001good afternoon and welcome to the school board meeting. At this time we have the pledge. pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And to the republic for which it stands. One nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. I guess before we adopt the agenda I would just like to tell you what we are going to do tonight. We are going to get a report from the superintended with information on the current status of SPGL. it appears the financial burden may be too great for them to receive this plan. We are coming away from this process with some benefits such as a completed environmentalist study which will provide a new RFQ. The housing task force deciding on procedures going forward. In addition we will hear a summary
002from the home school program. With that we will need to adopt the agenda. Thank you so much. I do have one change to the agenda. We are going to say in terms of the letter of intent with SPGL we are going to move that and move a report up to student success number two and that will be an affordable housing reports. The other change although you heard about that earlier in the week, we are going to change to action item one since we removed that letter of intent. Action item one will now be a tentative add-on to which I hope you're going to approve and that is the approval of the superintendent 23/24 administrative professional and employee recommendations. With that the agenda will be complete. So moved. Second. I recommend approval. Moving on so recognitions.
003If I could ask the superintendent and members of the board to come forward. Thank you so much for everyone's patience. I have the pleasure tonight to introduce Maggie the CEO of Keys Federal credit Union. Monroe County school district would like to recognize her and the entire staff of the keys Federal credit Union for their steadfast support of schools throughout the keys. Missus Christine Paul of the marathon area is the one who nominated her on behalf of the contributions to marathon but actually her reach and the keys Federal credit union reach extend keys. The key Federal credit Union established the school pride accounts which result in additional funds being donated to the high 27,000 and growing which helps support a variety of programs in each of the schools. Thanks to Ms. Sarah leadership she is always
004willing to help out with school initiatives through such outreach. A couple years ago she spearheaded the financial fitness challenge that gave kids the opportunity to really learn more about economics. She goes above and beyond for the schools because she truly cares about the students and our community. We are honored to present her with this for the many great educational moments that she and the keys Federal credit Union have given our students. Thank you very much. At this time we will have citizen input. First up we have Mr. John requesting five minutes. My name is John, key representative of key Republican club. Four-time best-selling author. I have been quoted by Yahoo finance, USA today at a top college. Today I'm going to give you a few quotes and suggestions. My older relatives used to tease me
005at weddings and say you are going to be next. I got over this teasing part by going to funerals with them and saying you're going to be next. I realize I have been teasing you guys about your low standards and the low results. I'm going to give you some suggestions and hopefully I am as solid as a bazooka and you guys take action and result. Jack Canfield said a success principle number one is you must be 100% accountable for all your actions and results. Your standards and results, you need to own that NB 100% accountable. If you are good with proficiency and AP math, not many people are taking math classes you are good with that and hopefully raise your standards. Theodore Roosevelt once said it is not the critic who counts, not the man
006who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. You can do better and you need to change what you measure. You should focus on what is important and what is not immediate. The book that Tom says you need to develop habits which change your identity. You did this strategic plan and I still talk to the person who did the strategic plan and I say tell me what books I should read. You should do it again. When you did your strategic plan you had measurable sayings. If you are proficiency is that 50% grade level for your math. An example of changing what you measure. Change how many people actually go to sporting events. If they are going to sporting events they are probably going to class. Change
007what you actually measure. Volunteer hours. You do measure attendance. In corporate America what we would do every quarter is give out T-shirts. There was the cause, a morale jumped up when we passed out T-shirts. You need to do something to increase your employee retention so you have lower turnover. You do that and it change what you are measuring, your proficiency level is going to increase and you will have more people taking your AP math classes. So, do the same thing. Do that strategic plan again but have a little shift, add things as you measure. One of my mentors said to me there is a correlation between being a millionaire and going to the dentist every 90 days. I never thought to measure how frequently I go to the dentist but if I want to have
008that good correlation I would goes to the dentist every 90 days. You need to find different things to measure it to have a higher rate of success. You go on the right direction, right now you are caring about the budget. One of the things you previously did is you have slush funds so you could pay teachers. What you should fear is you don't have a big enough reserve for insurances. That is your next slush fund for insurances. Keep going forward, go as far as you can see and once you get there you can see farther. Thank you and my name is John. Next up we have Doctor John requesting three minutes. Good evening, thank you for letting me speak. I'm sure most of you are familiar with me I am a retired Dr. If you
009watch the news last week you noticed the Biden family has been having some problems. Hunter Biden illegitimate daughter not being recognized by her grandfather has a lot of people talking . On both sides of the aisle they are in disagreement with the Biden family. They think it is very wrong. The situation has been heavily criticized by the press. Richard Fowler, the commentators said a baby cannot possibly be blamed for the things that were done before it was born or things in which it had no control. I certainly agree with him and I couldn't have said it better. But wait Mr. Fowler is also a proponent of CRC, critical race theory. Even those only practiced in some of our states and outlawed in all of them at the terrible cost of a great war, they still
010think all white Americans are guilty. Clearly CRC is immoral. Our schools should teach accurate and balanced history. If they want to teach judgment it should be in a form of this was done and it should be considered wrong by today's standards or this was done and it is right this is why you should emulate it. Our kids are taught to be ashamed of America and America doesn't exist in a vacuum. There are other countries and civilizations on the planet. In Africa they practice slavery for thousands of years and they still practice slavery. Seven out of a thousand people in Africa are living in slavery. In 1835, 350 years after Christopher Columbus landed. A rounded them up and ate them. That is what they considered conquering the land. I think we can do a little better.
011In 1932 Stalin wanted to build a subway in Moscow. He sold all the wheat that was grown by the Ukrainians. Subsequently millions of Ukraine's starved to death. Of course we know about the Chinese, I mentioned that to you last time. Communist countries always enslave and kill off their minorities. If you don't think so, think about how many Cuban leaders you have seen and how many are black. There are black Cubans but not in leadership. Our schools should teach accurate and balanced history. I have spoken to graduates of Key West high school and they are disappointed with what they get even in AP courses. The curriculum is not available to us I wish I knew how to get a hold of it. Thank you. Next is Ms. Diane Walker requesting three minutes. I am simply here
012to introduce myself as the new president of the United teachers Monroe. Holly after 12 years of loyal service decided to not to continue to do this so now it's me and I just want to let you know we do appreciate everything you are doing to try to get teachers to stay here. It is a big help the starting salary and those increases and I know that is due to you and us but mostly you. The other thing that keeps teachers hear here are happy work environments. Regardless of how much we get paid we want to work in a well-managed school district with well-managed, well led worksites. Maybe we need to make sure we continue to do that so thank you, I look forward to working with everybody. I don't have any quotes or anything to
013read, I'm sorry. Thank you. That concludes citizens input. We have the consent agenda. All items listed as consent agenda items are considered routine and noncontroversial by the school board and will be approved by a single motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items. Prior to this meeting board members have had the opportunity to review each of these items and may request that any item be moved to an action item for individual consideration. With that said, I recommend approval of the consent agenda. So moved. I'll second. I just have a question. When it says under item one, personal recommendations that's just identifying it it was not changed today right? No. Then I will second. Is there any other discussion on the consent agenda? Hearing none, the consent agenda is approved. Moving on to reports.
014Yes talking about the summer school program. We had a great program. Thank you Maria. I am very happy as we work on the technical side, to share the exciting things that went on in our summer programs this year. Thank you very much superintendent, members of the board, staff and the public as we discussed some of the things that went on at our eight school sites during the summer programs and we had a large variety of these. The academic programs were in full swing and the primary focus was on third grade reading camp and also on our English learner academic camp which was held for kindergarten through 12th grade students. There they got comprehensive instruction with the reading and math and vocabulary building so it was a very robust program. Also at the secondary level there
015was credit recovery available. They had the extended year program in several locations for those students and hope was well attended and hope is the required class. Usually taken by eighth graders going into ninth grade and gives them the opportunity to really know the campus and staff before they set foot for their first official day. Gerald Adams had their 21st century program and this is grant funded. They had a lot of robust things. Arts, physical activities, reading, writing, math. They had that all year but it does go well into the summer infected goes all the way into July. Along with Gerald Adams offering the 21st century at all of the other sites that there was hands-on learning, the reading and math. Students who participated in some of the programs were able to go out into the
016community. They had visitors come in, Stanley Switlik fishing club is very popular. The kids get the opportunity to build skills through a learning environment. A reading and math comes together and is taught and a lot of rebuilding and refocusing on their skills. Teachers in summer really like the small group and that they have so they can do targeted instruction. They look at the data and target their small group instruction. A lot of hands-on activity and utilizing science and social studies to help build math and reading skills. At the high schools they had of course hope, very popular. Extended summer school students had a lot of fun interacting with some of the hope students and we also had some special programs. Key Largo helps summer recreation which is not an official summer school academic program but
017it allows the students they are to have someplace to go to keep their learning going through the month of June. Plantation Key had an art camp and there was all types of mediums. They had artists come in. You can see how well some of the students did. Then we had stem camp at Gerald Adams and that was a huge hit. Mr. Johnson did an excellent job providing the science, technology, engineering, mathematical components and in addition to learning those singular skills there is a lot of teamwork in problem-solving where the kids get an opportunity to really think and to become problem solvers individually and as a team. There were over 275 staff members across the district helping with our summer programs. We had over 1300 students districtwide. 460 credits recovered and our move program which you
018have heard about throughout the year also was in full play and we have four of those students who actually worked in our schools with our younger students and one move student was hired to assist in IT so that program continues to build and we continue its true the summer as much as possible. Again, very robust. The specialty camps, the stem and art is very well-liked and I think students are looking forward to it. We have heard a lot of great things both from teachers and from students and parents. An excellent summer program and again teachers felt very confident in accomplishing the goals of helping some of those students really rise up and be prepared for the upcoming year. Does anyone have any questions? On the grant at Gerald Adams, that was offered to all students?
019No that is students that are there. They have to qualify for that grant and basically they qualify throughout the year and if they are not targeted for summer school they are able to continue growing. That's why the number was 400 Gerald Adams was our largest populated site because of the 21st century grant is so robust and of those kids get to continue on. In fact it goes until July. Sorry I don't have the specifics that I can get that information to you. I will ask for the breakdown by that grade level because those are kids that are specifically targeted to rise up so I will get that information to you. If we could include how many are going on to fourth grade.. Absolutely. Any other questions? Thank you very much. No we are just going
020to talk to you a little bit about what has happened with SPGL. I can give you some background first. I talked to Jim on June 22nd after Gail and I had talked. He felt in speaking with Jenny Stone and Gregor that there was some unsettled things going on. I wanted to talk to Jeff to see what the status of things was and he engaged in a conversation with me very cordially but his wife was very insistent that they wanted a ground lease. We were still well within our confines of delivering that ground lease to them but Jeff gave me the impression in that conversation that the cost of doing business had expanded considerably. More than they were expecting. But at that time on June 27th he did not give me an inclination that they were
021not going to work with us. So at that point I spoke to Gail about the feasibility of getting a ground lease or some kind of work to them that would help them make some decisions. I talked to Dirk and he was totally committed to helping so from Dirk's office it was Priscilla and dark himself and Gail who really pulled it together to be prepared for this meeting tonight where we were going to approve a letter of intent regarding negotiated elements of the ground lease and that's what we were going to be talking about with you. However on Friday I got a phone call and he said that he regretted to inform us that they were not going to be able to continue the Trumbo points project. That financially it was not going to be a
022possibility for them. He said that regretfully and I thanked him. They are building the Sheriff's 24 units behind us and that is moving along very quickly. We do have some reason to be thankful to SPGL for supporting our community. If not supporting our housing at Trumbo. We have some thoughts about how we are going to proceed. I have contacted all the members of the housing task force. They are committed once again to looking at everything, helping get a new RFQ or sole source as Dirk was discussing with me just yesterday. Gail is going to give you some specifics about how we need to proceed and what documents we can get because of our work with SPGL which we feel is going to be very important going forward. Gail? Just expand on what the superintendent said,
023we have been working with SPGL since the board approved the interim agreements and we have been making progress on negotiating the terms of what this field would look like. April 28th I sat down to discuss a term sheet so a major dewpoint of the board. We have an agreed-upon structure I think works for both parties and the stage we are at is fine-tuning the details and getting the draft of a ground lease and place that will act as the overarching structure of the agreement that the Florida statute requires. I did end up speaking with Jenny Stone around the same time. It was brought to my attention that there was a renewed urgency on SPGL side. We did spend the weekend before the Fourth of July really trying to pull out all the stops to get
024a letter of intent in place. I would like to thank Bernice, specifically Dirk and Roget. They took time out of their weekend to get this drafted and I was told at the time the letter of intent would provide SPGL some assurance to move forward with this. The letter of intent was discussed as soon as last week with Jenny and Greg. We were getting some feedback from them, from the Mollison family as well and when we got this put together we had it tied up with a bow. The last few changes be made and then the superintendent got a call unfortunately informing us the financial capacity of SPGL was not sufficient to cover this project. So where do we go from here? The interim agreement the board approved included a provision which is lessons I personally
025learned from the Sugarloaf project which is if we spend months at a time trying to negotiate a deal that falls through, will we have just wasted our six months? The answer in this case is no. The interim agreement does require SPGL to turn over all of their work product to the school district in the event this is terminated and survives termination of the agreement. The request was placed yesterday to provide us with specifically any reports, test results, surveys, maps, drawings, architectural drawings and other work prepared by the developer. I have not yet received a response from SPGL about that response but I'm hoping in the spirit which this proposal was put forward they will at least provide us the environmental report which again, I have not seen a confirmation that was completed but given the
026feedback we were getting from SPGL throughout this project, we got the distinct impression the environmental was not going to be an obstacle that was not something SPGL for they weren't going to be able to overcome. Clearly we do know from physical observations SPGL did send environmental consultants out to Trumbo . I have no reason to believe that report was not completed. We also know they have architectural drawings and site plans that were prepared and I have requested a copy of all of that. It is my hope with a lot of the legwork done particularly the environmental testing on site that will attract additional developers to this project who simply were not interested previously because of all of the unknowns. A lot of big change that has occurred on the proposal at previously is Senate Bill
027one Oh two passed and went into effect July 1st. Those of you who aren't familiar with that bill there is significant tax incentive now for doing this sort of project. The property owned by a nonprofit corporation and released her 99 years and at least 50% dedicated to affordable housing is completely exempt from at or below taxes during the entire term. That is a big financial incentive for a developer who has expertise in this area and I am pleased to say we are getting some murmurs from the community of potential developers that may be interested in this and we are going to move forward with this as expeditiously as we can. He is correct about expeditiously because we are still trying to hire teachers right now and we are having teachers turned away because they can't
028find a place to live. The urgency and everything that has been behind all of our moves here is still there. We are just going to move as quickly as possible and I just feel maybe this is a blessing in disguise. I always look at the glass is being half. Hoping that's how this is going to pan out. Before I open the floor to questions there are a few details that should be passed onto the board for consideration. The first is there are certain considerations we were giving SPGL. There is not going to be a third story that is going to be installed on here even though that likely would have been in the current building height allowance. We also are not going to build it to the maximum density allowed under the zoning. All of
029that was done as an incentive for SPGL being involved in the project. If a different developer was involved I don't believe they would have the same concerns and I believe the higher density and larger building height leading to higher number of total units being installed on the project is something that is on the table now. The other issue is aggregation. I know you all have heard a lot about that and probably are sick of hearing about it. I have a feeling this may be off the table now but I need to seek direction from the board as to how to respond to the US Department of education. I think it is clear at this point SPGL will not be contributing to that and we have until July 30th to respond to the department of education
030and confirm or deny whether we would be seeking that aggregation. To be clear there is nothing that would prevent the school district from reinitiating the aggregation process if we choose to do so in the future. The catch would be right now we are operating off of a 2021 evaluation by the department that is almost certain subject to change if we reinitiate that aggregate request. So I would be looking at some direction from the board on if we wish to proceed with that aggregation or if I should tell the department this unfortunately is not feasible for the district at this time. So we have until the 31st of July. Perhaps we will come back to the board during the middle of this month after we meet with some of these developers that we have scheduled just
031to see where they are with it. The reason I brought this up this evening is my understanding is the calendar was amended in the meeting is going to be August 1st. You are still meeting on July 20th? Okay. In any case before the departments deadline. Had we approve that, there is a business where every month it would go down. No this is the one piece of information I was able to confirm with the department as to why my number didn't match up with their number. What they did is calculate the cost of aggregation from the dates of the aggregation request. Yes the cost doesn't potentially go down but we have to reinitiate the aggregation it would be calculated by the number of months remaining from the dates of our request against a new evaluation of
032the property it might not be 1.85 million when we reevaluate the property. Who did the evaluation in 2021? It would be Key West appraisal company. I will come back to the board to seek further guidance. Did you have a requested date for them to respond to your RFP for us to produce the documents from SPGL? Yes, I requested a be turned over in two weeks from Monday. I will try to reach out to Jenny. I know she was out of town that may be a big reason why I have not heard back but as soon as I have spoken with SPGL attorneys to see they do intend to produce this work product without any paperwork to be signed I will certainly get that forward I am hoping that can be turned around before the next
033meeting. I will say I don't know anything about building affordable housing. We went to the Attorney General to ask if we could build mixed market rate on our property and he told us to know. The DOE property is the stuff across the road from the dog park? So that is sort of the waterfront? Not all of it is on the waterfront, some of our property is beyond. Correct if you have been out to the property area in question is a fenced in grassy lot and there is still waterfront where the transportation build used to be. What I'm getting at, we have a new box to think outside of, consider whether selling the property that includes the deed restriction for however many years and the rest of the waterfront to whoever develops the rest might help
034us move the restriction building and allow a financial advantage of building some market rate as well. It would be a win for them they could get the market rate and it would be good for us because we might have the cash provision to move. I don't know if that is possible. Absolutely. I have been talking to the members of the task force and they agree now we are in this situation we might want to look at selling that waterfront property to finance the moving of the admin building and to give the developer an opportunity to recoup what they are spending on it at a quicker rate. Our understanding from SPGL is that they could wait 20 years to start to recoup the value but most people can't wait those periods of time and they can
035either obviously. Right. Significantly below the amounts of density we could still get the 80 we were going to get and sell off even more of that property. We could get more units or we could sell more so those are things I just want to put on the table. Maybe we can make it a better deal for us. If we can't get $20 million from the state maybe we can figure out how to get a good portion of that to move the administration. If the board wants to cut me off because You've heard enough this and feel free to do so but if you look at the letter of intent on the agenda it is a phased approach. All of that is still on the table. I'm pulling this number out of the back end of
036my memory and I believe the maximum density was 237 units. We had a hundred and 50 be passed units that have been allocated by the city of Key West. The school board itself also has a small supply of be passing units that can be used. I don't know if we have enough units to get all the way to 237 or if we want to. All of that is now on the table. With the third story even with a change in footprints. Also the last thing I checked, the city of Key West at one point was considering a comp plan amendment as a matter of fact increasing their building height beyond what it is now because of the flood matching. Again if all that comes into fruition that significantly helps the footprint. I don't want to
037say it is not a possibility but so far our attempts to look into that have been met with fierce resistance from the Coast Guard. And we met too with all of those folks over a number of months. Both the Coast Guard and the Navy. Well, looking forward to the next reports. Any further questions? Thank you hopefully will come back next meeting with better news. Just to put a point on the flood maps. The height limits across the county are being raised. The new flood maps almost mandated because otherwise you are going to squish a house. I can't speak for them but I would imagine it is on deck for QRS too. I circulated all of the legislative summaries provided to me which are very good so when you have time to go through please do.
038The next phase is 52 52FDOE rules interpreting these changes. It is more to come and it is going to be much bigger so embrace yourself. The third thing I would throw out there just listening to Gail. The opinion we got on mixed market retail are not, sugarloaf the feedback back on the table so that is just one thing to think about. That's all I have. I will ask if you have any questions for me. Anything that was asked I think I answered individually but if there's any other questions I'd be happy to take them. Moving on to the superintendent's report. I met with members of the Golden fleece foundation yesterday. John and Brian Greene and Caroline who is our new CT coordinator. This is a really good news for all of us . Our students
039are this year got 1360 industry certifications. You know those certifications make huge differences to students who are going to college because they are granted college credit when they pass this certification test. Also when they go into the workforce because there is all kinds of things like automotive, food safety. Some of the really popular ones this year were cybersecurity. Students are really interested in the whole cybersecurity issue and of course we all are because it's important. Also entrepreneurship was a big draw. Communication essentials. Word processing and certified food protection manager had multiple students and getting multiple certs. At the Golden fleece foundation paid out of $186,300 for those 1360 certifications. These kids are in the higher-level computer courses they are getting as much as $500 for passing a certification. So this is truly remarkable. But what
040is really remarkable about it is how we stand with the rest of Florida and I'm going to go over that in a minute. Just so you know, in 21/22 there were 1354 certifications and 153,000 was paid out. As I said this year and 22/23 it was 1360 certs. if you want to see happy kids. Kids who are doing heel clicks, jumping up and down. Sometimes they take these tests two and three times to pass but they stick with it. It is absolutely amazing. So Golden fleece signed yesterday $220,000 for this year's plan. The thing that is so remarkable in this area is that we did an analysis of the participation in the other districts by looking at the percent of enrollment. The percent of our enrollment data earned a certification and in Monroe County it
041is 15 percent of our enrollment earned a certification. Let me give you an example. Miami-Dade is 1 percent. So to say that we are really focusing on CTE here and really helping students gain value added as they go through our high schools and middle schools I think we are truly doing a great job with that so I just wanted to share it with you because I knew you would be happy and I knew you would want to thank Mr. Pageant when you see him. The 15% is of our total student population? Of our middle and high school population. How many students is the 1360 certs?. Some students get multiple certifications I would have to go back and check but it is really a remarkable number. And you know the Trumbo housing. I also wanted to
042mention we have a partnership going with the fine arts Center and we are going to do three programs for kids. This one is called a dinosaur world. I've watched the video it's going to be amazing. I don't know if you know I have a six -year-old grandson. He knows everything about dinosaurs. These kids truly embrace them, they love them and the next one is puppy pals alive. It is a dog show and it is going to be absolutely amazing. Lastly the perfect dancers company for middle school and the Frank words from the shadows. So we have been trying with our emphasis on the whole child bringing cultural opportunities to students and this is going to be part of that. I think it is going to be really wonderful. That's it for me. Will we be
043able to bring upper keys and middle keys? Yes we are working on that. is this just a brand-new partnership we have talked to him about expanding to the middle and upper keys. This is Matthew he is the executive director of the fine arts Center he says he sees no reason that once he contracts a show that they can't stop and go all the way down the keys. I was away for two weeks so I haven't been keeping up with what is going on but I will tell you I visited a former graduate of Marathon high school who is now teaching at the University of Iowa. She has three wonderful children who happen to be my grandchildren and I'm very proud. She's doing very well. It's great she got out of Seattle and moved to the
044University of Iowa. It was a great time and shows you what you can do graduating from Marathon high school. If you don't come back and be the principal you can teach at the University of Iowa. One other thing. Because of where I am sitting I think the rest of the board would really like to see those socks you are wearing dark. Is that because you love the board? Very nice. I better check. No I'm alright, I'm normal. Why do you need socks? I also wasn't here last board meeting because I was stuck in travel limbo because of storms over Newark. Took me four days to get home. It is what it is. First of all, the comment for the deregulation portion, there is a portal that is open so I'm hoping we are participating in
045that and giving some feedback to the department of education. Also during the summer we always renew a lot of computer programs and today we did study Island and learning for math. I wanted to thank Mrs. McPherson last year I asked if we could review those in my understanding is they did get together and reviewed review them and they only reviewed the ones that we were getting the bang for the book for so I appreciate that although I would like to see that information because I think that narrowing down these purchases is something that we should have oversight over. We should see the evidence is what I am saying. While we are talking about that I still hear from teachers who had a light brain pop and now that brain pop has kind of changed its
046tune a little bit and will let districts pick and choose or eliminate videos that don't comply with legislation. Maybe we can get some of the language arts and math back that the teachers really loved . The last thing. We have about a month before school starts and the new legislation that is being put in place. Everyone is working to make sure we comply with everything. I spoke about auditing the number of single stall bathrooms we have in our schools and making sure there is for single stall bathrooms. The new rule is in the government building you have to use the bathroom that is assigned to the gender assigned on your birth certificate so I'm not sure single room bathrooms should even have a gender assignment to them. We should look into where the staff bathrooms
047are and throughout the schools kids or staff members who would feel uncomfortable otherwise have access to bathrooms and see if there is a way we can improve our current bathroom situation even if we could open up some that people weren't using before. I'm hoping before school starts we will get feedback on the Summers implementation of library materials. I know they are working hard in all of the libraries and all of the classroom libraries and elementary school to get them all online and making sure they are age appropriate and content appropriate. I would like to get some feedback on how that process is going. That's it. Consortium will be August 17th and 18th at the Reap house in Key Largo. As I was going through the employee recommendations seeing who's staying in who is retiring after
048all these years I came across a name that resonates with me 30 years ago as a freshman at Key West high school this teacher gave me my first F. I say this jokingly because that moment changed the progression of my life. It showed me that I earned that F. I knew the information but I was too lazy to put the information in so to Frank Heron, thank you. You changed my life and I hope you enjoy your retirement. I noticed you said that was your first F. How many did you get? I was on vacation so I really don't have anything to discuss at this point. I look forward to a deeper dive. Spending a lot of time speaking very freely which tends to happen. They are vetting all of those books. What's going on
049for us is we have a 52 page privacy document now that protects people online identity. Protects students. This was required by the commissioner last year. We got a letter from him saying data privacy is a paramount importance in school districts. They need to move in the direction of making that happen. Unfortunately we seem to be the only school district that's doing it. We are running into quite a bit of difficulty getting our contracts approved because of these data privacy issues. So that is what's going on in the center as well with the University of Florida. So we keep plodding along with this. Gail has actually developed a privacy statement that is much shorter and we are trying to see if we can use that. I don't know if you'd like to comment on this 52
050page document. By Jeanette Smith our legal counsel in conjunction with working attorneys that represent school districts across the state. Superintendent again as I have previously informed you when I first spoke with the director, nobody had any idea what I was talking about when I asked about this template. That is slowly changing. Very slowly but surely starting to see school districts implement some version of this contract. There is a shorter version we discussed implementing and when leadership gets to a point we would like to see some abbreviation of the contract template I think we are in a position to get that off the ground pretty quickly. I think we would have to come to an understanding with legal counsel what terms are considered absolutely essential and which ones can be taken out. I'm thrilled we are
051stepping forward in getting this done but we have some big companies we need to partner with and it is really slowing down the whole process. Who delivers all of the testing we do for the industry certifications. It has been an interesting summer trying to get our vendors to cooperate with this contract. I know we are doing the right thing here. And there is good news on the horizon because as of July 1st there is a statute that was adopted that mandates the companies, all of the provisions of our contract are now statutory requirements. Little by little I think we can put a pack on this but I will say I am starting to see more progress being made as these companies have to adjust to the new reality of doing business. I just got an
052update we are on track for August 1st. That's great thank you. I knew this was important to the board, the data privacy issue that's why we were aggressive about getting this contract in place so that's where we are. Or what it's worth I will count myself amongst the doubters but I will say Ms. Smith has been carrying some of the water on this. It has been a rocky road and we are starting to see some progress on this. If I understand the reading initiative. There were several parts to it and the only part we are worried about now is the act part. The rest, the teacher training and all of that is going forward? Yes that's correct. Now I think we can move on to our soul action item. I recommend approval of the superintendent
0532023 through 24 administrative/professional employee recommendations. So moved. Second. Any discussion on this item? I just want to briefly say I spoke with the superintendent. I think what stands out is for assistant principals at the middle school whereas that is the most of any school and part of revision to really get a rein in on some discipline issues that had been there, some student behavioral issues that had been there and I have all confidence in her plan to move forward on that. Every time we put someone in an administrative position we are pulling them out of the classroom. Let's just say Tiffany congratulations assistant principal at Key Largo. It also crushes need to know the great things she does in the classroom and that she is not going to be in it now. I want people
054to be able to advance forward and have those advancement opportunities but don't want us to do that at the expense of not having teachers in the classroom. I'm satisfied with the discussion we had but I want to see if the solution is more assistant principals or some other change. I spent the latter part of last year meeting with teacher focus groups and students and I attended faculty meetings so it was clear and getting feedback from board members regarding their school advisory Council and how they felt about things. Really felt that this would be an opportunity this year to make some changes at that campus. It is not a permanent move. That was made clear to everyone but there is going to be one AP on each floor of the middle school. At the sixth, seventh
055and eighth grade and one AP who is managing all of the elementary. So we really think that one of the complaints of teachers was the lack of responsiveness of administrators when there was a problem and an issue so we feel we are going to be able to support the teachers and the students within this model and wants of this model is moving forward and is successful we will be able to paperback again and lessen that support. You know there are more names on that list than are not in the school. I would ask the school in the beginning of the year when we have these issues open I would ask to consider putting those people in temporarily to fill those teaching positions. Amber and I were speaking on that on the way up here and
056she has already directed principals if there are openings, support staff would feel those openings so that we are not going to start school with let's say a reading coach and an opening in sixth grade. That reading coach would go into sixth grade. Any further discussion on this action item? The item passes and we are adjourned at 6:10.