Regular School Board Workshop - 04/10/2025

001Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Well, welcome as I call to order the April workshop of the Scammy County School Board. The purpose of this workshop is an open discussion on items brought forth by the board and the superintendent along with a review of the agenda items for our regular board meeting. Please silence your cell phones and other electronic devices at this time. If you wish to speak at public forum, you must complete a speaker request form located on the table at the rear of the room and bring it forth to Miss Harris at the front table. Our first item of discussion tonight is the Washington High School Marketing Academy. Mr. Superintendent and Board, as as we say every month, thank you for giving this us this opportunity to show off the great things that are

002happening around our school district. Uh I know that we all just came from a luncheon where we saw what happens when uh students in career and technical uh classrooms are able to explore careers that they're interested in. And uh we've got some students here, Miss Wendy Evans and the marketing and entrepreneurship academy from Booker T. Washington High School. They brought along some DECA students and uh they're going to tell you what DECA is. Um, but know this that all of our careermies have these outstanding career and technical student organizations that are co-curricular. They are intertwined into what the student is learning in the classroom and then that helps them intertwine those skills into the real world out there. And uh, these students are going to have a good time telling you all about that. So,

003I'm going to get out of the way and let them come on up here. Thank you so much. Good afternoon. I'm Wendy Evans, a teacher at Booker T. Washington High School with the Marketing and Entrepreneurship Academy. I've been at Washington since 2022, and I've been working to revive a program that has had many years of success. Mrs. Carla uh Ross left a program that had a positive impact on thousands of students, and it's my goal and vision to have the program up and running at that level. I'm really super proud of the students before you today for stepping up and receiving their industry certifications, taking the lead in our DECA organization, and giving back to the school and community with various projects. Now, I'm going to turn this over to them. Good afternoon. I'm Warren

004Kirkman, a senior and the vice president of lead leadership for Booker Washington. Deca marketing principles are the foundation for which the youth can use to achieve a career in marketing, finance, hospitality and b business management. These principles are essential for owning and operating a business and can help teach students the necessities for their life. Students are taught about financial literacy which is not normally taught. As an example of our academy career pathway, our partnership with Members First Credit Union employs our students as tellers, which is a stepping stone into banking. I and several other members of DECA have taken the opportunity and worked at not only the school branch, but in actual bank locations. Hello, my name is Eric Leaden and I'm a senior at Booker T. Washington. I've been a part of the marketing

005academy for three years and I'm also the chapter's vice president for hospitality and I can say that being involved with this academy has several positive impacts on both students and the local community. As a student, I can say personally that this academy gives students hands-on experience in marketing, business management, and entrepreneurship, preparing students for the future careers. It also creates networking opportunities for internships, mentorships, and job placement. The academy also helps develop skills with students such as public speaking, financial literacy, digital marketing, and business planning. It may also lead to scholarships and often aligns with college pathways. It also strengthens community ties. We often collaborate with local organizations, businesses, and nonprofits. An example is when we worked with Maxwell Resbit Center and Re-entry Alliance Pensacola to bring meals and clothes to the homeless. Good afternoon.

006I'm Kira Jones, a senior at Brooker T. Washington High School. I have been in this academy for four years and I serve as a chapter campaign director. This program offers a sequence of courses that provide coherent and rigorous content aligned with challenging academic standards and relevant technical knowledge and skills needed to prepare for further education and career in the marketing sales and service career cluster. 9th graders take the marketing essentials course. Here you'll learn the basics of marketing as well as prepare to obtain your first certification in the academy. 10th graders will take marketing applications. This class is referred to as the prep class as they prepare everything for the academy studentled business, the cat shack. Students will essentially set up everything needed to keep the 11th and 12th grade class flowing smoothly. They will

007also work on obtaining their professional bookkeeping certification. 11th graders will take marketing management and/or business ownership. In these courses, the students run their own business, the Cats Act. The Cats Shack sells food, drinks, and apparel to the students of Booker T. 12th graders will take independent study or OJT. Here, they can either continue running and overall supervising the catch, building their knowledge and experience in the entrepreneurship world, or they can leave the school and go to another job. Both classes build training in the workforce, ensuring student efficiency postgraduation. Personally, moving forward, I will be using my knowledge gain to apply my skills to real world situations. I will also be majoring in business post school. This academy has provided me with the basics needed to succeed. I will seek internships and even entry-level positions in

008marketing for more experience. This academy has allowed me to build a strong foundation in my career. Hello, my name is Tylen Chambers. I am a junior at Booker T. Washington and I've been an active member in DECA for three years. As a part of our academy, we pursue two primary certifications. The first one we take is entrepreneurship and small business. After that certification, we pursue professional bookkeeping. Earning these two certifications demonstrate a strong mastery of essential business skills and can provide several benefits for students and professionals both in careers, career advancement, and business success. These certifications show employers and colleges that you have practical business knowledge and financial skills. Many businesses prefer candidates with bookkeeping, entrepreneurship knowledge, making you more competitive in the job market. It also helps qualify you for roles like small business

009manager, financial assistant, bookkeeper, or marketing specialist specialist. Their professional bookkeeping certification ensures you that you can track cash flow, manage expenses, and understand financial reports crucial for running a successful business. You gain real world skills by learning how to manage finances, balance books, and use accounting softwares like QuickBooks, which lead to having more confidence in starting a business. This confidence can reduce risk of business failure by equipping you with essential entrepreneurial and financial skills. Passing and learning these certifications has led me to start and develop my own business called Bright Futures Car Detailing. Hello, my name is Cooper Linaman and I'm a student at Booker T. Washington. I am here as a part of the marketing and entrepreneurship academy. Like Thailand, I also have my own business called Coups Auto Detailing. We specialize in detailing

010all types of automotive vehicles and we even come to you. Although I started in middle school, I've used some of the marketing strategies that we imply here at the Cat Shack. I've learned to be simplistic when posting ads to various social media platforms. This academy offers many enhancements to post-secary opportunities. College admissions and demonstrated commitment. Active participation showcases a dedication to business disciplines, making you a more attractive candidate to colleges and universities. College credits. Our academy offers courses that align with college curriculum, potentially allowing you to earn college credits while still in high school. Networking with industry professionals. Exposure to professionals through academy events can lead to an internship opportunities and industry insights.Mmies often facilitate internships providing practical experience and professional connections. Hello, my name is Jude Per, current VP assisting and representing District 1.

011I've been active with Endea for nearly four years now and loved every minute of it. As you can see, many of our members here that are presented today are very active both inside and outside of the academy, even some starting up their own businesses. Our activity activities in our marketing and entrepreneurship academy are interactive, hands-on, and relevant to world business scenarios. Here's some of the most engaging ways that we involve students. We have our Shark Tank style competitions where students create and pitch business ideas for a simulated business of their choice as well as they will construct the business plan, financing and legal steps and then present all this to a panel of judges which includes students, classroom, teachers and other business leaders. We also have a simulated stock market challenge using the stock market

012game to teach investment strategies and financial literacy in a safe and non-risk environment. Students will start with $100,000 and from there invest into anything they please and compete to make the most money in a volatile system. We also have case studies and guest speakers where they analyze real world business successes and failures with insights from local entrepreneurs. This enables students to get a personalized help from people who have become successful in their own fields. We also have a school-based enterprise which was like said before our cat shack where students can run the school store and apply real business concepts in a real setting. This also enables students to train and learn about a small business from all aspects and levels from being a dishwasher up to a manager and an accountant. We also have a

013wildcat credit union. Having a credit union on site enables students not only in the marketing and deck academy but also the ones who are not. It teaches them in financial literacy as well as a create and run a bank account with the location working as a true branch. We also have our DECA participation uh competing in business and marketing events, leadership training and networking opportunities. Here, students are able to apply their learned skills in both state competitions at CDC and in our international competitions at ICDC. There students are able to compete to gain awards, scholarships, and recognition for their hard work. We also do field trips to local businesses such as visiting marketing agencies, startups, or corporate offices to see real world applications. We also will be attending trade shows and entrepreneurship expos, attending business

014expos or setting up booths to promote studentr run businesses. And this year, we will be invited to Pensacola's Intercon Conference. We also do community service projects such as organizing fundraisers, marketing campaigns or events for nonprofits. This is all done through our fall and spring helping hands and individual donations at our chapter. And even at our chapter, we were specifically were able to be out Cypress Bay down in Miami who had nearly 2,000 members in their academy alone. Um, we also will be doing another way that the marketing academy and DECA prepares for future is via its leadership programs and opportunities. And for a personal example of my own, I'm currently working towards joining the military via the Navy ROC and which will show a heavy emphasis on leadership which I have learned and exercised through

015the academy and through DECA. And these leadership skills as well has even enabled me to run for being the state representative in Florida which we haven't had in nearly 14 years. As you can see, the marketing academy is influential in teaching students finan personal financial literacy, leadership skills, and marketing. Is there any questions that y'all have for us on your your stock market investments? Are you using some paper trades on the Yeah, brokers is they let you go do paper trades. Have y'all done any of that or Yeah. Y'all have done that? Okay. So, yes. So, we have the stock market game which is directly tied to the actual stock market where students able to pretty much practice their stock market investments without having the same risk of investing. same risk as I get into.

016Yes. Yes. Especially you get into calls and puts and all those good things. Yes. Uh another example, amazing academy we have here in Skini County and uh you guys, you know, congratulations. I mean, you're you're looking ahead and it's going to pay off for y'all in the long run. Thank you. Anything else? I also want to congratulate you on on doing it and sticking with it. I'm I'm glad to see that the DECA is going to continue and I like the uh goal of keeping things going back to the Carla Ross standard and things. The Cat Shack has always been there and has always been very worthwhile. Uh appreciate that. I will ask the gentleman who has the car detailing is have you ever thought about a charitable thing like uh Mr. Shackle's ride looks

017really bad? I every time I drive by there, I think, "Oh, poor Mr. Shackle." So, you might want to hit him up first. Yeah. So, I've done a couple like small fundraisers for my mom's. Uh she works with Reading Pals, so I do some stuff with them. Um I haven't gotten to the point where I'm crazy big, so I can't do anything. That's Well, at least take the message back that somebody's looking out for Mr. Shackle, telling telling he needs help. But, uh I I do like the the attitude. I like what you all were doing. Uh I congratulate you. I it the things that you're learning and going and doing now will definitely be with you for the rest of your life and and it's a good start and I'm glad that you found

018your way with it thus far and I thank the teacher for stepping up and doing also. Thank you. I would also like to echo my board members doing a wonderful job. Thank you to the teacher. Forgot the name, I'm sorry. Wendy. Wendy Evans. Okay. Thank you so much. The financial literacy, the marketing skills that these children should say children, young adults, right? Uh are learning very very impressive. Um about the gentleman that has the car detailing. I'm going have to get your number, okay? Because my car needs washing. A lot of pollen. I want to congratulate uh each and every one of you. As I was listening to you talk, one of the things that uh uh I found very interesting is the length of time each of you have been in the program, which

019is outstanding. You know, you're learning a skill set now that will be valuable to you the rest of your life. So, uh and I also noticed uh uh Miss Evans that there was that each one of them mentioned the handon activities that they're doing. That's such an integral part of of the learning process. So, congratulations for all you do. Congratulations to each one of you. And also, thank you very much for what you're doing for public education. I always say that we we don't toot our horn enough in public education and this is another example why we're the best reason we can educate the youth of Escambia County and you're a great example of that. Mr. Superintendent, do you have anything? Yep. Very proud of you students. Um, and just as proud of you, Miss

020Evans. Thank you for everything you do and how you present yourself. Thank you very much. Hey, let's get him a round of applause, please. Thank you very much. Before we move on to our calendar, I have to get this out of the way. I just want to congratulate all the University of Florida fans on their their national championship. Uh, and that's all I'm going to say about it, Miss Payne. I'm not going to say anything. No way. Next on our next on our agenda is a calendar. Everyone, please uh board members, please look at the calendar for months of April and May, letting me know if there let us each of us know if there's any changes, any additions um to April and May. And we have the uh construction career datas in Santa Rosa

021County on the 22nd and [Music] 23rd. Anything any additions for April? Okay, let's look turn over and look at May, Mr. Chair. Yes, sir. Um, there's a lot going on in May. We talked about it as a staff yesterday. Miss Payne is uh working on putting together a one sheeter. Maybe it may get to two sheets and provide it to Miss Buswell. So that way you may not be able to make it to everything that's going on, but everything that we're informed about, but you you'll have an idea on one of those two pages, okay, about where it's at. I can tell you there's so much going on that we can't get to everything. So yes, sir. I appreciate it. Can't believe we already talking about graduation. any additions or any any anything jumping out

022of May? Yes, ma'am. Yes. Yeah. and we need to discuss June workshop because I believe a couple of us will be in Tampa at the U summer conference and then we're scheduled to have our on the 12th the discussion workshop and we move it to the 16th which will be be is that going to give staff enough time to we will we will do the best we can. What I would ask is if you end up with something that you see on the agenda on the 16th uh that you give us grace to work with Miss Odum to make certain we get it on the agenda uh without a lot of ample notice because it it'll just be the one day. This is always it's been my experience that when we found ourselves in the

023summer months not being able to meet on Thursday, this is when we have moved it to Monday and we've been able to make it work. Okay. Question, sir. If we move the workshop to early on Monday, like a nine o'clock, so at least you have a half day to get things, would it be better for staff in that regard? 7:30, 8 o'clock, seven. Yeah. You got four or nine o'clock would be good. Would would that work? I'm just asking. Would that work better for Oh, no. Wait a minute. I'm being told who's using it. Oh, okay. We can't have it in this room at 9:00 in the morning. We're at an Esau event. Um, what do you know what time it is? Do we know what time the Esau event would have any time then

024to um is there another room that would suffice Miss Odum to have a workshop meeting And I would say that the facilities people would know better than I, but it would it would need to be something. I mean, I know we have a we have some small auditoriums in a couple of places. Um, we have a big auditorium. You could absolutely do it at a school auditorium. We just need to make sure that we advertise it. Would Spencer bids room one like I think it's room 120. Would that work? Is that the former cafeteria? Yes, ma'am. Y'all be comfortable with that for the workshop. Spencer B. Yeah. The teacher training center now. Do they have do they have the same do we know? Do they have streaming information? Uh uh do they have We customarily

025stream all of our workshops. Do they have resources there? I was in a conference uh BSI and they were I don't know if they were streaming but I was able to see it was Mr. Ingram informs me that they can and would be able to stream from there. They just simply wouldn't have all the the voting and tally information but they can certainly set up the stream from there which we wouldn't need voting and tally for a workshop. So, okay, he's going to Miss Payne is checking to see when the end time is on the Esau meeting. Uh, and if that's where we if we can have it here, we will. If we can't, we'll have it at Spencer Bibs. Everybody comfortable with that? So, it' be that Monday at 9:00. Okay. Sounds good. The

02616th. [Music] Any more discussion on the calendar? Okay. Next, Mr. Superintendent, public forum update. No, sir. I don't have anything at this time. Okay. That brings us to Mrs. Burgos. Discipline status. Good morning or good afternoon. Crazy morning. Um, while I was out campaigning, the number one concern from a lot of parents, community members, and teachers was discipline. And I know that we are looking at different initiatives. The superintendent staff is looking at different initiatives, thinking outside the box to find out what are some strategies we can do to increase student engagement, increase student achievement. But also we need to look at initiatives for discipline. Uh I feel that we are losing a lot of families due to maybe uh middle school options and even high school but also discipline issues discipline concerns the students

027at some place they don't feel safe or they don't feel heard. So, we want to make sure that some initiatives are put in place to help our um families have a choice of discipline and ensure that I know that I spoke with Mr. Tommpkins and he's going to come up a little bit and share the current status of what's going on. Um I wasn't able to look through navigation 360. I know you sent me that link and I wasn't I apologize, but I know just for a brief discussion, there's a lot of information that can be utilized to help those students. So, I'm going to go ahead and give the floor to you and then I'll interject. I'm always uh happy to talk about the state of discipline in the school district because we have

028overcome a lot in the years that I've been in the district and where we're at now and especially postcoid. Um we are uh working hard in the schools every day to make sure that our schools are safe. Uh the superintendent has a clear message uh to the schools and to the community that he wants safe schools and that's the that's what we uh follow totally and completely. Um we have a strong robust um matrix as far as discipline is concerned that spells out what each and every offense is uh so that parents have a clearer and better understanding uh as far as that but we don't just focus on that we have other initiatives that we look at um that we follow through on I think the number one issue um that Miss Bgosh uh

029spoke about was bullying and what is bullying in that. So I have asked actually Mike Samala uh who is in um the department of alternative education to come up and speak to you about some of the initiatives of what bullying that we do as far as bullying, the school violence prevention uh programs that we have and and the system that we use to monitor the Jeffrey Johnson act and and make because uh I think that's important for you to understand. It's important for the community to understand and also what the true definition of bullying is. A lot of times our parents believe it is a one-time incident where something happens to a student, but the state definition of bullying is something that is systemic and repetitive in nature. And so t so sometimes just educating

030the public uh is what we need to do. But we take all incidents serious. So I'm going to let uh Dr. Smiler come up and talk a little bit about bullying. Good afternoon. Um, I'm not sure where you would like to start. What What would be some of your first questions you would have? Um, if you could please let the community know about the ways that the families can report bullying or report any concerns they have. Yes, ma'am. So, the alternative education office, we u manage the school violence reporting system through the district. Uh there's a couple different ways you can get to that system to file a report. Um it's housed on the um the front page of the um Mimi County website. You scroll to the bottom of the page, there's a red

031tile that says report school violence. So um parents can go in there, uh students can go in there, they can file an anonymous report or they can go in and put as much information in as they would like. Once that um report comes u through um the system and they submit it, it gets routed to the um principal at that school, the principal then will um assign an investigator to um invest uh conduct an investigation on the actual um report that's come across and the school has 10 days to conduct their investigation and close out the report. Um, I know there are alternatives for discipline issues for children with either uh serious offenses at middle and high school. What about the elementary? Um there is a you know for students that do um mis act

032out or misbehave at the elementary school to such a severe level that um it's impeding the instruction of the classroom and um the principles feel like it is necessary for them to be have a change of placement hearing for them. Um then that also comes through my department just like um middle and high school would. Um and then it's but Miss Coots is actually uh the one that um once we have the meeting it's referred back to her for final approval as far as that. So um there is a students are removed uh from the elementary school environment. It's not something that we take lightly uh at the elementary school. We really try as many interventions as possible before we reach uh that point. We use the RTI system. uh we use the Navigate 360

033curriculum. We we use all we can do and all the tools at our uh disposal to to to try to get past that point, but it's just sometimes necessary. It's at a much lower rate than the middle and high school. I just want to make that very clear. Um, and because we understand they're littles and you have to take care of them, you got to work through them and we're trying to change the behavior especially at that age um to make sure that we can get them where they're uh in a better path at the middle and high school level achieve academy called CAPS. Okay. That wasn't here the first time you were here but it's here now. Mr. Tomkins is correct. You know, that's not something we look to do on the first offense

034unless the severity of the offense would dictate that's where that's Keep going, Jeremy. No, I'm sorry. I I didn't tell you about caps. I appreciate that. So, um, you know, we have we've always been a district there are a lot of districts that just expel students and we've added that to what we can do, but we use that as a last resort. There are a lot of districts that that's all they have. They don't have the alternative schools that we have such as success academy and achieve academy and they do a wonderful job but we've always taken education as a priority and we provide them those opportunities. Expulsion is for those that are failed to take um advantage of those opportunities and we use that sparingly but we use it as necessary because first and

035foremost instruction in the classroom has to uh take place and so we do what is necessary. I can promise you my office stays busy. We work within the framework as far as what we have to help schools uh when they ask for it. we provide um um information to them as far as what's available and if we can come out and help and assist we do that and it's the same way uh with alternative education. So, um, those are the things that we have. Um, I would say I want to go to navigate 360. I want to talk about it's called compass now, right? Um, and I can provide the same link to y'all if you want to look at it. It's the curriculum that we've been use using for years uh here and actually

036we helped to create it years ago. It's actually purchased through student services. Um, and it is has a portion of it that is intervention based, a portion of it that we use for our mental health training. It's all in inclusive as far as that. And it can be used K through 12. You're not redoing the lessons. It's individual lessons. If a kid gets a certain lesson on something in first grade, it's going to be different from what they get in second, third, and fourth grade if they had to do that. It's we have lessons for bullying going back to what you're talking about. So part of the Jeffrey Johnson act is that we have to be able to provide counseling and intervention to both the perpetrator and the victim in that situation. That is a

037tool that we use. So once again we're proactive in that. But once again our primary focus is creating a safe school and al also in that curriculum parents can be involved in that. So we encourage our parents to do those activities with their children. Right? There's a parent portion in which they can go in there and they can do the similar lessons with their children because we want, especially at the elementary level, not that we don't at the middle and high, if we're trying to correct behavior, we need the parents to be on board with us and working with that. Do you have a question? I I did. Um, Mr. Chair. Yes, sir. Go ahead. Um, you know, I've been on this thing for a long time. And uh, and what I always remind everybody,

038especially in the world of competition, we're in competition with the with the checks that are given out for the parents to go to any place they want to go to. We cannot allow children who have those 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 referrals that take you all night to go through their job and you can see it. Balance in the bus, balance classroom. um we cannot allow them class. We had an elementary school one time and he might remember a situation. We had three students. One shut down a first grade class. The other two shut down two kindergarten classes. Had to get Malcolm Thomas involved in that one. And uh so it can cause disturbance. And what will happen is if there's if we can't have good order and and uh and a good

039sit environment for these students, parents will pull them. They're gone. That's where we get in a situation where our school's almost empty. We didn't get control of it the right way. But now I will say, Caresa, I've been on this board for a while. Um, Keith's gone a long way in making this better this year because I had to be a fight club videos. I had all that kind of different stuff during the predecessor and uh it's been much better and I read it by phone calls that I that I get and uh that's been way down. So Keith's been doing good. He's also said that we're doing true expulsions now. Yes. Okay. Because what I told the superintendent is Tallahassee ain't giving no extra credit for holding a student that we cannot control. They're

040not giving us extra credit saying, "Hey, good job." You know, uh they're they're looking at our school scores and what and other other performance ratings we have. But so it is very important. But I appreciate how much y'all been working on it. uh we're not going to cure. There'll always be a bullying and that kind of stuff. You just try to limit as best you can. And sometimes and we had this situation. I had a parent go on social media say how her child was bullying got bullied and everything else. And then when you look at the film on the bus, it was her child that actually was bullying all the other kids. So that that bully being a bully type thing it's it's a hard thing to um control because back in the old

041days a lot of kids kind of worked it out on their own and and we have but you don't have that today you know so uh but anyway we we need to keep keep on um I think we're doing a better job of having a good environment in in the uh schools and we we got to allow the teachers to teach and the students to learn and u I'm not talking about the Wednesdays or Tuesdays you know that. So, um, but yeah, I appreciate every every bit y'all trying to do and to maintain in a competition environment like we're in. Just a bit of positive news and I know that all of y'all might want to ask a question. I I want to say this because this is positive. Um, the number, you know, you

042mentioned when we would have more than 50 and and that that's a rarity. Um, these days we have really focused on that. those high numbers are less than 1% of anything within our district. And so we have worked hard to push through that because if you have that many referrals, there's another path that you need to be going. But there are some situations. But beyond that, um, our biggest issues that we deal with on a day-to-day basis are tardies, uh, vaping. Um, those are the same issues that if you look out in the public, that's what you have. There was a time when our biggest issues were fighting and those major issues. It's not that way now. I'm not saying it doesn't occur. I'm just saying it's down the line. So, we are making progress

043as far as a district and it's because of the team approach that we have at the school and within and within um all the department. So, um things are moving in the right direction and it is because of leadership. Yeah. Mr. I just wanted to ask a couple questions here and make a couple comments. The first comment is uh I've been visiting all the schools. I'm through two districts now, five and one. And one of the questions I always ask principles is, uh, how is your school climate in particularly in the area of discipline and what I'm hearing overwhelmingly out there is that there has been a steady steady improvement over the last three years. And you're confirming that by things you're saying. Also, the severity of the referrals. Am I am I sensing that

044that correctly, Mr. Thompson? Yeah, you you are. Uh that's what I was alluding to. Our major referrals that we have and like I said, they're never all going to be gone, but the frequency and is going down for those. And now we're dealing with, like I said, tardies, vaping. Not that they're not serious, but that's a lot better than what we were dealing with. Maybe cell phones included in that, electronic devices, but even they are going down. So I know Mr. Leonard and I talk about data, Miss Payne and I do. And so it's uh we're always looking at that and seeing where our problem areas are and u and trying to work on that. Something that Miss Burggos was very concerned with and I am too and that's bullying. Are you seeing a decrease

045in the number of referrals and so forth for bully bullying? True bullying. The answer is yes. There have been some incidents that we've had to deal with at a higher level, but we deal with it. Uh, yes. Yes, sir. Give you one example that frustrates and I I will be individual here. I'll say it frustrates me because I don't know how everybody else feels about it. Um, in order to get you can call it a hope scholarship or basically to get end up getting what you want like choice, all you have to do is claim bullying. That's correct. You claim bullying, you receive that there's many times many the the majority of times I can use that word when bullying is claimed and we review it, investigate it, whatever word you want to use for

046it, it is found not to be bullying, but we are required to still offer the hope scholarship. So every Friday, this is a great month to have this conversation because we're going to recognize our positive behavior schools here on Tuesday night. But every Friday, we send out information. Um, call them key performance indicators. You can call them goals, strategies. What we knew, two items we knew we knew we needed to improve in were attendance and behavior. Um our attendance is ranging anywhere from 91 to 92 90 93% each week. Our behavior we measure that through a positive number. Uh yesterday it was 98.27% of our students did not have a referral yesterday and we look at that every day. Now, where I This is again where I know we need to continue to improve. When

047you look at it and Tom them run these numbers for us, we put it on our website. We're not hiding it. It's out there. When you look at year-to- date, it's a much lower number than that. And it's because we've got repeat offenders. Obviously, our consequences aren't working the way they need to. Well, that's on me. We need to improve in that area, and we will continue to do so. But I believe that is much better than it has been, but it's not where it needs to be. So, we're in total agreement about what we need to do. Our schools, deans, um the teachers and their classroom management is only getting better and the hard work that they do day in and day out is showing dividends because guess what correlates to attendance and behavior?

048Achievement. So, I was fired up yesterday about another thing. Y'all got me fired up today. I mean, we're getting where we need to be, and that's what we're going to do. And absolutely, Mr. Chair, that's a good fire. Yes, sir. And I will say I I talked to two principles in the last week or so, and both of them said that uh superintendent and your staff has given them all the support to handle anybody that's doing disruption. So, um it has improved a lot. Um, I I said this to the superintendent the other day and I I'll share it with you. I have gotten less phone calls now with him than I did even with the first superintendent I served with. So, uh, another thing, watch out on the number of referrals that are reported

049or the stats on discipline because just because it's going down don't necessarily mean it's getting better. A school district got a high number of disary actions sometimes got more control of the situation than somebody don't have very little reporting. Uh matter of fact there was a large school well one of the largest school district in the state of Florida that had nothing reported and the department of education had to lower the boom on them. They they had come up with a way to where they didn't have to put in uh certain of these sear type uh records you know. So, you're going you're going to find out more what he did talking to uh principles and those out there that are actually in the field. But, uh much better than it was um since Keith

050took charge. Fresco, I just wanted to while the opportunity and the superintendent mentioned the upcoming PBIS achievement awards. I think that if there are parents who are asking questions about what's going on with behaviors in schools that they need to know that there are programs that are active and operating and doing very well. Every year our positive behavior uh improvement scores and and that program uh gets higher and higher standards. We have more schools that get recognized by the state uh for that program and how well it's doing. But we also have other programs. We have the leader in me at the high school at Pine Forest. Uh off the top of my head um program they're using about um the students working together and stuff. It it's kind of like the leader in me

051and that name will come to me once we end the meeting. But anyhow, but there are programs in place. The other thing that I have found and and have seen is that uh parents sometimes react to what they see on social media. And I'm going to go back to an incident that was at a high school and it was reported in the community or by those on social media that there were these 10 different fights. It was one fight video by 10 different people submitted on different days. And so it looked like there was a major problem at one school. It was one incident. And so the community needs to know that too. I'm not saying that to, you know, to cover anything. I'm just trying. Many times the students exacerbate a situation by doing

052things on social media, making it look like it's a repetitive thing when it was one incident. And and so when we talk to parents or talk to people in the public, we let them need to let them know these programs are in place that deal with behavior, have students accepting responsibility for their behavior. And we've seen the increase. And you know, I last week I went to the leader in me demonstration at uh at um Sherwood and and it was awesome. the students taking, you know, taking um responsibility for their behavior and for their classmates so that when they see another student doing something positive or negative, they're the ones who are saying, "Hey, good job," or, "Oh, that's not the way we behave here." So, we have a lot of good things going on.

053A lot of people just aren't aware of it. And I'd like to say this, Mr. Tomkins and I go go way back and he's always done an outstanding job. I think one of the things that we fight is a belief and myth of public education. That's why I say we need to put our best foot forward and toot our own horn. Uh we do a good job of discipline and keeping our kids safe in the scam county school system. And uh every board member needs to say that when we get a call and we're going to react. I know Mr. Thompson and how his office reacts to anything anytime a principal calls. Uh they're on top of it and also um the services of keeping our schools safe. I think we do as good a

054job as anybody in the state of Florida. And from my mouth, I'm always going to say it's the safest place to be because I believe in Escami County school system and the job we're doing. And I tell that to every parent. my kids went to to public education and if I send my kids there uh then I think it's good enough for anybody else's child as well. So we need to say the positive things and we need to uphold that it is safe to to go to school in PC at in the Scamia County school system. So uh if that parent wants to talk to me I'd be glad to talk to them. Yes. Yes. I do agree. Um, but I do think that we need to toot our own horn. Um, in my previous

055position as school liaison for NAS, I dealt with a lot of parents moving into Pensacola. Of course, the first thing they do is research on the internet and you and I know that sometimes that's not the accurate picture. So, we want to make sure to toot our own horn and because there are some great resources, great programs and um can we tweak it? Sure. We can always change. That's that's part of growing. Uh but uh I want to commend superintendent the staff for the hard work and dedication you're doing. William. Yes, sir. So we the Esau training that was going to be on June the was the 16th day we were looking they're going to do they're going to do it at Spencer Bibs so we can have our we can have our board workshop

056here at 9:00 on that date. Okay. I didn't bump on Mr. Wilson did my loato. Thank thank you for the update. Anything else from the on that item? Okay let's move on. I think I have the next item update on day in legislature and that was an interesting time for me being in Tallahassee. Um I tell people I felt like a hot dog in a steak factory. Um March 19th through the 20th I was down there with a lot of big wigs and and it was interesting. Um had a chance to meet with Senator Don Gates and also uh Representative Michelle Salsman. Both of them were very very nice. gave me gave me that time. I felt kind of special cuz uh y'all if you know Michelle she she's animated and when she saw me

057she just uh lit up and then uh everybody was trying to say Senator Gates and I guess it helps being 65 and uh he he was able to give me about 15 minutes with him but did present to him both of my legislative priorities of continued success for Scammy County School System. spoke to him about increased funding, hiring experience, uh, educators, mental health, school safety, and and voluntary prek along with the, uh, Florida school board association platform, which uh, also entailed, uh, hurricane relief communities. we wouldn't hit as much but that was one of the items that was a platform for the Florida School Board Association along with administrative efficiency which is new buzzword for deregulation where all um districts to establish school start times based on input from parents families and students attending those

058districts. I'm glad we had that input as well. Another one of the platforms was attendance and accountability empowering districts to address the chronic absenteeism uh in their counties school safety and law enforcement support want to continue to make sure that public schools are safe and then also another initiative for that for the platform of FSBA was the educational funding and fiscal responsibility where we wanted to increase the student allocation by 5% increase mental health allocation increase school safety support workforce US um development uh provide full-time prek and then then also to recalculate the capital outlay for FTE. So, those are the initiatives that we've been uh that we addressed when we were in Tallahassee. And there are some things that are coming down the pike such as um state bill 166 administrative efficiency in public

059school that's put it put by Senator Simon which um changes the graduation requirements of the ELA assessment and algebra 1 EOCC's to account for 30% of the total grade. So, those are some other things that were um put forth. It was very interesting. had a chance to really really uh hopefully make an impact for Scamia County School District and building those relationships with our legislators. Uh and hopefully next year somebody else can go other than me. But no, I enjoy it. I really No. So that was I'm trying I'm trying. So uh next was my item as well to give you update on the car Macintosh initiative. Something that we're trying to instill. We're piloting in three schools. Uh the car Macintosh initiative is something we voted on last year and which address and it's

060in honor of Cara Macintosh administrator that suddenly passed away. U and we want to honor her by some of the things in each one of these schools in district three and hopefully expands to other schools in the near future. Absenteeism, conflict resolution, parental involvement, career education, and mentoring. as of speaking right now. We've I've met and also superintendent I think has spoken to him as well. Global learning is working on absenteeism. CA wise is working on the parental involvement and CA wise and Mont Clay Elementary is working on mentoring and we're helping them with those aspects. And you have anything to add Mr. That's a great report. The one thing that we haven't done Mr. Mr. Williams and I plan to do it is it we hope maybe next week is uh we have some

061signs that say this site is the home of Carol Macintosh Education Initiative. We look to do that as soon as possible but so far everybody's been so busy we haven't been able to make that happen. Um very excited. A lot of the things that y'all just talked about when you talked about behavior, when we're talking about attendance, it's really it's not just happening at those three sites. That just happens to be where we're focusing. Those schools are in district three. I'm excited to tell you it's happening at all sites. Um so very very very excited about what we have going on. Thank you, Mr. Williams. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. And you rolled them two items very close together. But Keith, do did with your association FADS, I know he gave a report on FSBA. Do

062you got some information on what FADS is worried about uh this session? I do. Um it appears as though the school start time will be that bill will be modified to where it's a local decision as to when your schools will start. But what you have to do, what you get the opportunity to do is you have to submit your plan that shows why you start at the time you start. And um we had a meeting on Monday um with our superintendents in the Northwest region. Um we are already in compliance, so we're okay. Um we do four bus tiers. Uh many school districts only do two andor three. They'll have a little more difficult time. Uh there was one school district that does five. I can't imagine how how they afford to do that,

063but they they do. Uh the other thing was uh what' you call it, Mr. Williams? What's the new tango term for it? Administrative efficiency. The deregulation bill is making its way through there. the 30% of the grade for those EOCC's is a is a good route to go. They feel very confident that that will pass. Um the the bills that we're worried about, there's one local bill as it relates to what happens with uh vacant property andor if you have declining enrollment. Uh many 37 school districts uh in the state of Florida out of 67 have declining enrollment. So there are many school districts worried about that. what happens to vacant buildings? Uh because if you do what you're supposed to do, you got declining enrollment. You start limiting the number of schools that you

064have. But what are you allowed to do with the schools you vacate? That is one that the superintendent association two things they want to know. And Mr. Saints Seir ask it every time we talk. What is the definition of declining FTE? Which definition are you going to use? Are you going to use unweighted or weighted? Um, and then there was one other one. I didn't if I'd have known you were going to ask me, I would have made sure I read through everything. Um, but the the biggest thing now wasn't what we had requested as our legislative plat platform. The biggest thing now that superintendents across the state are really concerned about is the budget and the cut to some um add-on FTE values. Some districts have a different idea, but they may be in

065a different situation than we are. They may not just have a half cent sales tax. They may also have a local referendum where there's a one meal. So, they're able to do some things from a financial standpoint that our school district is not. And most of the school districts are in the same boat we are. So, budget was where the majority of their focus is after legislation now. So, thank you for that opportunity. Anything else? Okay. Um, next we have facilities finance and budget update. Mr. Superintendent. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Superintendent. And what I wanted to do is give you um a few a few topics today. Kind of an overview of the FTE uh the Senate FEFP and the House FEFP comparison. Then we'll look at advalorum forecast and then uh debt service requirements

066which will lead us into a facilities conversation. So with those in mind, I'm going to go ahead and get started with the FTE and we'll take a look at where we're at, what we project for the new year and what's the difference in that. So traditional schools on the third FEP calculation for current year, that's 2025. We're currently in the uh third calculation. traditional schools which include Achieve Academy and Acceleration. Even though those are contracted schools, we've got I've got them in this traditional school list. And then I've split out the virtual just for illustration and the uh juvenile justice. In another slide, I'm going to combine virtual and juvenile justice up into the traditional, but that'll be the next slide. Okay. So, take a look at the U section where it says traditional schools,

067virtual schools, D ju juvenile justice centers, DJJ centers. The subtotal there for all of those is 34,377. That's current. That's the current student count. projected into the new year that count goes to 33762 as a total for a negative 614.52 unweighted FTE. So that's a massive decline uh from current year to next year. And then you've got charter schools and family empowerment scholarships just to show you where they're at. charter schools currently at about 1569 and then for the new year they're adding about 101 I think most of that is PJ P uh PSC adding another grade level I believe uh family empowerment scholarships is a is a huge increase from the current year 547 is where we're at for the current year family empowerment scholarships are then projected by DOE this is not us

068by DOE to go to 6234. So that's an almost a,200 increase in family empowerment scholarships. Certainly much of that correlates with our 614 decline, but overall if you look it looks like we're increasing. So we've got that's what Mr. Leonard was talking about. It looks like we're increasing in the per in the student count by 674. But from a traditional schools funding for what benefits this district, the revenue staying within the district, we're in a massive decline in FTE. Okay, any questions on that slide. All right, this slide is uh a historical view. I wanted to go and take the traditional schools. This is all schools except charter and and the scholarships. This is all of our schools except the charter schools and the scholarships. So look at the first column. This is the shutdown

069year 2020. We finished that year, the shutdown year at traditional schools of uh 37989 [Music] uh 82. Look at the decline in the next year. That's that sec that's that in the parentheses 1592.9. That is the drop from the shutdown year to 2021. We lost 1,600 unweighted that never came back. The next year we had another decline of 213. 2022 traditional schools. The next year negative. The next year, 121. And that's when we handed off Warrington Middle School 2025. In the current year, we're down 445 over the prior year. And next year is projected at that 614. So that's 4,200 students. That's 2,000 out of our regular schools. The charter schools have increased uh about 808. And that's uh an increase mainly led by the uh Warrington Middle School, Warrington Prep Scholarships. If you look

070at the scholarships, they have increased from 5,443 all the way to the far right. So they've gone from 791. That's um I've got a note there. McKay and FES were separated during 2021-22 through the 202122 year. I don't have them separated but combined and then McKay folded into the fees. So they have you have the McKay portion and you have the regular student portion after 2022. But anyway, all of the total scholarship total scholarships 6,200 5,443 increase since 2020. Any questions on that? Look at the bottom. If you look at the bottom all the way to the bottom, the totals that looks like a 20h 24 increase over that same time period. That's all scholarships. Um Terry on these especially when you get to projected in the 2024 2025 which was a big jump is

071is it still my understanding we don't know how many of those students actually attended our schools or you have a better DOE is working on that. Okay. So very much so because I see this big jump and that's and it's making me wonder. There have been times when we were claiming a student with a student ID number for FTE and they had already received a scholarship, right? That's happening. That's the best example I can give you of chaos. The rest of these numbers make sense. It's just when I come down look at that. That's that data don't look right down when it go to 5,000 something unless they're counting everybody that's gotten a scholarship from that's a projection the current the 5,047 is current year next year the 62 is projected by DOE but I

072think what we don't know is is that out of that how many of them actually attended our schools that's it is not clear yet is there hope to be able to make that clear in the future I I got you on the top numbers. I mean, that's Yeah, we've we've had a drop. Okay, now I'm going to give you an illustration. Make it real. Okay, here's our traditional school, 4,200 unweighted drop. If you take the ratio of the schools population that would spread out to elementary at 2,00 middle at 880 838 and high school about 1300. The average school in those grade categories, elementary 521, middle 837, high school 1417. That last row is the equivalent of an entire school that would be staffed, operated just like normal with zero students. So we have the

073equivalent of four elementaryaries, one middle and high school since 2020 operating without any students, fully staffed, fully operational. That's this that's where we're at and it's it's very serious. We're seeing the effects of it. We're seeing how um really the revenue cannot keep up with what's being spent out there. Especially when you lose in that last slide 400 and something from prior year to current year 400 something unweighted. That's a massive drop in the revenue. Okay, the next slide is what the House and the Senate are proposing. House and Senate are proposing those first two columns and then I've got the third FFP calculation in the far right. So currently the base student allocation which simply kicks off the funding formula for the FEFP. The base unit allocation is currently. The House version and the

074Senate version are there. They're both le the House is less than 1% increase. The Senate is one and a quarter% increase. And as we talked about yesterday, we like that to be at least four or 5% so we can break even to break the district even and give a raise and break the district even. That's not happening next year. In the current year, it only increased a footnote at the bottom from prior year to current year it only increased 3.72%. which gave us around $8 million in new revenue. Uh the year before that we had about 12 million in new new revenue. So next next year you'll look at the highlighted portion next year that based on the Senate and the House and declining enrollment all mixed together. The House version would be a decrease

075in revenue. based on current year of about 3.8 million, the the Senate would remain flat about 142K on the increase. So you'll see how serious it is that even with a small increase based on declining enrollment, we can't even keep up with uh a break even scenario. So the total dollars on the unweighted FTE total dollars on the unweed FTE is the bottom. It all totals up when it runs through the formula is 8934 on the House, 9,046 on the Senate compared to 880 currently. Minor minor increases less than 1% on the House, way less than 1%. and then the Senate less than 2%. Either one of those will help us really break this thing even without some drastic changes next year. All right, so that's the FEFP. Um here's the just a quick value

076of what those scholarships are. That's 6234. That's worth those scholarships are worth $52 million and current year the 5,047 is worth 42 million. That pulls right out of the FFP in the calculation. There's a column for adjustments and that is adjusted out. All right, here's a quick I just want to give you a quick another cost increase. Oh, even though it's very minor compared to previous years. This year was very small, but next year the retirement rate will go up a little bit, but even a little bit is right just almost $900,000 on current salaries. About $900,000 increase on current salaries. Okay. So we have to overcome that. Also teacher salary increase is the former categorical is still calculated for us by DOE even though it's not set out as a specific categorical. It's still

077we still have to follow the the formula and we have been over the years. The house version there's a maintenance portion to keep it going. what's been done in previous years. That's about 15 million. And then the growth portion is the part that we would hand out as salary increases to the teachers and all those on the instructional salary scale. Not just the teachers, but the guidance media, all that, anybody on the instructional scale. This is the amount that goes to those teachers in terms of salaries and benefits. All the every the total cost has to fit inside that. So, the House version about $1.3 million increase and the Senate version about $3 million increase. Now, on a percentage basis, I'd have to think about that. I The Senate would probably be in the neighborhood

078of um one and a half% maybe. I think that'd be about right. Yeah. and then the House version wouldn't wouldn't make uh 1%. So, where does the rest of it come from? All right. Uh I'm going to give you a preview of the advalorum taxes. This is in the calculations for the House and the Senate. They're using a taxable school value. Top line, first column, 36.4 4 billion. The current certified tax role that we started with in the current year was 34.1 billion. So the change 2.3 about a 6.8% increase in the tax role. Now of course that'll change once we get to certified tax ro July 1 that'll change. It'll it'll be similar but it won't be the same numbers but it looks like we're headed towards a 6 to 7% increase in the

079tax ro. uh the millage rates that they're using required local effort current year 3.095 and then we have uh the discretionary portion that never changes 748 for total mills of 3.843 the proposed proposed is 3.847 847. So a slight increase in the millage rate 04. The required local effort is an estimate. Right now we won't get required local effort till the second calculation in July. Second FPF calculation in July will nail the required local effort. That's how we make all of our calculations and come up with the millage rate that's going to be proposed by the board. Um, I'm not going to include I didn't include capital outlay in this because it's pointless to do it. We don't have any idea what that is going to look like. We're currently at 1.004. That was to

080make a that was to make the total mills not require a tax uh increase advertisement. Okay. So if we're jumping up about 7% 6 or 7% and there's a similar required local effort coming out of the state then we're going to be we may be below 1% I mean one mill on the capital outlay if if the goal is to not advertise a tax increase. Okay. All right. Let me tell let me show you what we've got um or review it. We don't always talk about this, but here's here's what's out there in terms of our uh debt service requirements for the uh uh cops and sales tax revenue bond that we have out there. So, currently we're servicing the debt on three issues. series 2016 the balance there will be at uh June 30th

081will be 18.2 2 million. That final payoff date uh September 2027, it goes away. That built Baha Middle School. The uh payoff date for the first two issues is in direct relation to the end of the referendum. The end of the referendum. So, which ends in December 2027 and we specifically intentionally tied these two debt issues to that referendum and they're going away. So, this debt will be gone on the first two issues. The series 2020A again that one will be also about $18 million at June 30th. 18.3 million balance. You'll see I didn't mention this but the percent of debt service applied to millillage and the percent applied to sales tax on the first issue. It's all sales tax. It was a sales tax revenue bond. We had proceeds of 60.6 million and built

082that Bula Middle School. The series 2020A $18 million $18.3 million balance will be at June 30th coming up. We split that debt service between millage and sales tax and there's a story behind that. It was some legislative issues there dealt with cost to student stations. So we split that. We fund the debt service funds with uh proceeds from millage and proceeds from sales tax. 58% of it is millage. 42% is sales tax and with all of that we pay the debt service fund to the bank. Okay. Final payoff there is 212027 and that built Pleasant Grove Elementary or the rebuild of that one. All right. We have the most recent issue is a series 2023A. We've not paid any principal on that yet. 41 million 100% millage. It's a 20-year issue and it will end

083212 4043. We'll all be here by seems like we here that long. Yeah. So that's Myrtle Grove that uh as Mr. Dennis and Mr. Wen will talk you through may answer some questions on that if you need to. But that's Myrtle Grove Elementary. Those coops um proceeds were 41.5 million. Is Kingsville paid the bonds paid off for Kingsville? That that was not an issue bond issue. That was a pure sales tax. Oh, pure. We just did on sales. Okay. So, so let me tell you what we did there. That one was a ca that was a cash deal, but that same year is when we built Ba Middle School and we we issued debt. So, one we did a cash deal and we issued debt on the other. Now, I'll start this ball rolling and

084I'mma hand it off to Mr. Dennis. We're proposing now for the board. I have an agenda item on there that's called a reimbursement resolution that we'll see when we get to the agenda items. Uh it will kick off the timeline for a cops issue on series 2025. That'll be our next issue of series 2025 down the road. We've done nothing for it yet, but there'll be a series 2027. But that sales tax I mean the um reimbursement resolution will be the board's intention to go out for a bond a cops issue and provide us with the authority to go back and pick up some prior month last two or three months worth of uh sunk costs of capital outlay that we have already spent or will have spent on that project before the bond the

085cops issue goes out. But anyway, it it'll kick the it'll kick that timeline off and that's on the agenda. Um the balance the original proceeds uh that's calculated by the facilities department Mr. W and Mr. Dennis 58.8 million those will be the proceeds the original balance when we begin. Now the original balance and the pro and the proceeds are different because they're in the calculation for the original balance was made by my financial advisor will read Reed. Y'all met them Ford and Associates. Uh when the balance is less than the proceeds, you've issued those cops at a premium. So, we've got we'll have a premium amount of cash that the bond purchasers paid a premium for, but we're only going to be um servicing the debt on the par value, which would be 54 million.

086I don't know if that makes sense, but the proceeds are diff is different from the amount that'll be financed, and it was the same on every other one of those we just talked about. They were issued at a premium. That means we had cash of e the whatever that amount is for 58.8 to 53.9. The difference there is the premium and then the 53.9 will be um a 20-year bond uh cops payoff. And then the series 2027 50.5 million. We're going to finance 47.5. That one will be final payoff 812046. And that one's just in the pipeline. So I I'll hand it off now and they can talk to facilities with you. So the first three sales tax issues since 1997 as Mr. Adams pointed out in the case of Kingsville, we've always paid for

087our capital projects with cash. We squirrel away amount each for a series of years until we had enough to manage our large projects. And I'm going to speak specifically to large projects. We now find ourselves in a position where we have to take on debt in order to do several things. One is to manage the escalating costs of construction. We plan our projects and by the time we get to them five years later, those costs of construction can sometimes double, triple or in this most recent case quadruple. So we find ourselves in budgetary shortages for some of our larger projects. We also are limited in our ability to use our sales tax under new relatively new legislation which means we have to use a combination of millage and sales tax in order to accomplish these

088projects. So those are the hindrances when you take in escalating costs of construction and protracted timelines because of supply chain as we've all we all dealt with for the previous couple of years. These projects extend longer and the longer they extend the more the cost of construction tends to escalate. But we're also very proud of the the fact that we've managed our cash flow, our ability to manage cash flow for incidences in the sales tax budgets. We always want to make sure we have the ability to react and respond not just in those plan projects, but others since that is the sole capital resource we have for all intents and purposes to manage and operate the district. Having said all that, the next two issues that Mr. St. set the table for historically. You saw

089the the previous two were for individual schools, Bula, Myrtle Grove, Pleasant Grove. Those aren't on the horizon anymore. So, what you'll see for these next two issues are an aggregation of large projects, two clusters. Some of them are projects that have been on the grid for a while. Some of them are actually ongoing right now. And because their cost of construction has escalated, we're going to have to supplement their budget. So, we're using the debt service to manage that. That's the those are the problems that precipitated this approach. We've had great success with it in the past. We're confident that we'll be able to do exactly what we need to do without putting the district in a capital funding financial bind. So, Mr. Wen is going to come up and give you a quick and

090dirty laundry list and we'll provide you a written copy at a later time of the projects that each of these next two issues will address. Good afternoon. As Mr. Dennis said, the cost of construction has escalated exponentially in the past 5 years. CO did some things to us that we just didn't even expect. You guys are going to be voting shortly on an air conditioning project that's going to cost almost $10 million. That is just an air conditioning project. So, what we're looking at, and I approached Mr. Dennis and Mr. Saints Seir about this is being able to manage these larger projects that have been district initiatives for well prior to me even even my predecessor began that those initiatives. Uh the first two on here are the two auditoriums that we have already planned.

091That would be uh Escambia which we've already designed have a contractor in place to to do that. We haven't actually gotten a guaranteed maximum price yet for for obvious reasons. We're still trying to get there. The next one would be the Tate High School auditorium. And then a third project is at Pine Forest where we would build them a gymnasium and renovate their auditorium or their gymium I should say into an auditorium. Uh doing the reverse is is almost impossible. Uh we could not turn that into a functional gymnasium. We could turn into a functional auditorium, but we cannot turn it into a functional gymnasium. Um, for those of you who haven't seen it, it's it is literally it's a half a gym and it's half an auditorium. It's awful. Um, the other initiative that

092we're looking at in this is a classroom prototypical classroom addition for to replace ours and replace our our our portable that we have. Ironically, the portables are older than the modulars and thes are in worse condition and they just don't hold up. They've got to the end of their useful life. So the intent would be to develop a prototypical design 6 8 10 12 whatever whatever the classroom addition needed to be for the for the facility similar to when we did the covered play buildings we'll choose one architect we'll design the pro prototypical design we get economy of scale in that the only site work or the only design work on each one would be site work and then we would move those out into to the locations where most of those situations would require

093that uh like I said some of it is to replace portables to deal with capacity. Some of it's just to deal with aging infrastructure in that. Um Yes, sir. Uh when you do the new wing design, you're going to keep staying away from the gang bers, right? Yes, sir. Yeah. Yes. Yes, sir. Exactly. Okay. And we've been we've been having some discussion in my shop about what that actually looks like, what those modular and and this the idea is to do something that we can put at an elementary school, at a middle school, and a high school that functions across all the grade levels. Now, this would not function for the smaller elementary grades, but it would function for the older elementary grades. And so, that would be something that would be very similar, and

094you've seen them. There's several of them around the district that we've put in over the years. Uh we have, like you said, a lot of learned a lot from not having gang toilets and things like that in those situations. So, that would include that, right? Um and that is that is the first initiative uh that that that Mr. Saint spoke about. The second initiative would then be to begin to look at the Bula intermediate on the property that we purchased in that area. Uh that's probably looking at something like a 6 to 700 student much much like we're doing right now at Myrtle Grove size-wise. Um property is beautiful. I think it'd be a great place for a school. It's really going to be a really would be neat. Um then we would continue the

095classroom additions and that therefore that would free up the roughly $40 million in sales tax that we get for the things like the Washington gymnas or Washington air conditioner, the Washington pool um and just a whole laundry list of quite frankly projects that are not sexy. But we got to have water's got to flow, air conditioners have to run, sewers got to work. you know, those things all have to function and that allows us to free that sales tax up to deal with those type of projects as we go. Uh we're also in the middle of trying to to deal with uh you know, just upgrading and improving our our facilities just curb appeal. Uh you know, not only does this make a difference to way the schools look, it also makes a difference to

096the way people want to send their children. We just spent some time talking about how we're losing FTEEs. Well, we want to be able to make places that our kids want to go to, parents want to send their children to, and our our teachers want to teach in. And I think that's really important to be able to do that. But that's really a down and dirty on that. I'll be glad to answer any specific questions they all have. Oh, go ahead. Um, you said that we currently have some of these classroom additions at some schools. We do. Um, Workman, there's there's there's a classroom edition at Wman. There's a classroom edition at Brentwood. These these were done in the early 2000s uh right around really right around the time that global was built. Okay. And

097these are permanent structures. Permanent structures. My my idea is a brick and construction with a standing seam metal roof. Most fortunately, the ESR money gave us some opportunity to upgrade a lot of the um mechanical systems in in a lot of the facilities and we took that opportunity to upsize chillers so that we will be able to take advantage of this of the oversized of the chillers that we put there for the capacity so we wouldn't have to buy chillers and that. So, we're trying to keep that price down by utilizing some of the federal that we got last three years ago. Okay. I I'll I do I I'll I'll go to both Brentwood and Workman to look at those. Sure. And keep in mind, this will be a totally different design. They're both designed

098by two different two different architects. I think the one I know for a fact the one at at Workman uh Tony Nolles designed when he worked for uh Adache. You're going to look at like the covered play areas a standard one that would go. That's correct. Exactly. Every it would it would look look almost identical. that we would change it of course to fit the the architecture, the brick and the roof color and those type of things. Would would you have a two two designs? One for a single floor, one for No, sir. We would try and keep it a we would try and keep it a single a single some you may have to go vertical. I think we we're pretty good in most of the locations that we have without having to to

099stack. Uh I' I'd rather not stack. We get into a multitude. I ask you about stackables yesterday. Well, that's where you come. The problem with stack the problem with stackables is those are essentially modular construction which don't hold up. They're not as durable. A twotory construction, you know, when we have a constrained footprint, we'll go vertical like we did at Sudter, like we did in in other locations like we did at Bula and Myrtle Grove are all classic examples. But in most cases where we have a prepoundonderance of portables and modulars, they're already on a footprint. They're already spread out. So this allows us to build a permanent structure in in the same location that those other footprints sit on. And if you have 10 portables in on a location, that's enough footprint for many

100many classrooms because remember each portable has a 20 foot set back from each from the other. So workman is actually what we call a 5x5. Five classrooms on one side, five on the other. We'd be looking at something like that. Now cafeteria time for us is not underneath this, right? No sir. We pay that's a cash deal as well. Yes, sir. Okay. And and to Mr. Dennis's point, one of the first ones out of the box in this thing is is we're we're looking through this. Ensley is is really a good place to to start this prototypical design because Ensley is they're overcrowded. They have a bunch of portables, but they have a ton of land out there. It's it's not going to be like the the wing we got at Pine Forest that out

101there in the parking lot. That's a modular. That's a modular. So, that's what we're trying to replace. those things that hold up. That's what we're replacing. Yes, sir. Exactly. Yeah. This is this is not this is permanent construction uh with a with a at least a 50-year lifespan. One more question. Yes, sir. We got a lot of vacant portables around the school district. We we do. We do. And and we we've done a really pretty good job of getting that down. We are down under a hundred portables now. Uh we have a lot of idle portables sitting in locations. And uh the Washington project, I was just speaking to Miss Morgan about this. This is a good example of how we can use these things. Um we have five portables sitting there right now that

102are not being utilized. Our capital crew is going to go in, renovate those minorly, you know, carpet, ceiling, make sure the air conditioner works because we're going to use them while we do this do this renovation where we pull these kids out of the classroom and put them into the portable for say 6 weeks. We move another set in. We're also bringing in three more portables to that location. Then when we're done, we tear them down and they're gone. Um, they're still included in our footprint for for the state, right? For capacity, all these per portable. Yes, sir. All of all we you know, we have permanent and and and false sense of the excess seating, I guess. Yes, sir. And we do we we one of the things that we did do, we did

103an inventory of all the portables we had. We did a physical condition assessment of every portable in the district. We determine where what condition they were in, what they needed, and that's how we make the determinations as to whether or not to make them go away. Some of them you you won't be able to move them. Well, some of them I as a matter of fact, we can't move the wooden road. That's right. That's right. The uh the aluminum portables are the only ones that we can that we can move. The wooden portables we can no longer even move. They have to be demolished in place. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Anything else? I believe we started in my conversations with you, we started at 140 portables. How many years ago or modules? We had

104about 140 portals about a decade ago and we're down under 90 now. 90 something. Yes sir. We tear down about 15 of We're tearing about 15 a year. That that's good progress. I have looked at the modulars and you are absolutely correct. Uh they there I'm I'm I know that knowing you you've got a plan replacement for these things because some of them are rough. I'll just leave it at that. Um on the wings that you're talking about building it. I want to be sure I understood what Mr. Adams question was. You're uh you're designing classrooms for all three levels uh except for maybe the early childhood. Yes, sir. And those at all three levels they would have uh restrooms within them not gang to college. That's correct. Yes sir. Because that is a huge

105issue in cutting down discipline. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Uh the other question I wanted to ask is about our debt service and how our debt service compares with other districts from I was sitting here looking at that and I' I've seen some some from some other districts and we look like we're in in really good shape. Is that is that a good assessment of that for debt service? We we're very good shape. We're very low on our debt ratio. So, we have capa, plenty of capacity, and even with not levying a full 1.5, we have capacity or we wouldn't be doing this. Um, if it got to be an emergency situation where we had to go out and do something and we knew it a year ahead of time and we needed to levy more. So,

106we have plenty of capacity and and we're probably one of the lowest debt districts in the state. That's that's where I was leading. So, the the board needs to understand that that's a good comfort level for us to be in there with that. It's like a home it's like a home mortgage. You don't go out and make $5,000 a month and commit a six $6,000 house payment to it. But, uh that that also speaks well of of advanced planning and so forth on your part. So, thank you so much for that. That's all I have. They get rated on their bonds. What What's our bonds right now? A mined doublea. Yeah. So, and now's the time to go and I have bond going up. Yes. Municipal bonds in the market. I mean, CPI today showed

107we're we're dropping in inflation, fuel, all those items. So, right now it's it's heading the right direction for you two gentlemen. Yes, I have a Gant chart that outlines all of this. I'll email to all of you. Um, I didn't have it electronically, but it outlines what what we're doing and the timetable and what we're doing. I'll have that all out to you probably this afternoon. Thank y'all. So, it's been a while since you've seen this resolution that's being brought forward for Tuesday. Remember, we get Z, as far as I know, we still get zero in PICO. Okay? So, you know, we we have our half cent sales tax, which thank our citizens for that. This is one instance. You s you heard two or three instances in the past where we paid cash. That

108was the way to go. Well, I we need to make sure we leave some half cent sales tax money available. We can issue this debt when we're in a good situation to be able to do so. The market should be fine with the double A double A minus bond market rating. We've got to do it now. the bottom line uh and I'm I am really really tight. It's hard to even think about this but uh it is what we need to do because it's in the best interest of our citizens. So I really appreciate our facilities people finance uh operations for working our way through this and it's good for you as an elected body as well. So yeah, thank you. Thank you for the report. Outstanding. Uh, do we need to take a break

109or we want to keep going? Let's take a 10-minute break. get it started. We are now on item number three of the U workshop. And this brings us to Mr. Superintendent. Any additional comments? Uh, I just want to bring a couple of things to your attention. On February 27th, uh we did a press release about some Fairy Pass Middle School students in Odyssey of the Mind along with their teachers. They're getting ready now to go to state. So, we're pulling for them. Hope they they perform very well. We have a lot of confidence they will. And then one other item that I want to bring to your attention, if uh Delina and Allison will start walking towards the podium so they can be recognized appropriately. Is Debbie Debbie's not here? But I would invite her

110as well if she was. So if you're listening, Debbie Fussell, I want to say thank you. These schools, remember these schools. Sudter, Tate, Navy Point, Achieve Academy, Weiss Elementary, and Pensacola High School. Pensacola High were the schools that were selected for review for our food service audit. And Jelino, do you want to tell the board the news about how many findings we had? So this is our administrative state review that we get every five years. So they review the entire program including application processing, procurement, resource management, meal pattern, basically everything that we do in our program. And we had no findings. Yeah, that's great, man. Thank you. Very, very proud of y'all. Thank you. Very proud. Thank you all. That was that that completes what I wanted to That was awesome. Hold on because I

111have a finding about Miss Gelina. We had a meeting over in her conference room and she admitted she doesn't know how to cook. I thought not what happened. Apologize. There was no food. That's the way I remember it. Thank you, Jelene. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Superintendent. Uh, there are no committee department reports. We're now item number five, review of regular monthly board meeting. Uh, Mr. Superintendent, are there any additions or deletions uh to this month's agenda? Yes, sir. What I have is the item 24, consent, finance procurement. Item P has been added and item Q has been added. That's it. Okay. Thank you. It's it's uh this month is my turn to bring the invocation and pledge. I will take care of that. Moving into the minutes for March. Uh

112we'll have the minutes for March 13th, 2025 regular board meeting. Then we have the minutes from March 18th, 2025. Well, I'm sorry. The first one was a workshop and the second was a regular board meeting. No unfinished business. Uh, administrative appointments. I believe in superintendent that was one. Yes, we have uh Britain Luciano being hired in Fiddlers. Okay. Nothing for items number six, seven. So, it comes to uh consent agenda. Moving in consent agenda. Are there any items to dis to be discussed by the uh board? Starting with curriculum items 8 through 19. Hearing none, we'll move on to finance items 20 through 24. Yes, sir. Mr. first call. Um I I think it's my lack of knowledge and understanding, but items 24 uh 24B and F both deal with Skyward and it's like $36,000

113that that we're doing for Skyward. One says for hosting and one's for um resource planning. Alison, was one of those the uh uh redundancy part for Skyward. Can you look at uh item 24B and 24? You mind coming up? I knew she was telling us something about it yesterday. I just can't remember what that was. I know it was an increase. Yes. Yeah. Yes sir. Um they are two separate. I'm not the IT um best person. Um but the first one is the B is like what with our Skyward um where we put in for requisitions. That's our Skyward um HR. Uh the other one is hosting offsite. Um Tom is that where they store our data. So the hosting is offsite um where they uh keep the data. Right. So So they're storing keeping

114our data somewhere. in in addition to or in in lie of the hosting has been there from the beginning. That's is corp. They're the ones who that's the cloud basically. Okay. And uh the skyward software for HR, finance, everything we do in a business suite. That's what the 186,000 187,000 is. So that's the Skyward platform plus the hosting site. The hosting site is uh F 24F. Thank you sir. Any any other items? You had had something any other items from 20 and 24 not been moving into human resources items 25 through 29. like to pull 25G. 25 D is in Oh, G. And Mr. Williams, I'd like to pull 25 C. 25 C. Okay. Anything else from 20? Human resources 25 to 29. Yes. Yes. Okay. Next we have operations 30 through 39. hearing. None.

115We'll move on to the consent. Superintendent 40 through 42. Hearing none, we'll move now to number 45, the internal audit. Any discussion on internal audit? Anything from general [Music] counsel? That brings us to public forum. I do not have any forms. Say anything else for the good of the Mr. Williams? I'd like to give a brief explanation if I could on why I'm pulling 25 C. Would you like to miss also Miss Bos? Yes. Okay. I'm sorry. You want to go back? You want to go ahead, Miss Bos? Uh 25g if you could pull that up. I apologize. I don't remember exactly. Spoke with Superintendent Dennis about the safety officer. I just want to make sure that we are all on the same page. Sorry talking. I just want to make sure we're all on

116the same page because at first when I looked at this I thought safety officer why are we deleting one? But then he explained the reason. So I just would like to give him time to explain. Thank you Miss Bgos. And this is a classic example of a name not being necessarily reflective. Um the confusion is the safety officers are not our guardians. They are not our law enforcement officers. There were two safety office positions in protection services department. They actually predated all the guardians. They were the ones that handle uh emergency management, a lot of the training that goes on. And we have reshaped over the years that department to the point where we now have other positions that manage those. So safety officer is not a security personnel. It is one of two positions

117in that department. Thank you. I'm glad you explained that to me because I was quite concerned when I read words leaning safety officer. My other question regards I spoke with superintendent uh Wilson um in regards to the federal grants management and very familiar with the DODIA grants and how much money they have and we're looking at different initiatives. I want to make sure that we're all on the same page with the the person that um handles oversees the federal grants and just kind of explain a little bit about I know with the DODIA grants they're given to us on a five-year cycle and then u we have received one annually since I don't remember when but we have over $10 million right now and so if you look at the grants information, it looks like

118one's leaving, one's coming back, one's leaving. So, it's very confusing. So, I just wanted to let the board know that some of those grants do expire after five years, but we have another grant that's coming to take over. So, I just want to make sure we're all on the same page as that. And and next month I am going to bring on the agenda our federal grants uh management person so she can explain the do grants and the great resources that they're bringing. That's all I have. I know uh that uh it's unusual probably to pull leave of absences. So but I am doing that for a particular reason. I've already alerted Miss Cross Tag says she won't have a stroke over here. Uh but uh and that will always be my policy to alert

119someone if I'm going to pull something like that because they they no gotchas, you know, from me. But uh the the thing that I the reason I pull that is because we've had a wonderful event in our family. We have a new grandchild and the person named for a leave of absence there happens to be a close relative of mine. And I'm I'm going to operate under the policy that I will not vote for any relative. Uh I will abstain from that vote. So, I wanted to let the board know that and but I do want to vote on all of the other items and I think that's an obligation I have as a board member. Is that correct, Miss ODM? And so, what I'm I'm going to do is I'm going abstain and then

120make a motion to approve the others excluding that and then someone else will have to make the motion for the other. And I just wanted to alert the board to that. And I will do that each and every time I have a family member that might come up out of stain. that way that no one can say there's any anything out there u you know that uh that that might not be right. So I'll just leave it at that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. I apologize for not giving you a chance to speak. I thought maybe you wanted to speak on it next Tuesday. So that's why. Okay. Okay. Anything else? Okay. If there's nothing else, we'll now journ.