Superintendent's Workshop 12 p.m. 4-11-2022

001good afternoon everyone it is high noon on uh april it is today april 11 2022 and we are in the joanne idalette junior teacher education center and this is the superintendent's workshop for today um i'm going to call the meeting at 12 noon and i'd like to recognize the superintendent to explain today's workshop um while you do that could you explain also the timing that was sent and posted because we have 12 to 4 for superintendent's workshop and then we have four to six for another workshop what was it agreed upon and should have been posted is we start this meeting at noon and immediately following or we exhaust this agenda the superintendent's items will move right on to any board discussion items we do have one board discussion item today which would be heard

002i would anticipate significantly earlier than than four o'clock okay and our first item for today um i'll have mr meyer set up and present this is the instruction materials for math adoption in which we're kind of on a wait and see mode through the state but mr meyer will give additional information as to where we are there thank you dr moore through the chair um as brief to the board when we did the adoption process uh we are at a position now where we're waiting for the state to approve their list as we began the process back in the fall we explained how florida statutes require the district to go through certain steps and then ultimately the state board or excuse me the department of education approves the list should be by april 1st which

003if districts were to wait until april 1st to begin their process there's no way we could finish our process in time to order the materials so once again hats off to the math instructional materials committee that has done their due diligence and their review up to this point we're hopeful we remain hopeful that we can still get the list from the department of education prior to the april 25th meeting i mean they're 10 days late now hopefully they can get it to us so that we could vote on that and if you recall the item that the board approved we adopted and named the four titles-ish in elementary four-ish titles in middle school for the purpose to begin that review we did receive a few petitions for some of those books that we've heard public

004comment about at the high school level we have not began the process to hold a hearing on those because quite frankly we don't know whether or not they'd be on the state's list if they're not on the state's list it certainly doesn't make any sense for us to defend those so we're going to wait till we get the the state's list and then be ready to make a recommendation to the board so there's really nothing to present at this time we're just hopeful that we get that list prior to the 25th um because obviously if we don't get it by the 25th we'd be waiting until may to order um and that continues to put you know not just our students and indian river but the whole state at risk of getting the books in

005time so i'm hopeful that we get that list soon okay board members mrs rosario yeah um this i i was doing some research this this weekend um one of the reasons why i didn't get a chance to talk with you on this topic which i'm going to ask a question on the review committee for the adoption for the math adoptions process that committee is not held in the sunshine correct false that committee was publicly noticed and anyone could attend yes okay okay so i was reviewing this weekend a court case from collier county that they the florida alliance citizens alliance i suppose sued the county for textbook or violation of sunshine law with regard to one of their textbook adoptions process and the courts ruled in favor of the complainant that the adoptions process it's

006very interesting i would i i'm bringing that up because i think it's important for us to take a look at it um i know ms shattuck is kind of looking it ended i the kate cases september 10 2021 was when the final appeals or the judgment was rendered i suppose and the court case just basically said that everything really needs to be out in the open but what i found interesting was that the textbook committee i think the word is if the textbook committee is crystallizing and that's the word that is used in the case is crystallizing an opinion or helped this is how it's worded help to crystallize the decision to be made by the school board in other words they've come up with a recommendation and they're kind of forwarding their recommendation not

007as a recommendation but as a direction in which the board should vote rather than giving the board all of the data and letting the board decide um and that was and there was an interesting how they they worded it that doing it that way and allowing the committee to crystallize the decision for the board was a violation of sunshine as well rather than providing i'll bring this up in a little while too rather than providing the board with all of the data that they've collected and then allowing but anyway so if you read it you'll you'll kind of see um what i'm talking about so i'm glad to hear that it's been in the sunshine you know that that our adoptions committee has been in the sunshine so again just in case um you want

008it i can i have copies here but um i can provide that with you for you so you can review it okay and dr john thank you madam chair a special thank you to kelly baser mr meyer on that team i know the intense work that goes into any adoption i did my due diligence i talked with math teachers math coach district office people and i read every evaluation that was done by the committee members i said before and i'll say it again the number one choice for me as a board member will be what our math teachers want um as you look at our math scores and as dr moore begins to present that especially in the year of cover the last couple years you know we slipped a little bit just like the

009whole nation and i do think even though i was a teacher a long time ago we need to listen to those people in the classrooms that are there each and every day and i won't even say the last 10 years i'll say the last three years because there's been a real change as far as what teachers are expected to do and of course obviously a change with our students and what they've gone through with covid we've said this before the seniors this year basically had one normal year those meetings were open i didn't get to them this year i ran the science one a few years ago but they were definitely open and in the sunshine so again um when that recommendation comes through as mr meyer said maybe they won't even be on the

010list so i'll have to take a look at the other ones that are on the list we need to make sure that our math teachers and our math coaches and our district math people have the curriculum have the textbooks that will support growth in math thank you mr barefoot yeah i i uh you know i always make the assumption it's probably you could criticize for it is what what ultimately ends up on the list is acceptable to the department of education and then within that framework what's selected by the peace the teachers that have to teach it presumably is the best option available um all i know for sure is that much like early childhood literacy numeracy we are way behind and whatever curriculum along the way enables us to close that gap from whatever

011wherever we are to whatever we ideally would like to be i would be in favor of but i think at some point in time you've got to go with the people that are responsible for implementing whatever the curriculum is we can all sit here and have a slightly different point of view but that's what we these are the professionals and oftentimes people look at something and come to a different conclusion but i i would i would certainly support what what they recommend all other things being equal okay um i have a couple of questions um first of all so you don't want to state what the high school choices were yet you're saying because um you're waiting to see because those are the petitions that were put forward were just about high school titles is

012that correct that's correct the only petitions we received were those high school titles that have been mentioned at the other meetings during public comment the savas titles for uh some of the advanced courses right the two that were in question so um you don't want to put forward what the committee's recommendation is yet because you're waiting to see whether or not their recommendation is selected or not selected that's right i mean i think that's an accurate statement it's it's we we will pick from the list um so we want to make sure that whatever we pick from the list it echoes mr barefoot's statement if the state approves it um then we would pick something that's on that list okay and so by law the state was supposed to give us that list on april

0131st correct and so we have not gotten that list yet have we gotten any notification about why that list is late i requested that was just told that they hope that it's available soon is there anything board members can do to help and move this timeline because i remember last year with amplify it was a little bit helpful for board members to get involved with understanding or getting tallahassee to understand that we're under a time crunch so through the chair uh wednesday i have fads the superintendent's association i will be getting a briefing at that time and maybe at the end of wednesday i'll be able to give the board an update with information shared from the state okay and then an advisor okay and then the answer is yes there is stuff the board

014can do but let's see what they say okay that's that's fair uh we're not in a time crunch as of yet but we will be um as we keep moving forward and that's accurate i mean as we we try to give the presentations you know on on today and then we would bring it for approval but if it's available uh for the 25th we can give a presentation on the 25th um and then still bring it for approval on the 25th okay and then um the i know your your members met in the sunshine for the math adoption because um it's an instructional materials adoption committee and that meets in the sunshine so question um there were members of this committee that were also from the public correct correct there were both uh community members

015who did not have parent or children in school system and parents who were not also staff members so of course you have staff members who are both parents around the committee and then community members who were only parents who aren't staff members they were on the committee and then some who were just you know interested parties so it was good it was a good uh mixture and um i was stated you know by mr barefoot not everyone's going to agree but it's interesting when you have a instructional materials committee you have uh various opinions both within staff right we have staff who would you know support product a or product b so even the the teachers there's no there is not to say there's one product that is you know unanimous there's going to be

016opinions because different people hold different portions of the curriculum um in higher regard right um but i do i do the process was great i think that we very much look forward to having new materials we haven't had new materials for math since i think 2014. was the last time the state approved a list of materials so they're long overdue i'm just hopeful we get that in the next two weeks so that we can get them ordered as soon as possible start training on the summer okay thank you that's all i had i'm sorry have a follow-up please okay um follow-up with regard to when we have the when when it finally comes to us we have a few that are a couple that are tied um of which the committee kind of came to

017con equal thought on them middle school was one high school was another and i know we just talked about high school um the higher um courses but the other ones are very very close one with the other so the ones that are tied what would then be the recommendation coming to us so we're looking at a couple of things um you know pricing is a consideration uh the different options that are provided by the vendor and then one of the reasons i'm hesitant to you know make a recommendation until we see states list the state with ela for the first time they also gave some sort of alignment or ranking i wouldn't say it was a ranking per se but they gave more about their information than they had done in the past and i

018think that that should be taken into consideration as well uh prior to making a final decision so last year it would necessarily just consideration right i mean we need to look at it so i think this is where that court case will come in handy to allow board might give board members all the information and let board members kind of make that final decision at the end and that's exactly what the court case stated so i i think that at least that was the recommendation so that should be interesting when it comes down to us because last year when hmh was at the forefront and it was on the doe's recommended list it ultimately needed to be revised i mean ultimately they went back to hmh and said you have to take off some of

019these things that do not follow the law and hmh did that but then at the same time amplify um was then approved so we went with amplify um nonetheless just because the d i guess my point is just because the doe kind of recommends doesn't mean that things that are unlawful and included within the books aren't missed or are missed just because they get approved doesn't mean things aren't missed within the content of the material so we have to make sure that we have extra eyes on content that is unlawful against the statutes against the rules and obviously then i think those should be our priority and then obviously from that point as a recommendation from the committee does that kind of make sense it does it does um one thing that i would say

020and i haven't read the collier county procedures from 2017 nor the the court case but one of the the things that i think was great about our current process is that we brought um not all but um four choices right before the board for like let's say elementary school so we aren't in the position that we were in last year to only have the one and so i think that's kind of what you're hitting at like if a committee were to only bring one one product only goes through all of the necessary steps it does tie the board's hands that you can only select from that one where we're at now is that we have multiple products at our disposal to choose from so it's not all it would be wrong for me to say

021all because we didn't go through the process the committee did limit it somewhat but we've left the board with enough opportunity and choice that when the list comes out we're going to we're going to be protected we're going to have a product that that has been through that so um i i said very very glad of where we're at right now and look forward to seeing the end of it and then i have a last question that i'm not sure what the answer is to this it was proposed to me and i didn't know when we have electronic supplemental materials that are provided from these publishers worksheets homework sheets lesson plans whatever it is that's available in electronic form what is the process for which and i believe they're supposed to notify us but i

022just want clarification what is the process for which once a a book is adopted that they the publishers can update material or content within the electronic form without notifying us or are they supposed to notify us and let us know like page one paragraph three has been revised to blah blah blah what what happens with that i don't know i mean i would give a very vague answer to give you an answer that because i don't think that it's unique across the board i don't believe that there's a obligation for them to notify districts each and every time there's any sort of addition to the total package right um so we can look into that yeah i don't want to misspeak i thought there was a i thought there was a either a rule or

023a statute that required them to notify question the us is if we adopt on year one and year two some of the supplemental or electronic content may be changed or buried are we notified of those changes or whenever and it's just it's the electronic i mean obviously we get a textbook it's already pre-printed they can't change a textbook but electronic anything electronic they can change on their end and then when students receive that i don't know if miss shot miss miss uh ms shattuck do you are you familiar with this is there a rule or a law for publishers to notify districts if they change anything in their electronic forms um thank you to the chair not that i'm aware of i haven't seen one i'm curious so yeah if you can find that out

024you will thank you thank you okay uh mr barefoot yeah this is a question when you get into the more advanced math my question would be when you start including other than teachers what qualifications one thing to a k through five curriculum maybe even middle school will you get into math and having lived lived in that world and taken a lot of those courses um personally i would rely much more on on the instructors the teachers that have to teach it and understand what's behind it as opposed to perhaps and i'm not suggesting this the case parents who may not have that background in math calculus pre-calc you get into trigonometry and some of these things it's fairly complex and not it's not something that unless you live in a world where that kind of

025math is required that you're necessarily qualified to pass judgment so can you end up with a different publisher for middle school and high school yes we can select we can select buy the course the way that you do it is just like by the course uh the publisher that you wish to have so the the is it the same group of folks i'm talking about the the non-teacher members of the committee that are reviewing and recommending or voting on what to recommend or is there two different groups for middle high school the way that it worked is committee members were able to review whichever titles they chose to review so we didn't restrict that but one of the good things that we did another good innovation this year was that the i guess rankings if

026you will the evaluations were submitted digitally and so you can sort by role so you can sort by teacher or by coach or by community member so you can see an average or you can see what was recommended from the different constituent groups and you know like i said they weren't always disaligned there you're going to see teachers that did agree with the community members you're going to see teachers that disagreed and we did not have as many community members in this round that we would like maybe we'll get more with social studies or science maybe not everyone likes math um but i think that if you had enough community members you would see you know a dichotomy between community members which is great um i i do think that when the state released their

027list and we look at everything in conclusivity we're going to all be um i i don't think that we're going to be too far apart from the recommendation that's going to come before the board well i think it's going to make a lot of sense my point is that you're the group selecting for the high schools you've got you've got ap courses uh i i would put a lot more unless the the community members have a background in math that's current then i would tend to discount that point of view and rely more on the teachers when you're talking about you know k through five or social studies that that that's a little different animal than the quantitative nature of math teaching math and math courses that's just my point that's fair and the the

028state when they do theirs they do require that you hold a teacher certification in the area for which is being reviewed our policies do not require that but like i said we were able to through our digital submissions we can parse that out and we can see um who was selecting what but i do think i think that once the state releases theirs and we're able to finalize things i think that it will not be a contentious vote okay okay anybody else all right thank you mr marlon it is a very very complex body of work but being led in an absolutely outstanding way items b and c will be presented to the board by mr fagan this is the purchase of cafeteria tables at glendale and the interactive displays for vera beach senior high

029school mr fagan chair thank you superintendent in addition to instructional materials we always must make sure the children have a place to eat and a good place to be so for glendale we part of the renovation project at that school uh we renovated the cafeteria in the kitchen part of that project is approximately 54 tables that will be brand new approximate cost is 61 000 that project should is underway today and will be ready and open for the beginning of school next year any questions next one in addition to good food we also must maintain audio visual equipment so at the high school we have approximately 175 interactive displays that will be deployed throughout vero beach high school approximate cost is about 800 000. last time these were deployed was about 13 years ago so

030it's a complete upgrade we're also looking to look at sebastian river high school as to where those are put those in the pipeline to be upgraded as well um can i just ask for a point of clarification are you referring to things like smart boards yes okay yes that's what i thought yes i just want i that's what i figured it was because we talked about it but i want to make sure that the public understands that's a smart board one difference about these versus ones that are there these will be mobile so that you can move around within the classroom and having them stationary as a teacher that's what you want all right okay any questions do the old one i'm sorry madam chair go ahead do the old ones become god bless you

031do the old ones become obsolete they're over 13 years old the technology i mean they could still be used if they were still functional but we probably couldn't use them because of the technology we want to continue to upgrade but if there are spare parts for anyone that we have we will definitely do some salvaging okay okay thank you they can always be used for offices up here i'm sure okay absolutely we get the old stuff and before we leave mr fake and we do want to acknowledge our fix rating a plus for the second straight year at a positive rating that is absolutely outstanding time in a level of fiscal uncertainty across the state and nation mr fagan continues to ensure that uh our rating is reflective of the outstanding leadership he provides on

032a daily basis uh we're now moving to uh recruitment and retention update um miss christopholi will provide that update there you go all right he's getting there thank you very much so thank you i just wanted to give updates since we finished our annual virtual fair kind of tell you where we are with things so as you know the sdic recruitment program is called we promise we promise to listen support be inclusive and equitable build instructional leaders and of course work stronger together let me excellent so one of the great things that uh has come from our partnership with diversity education is i had the opportunity to apply to it was a national process for the advisory board the advisory board is one where they were looking for people to give their trends and their

033insights on recruiting on online job boards and i was chosen to be on the board and the other wonderful thing is that in the spring magazine for diversity and ed they actually did a spotlight on indian river county schools so please make sure you can check that out in their magazine that was a big moment lots of good pictures um of our district and information about what we're doing so march 16th we had our virtual fair this is the second year that we've used diversity and ed to host our fair i just want to give you some statistics um this year we had 340 registered participants as opposed to last year where we had 160. we had a help desk which was hosted by multiple hr staff thank you dr suit and your team there

034were 25 individual booths that participants could visit in our district including a separate booth for early learning programs a booth just for ese which was hosted by rachel moray and treasure coast technical college had their own booth as well we had a welcome video from dr moore the we promise recruiting video the mentor brochure was available in the resources on the website the we promised letter individual schools could post their own resources and there were two zoom sessions one at noon and one at four that we had about six staff members on including terry beckham and anitra that handle new teacher trainings for anyone and the participants that wanted to log on they could have questions answered so just to give you an update on the workforce housing committee because it has a lot to

035do with recruiting you know our goal is of course to do whatever we can and come up with incentives and and recommendations that would increase the likelihood of getting highly qualified candidates so the newest program which tomorrow at foundation board will be approving to partner with the school district on this project it will run through the ed foundation is keeping the promise which was a collaborative just the name was a collaborative effort between hr staff again thank you dr suit it is going to be a relocation assistance program we will not only fundraise the workforce housing members but ed foundation will be helping us fundraise for this program so once it is approved tomorrow i can show you the pledge form and the application process but i wanted to wait until that got through it

036will be eligibility requirement for new instructional staff coming to the district helping us being able to help them out with possibly just the moving cost or security deposit we are have been talking to realtors again and we're working on we have a meeting later this week with adding to the keeping the promise program very there's been several realtors that are interested in donating part of their commission back to the person who's looking for a house so we're working on adding that into this keeping the promise program i know it's very exciting so i just kind of wanted to show you we keep track of all the career fairs that we attend this year and there's actually two pages this year we have finished i think we have one more on the 12th career fairs that

037we have signed up and participated in 10 of which we've been to in person this year which is very different from last year and from those any of the very interested parties their names and information is added to what we call the talent bench they're not quite ready to go in they're sitting on the bench because maybe they just need to graduate or they're a sophomore or a junior but we're keeping track of them and keeping in communication with them so that so one thing that is not on here but i just wanted to bring up and remind you is we did we did start a certification reimbursement program which has been on the website and just recently we saw another need to add to the program and so we are also including and reimbursing

038teachers if they signed up for it's up to a hundred dollars per employee any kind of training or pd to help test prep if they did a there's a lot of things online you could that are fifty dollars a month so if they signed up to do that and then they go and take the test and they pass we are reimbursing them up to a hundred dollars for the test prep and they just have to go through the process so we're really really proud of that so look for some more information about keeping the promise that will be coming out and we'll be blasting that on the media and we're just really proud of the increased market space for our district doubling our numbers for career fairs and the participants that are interested just in

039coming to our district thank you great doc jones anything thank you miss christofole and dr sute for this very progressive movement into recruiting i just love the fact that ed foundation is becoming involved in different manners and what they're doing to help um and i also know when i was in the district you know help with testing because you know if you didn't pass it the first time taken again it was a financial burden for many of our teachers when i was looking at the paper yesterday where the median house in vero was 365 where when i first came here many years ago is around 150 you know helping our teachers get here with uh security or first month or whatever it is because rent's just as high too so you know recruiting people and

040then retaining them is the key because um you know i always say this statistic when i graduated from college 33 percent of all the graduates in america were in education now it's 10 percent so in public education or education departments are shutting down in colleges so we have you know we've got to be above the rest and make sure we can get these teachers here and then retain them and make sure that we help them you know as they move on in education but advancing information like this is really really going to help so i thank you mr barefoot yeah i would i would uh particularly put a focus first of all affordability is that's where it begins and ends whatever pieces you want to rents in the county are higher than owning a house

041you're going to pay more to rent a house and you're going to pay in a mortgage payment even now at four and a half to four and three quarters that's up from by the way three percent just two months ago and you don't have the balance sheet even if you could afford it you don't have the balance sheet to get a mortgage so i think this public-private partnership continues to evolve and i think this uh what's going on with the ed foundation not only here but in other other arenas is very positive so keep up the good work mr rosario yeah thank you congratulations on your appointment to the advisory board of diversity in ed i do have a question with their partnership with us or us using their platform um for the career fair

042is was that a one-time deal or whenever we have a virtual affair will partner with them how does that work yeah we have a contract with them just separate from the career fair we have a contract with them every year to have our jobs automatically posted onto their website and to be involved in their career fairs so they host their own national and we are one of the vendors we're one booth of many got it that's what our contract is for but when i was looking to do virtual last year i was looking at companies that had that a program to host a virtual fare and the one that i liked is not owned by diversity and ed but they partner with the company and were able to offer it to us for less money

043than if i'd gone with the company so it was the same platform but i got the benefit of them hosting and marketing for us so it was actually cost effective and as i felt a wider spread of what we were looking for so the platform that is cost more cost effective than diversity in ed that you discovered and that you were able to contract with i contracted with diversity in ed diversity and have a contract with the platform got it so they were able to offer it to us for less money than if i went on we we went on our own directly with the company which is called v fares if you want to look it up and i found it because we were participating in a diversity in ed virtual fair as a

044vendor and i thought oh my gosh this platform is so cool and so i called trina no doubt to trina edwards and asked her what is this and she said oh it's v fairs so then i called them and it was more money so that's kind of worked it's not part of our contract with them got it we it's a separate contract so essentially we have two contracts now one in which through v fares will allow us to use their platform for our own virtual fares in the future just trying to understand one a year it's just for the one that we do one a year through the fares platform right and then the other one is an annual contract an annual contract with diversity in ed so that we can be a vendor in

045their national yes recruitment and job postings on their online job boards okay so i i was looking at the diver i'm glad thank you for clarifying this because i was looking at their website i wasn't quite sure what what our relationship was specifically with the work that diversity in ed but i can see that it's just once a year that we will be a vendor because their website as as noble as it is it only it their vision statement is to um provide every student of color to be educated by teachers of diverse cultures but it doesn't say all students so i just wanted to know if they were in the business of all students or just students of color so what is your now that you're a board member so now you can clarify

046that i'm like what's happening here uh they have a target market the company actually started with um the the father of mr edwards where it was just a magazine and he was doing it specifically to reach and help get jobs of people of color and diversity and it grew into this well let's let's make it something bigger than just a magazine let's make it a place where we can attract and help them by doing career fairs and other and i don't want to speak you know i'm not on their board of the company i'm on just the advisory board for recruiting so i'm certainly not going to speak for them but um we we use them to post our jobs to just get more people coming to our website because that's what happens it's not

047it it's a link directly to the district website to our posting so we're just it's more traffic is basically that's what our contract is and then we can choose to participate in their fares our contracts on any extra money if we want to but of course we do just to try to get more people you know coming in to see who's highly qualified yeah i was looking around they have pinellas county is a small partner florida virtual there's tons of them new york city is on here you know a few raised eyebrows of that that i kind of thought of even the y in central um maryland is on here there's a lot of them that are on here um so once we partner with them in that once a year national fair um at

048that point when a teacher is hired or selected to be hired not quite hired yet a candidate a good candidate could be a for on onboarding or whatever what happens at that point in our process do they get referred directly to the principles of each school do we select these applicants and kind of put them in like a file folder and say principles here is a select pool of candidates that you can choose from how does that work on our end so two different things one the virtual fair all the schools are involved so during the virtual fair every school has its own booth and the candidates directly speak with the school administration so i'm just here to answer questions if they need to call me for some reason if a candidate's chosen i do

049help check references or something like that just to help the principals out so that's the our virtual affair on a regular basis if there's a candidate from us participating in one of their fairs i know oh i need three a science teacher over here i need a math teacher over here i need a esc teacher there are some positions like right now there's a we're trying to always find speech language pathologists so i've done specific searches of like where can i find those postings and things like that so if i am one of the recruiting team members that is participating in a fair and i'm talking to somebody that i know oh they might be a good candidate i get i ask them a few questions it's not a formal interview i make sure i

050have their contact information and i tell them is it okay if i set you up with an interview with the principal so i'm just the go between i'm the matchmaker got it and i suppose that would lead to my last question about let me get there the workforce housing on the presentation one of the slides says the workforce housing committee is proud to present keeping the promise a sdirc relocation assistance program in collaboration with the education foundation of irc i know you mentioned that what i'm asking is what are the specific assistance what is the assistance provided or offered so after their lunch tomorrow when the education foundation board adopts our program officially which is happening that's good um on the on the flyer which you don't have because i don't want to show it

051until it goes through there's just a list it could be moving costs it could be storage you know you come here you don't have you don't have enough room in your apartment for all the stuff that you have they get to they get to prioritize their need on the application right now so it could be security deposit first last month's rent uh it could be other they could write in that they have a need for something the application will be reviewed by a committee of school district employees and the you know we have to raise money so there's no money right now so it's all of as soon as they say yes we're going to go out and raise money for this program and it'll be eligibility requirement and then what do we have that

052we can give we're not there yet so as soon as we get it approved tomorrow then we will look at it again the workforce housing committee will look at it again with the scrc recruiting in hr and say okay what's the best way to roll this out but right now there's an application that's already been written and then it would come to me and then we would the committee would look over the application and see what the need is and we'd see how much money we have to to be able to give what we can give so we're not really this is just a preliminary look at what is going to be proposed correct this is not the final no kitten caboodle not the k it's not the final kit and caboodle yes okay because

053the way that i thought it was is that this is the actual program i suppose and it seems very incomplete for us to make a decision but i understand that it's going to come back to us right yes okay thank you still work in progress still a work in progress um i i have two questions sure you you mentioned you've attended 38 career fairs well not me specifically but the district yes right dr su you um how does that compare to the last couple years so this year we did 38 so far because we might i might add some more i'm going to wait and see after this the postings all the schools have completed their allocation meetings with finance and hr so then they're going to see what they have and doing the shakedown

054and then the jobs we posted so after that happens which will be at the end of this month um then i'll see do i need to have some more and i might add some more so we did we've registered and done one more on the list to go to which is at the end of this week last year there was 23. oh wow yeah so when we went to nova it was live and i their palm beach brevard miami-dade they were all there so i just got up and went around and gave them my card and introduced myself and i think it was broward they said well how many fairs have you done this year and i said well we're scheduled to have 38 and they're like what so most of them are virtual which

055is easier easier to do but if we can get two people interested from wake forest and one person interested from you know what i mean they're all our names getting out there and it's live i get to talk to them and so that that was my goal this year to increase our awareness the awareness of our district in the marketplace and thank you and kudos to you for doing that because i got that opportunity when i was in st lucie to go and recruit and i was sent to michigan for five days to do the michigan route that they do for each school and what i noticed in it and this is we're all after the same people and what i noticed is trying to get that connection between your district and the person up

056there that can help you recruit the people is extremely important because there were a couple of times i really wanted a teacher and i lost them out because they said well their counselor at their college has knows this other school district personally and and recommended them and i thought oh okay well there's there's that to know you know is that that goes on so i think that's great that we're getting our names yeah the career centers at some of the universities like i know the person you know we've met what you need to do and so we have that connection of hey if i have somebody i'll call you one thing i didn't see on here that i'm hoping you add to this is the new tax incentive that's going to happen for teachers that

057was just passed in legislation will do okay you know what i'm talking about right yes i do know you're talking about it i just did it it's not for renting but for purchasing homes it's an extra tax um is it 25 000. yeah the exemption the exemption sorry yeah tax exemption so that's an important thing i will mention as well yes yeah dr jones um i did not participate in a virtual one this year but i did last year and board there's a lot of interaction with principals especially when they want the same candidate yes i was watching some of the elements but anyway it was absolutely wonderful and this diversity in ed thank you for getting us to be a part of that you know our desegregation plan states we need to have more

058african-american teachers and i think that's absolutely critical when we're looking for recruitment and retention and dr moore what is that percentage right now as we speak african-american teachers right now we're at 12 percent i'd say 12 okay so um and that was an increase from last year i know it continued to look at it but um you know looking at our desec plan and where we need to go and having those continual talks i'm very very proud that you did that you and dr thank you and i do want to add and i wasn't sure if it was on the list but the the great florida in okay which happens in orlando okay um did not take place last year because of kovid so when i was at nova everyone's like are you going to

059that and i i you know you have those ones like did i did i get that email and i missed it there hasn't been an email but it's on the doe website so everyone knows the day but they haven't gotten the registration form but so we're all going so you know st lucy everybody's going and we blocked it on it's june 4th by the way it's a saturday so we will be participating in that yeah that i'm like i said that's how i initially came to florida and got a job through the teach-in yeah it's been going on that long i know i'm old yes what is that it's just another job fair but they call it the great florida teach and it takes place at the convention center in orlando yes it is a

060workshop too so it's ju it's huge and i just haven't i have not gone because last year they didn't have it so i'm excited to go for the first time but the recruiters from other districts that have been doing the job for 20 years like i've been every year you know the same thing so they're they're like we'll see you there you know that's kind of how it was when we left tonight i've never heard of it i that's how i got hired but i will tell you the the um enticement for me because i came from texas and i went through that that's how i got here and that's how i found out about jobs but the enticement for me was you could go to that and you could take all your tests there

061so i flew over took all my tests that week and interviewed with a bunch of people and flew back and that's when i made my decision of where i was going to go so i think that's an important one to go to and thank you testing right there do they still do that i i'm waiting for the registration email since i've not been so yeah because that was a big for me knowing whether or not i was going to be able to have the certification that i needed to to relocate was extremely important because a lot of times you'll you know recruit people and then that part comes afterwards so thank you um i had a follow-up though earlier uh to an earlier um conversation or talking point with regard to the fundraising for the

062um [Music] for the stipend or for the new teachers coming into the area right for the keeping the promise keeping them yeah keeping the promise um i think my thought on some of those and i don't even know where you all are in the conversation i know i heard you say that you're gonna meet tomorrow um my thought is that depending like you said you know maybe somebody needs money for furniture or something some relocation costs but everyone's is different so someone coming from st lucie county might be clearly different from someone you know coming from georgia or across the country how does that how will that play i know you all will talk but what are your thoughts on a flat fee or a flat stipend for all or a flat stipend for those

063outside of the state as opposed to just tell me what you need and i'll give you whatever you need well i don't think we'll be in the capacity to give everybody what everything that they need but we are going to follow what has there are many companies not necessarily school districts that have relocation packages and we've looked at what they yes what they look like as a model so there are some things example you that and not that we're going to do this but example we would provide um reimbursement or assistance for moving but across most companies it's if you live over 100 miles away so there are some little caveats of things of where are you coming from and then how many like on the application is you know is it just you how

064many people live in your house what is your household income is your spouse also working in the district you know so we have two teachers because we just hired from the career fair uh a husband and wife that are both coming and so they're looking for somewhere to live that's different than if it's a teacher and the spouse makes twice as much money as they do that's going to depend on you know how how much they're going to get right so i suppose there are contracts in there yes so for example if if a stipend or something were provided and then at the last minute they pull out but they've already used some of those funds that were provided for them to relocate do they have to refund all of that we have not put

065that into the program okay but is it going to be considered because then that's then we'll i mean we're making the public you know then anybody can say yes i'm going to go there just for the stipend and then pull out last minute i'm sure once you get to the final then yeah i i don't i think it's premature too i don't want to get into the weeds i just want when you go back we would like it to paint that conversation we would like it to be that it's not too stipulated that it is a gift that it's not too stipulated we're not talking about that much money we're not talking about one person's going to get 10 000 we're talking about somewhere between 500 maybe 2500 at the most because we don't have

066any money in the in the account right now so it really depends on the fundraising and once we start getting some money in it first has to be approved tomorrow it's not our luncheon the ed foundation is having a lunch so when they adopt the program which i've spoken with them so it's very highly likely then we will go on to the next thing everything that we're doing is a group decision made by the district and workforce housing members and members of our on our recruiting team and i've been talking to doug herron so and the board members for that foundation so it's difficult at this time to say every little step because we're not in the work yet okay thank you mr barefoot normally the way this works certainly from the corporate side is

067that to get reimbursed you submit an invoice you don't just make it up and and and it's going to be the ed foundation's decision not ours they're the ones that have to make make the money work if i'm a donor and i'm giving money to the ed i'm not giving it to the school district i'm giving it to the ed foundation and it's their responsibility to put in place a process that will determine how that money is is is spent but on a lot of these things it's it's very simple you just don't you're just not handed a check for relocation for example you if if you want get a 500 check for relocation you can spend it on transporting your dog you can go buy a piece of furniture you can pay the moving

068company you can rent a trailer but that's what it's for but you got to present an invoice correct i'm sure the same kind of process and controls will be put in place by the ed foundation because they're the ones that they're the fiduciary we are not correct they are and it was put put that way for many reasons but yes so the ed foundation will be working with us collaboratively to make those decisions okay thank you talk to more um absolutely outstanding miss crystal foley doing great leadership thank you very much i also want to acknowledge and we've kind of teased at it here some of the work the ed foundation is doing the board has been brief regarding some of the progress that organization has made and we're looking forward to bringing a public

069presentation and update to the board collective regarding that progress the momentum that they continue to gain uh regarding supporting our district strategic plan so i'm excited about that um so on to the next agenda item mr fagan will present um the transportation agreements and then followed by that mr westenberger will will do the fpl agreement regarding the the easement to the chair two soup thank you very much in addition to textbooks and food and cafeteria tables we also got to transport children these are three contracts for our three charter schools annual river charter high school north county and sebastian junior high school these are standard contracts that we deploy with them to transport their children any questions board members are we good to go thank you good afternoon i can go faster than mr uh

070fpl is requesting an underground underground easement for their overhead utility lines at sebastian river middle school it's part of their uh storm preparedness program basically removing the aerial service wires putting them underground the only question i have is how far underground because you know generally three feet three feet yes and they're going to be under um surfaces that kids are walking on or playing they're currently not currently right down the driveways okay the bus loop and the parent pickup driveway okay safety first thank you you're welcome anyone else have a question thank you all right dr moore has left the room so the next one is the moonshot acceleration team job descriptions and it says mr bass but i know he's not here that should be richard i believe okay is that mr meyer that's

071going to be presenting the next item [Laughter] anyone need to take a break it's almost one o'clock but we've only been at it for less than an hour okay i apologize come on dr moore we are on it today large coffee next next item is mr meyer presenting job descriptions mr meyer go ahead thank you the chair this is an opportunity to present before the board three job descriptions uh for the moonshot acceleration team uh you know even prior to my arrival here in indian river county my former role as the executive director of just read florida i was aware of the learning alliance was aware of the the moonshot moment it is truly truly a one-of-a-kind public-private partnership across the state in order to support literacy in the two years that i've been here

072working hand-in-hand with them i do believe that that partnership is what's led to a lot of our successes and this is just the next step in that partnership as we redesign and reorganize within cni ms basara's team this year was was able to really embed themselves in a few schools and really impact change there and with that model moving forward through this partnership with learning alliance these job descriptions these positions are going to enable us to scale that out they will solely focus on early literacy at schools to be determined but the role of these positions with the director with the coordinator with three master coaches to to work to make sure we get it right i mean that's the idea behind the acceleration team is to make sure that the the schools that they

073work with are going to be schools that that have it 100 and can be a model for others so they're there to accelerate that learning and that impact and i'm just it's very very exciting um and so happy to answer any questions at this time um mr mr barefoot no questions okay i saw your hand up um mr rosario um i'm not i'm um let me see how i can originally i thought that we were what i heard and what i thought was that we were going to begin this moonshot moment this moonshot school initiative this year opening in august it was clarified to me that it would not be this august it would be the following august so my thought behind this even though i know that the learning alliance covers the positions for

074these um job descriptions um my thought behind all of this is why so early why a year in advance so if you can clarify why the the move to do this a year or maybe even a half a year early er than the moonshot and then if these positions what i was told these positions should cover much of like the professional development or the um principal development even if they were to coach principals and go in schools there's one administrative position here going in and supporting the principals if they were in a year from now to pull away from those positions and work directly with just the moonshot school then they are indeed not supporting the district the entirety of the district so i just need a little bit of clarity on the role of

075these positions um i don't know if mr meyer i i i can respond i think those are absolutely outstanding questions and a great deal of clarity that you have really almost already provided we want to be proactive and i think one of the issues this district has suffered from as i peel back the onions over the last two years is reacting extremely quickly and sometimes too fast without taking the time to do the research to do the reflection and truly create programming and purpose based on the research this will address that intent so it will allow us over the course of the year to provide the above and beyond support for schools which is going to be provided next year but in addition to that uh work with myself and team really to create the

076structures the organization of the moonshot school so it'll be a collaborative effort over the course of the year really to create to do the research to identify what is the most appropriate school in which to be to locate the programming to address what you just said ms rosario how do we use this as a hub so other administrators across the district can come in and learn from the expertise that will ultimately be housed at the particular school so this is very very exciting i can't give you all the specific details but we'll continue to provide updates to the board over the course of the year as we create what this will actually look like where it will actually be um so i to be direct and answering the question why now it it will take

077time really to do the research to evaluate to create the structures and smooth a ensure a smooth transition as we move as we move forward so there's a lot of work to do and we're excited that we have the opportunity to to do it at no additional cost to our taxpayers so um the i guess the concern that i have is that the development of these job descriptions are pretty generic to what a job title of of this kind would be so it you know coordinator professional development just basically says all the things that a coordinator professional development would do district-wide but there isn't a dis a distinction in here that these are you know uh research based or you know that these are planning and preparing to open up a new moonshot school you

078know do you understand so it it seems as if these are positions that will be used within our district for for everyone but ultimately with the goal for planning and preparing the opening of a moonshot school that part of it is not indicated within the job descriptions so several times you have mentioned um you know how for example policy when something is captured in policy whether dr moore is here or not it is um it it it moves forward you know the the work of that policy will move forward um we don't have to rely on trying to remember a conversation or remember oh well this is what was said at the meeting whereas if you have it written down and encapsulated in the job description then moving forward whether dr moore is here or

079not we can actually say no those are not regular professional development positions those are professional development positions specific to the the moonshot school for example and that's not what i see captured in in in these descriptions i don't know if you want to respond to that well no um not necessarily so we have two weeks we can go back and and look at it to ensure it incorporates that typically in creating job descriptions we want to be fluid enough to capture the volume of work over the course of time so this is a unique body of work in year one that will help create and set up and establish the body of work that will be done in year two three four five to say so to create a job description which is ultimately the

080authority of the board as you reference for year one uh and then have to change it so we were looking at and did a lot of problem solving to be honest with you regarding the job description uh this is just the opportunity to get feedback it does is not going up for approval for another two weeks so we'll incorporate that feedback as we debrief and advise the board if there's any recommendations or changes yeah i'd appreciate that so currently we have positions that are titled instructional specialists right in general we have instructions so here is an instructional specialist that looks like the job description that's very similar to the current instructional specialist that we have so how can we differentiate them from each other that's what i'm kind of heading towards you know how can

081we reword these job descriptions to have them stand out above and beyond and say they're not the same position um these are specific to uh this goal so i appreciate that thank you will you get that to us if if anything um obviously you'll get it to us before the next meeting correct okay thank you dr jones uh thank you dr moore mr meyer i appreciate the fact that we're moving a little bit slower here so we can get it right and i know the school or schools have not been chosen at this point but when you look at these job descriptions and again i would probably have to talk with hr about that they will be on our salary correct okay so it's not going to be a different type of salary and the

082school district would be choosing these people correct or is that in cooperation with learning alliance we'll be selecting them we'll be driving driving the work uh it is a collaboration partnership in the creation but ultimately under my direct authority regarding the structure and organization and when i look at job goals whether you switch up that job description or not the one that stands out to me is to accelerate the educational outcomes of all students through the coaching providing guidance and professional development which is key you know especially for our moonshot schools and as you said earlier um this would not be coming out of the district fund this is would be paid for by learning alliance correct and so if this is kept maybe three to five years they would continue to pay the salary

083okay i want to double check on that but the job descriptions you know in general um again you and your department would know best i'm not sure how they should be defined when you look at these but i think if you look at the overall goal on each one of these they talk about professional development and learning outcomes which is key for our our school so thank you mr barefoot yeah the only thing i would add is that you you specificity is great but i keep enough flexibility so you're not having to rework this thing um every year every year and and we and it doesn't make us sort of a waste of time just think you want you want these job descriptions to give you the room to be able to maneuver given the

084times exactly um uh two comments one uh i got to attend the elementary track meet on saturday and it was just so much fun the bill wilson elementary track meet um but i will say that i was approached by a couple of concerned teachers and a principal that the rumor mill is flying they believe that their schools are going to be either a moonshot school this year and that everybody will have to vacate the school and rehire and all that so those those rumors are out there and i i mentioned that to dr moore this morning that um you know i was trying to quell the rumors and i think it's important that maybe perhaps you put out a moonshot school progression plan of a timeline of when things are going to happen and i

085think that will help employees feel a little more confident in the last month and a half of school because this is when rumor mills happen and it's testing time so we don't want that to happen but you know how it goes so if we could maybe have a progression plan out there of what we're hoping for this because the rumors out there that were changing in schools to moonshot schools and now that you've got these three positions here and we're going to vote on them that rumor mill's only going to strengthen so i think putting something out there to be proactive like you'd like to do would be important uh the other thing is i'm looking at like um on a job description i agree with you mr barefoot that it needs to be somewhat

086generic in order to be able to um attract the best candidates the other thing perhaps um listening to mr rosario making a good point that if it's moonshot and that word is out there that maybe you know this is for moonshot that perhaps putting some moonshot terminology in there i'm looking at number one and number six uh one is guidance and coaching to school leadership teams that sounds like what this person's gonna be doing for a moonshot program to be developed so to me it's in there i just think it just needs to maybe have the terminology added to it number six same thing assisting school leadership team with a coordination instructional program if that program is going to be changed to a moonshot mentoring program perhaps that terminology can be added just to um

087tweak this a little thank you can i also clarify go ahead and mr i'm just going to say that if this is a potential morale issue or concern you don't want to make this so special that it creates an issue for the staff i mean it's different but it's not special maybe that's not the best choice of words but and that's why i suggested perhaps a progression plan to go along with this vote because i think that's important that you communicate what's happening because yeah there are some morale concerns about it mr rosario yeah i um i think that if i if i'm right in in the presentations that i'm aware of and there may have been some presentations that i am not aware of um maybe about a month ago there was a presentation

088to when the learning alliance provided their faces campaign or the opening of their faces campaign here it was then that dr moore first kind of introduced the idea of a moonshot school and collaborate in collaboration with the learning alliance i don't know dr moore if you have had this opportunity or the opportunity to present this way in a facebook live or at individual schools you know or in teacher workshops or things like that so that everybody i think mrs barenborg makes a good point and if you have when was that if not then certainly i i certainly can support you know putting out there not just a timeline but a something you know something to say this is the goal moving forward we're not looking to create moonshot schools our first year we're looking to

089create one moonshot school so that that eliminates so your thoughts on that sir uh through the chair i think when we bring it to the board for for approval we can incorporate some of that that information the timeline is an absolutely outstanding idea can't really do anything until i have job descriptions um but as a point of clarity this is just additional support it is not changing of personnel or teachers having to reapply for anything other than uh a higher level of support and then creating an opportunity for us to have a model school we want all schools to be model schools but this is a structure that will accelerate the attainment of every single school being a a model school so what i would anticipate in the creation of this timeline would be every

090school lining up eagerly wanting to have this level of support uh being provided it is not a new way of work it is the school district of indian river county's way of work that's not going to change or modify uh it is not different voices it it's one voice but as miss bernborg says that i think that's that's an outstanding um idea you're never going to in any system large or small be able to you know people are going to talk or say this or say that based on past experiences but this is a a true collaborative relationship we're going to enhance the level of support and build a a world-class education system and use uh the level of thinking and research at this school to do uh to accelerate the attainment of that so

091we will do that okay i look forward to a progression plan on the moonshot initiative thank you all right next item is the let me see we're at substitute presentation this is a a update to the board there's no action to be taken at this time but there will be action to be taken when the uh salary handbook comes to staff i'm sorry well through staff to the board um probably in may or june correct june uh so this is the opportunity to give you a little bit of an update this is conversations that i've had uh or requests from mr rosario umass and this this will provide that that update so looking at substitutes and i don't think it's any um surprise to anyone who is receiving this information that substitutes over the course

092of the last three years has been a major point of contention really securing substitutes um in the midst of a pandemic has been extremely challenging to do so this is a brief overview of where we are and the structures associated with it so in order to be a substitute in our county you must have a associate's degree or higher you can be a non-education major but you do have to complete an a hour basic skills course training which looks at classroom management teaching strategies professional development uh things of that particular nature once you complete that you reduce a certificate and you have to go through the required application process in pre-employment screening so we're making sure that we have the appropriate people in place that are appropriately changed uh trained if you look at the

093last 151 days of school you can see that there have been 92 subs hired that is absolutely a humongous lift and and truly appreciate dr suits ongoing efforts we have 241 active subs and 176 have worked this year so that that tells you we're constantly rebuilding this bench over time so people come in they substitute and as you all know there are individuals who substitute just to have that connection a relationship with kids in certain schools maybe it is someone who their son or daughter or grandchild goes there uh others and you know substitute in our secondary schools because they're a coach or something of of that nature now when you look at the substitute fill rate and we just took a snapshot of march and there were 18 days of school in march and

094you could see we're in elementary about 75 percent of the open positions are filled 63 percent and middle school are filled in about 80 percent in high schools obviously we want this rate to be 100 when this rate is not 100 it causes a burden at the school sites whether it is a support personnel who has to cover the class whether it is a teachers in the secondary schools who have to give up their planning period to cover that class and there's a structure to compensate them for that in elementary schools we struggle with and we acknowledge that there's work to be done when we use all of the support personnel that is available and still don't have a substitute what we're forced to do is divide up a class so they receive instruction but

095a class of 18 goes to you know 21 22 23 or whatever the case may be and we could say that that's not an additional burden for our teachers or you're just teaching a few more kids but the truth of the reality is that is an additional burden it's three or four more kids you may not know as well you don't have that established relationship some of your routines may be the same as good as common planing has been implemented this particular year um that's still a that is a stressor for us uh our union is continuing to advocate uh for those that we stop that practice moving forward and quite honestly i cannot disagree with them so we need to continue to look at that and that's a piece of this conversation on how

096we fill that void going forward so let's do a little comparable study and as you see here uh this looks at the daily rates for some like counties sarasota is 120 manatee 100 uh orange brevard not as good uh 85 but does range up depending on your experience and how long you've been there up to 122. uh now jump over to the other screen and you can see in the school district of indian river county highlighted in red that this is a 95 compensation for us in comparison to our um cwa employees on on average make about 147 days and and we put that comparison there because then a lot of times it could be the same individual and you just where am i going to choose to go where i can make 147 a

097day or 95 dollars a day so just looking at this one particular screen we believe there's an opportunity to increase compensation now let me say this um under the leadership of dr suit in the two months that we had that were the trying months that was the very beginning of school and then when we came back in january and we celebrated what we did we sent out district staff to cover classrooms because there were just that many teachers uh that were dealing with with the pandemic or the or the uh having coveted as a result of the pandemic but we did increase the pay to 120 125 during those days and that was just an acknowledgement something that we could quickly uh leverage in order to maintain uh substitutes so the numbers if i were

098to show you or pull the numbers during obviously those two spike times obviously they would be significantly higher um but moving forward we're knocking on wood a lot today um the the pandemic doesn't have the impact in terms of substitutes as it had in the past but at the same time we want to be 100 percent covered and there are things that we can do around attendance uh when we're in a non-pandemic environment that would be much better but there's still work to be done so when we're looking at this compensation study you can see uh below market in florida below market um in nearby applicants pools you know palm bay melbourne below market st lucy even with with their new rate and below our cw average daily pay so you know meaning we are

099competing with ourselves so what we are considering board is bringing the compensation um schedule to you and looking at two different things upgrading the current pay for daily substitutes possibly around the the area of a hundred uh and thirty dollars a day that is in the next slide and then a long-term sub which we have for teachers maybe it's maternity leave uh maybe it's an injury unfortunate that an employee suffered in moving that rate up to 160. that would allow us to be much more competitive just looking back at those particular slides also dr suit continues to push and we are considering and running a cost analysis on creating a cadre of substitutes and looking at 14. no are you going to use your new language on me right the development cadre which is individuals

100who would be staffed and employed each and every single day so rather than daily employment they would be full-time employees of the district paid at additional compensation because they know they're going to have that job each and every single day we're still running the cost analysis on that but wanted to share that information with the board and what that does allow us to assign individuals to a school each and every single day where we know there's going to be teachers out we had something very similar uh a program when i was a principal was called at the time a pool substitute this is an individual who paid he was paid slightly more than a daily substitute but was at my school every single day you know if i had 100 teacher attendance and i was

101you know had 3 400 students in my school so that rarely was the case we could use them uh for additional coverage or interventions or whatever the case um may be um if you look at a traditional sub now this china reinforces some of the information that i just shared 95 a day upgrading to the 130 and 160. i also want to change the the stigma around i'm just a substitute to guest educator we think having people at the build those that cadre there each and every single day allows us to build relationships and what we know is if you're there every day you can build the relationships with students versus a random person one day unfortunately sometimes uh young adults and children choose to behave one way with someone they don't have a strong

102relationship in comparison to someone where they do have a strong relationship so a little a little bit more consistency with who the substitutes would be would ultimately improve um some of the behaviors that we would we would see so what we are doing now is seriously considering increasing um the pay for substitutes we will bring back to the board uh the full uh comp study regarding the the cadre we think it is a solid idea on multiple fronts um but there is work for us to do very similar to other other districts across the state if we're able to have substitutes that are readily available move to that 100 mark and that is an aspirational goal that is a huge uh huge thing to get to but what happens when we hit that an instructional

103coach is an instructional coach a media specialist is a media specialist a teacher who had planned a lesson for 18 kids doesn't show up and have 24 kids in their class so it just may seem as if we're trying to solve one little piece to the puzzle here but there are multiple parameters that have high levels of impact on teacher morale and overall the overall in fact impact on effective instruction to kids and the systems of support so we think if we look at this increasing pay that is a huge payoff consistency and where subs are going huge payoff so with that i i will pause and see if there's any feedback from the boards as we craft this item coming which will come to you through the salary handbook and i'll highlight those changes

104this is where these those changes would be so i thought it was a good idea to pull out the substitute presentation because as you know the salary handbook is a pretty big book so that madam chair i'll be happy to answer any questions mr rosario yes thank you um dr moore thank you for that presentation board members i requested um this presentation uh because i was approached by um a mom january lloyd lloyd she is in the uh audi in the room with us right now thank you january for being here um she is a mom an active pta member of her of stormgrove middle school um and she also has a child in vero beach high school i believe and just looking for what was that perfect two in high school one in middle

105um she's also a substitute teacher um and some of the concerns that came to me uh were pretty um concerning uh with regard to the pay salary and obviously board members you know you know we can't address things we don't know and so this was something that was brought to my attention and after talking with dr moore a little bit more about it i thought it would be just about the right time for us to really look into this so i do appreciate the uh pay increase i would certainly support it without question we are the low we are one of the lowest um on the pay scale for substitute teachers and we all know the devastations that happen when we don't have enough subs or when people say it's not worth it for me

106to sub for this amount of money a day especially when you're in some challenging schools or some challenging classrooms and you're disrespected you're not listened to you're not the actual teacher and so on and so forth so i would certainly um be be supportive of this um i'd also like to just ask for clarity though in our in our salary manual on page 22 board members i don't even know if you have it in front of you but the substitute and miscellaneous pay that is indicated there there is a separate pay for associates degree and then there's a separate pay for bachelor's degree so this 130 dollars or su proposed 130 dollars would that be for the bachelors or for the associates that would be for the bachelor's degree and what about the associates um

107we would have to work that out on the final presentation and work with mr fagan on the numbers that will come forward to you okay a progressionally an improvement based on the purposes but it certainly wouldn't stay at 75 a day and then the um there's a an indication under bachelor's degree that says after the 50th day well it's currently 13 33 an hour to 100 a day what happens on this new proposed pay scale for that 50th day and do we really need the 50th day and just for people who don't understand what that 50th 51st day is can you explain to them first and then kind of go backwards and answer the question no we would not need the 50th day but what we do is just move to the long term rate

108of the 160. so on the 51st move to the long term rate of guest educator yes look at you already already using the terminology pretty good right yeah doesn't happen all the time but you're welcome i'm excited about it okay so we'll have associates degree bachelor's degree then we'll have on the 51st day you become a guest edu educator or is the guest educated just for cadres you will be a guest educator when you become a cadre no you will be a guest educator when you come and work for us in our classrooms instead of a substitute you will be a guest educator we will no longer have substitutes so it would be long term you will be able to educate educators got it and then the development cadre will be the 14 people to

109begin with because eventually within the next year or so i would like to add to that group and the dream is to have a development pipeline so that we will have people we will have a bunch of people who we can develop to work in our district so we start to develop and recruit and build and have people that want to stay with our district and want to eventually maybe become a teacher or do something else in our district from that group of the development cadre there are cadre they can work in our classrooms they will be our first group of people that we go to to sub in the high school or in the school but eventually they may want to become a teacher so we have that pipeline right there for us as

110well the cadre is not a school cadre it's a district cadre no they'll be housed at this at the school so it's a school-based cadre of about 14 people per school we're now looking for 14 people district wide seven seven for the secondary one at each school and then one will be shared between uh the freshman learning center in ace and then seven shared between the elementary schools okay to start okay could these just let's say there's a cadre let's say there's a teacher guest educator in this cadre at school a there are no subs needed for that day but the person is a full-time employee what could we use that person to accomplish that day so we don't have a wasted position or work unused can we put that person to do hallway duty

111or teacher assisting or cafeteria assisting or libraries that you know something so so my dream is to have that person always be student centered to work with students to work with a teacher co-teaching or to do anything to assist the teacher to be in the classroom helping teachers they wouldn't be answering the phones or being a secretary but in the classroom that's the purpose of having the development cadre okay i like the idea so that's a cadre just so people uh subs listening will understand the cadre is a separate option yes to substituting so substituting is still available for anybody who would want it they they substitute on a daily basis if they're interested they'll go into asap which is leaders they would be guest educators they would go into aesop which is the system

112in which select the class on your own you build your own schedule sort of deal i want to work today i don't want to work tomorrow yes the cadre is separate and that would be a full-time position specific to possibly beginning with 14 so long as we can afford it and they would always be student-centered positions yes okay i thought i had a couple of others but i will leave it at that thank you dr jones thank you dr moore and dr suit talking in principles last couple years subs was always a concern you know even before covet you'd always look at the long weekends fridays and mondays and figure it out and that's before we had payment for the teachers the pay for the teachers right now they cover is their hourly rate correct

113on the substitute they substitute for one hour one planning that's what i was told earlier it's a percentage oh for the secondary schools it's a percentage of their salary okay all right another hourly rate okay and um on the cadre for the seven positions that we would have at secondary and they would be full time and at the school which i absolutely love do they would they receive benefits yes okay so that would be part of that and then the substitutes are just going at certain days i could do monday through thursday that still remains the same higher salary but yes and they would be the guest educators yes educators wonderful know that cadre i would tell you to high school though there won't be a day you know throughout a hundred and how many

114teachers we have at sebastian now is there 150 there won't be a day where that that person would not be used and it's just you know at the beginning of the day you know you get there at 6 00 am and figure out the call from the lady who did subs at that time and how many you had to cover so it was you know it was really stressed stressful on the principle because those classes had to be covered so i love the idea of the cadre and then our sub substitutes in general um getting an increase which would help us i think thank you mr barefoot yeah i certainly support whatever it takes to make the position as attractive as possible a question do the will these individuals they'll be not part of the

115union or they will be part of the union or is it optional if it is ever optional i'm just curious as to what involvement if any of the union would have been structuring this through the through the chair at the cur under the current structure they they are not they're not part of of the teachers union okay uh you know it's interesting just as an aside you talk about guest educators this this became an issue this high school in vermont that i'm on the board of we run it like an independent school even though it is a public high school they're actually called adjuncts much like the universities colleges and it's a it's to the point where it was it was viewed by the regular teachers as suggesting that they were even at a higher

116just based on title alone uh it's interesting how titles matter and how people are perceived in their community by what you call them you call them saints yeah i think we could call all teachers these days saints but um yeah first of all as a perspective of a former substitute teacher this is awesome because i know once you start subbing and thank you for being here um once you start subbing you find your comfort level you find out where in the school which school you feel comfortable with the kids get to know you it becomes easier for you to become a guest educator if the kids know that what your expectations are what your backup tricks are as i used to call them when i come in because the kids are going to test the

117guests they are going to test you and if you don't have those bag of tricks then you're at the mercy of the kids and so i think that this is going to be really helpful because i know as a principal i appreciate this because that five o'clock call would come in for my secretary guess what we need this these positions covered um how we're going to do it and it was always a wonderful parcheesi game every morning of how to cover different classes you know when i was at a school that we were trying to uh reform at school so we had a lot of of that at the beginning so i appreciate that and and i think your fellow teachers will appreciate the fact that they have people they can count on all the

118time to slide in and know them and know their kids and then you feel comfortable as a teacher because one of the things i think is the toughest for teachers is the day that they're out because you have to do a lot more prep work for the days that you're planning to take a day off and the days that you don't plan to take the day off there's a lot of um behind the scenes work afterwards coming back to fix up the classroom so appreciate that um it's about time that we increase this pay it's pitiful so i appreciate the fact that we're going to be rewarding people for the the work that they're doing um and also we're in competition so the more we can um attract the best people to help us the

119better and uh again i wanted to know if we're going to be able to get the insurance package i think you answered that with dr jones question so that's going to really help us get some great people in and i think it's best for kids because kids have they need consistency and when they have a substitute in the classroom when i was a parent and i would hear that there was a sub that day i think how many videos did you watch so um back then there were videos almost on fridays it was spelling bee then videos so um i appreciate the fact that we're going to be doing something like this because i think it really is what's best for kids and that's what we need to think about on this the most yes

120mr tsarnaev thank you um so i thought before it finally comes to us i'm just throwing out some suggestions here um and and actually they came from miss lloyd um good suggestions there were some special suggestions here on uh some suggestions here on us creating a special rate for retired teachers to entice them to come back into the classroom um it might with the salary increase that might be enough enticing but uh who knows right we don't know so just when you when you discuss that before bringing back to us another um suggestion is to create an advertising campaign just like there was an advertising campaign for bus drivers there really should be a really good advertising campaign once all of this is kind of solidified moving forward so that we can begin um you

121know recruiting high quality guest educators moving forward and then um maybe a bonus program for subs depending on the amount of hours that they sub i don't know if it probably would be moot at this point because of the incentive that you're that you're proposing one last thought that i had as other board members were talking i did really basic math here super basic i didn't even think about you know benefits or anything like that but if we were to take the salary of a first year teacher forty seven thousand five hundred dollars and divide it by thirty seven point five hours a week right um it comes out to about 105 105 dollars and 55 cents per hour with this increase for subs subs would get paid more than a teacher but than a

122first year teacher but we pay for their benefits full-time teachers get benefits substitutes don't get benefits in new york substitutes made more than many substitutes could make more than teachers because they didn't receive the benefits so it was an understanding they just knew that that's what it was right benefits for teachers included retirement medical vision all the other kind of perks that you get with the job so i'm not sure if that's a consider that would be a consideration moving forward i know that we are considering the new ester coming forward or the new funds that are coming in for teacher salary um for next year how would this change in substitute pay affect negotiations going forward for teacher salary so just a a point of clarity so a a daily rate for a a

123first year teacher is going to be about 242 dollars a day working 196 day calendar i'm going to go with mr fagan's math every every time every time what was that number to the chair 47 thousand 500 they work 196 days so 100 just dividing that's 240 dollars 240 per day but four benefits before benefits before benefits and then after benefits correct it would be what um depending on the benefits in which they selected right so it could be some people pay 300 400 for benefits correct it could be the number that i mentioned or close to it okay just to save our union president and an email it would be the the teacher would obviously be at a higher level of compensation than the the guest educator whether it's a full-time cadre individual which

124we're still working those numbers as you notice we didn't provide um numbers on that because we have to get the blessing from our chief financial officer and then the the actually days of it it does not include the benefits as well and benefits we charge at a rate about 28 percent so it's it's significant so these positions are positions that i would i would support for sure because i know that working at the school building things happen so often they're so fluid sometimes you can have zero absences and sometimes you can have you know five six seven absences a day um and and and these would directly uh affect children in the classroom for sure i believe that i want to believe that so thank you for bringing this forward thank you dr suit next

125presentation that we'll we'll pull up will be quarter three update and following that we'll have um i'll turn it over to miss barenborg for for her item so as it pulls up i don't know if i'm doing something wrong there it is um that's saturday school me visiting saturday school we have a number of schools that are participating in saturday school uh this is kind of looking at our district strategic plan and some of the things that we have accomplished once again this is just an update um so in looking specifically regarding our district strategic plan some things that we are accomplished specific to the third quarter uh it is really working with our steam committee members um to create and modify our plan for 22-23 so we think there are significant opportunities really to

126engage in that work to identify opportunities uh to move from away from just a theme but very comprehensive steam programming throughout our schools and that work is in progress really looking at the alternative schools for 2223 so i have a committee working during this third nine weeks to look at as we have discussed before the offerings of alternative ed uh we have significantly increased the number of students who attend ace we're um up to about 80 right now ms dampier but there's a silent student that we're equally concerned about and this would be students who are behind in credits are not discipline problems or attendance problems because they do not cause a disruption doesn't mean that the traditional education is meeting their specific needs so we're looking at are there opportunities to expand uh the

127offerings through ace to address the unique needs of those kids so if you were to picture a ninth grader who missed 57 days and i'm making this up but is behind seven or eight credits he is behind the eight ball moving into tenth grade and we have to do things significantly different for that particular child to allow him to recoup those particular courses so we're looking forward to bringing some information to the board on possible solutions for that subset of children we think there's opportunities for there created teacher parent focus promotional videos on the champions list mr seymour has done some absolutely outstanding work regarding what is available around extracurricular activities uh at our school and this is a point of pride and privilege that we all should be celebrating here in the school district

128of any river county some of the things that we offer are the volume of what we offer other counties just cannot compete and we use this list to truly leverage the opportunity to maximize participation and eliminate barriers or obstacles that may be in the way or perceived to be in the way so any child regardless of where they reside or their income status can participate in these opportunities um we continue to conduct monthly principal meetings to review our hiring practices really looking at and being proactive our goal for day one next school year is to open up fully staffed if we were able to do that a big piece of that substitute problem uh that cadre would be able to address the need the guest subs the guest educators i'm not accelerating miss rosario and

129changing my language would be able to address that and if we're able to remain fully staffed what happens is the the item that we just presented funds itself we don't have to hire all of these subs we can hire less subs and increase the compensation for the fewer that we hire our digital readiness pro profile is something we continue to celebrate we're going to bring a presentation to the board mr fagan was able to present it to my superintendent student council last week uh it was presented to our climate task force this is some really innovative work that's being done in i.t and we want everyone to see the the impacts of that in looking at uh specifically our african-american achievement plan which is required through our federal uh court order uh continuing to look

130at the early warning systems training counselors and staff for mental health services as well as federal programs really to mine that data to match the service to the students as quickly as possible we continue to visit schools to do what we call problem-based data problem solving at each particular schools really looking just not to understand the numbers but to problem solve to get to the root cause mr seymour continues to lead our climate task force they will be coming back to i'll give you all an update shortly but that committee continues to really push and provide feedback to us regarding the initiatives uh that we're implementing really really great feedback with a very very high expectation we've already heard from mr christopholi regarding diversity in education and what we're doing around our recruitment efforts uh

131and looking at master planning study and we're very very excited and eager to bring back information regarding our master plan and where we need to go in the coming years in the school district of indian river county so those are some of the things that we've accomplished around our strategic plans uh moving into the third quarter uh as we let me back up we're still on target to hit the overwhelming majority of our targets in making progress or fully accomplishing them um we're very very excited about that that's in all areas one three four and five focus areas one three four and five one and two mostly include our academic data and as we look at our academic data we continue to be encouraged despite the obstacles what our teachers have been able to do

132as it relates to the impact of children i think we're going to be celebrating i don't think i'm sorry i know we're going to be celebrating some absolutely outstanding outcomes as you all know last week our third graders sat and took their reading assessment and four through ten took the um writing assessment feedback from those students as i've shared in my facebook live as well as um on on the radio students very very excited felt comfortable and confident with what they were able to do as it relates to their writing now i kind of want to shift in this presentation and really talk about student discipline and it continues to be a point of conversation that we will have at our last workshop we look we spoke a lot about the st the code of

133conduct and embedded specific steps in there to accelerate the systems of support that we will be providing to children next year that specifically was the reduction of one of the progression steps that were thrown on the back of educators so we will eliminate one of those steps which allows us to get services to students quicker we know we have improved the quality of instruction as that instruction is aligned to the standards at a much more comprehensive way than it ever has been before but make no mistakes about where we are with the discipline isn't something we should be satisfied with it isn't something we should turn our backs on matter of fact we should continue to increase the volume around the discipline in our specific schools and it may be less disciplined over the course

134of one month to the next but it is not at all where we want they are scheduling me with youth groups i will be going and continuing to speak to families to those who are involved regarding some of the behaviors and influences that impact though behavior as we move forward but if you look back at 2019-20 those are the first three nine weeks of the school year prior prior to the closer the closing of the um of schools as that's when covet first hit and it lined up perfectly with the first three nine weeks and you compare it to this particular nine weeks the number of discipline referrals is down and we we acknowledge that it is down but we'll continue really want to ensure that we're more specific in the actions that we're providing

135so we don't celebrate that it's down we ultimately want to continue to progress when you look at out of school discipline and you in 1920 there was one action which was to send students home we had a very small uh alternative to the suspension program which was managed by types for teens it was capacity based and not effectively used so when you compare that to quarter one two and three this year there were two options all toss which was the alternative to suspension so the behavior warranted a out of school suspension but we know since in in a majority of cases just sending a student home without the systems of support uh did not necessarily help to remedy um the behavior that was displayed it comes back and it continues so we want to provide

136additional support so we created our own program alternative suspension we called all toss and were able to offer it to our students numbers still down about 798 total in comparison to 1461 we see the improvement of instructional delivery but as we continue to problem-solve and i've given this analogy before prior to the pandemic the systems of support that were in place uh was able to adequately address those typical behaviors displayed by students what we see now the same volume of support does not adequately address the volume of behaviors that we see now so it is being more fluid it is being uh being able to respond quicker um it has been a very very stressful year on everyone whether it be a board member a superintendent principals and teachers it's been very very very hard

137and we all were excited to return to what we thought was normal but we cannot keep our eyes closed to the impacts of children being out of school for 18 months a year and it has impacted children significantly different so as we continue to problem solve looking forward some of the solutions that we have in place is to increase the level of presence in our schools to provide accelerated consequences to students and be more specific continue to improve the quality of instruction continue to enforce a zero tolerance policy regarding fighting or things of of you know that kind of disruption when we look at the where this behavior is being displayed you see the majority of the referrals are coming from in classrooms those that's that continuous disruptive behavior when you look at what leads

138to out-of-school suspensions it's right what we thought it would be that the majority is the inappropriate behavior followed by the fighting whether it be slap fighting or joking or playing if you're putting your hands on somebody else you're going to have to find yourself somewhere else to go and then looking at typically the number of overall referrals and this is that bottom green box uh 12 of the overall referrals are received by about 12 of the total student population typically you look at about that we should number should be 15 percent or below that which would be like a tier 2 intervention so the fact that we see it under 12 is a quarter up to the quarter third the percent of students who had three or more is about four percent so that's still

139in looking at what would be a typical tier three intervention the most egregious behaviors uh that's the that's those behaviors are being displayed by about four percent um of our student population once again within the range of under under that five percent now those are our typical numbers i think our biggest opportunity for improvement is that general disruptive behavior the disrespect that we could continue to focus in on the one in which we cannot waver and need to be extremely aggressive is bullying whether it be cyber bullying whether it be typical bullying that we see in classrooms we continue to push out the information whether it be fortify florida or finding a trusted adult we have to have conversations at a much larger scale in our community this isn't something that can be combated just

140in a school it needs to be combated across the entire community really just making the stance some of these behaviors cannot be condoned how do we continue to expand our reach and touch on parents in which we see these behaviors being displayed by their children the most where can we connect and make relationships with relationships within the community to help combat some of that behavior the typical progressive discipline uh works for as we see most of student most of the students um but for the small few that it doesn't there needs to be more aggressive consequences that we need to be put in place in order to ensure that we're having the highest levels of support so this is a conversation that we continue to have and we'll work with our unions and work with

141district staff and principals really to ensure um as we close the school year extremely successful we do see a decrease in discipline events from march uh february to march but that isn't something that we're celebrating we're continuing to say we've got to push harder and we need to continue to engage in the dialogue use our code of conduct as it is intended to see the results so i think i've covered most of these areas so i won't recreate them let me just make through more robust tier 1 and tier 2 services multi-tier systems of support that'll be work that we do over the summer really continuing to ensure that we're getting the right services to the right students as quickly human capital and time to conduct deeper dives into the assessment events that are leading

142to those behaviors create an enhanced process to identify provisions needed for tiered behavioral interventions to ensure timely provisions of support to students which i think i've mentioned at nauseum and we've already spoke about the shifts and expanding alternative programs looking back at our strategic player these strategic plan these are opportunities for continued growth create enhanced master scheduling process to optimize student scheduling and um and match between student needs and course of schedules so really creating master schedules that meet the needs of students continuing to emphasize on eliminating existing achievement gaps really using that data to look at the gaps that we have historically to ensure that we are providing quality instruction where it needs to be provided to each individual student shift the focus for our strategic planning and problem solving for 22-23 academic year

143from out-of-school suspensions to office and discipline referrals so really trying to get in front of what we're doing around student behaviors at an earlier time instead of waiting until a behavior is displayed that leads to outdoor school suspension in identifying effective methods for increasing participation in african american students to optimize student enrichment reading and intervention programs so there's a lot of work to be done but it's not work that needs to be done in isolation and as you look at the performance accountability system some of the things that we were able to do during the third nine weeks during this window that we're now speaking about the entrepreneurial ecosystem symposium really highlighting some of the career and technical education programs was a tremendous success in its first year the we implemented the superintendent's spring break

144challenge and what that was was really increasing the level of energy for that third diagnostic and the response to that by students was absolutely outstanding and some of the data that that was provided was provided to us really helped us curtail and really focus in on in these last coming weeks exactly where we need to be focusing to ensure students will be celebrating outstanding outcomes it was indian river academy and sebastian middle school who won those challenges and we'll be celebrating with them not this friday but the following friday continuing to look at instructional improvements through our walk through process really if you haven't had the opportunity to walk with a principal and just speak about teaching and learning i would encourage you to do so because they are absolutely instructional leaders and as you

145know we implemented that all hands on deck really to alleviate some of the stress and burden especially around substitutes uh in keeping our schools open as we came back from the from the the pandem came back in january uh that was a a big initiative that was led in a way to be in the best interest of of children so there's there's a lot of work yet to be done um we cannot walk away and say ah this next year is not going to be a pandemic year next year it's going to be a pandemic year and when i say it's going to be a pandemic year it we may not have any breaks in instruction we may not have any surges of the pandemic but children will still be dealing with the impacts of

146that pandemic and we're going to have to really think creatively and work together in order to figure out what we need to specifically do different and i can tell you one of the initiatives as we planned the summer development and you all know about reignite that is the big training that we do over the summer we bring the leadership teams in last year it was solely focused around instruction closing that gap in the impacts of the pandemic this summer is going to be strictly around culture and climate what are we doing to create an environment in schools where students can focus uh and we could really provide quality environments where teaching and learning uh can we can get down to the business of teaching and learning so there's a lot of planning and work that

147we need to be doing over the course of the summer to ensure uh we don't close our eye close our eyes or walk away from what our current reality is um and just close this presentation by continuing to thank this board for your leadership around this specific area each of you uh see this as a concern and want to ensure that we're doing absolutely everything that we possibly can be doing uh to address this our teachers our true champions as they're the ones who stand on the front line and embrace our students each and every single day the frustration is high that the frustration is is high this has been a very very challenging year for a teacher and multiple points and multiple it's coming at them in all directions and we need to acknowledge

148that we need to embrace that and we need to continue to celebrate and thank them for what they're doing and one of the ways that we can do that is to ensure that we have the systems of support in place to ensure students understand what the expectation is when they walk in classrooms one of the ways that we can do that is to ensure that we're connecting with parents in every single way possible to help them understand the impacts of the behaviors their children may display and partnering with them to look at those devices to provide consequences uh when students do things i love my two dollars but there's plenty of times that um i'm just spending two days with them in which they they need consequences and they need that guidance and support and

149that expectation to be to be upheld and we need to do that as well so with that madam chair i i will i will stop there and answer any questions or provide any listen any feedback you may have okay i think it's dr john's turn thank you dr moore and entire district staff for supporting our principals and teachers i've said it before as a principal the first thing i said on the first day of school to every student you have a right to a safe learning environment and no one has a right to disrupt it zero tolerance is obviously crucial when i look at the impact reviews i've been a part of a couple of those i mean it all goes back to that engagement in the classroom will reduce discipline issues we've all known

150that for many many years and it's key in supporting our teachers in the increased numbers and ace and i have talked to mr brown a little bit about this what support are we giving them because our our key indicator here is how soon do they get back to their regular schools so what are we doing i think he's up to 75 or 80 now and i'm just assuming that some of these are because they zero tolerance and so forth so how are we helping that program achieve their goals so through the chair and everyone knows alternative that is it was my my first it was a life-changing experience not because i was there as a student but as an assistant principal counselor and ultimately a principal so providing the highest level of support for them

151they have additional resources that are there clearly defining what we need to what we need to do to address the specific behaviors so students can return to their their typica uh their appropriate school as quickly as possible with the reassurances that that behavior that got them there has been fully addressed so mr brown has done some outstanding work in preparation for the increase of students and i think one of the things that the pandemic has also done as students were not in schools the behaviors that were there because they weren't in school weren't being displayed so we were down to around 30 34 students in the alternative space because of the pandemic doesn't mean that that's something you celebrate look we only have 34 kids in the alternative school it's just that they weren't in

152the school environment uh in which would have ultimately led to the placement so we think the numbers that we are there now actually allows them to function more effectively because they have a body of students to effectively implement the appropriate interventions versus having 12 14 kids at school it just becomes you lose the vibe or opportunity to to do that so we're comfortable with the leadership that is there and the energy around the support that's being provided i guess the best thing i liked on here is implications for practice allocate human capital in time to conduct a deeper dive and you know when you look at approximately four percent of the students had three or more office discipline referrals obviously we're not getting them on tier one and tier two so when you talk about

153human capital what are we doing with those students the three the three or four percent we want to get those students that support quicker and i think one of the biggest initiatives is the progression of discipline ha one of the steps has been reduced so if a student is is continuing to display the same behaviors after a modification uh plan has been put in place we're able to move quicker to accelerate the higher level of support the student needs same thing with multi-tier systems of support so really looking at those particular frameworks whether it's leading to an esc placement or not um we need to ensure that as we implement those plans we only implement them once so we're problem solving with a team of principals and district staff right now really to streamline that

154particular process and ensure that the district is seen as a layer of support and not a layer of let's just do the same thing the principle is already done so i think we need to become more intelligent about how quick we move of getting the services to students as quickly as possible we know we need them versus let's try the same thing over if it if it's if it doesn't work the first time the second time you got to move on you can't do the same thing over and over and over stupid is a stupid dust and just a thank you to our teachers our support staff our principals uh as you said and and talking with some people it's a challenging year it's challenging here for our students um it's a challenging year for

155anyone who works in a school so um thank you every day for being there for our students thank you mr barefoot i think doc jones said it said it best you know i think this is a very ambitious and comprehensive approach um i you know educational outcomes is the goal here and when you have behavioral issues in any school it not only affects that student and the teacher but also the other students some of them are feel intimidated or they feel less secure whatever words one wants to use so i applaud the effort and you know whatever we can do to support it above and beyond you know i'm sure you'll let us know absolutely okay mr rosario thank you for the presentation thank you for the presentation i had a question about the alternative

156discipline that is on the sec third slide there was a it says initiated planning for continuous improvement for alternative discipline supports right there on the left third down second down sorry initiated planning alternative discipline supports so i heard you know everything that you were saying but specifically what alternative discipline supports are we talking about is it only altos is it um altos oss and something else like what are what is it that we're so in the most comprehensive natures it's looking at the alternative ed experience itself ensuring that we're meeting the needs of all kids just not students who have discipline problems that's what i referenced in in the presentation it is looking at the impact of all toss it is looking at the impact of the systems that we have in place the alternative

157to the suspension program the data is is really strong what is it ms dampier in the in the eight like 86 percent she'll correct me but in the 80s when a student goes to altos uh that does in fact correct the behavior they're not continuously disciplined for those particular situations but this is the first year that we're doing this well and that's that's what i'm saying we're going school by school to evaluate what has worked what what hasn't worked uh there has been some inconsistency i i've been assigned to alternative to the suspension program but i just didn't chose choose to go my my parents let me meet me stay home that didn't do anything to correct the behavior it just turns into ultimately an outdoor suspension can we be more intentional of saying because

158we want to correct the behavior you're going to have to go you know your parent agreed that you're going to go student agree that you're going to go school agree that you're going to go uh and ultimately the intent is to provide that particular service uh you don't get to say a and then do b so there's being more intentionality around that uh the free the increasing the rate in which we're able to give feedback to teachers regarding consequences that is a a school site problem-solving initiative that we'll do over the course of the summer making sure we're quick as possible regarding the the time in between a behavior being displayed and the consequences being administered and shared i think that is a major opportunity for improvement in listening to our teachers you know student

159does a he gets b i don't know about it until it's it's already been administered or or i don't know about it at all so there are opportunities not at all schools so i don't want to say that's but it's specific to certain schools and which we need to kind of share up some of that so that we have a lot of acronyms that are were brought up and in case there is anybody who is listening who doesn't understand some of these altos is the alternative the alternative to out-of-school suspension correct okay the alternative education program that we have um is different from our aspire program the aspire program is a core class that was created brand new this year as well or i i believe altos isn't new it's the aspire program that's new

160yes that is the program that is where students who need an alternative to out of school suspension will go there for the full day they do not have the benefits of being in traditional classes with all of their students all their fellow students they do have a certified teacher in that room they do everything in that room school work there are discipline [Music] correcting something rather that happens in there while they're in there no you're doing you're doing good all toss is the out is the alternative to suspension we house it in at a sub building in the at vero beach senior high school aspire is our initiative for indoor suspension in school in school suspension what we looked at it was very inconsistent from school to school and it was simply just a consequence

161and you would go there and you would sit all day and it was inconsistent uh we will look at that over the summer actually we're looking at it right now for the remainder of the school year uh some schools did better than others in its implementation were solid that we need to continue the initiative but want to ensure that we're looking at how in fact do we do two-fold the consequence is in fact the consequence while at the same time that consequence isn't it is helping the student not to display those behaviors again and we really at all levels of discipline that needs to be at the forefront we need to ensure what we're doing in partnership with parents is addressing the behavior that was displayed so for the students that um i suppose where

162i'm heading in this next comment is that as you know as you well know um transient education can really impact negatively the student the outcome for the students academically even socially so if they're coming and going into an altos or into even an aspire that can have a negative effect more so probably with the long-term suspension because they're there for you know some weeks maybe even a month and then they go back to the traditional school right so they go to the alternative ed for a period of time um until whenever the alternative out of school suspension ends and then they come back to school i i needed in my brain i needed to change my words because i was going to say something i didn't really really want to say um and so then

163they come back to school so i think that transition period is really something to look into you know keep track also of the the data or that transient move also those students how many times do you return to altos before we actually say enough is enough you know at some point we're going to have to put a break on some of the consequences if we're constantly giving the same consequences over and over to the same group of kids it's not working something else has to agree we have to stop doing the you know working on that hamster wheel and going nowhere mrs dampier i just um when we're looking at the data and we did a presentation a couple of months back it showed that our students that were in the aspire and the altos

164program there wasn't a whole lot that were returning back two and three there was like nine percent and they were our frequent flyers that we already know that need additional support they're on our radar and the students who are at our all toss program we had very not all talks at the alternative school we had very few students return again to the alternative school so i'll return back to the alternative yes so we know that there is work that needs to be done in the programs but at least we have these layers and we are looking at the layers to make sure they're being effectively implemented uh you know consistently across the district and across the schools and we are looking at that data so um i'm going to switch slides a little bit and

165go to the student discipline slides where you have the numbers in the charts clearly the numbers in the charts are going up we know that quarter one everybody's kind of just coming back from school and just getting used to you know going to classes and kind of hanging out with their friends and everything is you know happy-go-lucky and then you get quarter three and you get this shot up there but usually quarter three is going into the um uh christmas break you have i think thanksgiving might you're out of thanksgiving are we in it now is it post christmas quarter three quarter um through the chair quarter three is january right just to spring break and historically uh even in my previous district that has always been in terms of discipline the the worst not

166nine weeks and typically what you see going into the fourth nine weeks um is a significant reduction reduction because there's assessments reduction because seniors are are graduating and they've taken their finals so you know as school begins to close down um you see less and less behavior third nine weeks has always been um a challenging nine weeks so my part of this i wonder and i'm not at the school so i'm just asking for clarity it's my understanding um that and and rumors rumor mill i know mrs berenberg mentioned rumors before it's my understanding that a lot of the decisions of school-based discipline have now been deferred to the district office where either principals or assistant principals or those who are in charge of issuing a consequence at the school would have to call the

167district to get either approval or run through with somebody here whether a particular discipline would result in an out of school or an in-school suspension is that correct no the when you're going for a suspension it's just a call to mr bass in which we're we're talking through and we're looking at the progression of discipline the the act but in terms of any other consequence that absolutely not and it's not a this is what they did or to get approval it's it's a notification so it's only out of school suspension that they have to call mr bass so what at what point will we allow principals to make those decisions i mean they are school-based leaders and they know their kids more than anybody else they know the nature of of why certain behaviors occur

168are they behaviors that are occurring more than once is it in one particular classroom or another why don't we just allow the principles we have an established code of conduct that clearly maps out each discipline um i it just i don't want principals to feel like the district is micromanaging their decision making i would not say that's the case by any stretch of imagination it is a hundred percent we we trust our principals they everything you just said you know second um that is in fact the case and to be very very honest with you uh looking at the rate of suspensions uh historically uh allowed us a deeper understanding in terms of is the consequence aligned to the behavior um and i think as we we move out what we're seeing is is a

169quicker escalation to behaviors and the opportunity for improvement i think on the system is when a student does something that warrants the suspension you suspend them and you don't go through a progression of warning second time third time uh you have to align a consequence to the behavior even if it's the first time the behavior has been displayed so it's it's no secret that i have recently been um advocating for us to do more in terms of bullying you know put out we talked about a camp a campaign earlier but a true real district-wide no tolerance bullying campaign but that can't be done without true training that cannot be done without an understanding of what is bullying that can't be done um just on the blanket you know statement of saying well you know someone

170bothered someone the kid returns to an ap and says oh i was just bullied but it was literally was just a one-time bother rather than i mean when i grew up we were bothered all the time and it was like just deal with it you know move on find another friend you know it wasn't where kids are so sensitive today it was it i mean nowadays and not only is it often a few times just that one time occurrence but now you're finding that it escalates it increases in the amount of time that that one particular person is bothering another and the next thing you know they're fighting or someone gets jumped or someone is bullied to the point there isn't even like a a month you know it's kind of like the next day

171i don't like you and tomorrow i'm going to beat you up you know and they're smart they do it off campus or they'll go into the bathrooms we have a big problem with bathrooms with kids fighting in bathrooms with kids doing drugs in bathrooms with kids vaping in bathrooms um you know bothering or bullying each other in bathrooms i mean it's a clear indication and and you know as a kid they know we can't go in there you know they'll they'll go in and they'll literally in seconds things happen and and then they're back in class um and unless one of them reports it uh i'm just afraid something's gonna you know happen that's someone's gonna really get hurt um the increase of canines by the way i believe that you did do that recently

172dr moore uh in the increase of canines in vero beach the flick that in partnership with our deputies yes and i'll tell you it helped i've gotten feedback from parents who said my child saw an increase in these canines and they didn't want to go into the bathroom a lot of the other kids did it so it works if it works there let's continue that move let's let's really partner with the sheriff's department and increase the use of canines to send a message we're not playing we're not joking and from now until the end of the year that should be part of huh and next year and next year and moving forward um that you know we're we're not going to take the discipline that that we've been seeing thus far so if we could

173do that i i'd really appreciate it and shout shout out to the sheriff's department or the vero beach police department or any of the police departments that we partner with who are increasing the canines at our schools it is greatly needed um and um moving forward i hope to see that some of these discipline referrals are are truly reduced for the real reason okay um so keeping it on that last one that you had the bar graphs so you give us an overall and you know we had a meeting with a parent who's in the room and we talked about possibly looking at it by school will you be giving us that report to the chair that is on its public facing so we're going to we have that information to push out so being

174able to go on and look month by month by school groups of schools comparing middle schools in high schools is available um on our website so in my series of of pushing out information i'll probably push that out um next week that information uh is public facing because you know everyone knows that you get a different pulse of different campuses one you know i'm getting feedback from people as i go through the community and talk to people about what's happening in their schools and one piece of feedback i think we've talked about this is at a particular school that had a big event where a lot of police officers came [Music] one of the people i talked to said basically that one of the issues they're seeing there is that kids are enjoying going to

175aspire and i don't think that's what we want i think that we want kids who might want to be able to avoid that place but uh the the thinking is and this came as a quote from a teacher i talked to that said uh the kids are saying i can't get my work done in some classes and i want to be able to work and get my work done without interruption so i'm going to go to aspire and so perhaps we need to look at that is is why is that happening and and we know and i appreciate the fact that i think you put it on one of these the one that has the black background and i wrote myself a note is yeah you talked about enhancing the master schedule and looking at

176a match between student needs and student desires of courses and i think that's important because obviously you know as a former principal that discipline issues are directly related to lack of engagement and so the more engaging the class is the more students are involved in it and the less discipline issues that teacher has and the kids enjoy it and they're not going to act out for that for that classroom we know that so i think that's an important part to look at too another concern that came up to me and i heard this from an administrator um and a teacher were intake meetings after students returned back from alternative centers that used to be the problem before and this was something that i brought up in the past that kids are just returning all of

177a sudden showing up they were ace one day and they're showing up the next day at their back at their school so we asked the board asked could there be make sure that we have intake meetings where the principal is meeting with um somebody from ace and they know that they're expecting this child and then the child has that meeting with the incoming principal saying you know these are the expectations and you need to make sure that you're doing what you need to do when you come back on the campus and i'm hearing literally as of last week that that's not always happening so we want to make sure that those intake meetings are still happening oh sorry on through the chair we can check but not only do we do the the intake meetings

178we send staff from the alternative school as weeks after the student has already been back to progress monitor the impact that is having in that typical school perhaps that the intake meetings are happening with people that aren't the principal and the principal is not getting that communication from the person that's doing it whichever i think principals should be in tune with that oh i can tell you for all because my staff is in charge of those meetings dr lewis as well as mr brown is a part of that they do contact the parent i mean that the parent the administrator at the school speak to the principals sometimes the principals do not want to to hear that they're coming back and so because i've even spoken to a principal myself to say the student had

179met all the you know the expectations and that they were coming back to campus so they are contacted they are notified not via email but are they notified like in a couple of days in advance of the child returning or like the night before they are usually notified the day but weeks like if they're it's the following week that they return back if they're so there's a week between so that yeah opportunity for that for that principal to meet with the parents and the student coming back yes and there is an intake process that happens at the school and we have it outlined for and we tell them hey this is what what has happened at this particular school with this child and mr brown is available and he talks about hey we had this

180and this kid was successful actually talks to make sure that the kid is going to be returned you know and going to be taken care of when he returns she returns back to the school and you know it's a two-way street yeah um but my concern is if i'm hearing this are they documented those meetings yes they are because mr brown he has documentation of all of the intakes before a student gets ready to come back they contact mr brown contacts my office and dr lewis and my team they meet with mr brown he has to show documentation he can talk about the kid and there are a set of standards and expectations that the kid is supposed to have met before he or she can even be considered to go back and then that

181from that process yay or nay some kids do not go back even from mr brown's recommendation because we look at the data and says nah this kid is not maybe another nine weeks would benefit this kid so there is conversation a kid is not just automatically showing up we've had some parents take them back because they're you know they assume that the kid is supposed to go to back to their home school or vice versa even wanting to go to ace so sometimes parents do show okay so we need to get that um communication then with those parents yes okay because i'm letting you know this is what i've heard so um the other thing is i agree about the bathroom the bathrooms have always been an issue and and they're going to be an

182issue in the future for other reasons as well so um looking back on you know some of the things that this board has approved for redesigning schools and not building new schools but looking at our schools and saying how can we make them safer you know we did the single point of entries and i believe we're all done with those so the next thing i'd like us to look at is redesigning bathrooms and you and i have talked about this you know in airports you've got a choice of having an individualized family bathroom is what they call them i've noticed in some of the airports where you can go in and it's just an entryway from the hallway into one bathroom kind of like our elementary schools have elementary schools have one bathroom in the

183in the classroom that or two between the two classrooms that can be shared but it's for any child to use one child at a time and i think you know we really need to look at this for safety for lots of reasons vaping for children feeling safe and comfortable in their own space without other children that that are there that they're worried about so i think that we need to look at how we're redesigning our bathrooms in our middle schools and high schools and that needs to be a priority i think moving forward for just like we do with single point entry okay doc jones i saw your hand up thank you um when you look at florida statutes one zero zero two it talks about the responsibility of the superintendent and the principal so

184dr moore when you talk to your principals regarding discipline and their concerns what would you say that their top concerns are because i've got some comments to make about ace too but when you talk to them directly they are in charge of that school what are their top concerns chair i would say it varies from from school to school so the progression of discipline moving quicker faster is probably an overarching concern getting the the level of consequences to students uh is as quick as possible um probably the assignment or length of time students may stay at the alternative school would be an opportunity to to improve the volume of the typical behaviors just that they're higher than they've we've ever seen before so just the little continuous disruptive behaviors uh that if not addressed lead

185to bigger consequences as far as ace we were talking about um intake meetings i've been a part of one i was a men i mentored a student at ace going back to high school so it was a very detailed meeting on first of all were they even ready yes and then then the you know principals would talk about it and then you have a few who decide to stay because it's a smaller environment and um she's not ready to go back to the larger environment you know and i think of the schools and the bathrooms and so forth and obviously you want to have safety for all your students at all times all students at all times and you know we can take a look at that but i just you know um you know

186involving our parents you know it's just real simple you know you come to this campus we don't want any fights this is what we're doing please support us this is what we want to do in order for all of our students to be safe i think it's a key but just having that expectation out there from a principal's perspective a teacher's perspective a parent from a parent's perspective you know you want your child going in there and to be safe in all environments and again i say all students but you know you you hear things wherever you go in this community and i think everyone would say we're all trying our best to make sure that our students have a have a safe learning environment and we need to stay on top of it as

187a board as a board member you know and i might have been one of those principals saying i'm not sure that student's ready to come back but by golly they had a chance to come back and then you continue any child who came back to the school for any suspension met with me before they went back to the classroom i don't care if it was a two-day or they were an ace for a year you know these are the expectations this is what we need to do so it's that constant communication and support thank you mr rosario um i wanted to uh mention there was a question about why some kids want to stay at us in aspire um i know one in particular one aspire teacher in particular who is um whose students are

188asking to stay and it's mostly because he's building a relationship with them it's a si it's become a safe place for them i don't believe that for the majority of those students who want to go back to um aspire is because they want to get away with you know doing a misbehavior and you know give me the consequence i do think that there is some merit to some kids wanting to get their work done um but building the relationship with the kids was one of the purposes of of having an aspire teacher there to influence positive change um it might be a catch-22 when you think about it you know because if you make it too good uh of an environment they'll want to stay but what what are the what are now let's look

189at the positives of that if a student wants to stay in aspire it's because one they're given one-on-one instruction right or one-on-one attention or a private quiet place to do their work they feel safe and why aren't many of the other uh classrooms creating this same environment that's certainly a a topic for many again i come back to creating an alternative school similar to ace if not restructuring ace to be a small school a micro school or a mini school that has the actual you know low numbers obviously i talk about this a lot when i was in new york for the alternative school in new york they were over age and unaccredited and we were able to expedite the learning for them through a no frills program none of this other fluff i mean

190literally just graduation requirements let's get through it one-on-one instructions smaller class sizes and they opted to come in and they were successful and when they graduated they graduated number one because they wanted to be there they didn't want a ged they wanted a high school diploma and it was incredibly satisfying for them to walk across a stage in their cap and gown so for many reasons i think that that is definitely an opportunity i'll say it as many times as i need to for us to actually get there because our schools are too they're they're bursting at the seams you know create these smaller micro schools or these mini schools these um i know the word dr moore uses occasionally is boutique uh alternatives and they could be centered around specific uh needs right you

191can have a career and technical one you can have a uh just a a simple you know alternative to the bigger school so you have this smaller view i mean you can have a di one i i we we talked about a little bit you know a differentiated instruction why i mean there's so many different alternatives to doing this you can do it where you do not have to gra separate them into grade levels but into academic level which is what the homeschool community often does where you can have a grade three and four combined together so long as they reach the standards and they meet you know the the academic achievement that they need for that standard it's standards-based not grade level-based so it i mean it works it works anyway i just wanted

192to throw that in there all right thank you this will be a um no i'm done i'm done sorry i'm done this will be an item that we continue to have um i think ms rosario set us up for for information very nicely for for information we'll be sharing once we vet everything out and expanding the alternative program that madam share that exhaust my my item and the next one belongs to you okay at this time i'm going to take a 10 minute break it's 2 41 and we'll be back at 2 51. 51 we're resuming our superintendence workshop has now evolved into a board member workshop and we're going to start with the item that i placed on there which is a review of i'm sorry review of media and library materials review committee

193and it has to do with house bill 1467 that's recently been passed into law um board members attached to the item was the actual um enrolled copy that's what they call it is the the actual um last bill that was presented to the governor when he signs it it's the enrolled copy so when you go to look at house bills that's what you look at for the ones that have been signed so uh just to give a maybe a little bit of education on this because it's kind of interesting when you read these all of the writing on the bill that is not underlined is already law okay so only the parts that are underlined and it usually refers to like on the second page here refers to the section of the law that is

194now it's been added to so for example um on the second page it says section one florida statute one zero zero one point three five is amended to read one zero zero one point three five terms of office and then it goes through and it says okay our terms of office have now changed to 12 years starting november moving forward so you can see that's kind of how you read these is you go through and it says which section of the bill with the name of the bill i'm sorry which section of the law that's current law and the name of the law and or the number of the law and then what part is being amended or being added to so knowing that when you go through these i kind of went through it

195with a fine-tooth comb just i'm sure that his team is doing and um neola people will do is going through and saying okay what's going to apply to us to make changes so we have now gone through this um book review and we did it under the current policies and procedures that we had that we had approved in the past and under those current procedures and policies the book review team was not meeting in the sunshine it was a committee that met and reported to the superintendent and then the superintendent reported to us however because of the changes in the recent law we need to make sure that we're asking the superintendent to do a couple things so i'm going to read what i handed to you on my little handout which i just typed

196up yesterday it says the school board should task the superintendent with the following update all school board policies and procedures that refer to library books media center materials and instructional materials to align with the changes from hb 1467 to florida statute 100 1.35 term of office and statute 100 6.28 and statute 100.629.29 and 1006.40 and other statutes that are referred to in the bill to move from a subject to review a subjective review which is what kind of took place last time to a more objective review of the books the school board should do the following form this sdirc instructional media materials committee to determine thresholds of grade appropriateness for library and instructional materials for sdirc creating a community standard so under there i put a timeline for this committee should be established i believe

197dr moore shared with me today in my individual meeting which i'm sure you've gotten to uh his timeline he's kind of thinking the same lines i am that we need to start looking at a timeline soon the committee should establish guidelines for three age groups pre-k to five six to eight nine to twelve the committee should review and set guidelines for three areas with respect to age appropriateness and our community standard which this group would determine and then give that to the board as a recommendation so what are those guidelines what do they need to look at i think part of the issue with the last review is number one and i met with um miss pippen this week we actually compared one of the books and she had a version of the book i

198had a version of the book and there were two totally different versions of the same title and with that understanding that isbn numbers are so important because if there's a book challenge it's only fair to the person doing the challenge that they know which books we have in our libraries and they need to be access to those ib isbn numbers in order to do that so if they're looking at um if this group is looking at a book last time they looked at title by title by title by title and they determined individually each book what they should do with it i i believe they should come create a standard and if they create this standard then the book committee will further be able to just take every book and say okay let's compare the

199book to our standard that we all approved on and i think it'll be easier for the book committee and it'll be more objective than subjective okay so the community standard guidelines i think need to be set for um respect to age appropriateness for those groups and i mentioned pre-k to five six to eight nine to twelve and they need to be in four areas so they need to determine for our community standard what is okay and what is not okay for pre-k to 12 or pre-k to five profanity violence sexual content and critical race theory and books and same thing for middle school standard and same thing for a high school standard the committee should then take those guidelines and use them for future books challenges i think it'll be easier for the committee to

200then look at each book in the future and be able to assess it according to the guidelines so i believe that this committee should first set the guidelines and then use those guidelines to review books and this should be set up in accordance with the changes in this law and the law goes into effect july 1st of this year it all must be reviewed in the sunshine according to the law so this book committee has to be meeting in the sunshine it must be have a clear process set up within our policy so our policies need to be updated and they need to have clear procedures and processes that follow the law the other thing that it says is that the committee members need to be representative of parents in that have children in our

201schools and so i believe that our our board should determine the committee members that will make up this board so this all can't happen though according to this statute when i went through the statute changes until the three things need to happen at each school's website each school on their website has to have a list of all library media centers in his materials in a searchable format and i believe we talked about that it has to be on their individual website pages according to this the second thing is a list of all required reading books must be on those school websites as well and the third thing on the school websites needs to be a list of all instructional materials used to provide instruction also interestingly enough in here we have to be able to

202make available for parents any instructional material that we order like the um infini um amplify books that we we got um available for parents to purchase so that was kind of a unique thing in here that i've never seen before for instructional materials now i do know we've talked about having those instructional materials available for students for hard copy if they so wish if it's a digital copy purchase um and mr meyer and i've talked about that i'm sure you've had too with him but i think this is unique in the that the the statute says that um parents can have the option to purchase those books so that's kind of interesting so once these websites have been updated i would like to see and i put a suggested timeline of that the superintendent brings

203us a request with timelines which he gave us today and then in may and june the board advertises a request for some people that are interested in serving on this committee and then possibly by the june meeting we can vote on potential committee members so that they can start their work in july looking at what these guidelines would be that would make up our community standard for the things that i mentioned okay and these i came up with from what has been challenged and also what is in the statute that we're looking at and so i just think that this would help if we did it this way would help this this committee have a more objective view in looking at the materials versus a subjective view each time that a title comes forward um

204so that's that's my proposal i know that the superintendent has given us a timeline to implement those changes uh dr moore do you do you want to refer to that i would just like for this to turn on there it is um i think as we have this conversation it might be best for mr meyer to go through and highlight what specifically needs to change i think what you provided is a great jumping off point our goal today is really to highlight some of the shifts or the work that we have to do as a result of 1467 as you recall in february this board already declared the need for action and the shifts of policy and the item in which we ultimately approved so this is just us the natural progression and the work

205that needs to be done but as this is policy this is the opportunity for us to hear from the board um and then go back and begin crafting out so if mr meyer could review um a what are the shifts or changes that are required what we have to kind of accomplish and then ultimately a a suggested timeline which is just a point or a starting point in the conversation i think the best way to do is is to receive information from the board go back digest it and then bring back a more specific timeline based on um the volume of work that needs to be done thank you dr moore through the chair um absolutely and and yes we are excited to move this process forward as approved by the board in february uh

206the item that we uh submitted did identify that there were opportunities for improvement in the uh policy we did mention that it would be helpful to clarify the process of who is on the committee how they get on the committee the membership composition of the committee does parent mean a parent who's also a staff member does parent mean is not a staff member so opportunities to clarify that and policy to be approved by the board will be fantastic moving forward the frequency of the meetings so on and so forth that's great stuff we recognize that additionally uh there's been some things you know in conversation with community members you know what should the material stay in circulation during review should the arena appeals process um you know should we post the list of materials under

207review on the district website things of that nature would be helpful to put into the the change in policy when we get to that point uh house bill 1467 um it does obligate this change this is a perfect time to not just take what the the board has already seen that myof has already seen as opportunities for improvement but then to incorporate these obligatory changes such as the meeting in the sunshine there is a new requirement in that also a houseboat 1467 that requires [Music] individuals who are selecting the materials including library books to complete a training that's developed by the department and the timeline that's mentioned in statute is the department has to create the training to deliver to districts no later than january 1st of the upcoming year 2023 so you know should

208the board consider you know we don't select any new library books until that training is there because who knows what's going to be in that training so there's some some considerations to take that into account as we are doing this i'll be curious to see what that training uh would say as far as the reviewers themselves were like a challenge um ms bremborg you mentioned the putting the stuff on the website there's a couple of instances where house bill 1467 requires us to place different material on either the school or the district website but interestingly enough it says in the format prescribed by the department well the department has hasn't prescribed that format so yes we've got to put the stuff on our website but we've got a way for them to tell us how

209to do it um so we'll be you know sitting anxiously awaiting that um of course the materials need to be selected by somebody who is certified an educational media specialist which we we have one of those at each school and then the processes which we do keep on our website as far as how we are approving those but i think that all this can be incorporated in a timeline obviously this is april i would be intrigued as to you know if board members want to weigh in on some of the considerations of the points that we have to make now we can definitely bring a draft in may of uh these changes to 2520 and 9130 uh that we can then maybe get to a final draft in june i think that's definitely a timeline

210that's uh workable uh some other considerations neola we had a conversation with neola they told us that they're they would not anticipate having their changes to this legislative session until june 30th but you know this is a little bit different right i mean a lot of times neola incorporates things into their policies and we sort of wait for them to do that but this instance we've had a lot of conversation about this there's a lot of knowledge in the room about what we want to do with these changes to policy there's a lot of knowledge in the room about this this bill i wouldn't say wait until june 30th to take some of these proactive steps um i think that the board you know knows what they want to do with the committees uh for

211instance and there are some things we can start pushing the ball forward even though niola is not going to have their recommendations to us as dr moore mentioned he goes to fads i'm sure they'll be talking about recommendations at fads i attend a conference called foil foil is in may we anticipate getting some guidance from the department of education at foil it's always sort of a roll the dice how much specificity they give this close to a meeting at foil right after session so hopefully we could have some information in in may uh to guide our our direction but the timeline that's that's here i don't see why we're too far off from that um as long as we can start getting some feedback from board members to get you know as close to a

212consensus as we can to start making some of the recommended modifications and then of course the obligatory modifications are pretty easy i mean it's we have to it's in statute so know one of the things you brought up was about the website and that they needed to give you the guidance well it also says in there that we can't really have the instructional materials committee um reviewing books until those things are on the website so it's kind of a catch-22 then i'm hearing so the policies have to be on the website i mean and and it's the i don't think that it requires us to wait until the material that we've selected that is in use is on the website before we start a new review it's just they're going to develop a training for

213at least the way i interpret it right now they're going to develop a training to give to people to assist them in the review of their books moving forward but you know it is intriguing to um you know should we be selecting any new library books prior to that um i had a conversation with mrs pippen as well and one of the things that's not in 1467 but but i don't think is a bad idea is posting a list of materials that are under challenged locally on a website somewhere so that parents are aware you know these 150 books are under challenge there's no way that someone would have known that we don't post that currently it's work that you know you could request with a public records request but i don't i don't disagree

214with um you know informing parents as to the challenges because we've already implemented a a innovative practice here in this district where parents can opt their own kids out of library books for any reason so if they were to know which books are currently under challenge maybe they would simply take their own parental right into their own hands until that challenge is completed and restrict access to their own students books and that would be a way of getting us to that january date when the training is is available so i mean we wouldn't remove access for all students but certainly some students but again that's another point to consider for the board you know whether we want materials to stay in circulation during a review are pulled permanently for for all students i think the

215policy we have certainly enables parents to take charge of that on their own but we'll take the will of the board from that moving forward you'll see if you click on boards across the state and the country both sides of that question so it's i don't think there's a right or wrong answer it's just what we choose to do um looking at the top of what i wrote here with the threshold for a community standard for those grade bands considering those four things profanity violence sexual content and critical race theory do you think that would have helped um this past group be able to maybe have a quicker conversation or be able to review the books a little bit more objectively than subjectively uh did sure i mean absolutely would that commun that committee um

216was was following what we believe to be our directive i know we've had a number of conversations uh about what is what isn't obscene um and there were beliefs that you know the books were not going to be a violation of the obscenity code but certainly the committee itself had a lot of discussions about what was age appropriate there were people on both sides of that for a number of books that some of the committee members didn't feel like they were age appropriate but the consensus went out and that it was if the board defines that uh then it certainly makes it easier for that committee to simply carry out that mission right if there's if it contains this content this board feels that's not appropriate it makes it easy for that committee to you

217know get their work done um what you've put here i think is also a good idea to have the committee establish that i would say they bring them i would i would have them bring them back to the board to make sure they're what you'd want oh of course you know this is a recommendation to the board right i mean i think that that's i think that that committee uh brings forth what they would propose to be the guidelines and then they those are board approved and then they move forward i think that could work very well that may be better than the board uh trying to enumerate in the policy yourselves what those guidelines and what those standards are but but either way that you we define that locally it's going to assist that

218committee in and upholding that community standard and it's not going to leave it to just those people in the room um to interpret at a later date so right just report i just want to comment on this one thing that he was saying about the bringing it back to the board for a vote if i can um if you look at the suggested timeline on the bottom i'd only put until july and july was that they begin trying to set these guidelines because i think that's going to be the deep conversation about what is what does the guideline look for in those grade bands for those particular items once that deep conversation happens and and we come to some sort of consensus then that recommendation comes back to the board for approval i don't know

219when that would be but i do know that that would at least give them the opportunity over the summer and hopefully august to get something hopefully by the end of august or or september but that that's my thinking that that might it might take longer i don't know how long that deep conversation is going to take i just want to re restate what i think is there are required changes that mr meyer highlighted things that we absolutely have to make because statute has changed therefore policy must change taking on the community standard which is a a brilliant idea allows us the board to create in an open transparent way what the standard is in indian river county and you asked the question and the answer without hesitation is yeah would have made everyone's life significantly

220easier if that's if that standard uh was a little bit more explicit in terms of what is and is not age appropriate because that varied from house to house home to home family to family so that is a initiative that this board would be taking on at a local level a local level to be incorporated into our specific policies to guide the decision-making process of staff and as i think as you say july would be the opportunity to begin that conversation to take the time to get it ultimately right to build consensus um is a time frame that i would support in engaging in that conversation i don't think it would be easy but i think at the end of the day we could set a standard and take control of what's happening here in

221indian river county and yes i will go to the the state's superintendent convening which is wednesday uh and this will be some of the information that i will will share this is every single district is dealing with it and one of the recommendations i would have is everyone deals with it the same way i don't know if other superintendents would be as bold as this but i would encourage them to at least take it on um and then foil as well we have the the school board uh convening in june so the number of opportunities not to fly our flyer our ship by ourselves but to get input and feedback on what we're doing along along the way um so our goal today and this this is a first step but to receive information in

222regards to what you have shared the shifts or changes that are required i would love to get feedback on the community standard approach from other board members i i would definitely support it to say it up front but because i think it would make mr meyer in in team and you know media specialists uh and whoever serves on the committee very specific in terms of the action that they would be taking um and they would they would definitely appreciate that so this would be the first opportunity to receive information us to bring it back to you at the very next convening to continue to move this work forward for however long it may take um i also would urge that this group meet in the sunshine to establish the guidelines as well agreed okay um

223which will be an interesting thing i think it should be maybe audio taped and not videotaped because of the nature the concern of the words that might come up that would be that would be awkward but i i agree okay um and i know miss rosario also had some items attached to this mr rosario do you want to bring those up now um sure okay and then we can talk about um and the other thing i i want to throw out there to board members is i want your feedback on what you think about the thresholds for a community standard on those four points and then also how do we want to go about getting this committee formed um because you know how are we going to make sure that it's fair and we get

224all aspects of ideas in the same room to to vet this out yeah so um i'll just uh begin with a comment on the uh community standard i think one of the bullets that should be added is obscenity that is the code in which we are identifying the definitions of what is obscene and what is pornographic and what is sexually um uh um sexual content and so on and so forth so it so uh one of those or remove profanity and use obscenity only you know but obscenity should be one of those bullet points in their community standard the community standards here with the exception of critical race theory really isn't different from what our statutes are telling us and everything that was brought up or has been brought up in terms of what the

225statutes say are are these bullet points so it's not um it's not like we're reinventing the wheel but i do appreciate mrs barenborg you bringing this forth um in this manner it just kind of highlights i suppose you know the the topics of discussion or the topics of focus um with an eye on what the community would um identify as a standard to to weed out in some of these curriculum and the library books um i had a i board members i put up a an item after mrs berenborg's item because when i looked at her item i did not know obviously where the conversation was going what her intent was um and so just to be clear that's one of the reasons why i added my item to the agenda with the attachment so

226that you all were fully prepared to read and advance some things that you might want to address as you are making these decisions today i will mentioned that one of the items was a procedures on library book selection and review packet it had the sign in sheet the roll call and the sign-in sheet of the curriculum of the library review committee that was in process or in progress looking at the 150 plus books there were there are sign-in sheets there there are attachments that were given to the committee so just so that you all know what it was including the policies that we have 9130 it does include the obscenity statute it does include policy 2520 and these of course were all under i'm going to say mr meyer because mr meyer was overseeing the

227entire process of the challenged books case law was also included in that and then as you move forward there is a the list of all of the books and moving on after that are how the committee actually selected or provided little notes on there in terms of whether something was whether a book was lost or whether a book contained violence or sex or bestiality whether it contained critical race theory whether it contained graphic pictures um sexual content or it had sex in it but it wasn't graphic like all those little notes are in there for you there's whether there's a column there that says does this have literary merit and then whether the book was appropriate for elementary middle high unrestricted high restricted and then permanent removal what's interesting is this was not provided to

228us before our vote and i think that's that should have been had this committee been within the sunshine we would have received all of this information to help us better make our decision on february 28th we did not have that information we we relied on um what the superintendent request uh suggested to us as a recommendation that did come from the committee so um i just i gave that to you all because you you need to have it you need to know what what what occurred the other thing that i put on this um the other items that i put up here as a backup was in part really to support the 1467 um house bill so in talking with the superintendent and and what that would look like um we i think the suggestion

229was how do we start this if we're going to draft a policy which we did already approve um and he agreed uh in the february 28th as he mentioned one of the items that he proffered to us was to allow the com for the conclusion of the current legislative session to incorporate the potential changes from the florida statutes into new policy for revision so that's where we are right now and as a result i kind of provided a a suggestion to the objection committee so it seems like what i provided might be a good support to what you're providing um and so if you all can pull that out just it's titled suggestions um so i think that's really where we can kind of move forward the suggestions there um might answer some of the

230questions that you just asked with like how do we select the committee members and what would the committee members be responsible for doing so i kind of looked at this new house bill 1467 i looked at our policies i looked at the procedures that were attached to our current policies um and uh kind of created this the suggestions uh procedure um and i'd like to also just add to that our statute here in 1467 as is in 100 6.28 it does say that each school board has the authority we have the constitutional duty and responsibility to adopt the procedures for developing library media center collections and post the procedures on the website so that is our responsibility the policy and the procedures for this item oh thank you the policy and procedures for this item

231um so we it's this is not this is very important for us to be able to do um with the authority given to us by the constitution uh by the florida constitution because ultimately you know it comes down to board member responsibility here in oversight over curriculum um so as you'll see if by now i'm thinking that you already pulled it up as you'll see the first page of the suggestions are really just a summary i'll just read the first paragraph the rest you can read on your own assuming that you read it over the weekend this committee shall be responsible for the review of library media center books materials and electronic resources that are housed in the library or media center and are submitted to the district with objections anyone can submit an objection

232library and media center materials are non-state adopted instructional materials again much of this is just taken from current written statute but the suggestions for the committee review procedure would include an eye on some of these items that mrs behrenberg mentioned with sexual content and critical race theory stating that all state adopted and non-state adopted materials must be evaluated for bias free content must adhere to the rule 6a 1.094124 required instruction planning and reporting and must follow florida state statutes chapters eight four seven and one zero zero six mrs barenborg mentioned some other um some other chapters in there but they'll they'll fall under the one zero zero six as a chapter chapter she had the sections um and then were the ones that were edited according to the new law yeah so what i did

233i just put the entire chapter the entire chapters rather than looking at the specifics what i found before is that when we look at the sections we miss some other important information so including the chapters just kind of makes it clear like everything in there i included the entire law yeah that is what is attached to your item the entire law suggestion sure everybody knew that no they i'm sure they see it i'm with you on that one okay suggestions for the committee review procedure um should i read these should we go over them one by one because this might be i i think that these are suggestions that i read them i'm sure my bel hopefully my fellow board members read them i think instead of getting in the weeds about the specifics let

234the superintendent have the opportunity to go through all your suggestions which i think you made some great suggestions and then um get back to us with um you know how to move forward i think what we need to do today is kind of that how do you how do you see this going forward yeah um for creating the committee so let me let me finish here again i come back to it's our responsibility to adopt the procedures so if we don't get involved in the weeds of this and just defer everything to the superintendent i'm saying mrs rosario what i'm saying is we can all read it we can all do that we can all verify and review what he gives us to make sure that it's what you included as well and then we

235can i don't think right now is is the opportunity though to dive deep into this we're missing one board member um we just got all the information we haven't had him have an opportunity to give us what he wants to put forth i think given all that information then i can compare what you wrote what he writes and kind of dive into it because for you're right it is our responsibility and we need to take responsibility i am not saying that it's his responsibility and we just go with it we shouldn't not on this no but you just made that statement and that's why you shouldn't not on this not on curriculum curriculum is very important and it does fall on the responsibility of the school board to make that decision as is written in

236the statutes okay mr barefoot oh wait i'm not done i'm not done um the case for collier county is something that i took a look into um for this particular item because of the sunshine law and i'd like you all to kind of to take a look at that as well the final conclusion in that case stated that the sunshine law applies which i'm i will agree um the sunshine law real this committee needs to serve in the sunshine the last suggestions that i made were the makeup of the committee members the one thing that i will say is that i would suggest that however many people we have on this committee that it should be an odd number uh an even number won't allow for consensus or for you know when they're voting um

237you know that they would get the majority so i'm you know if their tie at least an odd number will will kind of help that process so i thought one media center specialist coordinator as you'll read in my suggestions having the media center specialist coordinator lead the committees would be a would remove mr meyer from actually doing that work but of course that person would be trained as you'll read within my suggestions at least four must be parents who are not employees but who have children enrolled in the school district at least two grade level teachers specific to the book or material in question you know so if you have a first grade teacher first grade book in question we should have either an elementary or at least a first grade teacher and at least

238two instructional coaches the committee members uh should not be should not consist of the petitioner or petitioners and the committee members should not consist of elected officials or candidates for elected offices we should try to make this as nonpartisan as possible and except for the media center specialist coordinator the parents the grade level teachers and the instructional coaches must submit a written request to sit on the committee the request will be reviewed and voted by the school board members the committee members may not be needed unless there is an objection i did think that obviously that should change i mean they might want to meet periodically throughout the year to see if there are any changes or updates and then this committee will be created and remain as such for one year so hoping that

239this i did run this by dr moore dr moore had uh very positive things to say about this suggested this suggested list so hopefully board members you will be on board with it as well okay mr barefoot i was just gonna suggest that we all we all have this now we all meet with dr moore on a weekly basis and add any of our own or suggest to some of these or suggest edit to these but the bottom line as is often the case the process that's followed is more important than the final decision that's made and that the more voices are heard in that process with different points of view the better chance that people will live with i'll use that word because it's it won't be often that everyone will agree on everything

240so i'm i'm i'm 100 behind being as specific as possible about the process but allowing differences of opinion particularly when it comes to what's in what's which age appropriate for a given thing you know k-5 middle school high school okay dr jones thank you miss berenborg um i've read the bill in its entirety and i certainly know new additions to the bill because i helped write legislative information always at fhsaa i'm going to go back to the very beginning on protocols i don't mind emergency items being added but to get all this information and then absorb it before you make a comment is still very challenging so i'm going to keep on top of the superintendent with that as of april 8 on the library of media form that all parents have access to 95

241students whose parents guardian grant in full access three high school students whose parent guardian excluded access to the restricted books 24 high school students whose parent guardian allowed access to the restricted books five students whose parents guardian restricted access access to all books three were from the same family and students four students whose parents created a limited list of books so 131 out of our 15 000 have gone on to see the library form uh ms berenberg i like the um summary you've done again i just am taking a look at it now but did you run all of this by our attorney to take a look no no okay um i i brought it to um dr moore i met with mr meyer um we talked about it and he and he agreed that

242this is the place to start it okay it was a conversation with us let you absorb it not make a decision today that's why it's being offered at a workshop let us all vet all of our ideas out there let the attorney meet with his superintendent and then kind of get get it vetted thank you because i'm looking at the three pages dr moore sent after our november 16th meeting and i and i know that's before state statute change but there's a lot of similarity there yes um the community standard um i think these four points are fine we can look at adding or deleting or whatever but the most important thing for me will be who is chosen to be on this committee i don't know if some of you realize this but right

243now we're a majority minority district we need to make sure that we have black parents white parents hispanic students lgbtq parents and i think students just in general because we need to hear from all of our representatives of this community if this is truly going to be a community standard and we could never forget that um as far as adding more books that will be maybe challenged i think mr meyer's idea of putting those on a list so parents make sure their children don't check those out that's fine but say we get 30 more challenges i don't want those going off the shelves automatically we have to take a look at these but parents certainly have the right to say i don't want my children where uh you know looking at them and so far

244not many have done that in general when i look at where we're going with this in the timeline it's pretty intense but i think we can get it done i mean we all i think we've talked about this at the last meeting where we say you know one parent doesn't have the right to tell another parent what book their child can read but when we looked at those 165 i believe and five were not k-12 appropriate okay that's fine some obviously needed permission and so forth but we have to make sure that we're following state statute i certainly understand that and then we represent all of our parents and students and when you look at where we're going with what dr moore put out there and i think it was december we need to re-envision

245our media centers and i think our media specialist would would support that um you know so that we have a good comprehensive catalog of materials and making sure we're maximizing that space on individual school needs stakeholders should include school advisory council school-based staff physical plant operators and technology specialists i think you know where we're going with this is you know and i looked at checkout of these books not a lot of students are checking out books in our media centers that's just fact we all know if they want to see something inappropriate they're not going to the library it's on their phone or whatever it can be and i want to make sure we have books for our children that are appropriate please understand that but i also want to re-envision on where we need

246to go with our media centers as we move you know in into the future i think mr meyer should be on this committee he's the assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction i understand the board's responsibility as being the you know we are the ones who are saying whether it's a go or no go when they come to us with these recommendations and i do agree that it needs to be in the sunshine um and the other information they put on here mr berg i've gone through it pretty quickly for the most part i think i agree with it but i just going back to my first statement i need some notice so i can study these because i study everything that comes to me so i think we can move forward and and continue to look

247at um and what i'll be looking at very very carefully is who's on the committee thank you yeah um this wasn't meant to surprise you this was a i was going to just read this and say it but i thought it to me it's helpful to see it in writing while somebody's speaking so that's the only reason why i typed it up for you thank you um i'm not done miss rosario okay so i see your list of um your potential committee members mr rosario your suggestion um sometimes i'm a media specialist coordinator i think it's good to put them on the committee but i think sometimes that person may not feel comfortable with being the leader of this group um with other committees i think we allow the committee to come up with the

248who's the leader they vote and and vote on who the leader is so that might be something a suggestion i'm making that um instead of appointing who the leader is maybe they they come up with who their leader is i don't know um the other thing is the you have at least two grade level teachers specific to the book that means that that would change all the time every time there's a book challenge because we've had books that are challenged from kindergarten all the way up to high school so that means there would be two people from every grade level on there potentially so that's too many people i think on a committee uh ideal committee can be anywhere from seven people to 15. i think once you get over that it's a little too

249crazy because they've got to be able to vet all of their opinions and you know keep it to what it is what i envisioned when i saw this and and i have to say thank you to mr meyer for talking me through this the thresholds in the age group appropriateness like how does a group go about this because different people have different opinions on what's okay for kids to look at obviously because otherwise we wouldn't be sitting here talking about this so i agree with you we need to have lots of different people with different aspects looking at this how they at least come up with the guidelines for example what um profane words are okay to have in a book that's given to elementary children that might look different than what is okay to

250give to a child that's in middle school or high school and so that's why i think it's important to have this committee go through and vet that information first of hey these words are okay these words aren't okay and then it makes it easier down the line when you got a book and you can just go through it and say you know what it's got this word that's not in our guideline you know we need to move it up or out or whatever it is but i think it it would help um future book challenge committees to do their work and not feel like they're every time going back to the beginning of what's acceptable what's not acceptable so um that's that's just my two cents on that mr rosario yeah they're um the the

251opinions should not be a part of this process what i think and what i feel um and what i would choose should not be a part of the process our lens should be strictly on what the law states using the obscenity code as a guide for identifying what is defined as you know nudity what is defined as obscene what is defined as a person what is defined as a as uh sadism uh sexual battery sexual bestiality all of those definitions are already created for us so we have to as a district agree to stop using the idea that well some people think one way and another we have to stop that that's why we are where we are right now we have to use the law as our guide the other thing um recently there

252was a press conference with richard concoran and it wasn't with this law it was with another one um i think it was with the parents bill of rights and education uh bill and he uh was asked by the media what is age appropriate and that was incredibly interesting so his answer he began the answer with tying it to the standards he didn't expound too much on it but what our standards say are age-appropriate is what's age-appropriate and i thought that was a genius description a genius explanation we need to look at our standards and our guide the discussion of what is age appropriate and what is grade appropriate so how i interpret that is you know if a first grader is supposed to learn their abcs then the books that are available for that child

253should be at abc you know on the abcs that's very very elementary right there but so using those as a guide and i also want to come back to 1467. there's something in 1467 on page four um and it is section b that would help us define age-appropriate and grade appropriate maybe not the way that we're looking for but any material used in a classroom made available in a school library or included on a reading list contains content that is pornographic or prohibited under 847.012 is not suited to student needs and their ability to comprehend the material presented or is inappropriate for the grade level and age group for each kid so there isn't a a uh progression as to how much profanity can you have how much sexuality can you have how much pornography

254can you have there there there isn't the statute is clear it says no pornographic nothing prohibited under 847.012 and that's it it's not suited to student needs it's not like it's not suited to elementary or it's not suited to middle or it's not suited to just high it's not suited means it's not suited if the district school board finds that an instructional material does not meet the criteria under sub subparagraph a which talks about meeting the the criteria um and does not meet the criteria uh oh i'm sorry or also any other material contains prohibited content again talking about that prohibition prohibited content under sub paragraph b the school district shall discontinue the use of any grade level or age group for which such use is inappropriate very clear if it contains anything prohibited in

2558 12 i'm sorry 847.012 it is not appropriate it must be removed discontinued not a discussion must ensue about whether it's good for elementary or does it have one piece of content or the other you know is it a little bit or a lot that should not even be a part of the discussion okay so at that point it should be removed the other comment that i had was um i think it was mrs dr jones who mentioned students being on the committee is that what you mentioned i think that is uh grossly and unacceptable because you're putting a child in the position of possibly reading um you know sexually conceptual content content that they are possibly containing uh profanity possibly containing pornography possibly containing any of the prohibited items in 847.012 and putting a

256child in that position a student in that position to read that material the material of which we are considering not allowing them to read would be grossly inappropriate i disagree especially at the high school level um i have another question dr moore have we been contacted by the sheriff's office at all with regard to any complaints about these books being in our current library systems have we been contacted by the sheriff's office about any complaints are we under investigation because of any of these books if a complaint is through the chair is submitted to the to the sheriff's office he's under obligation to investigate obviously there has been a a complaint submitted and he is uh looking forward to wrapping that up uh quickly so i've spoken to the sheriff a number of times regarding

257the process in which he is taking to do that investigation and we're looking forward to that being concluded uh real quick so we you have been notified on that oh notified no like yes we've had the conversation uh has that complaint been submitted uh yes uh does he have staff looking into it or deputies the answer is is yes because board members weren't aware of that right i was aware always it depends on yeah well i'm i'm hoping to have that information resolved as quickly as possible and and you're are you going to update us on that process absolutely absolutely because i didn't receive anything from you on this no well we'll get it did other board members receive information on this from you as it came up in in briefings yeah i think somehow

258we didn't receive anything in writing i asked him a question that's the question yeah okay um i want to respond a couple things you said um because this is my item that i brought up and you piggybacked on it which i appreciate but you you took the words that i said and you spun them a little so i want to talk about that you made a comment that it shouldn't be argued over which swear words or whatever you know in statute if you read the statute it doesn't tell you a list of swear words that somebody thinks is profane and another person doesn't what i'm suggesting in this is that people really look at that and say what's acceptable in our community to say in a book and what's not and if you look at

259the statute it doesn't clearly define the specifics of those things of what it does clearly define some specifics of what profanity obscenity sexual content is but it doesn't and this is part of why this is being argued across the nation is because some people's understanding of what's okay for a 16 year old to look at is different than what an eight-year-old's thing to look at right and so there needs to be some sort of vetting or community discussion and i would suggest that the attorney be at this guideline meeting so that the attorney can give advice as to what the statute says for this discussion and i do think that a community that of a committee that we create and a can come up with a community standard according to the statutes i don't differ

260with you on that we need to stay according to the statute what i do differ on what you said is that this committee doesn't have the right to discuss um how that statute's interpreted and i think they do and i think our attorney should be involved in that so that we make sure that we're following law and that this community group comes up with a community standard that's following law that's something that we can all live live by so when a book is being reviewed you don't have to go back to the beginning every single time and say does it follow each one of these statutes every time i think that's what we got involved in last time and that's where we had a problem and so i think to make it clearer this group

261needs to come up with those guidelines first according to the law i am not a disagreeing with you on that what i am disagreeing with you on is i think these people can determine if a certain swear word can be in a book or not that discussion could be out there so that they can say yes that's acceptable no it's not because if you look in the statute it doesn't tell you which swear words can be in the books or not so i think that that's an opportunity for this committee that can come up with that for us to be able to say we've vetted it this committee really understands what our pulsa of our community is and that people can live with those are the guidelines when we move forward with books and we're

262reviewing books we need to make sure that we're looking at those guidelines because that's been vetted with the statutes in mind dr jones did you want to say something obvious i can't find that timeline that mr meyer gave to us about all the times the committee met but i do remember mr meyer double checking everything that dealt with pornography and what constituted pornography and what did not and that was made very clear to us especially when we saw that what books would be restricted what books would be deemed not appropriate and then what were okay at certain grade levels so that was explained to us in detail mr barefoot did you want to say anything nope okay so just to follow up on that um the obscenity code is the one that i just quoted

263i didn't quote anything about profanity i referenced sexual content the definitions that are in the obscenity code are defined right they are with regard to sexual content or not you know whatever is pornographic uh deviate sexual intercourse harmful to minors i'm not disagreeing with you on that okay so that's what i mentioned that's what i am talking about with regard to uh opinions uh there there should be no opinions with regard to this chapter this statute on obscenity the obscenity code is it needs to be clarified though i think it needs to be clarified with the committee with the attorney president i don't disagree with you i think it needs to be clarified in so much as say no is no i i do think though that profanity which is the one i had there

264i did not have obscenity on this list you added that remember so the word profanity is what i had there for looking at what is profane language in elementary school that needs to be vetted by this committee i think and i think that's fair i it's not written anywhere which words can be are profane but i didn't see in any of the statutes but the committee is not defined in our statute as creating policy the committee there's suggested policy to the board the policy and the procedure needs to be clarified prior to a committee meeting the policy with the procedure very clearly as it states here let me read it again just to be sure each school board each school board shall adopt procedures for developing library media center collections and post the procedures on

265the website but we are responsible for the procedures we are responsible for collecting uh by constitutional duty and responsibility to select and provide adequate instructional material for all students in accordance with the requirements of this part and it goes on to say each school board is responsible for the content of all instructional materials and any other materials used in the classroom made available in the school library or included on a reading list and you could read the rest that is the that is the work of the school board okay mrs rosario what i'm asking and this is my right to ask as a board member is for us to have this committee vet the guidelines and i'm seeing guidelines they're not coming up with the policy they're going to set some guidelines to give to

266the board to say do we think that that's appropriate i don't think it's our job to come up with all of the list of swear words that are acceptable for each grade level that's what i'm asking this committee to do i'm asking them to come up with these guidelines so that we can be assured that we're following the state statute well i think there we would disagree well then disagree but i think that this is my suggestion and i have the right to make that suggestion just like you do but nobody's saying that you don't you just said i disagree with that i disagree with the community that's fine that's fine i agree with everything else i just agree i just disagree with you that the committee should make those suggestions but we're not here

267to make those decisions right now right we're here to talk about it so that we can read i just feel like my opinion is being shot down and not at all okay now you have your right to your opinion i have my right to my opinion exactly my feeling is we need to follow statute i don't agree disagree with you at all but i don't think we should get in the weeds and specifically state what is acceptable what isn't acceptable at every grade level and i think that's been the problem with this committee is people get to the committee and now they're arguing over every single book every single time about what is acceptable what's not i think the attorney needs to be sitting there and the attorney needs to be there so that anybody

268can ask a question of the attorney about what is acceptable and what isn't when they're looking at the books that's my suggestion the um the work moving forward right now dr moore what is your what is your understanding of what you've heard from board members thus far through the gym my next steps is to meet and debrief with each board member regarding exactly just that what we heard uh i think you've been you have provided me a great starting point mrs berenborg has the information provided by um the two fellow board members as well as dr schiff i'll circle back with her from there i'll put together what would be a timeline as well as kind of benchmark out what should be accomplished within that specific um timeline so to me it's relatively straightforward this

269is a tremendous body of work i think the board is choosing on regardless of whether it is a process that staff creates or the committee creates it is a tremendous amount of work that on the end will be significantly worth the effort that we put into creating and it will make everyone's life clearly clearly um much easier and then we would have a set standard that is embedded within policy and once it is within policy that then becomes the way in which i must implement or staff must implement so i think you know we're choosing to go above and beyond in terms of this community standard that we're we're looking to create which i think is the right thing to do and it will take us a little bit of time to to create that

270so i'll circle back with each board member get that input and then come back with what would be at our very next um superintendent briefing this is the what i put together regarding each board member's thoughts and then receive feedback as a as a whole and then kind of vet that out based on the feedback that i receive i'm going to add one thing to that um she added the word obscenity to the um the paper that i gave you and i didn't put that in there for a reason and that's because there is a very very s um easy law to follow on that um that's why i had profanity violence sexual content and critical race theory in there for that vetting process for guidelines obscenity is the law that's separate um and i

271think that's where we're differing here is is the frustration i'm feeling is that i feel like this needs to be discussed vetted from community members and um that's why i didn't put obscenity in there there's a law so the you know what's profane to somebody is different and what's profane to another person but what's our community standard you know that's why i said that and i think any policy that i would want to bring that is so specific to us uniquely here in indian river county uh should incorporate a process in which the community has the opportunity to give input to ultimately what the board would approve so that they're in my mind that we definitely have to capture an opportunity so when you five board members who represent the entire county are improving something

272that's creating something that is unique this is not going to be a neola policy that it's basically the same for all 67 districts it's going to be unique to us which i think is what makes it special and i agree with you there needs to be a process to say this is just not david moore and team's policy listening to the five board members but ultimately this is how we can stamp approval that it is reflective of a process that brought in the community's input and that's the work moving forward is to determine what is that process uh and then share it with the five board members to determine what is in fact our next step yeah and that's my desire is to give community input and then let the board make the decision on

273what to do with it um the i one thing that i haven't heard is um and i know that we we talked about it privately um about a reconsideration for the 150 plus books that were just done once this kind of gets solidified and we we have a direction in which we're going we have a um a new policy and procedures you know moving forward with this um so what's the reconsideration about are we going to then at that point reconsider the 150 plus books i know mr meyer said that he was open to that because we didn't have a open and transparent process for those books do we start from scratch which i think would be a very very smart idea um what are your thoughts i think we did have a pretty solid

274process but as we define what the community standard would be i think we're going to answer that question with looking at what those standards would be so there might be as the new policy becomes very very explicit in terms of what it would be and we look at the process that we followed previous the answer may be yeah we because the policy is now so specific we've created a greater level of detail within that policy we in fact should change or re-review those particular books but i think the best answer would be is let's see how explicit we can be in providing the our guidance to ourselves and then look back at the process we used before in comparison to the level of specificity that we have now and then we could you know choose

275to to reevaluate books or not to based on the specificity of the policy so what i have what i have con concerns about is creating a committee to get their feedback prior to writing a policy so you're gonna create a committee to get committee feedback on what they think is profanity to incorporate that in a policy that we haven't created yet so we're actually going backwards instead of creating the policy and the procedure and going to the committee and then adding it or having a draft and then adding to it so we're deferring to i can't defend anything because i'm not making any recommendations yet i am at the point in which i'm receiving information um from the board members there is a variance in in terms of how board members feel uh it's my

276responsibility to digest the thoughts of all five board members and put together one recommendation for you all to hash back and forth so i i can't defend a recommendation because i'm not making a recommendation although i do make the point we should have community involved in receiving feedback from them along the process i need to determine what how that process would actually look moving forward and bring a recommendation back to the i just don't want to receive feedback on something that is going to violate the law someone who says well i don't agree with the law i don't agree what the law says here or there uh but that's not up for discussion this law is law i i agree and if i would encourage you to vote no if there's anything that you would

277think was breaking along i would [Laughter] uh dr jones dr barr i think it'd be a terrible precedent to go back on the work that the committee did i mean there was a lot of time you saw the timeline the events that they all met it was a four to one vote and at that time that's what we were looking at and that was the vote i say this as far as moving along with a new state statute the new law we move forward not backwards go to the chair and once we have an item and once we were able to look at it we we can make that i once again i'm not making recommendations yeah we could get other laws that come through and also wait that doesn't work now i mean that's

278going to be happening come on absolutely um the only thing i'll say doc is if there is any statute there are some new rules we are going to that's why i suggested the guidelines from input from community members on this because once you have that i think it's only fair to go back and if somebody i think they need to put the book forward again if they want it reviewed again and i think we should oblige to do that and they also have the choice of saying i don't want my children to read that book right i mean if they we didn't have that i understand and that means every public school system who went through this this year in florida and in texas and other states would have to go back and look at

279that i think we move forward and then if a parent doesn't like a certain choice and as a parent i'd say no you're not reading it i fill out the form well let i think let's let the superintendent the other thing the reason why i put the guideline thingers because i imagined a parallel working on this you're working on the pers because you you and i discussed the fact that neola probably won't come out with with the actual policy until august right and so if that's the case if you're also looking at okay we possibly formed this committee and we let the committee give input you were doing the policy creating with the input at the same time there then the board votes on the final policy in august i think um the confusion is

280they're thinking that i'm asking for the committee to come up with their the policy that's not what i'm asking for i'm asking for the committee to come up with some guidelines so that we can create the policy that's that's the idea um but i think it's important to get that input from community members no just as a level of of clarity uh seeking input and thoughts from what is going to be defined as a community standard i think you need to collect that information from the community right staff school board attorney niola we will craft a policy that incorporates what i'm hearing is the desire of the board a community standard it will be unique to us because it will be our community standard but it will be a policy that will be crafted by

281staffed and vetted to ensure it is legally sufficient it can be upheld it is not violating any specific statute so it will be a policy just as any other item that will be reviewed for legal sufficiency but it will be the burden on staff to take all of the input from the board members reflective of our community to create a policy have it reviewed for legal sufficiency and then have the board digest that and make a decision regarding whether each board member thinks it's the way to go or not i have a suggestion or throw it out a thought what about creating a survey a community survey to receive that input that in that manner because you can have four or five different people or maybe even 20 people give you feedback but it's really

282not um indicative of the entire community that we live in all of indian river county whereas if we get do a survey an open survey on these bullets here we can get a better view a better understanding on what what their ideas are use that to craft and through the chair once again i'm not opposed to a multitude of different ways to receive feedback it could be once the the policy is created seeking you know give us feedback on this specific policy the advantages of of having a team is using the team to to pull apart and then put back together what the actual process would be so i think what i will bring back uh will be reflective of of the board and incorporate a process that we can feel proud of to really

283create a policy that does in fact include a community standard which is going to be the hard and complex thing to do to define in a very very diverse community what what exactly that particular standard is i mean i think it's worth the endeavor and i think we could be the the district that sets an example so as we move forward in this window of time and i don't think this is anything that's going to go away anytime soon we have policy to fall back on regarding what in fact is the standard and as dr jones says whether on what side of the standard in which you fall you'll always have the option because we're one of two districts in the state that says you have the opportunity to choose uh to opt out or

284or restrict access so we have that as well so i just um when we do that i just want to be clear that in this process as we move forward um because there are still so many other recommendations that you are currently working on which is already the uh the re-defining or re-envisioning what our libraries look like um but that it's very important for everybody to understand even though we are asking or you are asking the district is asking for consent of parents parental consent on this item it does not negate the fact that there are still there could be felony charges or it could be a violation resulting in a felony so parental choice on this matter really isn't parental choice it isn't a legal option is my point if that's found to be

285true if it's found to be true please say that please don't say that you think that that's the case because it needs to be found true but it is the case it is it needs both there's both it is the case that the law is the law and there is no getting around what the law says it is a felony a felony is a felony is a felony that's it on the opposite side if we are being charged with a felony we don't know that yet we don't know if we as a school district are going to be charged that's my exact comment that's not what i said i didn't say that we were being charged i just said a felony the law trumps parental consent in this case parental consent does not trump the

286law this is you you asked it was the chair who asked at the last board meeting for the school board attorney to provide additional information i think that information has been provided regarding uh the legal standing in which the district took to make its recommendation to to the board so um it has been legally reviewed um and vetted to ensure that we are in legal ground i did ask for that thank you dr moore okay anything else not on this no ma'am all right um i don't see anything on here other than um superintendent do you have anything in closing agenda oh that does exhaust the agenda thank you it is 4 10 and this meeting is adjourned thank you you