001All right. Good afternoon, school board members. Madam Chair, we have an hour and a half workshop scheduled for you to get an update from Florida School Board association on Superintendent Surge progress. With us this afternoon, leading the workshop is Dr. Rice, who I've had the pleasure to recently meet and get to work with some and of course Andrea Messina. So I'm going to turn it over to Andrea and she'll lead the way. Thank you. Thank you and hello board members. It's good to be with you here today. We have a number of items to walk through as well as to get some direction on, not least of which is beginning with a review of the input, both the in person sessions as well as the online survey, a review of the recommended qualifications and qualities
002that we're looking at. We want to look at some salary stuff, we want to look at the advertisement, we want to walk through the interview schedule and kind of let you know what our thoughts are on the semifinalists and how that's going to work. So we're just going to dive right in if it's okay with you. You did have prior to this meeting a large number of attachments. Apologize for all of that, but we wanted to make sure that you had everything you needed. I'm going to start by referencing the forums and the focus groups which were the face to face sessions and you had several of those up and down. Mike and Dr. Pace were the two that, that did that and just wanted to tell you as a summary was very interesting when
003we were looking at the summary of the forums and focus groups and then when we looked at the summary of the survey and when we look at your strategic plan, it all aligns. It's. To be honest with you, there's a lot more clarity of the strengths in this district aligning with your strategic plan than we see in some other districts. So it was really, really heartening that seem to know what the school district is, what you guys do and the values are shared by your community. So when we look at the strengths, we found strong community partnerships and involvement, including business support and people really appreciate the hometown feel. We found excellent financial management and teacher compensation. We found diverse academic pathways including vocational programs, strong special programs like ese, avid, Special Olympics, things like
004that were cited. Support for student activities in athletics and the fine and performing arts, school based management and teacher autonomy was cited as a strength. Technology integration and updated facilities. Positive superintendent union relationship, transportation availability for program access and professional development opportunities led by teachers. That's kind of the summary of what we found in the strengths. The Critical needs and challenges were not surprising. Staff recruitment and retention challenges, particularly non instructional positions. Housing affordability for all staff levels. Equity concerns across schools with facilities, programs, resources need for student support services like mental health and academic behavioral transportation limitations due to staff shortages. Enhanced academic support and achievement is needed just because they want to see continued academic success. Improved alternative education programs, ELL and ESE support services, after school and summer funding for programs and
005healthcare cost concerns. So I suspect from you all those are no surprises. That's the same stuff you're familiar with and that you already know. You have full reports of each of the sessions attached. So unless you have any questions about that, I'll move into the survey. Okay, Stop me anytime. I'm moving right along. Yeah, I have a question. Do you know what the community forums, what the makeup was? Did you collect, like how many were teachers? How many work for the district? We did that on the survey, but we did not do that in the face to face meetings. We have just the number of participants. One of the things we specifically do at those sessions, not just for you guys, but for everyone. We don't want to know if it's a teacher. We don't
006want to know if it's a parent or community member because people are concerned that somehow there'll be some sort of repercussion. So even when they say, you know, I work for the school district, we immediately say, don't tell us we don't want to know because we want them to have complete sort of anonymity, especially in the face to face session, so that they can't say that somebody told on them for saying something or reporting something. So we did not ask that question in the face to face face. All right, so now we're going to go to the actual survey. And Dr. Rice, if you can scroll down a little bit on that and show us the. Here we go. The number of respondents in English were 519. We had 19 in Spanish and four in
007Haitian Creole. What I will tell you is that the survey, as you well know, is still open. It doesn't close until Friday. So what you have here is the executive summary as of last night. Will provide you any updated between now and Friday. And if there's any summary data that would indicate a change, we'll let you know what that would be. Dr. Rice, if you could scroll down, I want to explain to you in each of the questions because the 519 respondents were in English, you'll see the count at the top is the count in English. So for this Particular value. And they're in descending order of the way they were chosen for each question. They're in descending order. What you'll see the count at the top is the count in English, the count in
008the middle is the count in Spanish and the count at the bottom is the count in Haitian Creole. So you can see the breakdown from each of the demographic groups where their priorities were. And it was interesting that not always like that third one down there. You can see the Hispanic respondents, 55% chose that. Where the English speaking respondents only 38 point or 35.8% chose that one. So you can kind of see that if you're looking to break that out. If you go to the bottom on this, what you'll find is a summary of the open ended questions where we asked about strengths and we asked about challenges. Once again we categorized them and we give you the number of times that they were mentioned. Strength. The number one strength was the teachers and staff.
009They talked about the dedic caring and quality of teachers and staff. That was the, the number one thing cited. Second was community support and the strong sense and support from the community that that helps to build the positive environments for students. Third was the student centered approach. And I'm going to tell you we've done, I've probably worked on 16 to 18 superintendent searches. Never once have I seen an emphasis cited by the community of things being student centered. So you guys should really be proud of that. I think it's what we should all be hoping for. But your community clearly sees it and feels it and that is worth recognizing. Next would be communication and then diversity, technology, resources and safety. So all really good things. And you can see how often they were cited.
010The challenges once again, no surprise, very similar to the challenges in the face to face meetings. First challenge is going to be your teacher retention. Issues about quality teachers, teacher turnover came up in that housing costs, the high cost of housing for all your employees, student behavior and discipline which by the way, just so that you know, every community that we go to, that's one of the top items that is cited as a challenge because it is a challenge. Compensation which is related to the high cost of living down here. But even without the cost of living down here, compensation for teachers across the state is seen as a challenge. Communication, always a challenge cited everywhere we go and then safety and security because it's front of mind and that's the single most important thing
011that parents have on their mind is the safety and security of their children that they entrust to the school district. So this is the summary of the survey input. Anybody have questions about that? Okay, then if you could put up the qualities document that. I know she has that one. Yes. So one of the things that the stakeholder group think, what I thought was interesting and what I wasn't really expecting is that more than 50% of the people were not school district employees on the survey. The survey. Can you go back to that? Because it shows the number of people. It's after the chart challenge is at the bottom. It's on page 16. So where is it? I know it's in there. Go up a little bit. It's on 16. There it is. There it
012is. So parent and Guardian, right? 68, 65.8%. And some of those could have been teachers, but when you go to Monroe county school board, there's 43. So we have, you know, half the response, more than half the responses are from people who don't work in the district, which I appreciate. Yes. And the Hispanic population was even larger for non employee responses. And then because you showed the pie chart as you were scrolling, I did want to point out this is the live or work. Remember sue, you had asked for that question. We had five people who said they do not live and work and everybody else did. So that's also some. We feel like it's good information. I will tell you, one of the things we, we looked at last night was looking at the
013number of respondents compared to your number of students. And we specifically ran that data compared to St. John's which is also doing a superintendent search right now. The number of respondents to their survey, to the number of students compared to you guys. It's exactly the same percentage. It was exactly the same. It was a little bit. We were surprised that it came like, I mean. Exactly. So we felt good about that because we felt good about their number of responses and your number of responses considering the number of students qualities. Yes. So these are the documents that we really would like some feedback on. And I have the ability to edit while we're standing up here. We took the summaries of the face to face meetings and what we had at the time for the
014survey and we developed a list of qualities. We did change a few of them as more survey responses came in. But what we developed was a list of qualities in each of these sort of superintendent responsibility categories that this particular document. I'm going to give you a minute to look at it. But this particular document will be on the website so that anyone who applies, we would, we would guess and what has happened in the past is they will reference these documents to kind of say, yep, check, check, check. Oh, I might need to explain this. Check, check, whatever. So we really want to make sure that the qualities reflect what the board truly is looking for. So if there's any language changes, if you think we've left anything out, we've tried to summarize to
015the best degree possible and categorize personal leadership, instructional excellence, business finance, operations, board staff and community relations. And then we've kind of plugged in some of the things that we heard along the way. So do you want feedback on that? I do. And I. Because if there's anything here that we need to change, we need to know now because the advertisement's coming soon. So on the personal leadership qualities. Yes, ma'am. I would move the third bullet point, flip those around and say that, you know, put student focused first and non political second. Okay. Is anybody opposed to that? I don't know exactly how the wording would go because the wording is a little weird in there. But since everyone said we were student focused, I think we should emphasize that. And I don't know if
016nonpartisan is really the word. And rather apolitical might be the word more than apolitical. Do you want them to be two separate or one in the same? Because they're. I think they can be one in the same. That it should be student focused and apolitical. Again, the wording, because it says mindset and that sort of thing, I don't. So if I rephrase it to say maintains positive student focused in decision making and is apolitical or is student focused in decision making. Is first and foremost student focused in decision making, and remains and maintains an apolitical mindset. Does that sound okay? It's fine. All right, let me make sure I captured it properly. I have. Is first and foremost student focused in decision making and is apolitical. Is that what she said? I would say and
017maintains an apolitical mindset. I think you can do that. I mean, I don't know. Andrea, how does the rest of the board feel about separating those two? I just don't love the idea of focused on children and politics involved in the same system. Sentence. Okay, that would be fine. Is it okay if I take is first and foremost student focused in decision making and put that up as the very first bullet? Do we really have to put that, I mean, at all the apolitical stuff? It came out as a priority from your community. That's the reason we're Recommending it. It might fit in the fourth bullet point where it says respects diverse cultures, backgrounds and beliefs. You know, that might fit in there somehow I don't know what the wordsmithing would be. And remains, you
018know, a political in decision making. Well, basically to say maintains a non partisan or apolitical mindset in that it should respect diverse cultures, backgrounds and beliefs. Yeah, that would be good. Say that one more time, Darren. So you have. Maintains a nonpartisan or apolitical mindset in that they respect diverse cultures, backgrounds and beliefs. Oh, so it's the beginning of that one. Perfect. Maintains an apolitical mindset in that they Respect diverse cultures, backgrounds and beliefs. All right, let me read it back to you. Maintains an apolitical mindset in that he or she respects diverse cultures, backgrounds and beliefs. Okay, so I moved the one to the top. Is first and foremost student focused in decision making. And then we've edited this one to read. Maintains an apolitical mindset in that he or she respects diverse cultures,
019backgrounds and beliefs. Okay, anything else? I got it for you already. So we're not there yet. But ultimately do we want to put in there something about familiarity with negotiations. With that would be business, finance and operations. I thought that had it there. I thought that was there. I don't see it. Oh no, it isn't. Yeah. So we have two options where we might consider this. The second bullet, which talks about retention and recruitment strategies, competitive salary and benefits program. But then the other one we might have, which is the second to last bullet, understands the complexity of district operations in transportation, food, nutrition service, maintenance facilities and union negotiation. I can add that there. You prefer it there? That's good. That works. And not in the Keys because I don't care if their experiences
020in the keys or not in the Keys. Like why are we. It's the complexity of district operations in the Keys is what that is. So let me move. Let's move that. And so we would say understands the complexity of district operations in the district, including transportation, food and nutrition services, maintenance facilities and union negotiations. Yes. Okay, thank you. Oh, well, there is the thing develops and maintains about positive working relationship with employees and union leaders. Is the. That's where I was thinking. Where is that not the same thing. They're not the same thing. Okay. As having experience with negotiations. Negotiate, you know, collective bargaining negotiations. And then the other thing is, at one point in the district we were school based management and then another. Now we're pretty much top down with some input from
021schools. But I'd like somebody who's familiar with both. So that if there's the decision made at the district level to change it back to school based management, our superintendent is familiar with how that works. So the first bullet under business finance and operations I might have maintains current high standards for financial operation and fiscal responsibility along with familiarity. In both top down and school based management or financial money, however you want to. I'm almost. I'm not going to use the word top down. Can I make a suggestion on that? Absolutely. So I almost wonder if the reason we think it's top down is that it used to be 100% school based and I and staff might be better able to, you know, like what does school based mean in other districts? I think it might
022mean what we're doing now. And so I just want somebody to Be familiar with the different types of funding of schools. So say it how you want. It doesn't matter what we call it. But I would like to see more than one way of looking at things, you know what I'm saying? Like a superintendent who's open to different ideas because they've seen different ways of doing things. Let me tell you how I'm wording this and you can. Sure. You guys can tell me if it's something you want to support. Maintains the current high standards for financial operation and fiscal responsibility and is familiar with district led and school based management. That's great. Perfect. Does that work? Yes. Thank you. Okay. I will say we don't always have. Demonstrates knowledge and experience of hurricane and disaster
023preparedness, but for obvious reasons it certainly should be included here. But that's one of the ones that is kind of unique to this district. I don't want to move too fast. So if anybody. So qualities are things that we're hoping for. Has nothing really to do with requirements. Right. Because if we had a great candidate who'd never been through a hurricane, I would have to assume we have staff members that can help walk them through what it's like to go through a hurricane here. So I'm just wondering how important that is even to put down as equality. Well, you just can remove the hurricane. Just disaster preparedness. Right. There you go. All right. Do you want to change that from Because I don't want somebody to look at that and go, well, I've never been
024through a hurricane and the hurricanes really happen down there, so I don't know if I should put in for this job. Yeah. And honestly they don't happen down here that often. Should we say hurricane and. Or disaster? No, I'd like to take hurricane completely. All right, so everyone's okay with me removing hurricane and just leaving disaster preparedness? I don't know why we need to say any of that, honestly. Unfortunately, you have the active shooter materials which you can consider. Right, but that would be any school. Right. Like, that's not special to us. Right. But again, you also want someone who, in the event that, unlike some of our community leaders, when S hits the fan, they freak out. But I just. I don't know. Some of this. I think in your mind, the way if
025I'm hearing what you're saying, that should be a given. Right. But what we try to do is pull those things that are consistently cited by the community and saying, here are the things that are prioritized. Okay. We hope that you'll have as many of these as you can get. That way, we're acknowledging what their worries are right now. The qualifications is what you were asking about Mindy, and we'll get to that in just a minute. This is really to help them see. These are things that are really important to us. These are some of our priorities. Okay, so maybe we can just say knowledge and experience with disaster preparedness. Okay. Demonstrates knowledge and experience with disaster preparedness. It doesn't include response, though. Is that okay, does it? Well, this didn't include response, but we can
026say preparedness and response. I just want to make sure. Yeah, that's fine. Okay. Demonstrates knowledge and experience with disaster preparedness and response. Everybody okay with that? Okay. On board, staff, community relations. The second bullet. I. I like what I think the gist of it is, but I'm not sure enhance educational possibilities is my. Okay, that's where I'm tied up with, I think. So instead of enhance. Regarding educational possibilities in economic development, is. It possibilities or opportunities or. Oh, you want to take out possibilities too? Because I don't know. It's. I think what you're saying, you know, it's not enhanced. I'm not the problem isn't enhanced. It's like, what is an educational possibility? I think it's an opportunity, you know, we want. I don't know. That's. How about this Works with legislators, government, nonprofit and business
027leaders to improve educational opportunities and economic development. I like it. Does that work? Yes. All right, let me say it again. Works with legislators, government, nonprofit and business leaders to improve educational opportunities and economic development. Educational growth and economic development. Maybe like opportunities is so, I don't know, Educational outcomes. Programs. I like outcomes. I like programs. What about everybody else? Do we Have a. It does say up above too, about. I couldn't hear you, Sue. I'm just I'm wondering too if. Community and economic development. Oh, to improve educational. Strengthen the community, you know, and strengthen community and economic. I don't know. Impact. I think economic development is good. The problem is the education one. All right, let's look at this. So far what I have is works with legislators, government, nonprofit and business leaders to
028improve educational something and strengthen community and economic development. How about growth and opportunities to improve. Educational growth and opportunity. What does everybody else. I think that sounds fine. And I like the strength in community and economic development. All right, let me read to you what I have. Works with legislators, government, Nonprofit and business leaders to improve educational growth and opportunity and strengthen community and economic development. Is the word academic rather than educational? Academic growth and opportunities. That works. One more time. I just want to make sure that we're all agreeing with the same words. So let me read it one more time. Do it one more time. Yes, ma'am. Works with legislators, government, nonprofit and business leaders to improve. I think the word community has to be in there. Like, we're pretty much naming everybody
029under community relations except the community. I think you can put community leaders instead of business leaders. They're the same here, aren't they? Yeah. All right. Business and community leaders. Do you want business and community? That would be fine, yes. All right, here's what I've got. Works with legislators, government, nonprofit, business and community leaders to improve academic growth and opportunity and strengthen community and economic development. I like it. Me, too. Does anybody need it a second time? My only question would be about the community leaders. There are a lot of people who are in our community that perhaps don't see themselves as a leader. They're just a parent or some other member of the community that perhaps isn't in any kind of leadership role. Business and community partners. I would prefer that. That works. Let's do
030this one more time. Works with legislators, government, nonprofit and business and community partners to improve academic growth and opportunity and strengthen community and economic development. I like it. See what great minds can do. Did you say no? Harry? Harry's keeping it quiet over there. Anything else? Okay. Yes. All right. I've saved that document. Harry and Maria, we are going to move to qualifications now. This one, you will notice, had some blanks in it. That's because we want to talk this through. This is what will be then. As soon as we make agreements on these items here, that'll be the piece that ends up going into the application advertisement piece. Okay, so we start with the minimum qualifications. First thing we have is a master's degree from an accredited institution. Then we have blank years of
031increasingly responsible education administrative leadership experience. I will say Mr. Dick, who was unable to be here with us today, submitted that he thought it should say Florida school district administrative experience. I just want to share that because it was shared with him. And we need to talk about how many years of increasingly responsible education administrative experience. Let me tell you what we think of as increasingly responsible. Can I add one thing? Thing? Sure. I'd be comfortable with that in preferred, but I don't want it in minimum. Which piece? The Florida. Okay. Piece. Okay. Like, that's great. If you have Florida. Maybe that's even better than just having the experience. But I don't want to not include people that are not from Florida. That might be awesome candidates. Okay, the piece here in number two, I'll
032put that under preferred unless anybody objects, and we'll talk about it when we get there. But this particular one, there's two items in here that I want you to think about. One is the how many years and second where we say increasing responsible education administrative experience. What that suggests is assistant principal, principal, district level, you know, maybe manager of something, and then assistant superintendent, whatever it is, they've moved up. So how many years would you want that range of experiences to have occurred in? Could be five years, could be seven, could be 10, could be eight. Whatever you're looking for, I don't know to what degree you're looking for that kind of experience. That's why we're having this conversation. And progressive increasing means you've assumed more responsibility. You've assumed more responsibility. So I guess my
033question for everybody is, is the only thing we want in a superintendent somebody with specific education experience? Because as a minimum qualification, if that's not something we think the superintendent has to have, it shouldn't look like that in minimum, but could definitely be that in preferred. We could also say, Mindy, for what you're describing, let's say you pick eight years. All right, we could say eight years of increasingly responsible education administrative leadership experience, or the equivalent, which would open it up to maybe somebody in military, somebody in private industry. I think that. Anybody opposed to that? No, we still have to figure out how many years. Five is a minimum. Just putting it out there. Ten as preferred. I was thinking more along the lines of 10, because how else can you accumulate enough experience
034to lead a district if you haven't been in a classroom in a few years and some leadership roles in a few more years? So with all that totaling, I would think anywhere from eight to 10 years at least, before you can run a district. I would go lower for minimum. But I agree with you about preferred. That's my personal. I mean, I hear what you're saying. But I just think for minimum, we should keep it minimum, and for preferred, we should put in everything we'd love to see in a candidate. You know what I mean? I do, but I don't see how someone with five years of minimum experience could run a district without, I guess. Once it says or the equivalent, because. You're basically just casting a wider net at the lower amount. But
035is that something we would want. Madam Chair. May I use myself as a personal reference, please? Yes. So I was a teacher for nine years. I was an assistant principal for four years, a principal for 13 years, executive director, my current role, for five years. So that kind of gives you an idea of sort of a career path. A person could be in some of these particular roles. Well, and I guess now that it says. Or the equivalent, I would be somewhat comfortable with putting a little bit higher number. I mean, we have a large budget and a lot of students and teachers and staff. So I heard Yvette say 10. Anywhere from 8 to 10. I think 8's good on a low end. And. And then obviously prefer we can go higher toward Harry's
036humble brag of his career. I could agree with that. So I'm hearing Darren say I'm good with either. But I was sort of thinking eight. I have two for eight. Any. So, yeah, let's go back a second because this says administrative and leadership. How many years were you saying you've been administrative or leadership? Assistant principal. Principal. Assistant principal. Four principal. Thirteen and five in my current role. Okay, so maybe eight to 12. Well, looking at minimum. So minimum. Right. I mean eight for the minimum and 12 for the preferred. Okay, 12 or more. But the different preferred is different because preferred is leadership at a district cabinet level. That's not the same as moving from superintendent to. Or from assistant principal to principal. That was kind of my original point, actually. So you could have
037eight years increasingly moving up, but you want. Preferred would be three to five years or something for the cabinet level. That's how that distinction would be. So the question is, can you also add. Or the equivalent to that as well? Yes. So if you're CEO of a company that's dealing with like thousands of employees, you don't want that person to go away because they can actually handle finance better than most. Even though they may lack teaching experience, they know how to get the team around them. So I'll add. Or the equivalent there. But let's go back. Did we agree with 8? Is there anyone opposed to 8 on the minimum? On the minimum? I think we're all in agreement on that one. All right, so let me just read to you what I have. Eight
038years of increasingly responsible education, administrative leadership experience. Or the equivalent. Its equivalent. Pardon? Or its equivalent. Or its equivalent. Okay. And then I'm thinking three to five years. When we're talking administrative leadership, etc. Because they're not the same thing. We don't need the number to go up. So split it at four. Well, Three to five is like splitting it as much as you can. I think you can say three to five if it's preferred. Except that makes it seem like five then is the max. Yeah, right. Three or more years. Three or more. Or four. I mean, I don't care. It's a difference of one year. So whatever everybody wants. Good at four. Four is fine. The minimum. The experience in a district serving diverse students over a large geographic area. I'm not sure about
039the geographic area. 120 miles. I mean, it is a large geographic area anyplace else. Right. But there's not, you know, but we're not really a large geographic area. We're just a lonely area. Yeah. So I think we're a diverse population. Population. I'm not sure. And I think we're rural. Ish. Right. Like, you know, rural could be, you know, some experience in rural education is maybe a preferred thing. But because, you know, we have so. So many small counties in. I mean, in Florida that that eliminates any of those people as being someone. Because that would not be considered a large geographic area. Although we are like a small. Yeah, I think we need to get rid of the. So I'd actually like number three to say experience in serving diverse populations. Yeah, that's good. Do
040you want to say diverse student population or just. Do you want to say diverse populations? All right, let me read to you what I have here. Number three, the only thing it says. And we got rid of the large geographic area. Experience in serving diverse populations. Okay. Everybody okay with that? All right, so then are there any other minimum qualifications that you all want to put here? We'll talk about the preferred in a minute. But are there any other minimum ones here? Maybe demonstrates community involvement. Say it again, Sue. I'm just something about, you know, has a history of community involvement or something like that. I mean, this is not just someone who went to do their job. They did something beyond their job. Does that. So I guess that comes back to my question
041about the difference between the qualities we're looking for and the qualifications we're asking for. So where, if anywhere, will the qualities be posted in the job description? The qualities will not be posted in the job description. The qualities will be posted on your website portal. And when people are going to apply, they look, we direct them. Look at the portal, look at the things that are on there. And we say we've developed a list of qualities that the board is looking for. So they will say, oh, I have 75% of these, or whatever qualifications that's like, here's what we're saying. You must have to apply for this job. So I actually feel like we should leave it at three each. At what? I'm sorry? At the three each that we have. If they're going to
042know the qualities we're looking for. We've gone over that a number of time in qualities. I don't think putting it in qualifications is something we want to do. Like, we want diverse applicants. We don't want people to look at the qualifications and go, well, I don't have this. And then we lose somebody who might have applied that might have been a great candidate. Like, I think if they can see and go over the qualities, then the qualifications should be more specific and less verbose, I guess. Yeah, I hear what you're saying, but I. It's whether and you disagree, so. No, I'm not disagreeing. I'm not disagreeing. I hear what you're saying. I'm. I just wonder if, you know, with the preferred. If budget. I mean, if there are some things that we would, you know,
043that maybe they're not minimum, we would check other people. But would we choose someone who doesn't have budget experience? I would think about it because I think our financial director is an incredible budget person and would be working closely with a candidate. We don't know what qualifications each candidate's gonna have when they come to us. And not everybody is gonna have everything. So some people might be great at finance, and maybe they ran the financial department at their other school and now they want to become superintendents. Somebody else who's got great history in teaching but really doesn't know a lot about budget and finance. I just. The whole point of having A staff of executives, it's kind of like the president having a cabinet. You rely on the people who specializes in each of those
044things to help you on something that you don't have. What about John's comment on having specific Florida experience? To me, that's not a minimum required. No, not at all. That's what I'm talking about right now. I thought we were good on minimum. Yeah, that's what I was saying before, that I'm comfortable with putting that in preferred, but I don't want to put in any minimum. So you're comfortable putting it in preferred Florida? Okay, I already put that down there. Right. I mean, I'll weave it in in a minute. But what about, like, experience managing or overseeing a certain level of budget? I'm hearing no. And I'm hearing yes. So what are the rest. No, I'm question. I'm asking the question to find out what other people think. I think you started getting in the weeds
045on that. And that's more of a individual kind. X factor, what that number would be. Okay, that's fine. I will say when you look up at the minimum and you say eight years of increasingly responsible administrative experience, that has kind of baked into it a certain oversight responsibility, but it does not have a budget level. Right. So how do you word the preferred qualifications with Florida? I haven't gotten that far yet. I'm on earned doctorate from an accredited institution. Do you guys want to leave that one? Yes. All right, then we have three or more years administrative leadership at the district cabinet level or its equivalent. Now, I could put Florida in there, but I was thinking based on what you were saying, that you wanted Florida experience as a separate item. Yes. Okay, so
046then we have. And this is when you want to talk about. This is preferred, not required classroom teaching and school principal experience at different levels. You guys good with that one? I don't think we should. That's preferred. I mean, just because you have. I mean, you can check off three out of the four. If we're going to have four on preferred. I mean, you may not meet them all, but, you know, you have the four years administrative leadership. You don't meet the classroom teaching level. You still are still. Should it be and. Or should it be or. Because somebody might have teaching experience without the principal experience. Well, or. I mean, the end part is at different levels, they might have been an elementary teacher, but then went on to be principal at elementary and
047then a high school. Can we call it administrative experience rather than specifically principal? We specifically put principal here because there were people who said they want like some principals like to know that the superintendent has been a principal bit, which means overseeing a school site. That's why we included that. But we can change it. But I'm explaining to you why we didn't put it in this one. Classroom change. For somebody to be a principal, they would have had to have been a teacher. No, not always. How would they get that job? Oh, I can take away. It's not impossible. Let's put it this way. Absolutely. Well, I guess Rebecca was a guidance counselor. Was she ever a teacher? So what I have here for number three is classroom teaching or school principal experience at different
048levels. I don't think you need. At different levels, classroom teaching or school principal experience. Okay, does that. I think that's. Yeah. No, I would. If you get rid of the. At different levels, then I would put the. And. Okay, so do you guys prefer and without the words at different levels? The point is that they would be in a middle school and a high school or a high school and an elementary. That's what you're saying. So classroom teaching or school principal experience at different levels? No, no. Let's start over. It would be and. Is what you're saying, Sue. Classroom teaching and school principal experience at different levels. We can actually separate it. So one of the preferred qualifications is classroom teacher. Former classroom teacher. That can be one. That could be one. And the other
049one could be preferred school principal experience at different levels. Basically, that means that wherever you were, you were at one place, and then they wanted to move you into another. Yeah, I mean, it's a. I think that's a sign of someone wanting to expand your, you know, or liking what you're doing and moving you to a new location or whatever. So what I did is I put former classroom teacher as a standalone. Is everybody okay with that? Yes. And then the next standalone says school principal experience at different levels. Does that capture it, Sue? So it captures what Sue's saying. But, like, we know, for instance, that there's a woman. I don't know what her current experience was, but at one time she ran our CTE program. And I don't think somebody like that wouldn't
050be a preferred candidate simply because she didn't actually do the principal part of her experience. You know what I mean? So would you say school principal or district program experience? I like that better. Like somebody who's running a program that's a mainstay of our district or any other district. I mean. Yeah, actually we have. Because we have so few schools, we. Correct me if I'm wrong, Harry, but we move a lot of people straight from the classroom into district administration out. Them having been an apartment, I would Say probably more so in the curriculum and instruction area is where I would probably see that the most. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, I do think also in some districts, they take APs and move them out. And sometimes they haven't served as a principal.
051So if I put on this one school principal or district program experience, does that work for everyone? Or district level, not program. Because somebody who became like, for instance, one of our teaching and learning people, we wouldn't want to exclude them from. So maybe. So what I have is school principal or district level experience. Yes, I like that. All right. Everybody okay with that? You mentioned that the community was something they were Interested in how does that fare with them? If they were interested in the school principal piece, the. The district level, I think that's a nuance that they might not have insight into. I don't think it would contradict it. Well, I apologize. Can you reread that thing? Because I must have missed. Sure. I have school principal or district level experience. Okay, I
052missed what you said. Thank you. All right, so then we get down into. On number two, you said three or more years administrative leadership at the district slash cabinet level or its equivalent. But when we were talking about the minimum and you went with eight years, increasingly responsible experience, one of the numbers you threw out was 12 or more years. But I think that we've captured that. So I'm going to get rid of the 12 or more years. Right. And I will say Mr. Dick specifically wanted Florida school district administrative experience. Florida school district administrative experience. I agree. As a preferred. As a preferred. Showing the word. Did he want it as a minimum or did he want it preferred? He did not say one way or the other. But when we were talking, when
053we originally started talking, you guys indicated you would be okay with it in preferred. So that's why I didn't have it in minimum. I wouldn't want it minimum because I wouldn't want people to go, I'm not from Florida. I'm not applying. That's my opinion on it. How about the rest of you? No, it's fine. I prefer for me, especially if you're under minimum, saying or it's equivalent and serving diverse populations. None of that is specific to school districts. So I would think it would have to come under preferred. And what it says, this is number five, I think. Darren, you were asking about numbers. Yeah. All right, so number three was former classroom teacher. Number four, school principal or district level experience. And then this one would be number five and it would say Florida
054school district administrative experience. And the key here being Florida. Mindy, you seem like something's going on in your head. Yeah, I just. I don't want Florida. And I know John's not here to talk to him about it, which makes it that much harder because I feel bad that he's not part of the discussion. But I just. And to a certain extent I agree with that. Only because Florida is. I mean, that's such a broad thing. Key west and Coral Shores are not the same thing. So just saying Florida is not like it's going to bring. The statutory requirements from the state in Florida are very, very specific. The accountability systems are different. The testing's, they're not nuanced. And it's a very different. If you leave the state of Florida, what school districts are like elsewhere.
055You know, most school districts elsewhere are tiny community things. They're not the whole county. They're not dealing with county. Right. But if we talk about superintendents from the past. Right. We had Mark Porter for how many years? He'd never been to Florida, had no experience in Florida and we kept him on as our superintendent for, I don't know, five, seven years. How long was he superintendent? Nine. It doesn't mean you wouldn't apply. It just means I don't have Florida experience. So now the onus is on me to tell the board members why my not having Florida experience is something I can easily overcome. Why don't we change experiencing experience to understanding and understanding of Florida, you know, rules and regulations? You know, we have in some job ads for superintendent we have had. It demonstrates
056understanding of Florida law, Florida education law and processes, or something along. Those lines that I like. That's fine. I can live with that. You good? John. Let me tell you what I wrote. Demonstrates understanding of Florida education laws and processes. Perfect. Does that work for everyone? I like it. All right, then I have one more that we talked about earlier that I want to just walk through here and that is the rural education experience that was mentioned before. I don't want that in qualifications. I was just saying that the large geographic area. We're more rural than we are a large geographic area. Right. But we took. So we're not going to put it in here. Okay. So I have five preferred qualifications earned doctorate from accredited institution, three or more years administrative leadership at the
057district cabinet level or its equivalent, former classroom teacher, school principal or district level experience demonstrates understanding of Florida education laws and processes. I like it. Everybody else, thumbs up. Now comes the big conversation. That is the compensation pro bono pardon, free pro bono school board is prepared to offer. We need to ask how many year contract you're prepared to offer. That's one item we need to discuss. And then the salary range. I realize Mr. Dick also sent an email. He recommended 175 to 225 as the salary we were recommending. 215 to 250. But we recognized that that had some anxiety. Not anxiety, but that was maybe higher than some of you were looking for. So I put a lot of thought into this actually. And while I don't have a number in mind, I would
058like to, because we're going to have some Key west local candidates apply. I would like to do a salary plus if you have to move some kind of housing relocation stipend, like not a consistent annual housing allowance, but some amount of money to get you settled here in Key West. Okay, so let me, let me say this. When we advertise for the position, the we're going to call that a relocation. Yes. Okay. That would not be in the advertisement. That would come in the negotiation of the contract. So your advertising, this is the base salary. So the reason that concerns me, and I'm sorry to interrupt you, is if that person looks at housing prices and isn't aware that that's something that we're willing to talk about, then they may not apply for the job.
059Okay. And I don't want to pay somebody, let's just say 250 because it's expensive down here when we can them to give them a one time, let's just say the number was 50 relocation amount in order to get down here and stay down here. And if we help somebody buy in town who's not from in town, I think they're more likely to stay anyway. So for me, I'd be uncomfortable making the relocation piece part of negotiation. Like I, I'd like to put it out there. I don't know how everybody else feels. So let me tell you the way I've sort of worded this for, for purposes of discussion, the school board is prepared to offer. We'll figure out how many years and we'll figure out the range with competitive benefits, commiserate with experience and qualifications
060as well as a relocation stipend. Yes, that works without a dollar sign. Just a relocation stipend. So they know that that's something you guys understand and perfect right up front. We're going to put it out there. I love that. Anybody opposed to that? All right, let's talk about the easier of the two questions. Length of contract. Harry, do they have a policy that says they can only do a certain length of contract for the superintendent? I don't know the answer off the top of my head, but I want to say no more than three. No more than three. And we could say up to a three year contract. But what I will also tell you, especially if somebody is relocating, right. There's a certain comfort knowing two year, three year, whatever that contract is, we
061are recommending three years mostly because of the volatility that especially in Florida superintendents experienced. And so they people from out of state saw that and it will deter some applicants. If it was less than three years, they'd be like, eh, not sure it's worth it. So I like the three years personally. I guess I'm wondering what the rules are in terms of separation. So, for instance, if we were unhappy after a year. Yeah. There's a contractual. There's a statutory maximum. I want to say it's six months. I have to pull out. We have a document that says compensation options, and we've got some. That's not. See if I have it in here. To figure out a superintendent. That's the contract negotiation piece, which will come later. We have a whole chart of the different pieces
062that are in different contracts across the state. We'll be bringing that to you next. Okay. And we'll be asking you to kind of look at the list of. We call them compensation options. Right. And so each of you will tell the attorney, here are my frameworks. Here are my frameworks. Here are my frameworks. And then the attorney will kind of put them together. There'll be some areas where there will be some discrepancy between what people want. Then those are the pieces you guys are going to need to talk through. But that's a negotiation piece. Okay, I like three years. Anybody opposed to three years going once? All right, we're going to say. I don't think, except when we had a governor appointed superintendent that we've ever. I mean, had someone that was less than three
063years. Terry, that's. But before that, people had four year. They're used to people being here for longer. Yeah. So are you suggesting. I'm saying the community will. Will not. I think the community will think three. Makes sense. Okay, so three is okay. We're gonna leave it at three. Now we have the salary range. So you received the chart of salaries that currently exist. You also received some information based on some of your questions. We have the cost of living pieces that some people asked for that are included in there. We also have the. Did we send you the electric superintendent salaries? Yes. Okay, so you have the elected superintendent salary piece. We might not have it in front of us, but you did at one time send that to us. Okay. So I know we've
064seen that. Which. Let me pull that up real quick so that I can tell you what the elected would have been this year had you had an elected. It would have been. I'm opening the salaries of elected county constitutional officers for school district officials. Fiscal year 24, 25, you'll recall, I think we had this conversation before that the legislature actually increased the salary of superintendents this year. They changed the formula because it hadn't been changed for so long. And given that in Monroe this year, the superintendent's salary, if the superintendent was still elected, would have been 173, 701. Mr. Dick had 175 to 225. I like, I like 175 as the starting point. I might go a wider range. Is anybody opposed to 175 as the starting point? Maybe 230? I don't, but I'm not.
065I don't know what, how wide of a range you normally would have. But I mean, if I look at the minimum qualifications, I think, you know, 175 is not bad for those qualifications. But if you get saved based on the total cost of living on that sheet that you sent us, that's like getting paid $40,000 a year after other expenses. And that seems a little low to me. I heard 175 to 230. I mean, if you look at people that are comparable to us and St. John seems to be the most comparable. If you look at the. All of the cost, that's the most comparable. And you see where their salary is. Also when you look at other leaders in Monroe county and what they make, the highest range you see is about 225. So
066I think that's a nice place to start. Perhaps, you know, with all of the. There can be some compensation and other benefits that could make that offer more attractive. Maybe a car allowance, maybe cell phone. You know, I don't know. There's a whole list that you provided of other things we can do to compensate a superintendent. So you're comfortable with 175 to 225? Yeah, I was comfortable with that. I mean, I understand that perhaps after a probation period, there's a bump up. And it's also based on their experience. I mean, they could be on the higher end. I don't know how the other board members feel. But if you. And potentially you would in part of the negotiations, again, it's. Most superintendents would expect there to be some performance incentive. Exactly. So you all know
067that. So I'm just thinking there's other ways in the contract based on who we Select, sometimes there's deferred compensation. Again, a contracted piece. So what's important for us to know is when somebody calls us and says, 225. That's a little low for me. We would, we, we need to know if we can say, well, the board is open to discussions about performance pay, about deferred compensation. Things like that. I mean I, I recognize the cost of living here, what it costs, but it does concern me to start on the very high end at 250. I think that's a huge starting place. No, I don't think we should start at 250. No, but I'm just saying, you know, so that's why that's, that's a nice range. You start perhaps at 225 with benefits, incentives, whatnot. You
068know, maybe there's a few other things in there that would make it attractive to someone that's coming in from out of town. And you're offering a moving stipend. So anyway, I just like to be careful. St. John's current St. John's currently is 174. Demetrius. What did they decide to advertise today? Do you remember? Hold on, I think I have it right here. Okay, let me just. So that you know. Because that's why you're asking the question. I suspect it is. Because what I'm thinking is travel from here is a lot harder and so I think we need to be just a little bit higher than St. John's as our starting salary. I mean, there are ones. Okay. I mean I'm open to it. Yeah, I just. I have got St. John's advertised. They approved it
069today. And in front of me, 170 to 230. How so? We're so 175 to 250. Yeah. 240. Well, 215. 225. What about 175 to 225? That's what John was at. I'm comfortable with that. Darren, I couldn't hear what you said. That's what John was at. Yeah, that works. We all good with that number? I have a clarification question for you. Let me put in the 175 to 225 and then I have a question. Thank you for chiming in. Top number our policies. So Please let Mr. Dick know he was well represented here today. All right, so what I have is the school board is prepared to offer a three year contract with a salary range of 175 to with competitive benefits. Commiserate with experience and qualifications as well as a relocation stipend. And here's the
070part I'm asking you about. As well as a relocation stipend and incentives. Did you say the board is willing to consider? Well, the qualification is, you know, commensurate with the experience and qualifications. So it's already qualified in and of itself. So for we feel you're not qualified for the incentives, you really don't get the incentives. We just need to know. People will ask us. And so it sounds to me like you guys will be willing to talk about it, but I also think it. Might not be the easiest lift and other negotiated incentives. Say it. Read it again. Does it? Read it. All right, let me tell you what I just put. I'm adding Mindy's language here. The school board is prepared to offer a three year contract with a salary range of 175 to
071220. 25 with competitive benefits commiserate with experience and qualifications, as well as a relocation stipend and other negotiated incentives. Good. I see a yes. I see a yes. Darren? Yeah, Sue. Okay. Watching the bobblehead over there. So what we're going to do is I'm going to take this language and you'll have this before the board meeting. I'll get it to Maria. But we have an advertisement. We'll talk in a minute about where we want to advertise, but let's look at the language in the advertisement. Poor Focus never had a chance. Hold on one second. I need to pull it up myself in case we make any changes. What are we looking at now? The superintendent search. Thanks. Sorry, I thought I had it open, but here it is. All right, so we have a draft
072advertisement. What you have at the top are some highlights from, of and by and for the community. Where you see. Can you go up a second, Demetrius? This is the part we'll paste in that we just did. We just agreed on. So I'll be cutting and pasting that in there. Then what you'll see at the bottom is the application process, which I'll walk you through in just a minute to explain. But what I need to know is the language at the top there. The paragraph here. Are there any changes that you'd like to have made? Should we distinguish the number of charter schools that we have? At one point I had it all listed out, but then it got too long, so I kind of summarized again, parentheses. So, yeah, because 18 seems like a
073ridiculous amount of schools for 8,500 students, and so we might want to. Well, if we're going to put a number in parentheses, let's put it after the word charter. What we could say is the Mongrel county school district, serving over 8,500 students in blank traditional schools and blank charter schools is seeking. That's perfect. All right. How many traditional Schools. Do you cite 10? And that would make it eight charter schools, correct? Yeah. Seven charter schools. Right. Because one. One of our schools is private. Right. We don't govern them at all. Okay, so it's going to say the Monroe County School district serving over 8,500 students in 10 traditional schools and seven charter schools. Correct. Okay. Or do you want the 10 traditional and charter to be down below at the end where it says already
074traditional and charter? That's what I was saying before. And includes 10 traditional. All right, so we would say and includes elementary, K8, middle, high and high school. So we get rid of traditional and charter there because we put it at the top, above it. Okay. Yep. Everyone okay with that? Yes. All right. And actually, our superintendent kind of also Oversees pre K. I'm sorry, what about. Pre K, head start, pre K to 8, or head start, pre K, comma, K 8, middle, high, charter, elementary. So wait, do you have any regular elementary. Yes, we do. Okay, because you didn't say it. That's why I'm asking. So let me make sure I get them in order. Head Start, Pre k, elementary, k 8, middle, high and high schools. Right. Think we can be done in 20
075minutes? I'm sorry? Think we can be done in 20 minutes or. No, I'm hoping we'll move quickly, but I. We need anything else here? No. All right, so I'm going to get that edited and over to Maria. So it'll be on your agenda. The next item is where you'd like to advertise. Can you pull up the advertising venues, advertising options chart? The second one right there? Yep. Thank you, sir. So you get to decide where you'd like to have the ads, if any. The free ones is what Mr. Dick said. He said he didn't think you should do anything beyond the free ones, those that will get your word out. We would actually recommend the American association of School Administrators. If you had to only pick one, one that would be the top priority. That's
076where people look who are seeking jobs of this level at a minimum, and then some of those other ones. Certainly you can choose which ones you want, but I personally recommend the American association of School Administrators because I know that's where people look. I'm surprised John doesn't want The Florida Association 1 Since he wanted that as a preferred. Like he wanted free. No, I mean, he wants Florida to be a preference, but he doesn't want To pay for association. So there's the word. Yeah, she's talking about Florida Administrative Association. Yeah, but FSBA is Obviously on there. So his. He gets his Florida in there anyways, right? Yeah, I'm comfortable with just American association of School Administrators, if that's your recommendation. My recommendation is for sure. I mean, I do think that there are some arguments
077to be made for Ed Week Top Jobs, but they have gotten very bright and they recognize that they don't even offer a 30 day advertisement. So it's a little bit higher there. That would be my second large choice there. The Florida association of School Administrators is always going to be helpful. Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents of. Is really targeting. And national alliance of Black School Educators is also really targeting both of them. There's arguments to be made. Well, I would just assume that black school educators and Latino administrators and superintendents would also be in American Education and Florida. So we wouldn't be missing anybody if we didn't have those two. Is it free for the Florida association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents? The Florida. Down at the bottom. Hold on a second. I want
078to get it right. No, it says $250 for six at the top Down. Down here at the underneath. Florida association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents. The last time we did it, it is. It was free and it was free the last time we saw it. But they, they haven't committed that it's not going to change. So I mean, it's this week at this point. It was free when we checked it. So can we say we want to do all the free ones? Yep. And then just say plus? Absolutely. And if we're going to spend $200,000 on a superintendent. Really, $3,500 on advertising seems like an okay compromise. I don't know how everybody else feels, but that gets us American Association, Education Week and Florida Association. I heard. American association of School Administrators, Education Week, School
079Top Jobs and Florida association of School Administrators. In addition to the freeway. May I ask a curiosity question? The last maybe handful of superintendent searches that you have done, did those superintendents indicate where they were they part of any of these organizations? How they heard about the particular ad? Education Week, Top School Jobs. American association of School Administrators. That's. Those are the places. Thank you. So we definitely want those two at least. Yeah, I would. I think we want those two. Please make sure we ask that question. We're interviewing them. How'd you hear about us? Check. American association of School Administrators and Education Week. Top School Jobs. Anybody opposed to those two? Okay, perfect. Then let me tell you just briefly. And I realize we're on a time crunch, but let me tell you Briefly,
080the process is going to be, we will be working with Harry to place these ads. When somebody decides to apply, they will submit their application to superintendentsearchsba.org so we receive those applications, we process those applications in our office. And by process, I mean we put them in order. We make sure that all of the pieces to the application are present. Once all of the pieces are present that we have asked for, which is a resume with a signed cover letter, maximum of three letters of professional recommendation documents verifying curtains, certain, excuse me, current certifications, copy of the college transcripts reflecting the highest degree held. Once we've confirmed we've received all of them, then that person has what we call a completed packet. Once they get a completed packet, we give them an applicant number. First
081person to complete their packet. We might be waiting for the third letter from somebody not complete. Somebody else has the third letter come in complete, that person becomes applicant number one. Okay? Pardon? Okay. Once we get the applicant number one and we filter out, you know, Social Security numbers on college transcripts, things like that, we then will be forwarding applicant number one's packet to Harry. Harry's going to take applicant number one's packet, he's going to put it to the board members and he's also going to put it to the website. So the website will have a growing list as they roll in applicants, applicant 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. There could be a time along the way when somebody withdraws their application. They've gotten a job in another place as soon as they applied, a
082family medical history thing changed or whatever. So if that happens, it's still public record. We put a line through it, we write withdrawn, you'll be notified. So we'll have a full list of applicants once. The reason the applicant number matters is because when we get to the interview section, especially for the face to face interviews, we do them in numerical order. So the lowest finalist number, even if your finalists are number 13, 25 and 35, applicant 13 will be candidate A. Applicant 25 will be candidate B. Applicant 35 will be candidate C. We don't just randomly decide who gets to go first because then that doesn't, it's not fair. So the applicant number matters. We'll work with you on semi finalist vetting process. Each of you will ask, I'll work with you to develop what
083we call our vetting question, sort of your deal breaker question, and we'll craft those. I do want to talk to you about the finalist interviews because we have to work with Harry and team on a Lot of details. And if you look at the timeline that we submitted, there are some numbers on page three, you'll see some highlighted items. Here we go. So what we're proposing and what we believe will work is if we bring in the out of area finalists on Tuesday, April 29, and we would like to try to have them stay near Islamorada, Coral Shores. Right. Somewhere in this area. Marathon at the most. The next day, Wednesday, would be conducting the on site interviews for the finalists. They would tour the Upper Keys facilities. We would have the meet and greet
084in the Upper Keys. They would stay at the same hotel, Coral Shores, if needed, but they would travel to Marathon in the morning. Then on Thursday, they're going to travel to Marathon that morning, conduct the on site interviews for the finalists, the public board interviews. They're going to stay still in this area and they won't travel to Key west in the morning. What we're trying to do is have one hotel for all the nights and they can travel up, stay here ish, and travel down as needed. That way we're not having people check out of hotels, grab their stuff and keep moving around. But I wanted to confirm with you all that that is acceptable. The only night we would have them in a different location would be the night of the Key west. Although
085they could come back to Marathon, but we could do the Key west after the meet and greet. They could stay in Key west and that is going to be the Friday night. So we need to know if that's okay with you because we got to start booking some hotels. And also we're going to need to know. Harry will work with you all on many of these details. How many staff members we need to have hotel rooms for, if any, how many board members. All of that we need to take into account. We thought one central hotel, move up, move down would work. We really would like your input on this. So just to share with the group, I have a meeting set up with the chamber presidents Carrie and Judy in the Upper Keys and
086Daniel Samuelson, Marathon, to start some of the conversations for hotel support, support of business partners for meet and greets at the three areas of the Keys. So I've already started to kind of put some of that in place, Andrea. So as soon as I'm able to have that first meeting with them on March 3rd, I can be in communication with each of you as needed to share some of those details. And honestly, Andrea, as board members, we expect to travel up and down the Keys, so we're not gonna. Okay, yeah, I don't think as a school district, we should be paying for hotels for board members. Okay. We. We didn't know what the expectation was On April 29th out of finalists arrive, Islamorada is misspelled. Yeah. Say that again, Sue. On April 29, 2025, out
087of area finalists arrive, Islamorada is misspelled. It's ISL oh, yes, it is. Thank you. One other consideration that is relatively newly developing is a road construction project in the Upper Keys that could impact. For now, it's shut down. But we might want to think about that in where we stay That could certainly affect it. I will tell you, having driven it today. Yes. You could still stay up in this area just south of. Of that. That project, and you'd be all right. Okay. Right. So although it's Pat's point is to maybe get that first hotel below the construction. It's 91, I think our original thought was to do something in Marathon and then you can go north and then the next day is in Marathon and then be in Key West. Perfect. Kind of in
088the middle. Right. And that avoids the construction issue. Yeah, you just have to be. The population of the Upper Keys is in Key Largo, and if there's traffic and we're having a meet and greet and it's in Islamorada, we will. The bulk of the population of the Upper Keys will not be able to attend. So are you talking to Susie Youngberg at Key Largo Chamber as well? No, I can surely add her into the. I should add her because we have a hard time getting people even. Like at Whale harbor, which is kind of the north part of Isla Mirada. For some people, that's too far. It's quite far from Key Largo and especially if there's traffic. So do you have her contact by chance? Yeah, I do. Can you forward that when you have
089a minute? Thank you. But I agree with staying in Marathon. Thank you. Then that concludes it for me. Unless you have any other questions, we will put those details into the timeline. We'll get that back to you. I want to get these materials to Maria so she can get them to you all for the board meeting in six minutes. Let's take a five-minute break and then we'll get started as close to five as possible. Thank you. [RECESS] Ms. Conn. At this time, we are ready to call the meeting to order. I'd like everyone to please stand as we have Robert and Ali Beth lead us in the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty
090and justice for all. Thank you. At this time, I would like to adopt the agenda. And we do have a request for a change. Ms. Kahn has requested that we move consent item number six to action item number four. Do we need a motion? No, you just pull it. Somebody, any board member, can say, please pull it. So let's get that. Please pull that. And we will move that to Action Item 4. Yes. Any other discussion on the agenda? We do need a motion to adopt the agenda as. Yeah, correct. I was going to that next. Just wanted to make sure there's no other discussion. At this time, I recommend that we adopt the agenda as modified. So moved. Second. Motion by Dr. Woltanski. Second by Mr. Horan. Any objection? Any discussion? Hearing none. The
091motion passes. Next, I recommend the approval of the meeting minutes for February 11th. Motion by Mr. Horan. Second by Mrs. Talbot. Any discussion? Any? No votes? Hearing none. The motion passes. At this time, we'd like to do a recognition of excellence, and we have two special things this evening, so I'd like to call chair Conn up to the podium. I sound like a Star wars character. We are excited this evening to begin our GEMS presentation with Nathaniel Sugarman. So if he would come up here. Along with principal Laura Leotard. [APPLAUSE] Nathaniel has been selected as the Monroe County School District Sunshine State Scholar. The Florida Sunshine State Scholars are chosen based on their excellence in science, technology, engineering and math. During his years attending school in Monroe County, Sugarman has excelled in many areas of
092study, completing numerous advanced placement classes, science courses particularly. He's earned a perfect score of 5 on those advanced placement tests, and he earned a perfect score of 1520 on his PSAT test. During the summer months, he further advances his studies by attending different sessions at special prestigious universities, particularly in the area of physics, such places as Duke University, Brown University. And he is taking a physics course from the US Department of Energy. He's not just an excellent student, however. He is also president of the Mu Alpha Theta Club, which is the math honor society, a member of student council, a member of the Academic Challenge team, a member of Interact, and a member of the Village Youth council. And in his spare time, he participates in cross country and lacrosse. And in addition to that,
093Nathaniel has completed over 200 hours of giving back to his community through different service projects. So we are so very proud that he will be representing our county at the state level for the Florida Sunshine State Scholar competition. And we award him with this gem for creating so many great educational moments, not just for himself, but for so many of his peers, his teachers and for the community. So congratulations. Nathaniel. [APPLAUSE] Good job. Thank you. Congratulation. We also want to recognize tonight a special group of students. They are the Silver Knight nominees and they are among the first counties. So would our Silver Night nominees please come forward. [APPLAUSE] As I said, Coral Shores High School is proud to present their first ever Miami Herald Silver Night nominees. The Miami Herald Silver Night awards are
094one of the nation's most highly regarded student award programs. And we are so excited that across the county each of our high schools has several nominees with Coral Shores contingent being the largest. The purpose of the award program is to recognize outstanding students who have not only achieved in the classroom, they all must have at least a 3.2 GPA or higher. And many of them are the or higher. But they also have to unselfishly given of their special talents and knowledge to community service or to help the school in some way. They were they applied and working with our CAPS counselor, which I want to give kudos to CAHPS counselor Jessica Haddad because she worked closely with the Miami Herald Silver Knight's nominee process and help these students all get their applications ready because they
095will go on to the next level of competition. All which will be celebrated with a very grand event where they reveal the top scholarship recipients at a special evening put on by the Miami Herald. So this evening we want to recognize the amazing students. So please step Forward to see Mrs. Kahn who will present your award and the area for which the student was is receiving it. For Rossio, Ornellis, Perez, Art. [APPLAUSE] All right, do it this way. Noah Myers, Business. [APPLAUSE] Rachel Rusch, Digital and Interactive Media. [APPLAUSE] We have Ivy Hong for Journalism. [APPLAUSE] Brian Hurt for Mathematics. [APPLAUSE] Robert Aleman, Social Studies. [APPLAUSE] Ali Beth Wilson for Speech. [APPLAUSE] Dylan Ostenson, Vocational Tech. [APPLAUSE] Andiris Ledesma Martinez for World Language. [APPLAUSE] Kai Guth for Science. [APPLAUSE] Brookelyn Zlockie for music and Dance. [APPLAUSE]
096And Connor Dixon for Athletics. [APPLAUSE] Again, this is a distinguished panel, so we congratulate all of them. Thank you Everyone. Go ahead. At this time, do we have anyone requesting citizens input? Yes, we do. We have Mr. Frank Derfler requesting three minutes. Hi, most of you know me. My name is Frank Durfler. The hat I'm wearing right at this moment is the past president Media Past president of the Upper Keys Rotary Foundation. And as you might know, we just completed the gigantic nautical market. I just wanted to say thank you, thank you to the school system. We absolutely filled up the bus ramp here at Coral Shores high school at 7:35 in the morning on Saturday. We ran school buses from here all day Saturday, all day Sunday. It was just a wonderful event. You'll
097be interested to know our GROSS well over 400,000. Our net really close to about 350,000. Where does that money go? It goes to students in the Upper Keys. Now the Upper Keys Rotary foundation is just a little different. And that is that we don't necessarily just give them a kiss on the cheek and a check on the graduation night in May. Instead we follow them through all four years 200 academic degree or toward a technical certification. And so we are very very happy to carry through. But it takes a community. We could not have done it without the facility here at Coral Shores High School, as you well know, without your parking lot. And we certainly could not have done it without the 300 or so volunteers we have from this community. So it's just
098a big thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] Thank you very much. That concludes those for citizens input. Can I. For some reason if you look on the website right now, you cannot click on the agenda any more. I had. We are having trouble republishing. All right. I mean we can move on. Okay. Notify we have our tech team working on that to reconnect the agenda. So please check back on that periodically and we'll let you know when we get it up. At this time we are going to move on to the consent agenda as amended. As amended again, item six has been moved to action. Item number four. All remaining items listed on the consent agenda are considered routine and non controversial by the school board and will be approved by a
099single 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 they have requested any movement to action. As stated earlier. I recommend approval of the consent agenda as amended. So moved. Second. Motion by Mr. Horan. Second by Dr. Woltanski. Any discussion? Any No votes? Hearing None. The motion passes. Thank you. And at this time I would like to call up Mrs. McPherson who will give us a report on student success along with two students, Ali Beth Wilson and Robert Alleman. A day in the life of a Coral Shores High School student. Thank you board chair and board members. So tonight you can see in repeat performance by our talented group of students. These two individuals are members of
100our Mags team, Monroe association of governing students. And they were invited by the superintendent to share a day in the life of a Coral shores high school student. And when I asked them to prepare their presentation, what you're going to see far outweighs any expectation that I ever had. They hit the ground running. They met with our team and just were just a wonderful, marvelous representation of our students in Monroe county. So I'm going to turn it over to them. Hello, everyone. I'm Alabeth Wilson and I'm your student body president. And I'm Robert Alleman, and I serve as the senior class president here at Coral shores. So first up, I do want to say before we get started that the surveys were collected by posting a google form to all the google classrooms of the
101four grades at Coral Shore. So 9th through 12th grade. And we got over 100 responses just to keep that in mind. So first up is transportation. So, as you can see in the graph, the majority of students commute to school independently. And many suggested carpooling to avoid parking across the street, which is a problem that people discuss often here. So for our homework, courses and academic support, less than one hour, which is 32.8%. Many students complete their homework quickly or have none at all. 50% most spend moderate time on their homework. And 13.8% said that they spend three to four hours on their homework, which is very extended time. And 16.8% of our students receive 2.8 hours or 2 plus hours of extra help after school. Up next is after school commitments. So many students
102juggle work and school. Some may need some extra support just to manage both of those. So 54.9% of students primary source of stress is family and work responsibilities. 32.3% of students do not have a job. 29% of students work 12 to 17 hours a week, which is the most common among the students. 6 to 11 hours was about 19.4% of the students. So they still work fewer hours, but they still must balance, you know, school and work. And then 9.7% work very little, just one to five hours a week. And then a small group group of students work 18 plus hours a week, which could affect their performance in school. So for after school clubs, most students spend one hour or less per week in clubs. A smaller group also dedicates three or more hours,
103which is 13.8% of our students. And only 3.4% report spending more than two hours. Club membership so our most popular club is interactive with 67.9% of students participating. Other notable clubs include Key Club, PBIS and National Honor Society. Several other clubs have smaller but dedicated participation. Some students listed multiple clubs or niche activities, which shows that Coral Shore students have a diverse range of interests. Then Sleep and Stress Levels so many students wake up as early as 5am with limited sleep. Less than six hours of sleep is common in our respondent, impacting focus and well being throughout the school day. Academic workload and college prep are top stressors. Balancing school sports and extracurriculars adds to student strain and then high stress and slow sleep, as you all know, can lead to a risk of burnout
104and declining mental health in students. So for students, free time and well being 58% of students only have one to three hours of free time per school day. 16% have less than an hour, leaving little time for rest and hobbies. And then for their screen time. 42% of students spend four to six hours on screens daily. 10% exceed seven hours affecting their sleep and mental health. So we've noticed that this is a balance issue. Limited free time and high screen use results in increased stress and fatigue. But schools can support student well being by adjusting workloads and schedules. Then the balance. So we notice that 87.7.9% of students have a heavy academic workload. Multiple classes assign homework, tests and projects, often overlapping each other. Each class may not assign too much work individually, but with
105six to seven classes the workload can pile up. College prep students juggle SAT and ACT prep and scholarship applications. Grade pressure also makes even small assignments feel critical. Extracurriculars and jobs Balancing AP classes, sports and clubs and work adds to the strain. And some students help with siblings, household chores and other family obligations, making it harder to focus on schoolwork. And as you can see, that's a pretty significant percentage of students that have those obligations. 34.5% so we've noticed that time management is a huge challenge that students face. By the time students get to homework, it's often late at night leading to exhaustion and less time for them to sleep. So here are our student needs and suggestions. So the students reported that the best parts of their school day were their social connections such
106as seeing friends, lunch and spending time with their peers. And the favorite classes that are reported are art, physics, history, marine science, digital video productions and other electives that allow creativity and freedom. Extracurriculars in sports such as leadership, weightlifting, track and cost crunchy and they enjoy their time with their coaches and Teammates. Yet their biggest challenges in their school day is the academic stress such as AP Honors, AP and honors classes, math tests and difficult coursework. The engagement. Some report boring or unengaging classes and a lack of stimulating activities. Others say time management is their biggest challenge, such as balancing school extracurriculars and their personal time. Others say energy and motivation, such as waking up early, staying focused and keeping up with all their work. And of course, their social and emotional struggles, such as
107asking for help, dealing with their teachers and other social interactions throughout the day. That's it for our presentation. And if you guys have any questions, we're more than willing to answer them. Does the board have any questions? I was just wondering if it's possible to receive a copy of the presentation so I could reread and absorb it a little bit more. Yeah, absolutely. We can get that to you. Thank you. Thank you for all your effort too. Of course. Good job. My only question is when the school day change is going to happen as required by the state. I think we're supposed to move school start times to 8:30. Is that correct? How do you guys feel that will affect your challenges and so forth? Do you think the later school start time will be
108a benefit or make it more difficult to fit everything that you want to in your day? I think that for high school students, I think starting at 8:30 is viewed more as like a delay to their day because it's just, it's an hour later. So that means they're getting out of school an hour later and it kind of limits them to that after school time to, you know, commit to sports clubs and any other after school commitments. So I think in terms of high school students, I think that would limit. It would cause a greater amount of stress. We may not have a choice, but thank you. Do you guys have an idea of those hundred students? Like how many were in each grade? We can go back and pull the reports from each class.
109I believe because they're posted on each Google classroom. I think that we should be able to see the specific reports from each group. Can you go to the. I guess it's the third slide. Homework courses and academic supports that bottom of how many AP honors classes are you currently taking? You know, the largest number there, if I'm looking at the colors. Right was five or more. Right. Are first year freshmen taking five or more? Freshmen are only allowed to take one Ap, but they might be taking honors, right? Yes. Or you can also take English honors and math honors. I think that you can have other honors elected Biology. Yes. And honors. Right. I think you're definitely able to see a fair spread. I would say it's more likely that juniors and seniors responded to
110this. You might be seeing a little bit of that difference, but I would say it's still, I mean, we were taking five plus APs. APs and honors classes. Right. And can you, from your experience, why are you taking five AP and honors classes in a year? Personally, taking the advanced classes in AP helps prepare us for college. Like we're all going off to college. And I think that these AP classes will help us prepare for that. And of course, everyone knows it brings up your GPA so that it makes it easier for us to get into college. And. And I've been taking AP honors classes my entire life and they're very engaging and I think that they stimulate my learning a lot more than what my peers do in their regular classes. Do you have
111anything to add to that, Robert? No, I think she hit the nail on that. Can you tell me, was there ever a class that you thought about taking but decided not to take it because it wasn't weighted like AP or honors? Not me personally. I know and Alibeth kind of spoke to this a little bit. I think that just intrinsically the students that are more inclined to take more AP classes are going to be more interested in the more academic classes. So like we're both in AP European History this year and that just gears more towards our interests. So it does work out that our interests do align with those AP courses. Also to add some students I know also didn't want to take leadership their freshman or sophomore year because it's only turns into
112an honors class once you're in it for two years or if you're a student office. So I know there are students who don't take leadership because it's not weighted as honors. And then for your arts requirement, what did you guys take? Digital Video productions. It does serve as an honors honors level course for all four years. And you too, Alibeth? Yes. And did you choose that, did that part? Was that part of your decision making process that it was honors? Not for me at all, personally. I chose it freshman year and I loved the class. It was great that it was honors. I only needed two art credits, but I took it all four years because I loved the class. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you guys. Thank you both. You did a wonderful
113job. We really appreciate it. And thank you, Ms. Fearson for all the work that she does with the, the mags across the County. That is the only report we have for this evening's meeting. So I will move into legal. So we're not doing the Department of Justice report again, even though it's on here? It's. Yes, it's below on pending. Okay. It was blue so it meant something was attached. I didn't. No. Yeah, I'll get to that with Pending. Okay. I just have one update that I've briefed you all on individually. I sent the link for the company that we're planning to use for the football field for the baseball and football field analysis. That's RS3 they were founded by and that's all they do is sports fields across the country. So I think their qualifications
114are pretty, pretty suitable for what we're looking for. We have a tentatively said they'll be here next week. I don't know the turnaround time on a report but they are aware that we would like to get this done as fast as possible. Other than that, I don't have anything further to report. Derek, at the end of the meeting before the school board members leave, can we be out of the sunshine picking a day for a workshop or should we do that in the sunshine? You should probably coordinate through, through Maria like we always do and that's going to hinge on when we get the thing done. So it's kind of irrelevant. Nailing it down right now isn't that easy. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. And I do not have anything for the Superintendent board reports. Ms.
115Talbot, Mr. Horan? I'll follow Mr.Dick and I have nothing to report. Dr. Woltanski. Can we get an update on the traffic situation? Just for the record. Mr. Lapierre. So it's been quite a week and quite a day today. A little bit of a second. So there was a community meeting held by the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority that explained this entire project and it was really a very fairly well attended. And at that time the concerns about the schools was really what will happen to the parking out in front of the high school when they're actually digging up that part. And with both Plantation Key School and here, what's going to happen when that part is being dug up. And the discussion was that they have moved that part portion, they have scheduled that specifically for
116sort of May and moving forward so that to so as to disrupt as little as possible. And so there wasn't, there was discussion about what we were going to do, you know, like to try to limit disruption. I think nobody imagine there would be this much disruption not just for the Schools, but for all the businesses and that sort of thing. And that's the feedback we got from the principals. I've been in a long communication with all three principals up here, starting early yesterday afternoon through today, with them providing me input so we could engage as required with the aqueduct authority. This morning, Mr. Velez, the CEO from the aqueduct Authority, called me and we had a conversation about one, our concerns and then his thoughts on what we needed to do moving forward. And
117we briefed our team on that. And then subsequently later in the morning this morning, they called a very short notice meeting that the aqueduct did that included representatives from the district. All three principals, Mr. Barrow, Mr. Thomason and myself, and Deputy Superintendent Svado were representing the district. There was a large contingent from FKAA and there was representation from Florida Department of Transportation and the Sheriff's office. So most of the key stakeholders were involved. It was over an hour long. They allowed us to identify some of the specific areas of concern that we thought were problematic to the cause. Clearly, a project of this scope and this size is going to cause disruption. We understand that and we're willing to partner with the aqueduct to try and minimize them. And that was the intent of the
118meeting. And it was a long meeting and it went round and round a little bit. But we, I thought we made significant progress and they were taking, I think, three or four different points back to DOT to see if they could get some, some relief or some changes made to help mitigate some of the disruption that we witnessed yesterday and today. So I thought we were in good shape at the close of that meeting. In some hour to two hours later, we were told that FDOT shut the project down, which we're not in favor of either. I think I'll talk to the superintendent about how she wants to handle engaging with the board, but we would love to see the project proceed on timeline with the appropriate partnership between us and the aqueduct to minimize
119impacts, because it's got to happen sooner or later. And they've got it set up right now to do the most significant portion of it over the summer. And any further delays on this is going to cause that disruption to happen during the school year, which would be less than ideal. It just reminds me of when the bridge to Stock island and the number of meetings that we had because buses were going to go over that bridge and all of our buses, every single. Well, the Key Largo school buses do not cross that bridge while they're there, but they all come from across the bridge. So it's multiple passage relief on Three on two of the three routes. And that project was discussed during today's meeting too. Thank you. That's all I've got. I have nothing
120further. Thank you. I would like to share just one thing. That Coral Shores High School has a beautiful new marquee outside. Hopefully you all got a chance to see it. That was newly installed and Ms. Leotard mentioned that they are learning how to use it. So you will soon see festive and wonderful messaging on that. So thanks to the team that got that. Moving forward, under pending items on the affordable housing, the RFP is being prepared. As the superintendent reported to me, the Department of Justice grant. There's nothing new on that. If there is, I don't see that there is anything linked. But if it is, the grant is there. But we have. We're waiting further direction. It was one of the grants that possibly could be impacted. And on the Tommy Roberts Memorial stadium
121update we had. Dirk, just give us an update. I've got another one. We've got on Rexweech upgrades. We are closing in on the end of the design development phase, which is good news. We got the final equipment specifications to our architect and engineer team after the last meeting and we've got another design team meeting tomorrow. So we should be very soon wrapping up design development and moving into the construction document documents phase. All right, at this time we will recess. We will recess the meeting and open for the public hearing. So this public hearing is for the first reading of a job description. 65026 Infrastructure Project Manager IT this is a restructuring of an existing job, not a newly created position. Is there anyone here to speak to that job description? My only question is
122the salary remaining the same or being increased? Salary range will remain the same. Thank you. Any other commentary on that first reading of the job description hearing? None. We're going to end the public hearing and reconvene our meeting starting with our action item one. Thank you, Madam Chair. This time I recommend approval of the budget summary reports for December 2024. Move. Second. Motion by Mr. Horan. Second by Dr. Woltanski. Any discussion? Are we going to continue to leave these on for action or are we going to try to move these back to consent? I thought we were moving them back to consent, but it was here. So. Andy moved them there 15, 20 years ago. There is a policy that says if our fund balance is below a certain thing, I don't know if it
123says they have to be on consent or action, but we need to confirm that we're following our policy or we need to change the policy. I'll look right now. They used to be on consent historically. And Andy moved in there a while ago. I don't know how long. So for further board meetings, unless it's in conflict with our policy, let's start moving the budget summary reports to the consent agenda, please. With their vote. I'm sorry. There was a first and a second. Second by Dr. Wiltanski. We had our discussion. Discussion. Any no votes? Hearing none. The motion passes. Number two. I recommend approval of the proposed 2025, 2026 school year calendar and tentative calendar for 2026, 2027. So moved. Second. Motion by Dr. Woltanski. Second by Mrs. Talbot. Any discussion? My only discussion is I
124like that we continue to not have half days that. That we're doing the teacher days as full days and trying to do as many of those days on Fridays and Mondays. So very much appreciated, and thank you. Any other discussion? Any no votes? Hearing none. The motion passes. Thank you. At this time, I recommend the approval of the Monarch County School District advertisement for superintendent of schools as crafted during the workshop. Is that on the screen? We're having difficulty connecting. It's been emailed to everybody. You'll have all three copies. You'll have the qualifications, the advertisement, and the proposed qualities, as was discussed during the workshop. So can we move on this, and if it's not as somebody remembers it, amend it at the next. How can we work that? I mean, I think we're trying
125to speed things up here a little bit. Wait, they got it up on the screen now and it's in your email. Okay, so does everybody want to take a minute and just look it over and make sure it's what we expected? It's not very long. It's three things. Well, no, the agenda. It's not linked to the agenda. It's sent as an email. Yeah, it. I don't think that's right. I think on preferred qualifications, it should not be a capitalized administrative. I'm just. I think we're asking about experience. So it should be a lowercase. Yeah, there's. That's perfect. Right? Like that. Yeah. Thank you. There's a typo in the qualities that I see. Can we. Is that. Can we put that one up there? And personal leadership qualities. It says the fourth and fifth. The fourth
126bullet point is not needed. It says and maintains an apolitical mindset. That's just a leftover. Because the next one says, maintains an apolitical mind set in that he. She respects diverse Cultures, backgrounds and beliefs. And then under business finance and operations, second. Let's see. 1, 2, 2, 3. I think that's bullet four. Understands the complexity of district operations in the district. If we can just fix that language to. Understands the complexity of operations in the district and takeout of district operations in the district. Anybody? That sounds fine. You see what I'm talking. I believe Andrea is correcting as we go. Can you pull up the other documents that were emailed? Anything under five or under is a written word. Same thing. Eight years of increasing responsible. Maria, do you want to go to. The podium
127to do that? Would that be easier? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, Anything five or under is usually written, I think. And anything six or up is a number is the rule. Well, that's true, too. Just make it consistent. Yes. Do we have the district part that I was talking about? We need the qualities and the qualification put up. Right now. We're on qualities. Oh, you guys still fixing qualifications? Okay. Yeah, they fixed that. So that's right. Oh, and the eight has to be the word because it also starts a sentence. Eight years of increasingly responsible. There you go. This is the worst search system ever. Did anybody have any changes before for the business and finance? Oh, we're still on that. Okay. The administrative. There needs to be. Scroll down some. Maria, please. If we're being
128really specific, it's a comma after qualifications in compensation. In the very last. Is everybody comfortable with the qualifications as they stand? I'm good. That document. I'm relying on you all. I can't read that part. So we're going to save that and move on to qualities, please. And I'm fine until we go down to business finance. Still eliminate that and maintains the apolitical mindset. Okay. Yeah, just remove that bullet. No, On all that language. Yeah. There you go. Anything else in professional leadership or personal leadership? Anything in instructional excellent excellence and leadership. We had no changes. So if everybody's comfortable with that. Okay, then on to business finance and operations. If you go to bullet number four. Understands the complexity. Complexity of district operations and taking out in the district. No, not the word operations. Just
129in the district. Yeah. Thank you. So on the board, staff, community relations, the second bullet. I know we worked this over and over, but I think there's an extra. And before business, I think it should say works with legislators, government, nonprofit, business and community partners to improve. Because they're describing all the different kinds of partners, right? Yes. So the ANFA for business comes out. Should it be. Is it. Should opportunity Be plural. Academic growth and opportunity. And. I don't think it matters. I think both work. It can be whichever then. So let's just leave that one. And then it implements. Does builds in the last bullet need an S? No, I think it doesn't need an S. Okay. It's to you work with them to strengthen community and economic development. So in the bullet that
130says implements innovative retention and recruitment strategies to attract and retain, shouldn't it be effective and diverse teachers, staff members, and administrators? Yes, because the way it reads now, it just seems like we're looking for diverse teachers. So effective and diverse. I don't think it needs that comma. Yeah, get that comma out. After effect. Though, the final bullet point there should say builds to be consistent with the other. It says builds community partnership. She just put added the S. I have it on mine. That's funny. Okay, now let's go to the draft. Advertisement. Did you save that, Maria? I think the word hour should just come out, and it should be students with the capital S. It's right before the word stem in the second note. Third paragraph. Maybe third paragraph, Last sentence of the third
131paragraph. And same thing with schools in the paragraph after or before? It's so hard to do this in the second paragraph. So in paragraph two, it would read rich in cultural and environmental resources, period. And then the word hour would come out and it would be yes. And then in the next one, it would be reflecting strong community support, period. Takeout hour again. And put students with a capital S. Yes. Next paragraph. Yeah, you already fixed it. And then we have to fix the qualifications again. So the eight has to be the word eight at the bottom of that. I think you did it, Maria. Go to the bottom. I think you fixed those two Perfect. I don't remember. And shouldn't pre K the k be catalyzed? Well, I love the way you guys made
132us sound, so thank you. Nice job. Well, you didn't make us sound that way. That's the way we are. But you did a good job explaining it. This is the first time that anyone has ever described the keys without using the word unique. So based on what we just reviewed, edited and read, do I have a motion to pass? I recommend. The approval of the Leonard County School District advertisement for superintendent of schools as crafted, edited, and identified on the screen prior to the recommendation. Second. Anybody? Second motion by Mr. Horan. Second by Mrs. Talbot. Any further discussion? Any no votes? Hearing? None. The motion passes. All right. Nice work. And number four, I recommend approval of the out of county travel request for school board employees. Move. Second. Motion by Mr. Horan. Second by
133Dr. Woltansky. The reason I had this item moved is simply for the portion that regards to the superintendent and deputy superintendent both being out of county at the same time. This is during Florida key days, and we will have a school board member there if support is needed. So my feeling was one or the other should travel with the school board member, but not both. One of them should always be here to run the district. So that was why I pulled that. I don't know how everybody feels about that, but that would be the change that I would make to that particular action item. Who's going as a school board member? Ovetsko. Oh, okay. No, I certainly understand the argument to be made about not having both of them there, especially if there's. Because I
134did talk to Superintendent Axford about this, and her quote was that you all make a great team. I understand the great team concept, but the reality is that we have. She does have a team player going with her, and somebody should stay back to make sure that we're functioning here. I understand there's contingencies in place and not setting apart, you know, the team, but there's really no reason for both of you to go if she has support with her. And I'll also mention that I had a discussion with the chambers, Carrie Baker, and she said that she would also be there, and we're going to meet with her prior to that, and they're in support of many of the things that we're asking for, and she and others will be there to support and help
135as well. The only thing I would say is that there's a very high likelihood that we will be making this ask again next year. And Mrs. Axford has been the lead on this, and she will be stepping away. So to have someone who presumably will remain in the district, that. To take the reins on it, I think might be helpful because it's all about relationships. And so it's not like you can say, well, there's. I mean, it's all about relationships. And I don't know, Yvette, how many relationships you have with the people up there yet. But it, you know, to have consistent. The same faces that people know those things make a difference. Well, next year the faces will be different. So I'm comfortable with Amber going and not the superintendent. I just don't think
136both should be out of district at the same time. I understand and respect your opinion and Darren's, but I do tend to understand what Mrs. Axford is suggesting, she has those established relationships. I think it's a crucial year for the district, being that those relationships are established with her and her contacts in Tallahassee. And I understand her point of having someone from the administrative staff. Presumably that person will be here next year in some capacity in the administration level, assuming the new superintendent, you know, wants that. And I think it's important that we have some consistency there. I am very happy to step in, but, you know, I'm in a different position than staff is, and I feel really comfortable that the other executive directors can step in if something arises. It needs to be
137taken care of, but, you know, that's my opinion. Are you a graduate of Leadership Monroe? I'm not. And Mrs. Axford is not a graduate of. Of Leadership Monroe, so. And Acevedo is. And so I think that's another. I don't honestly care who goes. I just want one of you to go and one of you to stay. So I'm happy to pass it in that way to approve the district travel for either the superintendent or the deputy superintendent. And then maybe the two of you can meet with Yvette, not at this meeting, or sue, if she wants involvement, and discuss who might be the best person to represent us on this trip. And I think the superintendent, who was going to try to come onto teams and is not able to log in with the technology
138in our discussions, I think her request for this comes from the knowledge, similar to what you alluded to, the fact that two years ago, we did go, and we both went for just a couple of days, and we were able to divide and conquer. Some we met together and some we didn't. And we were given a couple of million dollars, it seemed, you know, we got something through last year. We were close, we didn't. And she went. And this year, she has really put a lot of emphasis and effort into raising awareness because the money ask is definitely up there. And so I can. I feel confident in saying that the. The reason she made that request is because we're trying to cover so much ground. The more people you can talk to, the more
139people we have up there on our behalf to follow up. What she's already initiated is, again, you're trying to ask for a lot of money. So I believe that that was the request that she. The reason behind her request is feeling that, again, we have made connections, we have gone up there in a team approach, and she would do that. But what. Of course, whatever the board's pleasure is, but I did want to speak on her behalf, because I think she was going to share that information with you had she been able to. Teams in. My reasoning for going is, you know, as a new board member, I'd like to understand the process. I'd like to also forge some relationships. Currently, I don't have any in Tallahassee at the legislature other than our local representatives.
140So I'm sort of new to the process. So I. Although I hope to learn and gain those relationships, I don't know that alone, I am the right person to stand by her side. And, sue, you're choosing not to go this year? I'm unable to go that time. Just a quick formality. Is there a motion on the floor? Is there a motion on the floor? We're on discussion, but did somebody move? There isn't. We move to hear the item, but. Yeah, but we probably need a motion to amend the item if that's what we're doing. Yes. So you can finish this one and then take it up again, or you can withdraw your motion and make another motion. Well, I mean, I understand all sides. I will say that I don't foresee this being something that
141should be a continuum going forward after this. Like, next year. We should not have multiple people from the district going. But I don't want to belay this so. So long. It's just beaten the point to death. But since you said it, expecting high things if you both go. So hopefully I'm going to go ahead and move to approve it. But if you guys are going to divide and conquer, I certainly have high expectations and hopefully there's better. Better outcomes than what happened out of last year. Okay, so any no votes? Hearing none. Oh, you're. We're not amending. Okay. Hearing none. The motion passes, and our meeting is now adjourned. Thank you.