001good afternoon ladies and gentlemen today the board will participate in two closed ac sessions a special meeting and we'll end the day with four workshops the attorney-client sessions are open and close in the public the actual sessions are closed viewers and listeners can access the meeting today by either watching on comcast channels 234-235 u-verse channel 99 or by using the youtube link on our webpage at palmbeachschools.org we also offer a listening only option which the public can access by calling 561-357-5900 or toll-free at 1-866-930-7015 the meeting id is 1-561-880-1124 pound sign we will call the ac session order at 1102 am on november 10 2020 mrs bass mrs baez please call the roll district one barbara mcquinn here district 2 chuck shaw here district 3 karen brill district 4 erica whitfield here district frank barbieri
002yeah district 6 marcia andrews here district 7 deborah robinson here and we have quorum with all seven board members in attendance also joining us on our diocese superintendent dr donald fenoy general counsel sean bernard inspector general theresa michael executive assistant maria baez and board clerk carol bass who is joining us remotely the board will now open the attorney client session general counsel bernard thank you at this time i request advice pursuant to florida statute 286.011 concerning the following pending litigation matters brian lee versus tammy pierre the school board of palm beach county dba the school district of palm beach county gary mosley diana weinbaum and saying searchable case number three 919-cv-81631 judge ruben rosen ruben rosenberg u.s district court southern district of florida palm beach county school board the jb doa case number 19-0 administrative
003law judge diane clevenger the persons attending the attorney client session are board vice chairman chuck shaw board members deborah robinson barbara mcquinn marsha andrews karen brill erica whitfield and myself superintendent dr donald fennoy general consul shantoya bernard district staff attorneys blair littlejohn laura pincus sean fahey and lisa koring and the court reporter the session will be recorded by a court reporter no portion of the session shall be off the record the transcript of the session shall be part of the district's public record at the conclusion of the litigation the board shall now begin the attorney-client session session is expected to last approximately 45 minutes we will now all proceed to thurber conference room the closed door attorney client session has now concluded and the board has returned to open session in the closed session we
004discuss possible settlement negotiations and or strategy related to litigation expenditures through a motion to adjourn the ac session motioned by ms brill seconded by mrs andrews all in favor opposed motion carries 7-0 i now call the special meeting of the school board of palm beach county to order at 12 that clocks correctly at 12 10 p.m on november 10 2020. mrs bias please call the roll district one barbara mcquinn here district two chuck shaw here district three karen brill here district four erica whitfield here district five frank barbieri district 6 marcia andrews here district 7 deborah robinson i want to take a moment to note that this is a special meeting for vice chairman shaw while this term does not officially end until midnight on november 16th this will be the last board meeting where
005mr shaw's name will be called during the roll although we honored mr shaw at our board meeting on october 21st this meeting marks a turning point in mr shaw's amazing career in education good luck to you mr shaw we'll miss you sitting here with us at the dives also present with us today our superintendent dr donald fenoy general counsel sean bernard inspector general theresa michael executive assistant maria baez and board clerk carol bass who is joining us remotely senior staff members will join us periodically as directed by the superintendent this meeting is being transcribed by a closed captioner so remember to speak at a reasonable pace will everyone please stand for the pledge to be led by vice chairman of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation
006under god indivisible with liberty and justice go for comments mr superintendent yes sir mr chairman i would like to begin by commending the district's operation crews that were out in force yesterday while schools were closed cleaning up campuses following tropical storm eda thanks to their efforts campuses were able to reopen safely today i'm happy to report the district did not suffer any significant damage from the storm the district has also determined that a makeup day for yesterday's closure will not be required i also like to update you on the technological milestone we have reached on our campuses as you may know the districts had a goal of installing an interactive smart board in every classroom on every campus by the end of next week we will have deployed nearly 11 000 smart boards within our
007district schools these smart boards are a game changer for teachers especially in the time of simultaneous instruction these large interactive boards add a great deal of interaction for students in both in-person and distance learning classrooms on the subject of learning our district is proud to join dixie's across the state recognizing florida's holocaust education week this year the florida state legislature passed legislation that adds to the existing holocaust mandate the new legislation designates the second week in november november as holocaust education week this video created by the district gives you an overview the school district of palm beach county will be observing holocaust education week during the week of november 9th through november 13th the anniversary of kristallnacht an event that led to the holocaust my name is menachem my friends call me vicki i'm a
008survivor of ours we recognize without reservation that as a district we must strive to overcome prejudice and inhumanity through education vigilance and acceptance the picture below my mother her brother her sister everyone except my mother and her brother who exterminated the options in the past we have had a live performance from the company called living voices where they have partnered with many many of our schools but this year due to our covet 19 circumstances we had to get creative we are now able to reach every student in grades 5-12 with lessons from the holocaust as my holy man said to me just pass it on we know for sure that when we educate students about the holocaust and we learn from the lessons of the past we can change the future it's our obligation to
009share the stories and never forget [Music] there are a variety of activities and programs underway this week in additional to the core holocaust curriculum that we are current that we currently teach our students the proclamation regarding holocaust education will be read during the november 17th regular school board meeting i also invite you to visit the district's holocaust research webpage palm beach schools dot org slash holocaust education and now i'd like to share with you a brief update on covet 19. those of you who follow the district cover 19 dashboard know that we continue to report confirmed cases among students and staff while our commitment to cover 19 safety guidelines continues to keep the numbers relatively low our campuses reflect what is occurring in our community we have a workshop today which will provide valuable information
010about the timeline methodology and parental consent information that we will roll out along with the rapid antigen testing in our schools after thanksgiving break our school nurses have been trained the state has provided us with nearly nine thousand tests with the insurance that more tests are coming i look forward to sharing that update with you i'd i'd like to also acknowledge four tremendous educators in our district they are this year's finalists for the distinguished honor of 2021 principal of the year for palm beach county the nominees were selected by the regional offices and represent each of the four regions of the school district our outstanding finalists are from the central region adrian howard principal of ub kinsey palm view elementary school let's give her a round of applause from the north region phillip d'amico principal
011watson b duncan middle school let's give him a round of applause from the south region rachel capitano principal of don estrich high tech middle school let's give her a round of applause and from the glades region derrick hibbler principal of k.e cunningham canal point elementary school let's give him a round of applause the nominees will be celebrated during the virtual ceremony in january during that event the winner will be named the winning principal will then go on to take part in the principle of the year process at the state level again this please join me in congratulating all of our finalists each is certainly a winner in his or her own right let's give them all a round of applause i'd like to take this moment to acknowledge all of our veterans who work for
012the school district of palm beach county and live in our community and their families your service is something that i hold dear to my heart and i know our district does as well i also like to take this moment which i typically don't do i want to give a special uh thank you to my father uh you know a senior master sergeant for no i've never really called him that but senior master sergeant fenoy for your 22 years of service and to my mother who did all that time with him so thank you to all of our service men and women if we could have all our service men and women in the audience please stand yeah i see you guys please stand up so you can be recognized thank you mr chairman those are
013my comments for today thank you board comments mrs mcquinn mrs whitfield i just wanted to publicly say thank you to our legal staff for this amended final order that we are going to review today i know the tireless hours you've put into this and to capture all of our thoughts in a very long meeting last week i really think you did a wonderful job and i just want to say thank you miss brew thank you and i just want to thank communications for putting together the videos of the survivors and some others and i hope that you will share all of them with the board and i'm thinking bigger i'm thinking down the road that we share it with other school districts share them with the holocaust museum this is a way that we will
014be able to keep these lessons alive as we lose our holocaust survivors every one you know every year more and more and so i just want to thank you for your willingness to step out and and to put that together for us so thank you mrs anderson thank you and i too want to thank communications what a lovely video we can never forget and uh and we must talk about it every day and never forget i just want to personally say to our veterans thank you for your service thank you for keeping america great thank you for helping us to know that we live in the greatest land here uh in the world and we could not have the safety that we live with each day without your work so veterans everywhere our veterans locally
015right here with the school board we celebrate you tomorrow but we celebrate you every day thank you for your service dr robinson thank you um those are some good videos but i want to talk about veterans for just a split second so um you know i came to know myself during the vietnam era right and there were a lot of things about vietnam that were horrible and there were i knew people who came back from vietnam and i knew people who did not come back from vietnam and i had a really um negative view of the military and and those who served um but when i started working with veterans and caring for veterans first when i was in medical school which was on the locked psychiatric ward that was like a whole different experience
016but um but then at the va so you know i cared for veterans for i think it was 22 years like i don't i lost count but but their stories their stories made me wish i had paid attention in history class right and their stories gave context to what was in the book right and you know and there's stories in my family um like my grandfather who uh served in the the spanish-american war but was not allowed to train with weapons they had to train with broomsticks what kind of madness is that but and so you know i'ma look for equity everywhere but i just want you know my veteran taught me history and they also taught me the inequities inside of that sphere of stories right and so i really would like and i've
017said it before i think i'm appreciating it more now we really i think need to reach out to our veteran communities so that they can tell their stories maybe we filmed them and so that their stories are part of the lesson in school to so that they can this our students can feel it and know it the way i came to understand it much later in life so i also want to thank our veterans for your service i am um increasingly more appreciative of it thank you mr shaw nothing i have no comments today um other than ms shea i won't agree with the other board members you do a fantastic job putting those videos together as a matter of fact i will say on dr robinson's uh follow-up perhaps we could do some videos
018to some of our veterans that you can put together to show them in the schools and next veterans day we have something to get out to the schools dr robinson i don't want to do it on veterans day i want to do it as part of the class right yeah so that it enriches what's in the book i agree dr robinson except the veterans have always asked us to do something special on veterans day if we're going to put the kids in the classroom let's give them some veterans stories on the day that they're there we can do it other times a year too but especially on veterans day the kids should be able to see real life veterans and hear their stories thank you that will take us to the agenda item there's only
019one in the special meeting i recommend the board prove adoption of the final order in the matter of palm beach county school board versus william lats motioned by mrs thrill seconded by mrs whitfield is there any discussion all in favor opposed motion carries 7-0 take a motion to adjourn special meeting motion by mrs whitfield second by vice chairman shaw any discussion all in favor post motion carries 7-0 open up the workshop dr fenoy if you want to go ahead our first workshop by the day will be our 2021 legislative platform development at this time if i could have chief of staff ed tierney kathy philip vicente our specialist and officer the chief of staff and i believe um all of all three of our lobbyists around the face megan fey and rita saws that are
020on the on the line so mr tierney turned over to you [Music] chairman barbari vice chairman of shaw school board members dr fenoy we're pleased today to have an opportunity to facilitate the workshop on this year's legislative priorities on september 30th we had a board workshop to address the board's legislative priorities on october 16th we distributed a draft copy of that platform and the purpose of today's workshop is to have one last opportunity to have public comment board member questions or potential changes so there's not a presentation associated with this workshop this is an opportunity for the board to have one last look and discussion prior to voting to approve it one week from today mr terry one quick question for me i don't even know if we if it makes sense to put it
021on here but we have we have this issue with the advisory committees not being able to meet remotely um i've talked to mr leface and he's trying to figure out some way to get it done up there but apparently it doesn't look like the governor's willing to extend the executive order for advisory committees so i don't know if it makes sense even put on the legislative platform because by the time they get around to doing it we still have months of not having those meetings addressed and i know the general counsel was looking at some alternatives for for the advisory committees to especially cork which reviews all the contracts ahead of time make sure that they get that information to us but do you have any suggestions uh lobbyists or mr tierney on how we
022deal with that mitchell face yes sir mr chair um i did review the legislative platform in light of that issue when it when it initially came up and i do think that we can we can pursue a legislative change under the you know home rule authority or letting the district operate in times of emergencies so i don't know if we necessarily need to add it as a specific item but if if the governor is unwilling to extend it then we're working with the general counsel's office to develop legislation and i feel that that we can pursue it under the current proposed platform okay thank you other comments from board members dr robinson thank you um so okay so first i want to um thank everyone for including the changes that the board discussed last time
023um and unfortunately i didn't carve out time to really really digest the changes here but i have i think like six things i want to bring up so the first though is just eyeballing it i didn't see anything that talked about support for our movement to tech colleges at least i had it in my notes last time and i don't honestly know did we have that conversation as a board you don't think okay so it was just in my mind and i didn't share it okay then okay do you have something specific in terms of support well i think that um at least in conversations that i've had with staff over time we are trying to take advantage of this change relationship improve relationship with palm beach state college so that we then have more
024cte and pre-apprenticeships and so forth available for our students um and so that kind of change needs um needs money it seems like we talked about this because we talked about west tech we i talked we talked about um north tech and so i just would like to see uh ask for money if i if i may we have it on the federal platform on page one underneath continue to monitor if you look at that second bullet point thank you and it's also on page three on the state level platform if you look at the top there it's the last bullet before number two supporting state funding initiatives that would offer so if that addresses that then it does thank you so much and like i said i'm i'm cheating because i'm rapidly going through
025this um my second thing is on pay on page three number four about the charters and private schools and in the red so the red is the staff's input right so it just it hurts me just a bit the bullet all academic instruction and so i would just like to make sure that we carefully word that because um i i'm not trying to make charter schools do what we do okay and when i look at that at first blush that's what it says um you know i would like for charter schools to be able to do their niche to you know their incubator their you know um kind the back to the original intent although i know we've gotten away from that to a great degree but i don't want to propose something that says
026that they need to do what we do and so i just think the wording needs to be tweaked so i don't know that might be more about accountability but yeah i i just i don't want to take away from any creativity i would hope that we would um find more um so the third thing is um and i did not bring this up at the previous conversation about the legislative agenda um but i know i brought it up in previous board meetings and that is there's a state law that as i recall requires that we contract with a company that is embedded in the prison industrial complex and i don't want to call the name because i might call the wrong name but as i recall we buy some materials from them from through inmate
027labor and as i recall a follow-up conversation the law says that we must contract with them even though it doesn't say how much and i think that that law should be changed you know i mean and so i would you know i don't know if my fellow board members agree but i i don't think we should be supporting um the prison industrial complex um number four i suspect that i've missed this too and that is requesting dollars for post covet acceleration that's in here yes so the first section on the state platform on page two the first priority is as it relates to covet that whole first section so that'll be the first page of the platform so i believe it does have some language around increasing funding as it relates to kova but we
028can make sure that it's explicitly tied to the academic portion if you don't see it in there i don't see i see the part about increased funding funding for mental health services i just i just want to make sure we're asking for the money that we're going to need to have more creativity create creative time on task for our young people especially those who are in distance learning that we know statistically are likely to be falling behind right and so now's the time to ask right yeah i know there's mr tierney just pointed out there's a i think it's a one two fifth bullet down under the covet heading increase funding for progress monitoring interventions for students who have fallen behind okay should we tighten that up or just trying to get the board's thoughts
029on that word smithing um okay so if we talk about wordsmithing i just i don't like interventions i don't like remediation i like acceleration but that's me so that's my because i don't like i don't like the deficit kind of talk um okay i don't know if somebody i've just finished my little pieces here so um is there any just was this was this looked at through the equity lens that we are now talking about uh i think the process for this year was just to you know survey the board members have a consensus on that so i i don't think it was necessarily okay thank you for the honesty and did the the last um thing is i would like um to see if we can okay it is my hope that there will
030be additional federal dollars allocated um in the future um for students who are considered english language learners and i i would like for us to look to see if using our equity lens if we can find a way to support all students that have low ela achievement with this hopeful expansion of ela ell funds and so i think that that is both legislative and legal okay for the federal platform yes yep all right mrs mcqueen did you ever hand them mrs anderson and miss brill [Music] thank you and i'd like to thank uh miss solnet for uh meeting with the hispanic education coalition group on the j-1 visa program and i see you have it under continue to monitor and i know that a letter uh has been sent out from the federal government you
031know putting a hold on the program uh right up until december and when you say continue to monitor exactly uh how will this work when you know we have our international dual language programs our dual language schools what are we going to be doing within this time frame and uh especially after that letter uh expires in december to make sure that we're working closely to make sure that we get the teachers needed for the program can you hear me yes hi so um we believe that i have talked to two members of the biden education transition team and they are absolutely going to let that sunset you know in december and we're hoping um that come january probably after january 21st that the program will be you know whole again so that we can bring
032in [Music] teachers under this cultural j-1 visa program so that's where it stands now i don't we're not going to be able to do anything before now in december and just to follow up with dr garcia and heck because of their relationships with uh programs in the other countries uh can we make a connection with uh hispanic education coalition to let them know about the conversation that you've had and follow up with them as they relate to many of the contacts that they have as it relates to this program would you be able to do that um for us and so on that um looks like she got disconnected well well um i have mr channy follow up with her with your requests andrews and we'll take care of it okay mr pearl thank you
033and so um mrs andrews we're sort of on the same page but before i go into the federal platform first and foremost beyond anything else and i'm sure we're starting on it right now to me the most important thing in terms of the state platform is to ensure that students will continue to have a choice for distance learning so we need to be working on that now i'm hopeful that that the governor and the department of education will hear our voices but to me that's our top number one priority this is an exciting time for the federal priorities because i really have not been focused on them over the last few years but it's an exciting time knowing that we're going to have a new commissioner and we have a a first lady coming on
034board that's an educator um so the first thing i highlighted mrs andrews was the j-1 visa program so i think that you know we have a unique opportunity and perhaps through ms selnett or perhaps through our own connections we can get a seat at the table as the federal government plans its platform so i would you know i'll be happy to reach out to ms solnit but i think we have a great opportunity um because there are a lot of local connections to get our voices heard so we're gonna have to massage this and i don't know when we're gonna come back with the final platform but i think this is going to definitely this year be a work in progress that we need to stay focused on but i'm willing to step up and
035i will speak to you to see if we can get voices at the table to focus on these priorities um i did hear that they're looking to send monies down to help the schools and dealing with covet and dealing with testing um you know there's so many good things in the offing so i think you're going to see us more involved at the federal level than ever before thank you back again can i can i respond to that i was going to wait until next week to tell you guys this but i am a member of uh i've been asked to be on the subcommittee with the education transition team and so all of that was and i'm going to be working on the policy ended so i'm very much in touch um with them
036um so i wanted to mention that and i'm sorry to mrs andrews i got disconnected before so i didn't hear her question but before um i also want to mention um to dr robinson's comment about the la or english language learners about an hour ago the u.s senate released their fiscal 2021 spending bills and it kicks off negotiations in the house what's important there is we have an increase there's a 73 billion dollar discretionary education fund and an increase of 433 million and they've added 40 million for for title 4 student support so it is for that english language learners and i can go into that um that that's a very good chance that that's that's going to pass because they need to keep the government open and they have to do something by december
03711th so and one more thing on that um the covid relief which you know if you were in las vegas i would say has less than 10 percent chance of moving on its own they may actually take a section of that and incorporate it into the um fiscal 2021 spending bill so maybe some targeted colbig relief might be a part of that spending though so um i'm sorry mrs andrews i didn't hear your question and my internet's been going up and down well if you could work with heck the hispanic education coalition and the leaders you know they have connections all across the world and they've been inquiring about the j-1 and we knew the letter uh expired in december so if you could uh connect with the leaders of hacc to let them know
038that there's good things heading away for our international dual language programs as well as the dual language programs here in palm beach county to get the teachers needed okay thank you mrs whitfield thank you just really briefly i wanted to um kind of echo what miss brittle said about the importance of having school um for students virtually to be maintained in in january and i think that you know it kind of brings around another point um under where we said prior to prioritize the meaningful assessment of student learning and giving an opportunity for alternative assessment measures as we go forward if families are not willing to have their children come into the building for some of these assessments um after i visited a school last week i saw that there's a difficulty with fsa rights
039where it has to be done in person it has to be done on paper and so that to me is a concern that we need to be thinking going to the state how will we assess children if they don't come into the building if they won't come into the building and if we are forced to do the fsa how does that work so i think that should be in there and then i think as a school district if the state does come back and say that everyone has to be in the building we're going to have to come up with plans for our schools and our students that mean that they can stay home so maybe it's beefing up our own virtual education or something because i just don't think telling all the families that
040they have to come back means that they will i don't think they will come back so we have to be thinking what can we do to maintain the ability for us to get that funding and to have those students stay with us even if the state says we have to go back thank you mrs mcqueen [Music] thank you mrs whitfield reminded me of something and you may have given us the answer already but i'll ask it i know before this year there was an issue i talked to mr burke about it in terms of students enrolling in florida virtual rather than palm beach virtual my question is do we still have palm beach virtual yes ma'am we do the former principal at royal palm school is another principal at the ver the palm beach virtual
041school thank you that's your fault i thought that was the case so i don't know understanding that across all of our many high schools we we have guidance counselors balancing a ton of things they have a lot of balls in the air and i'd like for us to double down and make sure that the counselors understand that palm beach county gets the funding if you're in palm beach virtual and we know who those teachers are if if you look up virtual it's going to if you google virtual it's going to take you right to florida virtual so i'd like for us to make sure that we're looking at our palm beach virtual if we can do that mr attorney boyce i address ms wilt mrs brill's comments about the home rule under state level main
042platform the second bullet in red continue to prioritize parent choice for the remainder of 2020 2021 school year by allowing parents to make the best instructional decision and then the following page number three empower locally elected school boards and allow for nuanced decision making according to local needs by ensuring home rule and others so mr lafays have you or your team members up in tallahassee had any conversations with the commissioner or the governor that you can disclose to us as to whether or not he really intends to force the children to come back to our schools at the end of january we have we've been uh that's actually been the uh the topic of conversation for the last i would say straight three weeks um you know taking a little time off for the election
043but it is it is certainly what the uh the commissioner is working on he does begin the conversation with believing that children are best served in the classroom in brick and mortar and is working on ways to try to incentivize districts to convince children to return to the classroom starting in the spring semester and a lot of that swirls around how they're going to count students next spring whereas this fall we were held harmless on the student counts we don't we don't have a good idea and they're working through it right now what that actually looks like i will say that kind of like in the school reopenings based on the data that we're seeing we believe that the tri-county south florida school districts uh you know face a little bit of a different situation
044than the rest of the state does so we have been working uh together miami-dade broward in long beach for the last week and a half to we actually had the superintendents get together on a call between the three of them and their and all their government affairs teams to work on a kind of uniform approach for south florida that may look a little bit different than other other counties about how we get students back to the classroom and if we don't meet the thresholds that maybe are established for the rest of the state about how many students return to brick and mortar in the spring how we're still able to maintain you know our full fte count so those conversations are uh are being had we expect enough follow up with the commissioner um later
045this week but but that's kind of where it stands right now a lot of it's being developed but but to us it's the number one issue out there at the moment thank you other comments from the board members any additional comments from district staff only there was a question that this will be voted on next week to be approved final draft are you clear on everything the board members want to do yes sir okay mr pearl thank you and just for clarification though although we're going to vote on it we will be able to make changes to it as things evolve over the next months thank you mr superintendent you ready for the next workshop thank you um thank you team um so our next workshop will be our equity mission vision and strategic plan
046i have some comments before as the team comes over up to prepare to present this workshop our current strategic plan is set to sunset in summer of 2021. board members have shared feedback around the possibility revising certain aspects of our district's mission and vision prior to beginning the development of our next strategic plan particularly as it relates to equity based on previous board comments district staff have been developing a timeline to address the board's desire to possibly refresh our mission and vision statements while simultaneously providing a deeper dive into the concept of equity engaging in the activities now will ensure the district has a strong foundation in which to build our next strategic plan i appreciate the school board's continued commitment to this work and today's workshop will be will give board members a clearer
047picture of the timeline we are working with before we begin the workshop i do want to emphasize that we need the board's direction and how to best proceed with these planning efforts this includes selecting a date in early december for a board retreat as i mentioned at a previous board meeting and particularly as it relates to equity this cannot be a one and done kind of deal equity work cannot it should not be the responsibility of one department or division it can't be owned by one by just one person either it is going to take all of us working together from the school sites to the district office into the school board to build a strategic plan that places equity at the center of everything that we do it will require everyone's time and effort
048so please keep in mind as you listen to this presentation today and with that i will turn it over to staff thank you so we just need to make sure that presentation gets loaded and while we're waiting on that good afternoon board chair mr barbarian board members and superintendent dr fenoy there we go all right so before we engage in this workshop i would like to give an opportunity for the members of our team to introduce themselves hello again i'm kathy villavicencio manager of special projects in the chief of staff's office good afternoon my name is keisha starks manager of equity and access and as you see can see we have some goals here that are outlined that we would like to accomplish by the conclusion of this workshop but i think we need to
049i would like to highlight and reference um as dr fenoy stated we definitely need your input so keep that in mind as we share this information with you at the conclusion of this workshop it is our goal to share with you some short-term goals some long-term goals and give you a high-level view of the timeline of events and possible additional workshops that we could include we'll also take a walk and look back and quick review of our current equity policy as well as share with you a recommendation that has now become a reality that is helping us in a school district of palm beach all of our employees to help them fine-tune their equity lands all right so the board has discussed in several prior meetings the need to perhaps refresh our mission and vision
050and really come to a collective understanding of what we mean by equity before we dive into the development of our next strategic plan so we're on track to kick that off in january of 2021 so november and december are really going to be a time crunch as it relates to um you know putting a plan forward for the board to build and come to their own understanding of equity and perhaps some initial edits to the mission and vision and then coming together as a collective to discuss those uh initial thoughts and reflections and then you know in the longer term as ms millan said really operationalizing what that means in our next strategic plan and beyond so again uh we really just want to be very transparent that again as dr noe said this isn't
051a one and done there are some things that we kind of need to lay the foundation for immediately in our short term goals and then again making sure that we're still attending to the work that needs to happen and so building out that schedule now so that we can make sure after y'all engage in that mission and vision refresh that equity working definition that we actually attend to all that and operationalize it in the long term so why do this work now uh again we kind of know that equity can mean different things to different people the district has done a lot in terms of equity which would which ms millen and ms starks will talk about a little bit more towards the end of the presentation so we still want to respect and build
052on the work that we've done but we also want to make sure that we're well positioned to start our next strategic plan and so again really taking november and december to engage the board in some meaningful conversations about equity as well as whether or not we need to change our mission and vision as we embark on our next strategic plan so again you know we've identified that there are some inequities within our current system despite some of the work that we've already done and so really the goal here is to close that uh i don't want to say gap because i'm very mindful of what dr robinson said before but um repay that educational debt to all the children so that you know they're all achieving at those high levels and those long-term outcomes that
053will be in our next strategic plan so as part of this process dr fennoy you know tasks staff to really put together a comprehensive plan and so again really want to be explicit and transparent with the board about what we can do right now and so again the most immediate efforts will be focused on unpacking equity and how they relate you know to our education system and again all this work will precede and guide district staff as we embark on you know the next strategic plan development which again will kick off in january of 2021 with the hope that we'll have an approved plan sometime in the summer and then we can make sure that our focus shifts to implementation of that plan in an effective manner and then again the long-term goals so we
054have heard everything the board has said in terms of you know bringing in uh outside experts leveraging our relationships with the council of great city schools and other neighbor other you know other associations and affiliations that you all have to just surface those best practices and see if there's anything that we could apply here in the local palm beach county context so that involves you know inviting guest speakers and scheduling regular listening sessions with our actual stakeholders so you know not tokenizing them but inviting parents and students in to tell us how do the policies that y'all approve here in this boardroom actually play out at the school centers having equity data chats we know we've had a couple of those before but not talking in averages having those courageous conversations where we're actually breaking
055out data into different subgroups and seeing how the achievement actually looks for those different subgroups and then again involving our community partners in these conversations as well because it takes everyone as dr noi said this is a focus not only for our school board for our district but you know we heard about the hispanic education coalition and others folks that come here to speak regularly to talk about equity so making sure that we're engaging with them and then also we have bright spots here in the community again we'll hear about them a little bit more in this presentation but how are we leveraging those how are we learning from those best practices to then implement district-wide so we'll also be inviting some folks to come share as part of our long-term goals so here is
056the one of the big asks um in the presentation uh between now and november 30th we're really hoping that the board is willing to engage in a self-study which shouldn't take more than a handful of hours to watch a short webinar uh read a short article and reflect on some questions as they relate to equity and a possible mission vision refresh and really what do you as the school board envision equity to look like here in palm beach county and so those would be followed up with a one-on-one debrief conversation with uh mary fertacus who i'm very excited to speak to you about she is an equity consultant with the national school boards association we receive some external funding to engage with her she's a former school board member a current board of education member
057in the state of washington and she's very invested in this work and i'm extremely excited that she'll be able to guide the school board in some of these conversations because we recognize these are sensitive topics for leaders you have her resume and her bio i know mr tierney also emailed that to you earlier today along with a copy of this plan but you know if this is something the board agrees to will share those resources electronically so you all can start reflecting on these topics we're hoping to schedule a board retreat hopefully in early december miss furtacus is holding december 2nd from 1 to 4 p.m right now but we're definitely going to work with miss bass and the rest of the board office to make sure that the timing works out but hoping to
058have a few hours to really engage like this is you know heavy stuff and we want to make sure that the board has the time and space needed to engage in these conversations so that on december 9th we can have this public meeting on the mission and vision and the strategic plan and kind of bring forth some drafts for the board to discuss as a collective so again the larger timeline is in one of the handouts you received and i i know we asked mr takas to join us via google meet so i'm not sure if she's here but i also see the board chair has a as a comment i thought mrs bro once asked your question thank you and i just don't want to let this go back because you mentioned the date
059of december 2nd and for those of us participating that's the florida school board association so on wednesday thursday and i don't know if part of friday are going you know for those of us that have registered we will not be available so you're going to want to maybe rethink that date no but the fact that we're entertaining a date that's great exciting so we will definitely take that into account thank you ms grill um and then i don't know if miss fertacus is on the line in the google meet that's why you see me kind of texting down here at the same time i am i'm here hi mary did you want to say a couple words to the school board i'm not sure if they can see me or not but i can see
060all of you and i'm just very excited to work with all of you i want to give all of you kudos for undertaking this critical work at this point in time and just the planning that's going into it with by your staff is really commendable and i'm looking forward to being able to work with you to make this a reality for you thank you we're looking forward to you working with us on this also thank you all right so like i said the a more detailed timeline is in your your packet but again um we will work with the board clerk to secure some dates for that board retreat but also just surfacing that this month we'll hope you'll engage in that self-equity study and i will work with your the board office and miss
061vertacus to find the best time to do those one-on-one debrief conversations so at this time i'll go ahead and turn it over to miss millen who is going to walk us through some of the equity work that the district has done that we are hoping to build on in the next few months and real quickly performance carly from his mother speaks to the board um i've taken this study and read those articles so on our one-on-one so we can i'll be more than willing to have those conversations with you as well as you know approximately i would say three years ago it was dr ruiz brian knowles several different departments different employees across our district all came together when they received the charge of creating our equity policy for our school district and in that
062process not only did they collaborate across different departments before they brought the policy to you but they also met with several different community stakeholder groups one being the district diverse and equity committee in which you recommend um community organizations to serve on that committee they receive lots of feedback um prior to bringing the policy to you for final approval so now fast forward again another year two years ago we now have our district policy in that policy um it outlines and and clearly states um our responsibility for the compliance um to the three statutes that you see there for our state but it also outlines a clear purpose for the policy as well as some of the desired outcomes and we'll talk a little bit more about that um speaking specifically it doesn't just clearly
063state the purpose it also outlines equity is an an action as well as an outcome now we receive feedback um around that and that can be fleshed out a little more however it does it's pretty clear in the policy itself that you approve that gives us clear outcomes that we should be shooting for for all of our students and speaking of those outcomes the next two slides that you're going to see we actually pull the outcomes directly from the policy and i want you to envision this and it probably is easy for you to envision because some of you made these recommendations we heard you loud and clear taking these desired outcomes and imagine us creating many equity workshops hence equity a deep dive but also taking your advice and including experts so imagine the
064different departments that are engaging in this work as um was stated before actually getting us to describe what our current state is being fully transparent on where we are if these are desired outcomes just imagine having part of the workshop where we talk about the work who's actually doing the work what is our current state how is it impacting our students how close are we to our desired outcomes and then as you all have stated i think mrs andrews said it um in our last board workshop or special meeting and some of you have said it as well speaking to people that are in this journey in this work that have already done some of these things finding out some of their pitfalls finding out some of their successes and drawing from that and then
065the third piece will be creating a road map to get to that desired outcome so we take what we're currently doing get a current state we we learn from best practices from those that are doing the work we bring them as a part of that workshop and then we actually start mapping out how are we going to get or determining where we are to get to that desired outcome for all of our students because this has and this is the second set of outcomes because this has been already outlined in our equity policy we thought it'd be a great place to start because it clearly a lot of these desired outcomes are um in small boxes but they take a lot of work so we have a lot of work to do but we've done
066some good work already here in the school district and just imagine taking all of that and thinking about what is it that we want at the end of this equity journey for all of our students once they they get to the point they're graduating and they get to that state like how do we put all this together to ensure that all of this is working for the good of what we have in mind for our students it also outlines it's a great opportunity for us to develop a foundational um base for this equity journey that we are um continuing to embark on and it creates an opportunity to of use of common language and common understanding so just taking all these desired outcomes think about it from that perspective and we're proposing that these could
067be the found uh the topics or focus around our equity future deep dives in our future workshops because we have all committed to making sure this is an ongoing process and speaking of the district diversity equity committee not only did they provide input um on the policy in which that was approved um they also continue to meet we meet every month continuously and pulling out these desired outcomes from the policy is what we do as a portion of our meeting and we actually monitor and we're getting to where are we in our current state how are we going to get to our desired state and they are then making recommendations of course to the board well guess what they have committed to continue doing that and also would like to also provide input on future
068workshops of this sort and when we're speaking to this our whole goal is to make all of this a reality for our students so speaking of reality we've been engaging in workshops here in our district with racial equity institute we've been doing that for several years now and several of you have attended their workshops as well well that was one part of the work but what was what was it that we needed to create in-house for sustainability so that all of our employees could participate in ongoing conversations around that well i want you to go back now first i took you back three years with the creep talking about the policy took you back two years the approval of the policy go back in like four or five years and if everyone on the dice
069remembers there was a rate of equity audit that was completed yes you're shaking your heads yes it was equity audit completed and one of the recommendations of that audit um was that our district needed to engage in more culturally responsive education ongoing for everyone in the district it was a recommendation well i'm proud to announce that that recommendation is now a reality and i'd like to turn it over to ms starks who is going to take us through where we currently are with this one piece that was a recommendation but now employees in our school district are having the opportunity to fine-tune their equity lens so speaking of culturally responsive there are two tracks that i'm going to speak to uh today and i want to really share the excitement that i have with these
070courses or these two tracks that um have started to manifest themselves so culturally responsiveness is also in leadership and teaching so in the leadership uh track we've had about 330 individuals who registered we've also had about 102 who have participated in this so with these uh tracks i do refer them as a journey so reflection is a huge piece of equity so when we look at this i have looked at the equity policy in the truest form that we that it's that that we see it and the first course of the track is called let's talk courageously so this is really using the courageous conversations about race protocol having these racial and uh cultural narratives having these conversations in uh an open forum but also in breakout sessions as well but this lenses their their
071their view on bias what does that mean what does it look like we look at explicit so uh part two or course two is explicit bias also implicit bias with the focus of microaggressions why because they feed off of each other there's also elements that are tied to these two um phenomenons so we look at those elements as well when it comes to bias and microaggressions then we go into the whole trauma piece why did i put trauma in here trauma is also how we engage and how we um respond to individuals based off of our triggers so i take them through the cdc um the aces survey i'm sorry it's the aces survey that i take them through to get them to understand what their triggers are and what their trauma is and how
072they're going to engage now what this ultimately does is allow them to see themselves in those lens but also how this relates to their students sometimes as adults we forget that we used to be students and our triggers do engage us in how we respond to individuals and that also speaks to our students as well once we go through course one two and three now it's time to start looking at what equity diversity and inclusion really looks like once we have that background information now that we know what one two three and four entails now we can look at those culturally responsive leadership strategies and i take them through simulations these simulations can be culturally based they could be lgbtq-based they could be esc based whatever the simulation is walk them through the process again
073these simulations can be with students could be colleagues it could be staff walk them through these simulations so they understand what culturally leadership strategies they should be using in certain situations now the teachers are going to mimic that very same track the only difference is since they are more focused with students the first course is introduction to culturally responsive teaching so that kind of gives them an idea of what crt is what that actually looks like what it sounds like what it feels like not just to the the teacher but also to this to the student then they follow the same course let's talk courageously microaggressions with bias and then they go through the trauma piece as well their last two courses is focused on pedagogy what does culturally responsive teaching pedagogy looks like now
074that we went through one through five one through four once they go through the pedagogy course now we're going to look at equitable behaviors what does that actually mean what does it sound like what does it feel like now the caveat for the good part of this is not only do we have this i have also looked at equity teams so when i started i started with two equity teams two weeks overturned i have now 20 equity teams in different schools these equity teams are going to be tiered out into different tracks throughout the years how is this going to look i've reached out to teaching and learning so they are going to do social emotional learning they're also doing a race-based unpacking through literature i've also reached out to safe schools who are looking
075to do a behavioral track on cultural norms and also racial norms and how ba behaviors are seen through those lens is also reached out to multicultural who is also lending that lends to how cultures deal with different norms whether it's their language or traditions or customs so multicultural is going to lend their expertise on that as well i've also um looked at the four mandates and any mandates that we are legally responsible for that is also going to be within the track for the equity teams i am also trying to look at how to build sustainability so i'm also looking at how to build a train the trainer track so the teacher leaders who are on these equity teams could be able to train in these pds so keisha starks won't be going to all
076schools but we'll have some of those teachers who can do these trainings within these tracks now that is what we have that's going on right now that i'm diligently working on if any one of you want to sit with me have a conversation about the equity that we are working on i am more than happy to sit down and have a conversation with you regarding the equity work that is progressing thank you mrs whitfield you have a question you do i wanted to ask mrs starks thank you for that um and i'm very excited to see the work that you're doing i'm just curious how do you get teachers or leadership members to attend these classes is it mandate is it something that we need to make a mandate is it something that um you
077know they're just volunteering for how does it how does it work as of right now they're volunteering so there's not a mandate for anyone to take these courses [Music] to speak to the um um so another part to the answer it's not mandatory but as you've all heard this before if you build good pd they'll come to it and it's been word of mouth so we've been publicizing or whatever teachers talk to teachers leaders talk to leaders and it has caught like wildfire to the point where we have a good problem at this point in regards to scheduling to keep it up it's offered every month we put the dates in the e-learning system at the on the last day of every month so ms starks had a charge to build relationships because she's new
078to the district and she's exceeded that expectation because now everyone is saying her name in regard to the word but the best part about it is not only have they taken the course they've told a friend a friend has told a friend and they are actually taking this back and it has actually grown beyond what we exactly i think it was stated earlier equity does not live in one place if we do this right and we build this out in our strategic plan it lives everywhere so it's almost like the same with uh chief kitsaro we're all security we're all equity and the word is getting around around that and the tearing out of the different departments all came because they took the course and once they took the course they took it and they
079went back and did something with it and that of course created out different tracks so ms starks is being very modest right now in regard to that but because of what she has offered and the conversations that have taken place in these sessions they lead to the follow-up session can i call you afterwards can i really talk about what i want to do with my school and it has taken on so it is not mandatory but even with it not being mandatory the demand is awesome let me let me say this as well i think after the murder of george floyd um ms starks i think was relatively new to the district and so i actually brought her to executive cabinet to start this courageous conversation and we i think we spent almost half of
080executive cabinet doing this and so again i had no real expectations other than we needed an opportunity to talk about the situation in front of us what what grew out of that i found out months later is that each of the every member of executive cabinet then went back to their own departments and divisions and started requesting ms starks to come through those conversations in the world so it became kind of organic around sort of me just demanding that they came to executive cabinet and just kind of moved from there but i think now we're at a point now with the board's uh uh guidance so we can make this more intentional this is this was this was sort of just responding to the moment at the time that just kind of caught fire dr
081robinson mrs bro thank you um i might need to split mine up into sections here so um well first thank you for this presentation um i have so much i want to say i like god i am just hopeful i am hopeful not happy but i'm hopeful that maybe maybe maybe maybe prayerfully palm beach county school district will move down the road that i've been trying to push us now for 20 years actually plus right so let me say this so the first thing about this equity is owned by every one thing yeah yeah yeah yeah i got it just like safety is owned by everybody but guess what we have a chief of police okay so we need to have a chief officer of equity somebody has to own it while we're saying it's
082everybody's job right so i'm i'm just i'm crystal clear on that we can we can debate it if somebody wants the next thing is um i think it's critically important that we define our goal so and i've had this this multi-year um conversation with people where equity i say is equity in now i had this conversation with dr ruiz when he's doing the policy and mr knows is equity a noun or is it a verb right council great city schools there she had a little button that said equity is a verb yeah i don't agree with you right equity is a noun we need to define what the equitable outcomes are we're trying to get to right so along those lines i think that somewhere relatively early in these board conversations we need to define
083the portrait of a graduate right so what what are the skills and talents that we want our students to have not that stuff required by the state right but what are in the experiences that we want our students to have coming out of high school for them to be whole people that have you know these great expectations and and can take advantage of opportunities right so i'ma tell you one that in conversation with rei alumni last night i came up with and which is really people go go huh but i think that every child should have the experience of participating in a team sport because i think that that builds something and teaches you how to work with people how we're interdependent yada yada but what those bullet points are is for the board to
084discuss my point is this if we can clearly define what it is where we're trying to go what what we want for all of our students then we can back map and figure out what who's got what in terms of the things that get you to that point it's almost like you know i call it an algebraic equation and people's eyes roll in the back of the head but it's almost like you can you can create um a to-do list a sequencing of the experiences and things that you need for somebody to reach the point we want them to reach and am i making sense to y'all because um and so i think we need to set our eye on the the target or as i'm now referring to it the north star we need
085to define it right and so until we know what we think the minimum acceptable expectation is for our students coming out then we cannot figure out what the equity work is right so i'm really clear about this equity as a noun all right so that's one thing i appreciate you mentioning the educational debt i just you know i i did like an eight minute uh board comment thing on the educational debt article um many months ago i know everybody went to sleep while i was talking but i would encourage you to google it and read it because if you if you look at that you understand the the multi-generational um debt that we're dealing with that we see show up in our data and until we acknowledge that until we acknowledge the history right that
086is that is the foundation for what we are working with then we're not going to address it we're just going to be talking equity just saying the word right and so i would encourage that um okay i'm just to do a couple more points before i i've stopped talking and wait for my second go around but let me just say this it'd be real clear there's some saying that i don't remember exactly but it basically says that your budget shows what you believe in right and so we have to we have to talk about how our budget reflects our values around equity right um and one of the things one a very very low-hanging fruit that i'm gonna throw out now since miss stark's talked about these equity teams is we could fund those equity
087teams we could incentivize people to do a great job now miss starks did work in in broward county and had i'm a just i'ma brag on you because i i just thought it was outstanding way to operationalize this work she had for her um were they equity coaches that what they were called equity liaisons equity liaisons so she had a sequence of um like classes and deliverables and if they did those things then they got this stipend right and i just thought that was an outstanding way in a bureaucracy to make a bureaucracy start changing from the inside um okay i'ma just okay one more thing you know i got 25 million things i could say on this so on page six i just want to add this the scheduling regular listening sessions with key
088stakeholders let me be really clear who the first people are we need to talk to is the people we're not serving and all the all the equity work will tell you that so we we don't need to talk to the usual suspects now all right we already got that we already have our our hearing aids attuned to the frequency of their voices we need to hear from the people that we have not served right and i actually have a little idea about how we can start working on those voices but i won't be clear with that because we had this tendency to go around and do our little thing and listen to the same old suspects we have to find the way to to authentically listen not just listen but here right what our young
089people are telling us or as the president of the black student union that suncoast said to the then superintendent some a decade ago yeah i know that you hear me but do you feel me and that's what we need to get to because we we have got to start understanding how what we do makes our children how it makes them feel and how it will push them to disengage right and then we don't understand we just don't understand so this work around microaggressions i think is absolutely fantastic i went through this training about microaggressions just triggered me all over the place right you know i have triggers for being on the school board right but um but the point is is that if we understand if we understand how we are participating in microaggressions and
090macro aggression if we'll unders if we understand how when we witness a microaggression how we are part of the problem if we don't speak to it like we got to start getting with that because i can't i can't even tell you any half of the stories of that my children came home with about how what i now would identify identify as have experienced microaggressions so we need to understand why black people react differently let next people react differently and so forth is because of our experiences right individually and collectively and i'ma just close it by saying this i was in a conversation with the superintendent and some others and i told him you know i just had this little problem with it triggered me because they want to use um survey monkey right now i
091guess many people don't even understand why that would trigger me all right some people do all right so you know there was a time gone by where black folks were referred to as all kinds of different apes right so anything with a monkey triggers me i'm sensitized to that right um and so but i have i have the the voice and the agency to express it right there might there's gonna be other people who will be triggered but not express it and you don't understand why they suddenly withdrew from you so okay i'm i'm gonna be quiet for the moment but you'll come back to me i sure will miss brill and then mrs andrews thank you and mine's going to be a lot shorter because i just wanted to add into dr robinson's comments
092that i had made a note i would like us to speak to students i think it's important that we get the students voices because they're the ones that are the most impacted by what we are not doing the other thing was just very simply for the self-study and the article how soon are you going to get that to us you're going to email that to us today yes okay perfect yes and just to respond if i mean mr chairman um mary fertacus came up with this idea but she would like to also include our board student representative in some of these conversations she's more than happy to book some time i'll reach out to him and make sure he's available to include him on these conversations and possibly the board retreat so hopefully that you
093know she's very in tune with that so wanted to share with that thank you and and just as a follow-up who's going to be scheduling the time you're going to schedule i will work with the board office yes okay well for me i don't schedule through the board office so just make a note that because my schedule is crazy so don't worry you know as soon as i get that i'll reach out to you and we can put set a date thank you thank you mr sanders then mrs mcqueen yes thank you and this is such great work but uh as i look at this work and i think back over the years that i've been in palm beach county uh school district as well as sitting on this board we really have to mean
094what we say this time and get the work done i mean i've been through a lot of trainings and i've seen the teachers go through the trainings and it's forgotten and it starts out with a real big bang that we're going to do all these great things and then it just disappears so hopefully this this initiative that we're beginning this time will be meaningful because we will actually have a deep dive to where we need to be so that we can make it work so one of the things is i looked at especially the students i was just talking to dad or fetterman about the lgbtq plus students that we have in our district i heard you mentioned that a few minutes ago but we've got all kinds of students in different groups within our
095district when i looked at the short-term calendar for the board i almost see us and i know we have our district diversity committee and we all have one person representing representing us but that's a big umbrella we've got to dig deep into these communities we've got all kinds of groups of people in our communities where we can have a multi-level of conversation if we're going to dig deep and truly talk about it we were just talking about the cheerleaders last week okay we know what that is that's been that way and we and we've been looking at it and we don't really do anything about it but i'm talking about all these children that truly want to be in advanced placement classes i want to participate in the band and in sports that don't get
096a chance to do it so when i when i think about this i love it that we're going to get this training the teachers are going to get this training but we've got to get some sub components that we're going to dig deep dig deep in these neighborhoods where the children are coming from get some of the parents involved in this you know and i know you got the big heavyweight committees and i love our student council representative but i'm looking at the the maya group that we have right here in lake worth nobody really spends that much time i was happy to see something on the board where we're doing something with hyland but that's a group of people that we haven't even looked at so when we start digging deep with the people
097when we talk about equitableness and reaching out to those who are least served there's a whole lot of different groups that may be represented on our diversity committee but we got to go to the neighborhoods and go out and find them and make a calendar to give this information of this training that we're giving to all of us which work for the school district and and all the people that connect with us and our partners and business people and so on we've got to go deep down into the field into the weeds where they are so that we can find out what the needs are i love this i've just seen it before and i'm just hoping that with the consultant that's going to come back and retrain us again because we've been here before
098that we're going to really make a difference and talk about how deep we need to go and uh and we all know our districts really well we know many of the people in our districts we know where the children come from and where their parents are and what they need i'm hoping that the board will learn so that we can help the district dig deep i mean you know the schools know a lot but many times they're not out into the neighborhood the way they should be out into the neighborhood delving deep into these pieces that we're talking about so as we begin to build a plan i love the first steps here but i'd love to see a lot of different calendars of all the different groups that we've identified that's been left behind
099for years and years and years here in palm beach county and how we're going to put them on this plate with the school board with the administration the teachers and everybody else and how we're going to work this through it's a lot of work if you truly mean what you say and i'm willing to do my part to kind of take it to a different level this time and i commend you all for what you're doing uh with this so that we can do what we need to take care of our children so that they can all be successful and our communities thank you mrs mcqueen um comments lead into what i wanted to say but but don't let me finish my comments without going back to the last bullet on page four please whoever's
100doing this i would love whoever's putting these groups together that we're going to listen to how we must listen to the students and i would like to see to come back to us how that's going to happen students aren't going to talk to board members they're not going to talk to district people they will talk to people they trust which is usually a teacher so i know you're building teacher leadership teams kids are going to more likely talk to a teacher that they trust who's had this training and even if it is um i can't remember what we called it i didn't come back to me but if you even if you'll have two teachers together can create a nice friendly environment for kids to talk that's really what we have to do and you
101can identify those you can go to when we're talking different races it doesn't you're not necessarily in a particular neighborhood you can be um in at jupiter high school but you have kids coming from other neighborhoods who are coming because they want a particular program where they want a particular environment so i would just like for us to look at all students where we know that we have inequities thank you uh the last bullet i really love this it says we have a sense of urgency to address inequities i think we mean inequities that exist within our system the part to ensure ideal educational outcomes for all students regardless of background if we can do that we can change the world thank you mr chairman may i i do have a response for the student
102voice so i have added that piece into the equity teams so the equity teams have been charged to bring on a student panel of some sort almost like a student equity team with this and also um to the parent and communities i am entertaining tearing out these courses for communities and parents as well mrs mcqueen thank you and just a follow-up to that we won't necessarily find these kids who are our leaders i see you nodding so i don't have to say anymore thanks i yes they are being addressed in that with the equity teams to be very fair into in the student council panel piece with that yes absolutely okay dr robinson thank you i won't say everything um so let me just say i would like to hear from everyone but if we're
103going to talk about equity we have to reach those who we are not serving right not the student government kid right so i i just need to make that clinton and we all know that there are young people there's old people too but right now we're talking about young people who are um not engaging in teacher pleasing behavior but they are opinion leaders right on campus that's what we need to hear from as a start right we also need to go to the alternative ed schools because we know that we have failed them right and so you know a few years ago i made a few trips to and sat with young people at turning points and asked them tell me what i'm supposed to do how what do i need to do to change
104this so that your younger siblings don't end up at turning points right almost everyone said in one way or another like give me a teacher who cares about me right i mean almost everyone said it in different ways right um they also talked about programs engaging in programs that they were interested in but it was just amazing to me and and actually affirming the importance of teachers so the work that you're doing the culturally responsive um teaching work i think is terribly terribly important i don't want to confuse that with equity though right and so again i'm going to say point to the north star so we had this conversation is it outcome or it was what's the out okay so i'm willing to work with your your outcomes in here but i want to
105define north star right because i just don't understand how we work um with any sense of purpose and intentionality if we don't know where we're trying to go right so i think that it has to be early on in the in the board's calendar i would also encourage us to look at um there were some student surveys that were done actually will be presented november 30th as part of superintendent's advisory committee for black student excellence student surveys and i don't and you could talk to to um them about how they got this information from the students but i think it could be replicated and also in the summer the african african-american summer institute there was a student panel um that talked about again circling back the recent conversations about how learning their history engaged them
106and our students needed it so um i just want to also just outline to share this so you know i've talked about the council of great city schools conference it's always awesome this year it would focus on race and equity and two on covet so um but before i talk about this equity by design i want to know are we leading with race yes ma'am okay i only see one head nod so i just need to be clear because everybody that's doing equity work across the country leads with grace i need to know what palm beach county is or are we gonna do that everybody thing right because the primary sin in this country is based on race and everybody else's oppression is is part of that but are we legal with race i think
107once the board does the cell study that that self-study speaks to that reality and so i think we can definitely and then when we have a retreat i think that is the beginning of it but the the the information that the team provided to the board go straight to the heart of what you're saying thank you now oh let me say this and those links in the in the uh powerpoint the little the webinar that was all audio and then the 10 steps aboard can take um for racial equity act without standing like keep that stuff coming that it gives me hope but i just want to share um this one thing and then i think i'm gonna try to be quiet on from the there was one of the council gray city schools um
108breakout sessions that was called funding equity i think is what it was it was called the cost of equity the cost of equity and so these were people talking about their budget processes once they if they um focused on equity then how did they approach the budget differently right and so um and part of it i think it was might have been austin one of them talked specifically about their community engagement around the budget process right which is something that i hope we would do and it also reminds me of the people's budget process that took place in pinellas county a few years ago it wasn't the school board i think it was the county's budget but they actively engaged community in in the hard times when they knew that they were going to have
109to make some difficult choices and it and it served to and in both of these examples served to educate the community had a community understand the difficult choices um that the this in this case the school board would be um dealing with and then and then helped um us help them determine uh the priorities right so i i just think that's a process we should look at so the last thing i want to say is so the one part one of these school districts in this particular training had this um i think it was austin they specifically talked about this equity by design training and so they had eight steps first was em identify the underserved groups using disaggregated data right and so you know that's why i decided um one of the reasons i
110decided to start showing the data um to to listen to the voice of the adversely affected right three conduct root cause analysis with communities four do an environmental scan and asset mapping with communities five research promising practices and industry leaders six establish robust realistic goals over time for all student groups seven adapt or develop research-based tactics and strategies with the underserved communities and a draft strategic implementation plan and evaluation so i know we are anxious to do a new strategic plan i just want to do it right and i think if we're really going to have equity as you know embedded in it um that that maybe maybe we do it and then we just accept the fact that we need to revise it in 18 months or something once we've done more study around
111equity and what we can do in palm beach county school district to really focus on getting all of our young people to that north star thank you mrs whitfield then mrs andrews i just have a process question thank you um i wanted to um understand a little bit about that day that we're going to be working on this i saw a mission and vision we're going to work on um is that going to be a part of a larger strategic planning process that takes place later or is that are we going to try to tackle some strategic planning in the same day or is it when does that work how does that happen i think for the board retreat we're really trying to come to a working definition of equity just because i can't remember
112if it's the mission or vision but the word equity is in there and so um you know misfortune started before we even got the funding and she looked at our equity policy as well and also had some suggestions on well maybe if you come to a definition you revise your policy and put it in there as well so that you know you make that loud clear statement about where you stand as a board and so i think mr takas will be able to share some insight in that sense i think the board retreat can you know float a little bit to the strategic plan if we needed to but the ultimate goal is really to have some like a strong foundation so that staff can really take that and then start building out the strategic
113planning process and making sure that as we put drafts together we take that definition into account or any changes to the mission vision to make sure that those align with whatever strategic plan um comes forward i know dr fennoy may have yeah just and also in that particular meeting we will be onboarding our new board member as well that'll be part of that process as well i think um when it comes to the budget that's sort of something that's been kind of weighing on me in this process too is that if we really do want to prioritize these these changes that we're going to make or if we want to prioritize anything we have to tie it to the budget so how how would the timing work on that when do we have an opportunity
114to say these are our goals strategically you know maybe it's you know working on third grade reading and you know focusing on equity as an office instead of you know department or something like that how do we say as a board that this is a bigger priority to us um than something else like when is that moment so i know ms millen talked about this a little bit but we're really using the desired outcomes in the equity policy to be the organizational unit for these board workshops or sessions or whatever we want to call them around our current state like where are we as it relates to these outcomes what are some innovative or best practices related to that desired outcome so that's what will bring in you know some of these districts that we
115heard from the council of great city schools community partners or schools that may be doing some good things in relation to that desired outcome and then the nitty gritty what will it take and part of that conversation i think is going to be around the dollars and cents so when i hear dr fenoy say that no one owns this per se it's everyone i know that we've approached this work as you know we don't want this to be siloed like oh the desired outcome around recruiting and retaining teachers that only belongs to hr well no it really is an entire system-wide effort to get that diversity here so we really want to be mindful and using that equity policy as our organizational unit for those workshops so that you know we've already had folks weigh
116in and say this is what we think it will take you know i definitely hear dr robinson say but does that lead to the portrait of a graduate that we actually want and i think again this is very complex work there will absolutely be hard decisions that the school board district staff the superintendent will need to make if that's the the the line in the sand that you all choose to draw but i think our job as district staff is to really put these workshops together so that you can see current state you know best practices innovative and then you know definitely working with mr burke and his team to say what's the dollars and cents what will it take because you're absolutely right you know some things we may need to you know put
117to the side so that we can attend to these things in year one or year two or by year five and so if we if the board decides you know we may need some more time to develop the strategic plan or we know that in 18 months we'll have to revisit that i think that flexibility is something again that mr takas will talk to because it's not a one and done right it's a long term thing things are changing we know you know we want to accelerate our kids due to covet and other factors like we have that educational debt even before code so i think we can really use this as an opportunity and the time with the strategic plan will allow us just to organize it better because to miss andrew's point this
118isn't the first time but i think you know the three of us absolutely are committed to this work and are really seeking the board's direction here and i think we're hearing a lot of good things just to help us make sure that we can come back to you later this month or in early december so you all can see the schedule off-board workshops and make sure that that makes sense make sure that we're drawing on your collective expertise and of district staff as well to engage the right folks in this work and you know while we can't promise that you know in the beginning we'll get all the folks we're not serving we will absolutely be out there shaking those bushes for as long as it takes but we've got to start somewhere and i
119think again you know that that schedule of workshops will help you all decide and hopefully see you know what will it take financially as well as just you know culturally or or you know just decision making and things like that i think it's important too i mean mr burke and his team will be doing more budget workshops than we have in the past um you know i think you know if i reflect on other board meetings this is moving beyond aspirational goals right now however we still don't know what the mid-year adjustment to our budget is going to look like and so i think that's why we have to look at this as a multi-year this is not like something we're going to do this year this is we got to plan this out over
120years because we are dealing with realities of the economy and so i think as we keep pushing forward those are the critical conversations mrs whitfield and others that we're going to have to have because just like with our principals right now who we've asked them to change their entire world in no matter the last 10 months so it's stressful it is very hard so here's the question for us moving forward so we know that this is a priority for the board and we're going to put this in our strategic plan but at some point based on finances and because this is our new focus we have to ask ourselves what comes off the plate and that's the other part of the hard conversation and again you know we so we're having those conversations internally as
121a team but we have to bring the board up to speed on you know what what comes off the plate as we move forward these new initiatives especially as it relates to our budget constraints mrs anderson and thank you and this is probably repeating what some of you have already said but when you look around the country you've got school districts who have really been meaningful with this and it has taken years for them to get to where they are now but it started with the leadership of the board and the superintendent to say this is a commitment that we are going to do and we're going to make it happen because i'm looking at some of these school districts um each time i work with the council of great city schools so we have
122to be meaningful again i think we've been trying but we have really not been committed to to really being fulfilled to do what has to be done and we're looking at the united states of america people are questioning now why from education from economics from all of these different arenas uh equity and access for everybody it's being talked about and people want something to happen i certainly want something to happen as a school board member and i'm looking at the florida school boards association they have stepped up sarasota county just brought a consultant in last year and they've actually put together something so i would like for you to reach out to sarasota county and what they did uh because i'm looking at it as i work with the florida school board uh association equity
123committee and working with them so we've got to really be meaningful and this work uh surely we've got to have the budget money but it's not going to happen all on the the eight to five four thirty or four thirty job line okay we've got to be meaningful this is what i'm talking about i was sitting with the boys and girls club just recently in the evening when our children many of our children once they leave us during the day they have to go somewhere until their parents get off from work to get taken care of to get food to get something to eat to be supervised children are talking about what happens to them within the school district of palm beach county during the day and until you find those modes where you can
124get the truth because they will tell you the truth they may not tell you the truth within a classroom setting or within a school setting but they may tell you that within their neighborhood or at a church or in a boys and girls club or in a group of what truly has happened to them when they go to school every day so if we really want to change our way of doing things so that we can be uh equitable for all our children we've got to find a way to get their voices heard get their parents voices heard and it may not be at a pta meeting or pto meeting you got to find those places where people will be willing to to talk to you and tell you the truth including the students and
125so i mean when we talk about a budget and we talk about a term this is what i'm looking for i'm willing to give the long-term time and going out to places to find out what we need to do we kind of know that we know the children that are being left behind but their parents need to be able to tell us what they see for their children they have the same desires and outcomes that every other parent has and so we've got to give them the time this is a wonderful start and we're beginning but some of the road map has already been done by progressive school districts so i mean you can you can look and find a a a map where you don't have to really recreate the will but we really
126want to look at ourselves and how we do it and it's not a rush thing it's going to take the time to do it so i'm happy that we have the consultant that as a board we're taking the lead with the superintendent and the rest of the uh the team here in palm beach county principals and schools and everybody but we need to know it truly is truly about our children and making sure they can get the best so that they can be successful so remember it's not a nine to five or eight to four thirty or eight to three kind of thing and you go home you got to get to know who the children are who the stakeholders hires their parents and others and truly be meaningful and making a difference in their
127life academically socially emotionally to the next level thank you all right thank you assistant super dad melon team for a great presentation we appreciate your assistance with this mr superintendent you want to move on to the next important workshop yes sir at this time i'd like to bring forward um our workshop on choice and career options uh if at this time we have dr glenda sheffield mr j vargas dr jarelyn johnson come forward and give us our update to the board on career and choice choice in career excuse me well good board afternoon mr fabiari and um board members and dr fenoy today's workshop is to provide a yearly update regarding our choice programs and most importantly i have to tell you while working on you know today's presentation with the team i had to
128personally remind myself that educating our students um definitely looked different than what it did this time last year and i'm sure that everyone in this room can't agree to this but a positive for me in this current space is that we have been challenged to think differently and become creative and flexible when appropriate an example of this conversation for today's purpose would be that each year we look forward to welcoming about 15 000 participants you know to the south florida fairgrounds showcasing our schools our choice programs and then navigating in this covet 19 space a priority for the department had to be for us to rethink what a virtual experience will look like because at the end of the day our top priority is about educating our students and providing the services and resources for
129our family and i'm just so proud of this team because we surely brought that virtual experience that this covet experience made us think outside of the box to life back on october the 20th as we kicked off our virtual showcase of schools thanks to claudia communications and the entire team and this virtual experience is continuing as our families are content you know they're continuously reviewing all of our choice programs and doing it virtually they're not just looking at the schools that are housing our choice programs but they have the opportunity to look at all district operated schools and as we go through today's workshop i just want to remind everyone that many of our priorities have changed since march 13th to say the least we find that many of our goals and desires remained unchanged
130as our immediate focus shifted to providing opportunities for our students to continue their experience in the distance learning environment to name a few when we left on march 13th it was important as a team that we work with our school-based leaders on spring industry certification completions in an at-home environment who even whoever thought that we would have to shift from teaching our students from the schoolhouse to their homes and this for this was necessary to us from the career and choice choice department because we provided our students that opportunity to where they would have an opportunity to receive the credentials to earn their marketable skills and in addition it became evident that thousand vowel students that were participating in our medical academies were not being able to complete their clinical rotations and distance learning an
131option needed to be provided for them it also became evident to us that we needed to secure funding for computers for our cte programs to run more effectively and efficiently file students and teachers due to the consumer demands unfortunately these devices would not be available until february but at this time and i know that was just a quick overview but boy time has changed covert has definitely has pushed us to think outside of the box and as one indicated earlier distance learning is going to be around educating our students will definitely look different it would never look the same so we are committed to creating existence learning structure that we could utilize here in palm beach county to where we can continue to provide opportunities and choice for our families and their students so at
132this time i'm going to just turn it over to i'm dr johnson i'm our director for choice and career innovation and mr j bach is our assistant superintendent thank you dr sheffield uh as we move through to today's powerpoint and workshop um a few points of topic a little bit about who choice and career options is monitoring success anything from recruitment and support what are driving forces in both choice and career and technical education and then moving into ib as far as priorities and other choice programs and lastly really our priorities moving forward as a district and casting vision around that when we look at choice and career options um it is a small and mighty team very similar to their director dr jalen johnson small and mighty but it really is something that i
133can tell you uh speaking from past experience and even now current leadership experience around our mission and vision it is to empower and inspire success for our stakeholders very simply stated but it is also about redefining success that it is not just about college or university it's all-encompassing to college university trade school the military apprenticeship and that's really what we start to talk about in both mission but also about vision it's a new generation of learners and leaders that this inspiration pre-mid and post covid continues to be at the forefront of who we are as a department and a division but also what i think we're casting vision from dr fenoy and the school board's perspective when we look at long-term outcomes i can tell you choice and career options is from start to finish
134from third grade reading engagement all the way to poster fostering postgraduate success when we look at choice in palm beach county there's a variety of different different definitions from a federal state and local level but really it comes down to the choice it's not just the choice application process and anything that that might be that's just what this department does it's career technical education it's reassignments it's controlled enrollment it's opportunity scholarship hope scholarship and recently in the last two years family empowerment scholarships this small but mighty team takes care of all that work for this school district dr johnson so over the past couple of years we have continued to increase in the number of choice and career options as you can see here we've had a steadily growth pattern of programs here in palm
135beach county starting with fy22 we welcomed some new programs to palm beach county uh glade central high school will be welcoming a new computer science as well as the agri-technology uh choice program santa lucious high school will be welcoming a new cyber security program uh plamosa school of the arts will be welcoming their first sixth grade class uh for the arts addison meisner will be welcoming its first sixth grade class with a new business leadership academy that will be focusing on entrepreneurship and verdi k-8 will be focusing on a new cambridge lower secondary program and they will be bringing on their seventh grade class in fy22 we do have a couple programs that uh decided to convert either from choice to in-house which is in the case of lc swain for their pre-law pre-medical and
136pre-it academies and what we've seen is uh what we all know about the beauty of our programs what has happened over the past couple of years the dual language program that is now at lc swain has started to make the students that we're leaving and applying to go to other schools such as okaheelee when we put in the dual language program those students started to stay home and so as a result the number of inboundary students increased the capacity of the school and so the principal wanted to decrease the number of out-of-boundary students that were coming in to these three programs to allow for the handful of seats that they were getting for these programs because of the capacity of their zone students to allow for those extra seats to be allocated towards the dual
137language program seminole ridge high school is going to now accept some out of boundary students for their rotc program and we have a name change at roosevelt leadership academy at um roosevelt middle school as part of these oncoming k-8 programs we have to make mention to our penny at work these are brand new school sites and the expansion from k through 5 to now 6 through 8 and further defining what a k-8 is it is a k-5 school with a 6-8 choice option attached that's a question i'd like to see boca book elementary school up there it's a k-1 it's a title one school some of the most impoverished kids in the district go to that school they need a medical academy they've been asking for it for a long time the fau medical school
138is willing to work at that school send people over the only thing they won't fund as a teacher if we can put a medical academy teacher there they can flow from from boca elementary to boca middle to boca high school all have medical programs as well as west boca medical school we need to get something in there for those impoverished kids at bulk elementary school and the metal academy medical academy is the best option we have at this point because of the the feeder school pattern so can you guys take a look at that and see once and for all whether we can make it happen if we're going to be expanding let's take a look at bulk elementary see we can do for those kids sure [Music] one of the things that we do
139every year is we take a look at the number of students that are applied to our programs and we like to say that there is a correlation between the number of applicants and student interests so as you can see across the district in all levels these are the top five programs that tend to get the most applications they happen to be in the arts medical international baccalaureate i.t and engineering our student interest also i want to point out is in line with the targeted industry needs of our local economy so when you look at those targeted industries from the bbb career source florida they happen to be in health care they happen to be in engineering and also information technology so it's really nice to see that the students that are applying that those top
140five or within the top five programs they match um or align with the targeted needs of our local economy and so the next couple slides i'm going to go through relatively quickly this just breaks down that previous slide by grade level so you can see here by elementary school with the top five programs based on the number of applicants the next one shows the middle schools and this one shows the high schools we also take a look every year at um the students who are applying first choice so we like to say our students when you pick something as a first choice that's something that you really really really want and we do take a look at the number of students that are assigned as well so as you can see for our fy 21
141applicants we had a total of 20 131 students to apply and of that 1 20 0 13 143 students were assigned to a choice program that is students who met eligibility criteria so that's about a 65 assignment rate we take a look at these numbers from a demographic standpoint we also take a look at these numbers from a special population standpoint as well so one of the things that we do when we take a look at the data every year well you sit down and we make some decisions and we try to come up with some ways to improve each year so uh definitely we need to take a look at how do we increase the number of ell and esc students um applying first and foremost and eventually being assigned one of those things
142that we do we focus on recruitment efforts we focus on getting out into the community not so much in person now but we are virtually and we look at how we can assist our parents and families pre-lottery during the lottery process as well as pulse lottery so that um they have a smooth transition uh we're using social media we're on facebook live events uh emails uh creating videos in different languages uh having virtual open houses uh sending messages uh we just learned we're gonna try to send some messages through the sis gateway so that parents and students will know hey apply for a choice program it's available to all students dr johnson i asked another question yes so you showed about 65 of the kids that applied got in the other 30 uh was that
14335 percent um why are we looking for more kids and we have 35 percent of the kids couldn't get into a choice program that they applied for did those kids not meet the eligibility requirements or are they just there wasn't room for them it could be a little of both it could be that they may not have met the eligibility criteria or they there were not enough seats so can you let the board know how many of the kids that didn't get in just met the eligibility requirements but did not have any place where we could put them because we didn't have enough room and how many of them break them down by the ell students and such so we know how many kids actually applied that couldn't get in so the board can kind
144of direct where we want you to to increase the program so that we can make sure that those kids that want to get in have an opportunity to get in before we go looking for more children to put in in the in the mix okay mr barbieri miss pearl thank you and i just want to add to that if you would um let us know which schools i think that i saw something in there don't have any programs that people outside of boundaries can attend and and where i know for example in my area because i only have one high school um the students do apply at other high schools but they're not getting in and we're losing a lot of students that are going to a charter school because they can't get into their
145choice programs i'm able to get work with the families on some suggestions now we do have south tech which is opened um but i know we're going to to have a lot of students shifting over to south tech because there are no career options out in the western area so i just want you to give us a little bit of an update on that as well and perfect examples park vista there's no opportunity for any student outside of the boundaries to go into parkvist unless they do automotive right and and that is part this is a prime example and a lot of that has to do with the capacity of the schools and their ability to bring in these out-of-boundary students but we will put that information together mrs anders thank you and i like
146this uh graph for the demographics but i'd like it to be uh narrowed down uh by region i'd like to see one for the glades region to see how many students you know white hispanic black asian pacific for each one of the regions you know that will tell me better as to who's actually participating so if you could make that happen for me i'd appreciate it certainly what programs do you have planned for the new middle school in high school that's being built uh medical and information technology for both the middle school next to sunset bombs uh the one next to sunset plants uh information technology and i believe culinary in the high school the new high school is the medical initiative medical and i.t okay well if if i may follow up on that
147you know my concern there is going to be the feeder pattern for those programs you know for the sunset palms middle school culinary where do they go do they go down to west boca which is not that close there's really no schools for those programs for the kids to continue from middle school to be able to continue in those programs so you know hopefully with the new high school that's being built in lake worth that will give us an option but the only place they can go from there is south tech so when we look at driving forces behind choice and career programs i think some of this discussion is part of this decision making process everything from local uh the economy labor market statistics that we get from career source or economic council business
148development board continued feed patterns uh stakeholder interest transportation funding even spaces capacity are all part of that equation but a new piece is coded 19. um i can tell you just from what we experienced here on march 13th it was yes the lift of moving to distance learning but that's a very different thing when you're talking about culinary and medical and i.t or any of the other in between career academies so cover 19 has put a whole new spin around career and tech ed specifically but i can you know i in kind of helping to to monitor and lead covet 19 in in some aspect it is something that we're dealing with on a daily basis but for our career academy teachers they've upskilled and re-skilled over the course of this summer and i think
149that's something that uh the choice and corruptions team really dug into and did an excellent job of trying to make sure and prepare for august of this year dr johnson is going to take us into some of what that deep dive looked like i'm i'm sorry to keep interrupting i follow up on miss brill so and you you covered um a little bit but i think one of the most important things when we're looking at programming is is the feeder pattern um i mean it doesn't make sense to put into one of the schools put a new program where the kids have absolutely no place to go when they get out of that school she made the point at sunset plums there's no way the kids are going to go except drive all the way
150down to west boca which is to too far away from middle school kids to get to so you know that's got to be one of the guiding choices i mean guiding factors that you all look at when we put a program in is where the kids going to go you know it it it just doesn't make sense to put culinary and sunset plums if there's nowhere the kids can go after after that if they want to actually go into the culinary occupation when they get out of high school there's no place for them to go in high school except to drive miles in my foot it's at 10 miles away 12 miles to get to the nearest culinary program so hopefully you guys will be taking a look at that when you're making these decisions
151more more closely than than you are it's mrs anderson dr robinson and just to follow up with that uh when we talk about the dual language program at new horizons we need a middle school where they can actually move forward as well as high school there is nothing as far as i know so uh for new horizons polo park is something i thought we were looking at at one time i've heard nothing in palm beach central and that's a we have a big dual language program at new horizons and nothing and then for the glaze region for the children that truly want to get into some of the career programs that come up to the east i've been riding the bus a bit with them and they have to get up at 4 30 in
152the morning to make that bus uh for 6 15 or 6 o'clock to kind of take it to the 20-mile bend to get over to a school over here so you know and that's the folk hoping and so i've been able to see that per se so those children don't get a chance to participate because of that so we need to kind of think about how we can do better that's the equity piece again dr robinson and miss pearl thank you um so i want to talk about i want to look at this whole concept of feeder pattern through the equity lens right and so one of the things that and dr fano i would hope we would have a follow-up workshop on the choice program where we can spend some time and look at
153the transportation zones right so i realize it's it's nice it's so it's a wonderful concept to have a school close to home elementary middle high where you track in in terms of the program that's lovely but i want to remind you that we have we have our so-called premier schools where students will come from all over the county to go to these schools right and so i don't want us to start thinking that depending on your zip code you will or will not have access to certain programs through the feeder pattern i just i just need to add that other that other view um that in in our desire to have these things be nice and smooth we might inadvertently um block some children from participating and so those those transportation zones become critically important
154in terms of us looking at who has access to what um and i'm gonna hold i'm gonna hold my heavy hitting comments the later but but you know this chart i'm delayed chart on page 10. when you look at this i think we need to look at if um black parents and students are accessing our choice programs equitably right because it strikes me that with the engineering the technology that it relatively speaking black students are not applying and i think we need to look into the why around that right the medical and let's be honest um many of our programs that are labeled medical are pro producing young people as home health aids and in in that level and so i really need us to to focus on high wage not just high demand right
155because what's uh all too often what's in high demand what the business community will tell us that they want are people who work for low wages and to in my mind that is not really contributing um and to the overall well-being not only of that person their family but also not to the county right and so you know i know we had this conversation around um the high school and adult programming in del rey but and then that could be a starting point to do that home health aid thing and you know the ekg and and these other skills um that's not going to let you help you feed your not going to let you feed your family with just that we could have the pathway but i just want to be clear that this
156data medical listen medical is not all medical and that what i'm an md when i talk to my colleagues and we have a medical program i'm like yo hold on all right that's entry level that's the nice way i put it but i want us to understand and and hopefully agree that what we want is for our graduates to be able to feed their families and a lot of this what we call medical and which is and it's almost painful to me to see so many black and latinx as well as white students in these programs and i know that we are not creating a pathway for to have the the education they need to be able to feed their family so i don't this ain't worth bragging about is what i'm trying to say
157in my humble opinion and i hold the rest too late that's real thank you so two comments one was to go back to dr robinson's comment about the feeder pattern in certain schools mr barbieri and i well know that that a lot of families don't have the ability to send their children to bach or to dreyfus because of how far away it is some will let their children travel some will not and that's why we fought so hard unfortunately not successfully for a south area school of the arts or something like that because not everybody can so feeder patterns are still very important and the other thing i wanted to bring up i know mrs andrew mentioned the dual language programs we had a wonderful workshop talking about how we were expanding the dual language
158programs i would love to get an update on where we are with that i feel like sometimes we talk about stuff did it really happen you know is there italian down and one i think it was one of the boca schools right mr barbieri that you had asked for italian we asked we were looking at portuguese we were looking at chinese we you know looking of course it's spanish where did all that go because we sat here and had a workshop about that and i haven't i feel like sometimes we just talk and i'd like to get an update on it thank you so i'm sure that there's some families that um that will deny their children access to a program because it's not close to home um it is my impression that that is
159not the majority if you like come visit my house and watch all the buses rolling out of box right just come watch them roll out okay um and many of them are going to try real so people will choose the programs that they think are outstanding i like the feeder patterns i'm just saying to you that and that's why last year we i talked a lot about regionalization right but let me just add this because i guess you know maybe i'm just all my triggers are triggering let me just say this so let me tell you my history in the history of what is now known as bach right before then it was the school of the arts right there was a point when it was grades 7 through 12. it just so happened that
160i moved into the neighborhood when it was empty right it had been north shore high school i'm not even going to talk about the comparisons between north shore and westward and those communities and who got what but it was north shore high school the school district closed north shore i'm not even going to add all my bullet points under that right but this is what i know for certain that i witnessed with my eyes right that facility was like a bus storage place for a year and then guess what it was wellington high school now we know where bach is right it's in west palm beach when wellington high school was supposed to open it wasn't ready for in august that facility wellington high school painted across it right and i'm telling you there were
161busloads and busloads of children rolling in from wellington okay rolling in from wellington into my backyard because they were all with their neighbors and friends we all nice comfortable and stuff okay so the whole thing about and i heard it many times in in debates around various schools most notably suncoast where people would say well it's it's not that we don't want our children to go to school with other children we just don't want them to have to ride the bus that yeah well okay it was a whole bunch of people sent their children on the bus from wellington that i saw with my eyes that's the most egregious example and so while i like the feeder patterns and that's a lovely concept if we're going to talk that equity and access talk right we
162need to look at the transportation zones because i believe just like these folks put their children on tri-rail and the bus to come to my backyard to bach right god bless them i'm i'm i'm i'm glad black is there for you and you help your children enjoy the program right we other parents and children will take advantage of transportation if need be if it's not close by our goal i think is to make sure that we have outstanding programs that meet the needs of the children inspire them to become active participants in their own education prepare them so that they can feed their families or go any path they choose and i'm a roll into that in a minute but i i just want to be clear i'm not we cannot on the one hand
163say equity and access and then on the other hand not talk about the transportation zones okay i listen i'm sorry you're triggering me this is a superintendent bar but you want to continue please yes sir um we were picking up right where we rolled into our deep dive into career and technical education over the summer and in doing so dr johnson you're picking up with program highlights okay so some of the program highlights over the summer include we built and dedicated another home uh thanks to the construction academy at seminole ridge high school we also had one of our graduates from the bassa program down at boynton beach to be featured in a newsletter from emory riddle university for obtaining her phd in human factors at the beginning of kovit we were happy that our
164medical academies could assist the community but by donating ppe and also one of our uh signature events that we normally have at the end of the school year to recognize our students who have opted to go into the military uh had to be converted to virtual so we ended up having a really cool opportunity to do this on a national scale one of our staff members ms koble sat on a national planning team that included lots of celebrities to celebrate our students who opted to go into the military one pause um to lead you must first serve and i think that's what we showed when the covet impact came we had a chairman of this board and a superintendent that went out in the community taking gloves mass gallons anything that we could get from
165our medical academies and redistributing it out for the covet impact so i think that that was a highlight and mention um not only as a program highlight but i think as a district leadership highlight as well please support chairman shaw [Music] thank you i haven't heard you talk any about about this issue where are we and what experiences have we had recently on our students and our cte and our choice programs getting internships and being involved out in the community i i think for us the we see the um the agreements and most of them are health related um but not a lot of others where are we and what experiences are are we having if any that are obstacles to us being able to get these internships it is a challenge right now currently
166medically speaking we're still on a pause from the state department on whether or not we can have the clinicals aspect in our clinical relationships we have agreements but there's a bottleneck with everyone and i'm talking secondary and post-secondary trying to get into any facility that would allow them given social distance and in all the other aspects when it comes to internships there are many businesses that had wide open doors prior to coven and and they are not right now we're furthering engagement with business development board and an upcoming claim your future showcase um as part of a virtual platform in those aspects but we uh there's there's pieces around internships that right now we don't have the open doors that we used to just a quick follow-up and this is related to staff the same
167question are we having any luck in getting teachers involved with either summer internships or any kinds of internships of training within various aspects of the business community so are you talking teachers themselves going out doing externships so we do have uh especially with our stem teachers engineering teachers they're working with the stem council and they have been going out doing externships where they're able to learn the updated um information and bring that back into the classroom of course the covet this year we did not see that happening but i want to tag on to something else on to the original question about internships so prior to cobit we do have students that have been going out doing internships with our international business and our finance academies we have our students who are in our criminal
168justice academies they go out and they do internships at various attorney offices state attorneys offices so we do have students outside of our typical medical academies that do go out sometimes it is a challenge with students due to age with some internships at some facilities and some businesses have issues with insurance but we do have some students going out outside of the typical medical kids and mr charlotte the board prior to covet we did i think almost the entire executive team did go out and tour many businesses in palm beach county pratt whitney scripps another scripts visit anna at florida light there were some uh i actually did a presentation with charlotte where one of our teachers was part of a patent that they um they were part of a team to develop a patent
169and we went out there and celebrated them so i think the community at large the business community has a really strong interest in and i think once we get through cold those doors i think those i know i think kelly small ridge and the business development board actually has a very specific platform around this work um and again when we toured pratt whitney i think uh sheffield and i went out there they were all in around you know investing money in the district and creating an engineering academy at the time um so again i think those doors will open back up i don't think we're closing those doors i think it's just covered just postponed at all you know i know we've interrupted a lot so we'll let you get through your other 16 slides
170and we'll try and hold the questions as much as possible before they get started i just think because i'm sitting here and i'm hearing all in regards to what we need to bring back to the board and we definitely will get it to you is that we talk a lot in regards to what the immediate needs are of our students which is very important but in this current space is the also the immediate needs of the adult learners the teachers we have spent a great amount of time in regards to walking alongside and providing that ongoing support and training for teachers because when you talk about the cte um the courses and many of the other pieces that come along with it um our teachers are in dire need of that immediate coaching and guidance
171so as we are navigating with our students we are right there with our teachers so some of the ask i'll say again it's just not the inedible at this time as our priorities just have changed in regarding to trying to set both the adult learners and the student learners up for immediate success in this space so one of the other areas of success that we take a look at each year the state provides us with the graduation rates for our cte students these are students who concentrate in a cte program which means they take at least three courses in a single cte program so you can see from a graduation rate standpoint and this data is from the state that our students do outperform even the state targets um that are set our target for
172this year is a 95.75 percent and so looking at what our actual graduation rates have been over the past couple years we hope to meet that or exceeded uh we continue to be guided by programs of study that lead to articulated credit which will save students both time and money if they're able to obtain those articulated credits at the local state college and we continue to be leaders in industry certification and i know jay wanna i i i only want to make the point that this was in the midst of covid where the bulk of our industry certification testing takes place anywhere between february through april may is when the bulk of ic testing takes place on our middle school and high school campuses and then looking at it we still produced over 10 247
173passed and still put out 13 000 even taking the test this is we flipped to a virtual platform we were moving and doing distance testing it was one incredible feat for our schools and our students really wanted to make mention of that because it really impacted the way we did the work but the result still came out incredible for our students so really quickly back in march we did the mid-year instructional review and we talked to you guys about some work that we had to do over the summer and during the spring and with covet hitting it became very interesting for our our small cte team but some of that work was around an executive order and also house bill 7071 from the governor's office where he is looking to make the state of florida
174number one in workforce and career and technical education uh in the united states by 2030 it also involved an audit we also had work around new legislation around perkins which is our legislation for career and technical education from a federal level um so when it came to the governor's cte audit the state took a deep dive in terms of cte and every school district and they took a look at things such as enrollment numbers numbers of industry certifications and whether the programs were aligned with labor market demand if we didn't hit the mark on one of those areas they required the districts to take a deeper dive and to complete kind of a survey if you will on where we were with these particular programs so the programs that you see on the screen here
175were some of the programs that we had to take that deeper dive and and take a look at uh from a labor market demand standpoint uh from an enrollment standpoint um whether or not it was a a newer program so the numbers just weren't there yet or if it's a program that the state has uh daggered for eventual deletion within the next couple of years and we also took a look at our industry certification including the passage rate the next item that we had to deal with was again new legislation around perkins 5 that required us to do a deep dive doing some stakeholder engagement working alongside with palm beach state college with the survey out to the community we also had to take a deep dive into our programs at every single high school
176and middle school looking at size scope and quality whether this program allowed for students to concentrate again take at least three courses looking at how we transition our students who are in a cte program in middle school how they can transition into the high school program also taking a look at those work based learning experiences that you guys talked about earlier the internships but uh the way perkins five defines uh work-based learning it's internships it's ojt it's participating in student organizations such as fbla and hosa uh it's uh also they included whether the students are participating in a capstone experience and then also taking a look at whether the programs were aligned with labor market either from a local standpoint and or a state standpoint uh perkins five legislation also had us take a look
177at how we're recruiting and retaining our cte teachers and also looking at the diversity of our teachers um are we hiring teachers that look like our student population and also taking a look at equity and access from a variety of different lenses and putting something in place to continuously monitor the enrollment and performance of our cte students what we walked away with is four buckets of work uh funding for programs and activities utilizing our perkins funding also continue collaboration with our post-secondary partners in our business and industry continue professional development for our teachers and also student performance improvement program improvements again continuing to take a look at the data we also had the pleasure of undergoing a monitoring review a nice little name for an audit and that audit took place september the 14th through
178the 18th uh that's a significant date because it was the week before our brick and mortar return of our students to brick and mortar and instead of the state coming in person this time they did it virtually and everything had to be evidence-based so it was very interesting they monitored us on three years and they monitored everything from documentation of equipment that have been purchased using perkins funding where we literally had to have schools take pictures of these items that they selected and submit those to the state we are awaiting a final report we do expect to have at least one finding with no um corrective action because it is a finding on a data element that was included under perkins 4 which was in the fy 19 school year uh one student was reported
179erroneously with the occupational completion point but since then the state doesn't even require that data element anymore so no corrective action is needed there so we're awaiting the final report on that a two pieces of legislation that that really are impactful for the vision and growth of college and career acceleration centers around sb 434 and sb 662 going into effect the designation of school grades i can say i we worked very hard to have career dual enrollment added as part of acceleration i think as we continue to cast vision with our newly established relationship with palm beach state college career dual enrollment becomes a really incredible opportunity for us at both our comprehensive and and even uh technical centers the other is around education in the military the the usage of the asvab score as
180part of acceleration so those are two pieces to come when we look at uh college and career acceleration the the next slide is around choice and career grant initiatives um there are quite a few here and i'll go as quickly as possible but i want to make sure that they get strong mention that we have a perkins ruler innovation grant that we just wrote that is really going to provide the glade central high school engineering program opportunity for expansion the carrier corporation put up their their national if not international headquarters right here in palm beach county and the superintendent and dr sheffield and others really solidified this partnership and working with carrier for our hvac program at royal palm beach cares act this is what dr sheffield talked about when we made the flip to
181distance learning for cte it was identified as a strong area of weakness that we didn't have enough cte souped up laptops for all of our career programs so we we invested four hundred and eleven thousand dollars and really got that granted to make sure that every cte student has that opportunity both in person or distance computer science teacher bonuses um we've also got computer science certification grant the the next one is at naf in the infusion around forest hill high school and that's from united technologies so not only carrier but united technologies investing back in our k-12 system santa lucious i think this came to the board a median or two ago that we have a 750 000 grant coming from deluga foundation and in partnership with our education foundation again cyber security is one
182of the leading industries identified not only here in palm beach county but nationally and really equipping the next generation to be ready for that and last piece health innervate health care innovation grant again with our partners at the education foundation and really providing the support from quantum and really honing in on those medical skill sets and i would be remiss if i didn't say accolades to my team because most of these grants probably all of them someone on our team wrote them and we were some busy beavers over the summer in terms of grant writing we do continue to provide ongoing support to the schools we talked about professional development earlier uh and especially around uh working with our teachers so that they can offer students the opportunity to earn an industry certification from home
183while still following the state test security guidelines we transition a lot of our textbooks to online textbooks as we went through the textbook adoption process providing needed equipment supplies and so forth and as jay and dr sheffield have already mentioned uh flipping some of our very signature uh events and processes from in-person to virtual and uh again uh kudos to our team for building a virtual showcase platform that not only showcased our choice and career programs but also gives every single school in this district an opportunity to be showcased we continue to succeed with our ib programs this summer jay and i were on a conference call and it was brought to our attention and i guess i didn't really realize this that with the addition of some of our new ib programs that have
184come on board over the past couple of years palm beach county is number one in the state of florida in terms of the number of authorized ib programs and enrollment and number four in the nation so that is very exciting to hear we continue to have strong arts programs um stem programs steam programs our montessori programs continue to thrive and we mentioned earlier about dual language and looking where those can be expanded and so our team will work with our multicultural department in terms of looking at how we can continue to expand in the dual language area cambridge we now have three middle schools that have cambridge we talked about verdi earlier and again our jrotc programs as i proudly wear my rotc mask here from the army continue to do and provide an opportunity
185for our students to be able to have a successful future in closing our priorities moving forward we take what we learned from our federal perkins five reviewed our deep dive on comprehensive local needs assessment and really use that as applicability for our secondary cte but not just secondary cte it's an expansion of cte across the board from secondary to post-secondary what that means for our adult learners in this community our community stakeholder holders for workforce training and anything in between program reviews and and even looking at the allocations to each of those choice programs or choice schools and how the budget flows strategic alignment to post-secondary opportunities as i just stated and and really looking at expansion pieces of becoming with this new mou with palm beach state college and what that could really hold
186and lastly policy updates um specific to k-8 and what that would mean as far as a policy piece and working with our legal counsel uh to bring that back to this board questions board members mrs andrews i have to truly commend uh mr vargas and the team out there for the work that you do in the west area the west glades region working with the glades career readiness round table being on all of those google meets calls and working with them and i wanted to highlight pahokee high school largest increase in florida by ib diplomas earned at a school in 2020 that's a big fantastic that is a big deal and our mechatronics program that we have at west tech and the grants that you have secured for west tech i just know i spent
187a lot of time with you all and i really really appreciate the community appreciates you because you're on the ground uh out there before the pandemic you're out there in the community and now that we're on virtual you're meeting uh with the round table and doing great things at west tech as well as the school so i know you very well and you put your money where your mouth is you're right there making it happen for our children in our community thank you thanks man team effort and mrs andrews if i could say this um in terms of the success you see in the ib programs um again i would be remiss if i didn't say this uh sandra wesson who has been our choice manager for the last 14 years last friday was her
188last day she retired she really has worked very closely with pahokee and she was thrilled to see this success so mrs whitfield thank you um i just first of all want to say thank you guys so much for all your work um you do wonderful work um one of the questions that dr robinson had posed was to see the budget for each of the choice programs and um just going through those there is such huge disparity between schools and i i feel like we've given a leg up to certain schools by just funding them disproportionately from other schools and it can be seen really in the budget and so it's causing me some anxiety to look at it just knowing that i'm put my daughter in one of those schools and it doesn't get as
189much funding as other schools do so i you know want to know how we make those allocations who makes those decisions and is there a place for us in the future to sort of even out the playing field for some of these schools that have you know wonderful choice programs that may not be funded at the same level as other schools from us not necessarily from grants i know we have some that are um or foundations they're offset by that but our funding levels where we send the money right and and you're right our choice budget is well overdue for some deeper dives and an overhaul and that is one of the things as a priority for our department is to take a look at that the budget has been the same for probably the
190last 10 years and as we move forward we do realize that there are certain areas that need to be uh revamped uh again uh you know taking a look at shifting you know that means changes have to be made and some of those changes may not necessarily be popular because with of course budget times as they are right now uh to make that shift to give to one may mean you have to take a little bit from some other so that's some deep work that we have to do to make sure that we are as close to equitable as we possibly can from a budgetary standpoint but we do realize that that is definitely an area of work that needs to be done mr superintendent yes with the interest of one of the things that
191the team has taught me over the last couple of months that needs to be a part of this um sort of reporting out about the the the perceived inequities and funding is that i've come to learn that a lot of our programs were started at the school there weren't there wasn't a district approval and over time as those programs either became successful then the question became who starts to fund them after the the school initiates them and so that's part of that so that needs to be clearly laid out for the board because some of these programs weren't approved by the board they were they were school level programs that and i think part of this is also the reality of some of these programs were started and continued by very very competent teachers and
192when that teacher left then the programs tend to falter and so i think there's a lot of stuff inside of that that we have to really unpack because one of the things mr burke and i talk about often is you know if a school decides to do something on his own with the help of a foundation or a grant is it really the board's responsibility to continue interpreting because if that's the case then then we have some other things to talk about so that's just part of the conversation with the board is to really spell out what started as an individual program at a school and what started as a program that's sponsored by the board and dr snow i do think in regards to follow-up to dr robinson's question and i know we did
193submit some responses to her questions on last evening and there is some additional follow-up to it and particularly i think one of the questions was around in regards to those programs that are self-sufficient meaning funding themselves and so forth so we do have a deeper dive that we need to go as we're looking into the budget we have the takeaway we will do a synopsis like we did on last evening it's just going to take us a few weeks to pull together all these data points and we will definitely get back to you but i did hear a loud and clear in regards to the feeder padding and i'm looking to the side of me at mike here because we know when we start talking in regards to the feeder padding into your point as
194you're bringing up the budget is that we do have to hit a a hot stop and to do an evaluation a self-evaluation in-house in regards to the budgetary pieces because with any program it indeed takes funding so as we start that process i'm sure we would definitely need to come back to the board because it will be some hard conversation and some unpopular conversations in regards to what we continue and what we pull back i think the other part of this i think for the board is the very hard conversation on if we're willing to reboundry all these places um now you know that's the elephant in the room it sounds like to me from the team educating me some decisions were made made to avoid the boundary process and so this is like i
195mean obviously that's how i see it i could be dead wrong but it does appear that way and so that's just another conversation for us on the board to have is are we willing to go through especially when we start talking about the k-8 how many boundary processes is this board willing to go through in a year dr robinson and mrs andrews you um okay so so let's start with the choice budget that ms whitfield referred to what the document you saw does not show you is all the programs with the same name with reportedly the same curriculum and reportedly the same expertise of the staff that would have a big fat zero right and so it is something that we need to talk about um i think before we talk about that though we
196need to define as a board uh um what we think the choice programs are supposed to do right and so i'm fairly clear and i mean i'm open for conversation but one of the questions that i asked was if you can give me the data and i think i asked for pyg um by disaggregated by school by program because the question is are these programs short term having children engaged actively engaged in their own education right so if the pyg is not increasing and especially if it's falling then it's not doing that right and so and then we could get to the industry certification like at the end of the row i think that's great that's fine but somehow we have we have to again in addition with the north star piece define what success
197is within the choice programs i would add though just since i mentioned the north star that maybe industry certification is considered as a bullet point in the north star but so i just had to say that about about the budget so i look forward to seeing um that spreadsheet that's that is like it's and i suggested this i'm really i cannot tell you i i guess y'all know i'm really frustrated right i'm just frustrated i'm what would you say i'm testing dr testing okay so uh because this is not a new conversation right there's some new people at the table but this is not a new conversation um and it all ties to okay so let me so let's let's talk about um k-8 so let's let's deal with that right so i think that
198most parents that want their child to go to a k-8 expect their child to go from first grade to second grade you know from fourth grade to fifth grade but how about this from fifth grade to sixth grade at the same school that is not how our case was set up and mr boggy slid it in there but i want to be really really clear i think it's a bait and switch i'm completely and utterly disgusted by it right and so what we have is a k-5 and then and then you can apply to go to the middle school that's associated with your elementary school and i think that it's so very wrong and so part of my history as i kind of alluded to is the whole thing with bach i won't go all
199into it but you know just like i i thought years ago that if you successfully completed ub kinsey that you would get to go to bach and that if you successfully completed bach you would get to go to dreyfus but that didn't happen so now we are in in the very early stages of this whole k-8 thing and i don't want to see that same bait and switch happen again now specifically now this came up around plumosa because the middle school's going to open soon right now fortunately um wanda paul and her crew made sure that the middle school had enough choice seats i mean not enough choices enough seats total enough total seats for sixth grade to house each and every fifth grader and more so we would so it would get to that
200close to that 50 50 in house and and choice balance that i think is perfect right and so why we would set this up to say that the fifth graders that promote need to apply what excuse me that's a bait and switch i don't so i'm gonna be quiet right now i would like to hear how my fellow board members feel about that before i go through the rest of my choice comments but for me that is unconscionable it's just wrong mrs anders uh well it was in reference to something else uh and the first thing i want to ask and i know you brought it out early the agri-technology choice is that the agricultural teacher that's out there at glade central you all have upgraded that to an academy yes that is big deal
201you know she has been audited by the state of florida so if everybody did not know that blade central had a wonderful agricultural program so you have just right before the pandemic i met with her and then we lost track of each other so commend you for that and then my last piece i'm still worried about the children i heard when i was over at west tech the other day i don't know if it's true that maybe in january we might have welding for students is that something that's on the horizon mr vargas i heard that i i can't say that it is definite for january but it's definitely a conversation piece that that we've been working towards um january's tomorrow in my head and uh that'll be an incredible feat to pull off but
202i i can't say that well i just want to say this because i really do appreciate the work that you do but until we get something at our technical schools miss mcqueen and dr robinson you know what i'm talking about back in the day when we had north tech and west tech for children now we've done a little better with the mechatronics and the construction academy at west texas we do have some children there and all of that equipment that we have sitting there all day long where we have children that's not included in this packet at all that graduate from our schools with nowhere to go they end up getting a job in fast food or they may not have a job at all or getting into trouble we've got to find a way
203to get these young people male and female in these programs we've actually upgraded our facilities and they're working in the evening with uh a lots of people getting trained hvac uh welding uh construction the whole works and uh the adults are getting it but during the day for these high school children that really need to get something because they're not included in your data they're walking across the stage getting a diploma and they have nowhere to go many of them don't get a chance to go to college some of them do and if they do and they got that trade they can work and make money but a lot of them walk across the stage and they have no place to go and right now that we're in the pandemic they don't even walk across
204the stage i'm worried about a lot of children right now maybe sitting in their homes because they have not gotten the skill level training to get a job that can be uh applicable for them to make a good living or even to pay for them to go to college so uh we've got that uh i talked to fred botch a little bit before when we have a park vista the automotive that sit there at night and nobody's using it or during the day that you know that nobody's using at night we've got a lot of facilities that i just know a lot of kids because i'm in the schools that have no place to go and they're doing the academic piece and they're graduating and once they walk across the stage or get a diploma
205there's nothing we've got to do something about that that's why when i heard that we might have welding during the day at west tech i just heard it last week i had my fingers crossed because i'm walking there looking at hvac and all of those facilities sitting there during the day and nothing's happening for children so we have to do something about that we really do and it's urgent i think hopefully we're done with the comments at this point well dr robinson we have another workshop to go through and the meeting's already gone on five hours so let's try and wrap it up so we can get to the next one go ahead dr robinson well ms whitfield had her hand up so it's not just me i didn't see mrs whitfield miss with you
206go ahead thank you um i'll try to be quick i just um i thought one of the things that that just came up that was very important to me was what is the purpose of choice and i think um that's really important for us to to define um for me the purpose of choice and i'll give you my example of my daughter most people that are me white and middle class in this county seem to want to send their kids to bach for middle school but my kid didn't want to do art and she didn't it wasn't her passion and so i thought you know i don't want to send her to a school just because that's where everybody sends their kids so she goes to what is closer to our local school though not
207actually our local school and when she got there the experience she's having is literally fabulous she's having a great great middle school opportunity her teachers are brilliant the programs are amazing i really can't say enough about conus i'm so proud of them but what i think is the struggle is is getting people to go to their home schools and the the draw that gets people into a different school other than the one that all their friends are talking about is feeling like they're going to get a great education when they get there so having these programs and funding them fully so that when they get there the opportunities can be just as great at that school as it is at a school that may have a foundation behind it i think is our challenge as
208a board and so what i would like to see is that a choice program is truly for that learner who's interested in that subject to go to that school because they see something really interesting there and it and i know there's so many other societal pressures that come on to people in this community and deciding what school you go to but i think our job as a school district is no matter which school you choose to go into you have a great education when you get there and so i think we as a district need to look if our schools are not living up to that level when a student does choose to go to that school or if that is their home school then we have to step in and we have to make
209those changes to either fund it or fix it or get rid of it if that choice program is not as good as it should be because i don't want anyone to show up to a school that they put all their hopes and dreams and their child into and then when they get there they don't feel like it's as good as they want it to be does that make sense so those are my comments thank you okay dr robinson thank you so um well thank you for saying that um mrs whitfield i think one of my questions kind of uh alluded to a similar thought process in addition to requesting the data about academic acceleration as a result of engagement in your program i also asked what analysis are we doing of the choice program that
210tells us how we need to improve the schools that people are not choosing right because that was that was a conversation that held on this diet 15 years ago um instead of just creating the choice programs that we thought we would like drive this competition which is in part what i think happened with with these schools creating um the their own choice programs and but if they were called choice dr fanoy they were known about by the district they might not have gone through the whole formal process the answer i normally get is that many of the choice programs started with the msap grants and then when those grants expired then we continued to fund them at a similar level through the operating dollars and then there came a point in time when we kind
211of went no we can't do that anymore so if you want to have a specialty program at your school you just need to figure it out which is why roosevelt elementary has the same name program as poinciana like you know that's my favorite one right to point out and poisiana has funding and a planetarium and roosevelt has what zilch right and so yes we need to have some hard conversations about what we what we mean i mean i i'm really thrilled that we're having these conversations around equity and choice it's all also very frustrating to me and i guess just because i've been involved in these conversations for so long i want to shift into fifth gear right away um and we're not ready for that so i'm i'm trying to i'm in first gear
212but i'm doing that thing but the thing when the car needs to shift gears whatever that thing's called that's what i feel like i'm doing yeah but so let me just say this and and i will only address two things that i would address them briefly first because i think i kind of made it my my expectations clearing a previous board uh workshop about roosevelt leadership academy right so it is my hope and my expectation that we will end up with roosevelt leadership academy for young men roosevelt leadership academy for young women and roosevelt leadership academy for anybody who wants to come right because and if we need to bring in some of the people who envision that program in the first place you know aside from me but the community people then that we
213could do that but i'm just telling you where i hope we go right and so whatever those obstacles to getting there are um you know you can share that with us i mean there are people out there that say they want to help support um good work right uh and and so i'm ready to say to folks here's the plan write a check right so now the other thing i need to get back to plumosa because it's time sensitive and so um again i mean i made my case i think it's a bait and switch to call it and plumosa is not the only one most is the one in this stage right now right where we can get it right and create the template and then maybe apply it to other schools but [Music]
214plumosa has will have the space in the middle school for what i think is ideal all the kids who've been going to the school in elementary can go in middle school and some more kids can come in so i don't understand why we are going through this you got to apply things so here's here's my best idea at the moment um i will trust that if you find it dr phenoy to not be a good idea you'll come up with something better but it's like um what's that thing called with college early acceptance that's what it's called right so usually admissions early admission okay so my proposal is i'm not trying to create middle school boundaries for plumosa middle school i'm saying that we could do an early admission and say i don't know what
215the right date would be before or after the choice fair and say if you're in fifth grade you commit to staying at the middle school and you've got a seat you are ours you've been here we told you it was a k-8 you can stay right and then we can count out how many of those kids are going to stay and then you know how many seats you have for choice right it's part of that commitment they would say i'm not applying to other choice programs if they do then they lock they lost that seat and then they would end up in the lottery with everybody else if for example maybe they decided i want to go for bach i'm a list box number one promoter number two that's fine but you're in the lottery
216process you know per our guidelines for your number two choice my point is it is wrong it is wrong for us to call it k-8 if was not operating like a k-8 from the parent and student point of view and so that's my best idea um i i just trust that if the board doesn't want to talk about it the superintendent will fix it thank you miss bro i know you want to speak let me just ask a quick question on ferdie and addison meisner it's my understanding that there is a lottery but the fifth graders have first priority so kids will only be able to get into verdi and atomizer if the fifth graders there's not enough fifth graders who want to move on to six isn't that the way it's working so right
217now the k-8 schools all operate the same way so if i am looking to stay there for sixth grade i apply for sixth grade one of the things that we are getting ready to do is a policy update that would include either some priority sex and things of that nature we had plan on doing that in the spring and of course things got delayed because of covet but we are gearing up now for a policy update where we will be addressing uh all of the issues around k-8 and bringing forth a couple of different options uh in addition to the one that dr robinson just mentioned well dr robinson's right from the standpoint that if we get a commitment early on from the fifth grade parents that they want to stay there then we know
218how many sixth grade seats are actually open to outsiders so that we can tell them there's only thirty seats available at very elementary for example instead of saying there's 80 seats available and we know 50 of those kids are already coming from fifth grade so maybe we should look at something like that because my understanding was any fifth grader that wanted to stay or addison or verdi would be able to stay and then only other kids would come in but her idea to get an early admission then we know how many exactly how many extra seats we're gonna have available and maybe we'll have none depending on how many fifth graders decide to stay stay at that school yeah mr barbara and dr robson let us get let us look at this and bring some
219options to the board because i think one of the things that i'm curious about is how do we want to undo past practices moving forward or do we want to just make this retro i mean we're gonna do it for schools the new school's moving forward i think that's so we need to figure out the different options available because i don't want to deny any families that again like you said who who want to go but i think there's also i'm curious if part of the design of the k-8 model was to attract other kids into certain certain schools too so i just i need to get more clarity on that but it sounds like we need to bring you more options because i need to know if we really want to undo the way
220we've done it before and so i think we need some time to really dig into this and i'll talk to you guys one on one miss brother mrs whitfield thank you and so dr robinson's comments i found were disturbing because i wasn't familiar with that process and like dr robinson i would have thought that a student who's at the school that becomes k-8 automatically has entree into the k-8 program it makes no sense to me so as far as undoing what we've done in the past dr fenoy if it's not working anymore then you've got to undo it right so if it's not serving our purpose so i look forward to you coming back with that i do know that not all k-8s work the same way in the same schools i know i have
221one in my district that they're having trouble filling is a k-8 that they did it as a k-8 to hopefully grow the population and you know what it's not happening so you know not every area is you know was really ripe for a k-8 it works in some parts that's why i really oppose the thought for sunset palms being a k-8 because i know how the communities are there but i agree with dr robinson i think we need to get that fixed for this coming year and definitely give priority to those children who are staying there especially since there's enough seats this is with you i'm sorry i know we want to end this but this is burning burning question for the superintendent going forward as you come back for us um so if one
222of the things that i understand is the difference between schools so if you compare a suncoast to lake worth high which those are the two that are in my head suncoast has more offerings for ap than lake worth highwood right because they have more students that create those that can take advantage of those opportunities so we can pay for a teacher what i'm curious is that now that we've gone into this virtual world would it be possible going forward for a student to be able to take a seat in one of those classes that suncoast is offering for a class that is not offered at their school so if they want to take ap physics and pretend there's no class there and that they could actually take it at a different school so that they
223could participate and have those opportunities in case they weren't able to have it at their home school or at their choice program so that they could have every opportunity that this district offers to them so if you can come back and tell us i don't know the answer to that today because again fte follows kids you know it's it's and you know principal's gonna be very sensitive about money leaving their building for another but but let me say this i think one thing we have learned from this distance learning model we talk about it amongst ourselves all the time is how do we get our best teachers in front of the kids that need them the most and i think there's there's got to be an opportunity with this distance learning model to figure that
224out now again this is learning isn't for everybody we all know that as a board we get the emails some kids can thrive in that environment i'm actually surprised how many kids are thriving in that environment but on the flip side of that we know some kids even in honors class i think i was on the council of great city schools call the other day was dr sonya saying to lisa's in baltimore she made a comment that most of her honors kids in the virtual world are now regular kids they've lost whatever supports they had in the building they've now lost that in the virtual world and so i think there's something for us to discuss there but it's been on our radar and we just have to figure out how it all blends in
225together because i think that that's the to me that's the game changers we know that there are some teachers out there and let me back up even when we go back to choice you know part of the tension with choices again as a principal career technical education high school the biggest problem you have is teachers what i mean by that do you have enough engineering teachers to have 100 programs in palm beach county like literally you know those korean technical education teachers are hard to come by they just they're just flat out and so you would think in the culinary world that we could find all kinds of perfect you know professors and teachers to teach culinary it is not that easy i was at i think west boca or one of the other day
226when those teachers leave it takes a herculean effort to find a replacement of that quality and so again some of that is driven by the market so i think there's there's a bigger conversation we need to have around you know again i think back to the zone question you know even the expansion of north tech which is something that is high on my priority let's get that building done could these be hubs so that we don't have to keep replicating programs a hundred different ways in the buildings and then figure out maybe this is the central location where the transportation could be fixed because we're going to one place i think those are the type of conversations we need to have with west tech nor tech south tech i think when you think about the
227broward models and the orange county models they don't have all these programs in the schools ladies and gentlemen they have them in these centers and i think that's part of our discussion moving forward so we'll bring that stuff back to you thank you any other comments thank you thank you for your presentation appreciate you dr sheffield don't go anywhere uh if you could bring some other members of your team forward to talk about policy 8.01 student progression plans uh with diana fetterman and lisa carmona can come and join dr sheffield uh this will be our final presentation for the day mr chairman okay good afternoon again um today's workshop um our second workshop for today is just to provide an overview of the district's pupil pupil produ progression plan excuse me um per florida statute
2288.01 um it is something a plan that we must bring forth to the board each year a major update for this year's plan is the addition of distance learning being a part of our instructional method of educating our students and again as we continue to navigate in our current space of providing instruction in both brick and mortar and distance learning our goal for right now is to minimize changes at this time so at this time i'm going to allow diana fetterman our assistant superintendent for teaching and learning to provide us with an overview and some of the changes again in which we will see for this year's plan um mrs fetterman good afternoon for our first workshop on the policy 8.01 which is this year's pupil progression plan i'm just going to highlight a few
229of the changes that we are bringing forward in this year's plan so as you know is the 8.01 pupil progression is a plan that we bring forward every year and the changes that we make reflect either changes in state statute or reflect changes in district practice the biggest change as dr sheffield said is the inclusion of the definition of distance learning as we certainly learned last spring this is something that we did not have in our plan but is something that we recognize we need to moving forward we plan to include this in our plan and it offers also offers the school board and the superintendent the opportunity to move to distance learning in the case of an emergency some additional changes that we have noted include k5 remediation most of these changes are changes
230in language that reflect statutory changes one of the bigger changes you will note is a change that requires and certification for teachers this is for our grade three teachers that are teaching students that have previously been retained or any elementary teacher providing intensive support to to our students in the area of literacy they are now required to have by statute either a reading endorsement or a reading certification we have had three years of warning from the doe that this was coming so we have been working with our teachers to get this additional certification or endorsement to provide them with that in fact our district is one of the few districts that we provide this particular training and these workshops free of charge for our teachers we provide them completely online so teachers do not have
231to come in the evenings where many districts are offering them in the evenings we provide them completely online for teachers in the self-paced course we've made some adjustments here changing some names again either a name change for an organization making some additional language changes because of statute one piece that we did have to verify and place in because of an faq sent out by the doe is that distance learning does not provide the statutory requirement where all of our students for graduation do need to take an online course the distance learning does not satisfy that requirement and that is per an faq put out by the florida department of education additionally we have some bullet points there about some adjustments to the articulation agreement with palm beach state college and florida atlantic university and then
232finally we have two other pieces here the first is about our community service requirements this is actually a piece that is currently in our own board policy was just never included within our student progression plan so we are just including it in student progression that principals will recognize students that earn either 300 hours or 500 hours of community service and the second piece although students always had a 13th year to finish any assessment requirements that were necessary we're adding in the opportunity to remediate credit deficiencies those are some of the big changes we are proposing in this first workshop roberts um would you please refresh me and tell me who has to take intensive reading so in our secondary for our secondary schools any student that is a level one or a level two has
233to be looked at for reading intervention and that intervention can either be in an intensive reading class or it can just be reading support by a qualified teacher which is just extra reading training in order to determine which one the student gets you have to look a little bit further so we have a decision tree we look a little further if the student is reading two or more years below grade level then that student needs two periods of help and one of those periods of help must be intensive reading if the student is not reading two or more years below grade level the student only needs one period of help that one period of health can be intensive reading or it can be a content area teacher science of social studies with specialty training either
234one okay um follow up mr barbier so just um the converse of that so would it be appropriate to assume that if you have performed at level three four or five on ela that you would not be placed in an intensive reading class students who score level three four or five are not required to take intensive reading okay so okay so this is where i bring this up i was recently told that as as i understood it that there are some schools who are putting students who previously scored level three i think it's probably three but three four or five in intensive reading to somehow gain the system don't ask me i don't i didn't quite follow it but if you would um please i guess doctor for noise that not there mr oswald if
235you would ask mr howard to sort the data for you to see if that is or is not true thank you any other questions board members so board members as board chair i'm kind of given a schedule to try you know where they expect me to try and keep the meetings and so i don't mean to cut you off i just try to meet their expectations so i hope i didn't offend anybody especially dr robinson i'm just trying to keep to the expectations that they kind of set for me when we're going to get these out i'm going to ask the superintendent to look at our scheduled workshops where there's a lot of where there's an expectation there's going to be a lot of board discussion i'm going to see if we cannot put them
236back to back but with other workshops so we can kind of spread that out to give everybody the opportunity to speak as much as they'd like to on the subject go dr roberts mr barbara i was not offended i understand what you're trying to do i just um think that there are some things that we really need to dig into more i hope we have a relatively soon um i guess once that pyg data becomes available that we had a workshop on on the follow-up on choice um but i also want to say just as a matter of routine it's not as bad as it used to be but when we have board workshops there should be more time allotted for the board to discuss it instead of us just being talked through the powerpoint
237the staff gave us right thank you miss brill did you have your hand up nope i was debating whether to say this but i do know that part i was surprised when i saw these the topics today like this but i do know that we had to move the strategic plan because we were dealing with the you know the other issues in recent weeks so that kind of shifted our schedule a little bit um and so i i'm i trust that we won't have that problem going forward okay stupid time superintendent you have anything to add [Music] mr chairman i have nothing else to add other than um there's some information the team needs to bring back to the board and we will follow up on that all right thank you we have a motion
238to adjourn the workshops motioned by mrs andrews second by ms whitfield any discussion all in favor opposed to curious meetings adjourned thank you [Music] practice from khan academy helped