11.02.22 Board Workshop & Special Meeting

001superintendent yes our first Workshop today is on health related policies we've grouped five policies together that kind of are connected and Mr Keith I'm sorry Mr Keith Oswald chief of equity Wellness is going to start us off numbers mayor Smith that you've seen before and also the newest member to our team Miss Carla Berlin Jerry so she's also on our team as well so we're glad to have her as well as the legal counsel with Laura Pincus so as Mr Burke stated we do have five policies that we want to walk through some changes mainly due to changes in legislation this past year in particular the parent Bill of Rights so I'm going to turn over to Dr Smith who will walk through these changes and then at the end take any questions you may

002have good afternoon board members in reference to each of these policies uh the proposed revisions will update each of these policies to reflect or allow us to be in accordance with the most recent recent legislation which would be the parent Bill of Rights as well as House Bill 173 which is the care of students with seizure or epilepsy disorder policy 5.321 administration of student medication and treatment we have made proposed revisions to this one to again um reflect that we need to obtain parental consent uh before we um engage in any type of school health services for the um student as in giving them medication or conducting um treatments this policy also um or should I say House Bill 173 also impacts this policy because House Bill 173 reflects us providing medication to students with

003seizure epilepsy disorder policy 5.3212 blood glucose monitoring is yet another policy that is impacted by the parent Bill of Rights we've also included language in this policy to reflect that um any type of monitoring blood glucose monitoring should be in alignment with a physician's authorization or the student's individualized health care plan or an emergency care plan policy 5.325 once again parent Bill of Rights impacts this policy where we want to make sure that parental consent is um obtained before we do any type of examination of any student that may or may not have uh head lice policy 5.324 students with life-threatening health conditions this policy is impacted by House Bill 173 in regards to caring for students with epilepsy or seizure disorder a part of the um Bill requires that we now have what we

004call an individualized seizure action plan it is a plan that must be developed by the physician in conjunction with the parent once the parent brings this individualized seizure action plan along with the physician's authorization we are able to proceed in providing our care we have made um we have created a way or an Avenue to care for students whose parent does not present with an individualized seizure action plan because we're learning that a lot of Pediatricians aren't aware of this as of yet so we do have measures in place that we would still be able to provide emergency care until we receive an individualized seizure action plan a part of House Bill 173 also now requires that any School District staff who is going to have regular contact with the student that has epilepsy or

005seizure disorder that those employees are trained yearly and how to recognize signs and symptoms of students with epilepsy and how to care for them and what we have done is creating an online course that is um authorized by the Epilepsy Foundation our ESC contacts at all of our schools will identify who is an employee or staff member that has regular contact with the student and ask them to self-enroll in the course that we're offering through the professional development department principles in turn will be monitoring this to make sure that their staff are in compliance policy 5.32 student illness or accident this is again impacted by the parent Bill of Rights we now have to make sure that we have consent before we um engage in any type of provision of school health services we also

006have to make sure parents are aware that because of this legislation if they do not consent to us providing care then we will need to call them and have them pick up their child in instances where there might be bumps scrapes Cuts Etc however we do make sure parents are aware that if there's an emergency we will provide emergency care until um Emergency Services arrive on the campus so that concludes the presentation we'll be back for development in November November 30th and for adoption in January and we'll open up in case there are any questions Mrs Whitfield so two questions um the first thing I I desperately wanted to be known that if something happens to my kid please please please help her that scares me more than anything so my concern is if I'm

007a parent of any of these children out there and say the parent misses checking that box do we follow up to make sure that they chose yes or no because I just I can't imagine what if a parent just skips it because we have a lot of parents that maybe miss something or whatever they don't they don't get it and so we have no answer then what do we do so we've been working on a number of campaigns to get these returned to school we're at roughly about 80 percent return rate um as a district so it's gone up a lot from the beginning of the school year we'll continue to provide updates to schools on how many returns how many yeses and no of that 80 I will say that about four percent um

008are no's for consent to Health Services about four percent of the 80. um and then that other 20 is we're working to close that Gap to get those returned okay the other question I have is about um where that line is because you're saying that if they say no and then the kid is having an emergency and like we have an AED there maybe we have a trained CPR person there at what point are we just standing there not doing it or are we actually going to step in I'm just I can imagine the moment right now and it scares the life out of me that we were standing there and a child dies because the parents said no and we didn't touch them um so I'm like when does it constitute an emergency enough

009that we override that um and and do something or when is it not can you like talk about that a little bit if we deem that the injury or incident is serious then yes we will for example we will uh perform first we will provide first aid we will we will perform CPR we will use an AED just like we would now if there is an emergency now we notify the parent we call 9-1-1 and of course we have a crisis response team that returns that response to emergencies and we have the school nurse uh that responds uh to emergencies we have um uh pbsd 2667 which is another form it's called parent slash Guardian consent for school health services we utilize this for parents that need to make modifications if they've chosen no um

010on the consent form and to um piggyback on what Mr Oswald said anytime I am aware of parents choosing no I have called I have spoken with parents I have made sure parents understand exactly what they are saying no to and if in talking with them they understand they're like okay no problem I can go and utilize 2667 and change um my consent but yes we will never sit back and not perform any type of first aid CPR or AED we're going to do just like we've done in the past that's why we put this uh proposed revision into this policy and that's why we created pbsd 2667 so that we explain all of that out in detail to parents and I do uh do follow-up calls with parents and I have had Parents call

011me and once I under make them understand what's going on they've changed their consent and that message has also been communicated to school principals and their teams to call 9-1-1 on any case of emergency or concern and that has already occurred this year Mrs Andrews thank you thank you Mr Oswald I think you just touched on it because as we work through these policies uh in the beginning stages and this is the law now as we work with the parental Bill of Rights are we actually making sure that the ptas and the ptos and the sacs these are kinds of things that we're discussing uh the new parental Bill of Rights how we're going to be working through all of these policies we're not there yet but this is what we have in place is

012this something that's a communication strand that's strong at school centers so that parents who are involved at the school way before somebody gets sick or hurt or whatever that they know that we have these components in place can you tell me how that works yeah so it started obviously early on with a number of push-outs from you know our conference our call here that we did with the community each school has given out numerous call outs for their Community we pushed it out on electronically centrally we've been gone to a number of different Community groups to assist us that work with certain communities to educate I mean myself personally I've been working through all the different agencies on DDC birth to 22 many others to assist with this Outreach to educate people about this new

013process and new practice and that continues to be you know close that gap of the additional 20 so we can get those in so uh working with our FTE sis team they're creating you know reports so the principal is going to have the latest updates of the actual family so they can be more strategic and Target the Outreach based on those numbers thank you and just to piggyback on what Ms Andrews said I think that as we go forward an incident that happened this week actually is causing me to to think this through and I'll tell you what that was but it's our young children who are coming into pre-K in kindergarten we need to make sure the parents understand this too because they're going to be new to the district I know this is

014new for everyone and the reason that I'm saying that is I had a hospital call me yesterday about it was a charter school student and the child is insulin dependent and the school didn't know it and he was having it was in crisis at the hospital and also was getting speech therapy and didn't know that he was entitled to ESC services so um Kevin McCormick's helping so I say solo risk expression we I reached out to him we are helping the charter school by Monday it will be everything should be in place in terms of the student when he's back in for the insulin but it makes me realize that these young parents the families coming into the schools really don't know you know whether he was in a charter school with us what the

015child you know what they need to provide I mean the mom had no clue that she needed to tell us to the school so I think that we need to have a that is part of the package when a child enrolls whether they're young and just we're new to the district or whatever I think that communication piece is going to help us tremendously thank you Mrs Andrews and just to follow back up on the communications piece just last night we were at Wellington Wellington Village education committees those committees uh Ian Royal Palm you all know who they are West Lake the Tri-Cities I think these new laws that are in place for parental rights and talking about these issues these that we're talking about today and all the other ones that are in place we

016need to be out there uh spreading that word just as you say you're doing Mr Oswald at those committees too because what I'm hearing is that people says well we're not communicating and they don't know exactly whether we're doing what we say we're doing well we certainly follow the law and this is what we're talking about not through the policies so I think just having it at the school Center but outside of the school Center at those advisory councils that we have throughout the district where they work with the elected officials and the cities so that they'll know that we're talking about this we're doing something about it and we're certainly following the law thank you for that feedback we'll work on that as well question um from a liability point of view you said

017you only had four no's but and you call those parents and explain four thousand four thousand knows four percent four percent is four thousand and change Oh I thought you said before no so we we do we not unfortunately I shouldn't be laughing because it's not a joke right so what we're working is to educate those parents at marknow so we created a protocol a script for our principles for those who did Mark no to go through their list to really explain do you understand um what this means and so they have a script that we gave them to use by marking them so that if they do want it as Dr Smith stated update that to update those forms um in our sis system so so we're dependent on each principle to do what

018they're supposed to do and make sure that they talked to the parent that said no we haven't do we have any documentation on that the principals have any kind of form they fill out and said I called the parent the parent to discuss the no the parent still says no we need documentation because I can just see a lawsuit coming where the parent says I never got that call the principal says well I did make the call we need some kind of documentation general counsel would you agree we need some kind of documentation if we're taking it on ourselves to call these parents to confirm that they're no we need documentation that that call was made well documentation is always a good thing but there's many ways to document I mean you can you can

019you can keep a log um of it so um I'm sure there's something that we can put our heads together on and figure out what that would look like but there's many ways to note something without it you know creating another form and that sort of thing well I'm not so sure that leaving it up to 180 principles and each having their own way to document something is a good idea I mean I think if you're going to make these no calls you should have some kind of log that they keep the documents I talk to so and so on such and such a data and explained and and we have documentation that was done because 180 principals may do 180 different ways and have to go back and look at their Post-it notes that

020I put a Post-It note on my desk and I can't find it now but I did talk to that parent on I don't remember the date but I called that's not sufficient for litigation we need something more formal than that you pretended I'd just like to I guess remind us that this is this is a result of legislation for the parents Bill of Rights so the legislature and their infinite wisdom has given the parents the rights and with that comes responsibility we're doing everything we can to make sure they're making informed decisions but if we want to talk about liability let's talk about the legislature they passed the law we know under the Good Samaritan law that we can you know call 9-1-1 we can help in an emergency but I don't really want to

021create another burden on our schools Beyond doing everything we can reason we can do but not to be held to some additional standard it's not in the law that was created not by our doing but by that of the legislature so and with all due respect then we shouldn't call any parent if you call some of them and they you know explain what a no means but you don't call the other ones when something happens the person that didn't get the call saying well my friend got a call I didn't understand that I was checking a no box so if you're going to call some you need to call all if you're going to call if you're not going to call if you're going to call them then you need to document it one way

022or the other I mean if we're going to take it upon ourselves to call parents and explain no then we need to document that we did it so that no parent can say half the other people in my neighbor got calls and I never received a call I didn't understand that no meant you weren't going to do such and such so I understand the legislature put this on us just like every other burden that they put on us but we need to make sure we have litigation protection in the future you can't call some parents and not other ones and you have to have a log to indicate which parent you called right I mean it just makes sense General console it makes sense to have some kind of documentation if we're going to call

023any parent we need to make sure that we call all the parents and we need to make sure that we document that we called all the parents documentation always makes sense so you'll never get me to say that documentation is not the good the right or the good answer um I will say that we already have in writing I mean we've we've we've met our legal requirement by uh getting the the notice or the lack thereof by the the parent has already indicated their preference so we've met the legal requirement there um but you know documentation is always a well I mean we've met the legal requirements so don't call them don't they filled out a form they said no don't call any of them then either call them all or don't call any that's

024be gone beyond what the state requires us to do don't start with and we're going to call these but this principal didn't get around to calling those because we are going to get sued so just don't call any they the statute says they check a box they check no okay you check no don't come back to us later and say well you didn't understand you checked no you had the opportunity to ask questions you didn't so I don't think we should pick and choose which ones we're going to call or take a chance that some of them don't get called I think Dr Robinson you were first and then Mrs Whitfield thank you um so first I mean I want to thank you for going above and beyond that's what medical people do right so

025if it turns out that legal counsel says don't call them whatever okay but I think product is probably could be solved with technology okay because so the the newer returning student registration form is online now right and and it's my understanding that at some point in the foreseeable future nobody will need to print it the data processor won't have to enter it like it'll just go into proof wherever it goes in technology space right okay so I mean I would like to consider adding to that that the consent for school health services must be completed in order for the registration to be complete and does that make sense I mean I don't know if legal will say that's good or bad but in my mind you're not registered until you've complete that form and complete

026it in total so if you're not answering yes or no it's not completed we do train the data processors to go through but I'm saying when we get to the technology land which I hope is soon okay so the data processors don't have that additional burden I also I don't think this should be a burden placed on any school-based staff honestly I think I I don't think principals should be having a call I mean I just think that's ridiculous what I would ask for um the people who make computers work for us is that maybe if they check no that there's like an alert that pops up and says like attention realize that if you check no this I know it says that but do an alert like that you know flash right does that

027make sense because then that's kind of like a double thing in that and that flat that pop-up could also say if you have additional questions call you know Dr Smith or whoever the right person is right but I think I think technology needs to solve that for us right um now I just have a couple more things so um so first off I think that lights are nasty and not being able to screen if you think the kid has lice is nasty but I see that if that they could keep them home until they get clearance or they could just come to school and everybody know they had lights but we can't look is that tell me what's going on with lights please well in the event where you have this particular student who has

028the life if they see the nurse the nurse sends them home and then you have other students that are in the class that depending on the situation we may need to examine those who may have been exposed to the student who did have the lights and so if a student if a parent has not given us consent quite naturally and of course being medical you can almost look without necessarily touching a student to see that they have uh lice this is where you would do this in regards to the one who you think have life but as far as the students who needs to be examined if the parent does not give consent for it then we don't give consent for it and for the one that we do send home who we saw had

029lights if they don't have parental consent then the parent shouldn't bring the student back unless they have a note from the doctor saying that they're clear because our protocol now is if we send you home due to life before we put you back into the population the nurse checks you to make sure you no longer have lice okay so the way maybe I didn't read this um as closely as I should have but um my concern is I didn't see that the policy said we can send you home for suspected lives so I just need to like close that Loop now I suspected but diagnosed with life because generally if a student is thought to have life we send them to the school nurse that's great but if they don't have consent they don't have

030consent then we have to send them to the front office we have to let the parent know that we suspect that the child have life and they need to get the child um examined and they can bring them back as long as we have documentation saying that they're not they don't have lice okay let me just be crystal clear because I think I heard you I just want to make sure I did so you don't have consent to examine for life right the kids scratching whatever whatever you think the kid has lights right you call Mom you said say okay I think your baby may have lice baby needs to stay home until you bring a note from the doctor is that what you're telling me well we recommend that's what we say we recommend

031all right we don't we don't use the word must okay okay recommend and of course if the parent doesn't we can't keep the child out okay come back we do it again we keep the process going over and over and over okay so I want to move on um to the this individualized seizure action plan yes is there a template for that that's given to the pediatricians to complete yes um I myself I've worked with um the Department of Health to create a universal right individualized seizure action plan okay and just as we do with all of our other Physicians authorizations we're going to be visiting local pediatricians giving them this form and then we're making it where they can access it from us at any given time so that way we have one universal

032form versus all these different variations of forms very good because I mean that was my concern because you know when this crisis time is like you don't have time to look up and you know it's just and be in the real world you know if it's a cardiac arrest or seizure like you know what you're going to do like even if you never heard of this person before there's protocols right so I just want to make sure that we're not asking our people to like figure out every little Nuance for each kid in the emergency okay and then um I just kind of want to follow up on the question I think Miss Whitfield asked about um the difference between an urgent situation in an emergent situation right so it's clear that sometimes you're going

033to call 9-1-1 I think maybe the question is in that middle ground where they need to be seen but it's not 9-1-1 um and you call the parent and they're like I'll get them when I get off work no we're we're airing on the side of caution and I can only say this the way I know to say it as a medical person you just you just you you know take care of the patients and the whole idea is the patient is first saving life is primary thank you Dr Smith you're welcome Mrs McQueen and Mrs Whitfield I agree with Dr Robinson about individual schools not just the work involved but I think with 180 schools around we we simply I don't I think we invite liability when we expect uniform compliance across that many

034schools when something in terms of the calls and I'm not sure why we can't do some kind of flag or alert we do it with medical conditions right and okay so I I'm not sure that we can't do that something can't pop up with that student that says they have a no affirmative or the negative yes in in sis we do have a flag but I think what she's what Dr Robinson is speaking more so of being able to input the data into the system and the system sends an alert and then can basically give you a list of all of these students that may or may not have consent and you can work from that we sort of kind of have something like that we've been working with FTE and student reporting and they've

035created like this um step-by-step process of how each school can go in and actually pull up the number of students who they do not have consent for or should I say who do who they do not have consent for and whose parents have said no and then they work the principals and the school work from that list to try to reach out to the parents just to make sure and just you know to let you know this um chairman and the rest of you the reason I think we're going not I think I know the reason I know we're going um as far as we're going is because a lot of these parents just really don't understand the gist of that law and so what the schools are doing is they're trying their best to

036help them to understand it and then I let them know if you if you can't explain it or if you have a problem have the parent call me and then I explain it to the parent and sometimes just giving them the understanding they change it and so that's why we're really going out the way we're going out because we really believe that they don't understand what they're saying no to follow up please so again I think that we communicate that at the district level because across all those schools I I just think they will interpret things different ways and you know you're on the phone or whatever with a parent and you're now you're in a dialogue so I I'd rather say something that says if you want further explanation call the school versus making

037it incumbent upon the school in the first place to follow up can I just uh offer that when we had our back-to-school press conference Mr Oswald highlighted this change uh it's been part of our whole our principal meetings uh the forms I mean we've been pushing this information out quite a bit uh I think there has been a lot of follow-up on those parents to check no to make sure they understood that they were not saying no to a vaccination you know that was some of the confusion around the coveted vaccinations that's not what this is about this is about some basic health care services and we can continue to work on that I just get concerned about creating another layer of responsibility because you know where does it stop you can try to call

038a parent five times you may not get through you know you can send emails you can do all these things but uh I'm just hesitant to say every principal must make sure they connect with every parent that's checked now and because I think we might have a hard time following through on all that but we're doing the best we can this Whitfield and Mrs Andrews okay I just want to respond to what Mr Burke was saying um about the legislature I they come up with rules that they that we have to enforce and then if there's Fallout from that which we've recently seen in in lawsuits that we've gotten we still get sued so they're not getting sued for the outcome of of a bad decision so we are always going to be on the

039hook for that and I don't want in the middle of the political fighting that occurs that any children get hurt because that's our job right that's like this number one like every place that I go and talk to people I say first is safety and then we'll educate your kids so I don't like the idea that we have a parent out there I mean if a parent says no and they really don't want it I get it okay that's fine you have the right you can do that and I fully support them having that right but if a parent thinks that they're saying no and like you said for the vaccine I get that's that turned into a big thing they don't want anybody to vaccinate on their campus I get that but I'm imagining

040say you have a kid who you know is bleeding profusely are we not supposed to offer a paper towel or a bandage or a compress or something try to stop the bleeding is that is that where we're at are we at a point where this child is going to be sitting there a bloody a mess waiting for the mom to show up and does Mom understand that is that really what she wants um and that that scares me that that is a real day-to-day situation the other thing I want to say is our principals out there our teachers out there nobody signs up for this job because you don't like kids like how are they going to sit there and look at a child that's in distress and not touch them unless they're 100 sure

041that that's what Mom really wants like and I just can see some of these moms and dads not filling out the form correctly because they just didn't get it and that that scares me a lot so how do we resolve this issue I agree we don't want the principals or the teachers have to do anything else but I mean now who's responsible for the make the call I've heard that your office is going to do it if the principal can't do it is a principal supposed to do it first is I mean who's supposed to make the call on the nose so I want to be clear when as far as the cause everybody that's marked no we pushed out additional communication to what Mr Burke was alluding to through our Communications team so we

042can Target certain groups of parents but it's still a matter of whether or not those come back um they're not we still we're still at a 20 Gap so there's been additional Outreach of everybody it's just that they're still not coming back so unless we're doing a home visit for 20 000 at 20 percent you know that's pretty much where it's at so principals are have done a lot of additional Outreach especially at the beginning of the school year I think that's how we got to this 80 percent and our district district is not immune to this issue other districts are kind of seeing a similar issue of how do we get to that last group that are unaware they didn't do it um my other concern there's been different legal concerns around that this

043may have to be done at each school year so one of the issues I'll be putting on our you know from District staff legislative platform is that this rolls forward that whatever apparent marks so we don't have to start over again next school year that this carries forward so just answer my question so we have done it we've done principles being told that they're supposed to call the nose is that one of the things you're telling principals you need to call these people that said no and see if you can get in touch with them is that what the principles have already have worked through that you know we've gone through the first semester they have a list that they if if they see a parent that they know is a no on there and

044they happen to be at the school they'll try to get that and maybe the classroom teacher so they've done already at a lot of Outreach on this but they're not at different levels no but they have their list so that they again I get they have a list my only question is we can't do this haphazardly are the principles told they should try and follow up or not if if they're not told I mean are you telling every single principal in every school you need to follow up on the nose or you're not going to follow up on the nose I mean I just see litigation here you know we've had other issues where the board didn't see the litigation coming and we got smacked I can see litigation here so if there's going to

045be a rule on written board policy that you need to call the nose then is that what you're telling the principles or not we did we haven't asked that recently we've given them updated lists of as we get more in we give them the updated list of the yeses the no's and the not returned so that they have the most updated list for their school all right Mrs uh Mrs Andrews and Mrs mcquinn and and I just want to thank the teachers because it truly all starts in the classroom where the children are the parents uh love their teachers more than likely they know their teachers the best and when something happens to a child it happens sort of in the classroom and I know at the principal level they're putting this stuff out to

046make sure parents understand that's why my first question was are we continually talking about it at our ptas are sex and so on and let them know that yes you had the law is here we've given the information to you parents have made their choices based on the law We are following the law but I just want to thank the teachers and the principals because they have been supporting these parents making the decision yes or no and we have to continually work with them and educate them on whether you want to stay with your yes or you want to do a no but this is what it is but whenever something happens we have to follow the law so I mean following the law is the critical piece of this but educating everybody and thinking

047the teachers and the principals especially at the school level we're sitting here doing the policy but it all starts in the school center right in the classroom Mrs mcquend and Dr Robinson so I think I'm hearing Dr Oswald say that schools have been directed to contact the nose and I believe that there needs to be a point at which we don't put that responsibility on them I do believe we have the technology to somehow flag I don't know what could even come up but another I think it was um under a couple of of departments when we were in the covid our district did a great job of doing Q and A's and very Layman's language here's a question here's an answer and I think we can do that schools couldn't even follow up if

048it's done at the district level send that in their newsletters or whatever they do but I don't think that we're going to not get somebody and that one person that we don't get is going to sue us so I think we need to put the responsibility on the district level we're not going to have compliance across all these schools okay I want to be clear that at the beginning of the year we did this is all I worked on for weeks so call outs push-outs or Communications team principals did follow up so when we say a lot of Outreach to get to 80 percent first couple weeks we were at like 40 we quickly got it up to 80 so we were looking at the numbers so I want to make clear that we're in

049November now that a lot of that was done months ago kept me up at night I got phone calls from principals over and over so clearly working to push out to community groups so um I want to be clear the district took above and beyond efforts to make sure that this was put out and we continue to do periodic uh push-outs we had local media coverage going out to schools educating families about this so yeah so this is you know we're workshops in the policy today uh let me kind of I'll Circle back with our team here and just we'll do an assessment where we stand see if there's additional I think we have a video that's available as well see if we can do some additional communication Outreach and maybe by the time we

050come back for development or adoption we can share some improved numbers and let you know what we're doing Dr Robinson so the 20 are unanswered or knows or both 20 is no response okay so I mean well it won't solve the problem right now but I'm just saying in my head for the start of the school year when you have to complete the registration it's not complete until you fill out the form like and it needs to be done electronically and submitted electronically when have the paper option for those who don't have access but because we also need to decrease the workload on data processors because I can't imagine what it's like just to sit there and enter all that stuff I'm gonna enter something wrong right so but the other thing um is on

051that form is it they click no that there is a a pop-up that explains the most common concerns about no like even if you say yes we will not give your child vaccines without additional consent or something whatever you find the most common concerns to be um but then even after that those who who say no I just don't think school-based people should call them so maybe that pop-up should be if you have any questions call Dr Smith or call somebody but not the school not the school I don't I don't think we should put that on the schools and I don't think I I mean I get we were in crisis mode because I was getting all those phone calls too um from principals and parents about why I want you know the school

052nurse you know see the baby right um but then also be clear in that communication about an emergency you're even an emergency situation your child will be taken care of but miss Winfield brings up a good example so if the child's nose is bleeding all over the place what is that that's not 9-1-1 no but that's first aid so you could do that without consent okay notation and made parents aware that we will provide first aid CPR and AED okay all right so anything under first the banner first aid is still included without consent and remember we're using nursing judgment too yeah which is why we need to make sure we have nurses and just a quickie when you said that some of them are not answered I think we need to know exactly where

053those children are coming from because maybe parents may not have understood how and what to do with that form so I would be quite interested in knowing when that 20 could be they didn't say no or yes they just didn't fill it out so we need to know who we're talking about and as a board member I would want to know where and and who are we talking about so that we can help we're out in the field all the time and we can help educate parents and that's what we started this conversation at is communicating so I would love to know where it is that people just didn't fill it out so that we can help them yes we have that any other questions comments thank you very much thank you Mr super present

054yes so I'm going to invite up Miss Erica Rieger chief of HR for our next Workshop which is also a little bit health related it's uh policy 3.82 employee protocols in response to communicable diseases including respiratory virus outbreak epidemic endemic or pandemic this policy is nearly a complete rewrite of our original policy that was crafted in uh and specific to kova 19 in many areas so we're trying to rewrite this policy to serve us into the future for whatever we might face so with that we also have Jean Marie Middleton our attorney that's assisting with this policy thank you very much good afternoon board chair Mr Barbieri Vice chairwoman Mrs Brill board members colleagues thank you we're pleased to present the revisions to this policy 3.82 as you may know this policy was developed during

055the height of the covid-19 pandemic and things have changed and as of today many sections within the policy are currently suspended so these revisions will bring the policy currents um the first proposed change is updating the title uh the title is employee protocols in response to control of communicable diseases including respiratory virus outbreak and epidemic endemic or pandemic we are proposing we shorten that title to control of communicable diseases among employees and this brings the title in line with our student policy as well we also are proposing an update to our purpose we are making this in line again with our student policy this is to facilitate the continuous operations of the district and protect the health safety and Welfare of employees by allowing for the implementation of prevention mitigation strategies to diminish the effect

056of communicable diseases in compliance with CDC state and local guidelines during an outbreak epidemic endemic or pandemic we have added a section on definitions we've defined communicable disease epidemics pandemics outbreaks and endemics so that it's clear what these terms mean within the policy this this section provides information on what administrative procedures can be put in place by the superintendent for the control of communicable diseases things like instructing employees providing information on how to detect or prevent the virus requiring a reporting structure preparing standards for employees who are returning after recovering from a communicable disease any reports that are needed and developing programs on how they may be prevented or transmitted so that employees have that information we also kept in place the board notification part of the policy to keep the board oversight in place

057within the policy providing communication from the superintendent to the board and that was in the is in the current policy and we're proposing that state in we added a section on confidentiality and we also added information that we will follow the Americans with Disabilities Act and added a section that the superintendent shall comply with all applicable federal state laws executive orders and Health Department regulations we removed as I mentioned the currently suspended items these were very specific towards covid-19 things that are no longer in place like the definition of the uh the close contact and the responsibilities of someone has a positive test there were reporting requirements and testing requirements and things that were in place that are no longer in place now so these have been removed and these again were all are all

058currently suspended within the policy and those are the changes that we're proposing to update the policy most of them are in line well are were designed to be in line with the student policy so that we have some consistency between the employee policy and the student policy so the definitions and the purpose and things like that were all updated for that purpose just like to add so I mean this policy does Place some faith in the superintendent to react to these type of situations to follow federal state and local requirements we did include that provision that at the next board meeting or as soon as humanly possible I would get back to the board and apprise you of what actions I've taken but I think this is needed to be nimble enough to be prepared

059for whatever future outbreaks might face us yeah thank you very much all right thank you Ms Rieger thank you Mrs Middleton all right so that brings us to our last policy Workshop policy 5.50 student education records I want to welcome up Miss Heather Frederick Chief Financial Officer and Ms Cara rubinson our general manager of IT solutions all right good afternoon um I'm very happy to be here today to go over to policy 5.5 the student education records it's been a while since I've been up here for a policy so I felt like I needed to get back in the action a little bit um I have Carol rubinson she's been working very diligently on this policy as well as our legal phone a friend Mr Bruce Harris he should be on the the video and

060available for questions so in starting the overall purpose of what we're trying to to do here is just to update the policy and have it comply with state and federal rules and regulations and most recently what I want to point out is the state rule uh was actually just recently adopted on October 19th and so I want to really thank legal for working with us in order to get those changes into this policy presentation Ms rubinson has been working on the policy for several months and then we were able to also incorporate these new changes and so with these the the the main points of the uh the State Board rule is that we need to have uh review and approval of the online Educational Service uh Records which is actually software online Educational Service

061and it's making sure that all the personal information of the students is protected and in looking at that part of what this the the new rule and requirement is stating is that the board what the policy what the rule wants to do is to ensure that every single software that has personal student information is being reviewed by some persons or persons and so right now we do have a process in place we've had a process in place that all software is reviewed by the technology Clearinghouse committee and so now we're just adding that within the policy it's been our current process and we're just adding that to be more explicit within the policy and then with all other uh agreements because there are going to be when you look at the different software agreements they

062can range from being free having no cost to actually having a dollar amount and so this rule ensures that it doesn't matter what the value is that it has to go through this process and be reviewed and so that means that not everything is going to be going to the board everything else would follow the policy 6.14 the purchasing department guidelines and most of those contracts and software contracts would fall under the delegated authority so anything over 25 000 is what would be coming to the board which is what our current practice has been so it would just be anything that was less than 25 000 and would just fall and just only go to the technology Clearinghouse committee where there are some changes and where this policy is a little bit different is there's

063actually a financial impact if you noticed with this item and that's because there's some additional work that's being added on staff so we have to the technology Clearinghouse committee is an internal committee with internal staff it's comprised of I.T staff as well as academics because we want to make sure that is cross-functional they're looking at all softwares and we need to the purpose of the committee is making sure that it's not that it's going to work with our infrastructure that is going to to work with that has the proper security and so the what we have to do is we need to make sure that everything that's not going to the board so every single software that's being reviewed by the technology committee has to be uploaded on the district website and available for parents

064to be able to access what that is in addition to uploading it onto the website the actual you know what the vendor is in the software what the purpose of it is why do they need the personal information what personal information do they need that's information that we've always requested it's on a specific form that form number is called 2220 which is also attached to the agenda item and we're making some minor changes to that form to just more explicitly State what the requirements are within the policy so making sure the information is is kept confidential which it all has always been and also being very clear that it cannot be used none of this information can be used for commercial purposes the Third change is that so we're going to upload we'll have to

065upload the actual name of the vendor the purpose of why this information needs to be used which is that for form 2220 the last piece of it is we have to actually link to the vendor website to the terms and conditions that the vendor is using because within that form 2220 there's specific terms and conditions related to privacy that the vendor is agreeing to and this rule wants to make sure that the vendor is actually complying with what they what what they agreed to so we it's not just looking at the form but it's going to their website and having a link on our website our district website to the vendor website to ensure ensure the terms and conditions match what they agreed to and so that is going to be some significant work on

066the I.T side so we estimate right now that adding two positions between the security department as well as records management but we're working through you know where's where's the best best place to put those two positions let me ask a question and then Mrs McQueen wanted to ask a question this is a question for the general counsel my understanding in my discussions with you is that the new statute or the new rule requires not that I want to do it or I'm sure my colleagues don't either that any contract that involves an outsider having identical identifiable student information must be approved by the board we're being told that it's under 25 000. it's that's not the discussion you and I had the discussion that you and I had was that when the rule first came

067out before it went before the hearing that was something that we were looking at to see if that is in fact what would be voted on by the state board what ultimately came out to the State Board is not that so where it has landed is that that's not the requirement and so all of this work that we've been doing because it was a question mark at one point in time all this work that we have been doing has been around um the the technology end of it so that we can ensure that we are meeting the new requirements in the rule which does not require that everything come to the board as we had thought it might um and while at the same time you know changing the language making sure that we have

068the Personnel to meet some of the nuances of what is required okay thank you Mr McQueen did you have a question at this point I have a comment and I apologize to Mr Burt because typically I would give him a heads up however from the previous Workshop is what brings this question in terms of adding to staff members initially when I read this I totally understood it and so it's not even a request I'm making a point that we've put additional burdens on school centers but we don't allocate them additional staff to carry through with that so it doesn't even reply it doesn't warrant a comment back but I think we need to be cognizant of that right just understood we'll look at it it hasn't been added yet but uh we just see with

069these rules uh that they're putting more and more on our plates Vice chair Earl and then Mrs Anders thank you and don't get nervous Ms Bernard this is just used as an example but so in the case of activate right it's under the 25 000 correct so it wouldn't come to the school board but it would require it being on the website like how would that how would this policy alleviate the issue that came up with activate well this world this world didn't exist at that time right I understand that so this Rule now and if we Implement if we implement the policy it now has a technology committee that then would review all of that they would ensure as I understand it that it gets onto the website um in the form 2220 which

070was completed in the case of activate that they would they would be take part in seeing that portion of it all the way through but it still would not come to the board because it would be under the threshold so it was just my follow-up then is that yes no matter what the cost is of the program if there's student information to be shared it would go on the website whether it comes to us or not that's my understanding yes that is correct thank you thank you Mr Harris from above um thank you and for the benefit of the public the public I think it's uh timely that we talk about the technology Clearinghouse committee I'm always very impressed with the folks that sit on that committee I think all of the board members have

071someone and how often they meet and how they really delve into what we do here at the school board so can you kind of give the public a little bit about these outstanding people that volunteer their services to make sure that we are following process procedures and trying to do the right thing to protect our district as well as our Student Records so we actually have two committees under it so we have of the technology advisory committee which is comprised of volunteers with expertise within technology you're going to see the chair of the committee is going to be a part of the tech plan presentation they give their time to to review all the technology the district implements and they just do an outstanding job we also have the technology Clearinghouse committee which is comprised

072of nine Personnel of they're actually District staff so it's District I.T staff as well as staff from the academic side and edtech because when a school is asking to use a certain software we need to make sure that because that one school might not realize that we're using it at another school or that we might have a better product that we're using and we want to make sure it integrates with our with our infrastructure as well as meets all of our security requirements so any type of software goes through this internal committee and then is also reviewed by the legal department prior to the the contract being execute you did so with the collaboration and of both of those committees the technology it really keeps us on the Forefront of having the best technology within

073our district all right you want to continue thank you okay so now I'm going to pass it over to miss rubinson to finish up the all the other changes which is what we actually started with before this rule was just approved thank you heather um just some specifics about what we changed in the language of the policy we added a language that clarified what records are electronic and what records our paper I heard on Dr Robinson talk about the student registration form that isn't a perfect example of that we have the intent of hopefully having a electronic version of the registration form by hopefully spring of next year maybe I'm not sure of the timeline but um and then the student cumulative folders is the another project that that I'm very excited about that we

074have recently embarked on that we are digitizing all of the cumulative folders and the contents in those folders for all of our elementary schools now that's a two-year project just to do the elementary schools so in that two-year period we need to have a policy that that can handle both paper records and electronic records and some schools are having paper cumula folders some schools will have electronic so the policy needs to be able to um you know handle both of those scenarios um section two we added the board policies that that are related to policy 5.50 there are a significant number because the topic is records and information it's it touches so many areas um the definition section I think is really important now we expanded to add definitions of category a information category B

075information and student pii and of course the online Educational Services this policy is quite lengthy and quite complex so I think the definition section is is quite important there in section six we actually removed the fee schedule we already have a fee schedule in policy under policy 2.041 under public records so it made sense to us to Simply refer to that one rather than trying to keep two that are in sync and section 11 we added a new official school officials access section that helped to clarify some requirements under FERPA thanks um so I don't know that I need to go over every of these sections I think you can read some of them yourself I do want to point out section 17 is the updated records transfer requirements that's um specifically talking about threat

076assessments and unsubstantiated threat assessments this is the first time in in rural in in policy for us that we are saying that threat assessments do follow a student when they leave our school district and we send the records to the new school district and threat assessments do follow them as well as you probably know however unsubstance substantiated threat assessments would not follow the student unless they met certain conditions so that is outlined in section 17. um that's pretty much it we we deleted some redundant content that is is now available in policy 2.34 that was recently updated but that's pretty much it if you have any other questions we'll be happy to answer those Mrs Andrews do we have anything for the IEP um I didn't see it listed here there's nothing that needs to

077be specific to the IEP in Student Records it's just it's another student record like many others is it still paper uh or we the IEP is in Ed plan so so no I mean I'm sure the the older versions before Ed plan existed are still on paper but but no it's it's in edland so it is electronic and everything now any other questions comments all right thank you very much Miss Frederick stay close by we've got one last Workshop The Five-Year technology plan so I'm going to welcome Mr Deepak Agarwal in our I.T All-Stars you know these guys we approved our district Five-Year Plan and they said we're not going to be outdone by the district we're going to create our own Five-Year Plan to support you all and that's that's what they've done here

078today these are the brainiacs or the district these are this is a lot of brain power assembling at the table trying to hang on to all these folks they're in high demand thank you all right let's Frederick all right so we're going to be presenting The Five-Year Tech plan and is going to be presented to the board for approval at the December 7th meeting so it will be on your the seventh December 7th board agenda like I mentioned before which in the previous presentation we really have been on the Forefront in terms of technology in our district and we really do owe that to the leadership of Mr argoal he is the reason why we have a five-year Tech plan and that's something that he implemented when he started and I just want to give

079them credit because the reason why we were able to Pivot so quickly during covid and go and and put out to schools nearly a hundred thousand or to students nearly a hundred thousand devices in a two-month period so that students could continue to learn is because we had this Tech plan and we had it as a goal to have a one-to-one devices and we were able to have the foundation in place in order to make that happen so Mr argual okay thanks Frederick I'd like to say good afternoon to our chair Barbary Vice chair Burrell Supreme Park and rest of the board members this Tech plan basically is as good as your team basically so I want to introduce my team uh Michael Callahan director pmo Chris Prasad director of tech Ops Ray Osler director

080of I.T security David attwell edtech reports under Mr Vargas and Don Pumphrey director of Enterprise applications so without these people uh that's not this is not it's not going to be possible so this uh specifically this Tech plan will entail uh you know first we're going to talk about what we have done in that past Tech plan uh what we're going to be doing the future Tech plan and also a highlight mainly our key projects basically going forward so this Tech plan is nothing but is a road map for really our technology initiatives and what are we going to be doing for our students and our schools to make sure we're working in conjunction with our district strategic plan that Mr Burke has and kind of better prepare students for future academic and personal success

081um idea is we want to make sure that we want to provide the best technology to make sure our students are being part of the digital transformation are able to um you know have all the success in the future so these are the projects we did basically uh in the last tech plan and noteworthy Miss fedric already said about student one-to-one devices we also did our sis replacement we also did many cyber security improvements over the years um and I know David attwell and his team did the interactive classrooms and it helped as well so kind of like many many initiatives were done and completed on time and under budget thanks to the pmo so we were able to uh work with uh at Tech and our schools and I'll ask Mr Hatfield to go

082over a few slides on the IP Tech excellent thank you good afternoon board chairman Barbieri Vice chairwoman Bureau board members Mr superintendent uh thank you for the opportunity to share with you some of the great work that we've been doing and plan to do my name is Dr David outwell and I'm the director of educational technology for the district this strategic plan really has been a continuation of the great work done through the previous technology plan we have done um as we've done in the past we're collaborating with the division of teaching and learning to ensure that it meets the needs of all students to increase digital literacy and academic achievement the plan discusses the future of technology and its impact on academic disciplines some of the areas that are impacted are students with disabilities

083Ells library media stem encoding College and Career Readiness virtual education and course and credit recovery the classroom envelope is guaranteed for every teacher and student in Palm Beach County the image on the left shows a typical classroom setup with a teacher laptop document camera projector smart interactive flat panel and audio enhancement system the image in the middle and the photograph of a classroom at Verdi Elementary on the right shows the next iteration for the Elementary School classrooms where the projector and Screen have been replaced with a second wall mounted smart interactive flat panel we continue to improve our spaces as we build out our new schools listening to feedback and modifying plans accordingly so you can expect this model to adjust and evolve as time goes on and with that thank you for your time

084Apostle it back to the so next next chart is basically I want to commend our Tech chair Mr Dwayne Piper who's a CIO from South saltwater Florida south Florida Water Management so his his Tech members have held uh give their feedback on preparing our infrastructure and our internet demands and uh what storage we need and many of the Technologies we we have provided to schools and our teachers and our students and our employees and so all the so you can see the growth over the years and we have we have kept up with the pace and thanks to board and and superintendent to provide us all the means basically to to address all those needs so the next five-year strategic priorities is specifically we want to make sure our as we have done the digital

085transformation we want to have the classroom to be digital to be able to work with Ed Tech so they have the right Tools in place they have all the resources as well as far as students and teacher goes We Are One to One School District now and so you want to make sure we continue that path additionally we are working very hard on the cyber security we have a close closed door security Workshop uh with you on on December 7th so we will be providing you more details on that and we also want to make sure that all our administrative systems like PeopleSoft and sis and er you know all our HCM system they're all up to date and with not only the upgrades but also with the right infrastructure foreign so for the first

086time since I've been here all our I.T budgets have been fully uh funded thanks to miss uh Miss Frederick I appreciate it and Dr Mr Brown Burke so we we have uh classified into three areas so as you can see uh all our it and at budgets have uh 462 million basically in five years to spend to make sure we are you know making sure we have the right refresh we are right on the technology path make sure our students and our schools our and our teachers have the right technology in their hand and also the infrastructure to support I think the last leg we have on E8 so as you can see uh we get uh period reimbursement I think for the first time we put down like seven applications for uh next five

087years and all seven are approved and um and you can see uh eat it with FCC USAC allow us uh uh much more bandwidth now as far as application goes but you know as we're we're I think that they have also another Five-Year Plan um the way they are doing prior to one on priority two is basically more not on the first school basis but as a district basis and we get like around 80 of our investment back on bandwidth uh bandwidth and our network devices and and many of the technology we use to make sure we have the bright Broadband capabilities so but that I will be here for the questions because in the order that you had your hands up Mrs Andrews Mrs Mrs Whitfield and Miss Ayala wow I want to thank

088you all I think you're a super team here uh Deepak I mean you've been here with this District I see your outstanding team I think about you when I travel to the schools and I see the equipment the computers in every classroom and how Mrs Frederick you put that money together and we ordered all those computers and I was waiting with baited breath to get them in the Glades region I picked up the phone and I called you and it seems like the computers just came just like that and when we think about you know all of the things that happened to us during the pandemic working closely with Ed Tech you made it happen I want to thank Our Community Partners who worked with us so when we talk about you know being able

089to have connectivity in all of the communities that needed it it was your people I saw you and you got it done and and I thank you for taking us to the next level in Palm Beach County when I see the smart boards and I see the presentations everywhere I just saw all the great presentations at West Tech everywhere I'm walking I see you and I think about you and what you do and we're just so thankful to have a team with the cyber security I can't go through all of this because you're just awesome you haven't missed the beat and I know my fellow board members want to say thank you for keeping us updated on tasks especially for our children our employees to make sure that we don't miss a beat thank you

090is with you thank you I I just like Mrs Andrews wanted to thank you for your work when we look at our scores that we have in Palm Beach County compared to the rest of the state we're doing really well considering what we all went through and so I give a lot of that credit um kind of nobody thinks about it but the fact that we were able to Pivot so quickly because of the computers you were able to give to our students so they could actually work from home so I want to I want to give you that credit publicly and just say thank you so much for keeping us going because a lot of other communities wish that they had had that ability that we had and it's it's due to all your

091hard work so thank you so much Miss Ayala thank you Mr chair and I'm going to have some questions so I'm going to preemptively ask for opportunity for back and forth thank you first want to say thank you all for the hard work it's a really robust um my appointee Kathy Myron gave me a full report on the work that you've all been doing on this so I want to thank her as well for her time um I want to say great job keeping the budget in great shape especially with the large influx of products and technology that we've been adding in our classrooms really Testament to everybody who's on the team and then I had some questions about some of the things I saw in the packet first I want to say thank you

092for Esports I can't say how many times I go to a school and the students come up to me and say how do we start a club can you help us and they're excited about it but we know that with the gaming there comes risks if you're live gaming and different things that we need to protect our students from so I'm glad that we're thinking about that question are we thinking about virtual reality in augmented Ed as we look at the future of what education could look like at Mr Apple um yes so good you know we have we have District standard right and we we do need to make sure that all the systems that we put in place work with our work with our systems and at the other side of that we

093have Cutting Edge um VR has been you know Career and Technical education has been playing with that for quite quite a number of years whether you talk about the old v-space use it units that that those are probably about six years old now I know some of the headsets have come into to enter into that space as well um you know there's some technical issues because a lot of the programs are actually built on the one that is owned by Facebook and trying to make sure that these systems will work within our space but we are actually looking into that obviously with with these teams and with curriculum as well to to try and impact that there's a couple things that we're currently looking at in that area yes thank you for that answer that's

094great I was just really excited to see that um next I had questions about Cloud usage are we using it protect question um so we'll start there and then I have a follow-up regarding that so yeah I think the same question was asked in the tag last attack and I answered the same way so we have over the years you know if you see the other instruction material application mostly their SAS based application so we all been always been using cloud other than that we do use um you know I can disclose here overall but we do use AWS as our Cloud choice and we have some uh also some workloads going into Azure we are working on a few other Technologies right now to make sure we have a proper Disaster Recovery in the

095cloud so I'm just going to stop here we can talk more in a closed session if you want that's great and my follow-up was regarding the hits that we've seen to governmental agencies where they request Ransom after Gathering your information what's the protection for those risks that we have in place so we will talk more about that in the cyber security closed session okay great um and then last question on this um I really love the trainings for fishing I actually um had one come through it was the Amex bill they and that was great um what do we have on trainings for info sharing when folks attempt hacking right for our employees who are our first line of defense and protecting their credentials to access to all the portals that we have internally are

096there trainings around can you tell me a little bit about that so if you have an annual security awareness training which covers all those topics and we urge everybody here to take that training and we would like to protect every employee to make sure that they they learn every chapter and Ray is pretty big on that and every day reminds me give me the stats and take it to Heather and sure to miss Patrick's show you know and I think we're going to be talking in our departments also to make sure district is 100 compliance basically compliant I would say yeah attackers are getting incredibly sophisticated correct thank you so much yeah Dr Robinson thank you um so I'm going to Veer off topic just a wee bit because I know um my questions will

097not really be technically housed in your area but you are the computer whizzes and I need more from the computer whizzes for the children right so um the first question I have and I don't know I guess you got credit for the one-on-one so this I think belongs to you what what is the status of children taking home devices now I think the way every child should be able to take the computer home so it's a one-on we are one-on-one district and every school has computer for every every student take home and it's up to the school how they Implement that policy okay and so my request Mr subalua Barnett so principals know that that's kind of the expectation that yes we've we've navigated some issues when now that we have the progress monitoring monitoring

098testing three times a year there's a has it I mean there's a principals like to hang on to their devices so they may go through periods where they say look we don't want the devices going home we want to make sure we have them on hand for testing we're trying to avoid creating any inequities by you know doing that and Mr Tyrion I've worked through some individual cases and then when it gets to our attention we say hey make sure the kids are able to take the devices home but I probably need to do a little more homework on that one and get back to you because it seems like it's a little it's a mixed bag it is it is I mean I'm aware of a kindergartner who is taking his device home and

099it was just what they do at that school now this is a um inner city school right and so I think that they may recognize that some of their students maybe many of their students might not have access at home but then we have children in more affluent schools who don't have access at home and we're Equity embedded system we said so if we could just follow up on that we will the one thing that's been a real challenge with that program is the amount of breakage we're experiencing and I know that's been part of the motivation to try to keep devices on campus but we're working through that okay so um okay I'm gonna leave that part alone and so then um the in terms of the images you showed about the technology changes

100in the classroom so you have a model for what technology should look like in for example an Elementary classroom yes and so will we be working to ensure that every classroom in every school is that part of your Five-Year Plan to to get them to that point instead of just the new schools I believe so I believe so absolutely yes we um right now those um the classroom envelope is in each of the schools now of course we do have as time goes on um for example a document camera some teachers might not prefer to use the document camera take it off their desk or we might be doing a Refresh on a product such like a document camera or a projector but yes we're constantly refreshing these things keeping them up to date but

101as far as the list of those items those are what we do have in the classroom right now okay so then I misunderstood you because the slide that you showed with the three pictures so I thought that you said that the third picture which I don't remember which school it was had some brand spanking new formulation of technology in it yes so in new construction in in some of the new schools that we've been doing um basically they have in that of instead of adding another projector we've added a modern smart panel on the front instead of doing the projector in it's very cost prohibitive to go back into all schools and do that because you do have that second display already with the projector so what we're doing is we're upkeeping the fleet that

102we already have with the projectors to make sure that functionally instructional wise the teachers do have those dual displays it's just on new construction there's a couple efficiencies on why it's actually beneficial to add a panel or a screen on the front it's backlit it's easier for kids to see from further but we're maintaining our Fleet that we have in the other schools okay I'll follow with that later in a different way and so um and then I just want to throw in since you are the technology experts that I would hope that each of you that you're individually and collectively pushing into the academic program to make sure that we are developing our young people to be more like you right um that we have like introduction to coding in like across the board

103and I know you're not the academic people I know you know you had to talk to choice or whoever right but you guys know what it should look like and you guys know gals too sorry um no the steps to get there right and so I'm just gonna I'm just requesting that you push in with the academic people to make sure that that development's taking place because like I told some of the young people people who run computers will run the world and you know it's true right and so we need to develop more of them in Palm Beach County and my last question is um no I'm gonna make it a comment I hope that you will continue the summer intern program and that you do a I don't know what it's called like

104a development pathway so you know how they do like in baseball and then they have like the minor leagues the training camp I need you to not just take the kids who are already rocking it but to take the kids who have a high interest who really raise their hand and you inspire them to rock it okay thank you and so now I'm the next one to speak so I will I'm actually not asking any questions I just want to comment I want to tell you that your department is absolutely a model for the state and a model nationally and from the simplest level the annual training you know when I get all the notices to do my annual training I usually roll my eyes well I have to tell you that your training has

105taught me so much that twice my husband's business was hacked and I told him when I do it again you're gonna sit with me because you're going to have to watch to understand what you don't click on because the and that will prevent you from having those problems and the way that you've all responded to the cyber security threats really it truly is a model I'm just very impressed I thank you for your responsiveness all the time because no matter how silly my question may be I get responses right away and I hear that from everybody all the time so I just really wanted to say thank you thank you thank you and none of you are ever allowed to leave us thank you well going to last after six ladies I just can say

106ditto six times I do want to also compliment you it's it's a ways back and Deepak I'm not sure which of these people at the table participated but I remember West Boca High School my grandson's in the computer science academy and um and there was not a professor a teacher available and I know somebody from the I.T Department filled in and and taught those children until they were able to get a teacher so I want to thank you for helping the kids in our schools and situations like that too so thanks very much all right well thank you it doesn't get any better than that it team so we will rest our case and that concludes our workshops thank you during the workshop motion by Mrs Whitfield taken by Miss Iowa any discussion all in

107favor opposed motion carriers six zero all right I'll call the special meeting to order at time is it 4 11. 4 11 P.M Ms bellato would you please take the role Quinn here District Two alexandriaola here District three Karen Brill your District Four Erica Whitfield here District Five Frank Barbieri District Six Marcia Andrews here district 7 Deborah Robinson we have Quorum with all seven board members in attendance the record should also reflect that we have with the superintendent Burke General Council Bernard Inspector General Michael and board clerk Tony Balada would you all please stand for the pledge to be led by missile under God indivisible before we look at number two on the agenda it's time to recognize that Mrs mcquinn will be celebrating her 50th birthday in in two days happy birthday Mrs McCoy

108board members we have four sets of minutes on the agenda we need a motion to approve them motion by Mr Alice second by Mrs Whitfield any discussion all in favor pose motion carries 7-0 we have no items to add for good cause pretend you have any items to withdrawal no sir what members you wish to pull anything from the agenda need a motion to approve the agenda motion by Mrs Whitfield second by Mrs Andrews any discussion all in favor opposed motion carries 7-0 their disclosures or abstentions seeing none the superintendent you have comments yes sir I'd like to begin by thanking Mr James gavrilos president and CEO of the Education Foundation of Palm Beach County along with his team our students staff and the whole community that came out on Saturday for the eighth annual

109Heroes for Education run walk it was a great time I raised some money for a good cause there with the teacher supplies and our throughout our schools and we've got a brief video I'd like to share tonight [Music] the Palm Beach County School District Community played a big part in this annual event at John Prince Park to celebrate people with Down Syndrome welcome to the downward extraordinary Rock hi my name is Kelly diva I am so excited to be here what beautiful day today because without all these people I don't know what I'd be without them friends and family join teachers and therapists like this group from Frontier Elementary School this Fab Four and Duncan came out to support Grayson we're here for our kids all the time in school and outside of school we

110love being there for them we love reporting we're a family and us being out here out of school just shows them that there were also large and supportive teams for Jackson from Park Vista who are we detected Harrison it's Sunday from Timber Trace Elementary Nicholas from Boca Raton Community High Marco from Golden Grove Elementary Victoria from Santa Lucius Community High and birthday girl Anna from Jupiter Community High [Applause] the walk is another example of the dedication and commitment the Palm Beach County School District makes to support students with special needs every day we walk into the district office we know that we're there for the students that's our main concern together all these superheroes raise more than a hundred and seventy thousand dollars for the Gold Coast Down syndrome organization I was crying because Bodywork

111means all these people have the amazing love I have [Music] all right well that was not the video I expected but that was a great video nonetheless uh I think I'll keep moving ahead if we get a chance we'll go back to the other one uh was it last night yeah I guess it was last night we had the College and Career Fair out at the fairgrounds uh we think we had about 3 300 people come out parents students uh we had I think about 80 boosts on display with various colleges universities also Career and Technical education programs our armed services and all kinds of options for our high school students as they consider what they want to do after graduation so that was a big success and then uh also I just wanted to

112mention that let's see okay how could I forget this we got an important question about November 8th the elections fast approaching just a reminder that what we're trying to do here is continue what was originally approved in 2018 it's a tax levy already in place that's having a huge impact on our schools with school safety mental health art music choice career programs and improving teacher pay if you're interested in more comments from me you can tune in on Sunday to to the point with Michael Williams and I'll be talking a little bit more other than that are we do we have our video ready there we think so all right let's roll the dice board here's uh the heroes for Education run walk s for Education 5K run so excited to have you all out

113here thank you for being such a great part of this annual event benefiting the teachers here in the school district of Palm Beach County people ask me what the goal of our heroes of Education 5K is yeah we want to raise funds so we can support teachers and students but here's the goal we've got a thousand people out here today and they're having a ball a lot of these guys are behind me this is the Polo Park Middle School team [Music] we've had a bunch of employees here chairman of board multiple school board members and we're just having a good time this morning the turnout today has been great I've worked for today [Applause] [Music] our incredible sponsors are here our chairman of the board DJ Jim Morris got this crowd rocking we've got mascots

114getting ready to run we've got kids getting ready to do a 100-yard dash there's a thousand people here having a great time celebrating teachers students education and Palm Beach County what more could you ask for all right that was a lot of fun so that uh concludes my comments Mrs McQueen missile Mrs Whitfield we can always count on you Mrs Andrews yeah and just a quickie uh you know we're into the uh Arena right now for fall Sports and I just want to say thank you to the coaches to the students to the parents I see you all out there at the games all of the football games the other uh fall Sports I see you uh winning trophies uh Wellington and Palm Beach Central just uh created a big game just the other night

115in Palm Beach Central took the trophy back from Wellington I just know that it takes a lot to be in academics as well as in sports and I just want to thank all the teachers the coaches the families and the athletes for what you do your athletic Athletics as well as academics go right in hand and it makes you truly exciting I look at you on television on channel five late at night to see what's going on since I can't make every game and you're awesome thank you for having such a wonderful wonderful experience in Palm Beach County academically athletically socially and emotionally and thanks for all you do parents coaches teachers schools and staff for making it happen in Palm Beach County thank you Mrs Andrews Dr Robinson Miss brill I just want to

116thank this morning the superintendent I attended a uh the first annual Consular appreciation breakfast put on by the George snow scholarship fund and they invited the the counselors from the high schools in the district so it was a great a great morning to first annual hopefully they'll be doing it every year at least that's what the plan is but I want to thank Tim snow and the board of the Georgetown scholarship fund for recognizing that our counselors are some of the most important people in our high school so thank you we have several several we have 13 agenda item speakers are we connected to the Glades are we connected to the glaze right yes okay mayor Wilson mayor Belle Glade uh vice mayor Amicon or city of Belle Glade go ahead sir yes uh good

117afternoon all to superintendent Burke and all school board members and Mr chair my name is Joaquin and my son vice mayor said at Belle Glade and I'm in support of naming the new high school to be considered for Dr Joaquin Garcia uh Mr Garcia we know he was a great Hispanic Advocate and not just Hispanic advocate for all kids here in Palm Beach County and uh hopefully y'all consider this vote and take his consideration for Hispanics kids out here to have a mentor they can look up to on the school so we appreciate your support if y'all can support that mayor of South Bay uh Joel Kyles was here but he had a leap and he's also in support so I thank you for the time and consideration for this page thank you Mr vice

118mayor mayor Keith Babb from the city of Pahokee uh uh he's not here he couldn't make it okay Dr Carlos Diaz come up to the podium wait wait let's get a microphone over there foreign good afternoon members of the board and superintendent all of you know me but for the record I am Dr Carlos Diaz chairman of the Hispanic education Coalition of Palm Beach County and professor emeritus in the College of Education at Florida Atlantic University I along with many supporters are here to urge you to name tripolo high school after my predecessor as chairman of the Hispanic education coalition Dr Joaquin Garcia I could list joaquin's many accomplishments as a physician immigrant businessman community and education advocate joaquin's life was a true Horatio Alger story I will not do so because this board did

119an excellent job of recognizing them and the proclamation you issued posthumously honoring joaquin's life in December of last year at that meeting I addressed the board and said that A fitting tribute to what King's passion for greater equity in the education of all students in Palm Beach County would be to name the future triple o high school after him well that day is today and I'm back to implore you to do so board members are aware that Hispanics at about 37 percent represent the largest plurality of students served by the district their parents are the largest constituency of that population and Hispanic students generate the largest share of tax revenue for this school district yet in the history of the Palm Beach County Schools of the 180 or so schools in the district no school

120has ever been named after a Hispanic individual that dubious historical fact can end today it is true that the naming of the school is a symbolic Act the graduation or achievement rate will not automatically go up with the naming of a new school yet I would like to stress that it is a very important symbolic Act especially to the Latino community of Palm Beach County I cannot overstate the significance of the support and pride in the Hispanic Community to know that one of us is being considered by this board with the honor of having his school named after him an honor which will endure in perpetuity the Hispanic education Coalition has asked supporters of naming triple o high school after Dr Joaquin Garcia to attend today's meeting wearing white shirts or blouses this is to

121provide a visual image of the broad support for naming the school after Joaquin you will hear from some of these individuals during the citizen comments section of this meeting we have also asked those who support this naming but could not be here to contact board members to express their support I'm sure you've received a number of emails voicemails messages or letters to let you know that the support is widespread Joaquin and I were great friends who collaborated with others on Heck policy and actions for over a decade but our friendship is not the reason I'm here speaking to you today I have never met someone as committed as Joaquin to educational equity and who was willing to do whatever he could to advance that cause he did so even if it involved jeopardizing personal popularity

122or individual resources he always told me that quote the needs of the students must come first and he meant it literally Joaquin fully understood the significance of fighting for causes that would transcend his own lifetime that is a very valuable lesson for all of us in this room and for the students of the Palm Beach County Schools it is a lesson I have taken to Heart as I have tried to fill his shoes and honor his great legacy I hope that in the future Latino and non-latino students may want to know who Dr Joaquin Garcia was and after whom this school is named if they follow up on this question they will find a man who while personally very successful never lost sight of his good fortune nor trying to better the lives of others

123who needed assistance or advocacy what better message could we send to our current and future students on behalf of the Hispanic education Coalition I urge every member of this board to support the the naming of tripolo high school after Dr Joaquin Garcia the time to make history is today thank you thank you Dr Diaz Xavier Garcia [Applause] Mr Xavier Garcia are you here Javi I'm sorry Javier Messiah you have to excuse my mispronunciation no worries many people dream about making history few if any achieve it today you the board members of the Palm Beach County School District have been presented with an opportunity to make history we have the opportunity to step forward and be the first school in Palm Beach County the 10th largest school district in the nation to name a school after

124Hispanic this is not just about making history this is about celebrating our Hispanic community the very community that makes up the majority of our student body I know that many of you worked with Dr Garcia and I am sure each and every one year of you experience firsthand how dedicated and driven he was to improve in the quality of Education of Hispanic children for Dr Garcia ensuring that each and every Hispanic voice was heard was Paramount Dr Garcia was a fierce believer in bilingual education in fact he was honored with the medal of civil Mary by the king of Spain for his volunteer worked towards the quality of education and representation of Hispanic children and for promoting the Spanish language in our schools Dr Garcia was a warrior for anyone who needed his support and

125when he saw that the Hispanic Community was being left behind he stood up to stop it and when people wouldn't listen he shouted louder Garcia fought to ensure that every child got the quality of Education that they deserved he carried only one flag one sword one Shield and that was for the Hispanic Children of the Palm Beach County School District the naming of tripolo high school after Dr Joaquin Garcia will be a moment in local history that people will look back on people will remember the moment that our school district stepped forward and showed their Hispanic community that their voices have been heard that they matter they will remember that we were leaders I stand before you as a member of the Palm Beach County Community for over 30 years together together we have the

126chance to give our children a role model they can believe in a true example of how with hard work and determination anything is possible a role model that never give up fought for justice and believed inequality by naming the triple all high school after Dr Garcia you tell children everywhere that making history is possible thank you Green Acres council member Susie Diaz afternoon Susie Diaz I am a council member with the city of Green Acres and I am here today in support of naming triple o high school after Dr Joaquin Garcia I know I don't have to tell you who he was you know that you know he was a fierce Advocate you know at times he was The Devil's Advocate and that is how growth happens when we are challenged when we are asked

127to look at a perspective outside of the perspectives that we already know and are comfortable with Dr Garcia advocated Way Beyond education I was honored to have known him for nearly 25 years and during that time I saw him do so much good within our community which is why I am absolutely asking that you please consider naming the school after him I know we heard Mr Diaz mention the 37 percent Hispanics within our district one fact I would like to also point out is that where this school will be pulling students from it looks like it's the Palm Springs Green Acres Lake Worth sort of unincorporated corridor Palm Springs is 60 Hispanic Green Acres is 47 Hispanic and Lake Worth is 44 Hispanic so there is a very strong possibility that the concentration of Hispanics

128at this specific school will be higher than those in another um in another area so for these reasons for many more um again you all did such a beautiful job honoring him with the proclamation you you know who he was you know what he stood for and it is so apropos it is well beyond time as a Florida and Palm Beach County native I can tell you it is Way Beyond time that we look at honoring a Hispanic with a school naming thank you so much for your time foreign Mabel Melton good afternoon my name is Mabel Melton I'm here to speak and support naming the triple zero School in honor of Dr Joaquin Garcia I was privileged to meet Joaquin a number of years ago when my husband and I moved here after our

129lives spent mostly in Miami Dusty and I are parents of five children the youngest turning 34 in December don't figure out my age I'm old enough and we have always cared passionately about the quality of public education it is the formative Crucible in which many children's lives are forever impacted and improved and it is an equal opportunity environment that in many respects helps prepare students for adulthood and their lifelong opportunities ahead that too was joaquin's View Joaquin was passionate fearless and unrelenting in pursuit of equity and opportunity for all students of our Public Schools but especially for Hispanic students who are the largest to ethnic plurality in the district he was a Beloved Community leader not only in the public education space and he supported many Civic causes with his time his talent and his

130personal resources with nearly 200 Public Schools in Palm Beach District it would be well more than appropriate to name the new school in honor of Dr Joaquin Garcia the first Hispanic honoree this will be a source of enormous pride and inspiration to Latino students who number nearly four out of every 10 in the district and also for the Hispanic faculty and administrators as well everyone has heard everyone you've heard before today has said this is a historic moment and it is and I urge you all to take part in making history today for it not now when thank you for your consideration Carmen Garcia well I wasn't going to speak but um there's so much to say in such a short time Joaquin Garcia was more than just a man who gave 100 of his

131life to children that he didn't have I remember him telling me many times um I don't have any children of my own but every single child in the school district is mine he went above and beyond when nobody would hear him he would as was said before he would speak louder and if he had to scream he would scream but his most important thing was to always always make sure that no child was gonna creep through a crack simply because of the color of their skin or simply because of where they came from he was such an advocate I was very blessed to work with him putting the fundraiser together that we did every year six years in a row that was the only fundraiser that Hispanic education Coalition had and we did anything and

132everything to be able to get funds for our scholarships it is history in the making and I just pray that every single one of you understands how important this is to not only our community our Hispanic Community but every child that gets an opportunity to see that someone that looked like him or that has a name that they can relate to will be able to see that they are there's an opportunity for them and he always used to tell me you know when people think about Hispanics and Latinos I don't want them to think that we're just about salsa this and that no I want them to understand how deep we go into caring for our community and our children and um he didn't want just hit the children the Hispanic children to see maybe

133um the cleaning lady that looked like them or you know the janitor or or maybe um anybody else so the bus driver that he or the cafeteria lady he wanted to ensure that children would know that administrators in the school district and principals also had last names that they could relate to and that would look like him so yes please today um the last time I spoke with with Joaquin we laughed and laughed and it was a joyous joyous moment I prayed today as a joyous moment thank you [Applause] Alan Levine good afternoon I'm Alan Levine from West Palm Beach I met Dr Garcia 22 years ago I was volunteering at the Vickers house crisis center working on homeless veterans and Joaquin came and said you know I'd like to work with you on children

134and families that are homeless so needless to say we immediately had a fund subsequently I mentioned to Joaquin that my wife has a course that the 15th Circuit Court asked her to develop with regard to arrested prostitutes and Johns and he said he would like very much to be an interpreter at that class and lecture about HIV and AIDS and making those in the street seeking sex aware of what they're bringing home he wanted to teach and during the break he would be one-on-one with those individuals and that was most important because sitting in class listening to an interpreter interpret you lose track of what's going on but he made sure that he was available to speak one-on-one he was motivated to achieve he recommended goals his Focus was on Children and Families and his

135memory for me and others will continue to inspire children and teachers this was his dream so I ask you to be please please be considerate thank you very much [Applause] Dr Gabriella Mendez hello members of the world and superintendent I'm Dr Gabriela Mendez I'm a faculty at Nova Southeastern University I'm a member of a community I've been a mother of a student in the district till a year ago my my baby grew up what can I say that haven't been said so beautifully before me very little so I'm not going to talk about work working you know him you appreciate him so instead um I'm going to share a letter of support or I'm going to tell you who signed this letter of support naming triple zero dog after Dr Joaquin Garcia this letter happens

136to be signed um by individuals representing many diverse Community organizations who as Dr her King Garcia happened to also belong to the as he did before he passed they happened to belong to a committee of the school district the equity and diversity committee this letter of support is signed by the following organizations and their members Cesar Vigo division of blind Services of Florida Reginald durandis for the children's Incorporated Sue Davis Killian Gold Coast Down syndrome organization Juan Pagan Florida Hispanic American Chamber of Commerce Amanda connect Compass lgbtq Community Center Julie saver Compass lgbtq Community Center Emmy Kenny Palm Beach Community Palm Beach County Human Rights Council Dr Gabriela Mendez Hispanic education Coalition they all belong also to the equity and I also belong to the equity and Community um sorry equity and diversity committee 37

137percent of the students are latinx in this District no school is named after someone who looks dogs or feel like them if that's not lack of equity I don't know what that is it's time to change that and you have the power to do it please do it thank you [Applause] Dusty Melton good afternoon board members and superintendent thank you for this opportunity to address you today you were heard a few minutes ago from my wife Mabel about our great professional admiration and personal affection for Joaquin I can't do any better than she can so I'd like to comment this matter from a very different perspective Neil and I were very fortunate to move up to this wonderful Community a little under four years ago but I continue to commute by brightline to downtown Miami

138every day for my Consulting practice of more than 40 years most of my clients do government procurement and that makes me an exquisitely Keen student of government process and I'd like to talk about the process that brought this matter to your agenda today and in a word it was exemplary triple o had its own dedicated website from a long time ago the content was importantly bilingual and the process of evolving through the implementation of your board policy for naming new facilities was followed impeccably there was a naming committee pursuant to your policy it held two public meetings the public participation was robust the media was there both meetings were very well attended it was the nine-member committee was chaired by one of your administrators Karen Wetzel who did an outstanding an outstanding job and I

139was particularly impressed that the first naming Committee Member where not only did Miss Wetzel talk the community and her eight committee members through what would be the process but she also did it visually in a 19 very comprehensive 19-page PowerPoint that laid out the policy laid out the committee members laid out the procedure laid out the required by your policy history of the area that the school will serve it was just an outstanding and very transparent and informing to the public process the second meeting she did a remarkable job as the facilitator taking scores of potential names many of them quite peculiar and calling the list down to the final three that are before you today I've been doing government process for more than four decades it's my day job I rarely use the word

140flawless to describe a government process and I think you all understand what I'm saying I use that word today and therefore because I do believe this was a Flawless process that produced outstanding results I urge you as all the other speakers have to embrace your superintendent's recommendation thank you thank you [Applause] Denise LeBlanc I can't see around the corner there I don't know if you're coming up or not good afternoon my name is Denise LeBlanc I am a retired long time Palm Beach District teacher and Esau coordinator I worked at Forest Hill for many years as the Esau aquarium coordinator working principally with latino youth I've spoken with a few of them a few of my former students over this period when the choice for the naming of the new school would be made and

141it was pretty much a consensus of my former students principally Latino that it would be cool to have a school the new school named after Dr Joaquin Garcia I know you're all aware of his many attributes and what a great Local Hero he is what better way to honor him than name the new school which will be a Latino majority it sounds like and uh to give these young people someone to look up to and to inspire them so it is my hope that the name Dr Joaquin Garcia will be selected for the new school thank you thank you our last speaker's DeAndre Poole Mr chairman members of the board my name is Dr DeAndre Poole and I stand here in support of Triple O being named after Dr Joaquin Garcia Dr Garcia and I

142work together as counterparts I served as chair of the Coalition for black student achievement for many years and he and I served on academic academic advisory committed together as well as the diversity Equity committed together for the school district and I got to know him extremely well and he was a tireless advocate so I just want to just end my comments by saying that I support every speaker that has spoken thus far in everything that they have said and I hope that you will as well thank you [Applause] board members we have five uh items on consent does anyone want to pull any of those seeing no we need a motion to approve the consent agenda motion by Mrs Andrews second by missile any discussion all in favor of opposed motion Curie 7-0 superintendent regc1

143naming of high school triple o yes I recommend the school board approve the naming of the new high school triple o from the list of recommendations submitted in order of preference as follows Dr Joaquin Garcia High School Western wave high school and Park Ridge High School we have a motion missile High School Dr Joaquin Garcia High School is the top selection [Applause] we have a second all six any discussion all in favor opposed motion carries 7-0 Mrs Anders yes I'd like to make a statement before we move forward uh it's a great day today um Dr Joachim Garcia High School sits at the Eastern the Southeastern portion of District Six and I must say I knew Dr Joachim Garcia I worked with him representing this school board on heck and he was my friend it

144is a great day today for a great man who truly loved children he especially worked so hard for our Hispanic children his leadership with the Hispanic education Coalition was above reproach his work with our schools and our communities to provide equity and access to our children and Community is lasting his legacy lives on in the work that we will do as we move forward with this new school the naming of the school is well deserved so that we celebrate today we think about all of the work that he has done it makes us all proud he was one who gave his all for the betterment of others it is a special day a historic day in District Six with the school district of Palm Beach County Dr Joaquin Garcia High School great day Vice chairwoman

145brill so Mrs Andrews you know that that school Dr Joaquin Garcia High School sits in the corner of districts six so five six I'm getting totally confused six thank you um but we will be sharing the students that go there and I do want you to know we've said it when we had the proclamation in the memorial how good a friend Dr Joaquin Garcia was to me what I will share is that when Ms ayella mentioned that she was going to run for school board or thinking about it the first thing I said to her was I need to introduce you to Dr Garcia and so I did and so his legacy lives on through you Ms Ayala and through the naming of the school and I could not be any prouder to be sitting

146up here for this naming thank you of course Miss ayal I'm sure you have some words you like them just want to take a moment to thank every Community leader who's here today for coming for your energy for your organization um this is an emotional day for so much of us so many of us um Joaquin was a mentor to me a friend I know that um I would not be here if it had not been for the hard work he did for decades to make it possible and many of you in this room for a Hispanic Latino individual to even run for the school board um you know the fact that it is the first elected representative and it happened in 2020 shocks many people in other parts of the state and the country

147so to have that honor and know that it was because of the hard work he did and standing on his shoulders means the world to me and I'm just excited that we get this opportunity to our students to be able to identify somebody they can look up to who had a trajectory of professionalism and leaves behind a legacy that anybody would want to emulate of giving back to your community of being a public servant and of really investing in the future which is public education in our children so it is an honor for me this today I can't wait to celebrate this with all of you later call me Familia de heck thank you all so much and I want to give a shout out to the principal oscarotero who is here today [Music] would

148you like to come we're coming up I'm gonna call them up I'm gonna call them we have Miss Haynes the regional superintendent and also Oscar Otero to speak good evening I had I guess this is not on good evening I um had the three names prepare for you tonight so that is off the table um but I wanted to make sure that we had an opportunity to to see you tonight and also to be able to let you know that Mrs Wetzel is here as well as we've heard so it's amazing things about Mrs Wetzel tonight we're very proud of her work and also wanted to give you an opportunity or give Mr Otero our principal of Dr Joaquin Garcia high school and the opportunity to um to speak and address the board I'll use

149yours thank you good afternoon board members superintendent I guess it'll be exciting for the first time to call it the official from the principal's uh microphone Dr Joaquin Garcia High School there we go uh we're excited and we just thank you for for the work for the support and as you know we're working diligently to open what will be Palm Beach County's best high school in August thank you thank you you're welcome Miss Wetzel did you have anything you'd like to say thank you for obviously you did a great job on the board policy implementation so thank you for that well it was just it was an honor to actually be able to be a part of all of this and I had a team supporting me so thank you very much Mrs Whitfield I

150just I didn't want to let this moment go by without making a quick comment about Dr Garcia and I spent last night going through my Facebook and looking at pictures of him um pulling him up and and seeing you know what he stood for and the impact that he's had on this community with regards to the way that we focus on Hispanic children and I just um I think that this is more than just an honor for Dr Garcia it's an honor for each of you who put forward your words your kindness your efforts to make this happen I think it's an honor for every Hispanic child in this district and I'm absolutely thrilled to be a part of this moment I know that there was no chance this wasn't going to go through everyone

151I talked to kept asking me you know what's going to happen and I'm like I'm gonna go with like 99 that this happens which is not something that I I would normally guess but I'm just so proud to be a part of this moment and I'm expecting amazing things from Dr Joaquin Garcia high school thank you all so the board members from District 4 and District Six can argue all they want about that high school but Dr Joaquin Garcia High School belongs to all of us he was a great friend and he chewed us out sometimes but he also steered Us in the right direction so I'm very happy that the board all of us agree that that's the name of the new school Dr Joaquin Garcia High School [Applause] so we have a board

152discussion item Miss bro thank you and I'm glad that all of you are still here I have some new business items okay well you might want yeah I saw those on there all of you might want to stay for the discussion item if you if you have time cs1 I'm sorry Mr superintendent yes thank you uh pursuant to Florida statute 1002.33 charter schools there below a c grade must present a school Improvement plan to their sponsors board which is you all the board will vote to accept or reject the required School Improvement plan that was developed with this District assistance the next three agenda items are for the board to approve the school Improvement plans for University Prep Academy Charter School Somerset Academy JFK charter school and sports leadership arts and management or slam High

153School Palm Beach so I'm going to take you through three recommended recommendations and we're going to have each school do a brief presentation three minutes and then we'll we'll take board action so cs1 I recommend the board approved the school Improvement plan for University Prep Academy Charter School and authorize the superintendent and his designee to sign all related correspondence and documents motion by Mrs Anders seconded by Miss Ayala under discussion yes Mr Tony yes sir we're going to hear a brief presentation from University Prep Dr Michael Hill principal Mr George grozinger board member and Miss Bonnie May will be here for all three agenda items good evening thank you all for having me I am Dr Mike Hill I am joined by our board Chair George Grossinger we are glad to be to present our

154school Improvement plan to you this evening and what we're trying to do at University Preparatory Academy to help our school to grow uh taking a look at our data you can see we we took a serious hit during covert during the 2021 school year but when you compare that data to how we did this past school year even though we were right at a d we made some significant gains in terms of turning our school around we didn't have the luxury of time and it was a very tough and challenging year but just in looking at from the 2021 data compared to 2022 you can see that our school is already starting to turn around and grow despite that growth despite that effort we have continued to look at ways that we can squeeze out

155growth and squeeze out success with our school we've done some restructuring we've done some things that I want to share with you in just a moment but as you can see we are already on our way to getting back to full swing at University Preparatory Academy two major areas of focus that we we chose to take a look at were in transformational leadership uh primary reason for choosing transformation leadership is because we began to recognize that that was a definite need for Teacher support at University Prep we've been through a lot and uh we thought that the covet year was going to be tough one but the the one after that was actually the harder one and coming through that we recognized our teachers need support as well as our students and our support teams

156as well so we are we're looking to add and have already added an additional instructional coach at our school to focus exclusively on uh the math science and reading at University Prep uh primary reason for doing that is just that we recognize that these were areas in our data but we continue to make growth and development in our school when we compare our data to the district and the State of Florida instructional practice was another area that we decided to focus on and again it's just looking at the whole picture we wanted to make sure that we had the growth in in math science social studies as well as reading for our school here's the action plan we have and these are things that we're already putting in place and this is only a tip

157of the iceberg we recognize that our plans at UPA needed to be comprehensive and it also needed to be efficient and effective so that we can get the most growth in the least amount of time for our students so we are we've not only restructured our leadership team at the school to to put the dollars in to put the support where it really needed to be in our classrooms and supporting our teachers and our students but we are also supporting our leaders at our school so they can continue to provide extensive support to our teachers so we're adding actual coaching days where we are coaching our coaches so they so they continue to grow and support our teachers yes added a math instructional coach we are added additional professional development sessions for all of our

158staff and ongoing coaching support throughout the the school year that we've used to connect with third-party companies that are coming in and giving us ongoing support for our teams and then finally we've implemented program called for the four disciplines of execution on 4dx which is a part of our leader in me program the whole purpose of 40x is to make sure that we're staying highly focused on the extremely important goals at our school and that we're working through to fruition of what our school goals and and vision and then for an instructional practice we're chosen we're choosing to focus on our middle school students who we've seen a big deficit there in math five middle school students so we add a middle school math co-teacher we have expanded our tutoring program for the school we're

159now able to utilize funding to support our students with tutoring year round and into the summer just continuing to close that that gap for our students and the populations that that we serve we are dedicating funding to getting additional science resources because if you look at the science data we're obviously deficit in that in that area however we have begun a program called Project Lead the Way and with our population that we serve this is a program that's been shown to have a significant impact on their learning and their achievement outcomes and then finally we are investing in Virtual Technology as well again going back to the needs of our students we recognize that in social studies specifically and even in the sciences that our students are coming to us with a lack of background

160information being able to tie into virtual reality will help our students to make these Virtual Field Trips they'll be able to engage in with objects and items in ways that a teacher just have trouble doing in a traditional setting so we're utilizing funds to make it interesting and engaging for our students and hopefully in the process grow some young scientists in the process as well that is all that I have thank you all so much for your time thank you Doctor board members you have any questions of Dr Hill is there any discussion all in favor opposed motion carries 6-0 Dr Robinson is and not in attendance thank you Doctor thanks superintendent yes that takes us to CS2 I recommend the board approved the school Improvement plan for Somerset Academy JFK charter school and authorized

161the superintendent and or his designee to sign all related correspondence and documents motion bike Mrs Andrews second by Miss Ayala Mr Denny so Miss Bonnie May will continue to join us here I should introduce director of Charter School Mr PJ daust and then for Somerset Academy Miss Lisa Santiago principal and as Anna Diaz board member good afternoon board thank you for allowing me to speak to you all um I have been an educator for 19 years 19 years but this is my first year as a principal I opened up Canyons so now I'm very honored to be the principal at Somerset JFK was saying that the school did score a d as you can see from our numbers Ela took a major hit with only 42 percent proficiency math was low as well 30 percent

162proficiency science 21 and social studies with the Civic scores was that 34. our Civics was the strength of all of these tests so we are going to focus strongly on the ELA math and science again looking at the data only 42 percent met proficiency we are focusing on Ela and on the subgroups we are focusing on students with disabilities and ell students as well as our science our eighth grade science we have now a new curriculum and several laboratory equipment that we are implementing in the classroom so that we hope in hopes of raising the science score so as you can see here we are focused on the best standards instruction includes small groups with the funding that we have received from uniseig Title One referendum and so forth we were able to hire an

163instructional Reading Coach and an instructional math coach those two coaches are working directly with the teachers and with the curriculum we also have six reading interventionists that we were able to provide for the students to do small group interventions with tier two and tier 3 students we also have after school tutoring out of the 515 students enrolled at the school we have about 160 attending after school tutoring twice a week and we also have additional funds that we are going to have a summer school program where students can come to the campus for six weeks we are going to provide tutoring so that there is a reduction in that summer slide and besides that um we were able to fill all positions so we have ESC facilitators supporting our students with disabilities and esol contact

164but lots of thoughts lots of good things going on so I thank you so much for allowing me to talk and please let me know if you have any questions board members any questions all in favor post motion carry 6-0 thank you thank you CS5 I recommend the board approved the school Improvement plan for sports leadership arts and management or slam High School Palm Beach and authorize the superintendent and or his designee to sign all related correspondence and documents bike this is Whitfield seconded by Vice chairwoman brill iant and presenting for slam is Mr Clint Devoe principal of the score and Mr Alex tamargo board member well good evening board my name is Clint dubo I sit before you today and I sat before you I believe five or six years ago when I was

165in this predicament before with our elementary school which was a d and in one year we moved to a b moving up over 100 points that year and becoming one of the top gaining schools that year in our district here at Palm Beach County so here I am again climbing that mountain and hopefully whether I prepared through the budgeting and the fiscals that we've received over the last year uh we'll we'll get there um so last year and we're a new school this is our third year as a high school we started when kovitz started so we did not take the grade the first year when it was optional we did this year decline our School receives students from all over and not always from our feeder pattern from our Middle School up into our

166high school currently um but we saw the biggest declines with our swd our lowest performers there our lowest 20 percent made some dips and also just across the content areas in general um you know when we see those types of numbers we immediately think about where things could have gone wrong and we only had one coach last year afforded for us we made it a little bit of gain in U.S history not enough for me to be celebrating but we did have a game there um but as you can see here there was a decline in pretty much every area that we have but going into the budget this year and being a you know uh fortunate to receive all these additional fundings we have two instructional coaches one that focus is on math and

167science and one on the literacies we also have uh two interventionists one for the maths and Sciences and one's for the literacy programs we have many staff in the building counselors as well to prepare our students for the tests ahead when we're looking at the groups to increase you know we figured we got to look at the teaching the teaching is really important the curriculum we buy is great but it's the teaching it's building the leaders within the classroom so our instructional coaches and those who are there are working with the teachers through coaching Cycles looking at classroom instruction doing deep planning with teachers modeling co-teaching data desegregation building groups doing reteaching standards-based Mastery bi-weekly assessments we have after school tutorial for our high school students for all of our students on campus in all

168subject areas so we really have a very thorough plan in those areas in our building we do a lot of Celebration with our students as well we have a PBS system in place to celebrate not only their academic success but their social emotional sex a success using Live school as a way to reward students for timeliness working on areas that also we need them there each and every day as you can see you know these are the two main areas that we're focusing but they're just not the only areas that we're focusing on all the subgroups but we are definitely tracking our swd subgroup to make sure that they're getting not only their services on their IEP but above and beyond their IEP being in small group going back to tier two and tier three

169some of them are in our RTI process even though they already have an IEP their data shows that they need additional support data chats are ongoing students track their own data teachers and students talk admin and teachers talk we progress monitor throughout every two weeks with our students through our Focus calendars that are created and we have an extended day and we have an early release for students once a week so that we have professional development built into the calendar of our seven hour day we have one day where it's six hours and that day is allotted for teachers to collaborate meet with their Administration and really make sure that what we're delivering in the classroom we're seeing it turn key into the data and the results from our students [Music] that's just the tip

170of the iceberg so I invite you all to come to the school and see what a wonderful campus we have we have K-12 in one building it's such a phenomenal place to go you can get a hug when you walk in and a high five when you get upstairs the students are very um loving and the families there are very loving and we're very fortunate to have our campus so thank you thanks questions Miss Ayala thank you for that um I guess I could have asked it earlier too because I think you're all three schools are under academica right so question for uh Mr daoust and Miss May um as a company and the management structure what's being done to better support all three schools because my concern is this is roughly combined about 1300

171kids between all three schools that are in a setting where they're not really thriving so I'm just really concerned I want to hear what you guys are doing from the top down to make sure that our schools and our principals have the support they need to get those scores up and get these kids back on track okay so for academica we are the support system we help all the principals and most of like for myself I was a principal myself so we provide a lot of um support and it's it's coming from the schools themselves so the principles are open and we communicate the areas that it's needed and we provide that support and whatever that whatever that may be whether it's academics operating if it's we have a national director of ESC that comes

172out and supports so it's really at the direction of what the principals need um but we make sure that that's provided and then each one of our networks also has a director or an executive director that supports those schools in addition to academica and then each governing board is also very much involved which each with each one of those schools as well Mrs mcquin I'm going to be nice however I know that you're aware that we have the board that we have received um some emails regarding what is considered by a staff member or more regarding um safety and I don't I'm not telling any secrets when we know that Palm Beach County in terms of oversight by the state Palm Beach county is looked at very carefully in terms of our regular schools having

173all of our safety uh pieces in place not only the hardening of the schools but also just student discipline so I'd like some Assurance from our Department that we that basically I don't want this to come back and say that we didn't pay attention to concerns about safety thank you Mrs McQueen pjt house director of charter schools we operate Three core tenants that maintain high standards uphold Charter School autonomy and protect the student and public interests in the case of the Marjorie someone Douglas public high school public safety act we are actively monitoring all schools we have a great relationships with our schools and we act actively visit these schools we were invited by our principals to make take to make sure that we are observing safe and orderly schools further we offer technical assistance

174when it comes to the area of of Sessa reporting uh help assisting with expulsions uh any kind of academic uh transition issues with students coming from to and from Charter Schools we we are actively working with our alternative schools and in providing the technical assistance to our principals in interpreting our student code of conduct so I don't know if our principal wants to uh comment on our support but we we are actively involved in Slam West Palm Beach yeah you know and as the principal of that school I took my job very seriously 100 of the time all the time um so much to the point where it's always on my mind um and my students are my children I don't have any of my own and I will do anything to protect them um

175when I took over the school six years ago a kindergartner brought a gun to my school um I don't know if you remember that but we were on the news that day because I ran to the room and you know got everybody out to the playground and I called 9-1-1 even though there was nobody really holding the gun my gut was I need to protect them none of my families left that year they all stayed um but I take it very seriously as something is reported to me I handle it immediately as soon as a parent emails me I had one before I walked in here she already got a response can you meet tomorrow at 12. I don't push things off um I don't push things under a rug or under a table to

176hide because it's not about that it's about addressing issues that come up and following the protocols that I'm here to and I adopted your student code of conduct and I follow that to a t I've exposed expelled the kindergartner did get expelled and then last year I had a student also who brought a weapon onto campus when he was stealing a car again not to harm anybody but he was caught on campus with it I dealt with it I sent home the letters to the parents I informed everybody and he had was expelled as well um so I invite you all to come my campus is very safe and loving it's a high school at times and high school things happen I can't keep Vapes out of everybody's hands unfortunately and I can't do everything

177to protect everybody all the time even though I would and I try and when it doesn't go my way I do get upset about it and I am the first person to cry and so um you know the things that you have received are people's perceptions um and they don't always perceive things in the way that they maybe not agree with but I know that I seek guidance through PJ George Lockhart my team Millie Alex Bonnie I always do um and you know their safety in the classroom in the building on the campus is my top priority which aligns with their instruction and learning um so I hope that helps a little bit um it does thank you very much I um again we are in such a climate today that it's a shame sometimes

178when I get a little more nervous about issues that don't have a thing to do really with educating kids and I'd see from our staff they're nodding as they're saying yes you are very involved and I'm very pleased to know that you follow our student code of our code of student conduct so but I do very much appreciate your answer thank you you're welcome you devote let me ask you a question um because I'm not familiar exactly how your structure works so you've got academica and you have a board how involved is your board with you I mean do you see your board members yes at least once a month sometimes more yeah yes Millie can speak as well go ahead hi good I am Millie Sanchez I am slams chief administrative officer and I

179am the liaison to our board Mr tamargo here is one of the board members we meet with all our principals on a monthly basis as part of our professional learning community so we either I'm at his campus or we are meeting collectively whenever a parent or a teacher or anyone has a concern I get the email sometimes before Mr Duvall gets it so we're always in constant communication so I'm aware uh because I always inform our board and we always address this as a matter of fact last week Mr Duvall myself had a conference call with a parent who had sent an email and none of the concerns had been shared with him previously so some of these we always like I said try to get to the facts of the matter and that was

180clearly resolved and it was a non-issue so um we're in constant communication uh parents have parents and and teachers and stakeholders have my cell phone on when you go on the website um so like I said sometimes they reach out to us before they do but we always address the parents and families I do have to say something because he's very humble and he didn't say that this year um this year and like again I welcome you to come to visit the school because the culture of the school his campus has grown especially in the high school over 200 students this year and sometimes it's you have a certain culture and a school that is growing he's getting a phase two building because we're at capacity in a school that is growing when you have

181that influx of incoming students you're going to initially address some of these issues um and we were dealing with that and I'm not excusing the grade but he's shy to say that it was two points it was a d but it was really two points away from a c grade not that that again we aim for excellence and just to add to that we recently went through corporate accreditation under cognia as a system of schools as a network of schools um and as a result of that we just received as a slam Network the honor of of being a system of Distinction and only 98 schools or systems were chosen around the world and you can look that up in the conure and a big part of that was they visited his campus and I

182visit his campus um the culture is amazing so and this year actually and Mr Devoe correct me if I'm wrong you have had less incidents of any disciplinary disciplinary issues than the previous year yes things are not as many Vapes this year yes and no fights and no weapons yet good um we are I'm the key he calls one of us we call I call our board members and we get on the phone with the parents before it actually gets to you and unfortunately the case you're talking about went to you it went backwards then it went to you before it came to us and therefore we set up the meeting and and addressed it Vice chair bro thank you and so I'm going to go in a different direction um looking at the the

183performance of the students with disabilities and the interventions that you're putting into place with the students failing at such a great number um are you reviewing their IEPs to make sure that each student's IEP is really written to meet their needs yes absolutely I don't see that in the intervention so I would strongly encourage you to do so because pushing in services and interventions if the IEP isn't really if there if a student isn't succeeding I would first look at that IEP and I agree and I and we are and I want to also remind ourselves that some of these tests that our students are held to with IEPs is a Monumental Mountain for them and they are trying their best but I don't disagree with you I just wanted to remind ourselves that some

184of these tests are quite challenging um and the students that we have you know are lovely but it's tough for them to get there but this year they're going to do better than last year and that two percent is going to be gone and the hundred points that I went up with both schools in one year both my middle school was one percent away from an A and the elementary we went from a d to a b and when I was in Hialeah we had a school going from an F to a b in one year so I think I have a proven track record if I'm not going to be humble um that I'm up for these challenges they don't scare me I've always worked in Title 1 populations minority populations you know I

185might not look like a minority on the outside but I can tell you I'm different and what's going on in the political climate about don't you know that bill that refers to me a lot um so I fight for children every day and I will continue Mrs Andrews I like what I'm hearing we've seen three action plans today and we know sometimes we have to dig deep to help our children and I commend you one of the things that I will be doing is coming to visit your school and you have been a success before you know how to move children so congratulations on that and your spirit of knowing that you can make it happen because it starts with leadership so I plan to visit you soon as well as the other two schools

186that were here and reading your action plans you you've got it going on you're putting the time in with the efforts and supports necessary to help the children with their success thank you Mr Devoe you sound like a very qualified and competent principal We Wish You A lot of luck there's no further discussion we'll we need another motion Erica Mrs Whitfield left so we need to have the motion Mrs Andrews Miss Ayala any discussion all in favor opposed motion carries 5-0 good luck and I really welcome that all of you come and visit truly we'll be happy to host you on behalf of our board this bro you're up okay so um for my discussion item just start off by saying that you know many times I've said our best suggestions come to us from

187people on the outside you may recall that it was a teacher that suggested we use the state seal to comply with statute and the bumper stickers on our buses came from one of my constituents with Cobra and so in October October 18th we received an email all of us received it from Dr Brad Johnson a t social studies teacher at Royal Palm Community High School and I asked that I didn't realize the email wasn't attached to the item so I'm just going to read it real briefly because it is short and it really goes right to the point it's dear school board members please consider properly recognizing Mr Holland and Mr Fulton at the district building that bears their names to my knowledge there was no marker or explanation to highlight the contributions of these

188two Education Heroes at most a statue is appropriate at the least a plaque of explanation is needed and unfortunately this problem exists district-wide wouldn't it be positive and reasonable for a visitor to H.L Johnson Elementary School for example to read a plaque in the main office or somewhere on the campus grounds explaining why the community and District chose to honor that person by naming a school after him or her thank you for your consideration can sincerely bread and this is very timely based upon our naming of the Dr Joaquin Garcia high school so I do know we've had this conversation you know about when we name rooms but I think it's a you know I think a statute per statue personally is would be an expense but I was hoping that we would agree to

189give the superintendent Direction whether it's a plaque or something even some type of record or a typed explanation of who a person is at the schools where they're named for so that the families really would understand why the school was named for that person Mrs McQueen I agree with with something that again obviously we can't something that recognized I'll tell you what made me think of it having lived North County it's for many many years is how L Watkins Middle School I had to look up Howell L Watkins and the same with Watson B Duncan Middle School so it would be nice for my guess is that many of the faculties at the schools don't know why they're named the way they are Mrs Andrews yes I think it's a great idea I happen to

190have known um some of the people that we're talking about today uh the Fulton Holland you know I knew Bill Holland so I think it would be lovely to do this and uh the superintendent can find a way some of the schools when I go into them they do have some information about who the school was named after and why but it needs to be consistent so we can start with all the schools that we have it would be beautiful thank you and if I may just follow up as an added suggestion and I don't know if this does occur in the schools that do have people's names but maybe also a page in the handbook that talks about that individual so that the parents would also and the children would also see that but

191I just wanted to thank Dr Johnson again for reaching out to all of us again you know one of our constituents and this is an employee came up with a fabulous idea for us I agree I mean we have J.C Mitchell in my district and I have no idea I think he was a mayor at one point in Boca but I just found out that recently I'm sure the children there probably have no idea superintendent can you bring us back some kind of plan on what we can do today I support that notion I think it's needed and uh I mean I know this is just a discussion item so there's no formal action or Direction but I share the board sentiments and we'll work on that okay great all right we need a motion

192to adjourn this meeting motion by Mrs Andrews second of my missile any discussion all in favor opposed motion carries 5-0 but don't go anywhere we have one more meeting this is a quick one called the uh I took I took the motion to adjourn correct yes okay who opened in the meeting of the Palm Beach County School Board leasing Corporation let the record reflect we have five board members in attendance with Dr Robinson and Mrs Whitfield not here Mr superintendent yes early on your consent agenda during the special meeting you approved the as a school board you approve the issuance of uh the cops issue for construction we have this is a companion item that comes through the leasing Corp so the recommendation without further Ado is I recommend the Palm Beach School Board leasing

193Corp authorized resolution to issue certificates of participation series 2023 A and B with an aggregate principal amount not to exceed 225 million motion by Mr mcquinn second by Miss Ayala any discussion isn't the treasure going to be here tell us all the reasons why we should do this she's standing by I'll let you go home all in favor oppose motion carries 5-0 thank you motion to adjourn motion by Mrs Andrews seconded by Mrs mcquinn all in favor oppose motion carries 5-0 this meeting is adjourned thank you thank you foreign