position to us? Page nine of the actual org chart. It's under Chief Student Services Officer and it's just. Yes, by itself. I'll let MISS Hollingsworth add some detail about this position, but this position was added. I want to say last year, heeding the constant communication we receive about the lack of direction and assistance to many
204of our parents. So this is kind of like that, that that air traffic controller in assistance to make sure our parents can get the services that they need. And having one source of information. Go ahead, MISS Hollingsworth. Thank you. Good afternoon. Simone Hollingsworth Chief Student services Officer and Doctor Hepburn, that was a great analogy. The air traffic controller, that individual does work with all the schools as well as district departments to help facilitate and really have that cohesion of what student services as a whole offers, both to schools, the district and families. Okay, so why is there no one under underneath the box? Because it just looks like they're by themselves in a box here. Well, they report to me. Yep. They report. No, I, I get that, but what this doesn't really indicate. We
205only need that needed that one position at that time. And then we were able to successfully recruit somebody that had a lot of experience in Esq services to have that greater great understanding and knowledge and skill set to be in that position to support. All right. I it's just seems odd by itself. I have one last. Well, two things. So just to bring up to the superintendent, I got a number of emails about the Granicus issue and signing up. So if someone could please address that. My one more question and then I have a motion. The. We got a bunch of emails about some reductions in beacon and some of the concern was about beacon goes out to make repairs. Can you address how that if this reduction happens, how we are going to keep
206up with the repairs? And what is it that beacon actually repairs? Go ahead, MR. Sullivan. Excuse me. I know that's a collaboration between his his division, excuse me, and also the it division. And I'm. I'm sorry. I was talking to a reporter in the back, so I didn't MISS The entire question. So we've got received some emails about if the Beacon Department was reduced, that there were some concerns about repairs because they go out and make repairs. So can you tell us what they repair and what is the plan to make sure that that isn't, you know, that they're still getting serviced, whatever needs to be repaired? Sure. So my understanding there is ten of those positions. We reduced it by half. So now there's five. Those positions primarily deal with our older equipment. And
207as we phase out to new equipment the need will be reduced. Of course when you reduce there could be an impact, but we believe we'd still be able to maintain the level of services as we age out of some of the equipment that those individuals are responsible for. So can you give us an example of what that equipment is? It's like av equipment. It's also security cameras. But again, those are the older ones. So as we get new cameras and I'm sure MR. Davis could agree and jump in if he likes to add. But the newer cameras, those wouldn't necessarily be repaired by us. We would foresee if they had warranties and go through that route. So again, as we replace our old systems with new systems, it reduces the needs for some of these
208positions. Because some of the concern is that we would be sending out, we would get consultants and stuff to make those repairs. And I that wouldn't to me be a true cost savings. So if we could like give an idea of what that. No, absolutely. And that's a great question. And just to dampen that concern about consultants, as we look to make revisions and and staffing on the org chart, those those are some of the, the lines that we didn't want to cross. We don't want to get rid of position only to hire consultants to do the work. And what MR. Sullivan is alluding to as we replace old and worn out equipment that requires us to repair it because it's out of warranty. All the new equipment that we're replacing it with has warranty,
209and the warranty includes service. And so we don't need the additional people to provide service to new equipment, which actually makes the the warranty invalid. Once somebody touches it during a warranty period. Okay. Thank you. One more question then my motion. So we had a public speaker talk about food and nutrition services. So can you are we eliminating any positions in that department or was she talking about the debt, food, debt services? I can't remember. I think she was talking about food debt services. But if there are any, any delimit the limits is because of redefining. Okay. Because. You know, we're not in typical. They're not on. Correct. Okay. Thank you for that. Okay. My last, my last thing. I have a motion. I move to reinstate. 19 well, before I say that the the
210chart that you gave us doesn't really have any changes, because I know we had a discussion at a workshop about making some changes to the under the line positions, but this chart came back to us as is. So is that as it stands right now, those positions are what we see on this chart. That is correct. Okay. So with that being said, I moved to reinstate 19 of the cis positions and reduce school social workers by 19 positions. Second. Okay, guys, come on. I move the quorum in the audience. So a motion was made. We're waiting for a second. I did second. Oh, MISS Rupert seconded the motion. Public comment on the motion. MISS Hixon, could you please restate the motion? Right. So again, remember we have to add positions. We have to balance it.
211So that's what this is doing. So on this chart right now the school social workers are at 189 and the ssis are at two. So my suggestion is to change ssis positions to 21 and school social workers to 170. So I moved to reinstate 19 of the s, sis positions and reduced school social workers by 19. To balance that out. Public comment on the motion. The motion was made by MISS Hixon and seconded by MISS Rupert public comment on the motion. And again, I will set the two minute timer for people in the building. Wow. Everybody should be getting up speaking about this. Could we please have decorum in the audience? Oh. So go ahead, MISS. MISS Berkin. Melanie Berkin, school social worker, Davie, Florida. I'm really just shocked I spoke at the last meeting.
212I don't want us to be us against them. But when it comes down to it, if it has to be school social workers can do everything that the s, sis claimed to do and more. They MAY be trained mental health professionals. They MAY be able to train to do threat assessments. But the reality is when they find a student who wants to die by suicide or kill other people, guess who they have to bring them to school, social workers, school counselors and school psychologists. So I just I can't even find my words right now. I'm so disappointed. School social workers are part of the mental health team with school counselors, family therapists, school psychologists. We've always been. We've always worked together. We don't hide in our offices as been a. That's been implied here and
213I am just disappointed. Thank you. That. Yes. Go ahead, MR. Rupert. Thank you. Okay. Okay. So General Council, with this second being withdrawn, do we need to continue public comment? Well. You still I think you still need to move forward with public comment because it's been a. The second was withdrawn. So there's no motion on the floor. Okay. All right. Okay. So the motion was withdrawn. So there's no need. Is there another second. Okay. So the motion was withdrawn. So there's no need for further public comment. Thank you. All right. Any further board member comment? Hixon has the floor. You're done. Yeah. Thank you. All right, MR. Cervera. Thank you, chair. I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this. And I also appreciate everybody who came in today. Let their voices be heard, let their
214opinions be stated. Your message has been clear. You don't want this. I hear you, and I don't want it either. And in fact, I think if we are going to get this district back on track and return it to the prominence, it was years and years ago, this is one of these defining moments where we have to make the right decision. What are we going to do? To save Broward schools? Well, I can tell you where it starts right here. Vote no. On this organizational chart. And I'm going to tell you why. For months and months and months, I've been screaming from the mountaintops that while I understand the need for cuts. We cannot and should not cut any teacher or those folks who interact with our students on a daily basis. Can't do it
215and we shouldn't do it. These calls, unfortunately, were ignored by this version of the org chart, and the version before that. Instead of starting our cuts at the top like we should have, we're going after the rank and file instead of trimming the bloat that's in this very building, which I'm still wondering why we're still in here. And this hasn't been sold yet, but that's a topic for another day. What did we do? We produce an org chart that cuts teachers, cuts counselors, cuts mental health professionals, cuts a ton of positions that have direct interactions with our students every single day. We heard from a lot of folks today. We heard from our Sis professionals according to this org chart, if this were to pass as is, their entire department is going to be gutted.
216We heard from a lot of great teachers today in school staff. They don't want this. I don't want this. And respectfully, I don't think anybody on this dais should want this. I've been extremely vocal about this issue in the past, and I'll continue to do so today. So why are we here now and where are we? Well, unfortunately this situation just keeps getting worse and worse. This weekend I was fortunate enough to speak with some local principals in and around this county, and I found out some stuff that made me a tad angry, and I'd like to share it with my colleagues, and I'd like to share it with the superintendent, and I'd like to share it with the members of the public at large, because I'm not quite sure how many people know this
217yet. So. No longer do we have any budget guideline committees in our schools. The collaboration that our principals once enjoyed for decades between their school and the school budget office has been eroded. So what's happening now? Well, instead of collaborating, they are being given directives. The directive, you ask, new staffing models being implemented. Now, for those of you who've been paying attention in the past, principals, you know, the folks working at the school who know what's best for the school, we're given certain funds and we're always told, and we're always given the ability to decide how to use it based on need. This year, that, unfortunately, is no more. The new directive is if you have x students in your schools, you can only hire y teachers. Not white, y. y, y, y teachers. Sorry.
218Sorry for the confusion. So essentially you're being given a directive at these schools to cut approximately 10% of your teaching staff. I don't like this directive. I don't think it's fair. I don't think it's just. How can we continue to cut more teachers in our schools based solely on enrollment numbers, getting rid of the Budget Committee guidelines that have been in place forever. And now you want to tack on this org chart, which is going to cut, oh, I don't know, almost 200 certified teachers. How the hell are we supposed to teach our kids in these schools? If we keep cutting these teachers, how are we supposed to give these kids the quality education when everybody it seems like that's having interaction with them on a school based school staff level is subject to the
219chopping block. The answer is simple, folks. We can't. Everybody wants to talk about bringing kids back in, drawing kids back in. There's a lot of kids that go to school in this district. We're the sixth biggest district in the school. We keep cutting these teachers. We keep cutting these school based staff. We are not going to be able to educate our kids that are there, forget about others coming back or rejoining us. What about taking care of the ones that are there now? Amen. The only thing this organizational chart does is ensure that the k, c, w staff will have jobs next year. But is that really the goal? Is that why we do this for district staff, or we do this for teachers and school based staff and our ssi workers and our counselors?
220And, you know, the folks that educate and take care of our kids on a daily basis. Protect the bigwigs in the building while screwing over the teachers and school based staff. I'm not okay with that. But if that was the goal, we nailed it. So if that really was what this district wanted, kudos. They've accomplished it. But for the record, that was never my intention and that was never my goal. Chair, in looking through this proposed organizational chart over the last couple of days. I want to follow through on my position and my view that I've been very vocal about for a very long time in starting at the top and working your way down. So. I've got some motions. I'd like to start on page three of the organizational chart. Above the pay band
221t line. We have an executive director of Enterprise analytics. We also have an assistant director of Enterprise Project management. Page three, page three. My motion is to cut the director, Executive Director of enterprise and have that one position be created. That's the executive director or however title we want to give can fill that. I don't want to positions being used for that same job. Second motion made by MR. Cervera. Seconded by me. Public comment on the motion. Doctor Natalie Lynch Walsh Plantation, Florida. I support the motion and I'll do you one better. MR. Cervera I believe that there's another very similar position to this on under Strategy and Innovation. I believe I've mentioned before, that's where that position belongs, not in communications under the Chief of staff. So if you wanted to cut even further,
222you could decide which department. Again, it's something that's related to strategy. And they created two of these. I think t ty're bothh executive d dectors. S Sou coululd c c an a addioional one and cut two instead of just one, and that would get the job done. Mgt found a lot, a lot, a lot of redundancies in communications which have not been addressed. They just keep making new positions. And if you could just repeat the motion real quick. Second. The motion is on page three of the org chart under the Chief of staff's grouping to Cut, the Executive director of Enterprise Analytics and just have one director of Enterprise, which is the current position held below the pay band line. And second by chair Sarah Leonardi. I support that motion. We'll wait another 30s for
223people in the building who MAY be watching. All right, so that's two minutes have elapsed since the motion was made. Board member comment on the motion. MISS Thompson. Can the superintendent just walk us through the impact of this decision? Yeah. So I'll tell you why. This this isn't a new position. The titles, the title for one is new, but the positions are new. They've been shifted from another division. One of the things that and thanks for asking, MISS Thompson, just for the public in the in the board to really understand some of the complexities. And because of that complexity, the working in isolation over a very long time. So the cabinet, one of the things that that plagues us as an organization is this is not just Broward County government organizations, school districts, government entities.
224There's a. There's always a routine of working in isolation where we're not working in a more composite organization, solving problems together, ensuring that one division is aware of what the other division is doing, and also leveraging all the technology to support efficiency across the board, and also to the project management protocols that need to be implemented. So we break down barriers of isolation. Many of the things that have plagued the district over the past decade and more that that everybody on this dais and the public has witnessed is because of working in isolation and the results of that. And so these two positions were realigned from another division to ensure that does not continue, create better protocols, lateral leverage technology, and especially enterprise software better, and also implement strong project management protocols to ensure that
225we're breaking down the barriers of isolation and creating a more composite organization. So we become efficient but yet also effective at the same time. Other board member comment on the motion. DR. Zeman. We were briefed on these changes. There was kind of a pretty robust discussion. Do you mind moving your poster? There was a rather robust discussion on the need for enterprise integration. And my because this is not a new position, it's a realignment of a position. And it's an area in which I think that there's an opportunity for dramatic growth. I supported this when it came up to us, and I support it now. There MAY be other places where positions can be eliminated and where responsibilities can be merged together, but in my experience, when I see items, it often shows that Broward
226County can be a collection of pillars of excellence, which means an item comes from one chief. And it's it's deep in that area, but maybe hasn't thought about all the tangential issues that come for it. And so this board has asked a lot of questions where we get, you know, an item from chief x and we say, how about y and z and v and w, and you know, have they seen it? And I think the superintendents goal has been to try and have better integration across the whole enterprise. And that's why he moved this over to the communications to, to the chief of staff to, to make it happen. So I'm actually looking forward to keeping this as a superintendent. Recommended. I would love to find other positions that we don't need. But again,
227we ask the superintendent to find 1000 positions. He did. And I, I, I just don't think that this is really going to be moving in the right direction that we need for Broward County schools. We need more integration across the enterprise to serve our students even better. And that's what this position represents to me. Thank you. Thank you. Other board member comment, MISS Hixon. Thank you, Doctor Hepburn. Can you explain to us maybe you did, but why it is that we see the same exact position on page three and page seven? Yes, you'll see the same as that position because project management isn't division specific. As far as the title and the role, it's across the board. So is it a it's a common title and job description amongst all of our project managers that
228are supporting different divisions and different departments within the district. So there are two separate positions, correct? Okay. And why? I mean, you have an assistant director that for the enterprise project and management, I don't know. This is so small office. That's the only person that on the page three which is being suggested to be removed. The executive director. Why does that need to be an executive director? Could it possibly be a director that has an assistant director? I think so, director would, I don't. The cost is virtually the same as far as the pay band. So we're we'll just be playing semantics with the name. To be honest. My other question is why. Again, here's where you only have one person reporting to that executive director. So why couldn't you just have the the assistant
229director position? You're still doing. So, although this position is on under the chief of staff. If you go up to page two, you'll notice that this position is supporting every individual chief in division. So it's going to be a lot of work to bring that composite feel to the organization as we move forward. These are endeavors to help us accelerate our our opportunities to become better and effective in the future. So they're not just, you know, support the chief of staff office. They're actually supporting every division across the whole entire district. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Any other board member comment I have? I guess I, and I think maybe what a lot of people who look at these org charts want to know is like, what do these people do on a day to
230day basis? So if you could give me like a real life example of what the executive director of enterprise analytics and intelligence would do on a day to day basis, and then the same thing for the assistant director of Enterprise Project Management. Yes. So I'll give you one. Think about our erp system, which is district wide. If we didn't have that system in employee plan, employee planning, resource component, right. That that is our. So I'm going to ask, just like for a very plain language. Yes, I'm trying to give it to you as plain as I can. And that's how complex our organization is. Right? I think people really understand the complexity that makes the whole entire organization work. But that is one system, one enterprise system that makes the whole entire organization work. If
231we did not have that system, you would not be paid on time or you wouldn't be paid at all. To be honest, you won't be able to manage your benefits and all those other components that happen in hr, finance and also in the procurement office as well. That enterprise system is not isolated to it. It's not isolated to the finance department. It's not isolated to the budget. I mean, to the hr department, if it is, it will not function appropriately in our system will be lagging tremendously and spending millions, tens of millions of dollars just to fill those gaps. The enterprise, the the executive director of enterprise is ensuring that we're leveraging all the resources, specifically technology resources, to accelerate the the collaboration and throughout the whole entire enterprise, just to make sure that we're
232we're following all our protocols, we understand and collecting feedback from every person within the division within their departments. The assistant director is implementing project management protocols to ensure that we have a strategy to. For starting from the from the beginning of even from just simple brainstorming all the way down to implementation. And many of these enterprise software. The transition for. From starting just from brainstorming to actually creating rfp and all the way through implementation and completion is a multiyear process. It's not a one year process. So that's how important such positions are. Because if they're if they're not done correctly, the system spends millions of dollars to fill in those gaps. And that's just one example, because we've had to spend millions of dollars over the past ten years with our current erp system to
233fill gaps because of the isolation that is happening in that enterprise system for the school district over a decade. And so that's what you charge. A small investment equates to millions of dollars in savings. When we don't invest in these areas, we end up spending tens of millions of dollars to fill those gaps. Okay, so me, maybe what I'm hearing is, for instance, the updating of our erp system, which is what people use to like sign up for health insurance and manage. Payroll. Their, their paychecks and all of that get their w-2s everything. Transitioning that system requires an executive director of enterprise analytics and intelligence and an assistant director of Enterprise Project Management, I, I kind of hear you on the assistant director of Enterprise project management, because that's the person who's saying like, okay,
234so we're going to, we're going to fix our erp system. This is like, and then work with the necessary employees to figure out how they do that from brainstorming to implementation. So making sure that like what we say we're going to do, we're going to do, I'm still a little bit unclear about the executive director of enterprise analytics and intelligence. Like, what does that person do you want a day to day basis? Yes. Things happen. And so let me find another example for that one. We just had a recent one tray help me out. We had a recent project that we had. Yes. Yeah. Tray Davis Chief Information Officer So I think we need to kind of split the name, right? Analytics and intelligence at the same time. Think of it ai, right? Artificial intelligence,
235that's what we're using to kind of scale and sustain these gains. One example that I'll give you is the research that was done by this position here to ensure that we could incorporate the necessary insight and using copilot for deeper analysis to realize, at last check $20.41 million in overtime savings year over year. That's one example of many examples. This particular position would focus on unified governance and data. You know, analytics, of course, artificial intelligence to ensure that we can sustain those kinds of gains and efficiencies in the future and focus on projects using the position underneath that you referenced, you know, to make that happen. There are thousands of product, you know, projects that could be done operationally and impacted by ai and other analytics and data across the district. This particular position would
236focus on the top, you know, largest impactful projects. Yeah. And the example I was thinking of was our last procurement contracting project. So this person is kind of like an ai person. They like take the, you know, they use ai to figure out efficiencies throughout the organization. Am I saying that correctly or am I? That's one component. Okay. That's one component. What are some of the other components? Go ahead, MR. Davis. So, so yeah, it's definitely just one component because it's really about leveraging not only artificial intelligence, but human intelligence and making operational decisions. It's also about our unified ai strategy so that we don't have divergent strategies coming out of different parts of the organization, which of course equates to waste. Making sure that we have a unified strategy relative to to data, for
237example, our district bus to ensure that we can harness the data and it's not captive and is unrealized value there. So it really traverses everything from, from the data spectrum to analytics and intelligence in that mix. I think Doctor Hepburn alluded to on the chart, you'll notice the the dotted lines, which is supposed to represent the value stream that this particular position generates, works across the organization to realize value at scale, not just working in isolation. That's that composite manner of work like we do in information systems. Okay. My other question is, so right now, these positions are under your under your purview, MR. Davis. Right. One is. One of them the executive director? Okay. What is the what is the transition plan look like for switching that person to reporting to the chief of
238staff is the chief of staff. Right. So I'll let MR. Sullivan detail some of the transition plan. But the it's already kind of quasi already started transitioning because we've kind of tasked that person with certain enterprislevel projects across cabinet. So the, the, the work that's being done that's going to be done. They're already familiar with it because they've already started doing some of that work with some major projects. It would be JULY 1st. And I also do want to mention that the executive director position is not only about empowering the management side, but also the school board members to ensure that they have the necessary data when they're governing. Okay. How much? I mean, so we're talking about like efficiencies. What is the goal for these two positions in saving the district money? I can
239tell you, if we had these two positions, probably in the adoption of the last erp, I think that was probably, what, about ten plus years ago, the district probably would have saved about 50 plus million dollars over time. So do we have a goal for these two positions moving forward, though, like in the next five years, they will save the district x amount of money. So yes, everything that we do more efficiently and effectively is going to help us realize costs. So we don't have to spend a lot of money on the on the back end, trying to fill gaps with the vendor or to hire consultants to, to fill gaps once because we didn't do it right the first time. So I can't put a specific number on it, but I can tell you
240if we, when we don't implement something with fidelity, it cost us because of our size and our scale. It cost us tens of millions of dollars in a short amount of time. Okay. I mean, I understand like, I, I believe what you're saying in terms of like the, the purpose of these two positions and the efficiencies, I understand that I would really like to see like a clear goal, like if that person's coming into that role or, you know, if they are currently in that role, what are their goals for the next, you know, three year, two years, three years in terms of delivering on those efficiencies? I don't, you know, it's not my place as a board member to to manage that piece of it. But, you know, I do think like if that
241their whole purpose, the whole purpose of those roles is to deliver efficiencies and leveraging, you know, all of the resources of Broward County Public Schools to make us more efficient. I think that we should have a dollar amount in mind to justify those two positions. So any other board member comment? MR. Cervera MR. Superintendent, what's the current salary of the Executive Director of Enterprise Analytics and Intelligence? If you can give Doctor Lozano's team a second. $164,800. How much? Doctor Lozano 64. MR. Superintendent, how many first year teachers can I hire for? $164,000? Doctor Lozano, what's the first year fringe and salary? Average teacher salaries 87,000. So approximately two teachers with. We will have decorum in the audience or we'll have to recess the meeting. So please hold on. Sorry. Hold on, Doctor Lozano. Just wait
242a second. The expectation is that we can have a civil and respectful conversation. Staff is trying to respond to a board member question. Can you start over? Can you start over, Doctor Lozano? Salary and fringe would be two teachers. And just to confirm, Doctor Lozano the 164 that included that you gave me for this this executive director position that was salary and fringe. His salary. Thank you. Any other board member discussion on the motion? All in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. All opposed? Say no. Roll call. No roll call on the motion. School board members Alhadeff. No. Bulman. No. Cervera. Yes. Hixon Holness. No. Leonardi. Yes. Rupert Thompson. Yes. Zeeman. Motion passes five four. Thank you. Chair MAY reclaim my time. o oneook your timim g g ahahd. ou.. f f I c
243can. Movinglolong. I've got a couple more of these. I'm glad we're off to a good start. I want to thank my colleagues for their attention. Page 11 of the organizational chart. I've got a couple on here regarding page 11. We have an executive director of Food and Nutrition Services. We also have two directors directly underneath them a director of food and nutrition Services and a director of food and Nutrition Services Information Systems. So in total, if I'm reading this correctly, we have three directors overseeing food and nutrition services. Chair, I'd like to make the following motion. My motion is to cut the Executive Director of Food and Nutrition Services and have their duties and responsibilities split amongst the other two directors, who are directly below the pay line under that role. Is there a second?
244No. Second. Thank you. Chair. I'd like to call the question as an item number one, as amended. MISS Dupree. Bruno. Well, the motion that was pending failed. She can call the question the board has to decide. Even though he's not done talking. You have additional motions that I do. Okay. Well, she called the question the board has to decide. All in favor of calling the question, say I. I. All opposed? Say no. No. I believe that fails with one vote in favor with MISS Alston. Alhadeff. Continue. MR. Cervera. Thank you. Chair. Staying along the org chart on page 11. We have an executive director of student Transportation and a director of student Transportation and Fleet Services. At this time, I would. Motion to cut the executive Director of Student Transportation Fleet Services and have that
245role absorbed by the current Director of Student Transportation and Fleet Services, along with the many managers and assistant directors who are below the line of. Far as transportation is concerned. MR. Bruno is asking you to repeat the motion. MR. Cervera. Oh, sure. Page 11. We have an executive director of Student Transportation, and we have a director of student Transportation. Directly under the line is the director of Student Transportation Fleet Services. So essentially two directors, if you will. My motion is to cut the executive director of Student Transportation and Fleet Services and have those roles and responsibilities absorbed by the director, as well as the many, many, many managers who work directly under the Director of Student Transportation and Fleet Services. Is there a second, second motion made by MR. Cervera, seconded by DR. Zeman. Public
246comment on the motion. Again, I'll start the timer for two minutes for people to make their way into the boardroom. Doctor Natalie Lynch, Walsh Plantation, Florida. I support the motion, of course. Keep in mind you're now splitting facilities and operations up. Back in the day, not so very long ago, we didn't have so many executive directors. I forget what prompted that. Several years ago, food and nutrition has you have information systems. So that's all of these directors are also new. They're used to just be one director for transportation, for new food nutrition. MR. Cervera, thank you for trying to cut from the top, which is what the public is asking for. I'm not sure why your first motion to cut the other executive director. I believe the box is empty even right now because the
247person retired. But this is cutting from the top. And because you're being forced to do this on the fly without a workshop, this is about the only way you can do it is to start making a bunch of motions. It would have been a lot easier to have a philosophical discussion at a workshop. Victoria Trujillo, Hollywood, Florida. Thank you, MR. Cervera, for being courageous and the board for considering this. I echo what Doctor Walsh is saying, because this should have more time to be considered. How can we leverage our ai systems to support the people that will be tasked with these jobs? Because it can be done. And I would like to see that explored. Thank you, MR. Cervera, for the motion. I do support it, and I want to just make sure that it
248seems like it's going to be a really long meeting today, because we got to go through every little thing. But just remember that if the capital doesn't sacrifice, the districts will starve. Thanks. Hello. Anna Fusco, teaching and PRESIDENT. I could see a few more motions are coming because obviously there wasn't workshopped. And I'm I'm glad that you guys said let's keep the meeting going so you can hear it all. Just make sure when you get your time to speak, talk it through about the positions and why are there so many executives or however you want to call them, and how many are under them, and how many are under them? And what exactly is the direct report, how many direct reports and so forth, and really get the gist of of the positions. I think
249it's important that people. Well, you understand and that everybody out here understands, and I don't mean just sitting in this little room, believe it or not, there's multiple live streams going on around the county besides Anna Fusco's Facebook page. So, you know, please don't be afraid to ask questions and see where this is all coming from. And I appreciate people willing to make motions and make some movement. Any other public comment? Board member discussion? DR. Zeman. Thank you so much, chair. You know, the last reduction MAY come back and bite us. We MAY end up hiring lots and lots and lots of consultants to do that last job a lot. That is a critical function, and we MAY consider that again a little bit later. This one is not this is one where we have
250an opportunity to use a director position to do what directors are paid to do, which is to run large business operations. And I'm very confident that with the technology we have today and with the staff that we have within transportation, that this can be done by a director, and I look forward to this reduction going forward if it does. Thank you very much. Thank you, MISS Hixon. Thank you. I just like the superintendent to weigh in on the suggestion. From. If I'm wrong, Doctor Wanza, this position is currently vacant. The Executive Director of Transportation and Fleets is not vacant. No. No, it was the director. Correct. That was the motion to delimit that position. Just know. The Executive director. The motion is to delimit the. Of student transportation and fleet services so that that I
251will have to push back on. I thought it was the director. Yeah. We're talking about the largest transit system in Broward County to be to be honest. To ensure that we can get students to and from school, manage also our White Fleet vehicles. It's a large department district wide across the whole entire county. So an executive director is definitely needed for transportation. Okay. So can I ask a question? Can you tell us the salary of both the executive director and the director. About Lozano? Second. The executive director is 145,000, not including fringe. And the director is 103929. And that is currently a task assigned position. Okay. Thank you. So the difference is minimal. Would I'd like to make an alternative motion to eliminate the Director of Student Transportation and Fleet Services, but leave the executive.
252Second substitute motion made by MISS Hixon, seconded by Dr. Holness to eliminate the director position instead of the Executive director. Public comment on the substitute motion. Doctor Natalie Lynch Walsh Plantation, Florida. Okay, just as a reminder, my Phd is in leadership. I have an mba and an undergraduate business degree and you guys are making me insane. There's an entire study on organizational hierarchies. Like that's a whole thing in the world. Maybe not in here. So I appreciate what you're trying to do, but if you have an executive director, it suggests you first had a director, you would eliminate the executive director, not the director. And I really hope this is not about the bodies occupying the boxes, and I'm pretty sure it is. So we should find out who's in the executive director box. Did
253we just shove them in there? Are they task assigned? Was this to get them more money? Because this this makes no sense. You would eliminate the executive and leave the director. You would not have an executive director with no director. That just is not how hierarchies operate. Thank you. Any other public comment? All right. We've got about a minute on the timer left in case people in the building need to make their way. There's no one else in that other. There's no one. No one else. Okay. All right. Board member. Chair, point of order. Because there's now no one in the subsequent rooms. Are we okay with not doing the two minute timer anymore? Well, I, I do need to know from staff if people do, then end up in that room. Have we cleared
254that room? Have we closed it off to the public? It I'm here to make a comment, but I'm just waiting for the. So if right now is the appropriate time for public comment. So if I call for public comment, I need everyone who would like to speak for public comment to approach the podium. Thank you. On the motion. I am a resident of plantation, Florida and this is about the d. H h program at Tropical Elementary. Shake your head. Nobody else. Right now. So pause this time for a second. For me, right now we're talking about the the substitute motion of eliminating the director, the director of student transportation and fleet services instead of the executive director. So if you could comment on that. Okay. I have no comment on that. But at some point
255will be allowed to make the comment. I'd like to thank you. MR. Hill and MR. Sullivan. Have we closed off the other room? Okay. Board member discussion on the substitute motion. MISS Hixon, would you like to. I made my motion. DR. Holness. Thank you, MADAM Chair. So, Doctor Hepburn, for the executive director versus the director. The salary ban was stated. If in fact, we're just looking at position and not people, how challenging would it be to find someone to provide that scope of work for a salary of a director? So the the for salary of a director? Yes. Versus an executive director. Yeah. It would be challenging. We're talking about a county wide, very large county, very large district wide transportation system. And some people are often thinking about busses. We have a very large
256fleet of other vehicles too, that services schools and services departments and that support all the logistics of getting items to and from schools and offices in our district too. So in order to recruit somebody to want to do that type of work in the public sector is definitely difficult. Okay, so I don't know if you have the answer to this, but comparable to other large districts, this type of a position would, would you say the the current pay is within the market rate as it compares to other size district similar to Broward County? Yeah, I would say it's currently comparable. Okay. And would you say that $103,000 to do that kind of work would, would rather be very difficult to find an individual to do so for that kind of a pay. Yes. Okay. Thank
257you. Thank you. Any other board member comment on the substitute motion? Can you read it one more time? MISS Hixon. The suggestion is to eliminate the director position for Student Transportation and Fleet Services on page 11. But to keep the Executive Director. Thank you. MISS Bulman. Not to sound redundant if you've already answered this, but how. How does this look if we do this? Is this. Going to negatively impact our students and transportation. For the the the director position? Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I appreciate the sentiment of doing these things and cutting, but I it's also difficult to tell what the impact is to operations overall. And, you know, you penny wise and pound foolish. So if it ends up costing us more money or if it ends up being something that we
258then have to like consult out. Yes, I don't want to see that happen. So the position, as I said, the position is is currently vacant. It's somebody that's task assigned in there. If you get rid of director, position just increases the span of control for the executive director. And so we will work to become as efficient and effective at the same time as possible. But the, the, the executive director position is the one that's absolutely needed for sure. Thanks. MR. Cervera MR. Superintendent, I'm sorry, I think you said this, but I might have missed the last part. The current salary for the executive Director and the current salary for the Director of Student Transportation. Yes, we said that earlier, Doctor Lozano. You guys still had. With with fringe. Yep. Doctor Lozano, chief human resources officer.
259The executive director is. 1812 50 with salary and fringe. Task assignment pay. With the task assignment pay. Currently, the director position is $143,750, again including salary and fringe. MR. Superintendent, how many first year teachers can I hire? If I had an extra $181,000. Salary and fringe, was that 75 on average? So two. About two. Any other board member comment before I go? Doctor Hepburn, I know that you had talked about, you know, targeting, you know, eliminating positions based on first targeting attrition and vacancies was the director position consideration? Yes, that was a consideration consideration. And it was analyzed. But also one of the things we looked at is span of controls. When it comes to the vastness of the organization. So that was that was one that we did not initially cut, but we can
260mitigate this one if it's so the board desired to to remove it. Do we know how long this position has been vacant? This position has been vacant during this year. It's not been vacant for no more than a year. It was during this year. Do we know? Has it been vacant for a week, a month, six months. Go ahead. Doctor. I can't hear. Yeah. Go ahead. It was around SEPTEMBER, OCTOBER because the original executive director retired at the end of last school year a a staffing, you know, occurred. And then the current executive director, I believe, was hired permanently somewhere in SEPTEMBER or OCTOBER. And then we went on a hiring freeze. So that's how you had task assignments. Got it. Okay. Any other board discussion on the substitute motion? All in favor of the
261substitute motion, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Say no. Substitute motion passes with one dissenting vote. MR. Cervera, is MRS. Alhadeff on the line? She's not on the line. Okay. Oh, sorry, I didn't hear you, MISS Rupert. Can we just do a roll call, then? Yep. Roll call on the motion. School board members Bulman. Yes. Cervera. Could I just everyone speaking into the mic? It's very helpful for capturing the votes. Thank you. That was a no. No. Hixon. Yes. Holness. Yes. Leonardi. Yes. Rupert. No. Thompson. Yes. Zieman. Yes. Alhadeff. Nonaligned passes six two. MR. Cervera you have the floor. Thank you. Chair moving along here, page 12 of the org chart. We have an executive director of Physical Plant Operations. And directly under that position, we have a director of Physical Plant Operatatnsnsnd a Dirececrr off
262SuSuainability and c compliance. My motn n is as follows. To cut, the Executive Director of Physical Plant Operations and combine that person's workload and responsibilities with the Director of Physical Plant Operations and the Director of Sustainability and Compliance. Is there a second? Seeing no second, unless MISS Rupert, you would like to second it? I would like to hear it again. Sure. What page you. On page 12, we have an executive director of physical Plant operations. Directly underneath that position is the director of Physical Plant Operations and the Director of Sustainability and Compliance. My motion is to cut the Executive Director of physical plant operations and have that individual's workload split between the Director of Physical Plant Operations and the director of Sustainability and compliance. And now that I'm looking at it, as well as the
263many managers who who fall directly under them as well. All right. Seeing no second. Go ahead, MR. Cervera. Thank you, chair, page 13. We have directly above us. We have an executive director of capital programs and executive director of budget. My motion is as follows. Combine those two positions into one entitled the. The Executive Director of Capital Programs and Budget. If I can help you out there, MR. Cervera, if you go to quickly team, if you can direct me to the right page. MR. Finance page. That that position is not under operations is actually under the Finance Office 17 or 18. Page 1717 so that position is the Executive Director of budget under the finance chief, the cfo, that you see the dotted line to many of the other divisions, such as operations or to
264specifically facilities for the capital program, also food and nutrition, because they have their own budget or finance line items themselves. So that the cfo. 17 on. 17 so that the cfo's office is always abreast collectively of the entire budget and all the restricted budgets within Broward County Public schools, again, to break down the walls of isolation. This is something that helps the district move forward in a better way so we can get rid of all the all the isolation and the lack of understanding that sometimes happens in the cfo office because she doesn't have a conduit between facilities and also finance. So the executive director of budget is not actual position under Ops. That's a position under the Chief of finance under the Chief of Finance. Thank you for the clarification. MADAM General Counsel, you
265heard my motion. Is there anything impermissible or. In direct conflict with any portion of the Florida statutes in which I just suggested. Not from the Florida statutes? The only thing I would say about the motion. It was on page 12, I believe. And you wanted. 13. 13, 13, and you wanted to combine them with individuals that are not necessarily within that same reporting structure. Is my understanding correct? Better speak. Is there. I'm I'm sorry I didn't get an answer is I. There's nothing from from a legal standpoint, the issue I believe, that the superintendent was pointing out is that you wanted to combine them with the two directors on page 13. I believe it was, but those people are not within the same reporting structure. So they have different lanes. Okay. So it's a reporting
266issue. Okay. Thank you for the clarification. I didn't get that the first time. Apologies. And thank you to the superintendent for the explanation as well. I'll withdraw that motion. I've got two more, if I MAY. Okay it or information systems rather. Excuse me. Page 15. We have a an executive director of technology operations. And if I'm reading this portion correctly, there are four directors that directly report to this individual, a director of Data intelligence, a director of infrastructure services, a director of application services, and a director of Technology Support Services. This is on page 15 of the proposed org chart under Information Systems. My motion would be to eliminate the Executive Director of Technology Operations and have their responsibilities and obligations absolved by the four directors who are currently directing, who are direct reports to
267that individual. Second motion made by MR. Cervera, seconded by MISS Hixon public comment on the motion. And just to be clear with staff, no one's in the room with the delays. No, ma'am. If you would like to deliver public comment on the motion, please approach the podium. Doctor. Natalie Lynch Walsh Plantation, Florida. Okay, so a couple of things. You guys are good with having assistant directors reporting to executive directors seems to be a theme. And you MAY want to get your salary schedules out, because even I'm getting confused as to because the salary bands are in a range, they're not just one number. I don't know where the 103 was coming from earlier. As far as it goes, I support any measure to cut and consolidate from the top or top ish. You really would
268have benefited because I. I'm guessing you guys didn't get the report from mgt. I only have access to the emails because that's all they've given me. But they were looking at combining it and academic technology. I don't know if that gets you there, but that would be a further conversation because there do seem to be a lot of silos going on in it. Thank you. Next speaker. Rochelle Sofer, Coconut Creek, Florida. I also am in support of this not because of any elimination of any particular individual, but if we're really looking to curtail the amount of money we're spending, honestly, with as much work as you're putting on the backs of teachers and those of us in the schools, if these directors can't have a little bit more on their end, why are you continually
269giving them more money and not teachers? We're already doing this, so if it's good for the goose, it's got to be good for the gander. Doctor Trudy Germanovich, I'm in full support of this. And I remember when technology was under Neath academics, and I believe that's where it should be. We only had one person and we were bringing in all kinds of things. I know it's gotten so much more complex. However, that doesn't mean that you can't hire other people to do ai or whatever. You don't have to have these silos saying, this one's just doing this. It's too repetitious at the top. That's what we keep saying. Hello, Anna Scarbrough, teaching and PRESIDENT. Well, you know where I stand. Everything should be generated in the schools. I'm going to say it again today is
270what MAY what 11th remember this date. If you don't make more adjustments come next year, AUGUST 4th when everybody reports back to pre planning week and then the students report the next week because I will be the first back in here telling you I told you so. You nine board members truly truly truly don't know what is happening. Remember superintendent gets to talk to each individually. And now you guys are kind of discussing it. Schools are being starved to 10%. Thing is accurate. That's not fake. That's real. You know some of you up there talk to Lisa Maxwell and the principal so I know what I'm talking about. So I think stronger things need to be done in this order. Thank you. Anyone else? Board member discussion, MISS Thompson. Thank you. Chair. Doctor Hepburn, could
271you walk us through the impact of this. Yeah. And I and I'll start it off and MR. Davis can fill in. Is he over there? Okay. So I just want to remind the board this we're we're the sixth largest school district in the country. We have 237 school staff with principals and the like. We are a huge system. Many of the operational components of this of this org chart are the backbone of this system, working correctly and efficiently and effectively, even even with the gaps that the team has identified from the past that we're trying to close. And so it is. It is small. I want to say small decisions, but decisions like this could disrupt a lot of things. And especially when it comes to it, it is the backbone of everything in this
272district right now. Things that people disregard that MAY be simple is because of how it is the highway for many of the components to actually work correctly and get information to or from, and all the other initiatives. And I'm not just talking about software, I'm talking about hardware as well. And so with that said, I'll let you add to for the public to get a greater understanding of what this executive director does. And, and you can continue. Go ahead. So. Trey Davis Chief Information Officer I want I want the board to be very cautious here. And the reason that I'm saying this is because my experience of decades in private sector, as well as in k-12 at scale, tells me a different story here. What's evolving, what you're going to find is these particular cuts
273that you're making here are going to end up costing you exponentially more through sourcing than you would if you kept the resource in place. I think it's very important to note as well that just in my tenure, over $12 million in venture funding and licensing concessions have been realized in my short tenure. Additionally, over $15 million in it divestments, programs, services, hardware, and software have been realized. During my tenure of only 19 months. And let me speak to the positions that you're referencing. The positions that you're referencing have millions of dollars of named projects associated with them that value this district broadly. For example, the executive director of artificial and or analytics and intelligence alone, you know, has projects that are tens of millions of dollars, for example, facilities modernization. The one position that's driving
274that to realize that a bearish case, 40 to $50 million over five years on energy savings alone, not to mention tapping into the $80 million in labor, the $20.41 million that I mentioned in reduction of overtime, two use cases. We have many, many named cases here that you can't do that without this kind of, you know, capital, human capital here. So I would caution the board in making decisions like this that are going to end up costing you exponentially more. And my mantra, cost containment, never the expense of improvement or innovation. It's easy to cut the money. It's easier to lose out on the innovation that our kids deserve. Yep. And just to close out the value of us, these funds and some of these positions that the board has, has invested in and hopefully
275continues divested in the amount of cost savings realized in just a short amount of time. It tremendously exceeds the value 11000 x. And so that's why I want to caution the board on some of the decisions when it comes to these these positions. Thank you for for explaining that. I also know that our MR. Davis has gone through his department with a fine tooth comb since he started here, and made sure that it was as efficient and as small as possible. I think when we talk as a district about preparing our students for the future, like Doctor Hepburn cautioned us, we need to look at the huge, big picture. I also know this department has has brought made us the ai capital of the world, which I always say wrong. It's also brought in Microsoft
276partnerships. It's brought in expanded opportunity, and I would caution the board to vote on eliminating that. Thank you. Thank you, MISS Bulman. Thank you. I agree with MISS Thompson. I my experience working with MR. Davis is that he knows what he's doing. He has a lot of experience, both in the private sector and in the public sector. So there's no argument that he brings a wide breadth of perspective to this. And this is a shifting environment, whether we like it or not. And it's a huge organization that requires technical support based I mean, just any type of virus or any attack could just take down our entire school system. So I think we have to be very careful. And again, I don't want to be penny wise pound foolish about how we're looking at these
277positions. If they're impacting millions of dollars and you're paying hundreds of thousands, we need to look at that. And I also. Am concerned about a decision that we made a couple pages back with the the enterprise analytics as well, because I you know, Doctor Hepburn said that we for hundreds of thousands of dollars, they have those positions we have paid in the tens of millions to fix mistakes because they were siloed. So I, we need to be looking at the big picture and how we're best approaching going forward, even if a different position is being paid less, it doesn't make a couple hundred thousand dollars not worth spending in certain areas. So I, I appreciate MR. Davis cutting his org chart. I know he spent he saved about $8 million over the past year, two
278years. Higher than that. More than that. And then he's brought in, I mean, tens of millions of dollars in benefits to us. So I, I believe that the way that he has his org chart set up right now is the way that we should be proceeding. Thank you. And if I MAY, MR. Bulman, add to that for the it department, it hasn't been just this year of a of a reorg for them. It's been the past two years of finding greater efficiencies and reorganization within that department. And so I know this is we're talking about this today, but this has been a two year reorg. We did a lot of things to change components around and positions for greater value for the district overall. MR. Cervera. Thank you, chair, I just want to be very
279clear as to what the ask is here, because, you know, listening to some of these comments, one would think that I'm asking to shut down the entire it department in Broward County public schools. That's not what I'm asking. We have an executive director of technology and four directors, four working underneath them. All I'm saying is, let's cut from the top. Let's get rid of one position and disseminate that work and that responsibility to the other four directors. So their workload goes up by a quarter because you know, whose workload goes up every single day and they don't get more pay. The people teaching our kids. So all I'm asking is that we treat these people the same as we've been treating our teachers. Don't cut the department, cut the fat from the top and split
280up the work over the remaining four directors. We're not closing the it department down, guys. That's not what I'm asking. I'm asking for a little concessions so we can save some dough. Thank you. Amen. Thank you. DR. Zeman. I appreciate it, chair. I would just ask the board to think about something here. If we want the superintendent schools to reduce chief positions or executive director positions, we can direct them to do that. We did not. You know what we directed the superintendent to do? Go find us a boatload of money and cut 1000 positions. And he did that. For schools. He did exactly what we asked him to do, and we have the authority to go back and ask. Him, please. Sorry, DR. Zeman MISS Fusco, this is your first warning. And we have the
281opportunity to have him do it in different ways, if we'd like, in the future. But he did exactly what we said, and we didn't put parameters around him. We didn't tell him that he couldn't take positions that were encumbered. And he did. He took 300 of those. We didn't tell him a lot of things. One of the things I'd like to ask you, Doctor Hepburn, is last week in your presentation, you gave us statistics on pay band d and above versus pay band d and below. Can you share me those percentages? Yes. So directors and above were cut 16%. Thank you. And a majority I would say probably 1 or 2 vacant. The majority of those positions were filled or they were not vacancies. And and then. And then below was 15%. So on the
282chart was 15%, six directors and above was 16%. And tell me again, central office took reductions of 22% total. How about central operations? Central operations total of 11%. Only 1% of those positions were filled. How many positions out of schools did you take in this round of reduction? Zero. Okay. I just would ask us as a board to think a little bit about this, because Doctor Hepburn and his staff get to go and do the analysis stage. They get to go and say to MR. Davis, we need reductions. He comes back, he goes to MR. Lozano, who took a 20% qwak, which I think if I could, Doctor Hepburn. That was the biggest reduction in. Of all the Chiefs hr. Oh, actually, MR. Sullivan's division. Took a bigger one. Okay. What was that reduction? What
283is it, 27%. That sounds about about right. Maybe closer to 22. 23%. All good. My point is, is that that took weeks and weeks and weeks of working together to come up with a good strategy that would allow us to have the staff left over, not the 25,000 we started with, but the 24 we ended up with, that we can go and win. And so these one at a time cuts I don't think are getting us where we want to go. If we want to give him more direction and say, come back after this rorod and getet us thisis manyositions atthis lel, h h w wllo tt,t, b h he wiwill c creat s somhihing. I thi thisococrr Hepburn, if I'm right, I just want to ask this as a question. Are any of these
284cuts making us a better team to go win back the hearts and minds of students and parents? No, that's very much been cautioning. Be careful. We told him to do something and he did it. He did it where the more higher management people took it than lower. He took it out of central staff first and then central operations second, zero out of schools. Will there be reductions in schools? Have there been reductions in schools? Absolutely. We lost 25,000 students. Nobody's happy. Zero people are happy. No one's happy. Staffs aren't happy. The students aren't happy, the parents aren't happy. But we lost $225 million. And what we have to do is put the best team on the field that we can. And we asked our coach to do that. So if we want to change the
285rules for our superintendent, I would suggest we do that and have them come back. Doctor Hepburn, if we wanted to ask you to to save different or more positions, how much time would you need? Do you need three months a year? Yeah, we need time because there's a lot of analysis that took place for this. And you have other budget reductions that are going to keep us above 3% next year. Is that correct? Correct. Thank you. To me, that is that is really fundamental. And everyone needs to know that these one at a time cuts are difficult. I think it's very difficult to put Trey Davis on the stand and say justify position one. And then he comes up with $20 million saved another bunch saved on top of that. But I don't think this
286is a fair process right now to make people justify. If we want to keep going, that's fine. My preference is to say, look, if we want to do something different, let's give the superintendent six months and give them some directions to go make further cuts. Or we do what I think a lot of boards would do, which is wait and see how he's going to keep us over 3%, how he's going to work hard to find raises for people next year so we can bridge to the 2728 referendum funds, and let's figure out how we can go and build the best team possible. But these kinds of random. Okay. These kind of random ideas with the staff having to respond to it, I don't, I don't think is going to get us to that team
287where we have the greatest possibility to win back the hearts and minds of students. Thank you very much, chair. Thank you, MISS Hixon. Thank you. Two questions. One I forgot to ask earlier, Doctor Hepburn, when are we going to see the mgt report? MR. Sullivan? I know once we're concluded with this, it will be shortly. It won't be much longer. I can check with them. Okay. Thank you. As I mentioned before, it would have been very helpful to have it before we got to this point. I mean, I know they gave a presentation, but I was looking for more information from that. My other question to superintendent or MR. Davis is, what is the likelihood of being able to to take the executive director jobs and separate it? So kind of the question that MRS.
288Leonardi asked before, can you tell us what does the executive director of. Again, it's too small technology operations like, what is. What do they do on a daily basis? Well. Go ahead, MR. Davis. And then just a reminder, there were two editors and we removed one out of that division. Go ahead, MR. Davis. Trey Davis, chief information officer, the executive director of technology operations, handles all of the operational strategy and manages the, you know, the return on investment relative to those operations driving across all our value streams. So one thing that I do want to mention there specifically is that I think Doctor Hepburn alluded to this was last summer. We actually went through our restructure and moved from a functional, siloed environment to a composite organization, driving value again across the organization. I think
289it's very important to note that the directors that you're that you're referring to, I don't treat those as, quote, directors that have just personnel and budget responsibility. They are technical practitioners. For example, the director of infrastructure Services is our key network architect, you know, so imagine what occurs across the district relative to our network and the availability of things like Wan services, our internet access and. All right. So so if these were just personnel and budget managers, then our structure would look very differently. But that's not the case. The expectation there is that they perform at a high level relative to being a technology practitioner as much as they are, or personnel or budget manager. So back to the executive director position. That is a critical position in realizing the alignment with with organizational strategy.
290And actually what is delivered in the Is world again, across our value chain, our value streams. Okay. I appreciate all that. And thank you so much for all you do. But I don't think that I mean, I still couldn't walk away telling you what the executive director did. So can is there a way for you to, to maybe say that in a way that someone who's not technical could understand what that is? Because I'm sorry, I, and I, I'm not trying to be funny. I just really didn't quite get all. I appreciate the question. If it needs clarity, I'm happy to happy to give. So again, back to the operational strategy. So, you know, working again with each of the directors, ensuring that, you know, resource allocation is where it needs to be. Investments, both
291on a general fund and a capital budget standpoint is where it needs to be for each of the operational areas. We're very value driven. So if we look at performance and value, they're very defined metrics and expectations for that executive director to deliver with the directors relative to how we invest in technology, which, you know, of course, is in the tens of millions of dollars. But more importantly, what value is derived. So the reason that I place that value on the executive director's levels, because that is how much money, right, is associated with, with their tenure in that position. So how does what you, as the chief I.T. Person to differ from what the executive because it sounded like they were kind of managing resources for each of the directors. So can you explain what
292the difference is then between what you do and the executive director does that. That's that's definitely more organizational strategy. So I look at things like organizational architecture, the structure, you know, value streams, how we perform, portfolio management, vendor relationships. For example, some of what I referenced before in the 12 plus million dollars in concessions and licensing, dealing directly with vendors. I do not expect that the executive director to do that. I expect the director to executive director of tech operations to be focused on operational excellence, high availability of the systems, not on those particular organizational or relationship issues that, of course, yield tens of millions of dollars on their own. So strategy versus operations. Okay. Thank you. And again, thank you for all you've done to streamline and, and really get us to the top
293with the different it things. I appreciate all the work that you've done. Thank you, MISS Hixon. Thank you. Thank you. DR. Holness. Thank you, MADAM Chair. So I just want to thank the public and also for giving your feedback. But I also want to make it clear that the superintendent did come back with cut in. 16% of the above chart. Is that right, Doctor Hepburn? That's correct. DR. Holness. Okay. And below the chart he cut 15%. Below the chart we only cut 1,313%. So when you look at what we, as DR. Zeman mentioned, had asked the superintendent to do, he did exactly what we asked, and he actually cut a higher percentage of the top. Now, the impact, if we continue, in my opinion, to. Continue to cut more of the top based upon what
294has been discussed, the impact can be consequential. Board member Bulman made a statement that says, we have to be careful in how we're being penny wise and pound foolish. Now it sounds good to cut the top, I understand, and and he has done that. But I am concerned as a board member about the long term effect that it will have on everyone if we continue to have more cuts higher than the 16%. As a responsible board member, I have to listen to the superintendents rationale as far as the impact that it will have on our school district if we continue to increasingly cut more, a higher percentage, which is higher than what he's done at the bottom of our above the chart. So I was the one who supported reducing the number of chiefs, and
295that passed. We reduced the number of chiefs. I supported reducing the level of positions, but I am concerned and I'm not here for brownie points. I want to ensure that the district is functioning effectively. I cannot in my own conscience, allow or support any thing that I believe will put our district in a consequential position that impact all of us. And I'm saying this not just as a board member, but I have family who's employed by the school district. My sister is a teacher. I fully understand the whole thing. I was a teacher. But if I am to make decisions that I believe is going to be significantly consequential, where we're we're cutting positions that give us a whole lot of money just to say we're doing it. I can't in my right conscience do
296that as a board member. So I, like many of the board members, look at what's been presented to us. And I have to be very, very responsible in how I make the decisions. So some of the decisions MAY not be popular and some MAY be, but I believe that it's important that we move in a direction, as DR. Zeman had mentioned, some of his points, that we are not impacting this district in such a consequential way that even those at the bottom starts to get impacted, even those below the top. Because when we start losing money in different areas, it's going to impact everyone else. So I understand for some folks, they MAY come up with these things and it sounds popular. It's a buzz point, but as a board member, I have to act
297responsibly. And so I will continue to listen, but just understand, and I believe the majority of us, we're making decisions not just for what is being presented to us, but how it will impact all of us at the bottom, all of the staff at the bottom, including my sister. So that's the basis of my my decisions here today is to make sure that the whole system functions effectively. And I, if I do anything, otherwise, I would not be responsible. Thank you, MADAM Chair. Thank you, MISS Bulman. Oh, it's not here, MR. Cervera. Call the question. All in favor of calling the question, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Say no. Roll call please. Roll call. I'm calling the question Cervera. Yes. Hixon. Yes. Holness. Yes. Leonardi. Yes. Rupert. I have a question. Could you speak in
298the mic? MISS Rupert. I have a question. Is this just on the motion and not item one still okay, just on the motion. Gotcha. I'm a yes. Thompson. Yes. Zieman Alhadeff not on the line. Bowman. Yes. Passes eight zero. Okay. All in favor of item or the motion on eliminating the Executive director position? Say aye. Aye. All opposed? Say no. No. Roll call. Roll call on the motion. Hixon. No. Holness. No. Leonardi. No. Rupert Thompson. Zieman. No. Alhadeff. Nonaligned. Bowman. No. Cervera. Yes. Fails two eight. I'm sorry. Two six. Mary continuing along, chair on page 16 of the org chart, specifically under hr, we have an executive director of Talent Management. Directly under them is a director of Talent acquisition and a director of hr operations, which is being sought to be removed by this
299current version of the org chart. I have confirmed with the superintendent that the director of hr operations is a field position. As we sit here today, here's my motion and it's twofold. My motion would be to cut the Executive Director of Talent management and to reinstate the position of director of hr operations. Is there a second? I'll second it. Public comment on the motion staff. Is there anyone in the rooms with the delays? No, ma'am. Okay. All right. Doctor. Natalie Lynch, Walsh Plantation, Florida. I support the motion in spirit. However, the director of hr operations is a fairly new position, and the person that has been occupying it was a principal one day and then in charge of hr operations, but not related to schools as one might think. It was non-school related type functions.
300And I thought at the time, how in the world would they even know how to do their job? I mean, I know around here we like to take principals and put them in charge of hr. Actually, this is the department we're talking about, which gets us back to the job descriptions in making these suggestions. And certainly, if you're making recommendations as the superintendent, one should be looking at the job descriptions. Do you need this function? What are the qualifications? Because one of the biggest problems around here is having watered down qualifications, that you can shove anybody into an mgt. Did most of the analysis for this. Thank you. Next speaker. MADAM Chair, can you repeat the motion one more time, please? Well, the maker of the motion is not here. MR. Bruno, I know you
301can. I have my time back, though, because I just need to know the the motion. Please let Attorney Dupree Bruno read the motion. Thank. Thank you. It's the motion to reduce the executive director for talent management and reinstate the director of hr operations. Okay. My. It says I have 32 seconds left. Could I have the minute or. No. MR. Hill, could you restart the time, please? Thank you, ira Lynch, Deerfield Beach. I just want to say, I don't know if I agree with the motion or not, but rules are not written in stone and neither are the people who make them. I'm on a Hunger Games kick today, so Katniss Everdeen warned that fire is catching and this community is the spark. But there's a bigger threat than just our voices. Fiduciary responsibilities, a legal
302mandate. If you continue to protect the administrative bloat at the expense of of our students and teachers, you're inviting the state of Florida to walk in through these doors and take the keys. State receivership is the ultimate game over. And if you won't do the right thing and cut from the top, the state will do it for you. And they will start by removing the leadership that failed to act. Do the right things for students and teachers, not the above the line system. And MAY the odds be ever in your favor because right now they aren't. And Scarborough Teachers Union PRESIDENT. So I appreciate the motion, MR. Cervera, but that's a wrong area. Actually, the office of hr and talent, they're the worker bees. They are working diligently to make sure that all of their
30312,000 educators and all of their 3000 ESPs are properly credentialed and certified and have what they need to make sure that they're in those classrooms. I'm going to make this clear. I appreciate what Ty did over there. But, you know, he's no longer going to be working for Broward County Public Schools. He could put his resignation in so he could say whatever he wants to inflate it. You take teachers out of schools. They're the backbone. They are. You're not going to have schools that are going to run. End of story. I don't care how many executive directors or assistant directors you have, they are not the backbone of this school district. They are people that are leading and making decisions. And I like to ask this question, why are we this big problem? It isn't
304the teachers that caused it. It's the upper echelon. So you guys keep doing it. Might as well call the question and vote on agenda one right now, and see what it's going to bring to you next month. Any other public speakers? Board member discussion, MISS Rupert. Thank you. I would not be in favor of this. One of the most detrimental things that have happened in the last 15 years is when a very, very important chief position for leadership, for talent development was axed. And it took us all this time to get back into a district. So just be warned on that. So thank you. Any other board member comment? All in favor of the motion say I. I I'm sorry. All opposed. Say no. No roll call. Roll call. On the motion. School board members.
305Holness. No. Leonardi no. Rupert no. Thompson. No. Zieman. No. Alhadeff is not on the line. Bowman. No. Cervera. Yes. Hixon. No. Fails one seven. Chair, if I MAY, as I close out here. I mentioned this sort of in my opening about this directive that was given tour prprcipals recectltl a abo esntially tinin awaway their ability to control where their budget goes to and being given a very specific directive that they can only have a certain amount of teachers based on a certain amount of kids they have in the school. Since we are on the topic about saving money and cost efficiency and things like that in the org chart, I'd like to hear from MISS Johnson as to whether or not the information I was getting was accurate, and who ordered this directive to be
306issued to all of our school principals over the last, I'd say, a couple of weeks. And MISS Johnson, I'll take that question initiated at least, and then you can finish it up. Yes, there's going to. There's going to be. A reduction in school budgets because of a reduction in students, as I said before, year over year, ever since I was a teacher and most likely before, if a school does not get the increase in expected enrollment or if there's a projection of a decline, the budget is going to fluctuate as a result of that. That's just the natural cadence of of staffing schools or funding schools at that level. If they don't have the revenue due to not having the enrolled students, they don't get the funding. If they actually have a significant increase in
307funding in student enrollment, I meant to say they will experience an increase in funding to support the needs. As far as teachers and other personnel. And, you know, a lot of people forget that that fte per student is just not going to teachers to hire teachers. It goes to a lot of components that support students, goes to support transporting a student to and from school. It goes to all the ancillary positions to support that school. A clerical instructional support, not just specifically the teacher. So that fte that we receive per student is actually spread out across the board to support schools to do the work that they need to do. Okay. So let me let me just let me touch on that before I turn it back over to MISS To MISS Johnson. Here's where
308I think this, this confusion is stemming from. I'm not talking necessarily per se about a reduction in budget. And I realize that as attendance numbers go down, that there MAY be ramifications as far as budget reductions are concerned. What I'm being told is the way that things were done in the past was the principal would be allocated a certain amount of money, and the principal would make the decisions about how to use that money in their schools based on need, as them being sort of the, the captain or the the ceo of those individual schools. That's my understanding of how it was done in years past. This year, what I'm being told is, rather than following that formula, these principles are simply being told that if you have a certain amount of students, you can
309only hire a certain amount of teachers. So you're taking the ability for the principal to work how they want to work, their staffing and their teachers in their school. You're taking that flexibility away from them, and you're telling them you can only hire x amount of teachers if you have a certain percentage of students. Is that not accurate, MR. Superintendent? So I think go ahead, MISS Johnson. If you want to add. That is not accurate. I don't give that directive at all. The allocation model defines the staffing and the principal hire based on the fte that's allocated. Okay. So as you sit here today, MISS Johnson, because I need to make sure I understand this because I got a lot of off people calling me on this. And I feel that a lot of phone
310calls on this in recent days. Let's let's break this down step by step. And maybe you can explain this to me like I'm in fifth grade. So I, I can't understand in years past, has it not been this district's policy to go school by school and allocate them a certain portion of dollars for their budgets, in which the principals got to decide how that money was used? No, the allocation is based instead of seeing dollars they see in units based on the number of units FTEs, you get allocated that number of units and that's supporting kids in the classroom. Okay, so it's the same thing. Some decide to allocate teachers or they'll use extra periods. Okay. So our position today is going into next year, going into 26, 20, 26, 27. The principals in our
311schools have full autonomy to decide how they want to use their fte dollars and decide how many teachers and staff they want to hire. So no, and that's that's that's never been the case. So if I give you money, MR. Cervera, if you're the principal, I give you money and you have 1000 students by law, you have to hire a certain amount of teachers to, to educate those students. So I can't you can't just take the money and so-called have autonomy to go do other things besides educating the kid. And so I think MISS Johnson saying the, the dollars equal a certain amount of instructional units and also non-instructional units as well. So it's the it's the same thing you if I give you money to equate to 100 teachers or I give you 100
312teachers, it's just it's the same thing. So let me, let me put it this way, because maybe this is the easy way to break this down. Is it your position, MISS Johnson, that the directive that you gave to the principals this year, going into 26 and 27, is the same directive they received for the same past three years? Nothing has changed. I have not gave any directives to the principals I allocate based on the allocation model. Okay. So however you allocate it and based on whatever models you used, you're using the same algorithm. You're using the same formula going into 26 and 27 as you've done in years past. And nothing has changed. I haven't changed anything from years past. Okay, so perhaps all of the principles that have been reaching out to me, very
313distraught in what apparently they thought they were told were inaccurate. So I appreciate you putting that on the record. As to what the district's position is. My last question on this was the was the district did the district give a directive to any principal in any school that they needed to cut a certain percentage of their staff, specifically? 10%. So naturally, as you, the budget team or whatever team has discussions with the principal, if I if the projection says you're going to lose 200 students for the upcoming school year, your budget will be reduced as a result of that lack of revenue. So the majority of schools are predicted to actually have a decline in enrollment. Probably very few will actually increase. But I just want to very simple answer to my question was a
314directive given to any school principal? No. To cut by 10%? Your answer is no, ma'am. Yes. No. Okay. I appreciate the clarification. You're willing to go on record with that. That being said, for now, I'll yield my time chair. Thank you, MISS Thompson. Thank you. Chair. There's been a lot of conversation today, so I just I have a couple questions. One, there was a comment. I don't think he is still in the room about art classes and kind of art, music, that kind of art program being an important part of our education system. And I just wanted to request a follow up for what schools offer art classes and music classes especially. I've been hearing some misinformation in my district that none of the schools in my district offer that. And I know that's not
315true. So it would be helpful to have a spreadsheet or something so that as board members, we can advocate for our schools and let parents know which ones offer music, art, Stem, etc. MISS Thompson, do you want last year and next year? Sure. If we have that data, since we haven't had principal placements and I wanted to also talk about Lee County because that's been brought up several times throughout this discussion, saying that they've only focused on upper management. That's just not accurate. They're actually changing their allocation models to schools as well. And they've been given their directive that every school has to cut 3%. It's 3% at a school level, and it's 5% per department at their central office. This is Lee County, not us. So I just when we are bringing up headlines
316that we see, it's really important to understand the full picture, that this is something happening in every county across the state of Florida. And it's cuts both to the admin level and to the school level. I wanted to also talk about our address, the reason why we turn this to a voting meeting instead of a workshop. And Doctor Hepburn, could you please walk us through the impacts of delaying an org chart vote, especially on schools impacted by redefining. Yes, there's a lot of components to this. Hence why we brought this early in APRIL with the hopes of, number one, the staff that's impacted by this downsizing have a long runway of support from our current hr team. And if needed, the support of Careersource, that's that was the first priority. Second, there's other decisions that
317are contingent upon approving the org chart, such as principal placements. Hr starts working their their employee stream to ensure to what vacancies are out there. So we can start placing our employees in those positions. So there's a lot of dominoes that fall after this decision is made. And every week we we all know the summer goes by in a blur, and we want prepared for the upcoming school year with, with haste, with certain decisions that actually take some time to get it right. And I will just say, from speaking to families in my community, not knowing who's going to be the leader of their school that was closed, not knowing kind of those impacts have caused a ripple effect throughout my district. And it was very important that we settle this. We are now this
318is our third or fourth meeting on it. We are now on our five on the org chart. I don't think any of us are rushing this decision, but giving it thoughtful analysis and also recognizing the very human element in all of that is that we have people who are finding out their jobs are being cut from this dais. We have senior directors who have worked diligently with their teams and had really hard, hard and heartbreaking conversations about the reality of where we are. So any delay to that, I don't think is for the benefit of our communities, students or our families. I did have, and I know this is a little disjointed. There was a either a public comment or one of my colleagues brought up budget guideline committees. Don't we still have Sacs and
319isn't one of their roles to give guidance on school budgets, or can I get clarity on that? Yes, that's correct. The schools get guidance on their budgets from their sac committees. All right. I just wanted to make sure we didn't, because I hear from my school staff and then I wanted some information on the impact of the cutting the dhadhh teacher, the deaf and hard of hearing teacher. I know we have a public speaker that wants to speak to it. So but. We're cutting a teacher and I'm told that we don't have enough teachers to cover those students. So can someone walk me through that? I'm sorry, MISS Thompson, can you repeat that? The death of. Deaf dhh yes. Thank you. Okay, MISS Hollingsworth. So the deaf and hard of hearing teacher that was cut
320was a district department teacher that's been vacant. And we can do contracted services. There was no one in that position. And we have had. And can you detail the amount of time that it's been vacant? I believe it's been vacant for the entire year. I can confirm with the team, but. But was that due to the hiring freeze or was that because it's hard? Because because at least what I've been told about the breakdown is there's a teacher for like kindergarten through first and then a teacher through second. And so. That's, that's prior to the hiring freeze that has been vacant. I go ahead, okay. So we have two different things we do have, and I know the speakers here, I'm not going to speak for him, but at schools. So at tropical and some
321of our other schools, we have self-contained programs where there's teachers. So that's a school budget. This individual was on was on the district department budget, and it has been vacant for multiple reasons, a little bit of the hiring freeze. But then also it is a very hard to find, you know, certification. So what is this individual that's on the district budget then? They were an itinerant person that would then go out and support the teachers and, you know, serve a certain students as well. So were they like a substitute teacher? No, they're a full time. Well, they haven't been there hasn't been anybody in the position. But they then service other schools outside of, you know, that cluster or work with the cluster teachers and our students in the classroom. I, I guess to general
322counsel is without making a motion, is there a way that that public speaker could speak on the dhhs program. That everybody gets? Well, it's my understanding that this is a special school board meeting on the organizational chart. If it has something to do with the organizational chart, they certainly can speak. Okay. I mean, I realize that. But I'm a concerned parent. Okay. So let's let's have decorum in the audience. MISS Thompson has the floor right now. Okay. So I'm gonna make a motion to bring that the dhhs coordinator position back. Second motion made by MISS Thompson, seconded by DR. Holness. Public comment on the motion. Yes. Thank you all. Miles. I'm a resident of plantation, Florida. I'm talking about my daughter, Parker, who is a rural two tropical. They absolutely have three teachers right now.
323They have one for k through first, second through third and fourth through fifth. We were told this morning that one of those positions being eliminated, and now the teachers will be k through three or sorry k through two and three through five. Same number of students, 20 students this year there will be 20 students next year. And yet a position is being funded being cut. And I'm sorry, I'm very emotional about this issue because we already have students that are graduating from fifth grade who barely can read, that are in this program, and now you're taking away a teacher from a special needs group who absolutely needs extra help and extra attention. And that's why you have these programs. We've been talking about directors who are making $180,000 a year, pay an extra teacher to
324help special needs students. That's what we're asking for. And I believe Broward County deserves that. Thank you all. Thank you. I Rochelle Sofer, speech language pathologist. Do you know what I said? Because I certainly said things that are not appropriate for this, but none of, you know sign language like I do. None of, you know, sign language like I do. My husband is a proud product of the dh program here in Broward County Public Schools. You have been paying your itinerants piss poor wages. They're awful. You wonder why you can't fill it because you've dumped all over your dh itinerants and until you learn sign language, you don't know what you're talking about. To do this, my dh people, they know what that is. They're not clean words, but I'll put it on public record
325because that's what I think. And I don't have to say it. I'll sign it. Awful, horrible, rotten decision. Walk a mile in my shoes at my home, see what it's like to be a coda child of deaf adult. See what it's like to be in the deaf world. These kids can't read. They have difficulties. I have them in my private practice. Don't dump on these kids. That's rotten. Shelley. Thank you. Next speaker. Hi, my name is Candace Blake, representing Coral Springs. And I just wanted to say that I, too, am in support of exactly what all of them said, because we need to be here for all of our students, those that speak, those that do not speak, those who can't speak for themselves. We need to make sure that we have them in our
326minds and our thoughts and our thoughts, and also in our hearts. Doctor Natalie Lynch, Walsh Plantation, Florida. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought we weren't cutting at schools. Yes you were. [Laughter] Did I misunderstand that? Because that sounds based on the text I'm reading from a friend that that that's why her father showed up, is that you're cutting and for deaf and hard of hearing of all groups and you reduce staff for the homeless kids, what vulnerable group are you going after next? Because I know it's not the people you want to save in the witness protection program didn't do any hard work there. You let em do all the hard work, and then they wanted to keep themselves and their friends. But we're not cutting anything at schools. So I support the
327motion. Do not take support away from the most vulnerable kids. That is wrong. You should know that you, the board, know this, but the problem is the person you tasked because you don't see what's happening at the school does not. And it's. You don't get it. Oh my gosh. Are we serious? Listen, we cannot hurt children. You cannot do that to students. We keep talking. I feel like this line right here makes it seem like this whole side of the room is saying one thing, and you all are saying a whole nother thing, like we're not even in the same space. It's like I'm in the Twilight zone. What's going on? You're going to hurt the children and want us to support you. Just so you know, people do watch these meetings. You MAY not
328think so, but they do. And we're not going to support you when it comes time for election. Let me let you know that right now. Thanks. Doctor. Trudy Germanovich, the problem here is what it's always been and it's magnified this year. You do not have a communication system that really tells you what's happening at the schools. Thankfully, you have social media and people get in touch with you. Thank you so much for bringing t ts u uso t ttt this person could c comend s sak. Yo are t taking teachers out of schools. They MAY be because they were in this position or that position and came in or out or whatever. You are taking teachers out of schools and you said you wouldn't. Tamarack. So I'm speaking to once again. Somatics just like you
329stated, you're not removing people that directly impact children lies. You said zero will be impact lies. The truth shall set us all free. You're not speaking the truth. Just because the position is in district doesn't mean they're not impacting children. That doesn't mean they're not working directly with children. That doesn't mean they don't report to a school building each and every day, and are helping the staff and helping the children. Just because our position is district, it doesn't matter. We're still impacting the children. We're still impacting the school. We're still impacting the staff. You guys are affecting the school, you're affecting the children, you're neglecting them. Like this don't make sense at all. You're creating chaos and confusion and trying to put labels to it. Somatics. And teaching and PRESIDENT. I'm I'm still at a
330loss why you're not understanding this. And by the way, Rebecca, tons of schools don't have physical education bands and art. I challenge you to walk schools with me. That is a fact. There's tons of schools that have band instruments that haven't even been touched. That's a whole nother story. But what don't you understand? I'm. I'm at a loss. Nor as a teacher. Rebecca's a social worker. Dan, Debbie's a teacher. Sarah's a teacher. Jeff, you're a teacher. Heard your sister's in charter school teaching. By the way, Alan's a businessman. You're an attorney. You're an attorney. So I'm confused. What's your not understanding? Seriously? You're impacting the student. I'm going to say it again. You continue down this path. Next school year, it is going to implode. You're you're being told a false narrative. Thank you. Board
331member Hixon. Thank you, Doctor Hepburn. Can you because I think there's two different things going on. Here, things. Going on. So if you look on the chart that we had, we there's a teacher deaf and hard of hearing. There were 14 and that's going down to 11. Two positions were vacant. One position is being removed. That was that's at the district level. And that's. Correct, MISS. MISS Hollingsworth was talking about. Right? Yes. Correct. Okay. Then there's the teacher monitor dhh there's one and still one remains correct. So but the gentleman that the public speaker that came to talk is talking about a specific school. So is that a decision that was made at the school level? That's a school level decision. We're talking about two different things here. When we're talking about this initiative, the
332district budget, district based positions that we're talking about here. And to the speaker who was talking about that school, that's a school based position. If you haven't met with the principal, I suggest you meet with the principal because it's a school based position. And if there's concerns at that school level, you can feel free to communicate with the regional office for additional support. But there are there are two different things going on. We're talking about district initiative, district based positions. And what you mentioned, sir, was at a school, a school funded position. So if you haven't talked. If you haven't talked to the principal, I suggest you do. If you have, the regional office will be helpful to support you. So we do need decorum in the audience. Everyone did get an opportunity to deliver
333public speaking. Okay. So and thank you for explaining that because I think and we've said it a number of times, I know that I've said it a number of times when we talk about the initiative today, the initiative is this chart, our teachers being our teachers being let go at school levels. They are. That happens every single year because it's based on how many students are enrolled. Some schools get extra teachers, some schools get less because of student enrollment. That is not anything new to today. That has happened across the time. The one place where we have kept up with enrollment was at the school level, because you have. We have to. So this is a different thing that we're talking about today. So I think it's really important to keep those together or keep
334them that idea separate. So these are teachers, some of them that work at a district level that do go into schools, but it's a different initiative than teachers who are being let go at a school, because there's not enough enrollment that I think we have to be very clear and again, transparent. That happens on a yearly basis. It's not new to what we're doing today. It has happened for as long as I've been here 37 years. Those of you that have been here that were principals or teachers, you know that that is true. So you have to make sure you understand that there's two separate things happening here. Thank you. Thank you. Any other board member discussion? DR. Zeman chair, We back on the item. We're no, I believe we're still on MISS. MISS Thompson's
335motion. Can you tell me what motion that is, please? Chair? It was to bring back the dhh. Did dhh coordinator position. And I think we've determined so far that that is a staff level position, not an in-school position. Correct? Correct. Thank you chair. I'm good. Any other board member discussion? So I just have a question. Where where was that on the org chart. Because I don't see I mean, dhh is still on this org chart. So just to clarify, I made the motion so that gentleman was able to speak. It's not on the org chart. It's on the below. But he I thought should have some space to speak. Okay. Because can you tell us what page on the chart because I don't see dhh coordinator here either. Yeah. So maybe it's on this page.
336On the spreadsheet. Hold on. Yeah, that's what I'm looking. You referenced it earlier, MISS Hixon on the spreadsheet. But I think the. Motion was not coordinator. So there's a teacher. So the teacher deaf and hard of hearing it wasn't a coordinator. That's right. I think the motion was, as MISS Thompson mentioned, was to allow the speaker opportunity to to speak. So it's not in accordance. Yes. I was just trying to keep up. Thank you. Sorry. I, I oh go ahead. DR. Holness thank you, MADAM Chair. So I just want to ask a couple of questions on, on the dh position. But just to clarify the record, my, my sister does work for Broward County Public Schools and he's still working for Broward County Public Schools. And I believe I would know that, but I will
337continue. MADAM Chair, the dhh item. Doctor Hepburn, you mentioned the position is is vacant and that the position is hard to fill. So is it is there any way that and I don't know. That's why I'm asking that we could staff that position temporarily until we're able to find an individual that has all of the requirements for the position. Is there any way to bring someone in to provide support that has some measure of experience on a task assigned basis? Because it seems to me to be an important, important position, especially when we're talking about dhh. So can it be staff temporarily? And while we try to find the individual with the right requirement to fill it. So. We've if we had the person to be able to task assign, we would. The the only
338way to actually provide that level of service with that vacancy would be to contract out, which would cost a lot way more money than what the actual current position cost is. Okay. So there's no way to, to, to staff it through us with a lower requirement. No, we don't, we don't have the people. Okay. It's been vacant for so long. Okay. All right. All right. I just, I wanted to, to comment on the teacher position issue and kind of, you know, Doctor Hepburn, you and I talked about this last week. I also had some conversations with principals. And I think there's maybe a communication gap between here and our principals with especially with regards to like the positions and the budgeting for their schools. And so it, from their perspective, you know, they're being told
339like, you get this, this x number of positions. And because of that, they have to eliminate, you know, a certain position or two or more that they say that that is being directed by the school board and the school district. The parent comes up and is upset, understandably so. When a teaching position is eliminated and we tell them, well, that's a school based decision, but the schools don't really feel like it's coming from. They don't really feel like they have any autonomy or power over that. So I guess I'm wondering what we can do. And I, you know, MISS Hixon said it like, I remember when I was on, when I was a probationary teacher and I was like pretty scared I was going to get surplused. So I guess I'm wondering how we can
340improve the communication when it comes to a lot of these things, especially with our principals, so that we can all kind of be rowing in the same direction. And the deputy Soup has already initiated a great communication stream with a leadership group of principals. I think she just started meeting with that group to isolate what different areas to focus on moving forward. But as far as the actual budget as of right now, this week, the principals are actually having budget meetings with the budget team and any other supporting staff to they can ask those type of questions, get more clarification as they start planning out what the actual budget would look like for their individual schools. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else on MISS Thompson's motion? All in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. All
341those opposed say no, no, no. Roll call. Roll call on the motion board member. Leonardi. No. Rupert. Yes. Thompson. No. Semen. Nope. Alhadeff. No. Bulman. No. Cervera. Yes. Hixon. No. Item fails. Two. Seven. All right, MISS Thompson, are you. Yes. I still have some. Okay. Go ahead. Okay. So thank you for that again. That was to get some clarity and provide the speaker an opportunity to talk. But I also wanted to make a motion, and I believe I can, because I was on the prevailing side to bring back the executive director of Enterprise Analytics and. Second motion made by MISS Thompson, seconded by DR. Zeman public comment on the motion. And is there anyone in the delay room? Okay. Oh, sorry. Doctor. Natalie Lynch, Walsh Plantation, Florida. Can we get clarity on which one we
342mean? Because they seem to be all over the place. There's two at least. It was the one the board previously cut. It was. Page three. Director of Enterprise Analysis and intelligence. Oh, the one on page three, not the one under. Under academics. Okay. Not not if you're going to, not if you're going to bring it back. Oh, wait. You were trying to cut it on page three and you did cut it. We're losing track. Honestly, I was in favor of cutting it the first time because I'm in favor of it being all it sounds. It sounded after the explanation, like an actual I.T position I had suggested strategy. So it's beyond me. Why that and the assistant director, which. There's another assistant director too. Why you would put it under the Chief of Staff. So
343we'll be. I'll be very interested to see where this goes. So we'll bring it back to executive director for. Any other public comment on the motion. And if so, your motion was to bring back the director. See how easy that is. So you're going to bring back all of the mental health people that we want to cut, and all the itinerant teachers that you're cutting, and you have to have a parent come over here who's out there crying. Because then again, you, you guys snowed them and made it believe that it was the principal's decision to do this. When you know very well the superintendent has directed budget people to go into every single budget meeting and every single school to cut your budget. And then the principals do have to make that hard decision.
344Oh my gosh, who am I cutting? But I'm telling you now, if what if I sat up here and been wrong, why don't you put that in your little brain up there, guys, every single time I've come up here this last year with you guys, the graduation personalization, the glp ones, the referendum. I mean, come on, it's happening again. Do you really want to wait to see what happens next school year? Is that what you're going to do? And then go, oh my gosh, how do we fix this wrong? Thank you. Any other public speakers? Sorry. Board member discussion, MISS Thompson. I'm fine hearing from my colleagues. DR. Zeman MR. Superintendent, how much cost savings has this incumbent in this position save the district this year in terms of overtime and other initiatives that they've
345led. For overtime, over 20 million for this current year as far as other cost savings, Trey or MR. Davis, if you're over there, if you can, I know you have these in your head. Sure. Trey Davis Chief Information Officer So in addition to that, we we also are this individual, this position is actually worked directly, you know, with other functional areas, for example, in payroll to identify payroll anomalies, anomalies and automate that process. Also this this particular resource, two other areas actually, one was instrumental in making our world class deployment of artificial intelligence district wide. Without that position, it wouldn't have been successful. And secondly, relative to the operational efficiencies gained and funded by one of our vendors, for example, to assist is 40 to $50 million bearish case over the next 4 to 5
346years, as modeled out relative to just energy savings alone. So, so each of these projects that I'm mentioning with with savings is attributed to this particular position right here. I appreciate that second question to the superintendent as well. If you had to hire the talent that's in this position right now, if you had a contract out in order to get that talent, how much would you have to pay to have outside contractors come in and do the same kind. Of work? Easily seven figure contracts. Seven figure. Yes. Okay. Easily. I think that's enough. This position is a heavy lifter for the district. I have taken several different direct presentations on the cost savings. I'm fascinated, as you all know, with with ai and Broward County Public Schools being powered by ai and the work that
347this office has done in order to modernize that without allowing ai to go in places that it shouldn't, and to make sure that we continue to make adult decisions about it is very, very impressive. So it's not just the 40 to 50 million over the next five years, plus 20 million of overtime. It's also just making sound decisions for the entire very complex and large district. So in my mind, given the seven figure cost of replacing this Doctor Hepburn, and I know you would want to do that. You know, these are the kinds of things that we all should be proud of within the district. I support MISS Thompson's motion. MISS Bulman. Thank you. I do support MISS Thompson's motion. I think that there's been a demonstrated. Strategy and the benefit and the value of
348having this position. It has been demonstrated and explained to us by MR. Davis and Superintendent. I've had multiple conversations. Again, not to sound repetitive, but with MR. Davis about how important this is to the structure and how we are saving money by putting the different technologies into place. So prove us wrong that we spent a couple hundred thousand dollars and we didn't save tens of millions of dollars over a period of time. But I'm willing to take that chance because I think it's very important in the the potential for this is can't be overstated. So thank you again, MR. Davis, for your work on this. Thank you. Anyone else? Oh, MR. Cervera. Just want to bring back and remind everybody what the crux of the original motion was, because it seems as though a flip
349flop, maybe a foot. The original motion, as I explained on page three of the org chart, we currently have an executive director of Enterprise analytics. We also have an assistant director of Enterprise analytics that reports directly to the executive director. I was not suggesting that we get rid of both those positions and have nobody overseeing enterprise. All I was suggesting is that we get rid of the executive director and have the assistant director elevated to just a director position and fill both roles. So just want to make sure that my position was fully clear, as my colleagues consider a revote on this issue. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? All in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. All opposed say no. I nope. Roll call please. Roll call on the motion. School board members.
350Rupert. Thompson. Yes. Zieman. Yes. Alhadeff. Yes. Bowman. Yes. Cervera. No way! Hixon. No. Holness. Yes. Leonardi. Yes. Six three. Motion passes. MISS Thompson. Tnk youou c chairo I I there'e's be somome senmement about. Not cutting from schools, and I just feel like it's important to reiterate that we are a school system. So everything we do is going to impact students and the people that come to work wherever they work every day come because they think they are doing right by kids. And so I think a little bit more compassion when speaking about the people who work for us is needed. I also, people talk about voting and and how. One second, MISS Thompson. MISS Fusco, please follow the instructions of the officer. This is the last warning. Finally got one. You don't you want number
351three? Actually. Go ahead and continue. MISS Thompson, sorry to interrupt you. No worries. So we will talk about voting and what we're doing to advocate. And I think DR. Zeman brought up a really good point about funding and how we're comparable to our surrounding states. And, and other speakers have talked about the importance of advocating for more funding. And that is so incredibly vital. And I talk about it every time, and I'm going to continue to talk about talking about it, because I did not run because I wanted to close schools. I did not run because I wanted to vote on a thousand people being or positions being laid off. I ran because I wanted to create a stronger system for not only my three kids that are in public schools, but for every child
352in public schools. And I think when we are making these really hard decisions, we have to remember that we are only here for a brief amount of time, 4 to 8 years or more. And our goal should just be to have a stronger and better school system when we leave. So I'm just asking, and I know my colleagues are on the same board, but are on the same page of that. But for our community to realize that the decisions that we're making today are in order to stabilize our system so that we can thrive in the years to come. Thank you. Thank you. DR. Holness. MADAM Chair, I don't have any comment on the item. Okay. MISS Rupert. This is for item one. Still. Okay, great. I appreciate it. First thing I want to ask
353for or actually ask for some clarification is there was a job called specialist board governance and this was. Hold on. Part of agenda four. But wait, it's also part of agenda number one. So I did not want to MISS The opportunity, since it's referenced in both places to make sure I didn't MISS This time. The specialist Board governance is a brand new position. If you're looking at the MAY 7th update, it's it's a brand new one for 2627. If you're looking at the number four, it is a specialist board government with one position prior to cuts. And then it says it's new and then positions remaining is one. So either we have twins, conjoined twins, I don't know, but I'm confused with that. And also I was not able to find anywhere a job description
354or a job code for this position. And that alarmed me on many levels. The reporting aspect was to the finance department, the finance. So I would think a specialist board governance, which by the way, pays $113,000 and some change would report to the board and not the finance director. So I need a little bit of clarity for that. Go ahead doctor Lozano. So so that is a below the line position. So it's not part of this org chart. And it is coming to the board. Remember these are the thousand positions as part of the district discussion today. So in that thousand are above and below the line. The job description for that position is coming MAY 19th. No, no, we need to if we just want to go back to organizational chart and job description
355responsibilities when it comes to making changes to a proposed chart or job description, the board is not restricted. If the board ultimately makes those changes, the superintendent would have to implement the changes. However, it goes on to say the clarification is the organizational chart is a pictorial description of positions the board has created and who they report to in the district. The reporting structure is something the board designates to the job description, so the organizational chart should come simultaneous with or after the job descriptions. So I'm saying no. Go ahead. So again that position is not on the org chart. It is a below the line position that's coming on MAY 19th. Well why is it in the backup for here. Because to be voted on. Because we we're not voting on below the line
356positions today. We're voting on the org chart today. MISS MISS Rupert, the below the line positions that are listed here is just to notify the board of the impacts and the impacted employees as far as the, the, the downsizing initiative. But as far as what the board is voting on today is actually the org chart. But also the job descriptions are item four. And that's just one. Item two. Item two is just one job description that. I have that one. Yeah. There's no job description for this, right? It doesn't matter if it's below the line or not. Everybody up here should ask themselves. It was empty and it's filled and it's below the line. And it's in the finance organization. All I can tell you is this. I don't answer to the financial lady. I
357answer to the public. Every one of us should have a say if this position is going to happen. I'm saying, no, it's $113,000. Before you add in benefits, I'm going to say I'd rather pay teachers more. At least one teacher put it in there. We do not need somebody who we don't know who's sitting in it or going to sit in. I'm not going. To say it's vacant, MISS Rupert. I'm sorry. There is no position. There is nobody in that position. There is no position. And there is no position. We have to create the position through the job description. So the board could easily vote down the job description when it comes, because there's nobody in that position. Okay, well, I'm going to take a little walk over. Especially for. Positions prior to 52526 I
358got it. Thank you. And it's one and it's a new one. MADAM Chair, can you put me on the list? Yes. But it says there is. This is new. 2627 okay. And then. Why don't we go ahead and recess the meeting for a few minutes? They said ten minutes. [Music] We don't know. All right. We are back, MR. Rupert. Thank you. I understand that the the superintendent is going to be able to fix that little snafu and move on from there. So I've been assured that it is not a board position, especially on governance. So we weren't it would not be on a vote that is here today. So because if it is, I'm gonna be a little mad. Okay. So then the other part and I want to speak on item two. So just
359keep me on the list for that. But when it comes to our facilities, our losses and painters workforce jobs, what and I've said this before to, to the board and definitely to Doctor Hepburn. We have a plethora of workers that are really masters of their craft. And we do receive workforce dollars for those jobs. And it's pretty awesome when you have kids that go through our schools. Sheridan Mcfatter, atc and my two sons both went to one of those, and they're working in their fields still. And we have teachers and programs, and we need to make sure that the money for their programs is, is there and also the continuity of making sure that we're growing our own. So that should be a gigantic push. And I, I would request that the superintendent have a,
360a conversation with the Afl-cio f.O.P all those guys, the case people and talk about that. You know, if we're if we're cutting this many people because this is what's going on, we need to nd an answer for that. But we also have to make sure that we are fulfilling our, our obligation when we teach them these skills and they get their certifications, that there is a place for them to work in Broward County. So I think I just wanted you to have that information. And my colleagues, the the guys and ladies at Afl-cio and F.O.P, they know what they're doing, they know what the market looks like, and they know how to get there. And these are guys in the field. So thank you. That was all, MADAM Chair. Thank you, MRS. Alhadeff. I call
361the question. All in favor of calling the question, say I. I all opposed say no. Nope. I believe that fails with one vote in favor. MRS. Al-hada DR. Zeman. I have one thing. Since my colleague made the motion to reconsider the last change. It's on. It starts on page nine of the org chart. I'll just take one minute to kind of present the case. If you look on page nine, you can see that underneath the Chief Student Services officer, right in the middle of the page on the first. This is thth second of thehewowo pages describing the d dieie ascribed tohat position.N. Y y cacan ee t that ee responsilility on that one page includes school counseling, school culture, student support, wellness, and mental health. If you go to page eight, you can see that
362there are more responsibilities ascribed to the same person looking from the right side and kind of reading reading the opposite direction. We normally do specialized Esq specialized instruction Esq support and compliance. Esq educational curriculum. I want to make a case to the today that this proposal that came from the superintendent is really juice. That's not worth to squeeze this this shift from an executive director of Esq to a director will save Broward County schools $10,000, and I don't think it's worth it. And I'm going to explain the case why it's not worth it. When you look at the span of control, the complicated operations, the wide variance and outcomes, the operational risk, the need to educate others about how requirements for special needs keys are special needs. Children and students are inherently different. There is
363a need for an executive director position. We have a chief and an executive director leadership position this year. And why? Because they have to do financial oversight, legal protection, Cross-system alignment, improved student outcomes at scale, and to make sure that Essa services are considered whenever system wide decisions are made. Both leadership roles, the chief and the executive director seem essential to me, and I can tell you when I call them at 6:00 or 7:00 at night, they're still at their desk, pounding away, trying to make this system, which is incredibly complicated, more efficient and more effective. Of course, Esq is not a program. It's a high cost, high risk, federally mandated system. And having such high level leaders like we have today ensured that we have managed the risk, complied with complicated requirements, and made
364sure that we deliver for these special students. Esq decisions are cross-functional. Every one that is made has to do with academics, transportation, technology, human resources, finance, legal, student services. In fact, I don't know of any public school functions that in some way don't overlap with exceptional students. Why is executive director more important than director? Because if you're not at the table, you're on the menu and special needs needs need to be advocated for at the highest level. Second point, we have over 40,000 special needs students. If you add students and parents together, that's 17,000 students per single member district. And what I'm talking about will cost us $10,000, less than $1 for the student and parents in each single member district. The juice is not worth the squeeze. Here we have legal exposure. Every due
365process case that we get for one special needs student costs us between 25 and $100,000 per case. Large districts like Broward, on average, lose 1 to $3 million in compensatory services from missed service delivery. Again, the juice is not worth the squeeze. This position, in tandem with all the other folks on this org chart, represent 20 to 30% of the total district. It's incredibly complex, and I can tell you that if you look at the other executive director positions that are on this chart, we have one for talent management, great technical ops, non instructive broadcast transportation, ppo capital programs, budget. And now back again. Thank you MISS Thompson for analytics enterprise analytics and intelligence. None of those are more important than our special needs students. None of them. So I think that this position should
366remain I think for $10,000 we can we can keep this where it is, make sure that we don't take the risk and we can stand up to those 17000 members and each one of our single member districts, and make sure we can look them in the eye and say, we're doing the right thing for your special kids. Thank you very much, chair. I move that we change on page eight. The director of Exceptional Student Education Curriculum. Actually, I would propose that we delete that the one on the far left and reinstate the executive Director of Exceptional Student Education. Second motion made by DR. Zeman. Seconded by MISS Thompson. Public comment on the motion. Obviously, then I. I'm in favor of giving Esq an executive director. Given that you have three chunks of departments here, but
367then which of the directors. I guess it would be the one that has curriculum already would then have more curriculum, which makes a lot more sense than having two executive directors of analytics under the wrong departments. But if you bring one back, which is a lot more than ten grand, because the box oh, but you're doing the difference. You're getting rid of a director. So that's that. And I guess they're not going to ask you to make up ten grand. So yeah, I'm in favor of the motion. It's Esq. We have a lot of executive directors that I we could live without, but this probably isn't one of them. And it should be about the function from a management perspective. The people at the top do strategy. Then you have tactical and then operations. So
368you have to make sure whoever gets into that box can do strategy. Next speaker. Hi, Michelle. Sandy Davie, Florida Esq specialist. I support the motion. I would not be able to do my job without the director. I was able to call Stephanie Acosta Castro, and I know this is the the boss above her, but she got the people in the school to help me get my new school under control. We were completely out of compliance. It was a debacle, and I couldn't even believe that it had gone on that long and that these kids. I said what I did for the West I was going to do for the East. And I believe that's one of the reasons our program grew by 100%, because I know every single one of my 140 kids, I could
369write the iep at the table. I have great parent interactions. I can handle the advocates. And so please keep the do not cut Esq no matter what. Do not cut them. Thank you. And if our teachers union PRESIDENT. This is one department that shouldn't be touched at all. I'm confused. I mean, there are so many parents out there that are still trying Figure it out if their child should even be tested and what they MAY need. And we keep pushing. Bring your kids to Broward County Public Schools, but we're continuing to show that we want to cut real important pieces that really affect the students. So, I mean, if we're keeping it, people don't get me wrong. I mean, unless you have this plan that we're going to have some ai robots running our classrooms,
370then I don't think it should be more important than an Esq department that that can't happen. Again, anything that is affecting the student needs to be fully intact. Please support this this motion. MISS Dupree. Bruno DR. Zeman, I just want to make sure that I have the motion correctly. It's to move to change page eight to reinstate the Executive director of Esq and remove the director of Esq curriculum. I that is the motion I made. If. I might just intervene, though, before we discuss it, Doctor Hepburn. My understanding is that would. Of the three directors, that was the one that would most overlapped with the executive director role. Is that true. MISS Hollingsworth? Could you provide some detail on that? So good afternoon. Simone Hollingsworth, the chief student services officer. If you would like, I
371can give a kind of a broad overview. The Esq curriculum director is doing curriculum. We moved we had 141 schools that were on the sub list two years ago. We're down to 20. So that's been very, very intentional work with our regional directors and regional offices to make sure that we are addressing students with disabilities with their academics. The compliance is, as you mentioned, DR. Zeman very much around that due process and any litigation that's occurring. And we do have an increase of that. However, we're settling them better and better, as well as the specialized instruction, which is all of our itinerant and related service work, such as speech. Dhotpt hospital homebound. Now we've moved specialized health care underneath there, so they all have a functionality. However, that executive director individual does really, truly cohesively
372bring that all together so that there is uniformity, bringing that together, as well as working with the directors at the regional office and then really spanning that scope so that we can be continuous and have a lot of continuity and bringing that strategy and operation together. Doctor Hepburn are all three of the director positions encumbered? MISS Hollingsworth. Yes. Okay. That's different than the information that I got. So I'm a little bit stuck right now. I was told that one of the director slots was not encumbered. And so I just got misinformation. But. But this year, all three of those positions are filled. Correct, sir. What about for the as the org chart stands for the upcoming year. So for the upcoming year, then there would be a movement from one of the executive director into
373a director role. And then there was an assistant director moving somebody into that role. Terrific. And what role would that executive director have been moved to? The compliance director? Terrific. So to be clear then, chair, my motion is to delete the director for compliance, exceptional education, support and compliance, and reinstate the Executive Director. Exceptional student education. Any other public comment? Board member. Comment, MISS Hixon. Thank you. Just want to clarify with, I guess, the superintendent or MISS Hollingsworth. So if we were to reinstate the executive director, they're kind of over everybody and get rid of the Director of Exceptional Student Education Support Compliance, who would be the person over that? Because they'd have a director of Esq education curriculum that they would be over, and they would have a director of Esq specialized instruction, but
374there would be nobody. Kind, you know, like there are over there overarching. And we're kind of replacing one for something very specific. So could you just kind of talk about the logistics of that? And my understanding of the motion is that the executive directors span of control would increase, so they would have two directors reporting to them, and the components of the the positions that make up that that used to directly report to that director. So the span of control would just expand. So they would actually be correct. The director and the executive director correct that. Yes. That's my understanding. DR. Zeman but but that middle block has an assistant director as well. So that's what makes that middle block a little bit different. Okay. I'm just trying to figure out the logistics. Thank you.
375Any other board member discussion, MISS Thompson? Hold on one second. MR. Bruno. I just want to make sure that the record is clear. So, DR. Zeman, what I have now as your substitute motion is to move to change. Page eight, to reinstate the executive director of Esq and remove the director of Esq education support compliance. Perfect. And then I'm assuming, MISS Thompson, you're still seconding. Thank you. MISS Thompson. Thank you. Chair. I seconded this motion. I think there's a lot of room to expand in this department as well, especially with our pre-k programs. I think even as our student enrollment declines, our Esq population is increasing. And to make sure that we have support and also also a visionary for this position is really important. Thank you. Any other board member discussion? All in favor
376of the substitute motion, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Say no. I substitute motion passes unanimously. DR. Zeman. Anything else? No. I just want to thank you, colleagues, for the support, and I appreciate the time. Chair. MISS Bulman. Is is this my time to talk? I don't. Want on the on the item as a whole. Yes. Oh. All right. Thank you. All right. Well, so I. I was I'm going to say what I was going to say earlier today, but we obviously we've made some changes. So Doctor Hepburn and with the changes that have been made today, do you stand by the organizational chart that you've brought to us. Yes. Okay. And do you believe that you've made sufficient changes to account for the budget challenges that we faced this year, which kind of left us
377holding the bag and that we anticipate facing in the next school year due to projected significant decreased enrollment and other factors? Yes, as one component of a broader cost savings initiative. Yes. And do you believe these cuts are necessary for the future success of Broward County Public Schools, and to achieve a budget that meets the statutory requirements of the state of Florida? Yes. And do you believe that you have followed the board's directive to reduce the organizational chart, to minimize or fully avoid impacting the school level, because we're in the school business? Yes. And cuts at the school level decrease parental and employee satisfaction, the overall student experience, and the ability to attract new students. I feel like I got to raise my right hand here. Yes. Thank you. All right. I, you know. I
378yes, MISS. Bulman and I know that the. Our job is to hold the superintendent responsible and to review his performance. And this as is as the executive of this giant organization, we will be holding you to this organizational chart, as amended. And I look forward to seeing the success. And the other question is, if we if the projected factors change. Do we have the ability to amend this organizational chart? Do we have the ability to be flexible? Do you have you built that in. Because I don't think. Yes. Flexible. Last. This. This year. We've done work chart changes. Besides just doing this traditional window. We've done mid-year. Org chart changes. I think we did a org chart change for the General Council a couple of months ago. And great question. One of the things, if
379we see any pressure on the way we do, the way we want to do business, as far as supporting schools, departments and the like, especially with some of the changes made by the board or even myself, we will bring back that specific organizational chart page to make any updates necessary. So I think the board knows me. I'm not afraid to bring back something. If we feel like after analysis and implementation is going to, you know, become a barrier to us excelling in certain areas. So just an fyi on that. Part. And I appreciate that. I think we're going to need that flexibility as we see. I mean, this is a situation that we haven't faced before, so we are trying to get ahead of it. As MISS Thompson said earlier, to make sure that we
380have a stable, successful district going forward. And, you know, you'll hear from all of us as particularly those with children, because we're hearing about it every day what's happening. So as long as we have your word that we'll be able to make changes as we need to as the things arise, then I'm good with it and look forward to seeing how this works. Thank you. Thank you. DR. Holness thank you, Madam Chair. So I will say that the decisions today were certainly tough decisions. You know, there's this saying that leadership is not about popularity. It is about doing what is right. And so my moral compass when I make decisions is I always ask myself, is it is it right? And is it right in my mind? And that's usually how I live my life.
381Even sometimes when my decisions aren't popular. So it's always, can I sleep at night with the decisions that I make? And, and that's what guides me as opposed to anything else. And so unfortunately, the besides receiving only $9,000 approximately per year for each student in the state of Florida as compared to states like New York that receive over $30,000 per students, we are losing students somewhere between 8000 to 10,000 per year. And so it leaves us where inaction is not an option. And in fact, inaction will lead to consequences such as state receivership if we don't take action. And so what we've done here in reducing staffing, I believe it's the responsible thing to do. I believe this will, as board member Thompson mentioned, this will help to stabilize the district. That is why we
382are here, because if we don't make these decisions today, the consequences of it tomorrow will lay on our conscience because we will realize those consequences. And so although they are tough decisions, I believe that we've done the right thing. Now, DR. Zeman talk about the amount of money that we would have if we were being funded like other states are. Well, the top five most populous state is California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania. Guess how much New York gets per student over $30,000? Guess how much Pennsylvania gets per student over $23,0,0 from m e s sta. Calilifoia overr 24,0.0. Enn Tess over 13,000. We get 9000. And so when you look at how we're funded by the state, it's no wonder we have these financial concerns. And as a board, we are working in very
383challenging situations to make this district work. And I am comfortable with some of the decisions I make, although I am not. I wish I didn't have to make them, but at the same time, I can't sit back as a board member and say that I'm being responsible in doing nothing. Because if I do nothing three, four years from now, the consequences are too grave. That will affect all of us. So I think that the decisions today, MADAM Chair, I am happy that we are coming to a close with this. And, Doctor Hepburn, thank you for your patience, and I want to thank the audience for their patience as well. But please know that we're doing this in the interest of Broward County School District, and that's why we're here. Thank you, MADAM Chair. Thank you.
384And before we go to a second round, I just had a few questions. I want to start with the school transformation office. Does the number do the schools in sto fluctuate at all? Go ahead, Doctor Fulton. So this is year two of the sto School Transformation office. And we've kept the same number of schools. And the goal of when we started it two years ago was to have a time period. So we can calculate what's working and what's not working. So we say that we would keep them for three years. And then based on we have a criteria for exiting. That was going to be my next question. So next year would be the year we would be evaluating their exit exiting of the sto. Correct. Okay. On page five, I had seen in org
385charts in years past, like probably about a decade ago, maybe no more than that back in like the oh eight era where the director, that level of directors and the principals, they were switched. But would that then change the reporting structure if we switched those, if we, like, flipped the principals in the directors? Yes. Right now, the directors supervising and the principals. And so if you put the principals first. Then this. Yeah. Okay. Switched I wonder, I guess I would I'm not going to ask for a follow up, but I'm very curious if anyone has that knowledge why that would have why why that would have been back back then. So maybe Doctor Wanza you you have the historical knowledge you and I can chat offline and I'll I'll show you some of those org
386charts. Thank you. I want to go back to something that MISS Hixon asked about, because this is, you know, a concern of mine when it comes to some of the beacon positions that were eliminated in repairing our security cameras and our Esq classroom cameras, what is the plan to be proactive about? You know, having to transition from having, you know, a number of people who who do that work to repairing those, those cameras, to having a reduction in, in that work. It's pretty much creating a better project around the cameras. We, we pretty much have a lot of knowledge around how old the, the new cameras versus the old cameras. What's been the state or current state of the cameras that need to pretty much be replaced, and how many need to be repaired? So
387it's creating a better project list so we can accomplish that with the older cameras. But we also have a lot of new cameras that are coming online as well. Okay. And the last thing I'll say is, you know, the, the parent who was who came to speak about the dhh teacher being cut at their school. That really resonates for me because it's representative of a lot of conversations I'm having with constituents who. Kind of demonstrate to me that there's got to be like a better way to collaborate and communicate with our stakeholders when we go through these processes. And you and I have talked about, you know, implementing some task forces and working groups and stuff like that, could you elaborate on how maybe moving forward, we're going to try to communicate differently? Absolutely. So
388I'll initiate a task force for for just some budget initiatives and ideas, especially when they're crafted by cabinet, just to make sure we have an additional stream of people for insurance purposes of how we tackle that. I, you know, high school scheduling and things like that. And then Doctor Fulton has already initiated her, I forget what the name she uses for the group that are going to tackle not just budget, but a lot of other areas that we need support and guidance and to help empower people to be a part of that process. And then working with our schools and working with us as we as we improve our communication downstream and upstream, just making sure we're giving our principals the toolkits that they need to communicate with their constituents, whether the largest concerns or
389even collecting information beforehand during budget season. Because I know the public hears a lot of information and it raises Spidey senses in their brain and they start, you know, MAY MAY interpret things a little bit differently than what they're actually are. So collecting information and making sure we're communicating appropriately throughout all of our stakeholders, internal and, and external. So I know our, you know, like I said, communication probably hasn't been the best as we push information out and we'll get better with that with certain positions on the org chart, that's going to help us execute that much better. Well, and I will just say the the importance of collecting recommendations and solutions from our stakeholder groups as well is, I think, a really valuable exercise. And it creates a lot of ownership throughout the district.
390So it doesn't feel like or it feels less like something is being done to our community as opposed to, you know, our community is coming up with solutions for the, the problems that we're facing. So, you know, including as much opportunity for, for stakeholders to reach out and share their recommendations, things that we can do to save money, I think is really, really important moving forward. That was really those are my comments. I want to just thank everyone who has participated in this process and everyone who's come out to give their their feedback. It might not always be easy for us to hear, but it's important and it really means a lot that people are willing to stand up and use their voices and be a part of, of this school district. MR. Cervera. Thank
391you, chair. MR. Superintendent, how many certified teachers are we slated to lose under these cuts for the proposed org chart that's in front of us right now? MR. Lozano or Doctor Lozano? As far as certified staff of the 300. 112, sir. So when I look at the summary pie positions that was provided in the outlet, I see a line under btu ep indicating a total position elimination of 196. You see that column there, Doctor Lozano. What page are you on, sir? Yeah. Page one of the summary by positions the updated version from the seventh of this month. Yes yes 49 are vacant and 25 were deleted prior to JULY 1st, 2025. I'm sorry. Give me that breakdown again of the 196. So 112 are filled. Positions, 59 are vacant positions and 25 were vacant positions
392prior to JULY 1st. Of 2025. Chair, I'd like to make a motion. My motion would be to remove all of the current currently filled 112 certified teacher positions that come under the summary by position under btu ep. So just to be clear, my suggestion is to not have them removed from the org chart. Is there a second? I'll second it because I have. a question. So. Motion made by MR. Cervera, seconded by MISS Rupert public comment on the motion. And are there any people in the the external room? We let security know to let them know that that room isn't to be utilized for these purposes. If they went in there, it's on their own. Okay. Thank you. Doctor. Natalie Lynch Walsh Plantation, Florida. I'll support the motion to not remove the teachers from the
393org chart. We're already seeing where. Well, there have been hoards of people that have told you that it's going to impact things. And I guess if this doesn't pass, then you guys can wait till the first couple weeks of school to see how things are impacted, because you've had the head of every bargaining unit telling you you're going to have chaos come school time. Good afternoon. My name is Vanessa Matute. I'm not sure if in that 100 if that includes us, it should because we are a btu. I did want to also discuss that Cervera has been up here talking about cutting from the top, and I keep hearing the board and others talk about how we can't cut this person because cyber attacks or we can't cut this person because they're director. But yet
394you're cutting the people that are working directly with the students. So from what I've gathered from these conversations is it's more important for a child not to have a cyber attack, but it's not more important for a child to jump off one of our school buildings. So we're valuing technology more than mental health. So I would like to support his motion. Thank you. Hi. I'm back. My name is Patricia Ville and I do hold two master's degree and I work in the ssi department. It's really sad and it's disheartening to see how much you care about these top level positions versus the lower level positions. And, you know, thank you for bringing this motion. I thought Thompson, who brought the chaos and confusion to our department, would have rectified it today, but she didn't bring
395it to the table again to clean up that situation because Sis and our supervisors were not on the chopping block. We were not we're not part of the funding that is being affected. That long hold will save us money. We're part of the referendum. So for us to be put on this org chart by Thompson and for her not to once again take accountability and say, hey, put these positions back is disheartening and distrustful. You want us to believe in the power and to achieve success, but that's not what I'm seeing here. So thank you so much. Kudos to you for understanding what the important role and the impact is for the children to have us there. So please bring Sis and our supervisors back. Any other public comment? Board member discussion, MISS Hixon. Thank
396you. I was going to ask this question on a different thing, but since MR. Brought it up, Doctor Hepburn, can you remind us of a couple of things. So when this pay. First of all this is not part of the org chart. Is that correct? Correct. These are below the line below the org chart positions. Okay. Thank you. So when we had this discussion and I keep trying to figure out when the first time we did this was, but I can't find the workshop. Workshop date. What was the suggestion of the student support instructional specialists initially? Because now the what's on here is that we are eliminating 36 positions. But what was it before the workshop where this consensus. Gotcha. Before it was the workshop. Go ahead, MISS Hollingsworth, because I can't remember. Good afternoon
397for the 21st for the workshop. They were not on the original list of 15% cuts from student services. Okay. So that there wouldn't have been 36 and we would have remained with 40. Correct. And what was what was what other position was lessened in order to. I think it was social workers. Okay. So what was the. Yeah, social workers, school counselors. There were six program specialists for Esq. I think there were 14 social workers that were filled and one that was vacant. So I think. 15 and then I believe there were. 18 Esq counselors, if I'm not mistaken. Okay. That were part of my the original plan. Thank you. And I'm just. Trying to, to figure out how to balance that. I will say, you know, I really appreciate also everyone coming. And we I
398personally, I'm guessing everyone got it got emails from students that are impacted by the ssis employees. And those were really heartfelt and, and, you know, explaining their, their story and their experience and parents explain that and where we said when, when we talked to students, they said, we want someone we can talk to. And so we created these positions because they're someone the students can talk to. And now we're eliminating all of them. So I don't agree with bringing all of the positions back, only because I think it defeats the purpose of what we were trying to do. But I still have concerns about eliminating all of these positions, so I'm not sure how to reconcile that. But Doctor Hepburn, can you tell us what would the cost impact be of MR. Cervera request? And
399then the second question I have is of those 112, 190, it's hard to. MR. Doctor Lozano said. 112 but then it says 195 but anyway, the. The certified teachers on this list were they also who you were saying would find a place in a classroom if this were to go through so that they weren't looking at losing their job, just the position in. This, the position they're currently in right now, all the certified teachers would be eligible for positions in at, especially at school based and probably even other positions. The 112 is actually the field positions that MRS. Cervera made a motion to bring back. Those are filled. But all of these positions, or the majority of them, are certified positions where they will have an opportunity to continue employment here in Broward County public
400schools, just not in the capacity of these current positions. Also, the cost for the 112 at an average of about 75 fringe and salary, is 8.4 million. Okay. So I guess my question to the maker of the motion is what where would we be cutting the other 8.4 million? I don't know, I made a dozen or so motions today to cut some stuff from the top that what everybody rejected. At this point, my main concern is making sure that we don't lose teachers from both ends. I'm hearing that we're losing 100 and 196 or 112 certified teachers, and our principals are now being given directives to cut their teaching staff by 10%. So keep losing teachers. We keep losing teachers. I'm not sure who's going to teach our kids soon, so I don't have an
401answer to your question. I'm just trying to keep teachers in the classroom and to make sure that our kids are getting a quality education and we keep our e rating. Are you done, MISS Hixon DR. Zeman. Thank you so much. I just want to be clear because the words matter. These certified teachers, I think Doctor Hepburn 100% will have the opportunity to apply for any of the hundreds plural of our certified teacher positions that we have in Broward County that open in 75 days. Is that correct? That is correct. Hundreds. We're not losing in Broward County, 112, 196 certified teachers. Their positions are going away. They are fully certified to apply and be hired, and they get priority placement in every one of these certified teacher jobs. Broward County every year has 4 to 600
402new position openings, even with declining enrollment, and all of them are fully capable Doctor Hepburn of applying for those jobs and get priority placement. Is that correct? That is correct. We will still need to go out and do a a hiring fair for teachers. Even after this, even after we fill those positions with the people who are on this spreadsheet, we still will need to go out and do a teacher fair. Thank you. MISS Rupert. Thank you. My question is, are any of these first year teachers. And the second part is, are any of them holding professional certificates so they're not annually let go? That'd be for that type of detail shifted over to Doctor Lozano. Thank you. And as they pull up that information to MISS Rupert just a reminder that they if they're
403certified, they'll be placed in a in a instructional position. I know that, but since you said pretty much everybody was going to be having an opportunity to have a position, I wanted to make sure that those who have professional certificates understand that they have an extra asterisk by their name. Yes they do. Okay. And how many of the 112? I. Was saying about 12 of them. I'm sorry. 12 so so 12 of the 112 are basically protected. And the other ones, the 100 will have the opportunity to apply JULY 1st. So we use the involuntary transfer process where they will select make choices and then we will place them. For the 12, for the. For the whole. For the other ones, for the whole. And when will that be done? Once it's org chart gets
404approved and we finalize the school budgets and we have a total picture, we'll begin that process. Okay. Doctor Lozano, just to help MR. Reaper out, there would be lapse in n emplment for ese. o, s. Oka s So eyey wldld retain eieir insurance. So thank you. Thank you, MR. Cervera. Just want to make sure I understand my colleague and the superintendent's position on this. So we're going to cut 196 of these positions, and we're going to give them the opportunity to reapply for them at a later time this year. No they don't we don't we don't we're not asking them to fill out an application. And I'll let Doctor Lozano kind of map out the the process for you, but it's not you go find a job and click on application and go through an
405interview. And all of that process is go ahead Sue. MISS. Hi there. Good afternoon, Susan Rockman, talent Management. So the process we will follow is outlined in the collective bargaining agreement for educational professionals. And we've met with the union to review this process. What will happen is those instructional employees that have been told that their positions eliminated will basically get a form, we call it an involuntary transfer form. They will fill out that form. They will list up to ten vacant positions, schools where they would prefer placement. We then take those forms from all of our eap employees that have been positions eliminated, and then we place them in order of seniority into vacancies. So far from the budget conferences, I think I have collected over 500 teacher vacancies, so I'm confident that I'll be
406able to find them a new home. Okay, so let me ask the obvious question. We're cutting them now only to bring them back later. So what is the point of cutting them now? So if I can clarify for you, MR. Cervera, these are not classroom teachers. These are district instructional personnel that do various duties across the district. Many of them provide services to our schools, but they are not classroom teachers. So we're taking certified teachers from the district. We're removing them, and we're telling them that they could be placed within schools because apparently there's 500. Yes. Okay. Yes. So as we sit here today, can we guarantee all of these 109 folks that are about to have their positions cut and their jobs lost, albeit maybe temporary, can we guarantee them employment within the next
4073 to 6 months? Yeah. Go ahead. MR. Thank you. So next week, we will be reaching out to them and we will gather their preferences. And by the following week, they will be offered a position of where they will be placed. Okay. Do they have a say in this at all? What if they don't like what you're offering? Then they are welcome to go ahead and submit a transfer form. And as vacancies start occurring, they can transfer before the school year begins. So it's no guarantee they'll actually be placed where they want to. But there will be a job for them somewhere, correct? Okay, so the job cabana fantastic classroom. Or the job could be on a roof somewhere, but they'll be offered a job. No, I won't be on a roof. It'll be in
408a classroom, in an air conditioned building. And all our all our classrooms are fantastic. So they. Okay, Okay, so and listen, joke joking aside, I just want to make sure that I'm clear because this is important. We're talking about a lot of certified teachers potentially losing their employment and them not being able to educate our kids. All of the folks within this line item summary that we're talking about, 196 of them, we can guarantee them there, there will be a spot for reemployment within the next 3 to 6 months, 3 to 6 months, somewhere within a classroom in this district. The 112 district teachers that have been identified, if they hold a valid certificate, they will be able to be offered a position at a school instructional position. Thank you for the clarification. You're welcome.
409MISS Hixon. Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to point that out because there was a a statement made that we're taking all these teachers out of classrooms. So I think it's really important for us to understand, although they do go into schools to do some work, they are not classified at this moment as a classroom teacher. And I had one other question, because we've been talking about staff allocations. So, Doctor Hepburn, if a school what we've heard today is that schools were told they have to do a 10% cut across the board and the principal decides where those cuts are based on what they have. What if the school has higher enrollment? Like, we got a list recently about some schools that have actually grown, so kudos to them for that. I'll use an example.
410Oriole Elementary. They're bursting at the seams. So next year when AUGUST comes or I guess SEPTEMBER when we get our fte, if they're an increased enrollment, do they stay at that decreased budget or will we meet the enrollmen and increase with increased funding? So as we do every year after ten day count, we assess the enrollment more specifically headcount and also fte just, you know, just a reminder for the fte and enrollment are two different things. The fte could be less or more depending on the programing for that specific student. But we assess the headcount at the ten day count. If a school goes up and requires additional staff, they get that additional staff. If a school goes down and they don't need that additional staff, we shift that additional staff to the school that
411goes up. So that's a traditional routine that we do every year and every school district, you know, ten, 11, 12 day count. However, the other school districts do it, but here we do it after the 10th day. And so what if there's a school? Because I've been to a few where they've said they already know they're going to be at a higher enrollment than they are right now, and they're concerned about having to wait until that fte count to be able to hire a teacher. What where do they fall in this process? I've gotten that a very long time in my career, and I tell every principal the same thing, call those parents and have them register. And when they get into our system as a registered student, then the then the funding. But as
412far as the hope and the prayer that, hey, I'm going to get an additional 100 students, but that's not reflected in registered students in our system. It's not going to materialize until those students are registered. Right? Because a parent MAY say, hey, yeah, I'm coming. But I get that. But my my question is, let's say today I'm sitting at a school and I have 50 additional registrations. Is that principal still being told they have to cut 10%? So they would communicate with the regional office, and we bring those issues to cabinet to discuss if, if, if they have registered additional students that will garner additional staff, they will work through their director and their regional soup. Okay. Thank you. I'm just trying to get out as much information. I know for. Sure those are good.
413Those are good questions because we hear them all the time. And I've heard them in all the school districts I've worked. We have to get the students registered. We can't provide funding for students that aren't actually registered in our system. Okay. Thank you. Any other board member discussion on the motion? All in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Say no. No. Can you repeat the motion, MADAM Chair? The motion. Well, I'll have MR. Cervera repeat it. But it was to bring back the 112 certified teacher positions. But go ahead, MR. Cervera. My motion is to bring back the 112 certified teacher positions. MISS Alhadeff, for benefit of the paperwork that you MAY or MAY not have in front of you. It's on the summary positions log that was provided in our packet.
414Can we get a roll call? Roll call on the motion board member Thompson. No. Seaman o. Alhadeff. Oh. That was a no, MISS Alhadeff no. Bulman. No. Cervera. Yes. Hixon. No. Holiness. No. Leonardi. No. Rupert. Yes. Motion fails. Two seven. Anything else, MR. Cervera MISS Hixon. I know we already did a vote on it, but I'm just going to say for the record, one more time, although I didn't agree with bringing all of them back, I do feel that we need to somehow get the student support instructional specialists back. I made a motion. It didn't pass, so I'm not going to try that again. But just for the record, I just wanted to say that. Thank you. Yeah. Any other. Really guys. Any other board member discussion on the item, MISS Thompson? No. No, just
415call the question. All in favor of calling the question, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Say no. I motion on the item as a whole. All right. Calling the question passes unanimously. All in favor of item one, as amended. Oh, do we want to vote on it. And then or do you want to recess. And then we vote on it with all the changes? Go ahead, MISS Sullivan. We don't need to do that. I spoke to general counsel. So based on the item, we would bring back job descriptions to delineate the the change in reporting structures for the departments as it relates to splitting up those three chiefs into two chiefs. MISS Hixon. Thank you know, I, I completely disagree. We only agreed on a workshop to make this from a workshop to a meeting. If
416there was a recess and you would put in writing what it is we're voting on before we voted on it. And I will not vote if I do not see in writing what it is, because that's not fair. There's been a lot of changes, and everyone needs to see what that looks like on paper. And I don't typically throw a temper tantrum, but that was the agreement last week. How much time we need, MR. Sullivan, I know you guys have been working. Throughout the meeting recess. I would recommend a ten minute recess. However, I would table this item after the ten minutes, go to item two, and by the time item two is disposed of, we will be ready for item one with an updated org chart. But as as an alternative, we could table
417this now and go to item two and see if you come back without the recess. Yes. We can make. I wouldn't want to be a part of. I need the superintendent's attention for at least 15 minutes of that. Where's the deputy? The problem is, I think item two is going to need your discussion as well. So perhaps we can take a five minute recess and we'll table this item. Five minute recess. That's all the time I need for the superintendent. And then we come back. We will recess for five minutes. All right. We are back. Could I get a motion and a second to or could I get a motion to table item number one. So move second. Move by DR. Zeman, second by MISS Thompson. All in. All in favor of tabling the item,
418say I. I I. All opposed? Say no. The motion to table the item is passed unanimously. Could I get a motion and a second to bring item number two to. The. Second motion made by DR. Zeman. Second by MISS Rupert public comment on item two. We have two registered speakers. Doctor Natalie Lynch Walsh and Melanie Burkin MAY proceed to the podium. Sarah put me on the list. I did it again. One of us anyway. Is Walsh. One second. I don't know that the mic is on beacon. Can you turn on the mic, please for public speaker? Doctor Natalie Lynch Walsh Plantation, Florida still here because of the one behind me would have killed me if I didn't basically. So she's been harassing me to look at this job description since I think SEPTEMBER. So you
419mashed together two things, and let's just say they were not mashed together. Well, and this is why. And you already approved the org chart with the mashed together title on it. So if you change anything on the job description like reporting, then you'd have to bring it back. It's a good thing you didn't vote on it. However, there are some like disturbing things on here on page two, minimum qualifications and experience. Call me a purist, but if you're going to say an earned master's degree from an accredited institution in one psychology, two social work, three counseling for mental health counseling, public health, oh, ding ding ding. Educational leadership. How is that related? Like, how does that prepare them? That's a problem. But in the experience we crossed out social work, you still have mental health
420services student. Now you have student services or related educational leadership role, but kept social work crossed out. You require a master's, but no experience in social work would be relevant. That seems problematic. You did put in mental health services. So then there's some other things that I think Melanie is going to mention, but there's the these are red flags. This smacks of we know who we want to put into this position, and we are going to tweak the job description to match that person. And it generally starts when you have educational leadership, because now we're sneaking in principals who don't have any of these degrees, the degrees, like in mental health. And I pulled a statute, I think, because it mentioned it somewhere in the backup where you're supposed to electronically submit your school wellness
421policy because now this person is in charge of wellness, but there's no mention there is a generic mention to federal and state mandates. But for a district that gets pretty precise and petty about little things and its job description, you would think you would issue a reminder, which, by the way, you're out of compliance with the statute. 1,003.453 because the last time you looked at your wellness policy was JANUARY of 24, and we are now in MAY of 26, and then there's some other requirements. So hopefully that will be in this job description that you've mashed together. I would say take a good hard look at this because you're creating, it's about a person and it's not about the actual needs of the position. Thank you. Good afternoon. Melanie Birkin, Davie, Florida Natalie mentioned many
422of the concerns that I have. I sorry, I have like all sorts of stuff everywhere because that's kind of how I felt about this position. We talked a lot about copilot and ai, and honestly, the district would have it would have benefited you to have taken the previous two job descriptions and merged them together with copilot to create something that would have been a lot better than this piece together document, because I really feel like there's a lot that's missing. And a lot that's duplicated. And really it just does not cover everything. So really could use that ai chief to have created this a lot better. This also goes to what happens when you have somebody in a related field. Create a job description for a mental health coordinator that they MAY not understand all
423that that should be in here. This is a position that is required by statute, paid for through the mental health allocation plan. It should have a mental health professional in this position. I'm really, really bothered by there's a lot of typos if you're going to approve something eventually. I would like to share the typos at some point, but I don't want to use all my time talking about the other pieces that are in here that I just, as Natalie mentioned, I just don't understand. It's disappointing to hear that that the minimum qualifications have been extended to so many areas. And I don't know what's left. When you talk about a, you know, public health leadership or a related field, like related to what what's left? You've already named every other job. It just really is
424disappointing. Again, the the preferred qualifications moving eligible for or possess Florida certification as a school social worker and or a licensed in an area of mental health. Again, your Director of Mental health should have a mental health background. I don't know how else to make this clear. I mean, it shouldn't even be a question. And again, I have some other typos that that could be corrected. Co-pilot's a great thing. It's my best friend when I'm going to write an email. So in speeches which I have here, I really thank you. I urge you to take into consideration all of the changes that really need to be made. Most importantly, the minimum requirements. Thank you. That concludes our public speaking. Thank you. Board member comment, MISS Rupert. Thank you. I have two motions to make. I
425move to strike out the words educational leadership or related field, which is. Hold on in the first bullet. Second motion made by MISS Rupert. Seconded by DR. Zeman. Public comment on the motion. Yeah, I've got two. I've got two motions. Yeah. Please go. [Laughter] I'm sorry. Sorry, doctor. Natalie Lynch Walsh Plantation, Florida. It's a difference between personality types. I keep walking a straight line from my chair. I support the motion fully. That resolves the biggest concerns. As far as minimum qualifications go. Too often that as Melanie mentioned, the aura related field. This is how we wound up with, you know, someone with a kinesiology degree running the business support center because somehow or related field got us there. So educational leadership is not mental health. My own daughter is is getting a master's in psychology,
426not in educational leadership and not in a related field. So in theory, she should be would be eventually qualified. Not that she would work here, but that's different. Education does matter and it should matter, or else we wouldn't have k to 12 and we wouldn't have different degrees. We just have all one size fits all. Thank you. Next speaker. Melanie Burkin Davie, Florida. I'm sorry, could you please repeat? It was just take off the leadership part. That was. For related field. Okay. Yeah, I support that. And I thank you so much for that. I forgot to say to the title Wellness and Mental Health. I mean, I think I mentioned it earlier before, but thank you. I support your motion. Board member comment on the motion, MISS Thompson. Thank you. Chair, I support the motion.
427I actually had it written down to make the motion myself as well. So same brainwave. I just think it's really important that if this person is going to be coordinating all the mental health services in our district, that they have that in their background. Thank you. Thank you. Other board member comment, MISS Bulman. I agree. MISS Hixon. Just a question. So was the motion to take it out just in that first bullet or the second bullet also has it. I have a motion for the second. Okay, okay. Thank you. All right. All in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye aye. All opposed? Say no. Motion passes unanimously. Okay. Second one. Okay. I move that the second bullet put underneath minimum qualifications to hold on. Oh I see okay, back it up. I moved that
428the original second bullet to the third and remove a related educational leadership roles in that second bullet. Motion made by MISS Rupert, seconded by MISS Hixon public comment on the motion. Second move. Yeah, but I'm going to do one more. You want me to do it together? If you would like. Okay. Because last time everybody made me do it one by one by one. Okay. Yes. Under preferred qualifications and experience, I move that the eligible for or possess Florida certification as a school social worker and or licensed in an area of mental health become the the second bullet. So that's what I was talking about. Moving the second to the third bullet. MISS Dupree. Bruno. You were right, MISS Rupert, one motion at a time. So we have one motion on the table at a
429time. Okay? Okay. So, MISS Rupert, just for the record, could you repeat just the first motion, please? The one that we already passed? No. No, the one that you just. Okay. The second bullet. a minimum of. Yes. I move that the second bullet under minimum qualifications to move the original second bullet to third and remove related educational leadership roles. Okay. Public comment. And that was seconded. Public comment on the motion. Doctor Natalie Lynch Walsh plantation, Florida. I believe I support the motion from the standpoint of taking out or related educational leadership roles. That does still leave social work crossed out, which just seems weird to me since you're supposed to have a degree in social work. Mental health services is in there. Student services does encompass social work, but it's not explicit. So if that
430went back in there, that would be even better. But I support taking out or related educational leadership roles because I don't know how that's relevant to this position. Yeah, it'll it's coming in the third motion. Melanie Burke and Davie, Florida. Thank you. I support this motion 100%. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Board member discussion. DR. Zeman. I just wondered if the maker of the motion could read the complete bullet when you're done with your changes. Yeah. The second one. The motion that's on the table. Okay. Move the original second bullet to the third position and remove or related educational leadership roles. I think. You could read it after those changes. Could you read what it. How it would look once the changes are done? I can't I'm. Sorry. I think I can. So a
431minimum of seven years of progressively responsible experience in mental health services, student service and student services period there. So just removing the. Or student services. Yes, I guess, or mental health services or student services. Brilliant. I love the motion. Thank you, MISS Rupert. Anyone else? Okay. All in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Say no. Motion passes unanimously. Okay. My last motion to move the eligible for or possess Florida certification as a school social worker and or licensed in an area of mental health, become the new number two bullet. Second motion made by MISS Rupert, seconded by MISS Thompson. Public comment on the motion. Point of order. Does the sequence of the bullet change anything. MISS Rupert? It makes more sense to me. Priority. But open to amendment. It makes it a
432minimum qualification, not a preferred. 0000. So just to be clear, you want the first bullet under preferred qualifications experience to become the third bullet under minimum falls second. I'm sorry. Yes. Any bullet, you can pick one. That's fine. So this becomes a minimum. Yes. I'm. I'm worried about that. Okay. Can we take public comment and then. Yeah, go ahead. Melanie Birkin Davie, Florida. Thank you. I fully 150 zero zero 0% support this motion. It protects mental health professionals in this role and prevents further related field individuals from from being assigned the Director of Mental health. So thank you, thank you, thank you. Doctor.Atatieynch Walsh Plantataonon Floridada. Iupuprtrt theototion and I understand Missus Rupert's prioritization. You have education. That's been clear. You passed that motion. Then you have certification. So you would have the Florida certification
433as a school social worker and or licensed in an area of mental health. So you have certification or a license because for certain fields, those are important. And then the third would be the experience. So now we have education certification or license and experience. And that's hard for people to get around. If you put that into a job description, clearly, as minimum eligibility requirements not preferred, all minimum. And you want the best and brightest. I heard that a lot today. And that's how you get them by making having the bar set high. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. My name is Patricia Ville from Tamarac. If we're really going to set the bar high, it should be licensed clinical social worker because not just a social worker, licensed clinical social worker, that should be the highest
434level. Because if someone is coming in as a social worker and looking for someone to supervise them and someone to be their director, if you're going to make that change, that's the highest bar licensed clinical social worker and mental health or counseling services licenses. Because if I am a mental health licensed counselor, I don't want to be supervised by I'm on a higher position than a social worker because I'm clinical. I could actually open a clinic versus a social worker who can't. Licensed clinical social worker can open up a clinic. There's a difference in the levels and the titles. So that should be the requirement. Licensed clinical social worker, not just a social worker. All right. Board member discussion. DR. Zeman. I'm bothered by the language here. We have a dangling participle which drives me
435batty. Okey doke. Eligible for possesses Florida certification as a school social worker. Get that? But then we say or licensed in an area of mental health. What if you're eligible for becoming licensed in an area of mental health? Is that covered? Yeah. Well, it doesn't say that. It says you're eligible for possess a Florida certificate as a social worker. That's one thing. And or do we really mean eligible for or licensed in an area of mental health? Because that's what we say about social work. Would you like to make an amendment or a substitute motion? I'd like these things to be written well, to be honest with you. I mean, it's it's, it's a really, really important thing because job descriptions, you know, people read this and they say, oh, I don't meet that criteria.
436They don't apply. And so like, I'm, I hope we can increase the quality of these things over time. I'll make a motion. Excuse me. I'll, I'll make one when we're done with this so that we can clean up the language. Okay. Any other board member comment, MISS Bulman. To that point about eligible for what does that really mean? Thank you. There are social worker in Georgia or something. Go ahead, Doctor Lozano or MISS Rockman. Yes. So the way that the Department of Education works, if you have. They they set a different qualifications in order to be eligible. So yes, I can have a master's degree in social work and qualify to get a Department of Ed certificate, whereas to get a Department of Health license, I have to complete all the requirements to get the
437licensure. There isn't. You have to meet all the eligibility to get the licensure. So there isn't a provisional way to get one. You have to be done with everything and then you get the Department of Health license. But if I was a if I had my master's degree from Georgia in social work, and I wanted to come and work in the state of Florida, I could get a. I would be eligible for a Department of Social Work certificate. I would get the certificate on a temporary provisional. And then I have that time frame. Five years to complete all the Department of Ed requirements, but I could be eligible for one. Is that help? So should it say something about provisional licensing then? No. Okay. I'm just I mean, based on education, you're eligible for something.
438But does that mean that you pass all of the background and all the other things? Okay. All right. I'm not wading into this. If you guys think that that's okay, I'll deal with the law stuff. MISS Thompson. Oh, I was just going to try to help because I have my school. I have a social work master's from Virginia. When I came down here, I had to get a certificate to be a school social worker. That's how it's different. And then to be a licensed clinical social worker, you actually have to go through a practicum and you take a licensing exam. It's it's a different process. And I'm guessing for mental health, it's like counselors and psychologists. It's probably also a similar process. So but I don't believe in, correct me if I'm wrong, that they
439could practice if they're not licensed as a, like a mental health counselor. So I think that has to be licensed in that area, I believe. Correct. Make the change. Great. Anyone else? All in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Say no. Motion passes unanimously. Are you done, MISS Rupert? Yes, I'm. Done. MISS Thompson. Thank you. I just have one motion. I would like to change the name of the position to Director of Student Services and Mental Health. I feel like wellness is is not an appropriate term. Second, public comment on the motion. Melanie Birkin, Davie, Florida. I support the motion. I think that's a great idea. I'm really, really happy. Child abuse. Homelessness does not fall under either mental health or wellness. Thank you. There are some typos to before you guys
440totally finish everything, but thank you. Yeah. Doctor. Natalie Lynch Walsh Plantation, Florida. I support the motion. That's a more catches more and. Seems to be a better fit. I still wish you could get that stray assistant director of student support initiatives somewhere, but I guess they're not going to find a director to attach themselves to. But I support the the motion. Board member comment DR. Zeman. You mean throughout the whole job description? Yes. So the the title would change to student services and mental health. And I only really saw system of wellness. So system of Student services on the. Now I don't know in the position goal. So it would be an integrated system of student services and mental health, but I'm sure staff can clean up. Yeah. Anyone else? All in favor of the
441motion. Say aye. Aye. All opposed? Say no. Motion passes unanimously. Anything else? DR. Zeman. Thanks so much. I just move that we under what I think now is the second bullet as a as we've amended this under minimum calls, that we amend that language to, say, licensed in an area of mental health and or eligible for or possesses Florida certification as a school social worker. Second motion made by DR. Zeman. Seconded by MISS Thompson. Public comment on the motion. Got it, I got it. Come on, guys, it's grammar. Could you repeat it? I'm sorry. I'm sure I support it. The new language would say licensed in an area of mental health license and or eligible for or possesses Florida certification as a school social worker. Period. Okay. Thank you, I support. Doctor Natalie Lynch, Walsh
442Plantation, Florida. I support the motion. I'm not going to claim to be an English major, but yes, I get DR. Zeman point and that should read better. I suspect that there's going to be further tinkering, if not today, next year, because of some of the other adjectives that could get added here. But it would be nice if we could get the grammar hammered out before it comes here, so that you guys aren't constantly tinkering with grammar every time it seems. I support the motion. Thank you. Board member. Comment on the motion. All in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye aye. All opposed? Say no. Motion passes unanimously. Any other board member comment on the item item number two as amended. All right. All in favor of item number two as amended, say aye. Aye.
443All opposed? Say no. Item passes as amended. Can I get a motion and a second to bring back item number one to the second move by DR. Zeman, second by MISS Thompson. Doctor Hepburn. All right, MR. Sullivan, I think there wrapping up to get a displayed and. Do they need us to. Are they ready, Doctor Lozano? Do we need to. Okay. Well we'll reassess the meeting for ten minutes. Oh my GOD. There's other All right, we are back. And we also have to take a vote to extend the meeting. So I'll make a motion to extend the meeting by 15 minutes. Seconded by DR. Zeman. All in favor of extending the meeting? 15 minutes, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Say no. I motion passes unanimously. I'm even. I took the first time in four years.
444Seriously. All right, Doctor Hepburn, do you have your amended org chart? Yes MR. Sullivan. Beacon, if you can display my screen on teams. Okay. I think there's a little delay. Yeah. That's coming. All right, I think I got it. And we're we're making some hard copies as well. So I'm going to go to the pages that were changed based on the Chiefs positions change. All right. This is academics. All right. So there's going to be two pages starting on page 11. And these are coming to you guys. But in the meantime. So you'll see the on this first page, the chief building official, executive director, student Transportation and Fleet Services, and the executive director of Food Nutrition report to the Chief Strategy and Operations Officer, you'll see the director position was eliminated based on board
445motion. Page 12 is also going to be this chief Strategy and Operations officer. You'll see a director of demographics, director of athletics, director of the sim team and the director of charter Schools. That's no change, MR. Silver. It's the change. That school choice is probably the only change to everything else was already well is in strategy and innovation. But school choice moved over here. So that is new in terms of the who they're reporting to. All right. Now going to facilities. So there's no change here for facilities. Thank you. Skip the page. Sorry. This is the first page of facilities. Can you walk through verbally too. I know we have MISS Alhadeff on the phone. Sure. She can see the screen. Okay. But Chief Fire Fitzgerald, director of facility and real estate and planning and
446real estate. So that's a realignment that used to be under the strategy innovation officer. Now it's under chief facilities officer, director of physical Plant operations, executive director of Physical Operations, and then director of Sustainability and compliance. That's the first page, and this is the second page. That's awesome. That's great. Anyone have any questions or should I go back to any other pages? I have a question. Where is the building department? The building department is under operations. Okay. Just want to. Right here. Okay. That's awesome. Thank you. Any other questions or pages? This has been printed out as well, but that's going to take a little longer. Oh, and then let me go to page three I believe. Page three. The director of Family and community Engagement is back in communications. That was going to originally
447be part of strategy and innovation. You mean back in chief of staff? Yes, sir. And what about the other changes? I mean, that's all just for the chief changes, right? You're going to show us the other ones. Like the we changed some directors and added an executive director. Are we going to. Let me see. So for Esq. You had it, John. Sorry to fast. That one's back here. And then the elimination of the Esq support compliance. And then the transportation. One. That one wasn't the operations that I showed you guys. Let me go back to it right here. Anything else, MR. Sullivan? That's it. I can go through each page real quickly again for a couple seconds on the screen, if that makes everybody more comfortable or go more questions, whatever you guys like. Does
448anyone have any questions? So go ahead, MISS Leonardo. You can ask questions. So, MR. Sullivan, if you can go to the ops and facilities, one recommendation that just. That's the first page for. For the chief fire official is I think it's under facilities. Yes, sir. To put the chief fire official. I think that was one of the. Also the the points of separation put that under the ops. So we'll make that that move to. Are you talking about the chief facility chief building official sir. That's that's okay. The the chief fire official is still on the facilities, so the chief fire official would need to go under Stratton Ops as well, because that's one of the other sticking points, I think, for for the acts, for the separation of the chief facilities and chief operations.
449And correct me if I'm wrong, if. Very important to see separate. Yes. So we'll make that shift. So that would be an additional change. Moving the chief fire official out from the Chief Facilities officer under the chief. Yep. Correct. So that would be the the only additional change that's that's not printed out. So I have a question. So how many direct reports does that give the chief facilities officer as opposed to the chief Operating Chief Strategy and Operations officer. So this would be one, two, three four. 567. I'm sorry. No because they have a. Yeah, you're right. Seven no, because the executive director. That's one. They all report to the executive director. So it would be one, two, three, four. They would have four. Okay. And how many does the chief strategy and operations officer.
450123. 4567 and then eight with the. Fire would have seven and one would have eight. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. I don't want. So the only difference with the handouts is again page 13. The chief fire official would be going under the Chief Strategy and operations officer. As Bulman. Thank you. Chair. Can I correct the record? I just said something real quick. So the Chief Facilities officer will actually have three direct reports, because there's some executive directors in there. And versus the coo, I think it was eight. So just wait. Yeah, because I said seven before, I didn't count those executive directors in the span of control they have. Thank you. Oh, go ahead, MISS Hixon. So just that's why I kind of asked because we have the chief facilities officer at a
451t band with three direct reports and the chief Strategy and operations officer at 7 or 8 or whatever, only at Esq. So is there does that make sense? I mean, since we've shifted things around, we shifted most of them to combine the two of those. And I just have concerns about how many direct reports they have. And the pay band were. I think, you know, the controversy here, or as I hear from the board and sometimes the public, is that traditionally under the chief facilities officer, the building department and fire official will be under them. So that's the difference here in Broward County is the continued acts that they be separated under two different divisions. But nonetheless, they end up collaborating and at the same table anyway because we we don't allow them to work
452in isolation from the capital program because the collaborative decision making was driving that drives completions of projects. But either way, you'd still even without that, that part of it, you'd still only have three direct reports. The chief facilities officer, chief strategy has everything else. Just just asking. MISS Bulman. I just wanted to look at page 11. Revisiting transportation. We're going to have to vote to extend in about in a few minutes, so. Okay. Go ahead. I was very hopeful, though. I did we only do 15 minutes. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So just looking across the line for in the middle and we took off the director of student Transportation and Fleet Services and the others have. Directors that are on that line. So I'm just wondering if that's problematic for down the chart for the executive
453director for student transportation and fleet services, and maybe could get some input on how that's going to impact. I'll defer to Doctor Wanza since she's been working with that group. Valerie Wanza, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer Make sure my titles right today. So I will certainly respect the will of the board. But I will say in working closely with that department, as I have since middle JANUARY, I do see the need to at least have the director position there, similar to physical plant operations as well as food and nutrition services. When you look at just the span of control of that, that body of work, that's approximately 1400 plus people over five different transportation terminals, as well as managing and maintaining the entire white fleet. So a lot of people think White Fleet is just
454the cars that MAY be directors or the or the police would ride around in. These are also the vehicles that go out to schools to repair, to maintain. So it's that whole operation as well. And I would just say that the the terminal managers do an exceptional job managing their individual terminals each and every day. However, the director is there to help with compliance and, and, and leadership and, and that then allows the executive director, similar to what MR. Davis said as it relates to it, with the entire strategic efficiencies, reimagining what the what that operation looks like, and really designing systems not for today, but systems for tomorrow. So I would I would say that there is a need to at least contemplate the director position being there. Okay. Thank you. I'd like to
455make a motion to put the Director of Student Services, Transportation and Fleet Services back on the. Is there a second? Second motion made by MISS Bulman, seconded by DR. Holness. Public comment on the motion. Board member comment. MISS Hixon. Thank you. I just want to point out where on the other ones where there are executive directors and directors, we got rid of the Assistant director. In this position there is assistant director, even though there's not a director. And when you go to the chief building official, they don't have an assistant at all. So I know you were looking at the food and nutrition piece of it. And then the, the, the, the finance part, which is complicated because it's in the cfo thing. But I just would point out there is there is an assistant
456director there. If I MAY, Doctor Hepburn, if. Okay. And so I, I certainly respect your point and what you're making, MISS Hixon. But but if you look at the. We actually combined a position to combine it so that the assistant director can focus on additional duties as well. So I would just say again, while I, while I respect the position that the board is in and what the work is here today, I would just make the argument that that that director position is essential. And we did eliminate another position that is at the same level as the assistant director to realign some work over there. DR. Zeman I think this has been asked and answered already. I think you can always find a rationale for moving back layers of management, but this is transportation services.
457This is a process that is. You know, predictable. And it it needs help in terms of efficiency, but adding more management layers back is actually not helpful. You know, sometimes you do addition by subtraction. And that's what this is. They have an executive director. They have tons management. They have lots of folks. And I just, I know that we've already debated this, and I don't want to go back and debate every cut that we've had on this chart. I think that this has been asked and answered, and we need to move quickly through this and approve these charts and go home. Anyone else? All in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye aye. All opposed? Say no. No. Roll call please. MADAM Chair. DR. Holness. Could you have the maker of the motion? Repeat the
458motion again for everyone. The motion was to put the Director of Student Transportation and fleet servicing back on. Okay. Roll call, please. Roll call on the motion. School board member Zieman. Oh, Alhadeff. Yes. Bowman. Yes. Cervera. Nope. Hixon. No. No. No. Holness. Yes. Leonardi. No. Rupert. No. Thanks. Thompson. No. Fails 36. ououavave the flo,, MISS Bowman. That's all. DR. Zeman. Thank you. Chair. There was a really important thing to say, but after a few hours. I'm sorry. I don't have anything else to add, I apologize. Okay. Anyone else on this item? All right, all in favor. Oh, go ahead, MR. Sullivan. Through the superintendent. If it's okay. Just on page nine. I forgot to mention that. Also, the director and before and after school care is going under student support services. Okay. Anyone else? All
459in favor of item one, as amended, say I, I. All opposed? Say no. All opposed. Say no. No. Roll call please. Roll call on the item. School board members. Alhadeff. Yes. Bowman. Yes. Cervera sticking to the sign. No. Hixon. Yes. Holness. Yes. Leonardi. Yes. Rupert. No. Thanks. Thompson. Yes. Zeeman. Yes. Seven two item passes. All right. That concludes our the business of our special school board meeting. Do any of my colleagues have any student successes or issues they'd like to share? MISS Bulman. I have one. I wanted to congratulate Sebastian Gonzalez of South Broward High School, who won fourth place at the state tournament for track and field in the 800 meter with a 154, and his parents, Rodolfo Gonzalez and Jenny Garcia, are assistant coaches. And so I just want to congratulate all of
460them for all their hard work and for all of the great work that they've done for all of our other athletes. So thank you. All right, MR. Cervera. Thank you, chair, the Sun-Sentinel released yesterday its 2026 winners of their annual high school journalism contest. And I'm happy to announce that in the photography category, MISS Isabella Pardo of Western High School won first place for her girls exhibit. So big shout out to Isabella for her excellent photography skills and the first place prize. MISS Hixon. Just congratulations to Marjory Stoneman Douglas baseball team. They will be making their way to the state competition again. Final four yes. MISS Thompson. Shout out to Flanagan track who won for a in the state championship. Anyone else? The scheduled order of business for the Special School Board meeting of the
461School Board of Broward County, Florida has been completed. Seeing no objections, I will now adjourn the special School Board meeting.