07/08/25 - Flagler School Board Agenda Workshop

001Good afternoon. I now call to order the Tuesday, July 8th, 2025, 3M school board workshop. Um, please uh rise for a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance and the national anthem. Please join me in the pledge of allegiance. 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 and justice for all. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Thank you. Please be seated. Okay, we will now uh move on to roll call. Uh starting at the end of the table, Lauren Ramirez present. Jamie Brad present. Derek Bars Christy Ch. Will Furry Lakamore. Okay. Uh are there any um additions or changes to today's agenda? Um I do have one uh request is that we move 17.01 01 the

002school resource deputies contract after board um I'm sorry after public comment before 7.01. Okay. All right. That has been noted. Um like a uh motion to uh move forward with this agenda. Motion to approve. Have a motion by Mr. Bar and a second by Mr. ready. All in favor? I I opposed. All right, we will move forward with today's agenda. And we will now um open up for public comment. Do we have anybody signed up for public comment? No, we do not. Okay, so we will close public comment and uh move on to our first agenda item 17.01 um school resource deputy contract. Good afternoon. Welcome. Welcome. Good afternoon again. Uh, Chair Furry, school board members, and Superintendent Moore. I am joined today by Chief Strobridge from the Flag County Sheriff's Office and Spven Smith,

003our our general counsel. Um, we come to you uh this afternoon to continue to seek um our partnership with the Flaggler County Sheriff's Office and providing student resource deputy coverage along along with school crossing guard um coverage throughout our schools in the district. Um you will notice two significant changes um to this year's agreement compared to last year's agreement. Um the first one if I can draw your attention to page 10 article 17 and that deals specifically with access control. Um since we are moving to electronic access throughout our district-owned properties in speaking with the sheriff's office we're trying to um expedite response time in the event of emergencies. Um so this language um references providing u the sheriff's office beyond our school resource deputies uh electronic access to our campuses that they can use

004in the event of emergency. So rather than um initiate a separate we thought it would be best to to add it to our current agreement. Um so that that's one significant change that you have not seen. The other change for your consideration um which is new in this agreement compared to other agreements is um the recommendation of a floater deputy. Um so as you are aware um beyond our contract with our our standard contract um costs with the with resource deputies, we pay additional costs for um overtime coverage for our extracurricular events. Um and then there's also an additional fee um in the event an SRD um is absent at work for training or or uh personal leave or other matters. So um in previous years our our contract read that the district would be

005responsible for picking up those costs if we had for the required coverage as long as well as the extracurricular coverage. And speaking with uh Chief Strobridge, we we were discussing what are ways we can maybe alleviate some of those costs. Um we've had discussions um seems like each year for the for the past number of years about a floater deputy. Um we did agree that if we do um implement a floater deputy um that would alleviate the district from all required school coverage um periods meaning the the SRD leave times and things like that. And then also um in terms of of um helping stabilize some of our extracurricular uh events coverage in the event that the um the floater deputy did not fulfill his 40hour work week by covering schools that extra time would

006be credited towards um extracurricular event coverage. And that language is is stated specifically on um pay article 8. Uh so why do we go down this avenue where we're essentially almost um skirting the line of having the entire payroll of these officers under the coverage of the school district as opposed to a contract agreement much like let's say our legal council where we pay a flat rate fee per hour. And because it seems like we're absorbing um financial costs for their sick leave, vacation leave. In addition, we have to absorb COLA increases that are agreed to with the sheriff's office as opposed to the budget that were provided, for example, under safe schools. I'm sure there's a wide discrepancy between that. Um, so have has this been the format for this agreement with the sheriff's

007office through the history of our work with SRDs or has it been more of a uh contract uh per hourly contract agreement in the past? It's always been a service provider type of contract. Uh, at least I can only speak for the last nine years. I can't speak prior to that. Uh, 2017 was the first time I was involved. Now, what I do know from the history from Miss Gavin when I first came to the uh the school board back in 2017 was the contract had remained the same for a long period of time members of years prior to that that basically we provide this particular service for this amount of cost as a result of that um the county other entities uh pick up the additional cost. It basically breaks down like this is

008we provide you 13 deputies for x number of dollars. The other part of the cost has been borne up to this point by the board of county commission as well as one from con coast. So when you when you say you uh carry the cost, the school board has the ability 100% has the ability to have their own school uh law enforcement personnel and uh you certainly can do that and that's been discussed in the past. Uh just like we we actually hire your crossing guards, you pay 100% for crossing cards and we've also suggested that the school board crossing guards because what happens is when the school of crossing guard is not available, we always make sure that positions filled a lot of times with the with the deputy sheriff and such. So, we're

009providing the service overall just like any of your other service providers and as far as I know at least uh in the past probably 15 20 years this is exactly how the contract has been written. Now, it seemed like in the last two years though, there was a large uh much larger sums of money going to overtime. I believe it was 60 or $70,000 than in years preceding those two years. So, if the contract has been relatively stable, why in the last two or three years did we see a $70,000 per year increase in overtime? The the largest reason is because of this. Again, we proposed a floater every time and in the prior contract agreements, uh it was loaded into the contract that if you're not going to provide a a floater, then anytime

010the school has a vacancy that is re result of the deputy being sick, infirmed, uh not standard usual training because we do that in the summertime, then the school board would give him the cost in lie of having a floater deputy. If um if it was because of an operational need that we pulled them out of the school, then we backfilled with with our deputies and the deputy makes the cost. And this is why that looking at the floater kind of made sense is that all that cost then is borne by the sheriff's office. So with the floater deputy, you don't have any additional responsibilities for overtime for filling the school when a deputy's injured or out. uh there be available the additional benefit being and expand a little bit of what Mr. prospect was

011talking about is that you know certainly we know that uh during the fall we're going to have a lot of Friday nights out there which means a lot of additional coverages and what would the floater would do is essentially the plan schedule for the floater would be that it would work in the evenings on Fridays to help cover some extracurricular activities that you're now paying for directly. Uh, so it would kind of look like this. Monday through Thursday that the deputy would work and fill in wherever he needs. And if he didn't have to fill in somewhere on that Friday, his automatic schedule would be to fill one of those other slots that you're paying additional dollars for today uh to cover the schools for extracurricular activities. That's why when you look at the scope

012of it, it it makes it more attractive. doing the dollars and cents. Uh I'm not sure that we are quite there in the amount of overtime that we expect, but that's kind of the overview on what the cost are across the board. So would you say though that we absorb the cost of sick or infirmed? Yeah. Um are you saying of an additional headcount or are we paying their sick day as well as another headcount for that coverage? No, you're not paying both. You're just paying for the one. So if if the SRD at uh Old Kings Elementary School is out for that day and we use a filling dep that we have to use on overtime, you're paying that today. Mhm. Is so chief is is that a is the floater going to be

013a one for one then? So hypothetically if you had two SRO's that were out, are you only going to pick up you're going to cover the other one as well or covering the other one as well? So that extra cost and there's times where you would have two or three that potentially could be out for whatever reason. It would not be for one for one. I'm gonna put whoever is out regardless whoever's out regardless of what happens. Absolutely. What is difficult for me to um evaluate these two plans and the two appendices is that both neither of them include a comparison of what we're paying in overtime. Now for example, the one with the floater is more expensive. Of course, we have another headcount, but okay, what would we be paying if we were to

014just have those extra events covered? Are they always covered in overtime? Um, or can we create another part-time contract and increase fees for those events that need to have more u SRD coverage? really in this contract that's kind of covered because there's a fee based for those extracurricular activities already in the contract that became a flat fee. We ne we kind of negotiated that because it was actually at one point actual cost. So I think it was last year last year when yeah because what previously happened it's based on the deputy that works on it and coupe if he's working he's very expensive because he's he's been here a thousand years and uh he's quite expensive. So what we did to make it more stable for better planning purposes, for better tracking purposes, we made

015it a flat fee that is encompassing of that. That's actually in this contract as well. Do you have the ability to choose the range of years of services that an officer has to fit within our budget or are we receiving who they assign to these roles? We look we don't um but to Chief's point with that flat rate it it doesn't matter who they send it's going to be the same cost and in years past and one other uh thing you mentioned that I just want to touch on that's why it's hard to com when you look at overtime cost year over year it's kind of it does fluctuate because the formula in years past it depended on which they were sending and then either last year or the year before they switched to that

016flat rate um which now we get a better understanding of now we're now we can really look at how many overtime hours we require compared to the dollar if that makes sense and another point outside of the overtime piece is we use utilize I'm going to say let's utilize services throughout the summer and all those people are being h they're actually working right now for summer school and things of those that nature as well is that correct there there are some of those and some of that's contractual as well the um I want to go back up and and grab a quick point that that she was making about the cost as far as tenure with within the organization is when we put this whole formula together initially, there's about five of those positions that

017are still at entry level and you don't get entry- level deputies. You get deputies that are experienced because we're not going to put a first year deputy sheriff in the school as an SRD and we did that to help kind of stabilize the cost as we move forward to the future. So, we haven't really changed that. uh what was previously locked in was some of those people who SRDs for a number of years within this program who were already at the higher cost. They're kind of locked in, but in so far as if we change out people, you can get somebody that's 20 years and still paying that lower amount for them in the car. Mr. Mr. Buster, I'm concerned though that for 154,000 we're getting we're essentially saying that is going to fill these

018empty spots as well as Friday evening fall. That doesn't seem like a full-time role. Do you have other plans to fully utilize that individual to their maximum utilization for that headcount? So, I think um a couple things with that. Um I do not anticipate that floater deputy being able to cover all of our extra over time. Um just because a Friday night football game has six to however many deputies. Matanza FC has has a large number of deputy presence. Um so I don't anticipate it alleviate all alleviating all those costs. Um, one thing we are looking at and and that we need to do is come up with a a staffing matrix as far as what does it look like at extracurricular events, um, how are we justifying when we need a deputy, how many

019deputies, and making it consistent so we can plan and budget effectively for what what is what is the cost what is the cost of of running some of these events? And I think you mentioned it earlier. Do we need to look at, you know, how much are we charging our spectators to to come into some of these events? Um because they are fundra fundraisers for our extracurricular clubs and and and sporting teams. So um that's kind of where where we're at moving forward is just coming up with a standardized process and you know when we're having these events, let's plan ahead and not making spur-of the- moment decisions. Hey, we need six deputies because we're expecting a large crowd tonight. Um so making it more consistent. What's the salary increase this on this compared to

020last year's? Like what's the percent increase on this new contract request? I don't have it off the top of my head. Here's what I can tell you is um special risk FRS went up considerably. You know, I I know that that our overall budget uh request increased more than a million dollars just to cover the Florida uh state retirement system for special risk class increases alone. Uh I think it's like 2.4% % is 2% for what it is. So at least five and a half% like five and a half% but I had to have to run the numbers to tell you exactly what it was. So Mr. Bardet when our safe schools increase has been a little over a percent. Where is the extra funding going to come from this? It would come from the

021general funds. Our safe school allocation remains relatively almost exactly the same um this year as it as it did last year. Has there have been discussions on subsequent contracts or is that even allowed to kind of say, you know, we can only spend what we're given by the state? If the state says you get a 1% increase, a 7% increase, whatever it is for safe schools, that that's what we proportionally can increase with um salary increases for deputies or whatever it might be. Is there something we can do in the future to tie that together? I would I would think on this on that particular question that we probably need to again safe schools. We we have a lot of requirements that we want to have our students to be safe and we all want

022that. Um but then making sure that we are lobbying that we don't have stagnant for safe school money and that's going to take the help of our sheriff and the sheriff's association and people like that to lobby to say that this particular issue is important and I would ask that we in partner with the sheriff's office that we make that a priority moving forward and working together with that because it is not to me it's not acceptable that we place so much emphasis on school safety that we do not increase the numbers for school safety uh through our legislative process and I and I would love to give you a brief since you brought it up if I may give you a brief history on on how that works for safe schools. You know the

023safe school formula is based upon what you find active communities. So these counties that have high rates get the vast majority of the money from the state. It was not, it has not changed the formula in a number of years. In 2017, uh, the sheriff body and said, uh, gee, let's go to Tallahassee together. Let's try to get this change because it's disparit. So, if you live in a safe community, you don't get as much money. And that's not that's not right. from the state of Connecticut SRD in every school. That's when it became more and more important that we actually change from day to year. Heat. Heat. Heat up here. Heat up here. Heat up here. Heat. Heat. of our money as I said before and I try to be as frugal as we

024can with our budget request. the costs are what they are and uh if if the money's not there to pay for it, then somebody else has to pay for it or we have to trim it down. That's really the only true answer is there's not much we can do to change that type of cost. Um can't hurt to ask. Just as an aside, you were asking me and kind of asking me for a second, so I feel compelled to say something. Um, so it's a it's a u it's part of economic planning is really what you're asking and can there be economic planning? And the answer is yeah, there's a base allocation to every district of 250K. And then in addition to that, it's dependent upon the Florida crime index and then also upon the

025um the allocation is also dependent upon uh FTEEs like the number of enrolled students. And so if we have an idea of the projections on those those figures then you know we can look at the patterns then you know you can you can economically plan. And if I can add, and I know you mentioned 2017, but um last year and this year, the the sheriff has said and stated that again, he is willing to um let's look at this being a part of the legislative platform to look um I want to say it was in um 2023 that there was legislation that said that the um DOE would look and review um the safe school allocation formula. To my understanding, I don't know any work that was done on that. So, I think that is

026to go back and say what does that look like? as well as in a few weeks the sheriff, the county, all of us will be bringing forward our legislative ask and us to, you know, not continue to talk about it, but actually make it a a a point that we want to ask that the our legislators um really look into. Chief, you and I talked about this earlier about that. I think that's a a priority for us moving forward and we know it's been going on for a long period of time and I just I think that has got to be top priority. Well, it's aggravating because the counties that get the vast majority of the dollars because they're high crime counties, uh, of course, they're fighting to keep every penny that they get because

027they end up being fully funded in a lot of their areas as a result of that. And safe communities don't and, you know, unfortunately, safe communities are usually smaller communities. So, their voice is well heard. I mean, we have many fortunate aspects to that. and you know while they may get more funds right we don't know until we walk in their footsteps the challenges that are placed do they need more than uh the uh SRO's that they're afforded so I guess what I'm saying is you know obviously we only have a certain bucket of money and sure we would love to advocate with you and champion uh for uh at least you know when you have an increase to FS uh F FRS as well as your insurance just like we do with our staff

028that we can receive that money to pay that um pay that change. But I think in until I see what I would need in order to make a decision on this is what has what would the impact on overtime be here and what does the utilization of this floater look like beyond some of these um uh you know the lowhanging fruit that we need them to be uh uh used for as well as what does that economic plan potentially look like long run because in the end we have let uh lobbyists. We went, we've spoken and we didn't get pretty much anything we asked for. So, we can't put all our eggs in one basket that well, we'll we'll eat it this year and next year. I'm sure they're going to listen to us, right?

029So, I want to think a little bit more long term and uh what we can do to mitigate this uh which will certainly be the same problem this time next year. One I'm sorry, go ahead. Uh, one thing I I will say as far as what we do know this, uh, floater deputy um, would take away is last year we paid $78,000 in school required coverage. Um, so again, whether that floater can cover every vacancy or not, that wouldn't necessarily be our issue. That responsibility would be on the sheriff and they would pick up whatever additional cost. So we know um, it would alleviate, you know, close to close to that amount. I would I would assume it'd be a similar amount of of school required over overtime coverage. Um last year we also spent

030uh 57 about $57,000 in extracurricular type coverage. Now that's that's where it gets tricky because we don't know how many um how many hours that floater deputy would work. Um and that's the question because we're talking about $120,000 difference here between the two proposals. So, I would like to know, well, what's the real dollar amount saved um from either of those buckets that we can realize? And we know that there's going to be concurrent events. So, it's impossible for them to be everywhere all at once. But what's that real savings? Is it worth that or are we not there yet? So, I know um so after, you know, you gave us the information um I you know, worked with you back and forth and and you know, like different opportunity of like researching and interviewing.

031So with the floater and just let me know if this is right or wrong but it appears so with the floater it's not going to cover all the overtime it's impossible because we have a lot of activities and even now with our basketball games we do not have SRDs at every single one. I mean, you know, it'd be great, but sometimes, you know, it's impossible, but it would be great. Football games, I know, you know, which ones we need more or less, but if it's if it's worked the right way, we may not save money, but it still helps facilitate and have the safety issue done because, for example, let's say Matanis High School has a fight where, you know, they have to call their backup. Um, someone's getting arrested, right? Well, that that officer

032has to now do the paperwork. So, they are not there with the student. So, they have to call someone in like an additional officer. So, this could potentially be the floater that would come in because now we need the two that are there. So, it can help um if it's done the right way like the scheduling. It would have to be someone really flexible because you know if it's one dedicated person um I don't know how if we would save money or not but it definitely would be beneficial with they definitely would get their hours if you look at all the activities that we would have in my opinion just looking sure I mean but I guess my concern is right we're facing a a current scenario where we have money that is frozen we

033have unknowns what's going to happen to that we have already uh communication that uh there's concern over our general fund imbalance as a result of the current budget. So, there's a lot of nice things we'd like to have, right? There's a lot of nice things we would do, but can we afford them in this time of uncertainty? That's a whole another thing. Right now, we need to focus on what do we need in order to maintain a high level of safety and not focus on the extras because we're not in a time of plenty unless it is in the appetite of this board to start to discuss things like uh impact fees. I know the county commission has already gone to discuss that before some uh policy takes place or other millage changes which I'm

034not a fan of. were already taxed disproportionately compared to our other counterparts in other counties. Those otherwise we don't have the room for the things that are nice to have unless I'm speaking out of turn and miss um uh warm can correct me if I could just add a perspective as well as you're looking at both of the options. um when we are in a time where um the funding isn't a plenty, it is important that we are able to budget for what we know is going to happen. So the reality of it is that overtime is going to happen. And so we can either try to offset it by having a floater and control some of the costs or we can just go with, you know, month-to-month this is what it's going to cost.

035So we know it's going to be a cost, but you know, do we go with a cost that is going to be something that we can budget for versus something that we are um revising month over month? And that's totally what I I would need to see because I don't see that dollar amount right now. The last number I saw was that overtime was 80,000. This is asking for 160,000. And I think it's hard though to to really to get that number because like the fight example. So when there's an incident at any school, that officer has to stop what they're doing and do paperwork regardless and arrest that child or whatever it may be. So now they have that extra overtime officer there. So, it's hard to gauge, you know, with safety like what

036emergencies are going to happen. But, um, you know, we know how many games that we're going to have and then you have to decide which games are most important to have. Um, I think it's difficult for us to project it, uh, because the models have changed year over year. And so, um, we can go off of the projections that we've looked at of how much did it cost for us for, um, overtime last year, how much did it cost for just coverage of school coverage, and use that as here's what we do know. We know just to cover the cost of um, officers, deputies at schools, that was 70 plus,000. that 70 plus thousand we know we don't have to budget for that in addition to it because we've already budgeted for it in the

037in this person. So I think some of it is hard um for us to provide to you um what that savings will truly be because it is it is a different model. Well I have a question on the overtime when when we're talking about a sporting event, right? And some are larger than others. Um, you know, I've heard, you know, sometimes if we have maybe two, sometimes we have to have six. What what is the matrix that determines how many deputies that that we need there for security? So, I look at it from two perspectives. I'm like, okay, so what is the as a district, what is the requirement that we provide a certain level of security, right, for for the event that we're holding, right? And then from there, what is the responsibility of

038the sheriff to say, you know, we need to step in because because this is community uh policing, community safety, uh that level falls in a in a different bucket basically, if you want to call it like that. uh because if I'm if if we have if the if there's a uh only a requirement for us to say have you know two deputies there or security people um then you know maybe that's where we our our uh cost should stop and then the sheriff then is just that's a community expense to for the extra policing. So can you speak to that at all? Sure I'd be glad to. Okay. Uh well first of all I don't think there's a statutory requirement for you to have anybody at your extracurricular activities. I think it then has become

039based on what exposure would be to the board to the school system for not providing the security for those type of events. The other piece of that far as total numbers are are based on analysis of an evaluation of of what is required or believed to be required because of rivalries as a result of that. I mean, if you're going to have a an FPC, Matanza football game, there's there's higher potential for emotions to get a little bit more. So, naturally, uh certainly in Mr. Bosad's case, as well as coordinating with uh our team, they evaluate what they think might be potential problems. again. Uh so that can be that can be reviewed constantly evaluated and you know what is safe, what is required, how much exposure would there be uh for not providing. Sure.

040And and that makes sense. But again, where does that line uh end for the respons the liability of the responsibility u so that we're not negligent as a school board where beyond that is if something was to rise that then then law enforcement would would would show up. I don't think there's a bright light. Uh we would show up certainly after it started, right? You you would it'd be more reactive than a preventive is all you do at that point. Well, I'm saying we don't we don't want to invite that. But I I'm just saying there's always a number. I mean, if we have six and something happens, there's going to be another 12 going to show up to help solve the problem. Do you see what I mean? So, I'm just saying from from

041from a financial outlay and overtime, you know, where's where does that end, you know, for us to say, hey, this is an acceptable amount, not at the sake of safety, right? But but what where is that measure? Is there is there a measure if it's not state statute says hey for every thousand people you have in attendance then this is the acceptable if I was an attorney and I said hey you had this you had so many thousand you only had this many deputies we find that negligent then you know that's one thing but if we have the adequate numbers so not not coming from law enforcement understanding these matrixes that that's what I'm getting at I think to your point Mr. Fury, the question might be clearer if we say when we have the

042strawberry festival, do you not provide any coverage? It would be up to the event event coordinators. Otherwise, you're relying on people calling in, hey, there's a again strictly reactive, not not proactive and those kind of things, whether it's the strawberry or whether it's a concert or whether it's the 4th of July. Gotcha. I think and if I may, um, because there were a couple comments I just I want to address. So, um, Miss Ramirez, to to your point, um, as having the floater deputy, the intent today was, um, to give the board two different options, append the first appendix with the floater or or without the floater, obviously. Uh, to your point, and and I agree with you, having a floater would be would be beneficial in terms of of a couple things. It's that

043familiar face that they they know how to work in schools. they get to understand a school system because there is a difference in in a road deputy filling in a school compared to, you know, an SRD filling in a school. Uh to Miss Moore's point, it does benefit us in in terms of being able to plan for some of those expenses. Uh Miss Ruddy, to your point, and Mr. Furry's point, um there are unknowns and we we know it'll alleviate the required school coverage overtime. Um, as far as the extracurricular overtime, uh, we've identified as a district that, um, there is no state statute that says at extracurricular events you have to have x amount of SRDs, but there is language that says it is our responsibility to provide, um, policy, what that looks like.

044So, we we need to identify, you know, when are we going to have SRDs, at what point do we need multiple SRDs? Um, Miss Moore has has recognized that we need to establish that going into this school year and we've spoken with representatives from the sheriff's office. We're going to sit down and and get their recommendations on what does some of this stuff look like. Um, that way we're not making spur-of the- moment decisions. So, the extracurricular overtime is kind of the unknown factor that we don't have a true true number on. Um, I do want to state though if whether we go with the the floater deputy or not, I personally don't feel it's it's adding extra safety to our campuses. Um, I feel our I feel our current model um we are safe

045in and and we provided a safe environment for for however many years we've been doing this model. Um, that wasn't the intent to bring the floater deputies to make our schools safer. Um the intent is to bring this on a trial basis to see if it will help alleviate some of those costs and see if it'll be beneficial you know in terms of planning building those those steady relationships on campuses and maybe it will be you know um costbeneficial as well. So that that was the intent behind it. Not we feel we need to make our school safer or Well, go ahead. I'm sorry if I missed this, but is the floater going to be full time during the day? They'll be an extra per It's not if somebody's sick, then they fill in. They're

046there. And they could also just to go back. So if a middle school deputy has to be off campus to make an arrest, that person would then if he's working, he would respond to go and fill in that spot there. Is that correct? Or he he could be standing in her corner too as well. So it's for all of those things. Yes. So he literally or he or she will just be go to like all right Deputy Smith we need you at Matanis and Deputy Smith we need you at Old Kings and then that's like the intention to kind of alleviate. Um we are sure in speaking with Mr. Bosard that we can fill the schedule. Yeah. Well, yeah. I think it from what I was looking at, I feel there would be it could

047be an 80hour week work week, but I mean just from the activities, but in addition to that too, you know, the they are trained in many other things. There's uh evaluations that should be continually done and such. Again, there's so many uh statemandated things we we have to do now in our schools and everywhere else that there's there's time to fulfill those kind of positions. They also need to be a DARE officer. Well, you know, just as we decide whether we would want to go with a floater or not because there's there's definitely pros and cons to both, right? Uh and um you know, but if we're saying, hey, you know, we'd like to have a floater, but you know, how do we kind of justify this financially as well? Um you know, we look

048at this the overtime seems to be always the the unknown here. If we're talking about like at a sporting event, you know, where where it's a large event like you mentioned in that example where we have to have maybe six deputies there. Well, um not not knowing exactly what our hourly rate is off top of my head right this second, but um you do we have three deputies and and maybe three private security or something like that or have some other form of security whether it was um like a guardian or whatever version of that that it might be. uh to to to make this happen because we we want to we definitely want to solve a problem uh here. But at the end of the day, um th this unknown could just uh magnify

049the cost here o over time. And so if we were to do it, I would say that if we went down the road of of having a floater, we could look at some of these cost-saving uh supplements to it. But at the same time, it should be looked at more of a of a pilot program rather than a full adoption of this idea. uh if we said okay let's let's try this for for 12 months and write it very clearly in the contract so that there's not expectations on the sheriff that this person is going to automatically remain on the payroll after 12 months we could evaluate the true cost and service benefit right not always just the money um and see if this floater really works um so if we were to go down

050that road that would be something that I would like to see written into the contract because I if we don't then it it becomes an harder to undo these things if the expectations are hey this is the the direction we're going for the future. So and is this the first time that we've done a floater? You said that's the first time it's ever come to the board. Okay. We have talked about it every year since 2017 that I've been and um and one thing uh so with the floater so we know it's a full-time role. They are an employee of the sheriff. So basically they're or they're they're covered under the sheriff. So if let's just say they were injured or they accidentally just like any other SRD then it everything insurance related would be

051under the sheriff's department as well. Yeah. Yes ma'am. Just another question related to this um from a security and safety and you know a criminal aspect too as well and and the usage of canines that you already we already have in the school and we have one that's dedicated to Palm Coast High School and to me that utilization potentially could be used at another you know spread around to the other schools instead of just that one school all the time. So potentially maybe your floater and I can't tell you how to run your operation by any means, but it seems that particular if we were to go this route that is a way to utilize that asset in other locations more frequently potentially as well. Absolutely. Well, I know with the and correct me if

052I'm wrong, but with the K9, there's a lot of training that the K9 has to go to. So that that actually when they that K9 has to go away with his deputy champion to go train in special conferences then we have that opening at FBC that now we need an officer for overtime but if there's a floater then the floater would take that. So that's like another example Brad the dog. So that's what we alleviated is bringing in another officer that would be char we'd be paying overtime. Otherwise, we would just be paying the rate that for for the floater and it wouldn't be considered an overtime cost, right? Just be just filling in the spot. Uh and that's one of those unknown budgetary items that we can't reflect because we don't know how people's

053lives are going to be if they have to be out of work and when that cost is going to be more. Well, what we do know is that if they're a minimum 5% cost every year, right, at this $1.5 million, we're go if we take this floater, right, we're essentially saying every single year, we're another hundred $120,000 if the math is off my head right. The other piece is yes, there's an economic law called Parkinson's law. the time you apply to something, it will take the time to do that work. We could apply tons of work to anybody. But can we afford it? There are a lot of advantages. I'm not saying I wouldn't love to have 10 floaters, but I don't know. There are a lot of unknowns in terms of can we afford

054this long term if the current um uh budgetary pressures are longer term and god forbid our property taxes uh come in even less than uh they are in the future, right? Uh and so to think if we every per every headcount we take on with a 5% increase which is low for their cola, we're going to every year absorb essentially uh be paying out another headcount for that based upon the 1.5 million. Do we have that in our budget? And I would just if we could make this I don't want to continue to beat an old dead horse to death, but is is there a way and we talked a little bit about the matrix earlier, you and I did too as well and you brought it up. Is there a way for us to

055as an action item from here for you all to take a look at the matrix of what that has looked like into into in the past and then what realistically that looks like for this coming school year of what we think that should be and is there some savings in that as well compared to what's been done in the past. Um because I don't know you know before I don't have I'm just throwing these numbers out. Did you have 15 or 20 there before, but we really only needed five? And so, um, or you had five, but you really needed 10. And so, really look at the numbers. And we had an incident here and kind of looking at we we had some serious issues at this particular location and we actually had to call

056in resources. That's going to take a little bit of homework, I realize, but I I really want to know is did we have enough resources there when we didn't? And I can see I know that we've had some issues and stuff like that in the past. And could some of this been alleviated if we'd have had more personnel at some of these particular spots? The only way to to truly justify this financially is is to offset overtime right now. That seems like the only bucket of money that we have to to try and tap into is not spend that because there's no money from safe schools and and our budgets bigger or raise it a ticketing at events or start to ticket certain events that are not like $1 extra. I mean, I was going

057to wait for board requests, but having that could be I don't know. Well, what we what we got to remember too is that right now we're we're having a great workshop discussion and that's what we're doing here right now is we're we're building the understanding and information to to help us get to this uh when this action so this will come back before you for July 22nd. So it will be on that. Okay. Um at that time I did um write down that you would like for um the two agencies to go back and for the pilot to just have it clearly clearly written that is a pilot. It's just a one-year thing. U make sure that it's clearly written if that is the route that you go when you um receive this on the

05822nd. Um unless it is pulled because you're not prepared to to to make that decision or any of that. um you will be voting you'll have both before you and you will identify which direction you will be going in. I think the other item was an understanding of the offset of the uh overtime costs uh which is to help us better uh understand the the cost savings as well as the true additional cost to the floater. Do you have something do you understand what do you understand what is being asked with that that request? So in terms of the the additional cost, we're just talking about extracurricular activities, correct? No, like there was actual overtime, right? Paid out $78,000. Okay. So if we take the what was 15678, okay, 122 or something. So that's the

059true exact cost to this position. And then do you have a projection on how much this would uh cover extracurricular activities that that's going to be that number is going to be hard to calculate um because this year it was we did 55,000 right for the um over the extracurricular activities was it 55,000 57,000 and so we can't gauge what of the 57,000 the floater will or will not take because it could depend upon whether who's out that particular day what he would have nor we can guesstimate potential Miss Ruddy to to your point um we know there's we know there's approximately $57,000 worth of extracurricular overtime that would need to be paid somehow but it's like one person so it's like are there do we estimate they can um take on 15% of it

060yeah I think right I I think Um, we can look and it'd be hard to it'd be hard to estimate it. It it it that number is going to be dependent upon how many vacancies are at school because otherwise what what we're looking at is paying double the amount that we paid for overtime last year to save half the amount on overtime this year. I think um again that that it's that's why it's brought to us on a trial basis. Mr. refer to your point on page one, it does say this is a one-year trial basis in the whereas statement um and and just to to help stabilize cost is how we word it with both the understanding if this is a beneficial for each side then we wouldn't bring it up for consideration and

061I I and I really think if if we're looking to to determine if this this is one of those things that you you we have to do it to find out which is terrible situation to be but there it doesn't appear that there's real hard data for comparison to say exactly how the time is going to be and we can put some expectations on it but you know I think at the end of the day we have to decide do we think it's valuable to have this floater for reasons other than just offsetting the overtime uh because it's clear it's not likely going to completely be covered by uh that. So what are the value of having that there? added values of having that floater for the safety of our school and is it do

062we feel that that now is the time to allocate that those resources? Uh that I think that's really what this comes down to because we can always say having more presence on our campuses is could be is is better. Um but again then also we have to look at we still but we still have adequate coverage if we don't that that's the thing. We're not we're not lowering Yeah. This isn't even adding more presence really. It's just Yeah. It's absentee. Exactly. keeping that that that the flow of of an actual SRD that's engaged with our campuses and so it's a familiar face there's a lot of value in all these things but again it's is can we allocate the resources to achieve this now or is it is this better served at at at a

063later date as uh chief had said that this has been brought up within discussion not necessarily with the board before so it's been something that has been workshopped uh with with district staff Um, so you know, again, is now the time, right? So it's the first time we're seeing it, but is now is now the time for us to do that. But that's all for us to decide ultimately when we meet on on the 27th. So maybe if you're going back and pulling data, you can look at maybe a last couple of years of how much, you know, leave vacation time and stuff like that we had throughout and say, okay, well, we can fill in that part and then say, okay, he's at least going to have to be there. I'm just going to

064throw a number. He's there 50 days he's had to fill it in for somewhere else. And then of those hours that are left, throw those into an overtime bucket that we had whatever hours reached that 57,000 to see if okay, he would have filled in the rest of the remainder of time in those spots. I mean, that's not going to be a science by any means, but the same amount from him and it would it would kind of exactly get an estimate. Give us give us a ballpark figure of what we're trying to because I think we take the actual hours. Yep. And then use the current multiplier and what the new rates will be and all that type stuff will give a little clearer picture. Yep. And not that this would make a huge

065difference, but I brought it up before, but and I spoke I know with Miss Patty before how much it cost us to have an SRD or you know here at our workshops. we can, you know, run the numbers and, you know, like as of like just not the board meetings but the workshops because I know in the past we used to not have that. So could that it won't offset it a lot but that could potentially help with cost if because otherwise that floater would be filling in a space here. So you know I'm just Yeah. and and and again everything's you know this is not uh this this is something that is we're comparing normally but with right now you know as this this district grows we're going to need um more SRDs to

066begin with. So, you know, this is this is one that could graduate into that uh role. And you know, all I'm saying is that there's a there's a constant movement in security for our for our schools in our in our district. And um so, but um but but to Mr. R's request about you know having some sort of a calculation at least gives us some measure of expectation that we can uh balance against as we're following this and say hey it's it's nowhere near what we estimated um or hey it's getting better just something to measure off of uh you know so it could go either way to be honest with you and really could show some other other points you know maybe and I'm just looking for a cost benefit too at the safety

067aspect I mean I I mean for this board member of the board members here I mean being an SRO I get it. I mean I I think that I know I see the value. I know the value um and what they bring to the table and but we're we're also at a at a time where we have to look at what's good from the dollars and cents just like the sheriff's office and everybody else has to do too. And again, I can't thank the sheriff's office enough and our partners that we have with the county and the city for what they do to support Flaggler schools. And it's extremely extremely important that we all recognize the the value that our other partners put into uh the safety of our students and I really appreciate that.

068Absolutely. and they go beyond their job because they connect with students having fun with them at dances um you know shoulder to talk to we really appreciate it it's been uh immensely valuable that's certainly what Sheriff Staley wants for the SRD is to be engaged and involved in those kind of processes he's always supported the idea too that in the in the future that we certainly could do programs that are similar to ADA um or a great program or something like I think that's important. And I'll tell you at the Beltare promotion, I I don't know if it was BPK or kindergarten, you know how many little ones they said, when I grow up, I want to be deputy Cooper, you know, and so that's a huge difference when you have a deputy that's there

069with that child, whether they're BPK or high school, and that's a different level. So, like what you guys do for us, like having a an SRD with our students, it's I mean it's priceless. Like I I'm like you think of that like multiple kids said that. Deputy Coopers, good job, Deputy Cooper. It was so cute. Thank you. So, uh board, are we um do we have enough information for today's discussion? Thank you, Chief. All right. So uh we will get back uh to our regular order here. Okay. So we are at uh finance consent. Good afternoon chairman for furry board members and superintendent Moore. I am here to answer any questions on finance consent. Okay. We are on um 7.01 uh board approval of purchases over orders over 10,000. Um, can I have the Yes,

070you may. All right. I want to talk about uh the purchase orders for uh the vehicles. And so if we can just kind of walk through uh the process of these vehicles and what they're replacing. Um is there a onetoone replacement for the vehicles that we're purchasing? Um and do and do we have a procedure that is in place of where we're um rotating vehicles out and what does that look like and where do we stand? Sure. I'll go ahead and start. I'm going to have uh Mr. San Philip Philipp will come up. Um just just to brief you on the process, we do have a rolling five-year white vehicle white fleet replacement plan. It was started by Dave Freeman years ago. And the reason was because we got to a point where we had

071so many Asian vehicles, it was costing so much more money to maintain and repair them instead of replacing them when they should. So David worked with a fleet on that and we've been using it for years. Um we are getting to the point where we're not having to overreplace and spend excessive money each year because of how many years we've been doing that. Um, I will say that there is a line item on the five-year capital plan every year for white fleet as there is buses. Last year, uh, we spent about $1 million. This year, it was lower by 200,000. It was about $800,000 just just shy of that. And that would include this number or is that Yes, that's that's for all the vehicles we plan to to replace for 2026. Um, I I

072will tell you too, and Marcus will will touch on this more, but all of these are replacement vehicles. I think the oldest one dates back to 2005. Do you want to add? 2004. Yeah. You want to talk about And the specifically when you look at like the F450, it was a multi-year plan for the F-450s. We had a dump truck that was aging and instead of replacing a dump truck that is just used for dump for one purpose going to F450s now you have a multi-use vehicle that they could use every day for towing for traveling and then also for the dump. And I will also mention typically these purchases are done throughout the year. You don't see them all at one time. However, we were in forms of a price increase as of July

0731st. So since we were able to get them the POS prior to June 30th, we are locked in to that price. Okay. And then can we talk a little bit about what we're utilizing some of these particular vehicles for potentially um to for some cost savings um as we replace I know 2004 vehicles that's replacing some of the cars as well. Correct. And so I guess what I'd like to see if I could um do we have the vehicles that we're replacing the years and the mileage and if I I will get that afterwards. Yes. Maintenance cost. You get that for you. Yeah. Okay. And and the use is um staff use um for um of course daytoday um things in order to um uh decrease uh reimbursement. We also staff travel outside of the

074county um to reduce our rental um costs through enterprise is what we um typically uh use as well as for like our students. And so for some of our smaller teams that or activities as well to be able to use that to transport students um to different events as well. Have we done an analysis recently to determine um you know if how much cost savings this is instead of paying mileage or enterprise rental cars and to determine if what is the quantity of the fleet vehicle that we should have on hand like how many are being checked out on a daily basis that kind of thing. Um I don't know that we have that analysis. Um we we definitely don't have it right here, but um we can definitely go back and look at our

075requests for um the vehicles. I I will tell you the vehicles that are even just here at the district office, they are definitely always in use and people are still um having to use their personal vehicles um often to travel along the c um the county. What uh Mr. Walker has also done with u Mr. Sarah over in uh fleet and transportation is um making and Mr. Freeman developing a a more comprehensive fleet request process to um ensure that vehicles are not just um I think outside of the vehicle that I use on a regular basis, everybody else's vehicle is really up for grabs. And so making sure that we have a process that um these vehicles can be in um use and not just sitting um in a parking lot for sure. Is there

076like a how this is probably a whole another set of questions for another segment of this workshop, but is there a a computerized way of checking out these vehicles? Is that correct? That's what we're we're working towards. Yes, I'm working towards a process. Just go to a box, open up a key, and then you go wherever you go. Yes. And we did we have started some of that um work. Um but that is the the intent for this year is to to make it a system that is very much like digitally led. right now it does have um Miss Clarice um from um in my department is in the loop of that as well as um in our fleet um that is doing a lot of that making sure that the vehicles can be used

077across the across the county on the heavier duty uh equipment that we have like an F450 that has multi-uses. Um I mean are these are we these type of vehicles are we using these like every day? Are these in full service? Yes, that's Yeah, that's why I move moved away from the like I said that one dump truck that was sitting so that way we're actually using the vehicles, putting miles on the vehicles, going through the warranty process, vehicles, getting the full use out of them. Got because I was just thinking, you know, if we have these and it's if we need to dump type thing, is there is it better just lease a a oneoff use for for a dump truck? You know what I mean? So, and that was looking at like an

078F350 to do the the hauling and the pulling or an F450 and F450 could dump and haul. So it kind of that's why the process but these vehicles are moving every day. Yes. Okay. That I just don't I think that's also part of the white fleet and we just don't want cars sitting idally um because if if that's the case we have too many and absolutely we have too many or um we don't have clear process in order for individuals to um use them. And I will say uh the team has done a really good job with that. That was um we went through some growing pains when we moved the um the vans. You see the vans across the community that um are wrapped in the um elementary um schools. They those vans used

079to be at the elementary for the majority of the time. We went through some growing pains where we said, "Listen, these vehicles aren't moving at the rate that we need to. We need to use these in a different way as well." And so um if you know anything about high school um activities, they will definitely put some miles on a on a vehicle. So we we do assess that and make adjustments to it if there is a vehicle, but those were the only ones that we ran into that with and those changes were made and now that's definitely not the case. Is there an added to fleet or is this all replacement uh especially when we're talking about the uh Explorers or SUVs? These are all replacements for for older vehicles or ones that were

080planned like um Marcus had mentioned that we couldn't do last year because of cost. So we pushed it to this year. So those other vehicles then we should get some return. I know it's not going to cover all the cost, but we're gonna we're going to be able to send those off to auction to get something done. They're either going to be auctioned off or sent to another department if there's still use in them. So some of them will will swap out like if teaching and learning is has to get rid of theirs. If a new one is rep, and this is just an example, if a new one is replacing an old one, that that old that old one that's not that old will go to teaching and learning, if that makes sense. So,

081it's a it's a variety, but for for the most part, they're all going to be auctioned. Okay? So, it's not a one for one. That's kind of what I was talking about. So, it wouldn't be a one for one. It would just be also we may need to see where there's a potential need as well. And I think that's where probably we need to look at probably moving forward is looking at the need what the process is having that process in place of we don't replace the vehicle. We're we're not adding additional fleet. Absolutely. But this is what we're potentially doing is that we're adding fleet. Uh and do we need to do that or not is the question that I want us to kind of talk about in the future. Okay. Um, I have

082a question on the It's on uh page two, Marcus. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate that. It's on um page two. While you're asking that, can I ask what the percentage was on that? I'm so sorry. What was the percentage of us ordering these prior to um I'll have to get that from Mr. Nero, please. Because I appreciate you all at proactive a step to that. Thank you. So the um the first line item there, the Belffor USA group. Yes. Um so now that's a deep cleaning of the restrooms and the front step and the front steps and the carpet. Is was that is that was that part of the the renovation of the building while we did that or was there was there an actual like event there that happened that we had to call? No,

083that was a part of um for the building. My my question is is just that my understanding of this company Belffor you know they are often uh known kind of like somebody that comes in and does work after a disaster or you know really bad situation but they come in fast they do the work and they fix it but they they tend to charge a lot more than potentially other contractors. I just wanted to know how so that is typically um how we use um Belffor. We're also using um them for um a project at Matanzis to get get into their locker room as we all know. We've been hearing about some work that needs to be done um there. Um and then sometimes it is when it is outside of the capacity of our

084staff that we will bring them in um to do it. But our our typical use for Belffor is um when we had the flood um at um Old Kings, they were the ones that came in. We can bring them in quick. They they do um all of that and other other things that that happens um for Yeah. I mean that that's a perfect use case in my mind for Belffor because they but they're not a common one that we use just to go in and clean them. This was for um to ensure that the um facility was properly cleaned and up to to standard to be able to bring up. So would this be something where there would where would there would have been a bid on it or was this just a a direct

085contract to hire them to do it? Due due to the cost you would only need uh three quotes for it. A bid is not required except uh for anything over $50,000. Okay. I would just going forward uh to consider some other contractors from a price perspective because historically companies like Belffor uh ServePro, all those things, they they charge more for a service and there may be uh they may have a different price point for things like this, right? I just have nothing to compare it against. So I I don't know. But just knowing the history of the company, they they advertise themselves like, you know, hey, if your if your school floods, we'll be there in five minutes. So, so, uh, maybe we might be able to find some some, uh, lower prices for the

086same service. Definitely not in the future. Um, that's all I have for the moment. Any others on the purchase orders? Any other questions or concern? Okay, hearing none, we'll move on. Thank you. And, uh, we are going to go to 7.02. 02. This is vendor payments. Um, any any questions on this one? I just have one quick question for MetaQuick. I'd ask about was that what was that? [Music] Well, maybe I will. I know they have they do the drug screening, but I didn't thought it just said urgent care. What caught my eye? For the um is it work comp maybe? It's for the DOT physical and drug screening. Okay. It wasn't a lot. It was just caught my eye was like uh urgent care and stuff like that was and now we'll be using

087marathon. Correct. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. All right. There isn't anything further. We'll move on. 7.03. Um this is approval of deletion of inventory. I see some cars on there yesterday. There was junk cannibalized. Nothing for sale on this list. Okay. Um 7.04 uh request approval for uh finance budget amendments. hearing none, we will uh move on. 7.05 uh approval of professional development travel. So this was everything that was this past year. This is everything from June from June from January through June that has been submitted. Um, as you recall, we had to stop paying out until we got the um, policy updated. So, you'll start to see a lot more next year. I mean, next month too for 2425. And then you will see this monthly as you previously had. Okay. Thank you.

088Okay. So, we'll move on to 7.06. This is for report approval of district financial statement. Um, I was just wondering if you could speak a little bit to um your evaluation of the release of the budget for this upcoming year. Uh, and I was just curious, you know, obviously we went through the whole um teacher pay contract, all of this, which doesn't really align when we get the the the new budgets. Is that something that we can align in the future or uh is that kind of out of our control? So, first question, um, uh, what are what's your analysis of the released budget? What should we be particularly paying attention to? Um, and, uh, with the freezes, is there I know you've sent an email about uh, how we're mitigating that. Anything we should

089be aware of regarding what needs immediate attention on those? Can I hit the second question first and then because the first question is going to take a little more time. Um a few years ago, maybe three um years, we have tried to get ahead of the um negotiation um sessions because um prior to that we would get very close to the Octo is it October 15th? Um I think that's the date. I I' I've forgotten the date because I'm like we're not getting anywhere near the date. whereas we have to have an agreement with our um teachers union around how we're going to um utilize those dollars. And we've had to my previous superintendent has had to go before the state board and they want to know why aren't why haven't you gotten these dollars

090in the hands of our teachers? And so we've gotten ahead of it in order to ensure we had enough time to be able to meet those deadlines and have an adequate um amount of time to be able to properly budget and um negotiate with our our unions. That's why that timeline is off that way. And um we take, you know, and use our projections of what we have. We work very closely um with our um our lobbyists in order to have a good anticipation of what it's going to look like so that we can stay um within budget. But you know, this year was one of those years that I think for our unions especially, you saw it happen in some other counties that it was be better for them to agree before the budget

091was released because once the budget is released, there may not have be as much as what was offered. And so we we've worked collaboratively with our unions in order to um just make sure that we can hit the August I mean October 1 deadline um and get the dollars in the hands of our employees as is the direction from the state. So that's why that timeline is off that way. And just to um add on to that since Superintendent Moore came on board that was the first year that we have ever closed. This year is the second year that we closed prior to June 30th. We used to close in September, January the following year. It it just created a lot of discord. People don't get their increases until halfway through the year. Um so

092we have worked really hard with our union to make sure that we meet that deadline of June 30th and don't go into the next fiscal year. So when the year starts, we are already done. Um to answer your question about um the budget, the key is student enrollment. As you know, um, as I talk about in our budget meetings, just because we may be considered a property rich county, we don't benefit from that because the property value revenue has an inverse relationship to the state funding. So, that is a big misconception for many people. Um, so student enrollment is really what we have to re rely on. Um, we've talked many times in cabinet about marketing our district getting back. We have a plan that um our superintendent is working on to um offer classes

093alakart style to try to get some homeschool kids back, scholarship uh kids back. The scholarships has taken over the state. Um the numbers of that has increased over the past couple years is just uh crazy and very scary for for for many school districts. Um, we will know that we will be using some of our fund balance to balance the budget. That was agreed upon during union um, conversations with the board and we will be using capital transfers as we always do to balance our budget um to and to try to continue to build a healthy fund balance and not have it decrease so much. I can tell you right now we're still in the middle of trying to balance it. Um, we are my staff is going through the departments right now. we have

094already cut 4% from all the departments um and um backed off on um on uh teachers where the enrollment was not there per the FTE projection that was done. We probably will most likely have to add going forward depending on where the numbers come in once we start school and get past our uh 10day count. The budget meeting is scheduled for the 22nd. I'll know a whole lot more in a week and then that will be presented to you all in two weeks after reviewing with our superintendent. And if I can add one piece to that that um over the next two weeks or so will become very frustrating for our schools is that we are staffing based on what we are forecasted for. Mhm. And so for them they may say well I have

095100 more students enrolled than what we have forecast. Well for us we have to wait for that 10 day in order to ensure that not just at your school but across the district we are are staffed appropriately. And so we're we're not going to be negligent and we are going to monitor the numbers. We're going to look at historical data. We're going to look at how many students with typically withdraw within the first um uh 10 days of of school, like all of those pieces. But over the next two weeks, our our schools will begin to um I'm sure they will begin reaching out to us. They're already putting in their staffing requests. So, we're not stopping them for putting in their request, but we're being very hesitant to hire based on just the numbers

096that we currently have because we know that there's there's shifts that happen. So, we are right now we are staffing based on what we are forecasted for by the state telling essentially saying the state says we're going to have this many students. So that's many how many students that we are staffing for not be on that and that's how much money that's how much money we're going to get and we appreciate the understanding of our parents guardians and students because it inevitably means uh there are going to be a lot of students whose when they are assigned a teacher that is not going to be their teacher um there may be shifts for their whole quarter there they're going to be shifts and so that is the benefit of common planning and common curriculum common

097uh lesson plans. So there's some continuity there but uh you know we have to do that to be financially responsible. we have to and this is um I would say the first time in um some time that we absolutely have to in order to ensure that we are not um beyond just overbudgeting but that we are um aligning our staff to what our numbers say. to your point um Miss Ruddy, we have had the luxury for uh for some time across the state with some of the additional federal dollars that have been provided through um uh co relief and all of those to have some things that were nice to have some really great things, but we're at that place that we have to really look and say what are the um mandatory things that

098we have and then from there what are some nice to have things that we can also um have because there are some things that we will continue to have, right? We know that we are committed to having um literacy coaches at our schools, right? We that's not an area where we're we're pulling back to say we're only going to give what within what the um the allocation allows for or those schools that are um performing at a certain level. So we we have to be able to identify what are those um things that are beyond mandatory that we continue to need in order to to provide a high level of um educational opportunities to our students. Thank you. But it's going to get tight and people are going to be very it's going to be

099uncomfortable and we know that we have professional learning with um all of our district staff members. Uh Thursday we will reiterate that. We will tell them we're in this together. We understand. Um but they are not going to want to hear that for sure. But we have to be responsive staff. Yeah. We'll have our administrators there, our and when I mean schoolbased as well as um department based as well, operational and academic. I think the communication piece again we talk about a lot, but I think we have to be again transparent about what the the climate that we're in so everyone understands that we're trying to make every effort. We don't want to hire people then say, "Well, sorry." You know, we don't let you go. That's that's not how we want to do business.

100And that is something that we try we we have been intentional. I'm not going to use the term try. That we've been very intentional to make sure we're having conversations with all of our district leaders around the impacts of the budget. This is not just a school thing. This is schools. These are departments. It's all of us. where we have to all be working together in order to make sure that we're being fiscally responsible. And so it's going to cause all of us to get, you know, squeeze in some in order to ensure that we are being fiscally responsible and that we are also leaving room um so that this board can continue to have priorities like making our our health insurance benefits an actual benefits, having um dollars that we can utilize in order

101to negotiate with our unions as far as salaries and those things. So all of those things we have to take into account. Now over the next I think our first budget um meeting is is it July 22nd? Yes, July 22nd. We'll um have that for the board and we'll have a lot of discussions around what we're doing in order to ensure that we're we're we we balance the budget and we're being responsible. had a community member reach out to say well why don't we enact a similar kind of buyback program uh where essentially you offer early retirement to uh those who are more seasoned and thus making more um on the salary scale uh that is not something that aligns with the state um a law not within our I don't know if you could

102speak a little bit to that to help educate the community around some of those limitations on what we can offer. Yeah. And I um I want to say it was the year going into it was the year of COVID that we offer the following and the following year we offer 2020 21. Yeah. Well, if you'll talk about that time and then I'll talk about what what it has been our So, we we did do that coming out of CO. Um and there were a lot of people that took took that um took took that early payout in 21. In 2021, we did it again. Um and there was several more that uh took it. I will tell you that we've offered this historically in the past a couple years in a row. The amounts and

103I'd have to dig through my data, but it wasn't a significant cost savings because what you're looking at now, some of the people who took it were not always the most seasoned ones. They weren't the ones who were who were making the most money. Um, the people who did take it also had very very large leave payouts, too. So, there's many different factors that go into it to determining whether it's really going to be um a cost savings. And doesn't our contribution towards FRS and some of those other things still linger even after they're under our employee or is that then they're released to the state and it just gets rolled into our general contribution? Yeah. Once once they retire or leave, our FRS contribution stops. Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah. And when we think

104about leave payout specifically, that is another piece that we budget into what's um historically or um looking at our data to say how many individuals do we anticipate um leaving the organization, what will that cost be? So all of those pieces. So it just hasn't been something that we've done since um those years um coming out of coming out of CO or going into CO, whichever way you want to look at it, um is not something that we've done. We also want we we value having seasoned educators on our our our um team. that is um evident if you look at our staffing our I mean our salary matrix um that it is beneficial to work for Flaggler schools as a seasoned educator and I I I love reading different articles and research and you

105know there's a lot that is being said about those of us who are in that 15 years or higher around being the last um role of those lifetime educators happening and so there's a lot of um knowledge that those individuals um bring to the organization and and we want to hold on to them um as much as possible. How many how many retirees do we actually have that have said you know want to come back to work? Do we have a lot of those within the district? I don't have that um that data. Do you know Bob? I can get that for you exact numbers. It's not um as far as our retirees is not on a significant well retired in in the Florida retirement system period. Um what we more likely have they did

106retire they retired from out of state. Okay. And then they come to us from out of state because they don't have to sit out the six months. Yeah. The only reason I'm saying that is is something for a potential uh legislative is if they are retired in a Florida retirement system and they come back to work, we're still having to pay their a portion into their retirement even though they're not even eligible to receive it. Can I just add that to our legislator? I was not surprised. Excuse me. Okay. Well, let's uh move on here. 7.07. Um uh this is just a uh wrap up that we do every year. Um the auditors look at this just to give them the final payroll um check number, direct deposit, accounts payable. Um, and that's just information

107purposes for the board and the auditors would just look like to see that it was on on here on here. Okay. All right. Well, I think that wraps us up here. So, thank you. Thank you very much. All right. So, academic services. Uh, we are going to go to 9.01 mental health plan and Miss Williams and Mr. Fali. Welcome. Good afternoon, Chairman Furry, School Board, Superintendent Moore. We are here before you today to give you the wrap up of the 2425 mental health plan, give you some of the data and the outcomes that that went along with it, as well as to share with you the new plan for the 2526 school year and the budget for that plan as well. So, this time I'm going to turn it over to our coordinator of counseling

108services, Miss Williams, to give you the uh last year review and the the year look forward. Yes. Good afternoon board um Chair Furry and Superintendent Moore. So um we are going to be intentional about our time this afternoon. I do want to go over just the final numbers that we typically bring to the board at the end of the school year in terms of how many students receive services and that kind of data as well as go over the information uh for the the new mental health plan. Um, so I always start with what our mental health plan looks like because it's a good reminder just like what we're talking about in general uh how the mental health plan is is uh communicated. So our mental health plan just like every other intervention service or

109or multi is a multi-tered system of supports which means that when we've identified that a student has a need we want to identify what level of need they need and then link them with the right level of care. So tier one services are services that all students have access to. Tier 2 services are are students who might be showing that they're having some mild dysfunction or or something's going on for them. They're having a difficult time regulating potentially their emotions. And our school counselors are providing tier 2 interventions for those students. Um our tier three services are services that are provided to students who have a mental health diagnosis of some time, some type generally. Um, and those services are being provided by our licensed clinicians on staff. And then tier three intensive services are

110services the tippy top of the triangle for a very small percentage of our students that require wraparound services. And those are services that they may not just be getting outpatient therapy or may not be just getting medication management, but they also may be working with other agencies in the community for things like targeted case management. and um they may be involved with DCF or DJJ and those kinds of agencies as well. So that's what our mental health plan generally looks like at each one of the tiers. Um so our data trend uh that I want to start with is our tier 2 data. Obviously tier one data are all of our students. So all of our students get access to that. So what I want to show you is this at this time is the

111numbers of all of our students who access tier 2 and tier three services for the school year. So you will see our data trend obviously this last school year at the bottom um significantly going up. The reason for that is is for multiple reasons. I think you we talked about this last year. We saw a significant jump in our data for tier 2. We're seeing another significant jump in our data for tier 2 for a couple of reasons. One, we are being very intentional with um supporting our staff and making sure that they're identifying and acknowledging all the work they're doing. They've been doing all this work where they're supporting students for emotional regulation and providing those counseling tier 2 services, but they weren't always probably documenting it in the right place. So, we've been

112very intentional about having them slow down and make sure that if they're providing a tier 2 mental health service that it's getting documented and getting recorded in the right place so that at the end of the year in September, we're able to report the numbers back to the state that yes, we are using all of the resources we have on campus to provide mental health services for our students. So, that's why you're seeing a significant jump in in this year's numbers. Additionally, I think what you'll see in the next slide um is you'll see our tier three number kind of taking a little bit of a dip and that's means the program's working properly, right? Not every student is going straight to a tier three service where they're being linked to a clinical service. All

113students don't need necessarily a clinical service. So, we're catching them early earlier and we're providing an intervention to help them avoid going to a tier three service. That's the goal at the end of the day. So we see a slight dip in our number this year for tier three for that reason as well. Tier three intensive data, same information. So our tier three intensives, we are seeing a slight dip in that number as well. These are students who are stu are generally engaged in like I said those wraparound services. So, the most common um program that we're using are our HBS CAT team or our community action team uh where they're getting just a lot of additional services um for the family as well. Any questions on those numbers? Just to reiterate what Miss Williams

114was saying, the increase in tier 2 and the decrease in tier three and three tier three intensive are are great numbers. it shows that we're intervening earlier before students get to a point of uh significant crisis. So, um it's encouraging to see those numbers trending down towards the tier 2 and out of the tier three or intensive range. So, what is that about eight or nine% of our student body? Is that in line with other typical numbers or are are we you know do we have a little bit of a crisis in this county or is that aligned on with averages? Yeah, I would definitely say that it aligns with averages across districts. Um, these are students who are identified and have consented to services. I just want to bring awareness and attention to that

115as well. Right. So, it doesn't necessarily mean that there are not other students in our in our um district who may need support in that way, but they're not being um identified through our mental health system. Maybe their parents are taking them outside of a referral for services through the school district. Um so the next slide down really focuses on kind of the trend over the past several years around identif identification for services and you can see of course in that trend has gone up as well. So the total students identified this past year is 1863 1851 were referred. That just means that those are the families who requested that we refer for a service. Those are the families that signed a consent that wanted to be referred to an agency. Um 1,400 of and

11674 of those actually received a service. And that bottom number at the at the in the black bar, the 229, those are students referrals who are still open at this point. So we don't know the final outcome of them as of right now. We follow every referral until it closes. So when those outcome measures come in, they'll populate in where they need to be. involuntary examination data. This is um specifically also known as our Baker Act trend. So what you'll see across several years at this point is the large green box is the Flaggler County um baker acts that happen. Um those are countywide. The blue bar is everybody who's under the age of 18 that unfortunately in Flaggler County has been baker acted in the past year. And then the gray bar are the

117numbers that are happening on campus. So, as you can see, if you look at 2019 to 2020, we're obviously up from that because that was the year where we missed a final quarter. And unfortunately, that's a lot of times when we see a larger number of our Baker Xes as the quarters um wrap up, but we are down from last year. Again, intervening early, deescalating. We are required according to statute to deescalate a student prior to baker acting a student. Is this number of incidences or number of students like are if a student is baker acted more than once are do they appear here twice? Great question. It's number of incidences. So it could be one student five times or Right. Right. I'd be interested to see that number for 25 26 though because it

118looks like we may see it like it was up then come down and now we're trending back up just overall in Flaggler County. It's kind of interesting. That's not probably the appropriate word but um and then the 18 um and younger that number has continuously going up. That's a little concerning. And all that data is available on the DCF website as well. Um, okay. So, moving forward, I we're going to we're going to transition into the mental health plan. So, prior to going into the mental health plan, do you want to speak to the So, yeah, we had some um strategic partners that we've been working with that have really supported uh the the needs of our students and we just would be remiss not to recognize them for all the work that they've done

119in conjunction with us and Advent Health has been a great partner um supporting through the Ed Foundation and and directly to the school district. So, we want to recognize them. The Ed Foundation, of course, who's been able to um fund positions for us through a grant for the past year. Um we definitely want to just recognize them as well. And then also um just recognizing the fact that we were able to re-up a a very large and important grant, the criminal criminal justice mental health substance abuse grant, which is a DJHJ diversion grant across five community agencies. Um it is a very large and powerful grant that that really supports our youth through the sheriff's office, the school district, um and and our other community partners. So we just want to recognize them and all

120the work that we're doing as a community to um to support our youth. Yeah. Don't know where we'd be without that. Right. Truly. Truly. I don't either. Seriously. Yeah. I don't either. Um, so moving on, we're going to talk about the the 2025 2026 mental health plan. So every year we're required to submit a mental health plan and it's always really tricky in terms of timing because they don't always release the plan for us to be able to complete the plan from DOE until late. And so our access to that is is uh is challenging from time to time. So I believe that we uploaded an update this afternoon with our budget. So, we were able to complete that piece um for your review. The entire budget or the entire plan is there for your

121review. It is 29 pages long. So, I'm not going to go through every item on it, but I am going to go over obviously the important parts parts that we need to know about. So, the mental health assistance allocation is is the funding source that we use to establish and expand school-based mental health care, train educators about mental health, and connect students for services. The mental health plan overview is broken down here into four, it's four separate parts. The first part is plans and asurances. Those asurances have been the same for several years with the exception of one that they've added this year. They add new asurances every time they change or add a statute that we have to be um in line with. And the one addition this year is that we are required

122to have a system in place to measure the program outcomes. We're waiting on a little bit of of clarification and language on that one. We already, as you know, track all of our program outcomes. So, we identify all of our referrals, whether or not they received a service um from each agency that we send them to. That's why we track them the entire time they're open. Um so, we already do that piece. If that's what they're looking for in terms of program outcomes, um we're good to go on that, but we are waiting for some more clarification language in that. Um the next piece down is district program implementation. And so that is your evidence-based practices. We have 16 evidence-based practices that we use across the district. Evidence-based practices are just practices that have been

123shown to show to have positive outcomes for students who engage in that particular um intervention. And then direct employment focuses on what our policies are around reducing the roles or excuse me reducing the ratios for students to have access to school-based mental health providers and policies and roles of those staff members who are providing those services. And it requires that we disclose all of ourus for all of our community- based agencies that we refer students to. Um and then the final piece is the projected budget which I will turn over to Mr. Finelli to read. Sure. So, we did, like Miss Williams just said, we just did get our budget numbers. Um, funding was flat this year. We did not see an increase. We actually saw a slight decrease in funding based off of our

124protected uh allocation. Uh, our funding is 90% absorbed in salaries. We're one of a few districts eight years ago that decided to to do the work of creating and building an in-house mental health team as a district. a lot of other districts um they just went out to a provider agency, gave them the allocation and said, you know, help support our students. We we felt that we could um better utilize those funds by hiring internal clinicians and building our own system. And that's what we've done. So, um we did work very strategically this year to um hold back some rollover funds because we knew there were some grants that were suns setting. So, because we did that, we have enough funding to cover um staff for this upcoming year. We're going to have to continue

125to monitor that in moving into years forward. Um also, imagine does their own mental health plan. So, they get a portion of the allocation that is dedicated to them, which you'll see in the budget as well, um for them to uh to support their own mental health needs on their campus. And um there is a a small portion of money that basically supports um our training needs in regards to state conferences. So you'll see that built into the budget as well and some funding for youth mental health first aid training uh moving into the new year to make sure that we're keeping our number of trained staff above the state required 80%. Is there any research or any data that shows like the the differences between because I feel like based off of what I've

126seen in the work that that you all do and present and then the interaction that we have when we have an issue with our students, how quick we respond and how well I think that we do. Um is this a a place for a model uh to some degree if you will and is it and going back to my original question is there like data to show the people who have you know basically third party it out compared to what we're doing here I mean what does that what does that look like great question and um to to Miss Williams and all the hard work that she's done she was actually asked by FL DOE this year to present we presented our plan at the state conference to all the other districts as a model

127plan. So very proud of that. A little emotional about it. Very proud of the work that we've done over the years, but yes, our our our plan has been recognized as a model plan by DOE. Nice. Anecdotally, I'll tell you a lot of the districts who did um pay out and just ask for community providers to come in and do, they have really moved to a model very similar to ours. Yeah. um because it's just especially in a community like our community, we don't always have access to uh enough providers all the time, so the flexibility isn't always there for us. Um so it made a big difference. When you say you you close out these referrals until they're closed out, um when you say we, is that a mix of like who who exactly

128on the team? Are those like the counselors, the like yourself? like how do you does it sound I mean it seems like you guys are really like working really closely with these students is it just like every single part of your team or so we have a very specific process that everybody has to follow for the mental health referral procedure mainly because obviously we need to make sure that we have consent for families or from families to provide those services. um we have one administrative person on the team uh who runs all the referrals through that software system where we can track them and we meet with ourou providers on a monthly basis just to to make sure that all of those updates are being provided to us in a timely fashion. Ourus require that

129our providers give us an update every month and so it is we do stay you know linked to them very closely to make sure that we are um getting those updates in and we have that one administrative person who does that. Yeah, good question. It's a very small we it sounds like like just from like every time you guys present and you know the things that we see you do it sounds like what we're doing obviously is working we can all you know everyone can always do better but you know it sounds like we never stop trying to do better and better. So, I'm just, you know, you know, obviously I can have more I think it's to um Miss Williams alluded to it of having very um specific writtenout procedures that we follow to

130ensure that we are moving through the process in order to ensure that our students are getting service in a timely manner. And so just making sure that we have those processes in place because there it it's not a large team that's doing the administrative side of it. We our investment is in people being in the field servicing our students. And so the we is an administrative assist administrative um employee that we have and Miss Williams and it's working like just you know we've talked about it already but you know thank you. you can see the terrible things that have happened, but it the process, you know, and we do have we we respond when there are things that happen within our school. Um, also for our families out in the community, and I don't think

131it's something that a lot of families know unless it's your family that we've had to go and send in support to. And it it doesn't matter when those things are happening. if it's during the summer, it's a holiday, it's a weekend, if there's a need um that we can meet for our students, um we do that. And I wanted to speak to that because I have heard firsthand from community members uh just recently and before, but just recently and they specifically mentioned both your names and how you uh went to their homes, helped them through uh our students were were dealing with with some a family issue that was uh and they said, "Wow, how much Flagger Schools cares about the families here and specifically mentioned both your names." So, I just want to personally

132thank you for that uh investment in our children's mental health. So, thank you. That goes on and on. I'm with you. It has happened multiple times. I've already shared that with you all on several families. But again, kudos to the work that you're doing and the how you're representing our school district, especially being able to to go and and show it off. So, I think that's and you don't give up. Like, you know, things get really tough and you guys just keep going. We're problem solvers. And I want to highlight the um Ed Foundation again with that because sometimes their needs are are resources that we can't provide on our side of um but um we often also partner with the Ed Foundation that can um come along and provide some services and some support

133to families with things that are fundamental things for them to be able to continue um um being able to have access to a quality of life. And so, um, we appreciate them and their partnership with us as well. A great partner. We rely on them a lot, especially for there's only so much we can do to help support the emotional process and then, you know, they still need to have food on the table and and things that that everybody needs, right? And so, they have been very they've been a great partner. All right. So, I think our ask at this at this point is just to know that um on July 22nd, we'll be coming before the board with a request to um sign the mental health plan for the 2526 school year so that

134it can be uploaded to the DOE website by August 1st, which is a deadline. Okay. Any other questions? Thank you. All right. Thank you both. Thank you. Thank you. Um the next two items are um presentations that we've um given at the last meeting. So, we will bring Miss Kirkland forward to answer any additional questions that you have from her her last presentation and then we'll do the same thing for for our comprehensive uh reading plan, evidence-based reading plan. Good afternoon, Chair Furry board. Um on the on June 24th, the Flagler Technical College fee schedule for the school year was presented to you and workshopped. So I'm here to answer any questions that you might have in between that time and now. No changes from from that presentation. Any questions from me? All right. I

135do want to just say I've had a great opportunity to be able to again taunt uh Flagger Technical College when I was in Washington a few weeks ago and we were talking specifically about truck driving schools and you know that's dear to my heart and um and they there may be some other things coming forward with with that what that looks like but there was some interest in the work that you're doing there. So stay tuned is my point. Oh wow. And uh also uh you know sent some stuff about some grants to you as well. I know you're looking into that, but hopefully we'll be able to help offset some of the work that that your folks are doing. And again this morning, this is probably not the time if this time for this

136or not, but we saw some of the staff that I know they're taking part of what you're presenting here with fees and so forth. And they were doing a good job with some of the little ones today going swimming so while we were there. Kudos to them for taking at that camp. So I I appreciate all like everything. Two bus loads. Two bus loads of I know they're going back Thursday. There's an astronaut coming or you know. So great job. Yeah. So and very reasonable fee structure across the board. It's you know I don't I can't think of any um you know group institution that can put on the quality and uh variety uh that you at that cost I I had to look twice and I even double checked like this is and it's

137we're we're not at the max we're right in the middle too right so um very good excellent I you I'll go back to this a third time I think I mentioned it today but how do we communicate that piece out to to get a lot of additional people in here because you're providing a lot of different things at low cost that would be beneficial to different segments of the community. So, there's more. I see her writing down there, but well, they have they give facials um back. Yeah. I mean, they very affordable. Then we should do a a board PSA and we'll all go there and get some sort of service or engage. That would be fun to support a friend's daughter who was in the program. I'll get a pedicure. I I used to

138participate in some Zumba and I also did a st at the summer school uh as when I was a teacher. Uh I was pregnant so I was not as fast on my feet. It was exhausting but um yeah it was fun. Everything is very activity based with the kids. We took them to Daytona 500 that year. Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned the Zumba because this morning we talked a little bit about that. It's time to bring some of those wellness classes that we used to have years ago. Bring them back. So, if you, you know, if you're talented in some type of wellness skill, you reach out to, uh, Renee and Mr. Oulette. Um, because I think we got a perfect space to be able to offer some of those wellness. And I heard that,

139um, Mr. Oulette's going to teach the yoga. I heard that he volunteered. He volunteered to do yoga. So, I saw that on. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Great job. And the same for our lovely ladies that are going to come and talk about the comprehensive evidence space. [Music] Hello my voice. We had a rowdy recess today celebrating kids who passed summer school today. So we have two more days. So some students are not done yet, but this is rowdy recess. Um we brought Mr. Reynolds with us to answer the data that we had questions about last time and then we'll take questions on the survey. Yeah. So, one of the pieces that you were looking for was uh capacity for VPK. Mhm. Um and this isn't like as of today, but as of like a

140week or so ago, we had about 33 spots across the district open. Um at Old Kings, Ramfire, and Benell, the other schools were full, but there wasn't anyone on the waiting list as of a couple weeks ago. Um, and as we keep getting more students on our waiting list, we are working with schools to hopefully identify more space to open up more rooms. Um, we just opened up a room in Oaks because they had a large weight list. Are the waiting lists school specific or are they districtwide? They are school specific, but I believe at at some point they open it up and they say, "We see you're on this waiting list. We have availability at this school." And we move them up. Yes, that is exactly what happens. We will offer that um they

141can stay on the wait list waiting list if they would like, but we offer them a spot in one of the open um schools. Do we have an idea on how that uh enrollment and weight list is comparing to uh the private uh groups offering DBK? Um I did have that information. U Dr. Dr. Brandon, do you remember we I just met with um DJ Lebo um from um early learning uh coalition and she gave the number of um students that we had last year on some form of weight but I do not have it. We can we can ask that. Um, what we do know is over the last two years we have opened up additional space because there were individuals that weren't able to get spots within the community. And so we're being

142very mindful of that. We don't want to appear to be the big district that's coming in and swooping up, you know, all of the VPK students um because we do have our private providers that we are in partnership with. But we will open classes as we are able to fill those classes. And so these 30 plus spots we will definitely get those um all of them will be will be full by the end and we will um likely need to look at and begin to discuss um the need to open additional class. Thank you. Um the other piece of data was about how students who attend VPK with Flaggler and how they u perform in future years and the difference between students who go to our VPK and who don't. And we um did some

143digging and we found for this year's results for our kindergarten students that students who attended Flaggler PreK had a 9% higher median uh percentage skill score and a 6% higher pass rate than students who did not attend Flaggler BPK. Uh and then it continues on in grade 1, grade two, and even grade three. the higher pass rate was 3% higher than students who didn't go to Flaggler BPK and preK or sorry and kindergarten um than students who did not. Those are some that's great that we have factual measurements there. I mean that's again something that we can tote that were the best choice for BPK that out there in kindergarten as Exactly. and keep going. Okay. So, what questions can we answer about the reading plan? Any other questions? All right. Good job. Well, thank

144you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Good to see you. Appreciate the update on those figures there. Okay. So, that leaves us now to VPK schedule 9.04. That's me. Mr. Reeves is on vacation. Okay. So, I'm filling in for him. Did they present this last time? This is just Okay. Uh, so this is just the fee schedule for VPK. And you kind of, if you scroll down to the bottom is really where the numbers are. It is $70 per week. And if there's ever a week that has less school days, it is prrated for that. For wraparound specifically, yes, this is for wraparound. Was there any increases or I am not sure but I can get back to you with that. Don't have last year's and there's still the late fee dollar per

145minute. So you pick up the kids when you got to leave work. And um again kind of comparing to what's out there privately uh you know how does that wrap around because we know the state uh supplements that program but that seems very very economical. So I'm just wondering um have we analyzed should we be charging a little bit more because uh the private offerings are so much higher just so that we can you know stay afloat a little bit better. I am we will have that we will provide that to you when we bring this back before you okay of of what has been and what data we can pull on what the wraparound cost is for other programs. see how we are. Any other questions on this one? Okay. So, then we'll move

146on. And so, now we are at uh student travel consent. Yes. So, we have a chorus trip from FPC and a course trip from Matanzis. Matanis is going to the Lincoln Center with their course group. And then we have a couple FFA trips, one to the Sunb Belt A Expo and one to the chapter president's conference. Any questions on that? I never had these cool field trips in my school. Now you get to approve them for other cases. We can always go on them anyway. Thank you, man. That was exposed. Great. I know. When the um steel um band were when they were going to Hawaii, I I said to them, you invited me to chaperon in Tampa, not chaperone in Hawaii. There is something wrong with that. Or in Key West. Yes. A lot

147of great experiences for our students. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. See, so now we are at uh human resources um 11.01 student teacher affiliation agreement. This is Mr. Robertson affiliation agreement with University of Central Florida. Okay. Good afternoon. Welcome. Okay. Um well, we um we've reviewed the agreement and as I stated the last time I was up here, um our attorney made quite a few corrections to it. Um we sent it to UCF. Um they received it a little over a month ago. Um and they have not um return that agreement for our approval. Um however um we have been actively reaching out to them uh and trying to figure out what the uh what the delay is. Um they've just told us that they are um reviewing it. So is this

148is here as a placeholder and if we don't get that we'll pull it from you. Yes. And um um if it's not if we do not have it when we go live then we will pull it. If we have enough time that we can um put it on both we will consider that. But if we don't have it within that time frame then it will not be for your um approval until August. And I I do know they've got a student they wanted to place with us which is why they were pushing us. They did they do um so they've been pushing us to get it done. However, um we did make a large number of changes to the agreement and I think that's probably what's delaying right the approval of it because they've got

149to review it all. I think the one attached it might be missing pages in here. Uh because it uh just to note on the future obviously it is it's in good hands but you know uh when it comes up when the final item yes quite a few things were put on there. Um I do think that uh Mr. Smith is doing a good job of reviewing these. We've had several come in um that will be putting forth in the next probably the next month or so. Um particular I know we've got one from West Florida that we sent off. Um but what we've been doing since we've had Mr. Smith uh we've been reviewing them very diligently and having him kind of make all the corrections to him to ensure that we are not putting

150ourselves in a precarious situation. And then we they bring it to me after Mr. Smith gets it. I'm sorry. He makes the revisions, I send it back to them. Then what they will do is they'll um they'll make the changes, bring it back, uh then we'll look at it again. And so we've developed a a better process of vetting them since Mr. Smith has been here. So that's taken us a little bit longer to get them ready for board approval. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you. So 11.02 02 request uh board approval of personnel items. Mr. Olette, superintendent, chair board. Um this is a kind of sparse on personnel um uh action report. There will be uh additional forthcoming as we are now in the midst of hiring season and onboarding and um there

151will be several additions as we your time to shine right. Yeah, it is our busy season. Quick question. Um uh the first item Ephine Gutierrez, it says effective date is in 2023. Oh, that's um and it says the new replacement is Mr. Kron. Am I reading that right? because I thought Mr. Well, he is it new or a replacement? He is a replacement. He is replacing Mr. Kron and I wonder so the appointment is Mr. I see and so uh he had an original hire date of 2023 um and he left the organization returned. So um we need to change that's why the 2023 date was in there. That's an error from migrating over from Skyward. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Any other questions? All right. Thank you. Um we're going to take a a five minute

152um recess. Okay. the meeting. Uh, welcome. We're on agenda item 16.01, code of student conduct. We have Mr. Glasco. Mr. Finelli. Good evening. Chairman Furry, school board superintendent Moore. I come before you this evening with Mr. Glasow. We are in the home stretch of revisions to student code of conduct. So, he's going to go over just uh final updates and then and answer any questions you may have uh before July 22nd vote. All right, Mr. Glas. Good afternoon, board. Good afternoon, Superintendent Moore. Uh I'd just like to So, I gave you a clean version and an edited version on board docs for your review. This presentation is all of the revisions al together. We're not going to review 39 pages today. We are going to take a look at two though. So, Nia, could you

153go to page 14? And this was a revision to the revision. So, these documents are shared out with all stakeholders to include um within our district. So, um some of the feedback that was given is that when certain law violations or activities occur off-campus, it may be addressed in accordance with our school uh district policy and state statute. It was much longer before and and had a whole bunch there. And the conversation was is that we were boxing ourselves in. So when things occur off campus, it's not necessarily a discipline action that could happen. It could be mental health support. It could be behavior contracts. It could be something other than punitive consequence. So we didn't just want to say that we're going to consequence. We want to say that we're going to follow our

154procedures. So that would be the one change that's here on this one. Um and then Niad, if you could go all the way down to page 38. So on this one, the only thing that was added and it was uh feedback that uh Dr. O'Brien had collected at one point and it's just directing our families where to find the u medic uh medication forms and how to be able to have their uh prescription and non-prescription medication given. So we needed to collect that. Other than that, that will wrap up the 2526 school year's code of conduct revisions. Does the team have any questions for me? All right. Good work. Well done. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So, we've already done uh 1701, so we're going to move to human resource services 18.01, school choice

155specialist, job description. Good evening, board superintendent Moore. Um, we brought this to you at the information session. So, as school choice specialist, this would be um a new job description, but a current allocation already uh would be dedicated to this. So, it's not a um it's not a new al staffing allocation needed. Do you have any questions? I'm sorry. Can you clarify that for me? And uh I apologize as I know I wasn't there at that last meeting due ination. So when you say that this is not a new staffing allocation, we have a person on staff is what you're saying or are you just trans are you removing one title and replacing it with this? Yeah, we have a current vacancy in um it's called a student engagement specialist position um which is more

156more of a a clerical position as kind of like a homeschool liaison. Okay. And so what we're uh trying to do is replace that allocation with a school choice specialist. So, are we retiring that role uh or is it you're putting on hold and if in the future we have budget funds for that? It would sunset right now and this rule would uh replace it. Okay. And um so the other rule being more clerical, this salary lane uh says POW 4. What's the difference there? This is a professional lane. I believe the salary difference starts around $25,000 different higher would be an increase. Yes. And just I know with previous meetings I know this was already allocated the budget it's already budgeted for was the additional cost that was budgeted for as well for when

157you did the budget for just for this meal. Yes. Okay. And um this position has um it was filled and it was vacant. So it has sat vacant for some some time. Um and now we do believe that this position better represents what that that um individual will be doing in the role this job description does. I I I my hope is that this this position actually has a real return on investment. you know, I mean, from a monetary standpoint, you know, um, you know, we we can't put that necessarily that benchmark on all of our positions obviously because, uh, there's different outcome expectations, but this one here, my hopes is that, you know, we'll be able to balance and recapture some of those choice dollars. um whether it's through the hybrid or whether it's

158through full return to school or whatever the option the parent wants but I I just think it it it's a that parents just need to get the right information to make the right choices right so well in other districts I mentioned are they have this similar role um so it's I think you know just what I talked about last time so I just know there have been a lot of questions but it sounds like it was already budgeted but um yeah thanks Okay. So, to be clear, the your question, Miss uh Ramirez, is that the $25,000 extra has been budgeted and that's you you're confirming that. Okay. Um and so to clarify because I I do want to make sure that this role doesn't become like um uh basically this is a liaison to tell

159me how to get out of the school system, right? So, what is the goal? What does this look like in application? Is it that hey when when people are submitting requests to potentially leave or change this role would consult with those individuals or so is it or is it trying to be even more proactive than that? What what's the vision here? So, right now, um, we we don't have with with this the school choice landscape changing, we don't have a dedicated contact at our district that is working to help families and all of us kind of navigate these non-traditional pathways. So, when a call comes in, we're we're fielding it and we have we have been learning the new information as we go and working with our schools to get these students enrolled in courses.

160So, um, this person would really be responsible for keep keeping up to date on all of that, the changing legislation, the, um, the intricacies or what we can and can't do with the scholarship spending, um, and and and really being that point of contact that's going to help families and students navigate the range of options that they have. And we, you know, along al along with it, we are, you know, in the midst of creating a communication and marketing campaign. And so that person would really be carrying that out for the district. And um a couple um more um specific things um as well. Right now, when someone says that they're going to be leaving the the school district to go to homeschool, we we say thank you and um that's it, right? But this

161person will be there to partner with those families to provide them with information to be really a liaison um that they can come to and get information. One of the things that we get um some some complaints about from families who want to to do some mixtures of options is they're getting conflicting information because we don't have those that identified person. And so this person will be um an identified person that our families will be able to go to and be able to get the information that they need. And then this person will work with our schools in order to ensure that the process will is going to be a smooth process. Being proactive. I see this person out in the community alongside me talking about the options of um that we offer within Flagler

162schools. meeting with our our private providers, meeting with our homeschool co-ops, meeting with our um our families and our other partners around what are the options and what is what does it look like in order for them to be able to come and be a part of what we're doing while also also um maybe choosing something else or how to transition from one to the other. It's extremely complex when a student is coming as what we call non-traditional to ensure that we're following the right we are providing them with the right information to put them on the right track based on the goals that those families have. So when it talks about our guiding principles um commitment to individual needs the purpose of those scholarships is to individualize um the experience for the student. And

163so this person will be there working with those families in order to make sure that we're understanding what their end goal is so that we can help to provide them with um the the appropriate options that we have within the school district that they can take it take advantage of. So instead of losing all of the student per se, then we get a portion of that student back potentially with some of this help of them saying, "Oh, well, you can take this class or this class or be a part of this I just had a parent this um I was um right after the parade I was walking and the parent said I reached out to one of the um middle schools about doing a hybrid and they told me that I couldn't couldn't do

164that and I was like no you absolutely can but you know is the p did does the person that they're speaking with know exactly what the information was versus like who's that point of contact for to be able to provide the um truth the accurate for information of what the options are. So, a couple of things there. I think the first person that most parents are going to go to is a guidance counselor. Um, they need to be equipped with information which absolutely um we have this information can be distributed down. It can be just like you you do with teachers and their their curriculum. uh what I don't want this to turn into is that we are fronting uh a position that is essentially the liaison for uh you know our concierge for all

165of the options uh that essentially if there's a homeschool option out there they should fund their their concierge. Um I would like to see this wrapped around some performance metrics. For example, after two years, if we don't see an x number uh of return or maintenance of students lost, then we re-evaluate this position because otherwise this is essentially a go-to person to advertise, well, what are the ways that I can uh exit or reduce potentially um um my involvement with Flagler schools. Again, that's an assumption, but if we center some performance metrics around this for us to determine if this was a smart move to reflect on later, that um uh I think is important. Absolutely. I would add so I guess it's just a matter of perspective and how you look at it. I

166see it as an opportunity to show them on ways they can stay with Flaggler schools, not to leave. I it is an it is a a a place where um rather than just a a parent just saying okay I'm just going to go with this and take my voucher and I'll figure it out on my own and then realize later oh you know I I didn't realize I could have done that hybrid if that if that was it's almost like an an exit interview if a parent's already meeting with us at this point they've made up their mind that they're either doing this or they're exploring the idea of it so that gives us an opportunity to re-educate the parent on exactly what we offer and the value of either staying in or doing that

167hybrid. Um I don't know necessarily I mean just by the virtue of the employment I would hope that this person's not an advocate for just sending people away but we just want people to have the right information so they can make the best decision. I mean that that's the lens that I see this position doing. And also I think this position should also be uh uh advertised to the community because we also have an issue of parents that are coming to the district but they're never coming they're not coming here first, right? They're going straight in to something else. So that if we could be almost like you know you have the it's almost like the tourist bureau in in in a community, right? where where do you go? Right? This could be that that

168little grand central for new families coming in that want to see what what the I'm not saying we're going to we're going to give out brochures for everybody every other place around town, but at least we can advocate for the value that we offer. So, right, and that's my my hope as well. And so putting metrics around a particular role that we're resurrecting and contributing an extra $25,000 to um per year, it helps us to later evaluate if this was the right move, if it moved the needle in those directions or did it not. Right? And um because honestly I'm not an advocate right now of adding additional administrative rules when our student population is decreasing. Right? We shouldn't have additional administrative roles when our total population is decreasing and or our teacher uh roles

169are decreasing. So um if this is an investment role then it should come with uh a monitoring of the health of that investment. I I we agree with that and we have um discussed um um that and I completely um agree with you and it is an investment in more ways than the students coming back to us but to ensure that we h are um accurately reporting the students that we are servicing and how we are servicing them and there are very different requirements ments for the different types of students that we are servicing. And prior to that, prior to this position, that has been the responsibility of of of someone at in our opinion that was not in the right category of employees that should be um doing that that um type of work.

170So, it's definitely an investment to ensure that we are properly um reporting our students. So we're getting from the state and or from the families the funding that we should be getting in order to service based on the students that we're servicing. Right? We have a hundred last year we had 179 students that we reported as service that we were servicing them but those students were also on the list to get a a scholarship. Well, those 179 students, the state says to us, "No, you got to you got to get your money from over here." And so, this person will be on the front end of that as well. We've added to our registration a question that says, "Do you receive a form of scholarship?" That person will then be able to work directly with

171that family to identify what scholarship do you have? What services are you being are you going to be taking advantage of? And this is the process for you to um pay for those services that you're you're getting. So the return on investment is not just about attracting students back into our c our district because that's one part of it, but it's also to accurately report and capture the students that we're already servicing that we may not have been getting the funding for that we should be. We need three people to actually just come into the district and it'll it'll pay for itself. I mean to be honest we have registars we have uh MIS people who all relate to those roles as well um um Mr. Bar so to I I think we don't want

172to what I don't want there to be is a false picture that we don't have some systems or personnel in place related to the maintenance and reporting of student enrollment. Oh, that that is not what I am saying at all. But I will tell you that this is an area that um we we need to make an investment and to ensure that we are properly capturing our students and the the way that we are servicing them. And it it comes multiple ways that we go about doing that. I don't know if we do this yet, but like families that are not in the public school, I I'd like to see this person reaching out and saying, "Hey, I see you have someone going into high school. Come see what we have to offer. Come to

173this open house." Um, yeah, we should have school choice day and come in like like, you know, just again, this is what we're offering. So, so what I what I see in our families coming in is a lot of times families come in from out of state and they go right to home education and they come in and say, "Hey, I want to home educate my child." And they don't even know that we provide all these options. A lot of times they say, "I want to home educate and I'm going to do it virtually through FOBS." Not even realizing that we have an in district virtual program that we could offer them. So it it's really instead of just having somebody that's in a managerial role to do the paperwork, this person will say, "Hey,

174welcome to Flaggler County Schools. We understand that you're interested in home education. Are you interested in a virtual model? Do you know that Flaggler County Schools offers a virtual in district virtual program that will provide you a device that will provide you with um additional support from local teachers?" So there's a lot of things that um we're just not sharing with families and families don't know about that this person would be a liaison to all of the options that are available to them. And I think we we often think about those going into home education, but when we look at students that are leaving imagine um after 8th grade, how what what is our engagement with those families? students that are leaving Christ the King after 8th grade. What is our engagement with those families?

175I will tell you until last this year we just left out those families. We hoped that they they came to us. There was not a system of us communicating with those families directly and especially those ones coming out. I imagine making it very seamless for them to be able to be a part of Flaggler schools. Um but we cannot peacemail it is what I would say is that we are we we're beyond peacemeal milling it. It has to be um in an area where this is a focus that someone is having um to to do this intentional work around attracting um students and keeping students within our um district. I'll tell you, I've personally done this work in student services with families that have come in and Miss Susan, our department secretary, will get me

176and say, "Can you help this family? They don't know what to do." And then we talk about everything, credits and options and choice and schools and programs of study. if you want a a a diploma from us or if you're not you don't want a diploma from us like it it all is very specific of what around the process that you must take. Um, and 99% of the time we have an option for them in district. And in the shadow of a $2.5 million short, you know, shortfall because of enrollment, I think this is a pretty safe number to to invest to try and recapture some of that number. And would this person um be able to assist families with uh and I won't go into a lot of detail, but when I was in

177all of my budget training, they I mean this was mind-blowing and I talked to Miss Moore about this. There were over 22,000 students. Oh, yeah. And there's probably more. So, basically, think of that um in the state. So here just in Flaggler thousands where that one student just I'm going to say $11,000 was provide should have been provided to Belter Elementary for that student because they were a student in Belair but that $11,000 stayed in a bucket and so now that teacher those resources that student should have got but it there was just you know that's it happened and it's continuing to happen. So would this individual like I'm like really upset right now. Would this individual be able to do that and assist these families? So, they're filling out the documentation correctly because that

178could be thousands and thousands of dollars that we should have received and it can it's going to continue to happen if we don't have someone like showing them the way. So, that I should have asked that last time, but if that that right there is absolutely I mean that would pay what was the salary? My understanding is that it start it starts at um 68,000 I believe. Okay. So at 68,000 I mean that's basically potentially seven or eight new enrollments brings in the the equivalent. Not not that you know that that money's spent. But I'm just saying it doesn't take much to to to show the value uh prove the value of this position. um if we if we see those enrollments um but I do like the data collection and then just seeing but

179I mean just right there the numbers the math doesn't lie and the math we didn't get so much money and it's still not coming to us ever and it's just going to continue to happen if parents aren't able to fill out the paperwork the right way um even it could help with just that's just one little piece um what Miss Ramirez is referring to though is isn't that a statewide wide accounting and and tracking issue. Not necessarily something we did not that is nothing we we did not do anything wrong. So how are how are we saying this person would solve? We we get that list of those student. We just had to break it up and call these families and because the state Yes. We divided it up among people across the district and

180started calling these families and saying, "Hey, but this was I mean this was late. That's why now for our annual our annual documents. We're asking that question on the front end, right? So that we can we can say to the family because some of the families, you know, they thought we were committing fraud against them because we had reported them to to the state as we've provided the service to your child. And so we are we're we're chasing 179 students. This is how you fill out the form. Click this button, not this one, because if you click this one, what will happen? Your school will not get that $12,000 even though your your student is still there. So, just, you know, little things like that. Um, that was mind-blowing. Yes. Okay. So, that would be

181a really big request for me if I don't I don't know if it's specifically in there, but being helpful. I think that falls under liaison of assistance. Okay. So, if we're done talking about that, we'll move on. All right. Thank you. So, we've got uh 19.01. That's just an FYI that um at your July 22nd meeting, you will need to identify an FSBA representative and an alternate. Okay. Very good. Thank you for that. And that leads us to public comment. Do we have anybody for public comment today? We do not. Okay. Okay, we'll close public comment and uh we'll move on to board member requests. Are there any board member requests today? Just tiny um I just don't want us to forget about the like health and wellness like you know because when school starts

182in octo or August um just to make sure faculty staff district you know just keeping up with the wellness um that was a request from before but whatever budget we have. Yes. And um that team is working with um the insurance team about the wellness initiatives and all of that. They are doing that, but we will bring them forward to give an update on where we are. We are also pulling the data for you so that you can see the breakdown of the selection of um plans for um the open enrollment season that we just came out of. So we will bring be bringing that before you as well as bringing you an update on um the fleet trust. Uh we spoke with them um today. Um they are still working to bring the data

183um to us around what that benefit would be if we were to join the the trust. They were not fleet when they came before us. Remember they were the ones that were going before fast. They're now fleet. And so we will be bringing that before you as well for that. Um I believe that I might have brought these up in previous items. Just reiterating um having a set of protocols that are clear and uh across the district and are transparent to parents regarding uh what the uh process is if uh classrooms are not fully staffed. So for example, is it our process that okay if you do not have a certified teacher or a certified substitute then uh the we will put the student in an online program like what are those automatic uh decisions

184uh or placements uh that we can say are going to be uh something scalable and put parents minds at ease. come this fall if there are uh unfilled vacancies especially in those critical shortage areas. Um the next item is uh we are very involved and understand the five-year plan process as it rolls for improvements on different campuses. I would love to have uh a presentation where uh perhaps the last 10 years there is uh data sharing around what improvements and what um five-year plan uh commitments have been completed and that spend across the different campuses. Uh as well as how items make it onto that five-year plan, right? What does that process look I think look like? I think that would be beneficial especially for some community members who are looking at bottom line numbers

185and wondering why why is this school have x amount of dollars versus this school x amount of dollars uh related to uh improvements. Thank you. Your plan is on for the first meeting in August the information on we'll make sure that we can add the additional pieces. Yeah. Okay. Nothing further for me. Okay. So, we uh move on to um closing comments to say today. Yeah. So, the wellness center ribbon cutting today was amazing. So, that's why I think just getting all the well health and wellness for all faculty is great. Mrs. Anderson um Miss Brandy Anderson will be having hopefully we'll see if she's the big winner next week. So, for everyone listening, cross your fingers. She worked really hard and we're so proud of her. And uh just something little um a parent

186gave permission. So we have a student in Matanis that had a boating accident like family trip in Mississippi um just you know sending prayers. So he's a football player ace um academic scholar um but pretty freak accident um in Mississippi. They're still there. But just sending prayers to our Matanis athlete. Um you know so the parent gave permission and and if you'll get with Mr. Finelli afterward so we can um and it just happened you know and I know we see a lot of boating accidents but you know and it's it's our own and uh we'll reach out to see what we can do to support the family. But we're thinking of you and um but yes so thank you everyone. Great great job. Uh yeah just um uh looking forward to the start of

187a new school year. I'm excited about a lot of the outside the box uh solutions and preparations that are happening for this school year. Um and uh I I I'm I'm in heartened by the efforts and uh the strategy that's going around uh to keep our schools in tip-top shape. as well as again want to shout out everybody for their growth uh this past year on the state assessment scores. Um and um I think that this is the start of an upward trajectory that uh is going to um yield even higher uh results in the next few years. So I'm very excited to be a part of that. Thank you. I'll echo that Miss Ready for sure, but I won't steal Mrs. uh Morris thunder about talking about that, but I am done such a

188great job and I've been saying this, we all have, that we're heading in that direction of of just being the premier uh learning institution, not only for this county, but I think in in the state, we want to be a nation. So, I appreciate our leader uh that we have who is guiding this with the help that with everyone in this room. It takes all of us and we're going through some difficult times. Um, but your resiliency that you're showing right now is it is so admirable and I really appreciate and it's it's uh it's seen in this community. Um, and I so I just look forward to what the future looks like um as we move into next next year as we look at grades and what that looks like. And um so anyways,

189I just really appreciate the work that we're doing. We have a lot of work to do. I mean to to continue to be better and better and better and better. It's just a it's that's a neverending ending cycle. Um again just the the wellness center today I think Mr. Bob's already going and his team and just want to recognize uh Mr. Walker for his work. And people were talking to us as we were talking today about how attentive he is and said that they've worked with multiple school districts in the past, but this by far has been one of the best school districts that they've worked with in being able to uh put a project together. So that uh it does not go unnoticed. So I'll leave it at that and give my time back.

190Thank you, sir. Um, yeah, I I am very proud of everybody and the hard work to increase um, you know, the grades that that uh, we've been working so hard for. Um, it hurts a little to be shy, two points, especially being here for three years now. But, but I know that that our team works very hard and that you all lead with integrity and yeah, we'll get there. Um, and also just extend my thoughts and prayers to Texas. It's just been so heartbreaking to watch. So praying for them. Yeah, I echo this many of the comments that you all made and um and um when it comes to um our our school grades and um we we have clearly been moving it forward and you know this is a when this is a big

191ship to turn around and but it it we we've got that bow just about there. Right. And I I agree with Mr. bars that we have a great captain and I know we're going to get there and I'll I'll yield the rest of my time. Um I actually want to I want to say kudos to our team on the parade. Um I think it was Miss Ruddy who said and Miss Ruddy and Miss uh Miss Dr. Conklin was another. But we were walking in one of the parades and Miss Ruddy said, "I think we could pull out a float." And we said, "We're going to do it. We're going to do the float." And so I just want to say kudos to the team. Um it was a great um Fourth of July parade. Our

192team did a great job developing and building the float out and that was a lot of um fun. I want to um talk a little bit about school grades. Um you know I've had a lot of people asking me like Laka, what are your thoughts about school grades? And last night I I am hardest on myself. And so I want for our performance to be reflective of the hard work that I believe that our our educators across this organization are put together. And so my reflection last night um my question was um can you make progress and the results still be the same? Right? Because when we look at those two points, you know, Mr. Bar sent me a message. You're like so close. so close and I had to dig in and say what

193does that look like you know because what I don't want for us is to be the same right because that is definitely not okay with with me and so I just want to highlight a little bit of the success and the things that were done this year that though that end number is the same the the the work that was done and the differences that probably don't stand out to to many people. And so I'm going to start with a high and then kind of go down, but I promise you if you give me like one minute and 30 seconds, I'll I'll get it all I'll get it all in. And so um we had three schools remain in A, five schools remain um a B and the district remain a B. I want to

194highlight Flaggler Palm Coast High School because sometimes you know you see Matanzas as an A and we are proud of that A. Flaggler Palm Coast High School increased 30 points last year. It is not easy to do and so I want to just highlight them and the work that they're doing. Renfire Elementary School went up 19 points. Um Beltier Elementary School 15 points. Matanzis High School nine points. Indian Trails nine points. But three points. We saw growth in every single achievement component. Every single one of them. ELA, grade three, ELA, math, science, social studies. We had overall um increase in our points by five. But what I am most proud of that um that may not show initially our our guiding principles, our um vision and mission talks about all of our students making progress

195in the growth and it it chokes me up really to to think about it. But there have been times that we have been in a and we've had some poor poor performing subgroups. And so I just want to give you a little bit of data to say the end can be the same, but progress still um made. When coming on, we had um several of our schools were black and African-American um students were underperforming subgroup. We have zero as of today. The first time that I remember that that subgroup is not a subgroup that we have on our federal index. um our Hispanic subgroup, zero of those su that that subgroup is at any of our schools that are on our federal um index for an area that we have to look at. ELA subgroup,

196we're at zero um for that subgroup across our our schools. We've gone from 10 schools that had um students with disabilities that were an area for um for us to down to three schools that have an area um for us. and we have significantly reduced our subgroup data. And so, Miss Chong, you used the term integrity and that means a lot to me. And the team is like probably like here she goes again with the word integrity. There are lots of things that we could do to get an A and get an A quickly. But what our focus is is to ensure that when we get an A, we can celebrate with all of our schools. We don't want to have a schools that are schools of excellence. who are underperforming subgroups of students, right?

197We want to be able to say that every single group of our students are making progress academically and we can confidently say that. And so I'm telling you, I'm hard on myself and I'm I'm like looking I'm like, "Okay, are there things we could have done differently?" But when I look at what we're doing to truly live out what our mission and vision states about all of our students, the proof is in the pudding. The numbers do not lie. And though the state continues to edge it up to make it a little bit more difficult, I think next year you need 65% of the points, you know, we're going to get to a place that we don't care what the state does. We're going to be clearing that. Um, no problem. And that is done

198by ensuring every group of student that each each group um that they are making progress, not just that one number. And so so much to be proud of. So for the people who are asking, I am very very proud of the work that we've done. I am not yet satisfied because for us to be satisfied is for us to say that 100% of our students are at the place that we need and that will then say we've accomplished the vision, the mission that has been set forth and then we need to rewrite it. So I'm very proud of the hard work. Can't wait to see the great things that we will do going forward. Um and I took longer than a minute and 30 seconds, but it's important to know. So I say to you,

199yes, the end result can remain the same and you can still show that you're making progress. And so when we say flag forward, we mean it in all areas. Flagler forward. So have a good night. Thank you. The meeting is a journey.