001we'd like to welcome the public to the Sarasota County School Board this is our work session for today March 4th it's approximately uh 1:00 p.m. uh we did run uh longer this session earlier than we thought um so with that uh superintendent Connor Thank You board chair uh as we begin today's work shop session we are going to be discussing uh three items today Safety and Security our elll plan that we will be submitting to the Florida Department of Education for your review as well as a strategic Plan update on pillar five specifically related to our communication efforts so at this time I'm going to hand it over to our Safety and Security team that includes Chief F Shan over uh sorry Shan O'Keefe and Jason Overbay uh in our Safety and Security office to
002provide an update as well as our state inspection report that is required by Statute thank you superintendent Connor chairman enus uh distinguished members of the board uh we appreciate this opportunity this afternoon to come before you and talk about Safety and Security and how our state compliance checks have been going uh here in Sarasota County uh today we'll talk about the district and state compliance checks uh briefly touch on the security aid program and some of the training that we've been offering um we'll go over the proposed school security legislation that is on file right now and uh Chief Ruiz will close us out discussing some uh Police Department issues uh to talk about our state inspections as the superintendent had mentioned uh House Bill 1473 requires that we come before you quarterly and discuss
003what what our state inspections are uh we'll go over a little bit about what's involved with that um the Florida Department of Education off State schools uh they have to inspect every school in the state of Florida once every three years um I the school safety specialist that in each county is required to inspect every school uh traditional and charter school and uh we have to write uh both the state and uh I have to write a report inside of the Florida safe schools assessment Tool uh that talks about how those inspections went um there are 27 different items that we have to touch on inside the inspection that covers everything from uh after action reports and drills uh into um how the school is hardened uh against intrusion and the district compliance visits this
004year uh we have already finished all 57 schools um our main area of uh need for us to fix was uh compliance with uh state requirements on cert certifications for threat management um we were able to work with our district threat management coordinator Michael santagata and Cindy whel to get all of those certificates back out to the schools to make sure that would not be an issue when the state came in and inspected uh we've worked very Clos ly with the administrators going through our inspection uh to make it as as difficult as we could um so that they would be prepared for any of the six um State uh inspectors that might come in uh so that they would be ready for any type of question and any type of issue that might have
005come up uh for them to answer we're always there for support but uh we are U not supposed to answer the questions they want the administ rators to uh answer on behalf of the school um we also work uh very closely with the administrators and the school resource officer to fix any deficiencies that might come up uh during our inspection uh this year the uh state has come in this quarter and has inspected 14 Schools uh just two schools just last week on Wednesday uh we've had nine of those 14 go go through the inspection without any blemish whatsoever which is a uh an amazing feat uh Emma Booker Elementary Tuttle Elementary Lake View Elementary uh Brentwood Elementary Imagine School at Palmer Ranch uh Sarah middle the Pine View School Booker Middle and Bay Haven
006School uh all went through their inspections and didn't have a single uh blemish inside of their inspection we're very proud of them uh we had 79% of the schools that we've had inspected so far uh make it through without any violations or or only minor paperwork violations and 56% of our schools that have been inspected to date uh have made it through their inspections with absolutely no violations uh that's our state required report on the uh state inspections um that'll come up on the 11th uh for yall to approve uh that report um Talk briefly now about the security aid program we were honored to take that over uh in July of 23 um we've worked very hard to improve our staffing numbers uh to where now we have uh interviews coming on I believe
007Wednesday with uh two dayshift vacancies and one night shift vacancy um our safety officer program has been very effective uh we have all of those officers hired and they are going through the schools helping our elementary and middle schools with uh security after hours and uh just being eyes for administrators for things that might be violations of House Bill 1473 uh to bring to those administrators uh attention so that we can get them fixed um we have increased the amount of training that all of our security Personnel go through uh we have really worked hard on escalation and techniques improving their verbalization um and uh talking to them how how uh they deal with situational awareness and how uh is best to approach different types of situations uh that they might may find themselves in
008um on school campuses uh we go through very explicitly with them uh District policies procedures as well as state law so that they know uh what and where they're supposed to act and um what their parameters are within that uh we believe that we uh the increase in training and the focus that we've had has really improved uh the contribution that they're making at the schools and the contribution that they're making with students making the uh culture there uh better um on a daily basis quickly going in now uh to the proposed uh sec security bills um the Senate and the house have both submitted separate bills a house bill 1403 um requires schools to follow provision of House Bill 1473 at a minimum of 30 minutes before the start of school uh to 30
009minutes after the end of school um this allows the school to kind of revert back uh to other security procedures after those times um and not have to worry about about 1473 compliance it allows for certain Gates inside the secured perimeter to be left open uh and unmanned without a waiver so they don't have to worry about that violation if uh a playground gate or something like that has been left open and hasn't been closed or isn't manned um the house bill also is very specific it allows for uh right now there is no exemption period for any classroom door uh so it allows for uh Career and Technical education um classrooms uh if there is a health and safety need for classroom doors or garage doors to be open uh for student health that
010allows us to wave those doors uh so that they can be open right now we're not allowed to do that um also it names common areas such as cafeterias auditoriums uh can be unlocked when there is not uh State Testing or some type of in instructional time going on inside which would alleviate some of the issues that we're having right now with student movement uh during the class day uh the Senate bill is very similar um it is Senate Bill 1470 um it allows uh or in instead of saying 30 minutes prior to school and 30 minutes after it calls uh that time uh School supervision hours and leaves it up to the state and the district to determine what that is uh it also allows us to wave uh or not wave but allow
011certain gates to be open on campus as long as they're inside of our uh internal perimeter uh without penalty and instead of allowing us um to wave certain CTE classrooms it is asking for the office of St schools to create a list of exemptions um for Camp campuses similar to CT uh the CTE classrooms to where uh we would not have to keep those doors closed locked or manned uh during school hours um and we would not be out of compliance with House Bill 1473 um we are working with HR right now um and it to satisfy the new rule in um the uh let's see it's uh 18 um so it's uh 6 a118 excuse me uh that requires that uh we certify that parents have been trained in 45 Florida uh we will
012be working with itnh HR to have that inside of focus so that parents when they're signing for uh the uh uh the the student code of conduct they also will sign that they are understand what fortify Florida is and what the penalty for false reports of fortifi Florida R um we have done a good job of making sure that all students are trained and then we went the extra effort um also at uh Mr Diaz the chancellor of Education request uh to make sure parents were trained in fortifi Florida in December after uh the shootings in Georgia had an uptick in false reports um we are also working on uh fingerprinting for the district um fingerprinting is now being transferred from FDLE for school districts over to uh AA or the Florida Department um of
013health and so that all finger all district Personnel will have to be ref fingerprinted over the next three years um so we've been gearing up in our fingerprint office to get ready for that we'll be visiting all the school sites uh so that we can fingerprint our staff at a convenient time for them um so that they don't really have to go out of their way to get fingerprinted um AA has a lot of different rules than what FDLE had uh we'll have to take pictures of all the employees and uh send them in but it'll also allow uh once you've been fingerprinted and and if you're within your retention time uh if I move from Manatee County to soda to be a teacher I don't have to be re fingerprinted so those costs will
014not have to be transferred back to the employee uh so in the long run it's going to be a very good thing for us um and we have been working with very closely uh with our uh law enforcement Partners including Chief Ruiz and the school school district police department and um our fire fire Partners on reunification uh making sure that we're all on the same page when it comes to reunification how if that type of event would occur here in Sarasota um depending on what jurisdiction it occurred in uh what everybody's role is where reunification would take place um so that uh we don't have some of the issues that have occurred in some of the other locations um we have met with uh some of the parents families from marjor Stoneman we had uh
015Miss lorri alade speak to our staff in July and we have redoubled our efforts to make sure that reunification is one of the areas that uh this district is very strong in so I want to take just a few moments to a very important piece as far as highlighting our staff not only in the police department but the Safety and Security uh as you know uh the district highlights uh through the program SCS cares uh excellent staff uh for for job that they do throughout our schools and I'm proud to say that the majority the department with the most nominations and awards this year has been safety security in the police department here you see the the list of folks in the months uh of who was nominated and who won the award on top
016of that just this past Thursday uh our Police Department's evidence and uh specialist pment one uh the school-based employee of the year uh for this year and I just want to give a shout out to her and now she is eligible for recognition at the state level and so I just want to recognize this is just a snippet of all the staff uh within Safety and Security that do an amazing job and and not only are intentional about changes the culture of our schools Safety and Security but have amazing relationships with teachers and students uh that make truly make a difference uh and in closing just want to thank the board for your continued support uh and in Safety and Security and Leadership provided a lot of the questions and things that you bring up
017are very important to us and we we we we take all that information and and apply it back to uh how we can improve Safety and Security and just want to thank you all and superintendent Conor for your support board any comments I'll go ahead um I want to appreciate all the efforts of school police officers the dedicated officers that are on campus every single day Mr Overbay Mr O'Keefe I mean obviously technology wise and all the stuff that you're doing in the schools uh you know one of the things that as it keeps coming up is you know I know we had some violations but one of the things that I would say to all of our Administration you know we've had different policies as we've enacted here at Sarasota County School District as
018we were uh on know most of these we were leading and that we were the very first in the state in order to do a lot of different things you know whether it was uh lockdown buttons the drills the safe Corners I mean a lot of different things that came out of Marty strowman Douglas but we also have had here like a lock door policy since 201 18 and so one of the reasons why we do all this stuff is because of things that end up happening like this which is I gave the board uh this came out a while ago this is in reference to Rob Elementary School which is the uh from Texas in reference to the House of Representatives and what it does is it is very very critical in the law
019enforce response but it's also very very critical in reference to uh the school administration response in reference to deficiencies that were on their campus I know with uh all three of you that are here today I know that that's the things that uh that ultimately uh you know Safety and Security kids can't learn if they don't feel safe teachers can't teach if they don't feel safe and that's one of those things that uh we just have to make sure that we should be 100% a compliance that's ultimately the goal because every single kid because I can tell you at Rob Elementary school you know they had a culture of um that started that um they didn't they had they had a lock door policy but the culture was they didn't need to lock their doors
020um which ultimately led the the shooter the murderer to go in the back door which was left unlocked to a classro which had been reported that the door lock didn't work which had been a work order which never got fixed which also to a wi-fi system for the lockdown which I know as Mr Overbay Mr O'Keefe knows painstakingly Motorola has come through here to make sure that we can get uh have strong Wi-Fi reference to our being able to transmit on our radios to schools but at the end of the day all of those different things on a place in Uvaldi Mex Uvaldi Texas that people would have never have thought that would have occurred is it could occur anywhere as well as it did at Parkland so whether you're high socioeconomic or low socioeconomic
021I would I would have any any principal or anybody if you really want to see and really make you outraged is to read the report um because it does show the of the law enforcement failure but it also shows in reference to the complacency issue and maybe just one locked door would have kept that person out till law enforcement got there and maybe we could have averted some of the tragedies but unfor fortunately Murphy's Law is that if it's going to go bad it's all going to go to bad and I could tell you here at this district is we got to painstakingly fencing all of the things that are required um and we appreciate I can tell you as a board member I totally appreciate all the stuff that guys do continue to make
022sure that we're appraised and we're up to date on those things and um as the Law changes which we know it will again for next year um again with the briefing from this morning you know I I thank you for all of the information and I know that we'll strive uh to get to 100% if uh because I think that's what's deserved here in Sarasota because we should always lead and we should never follow when it comes to Safety and Security here because that's what our parents have an expectation of so do our teachers because our kids are our future any other comments from the board thank you very much I appreciate your time superintendent Connor thank you sir all right we're going to move on to our next item which is the uh review
023of our English language learner plan that we will be submitting to the doe uh after review with the board so we have our supervisor of elll Miss Megan parento Christy duus and Rachel OD day who will be here to review our plan good morning or good no it's not morning anymore I was in here in the morning good afternoon everyone great to see you again and um we are happy to share with you our elll plan moving forward for the next three school years this is something that is um state statut that does have to occur with your approval every three years similar to to the ESC plan we went over at the end of the year last year and um similar to our uh pupil progression plan and our comprehensive reading plan which those
024are annual but this is similar to that um we know that you worked hard previewing this it is a long document and there have been revisions and updates made so miss parento will be focusing on that high level overview knowing that you've already read this but please feel free at the end of this short presentation if you have any further questions that we'll be happy to answer Miss prto thanks good afternoon guys we will go on ahead and get started so as you can see up on the screen there are an abundance of laws statutes and rules that really govern the way our elll program is developed and the services that we provide to our students uh we develop the plan to outline the strategies and procedures that we will use to provide an appropriate
025education to our El students ensuring that they receive equal access to a quality education as Mrs OD said these are to be redone every three years and submitted to the state for approval and if at any time we want to go back and amend to make some changes to the supports that we provide our students we can do that by making an amendment bringing it back to you guys and resubmitting to the state the plan is composed of 11 sections and I'm going to give you just a quick little brief overview of them uh very minor changes from years previously a lot of our rules and laws regarding L's has not changed so not not much different but going to let you know about each section section one includes the procedures for enrolling new students
026who are English language Learners including parents completing the home language survey they do that upon registration fully integrated into focus and our CIS system uh I we we're very excited that our home language survey is available in eight languages currently and if it is not available in parents home language when they come to register we do have Ila devices in schools schools can utilize the language line to really make sure we have broken down that that communication gap with parents while they're registering upon registration we ALS also um identify immigrant students students that have been enrolled in a school in the US for less than three years and we identify their Duce dates section two focuses on the placement of L students based on their assessment data so when they come in they're um identified
027as a potential English language learner based on their home language survey questions our school-based esol could be a PA professional could be an Esau liaison a program specialist administers the weda screener to our students and if they they meet a certain criteria we will offer them supports in the Esau program it is also important to note that if students score above the threshold for services but we really feel like it's in the students best interest to be enrolled in the Esau program we can convene an elll committee meeting and offer parents those Esau supports as well go back one I got excited section three encompasses the procedures that we utilize to ensure we're placing L students in the correct grades courses and programs anytime a student comes to us from another country that is receiving
028L Services we always go back and do an academic assessment of their transcripts their records we honor course credits as necessary especially in the High School area and when students come to us with no transcripts with an interrupted education especially in high school again our guidance counselors work tremendously to make sure that we're putting students in the appropriate classes and placements for them and if they were already enrolled in an Esau program those supports continue and if they were not we start them with supports when they when they arrive with us section four identifies the various models of instruction used here the preferred model at many of our schools is mainstream inclusion however our secondary schools also do utilize self-contained and sheltered classes for language development purposes in addition all of our district schools have
029additional pushin Esau support through par professionals and Esau Liaisons section five specifies that all L students will participate in Florida Statewide assessments regardless of their level of English language proficiency L students are provided the following accommodations during Statewide assessments flexible seating flexible scheduling assistance in inherit erative language and the use of an approved dictionary a letter is sent home to all parents notifying them of the accommodations parents can opt out of those accommodations if they would like to but we do let them know that is a standard accommodation offered to all students section six focuses on L students who are ready to exit the Esau program we look at their academic data and level of English proficiency to make a determination um just like students can be entered into the program through an elll committee
030students can also be exited through that as well uh meeting various criteria that's laid out in the plan in- depth and we always include teacher feedback and report card grades among other things when making a determination on an exit section seven is our monitoring procedures this includes how we monitor monitor students who have been recently exited from the program as well as how we in the district manage the esol program itself students who are exited from esol are monitored for another two full academic years to make sure that they're continuing on a path of success and if during those two years while we're still re-evaluating those students we think continued Services would be in their best interest again we can convene an elll committee meeting and re-evaluate that student and potentially put them back into
031reclassification to continue receiving supports section eight details the involvement with families of el students uh as mentioned previously it is critical that we break down the communication barrier with families to best support students we regularly send home district and school level Communications to families in their preferred language through Focus which they can select themselves and parents have the ability to select um languages that they would like things to be translated into some of our families still choose English through Focus but it's really important that they have that ability to choose how they want to receive their communication s again we have language line at all schools and all of our Title One schools have Ila devices and next year all of our schools will have Ila devices to be utilized to communicate with families section
032nine focuses on the parent leadership council at both the district and the school levels each School hosts annual Esau family nights developed by their school-based pack and we are proud to say that this District elll plan has been developed with reviewed and approved by our district PLC president miss pesova section 10 identifies the way that we train our teachers and school-based support staff to ensure teachers of L students are all esol endorsed because we know all of our teachers are esol teachers we offer professional learning three times a year to staff to earn their esol endorsement this is monitored in collaboration with our human resources certification Department our professional learning sessions are available online and facilitated by trained Esau liaison and program Specialists here we also host monthly professional learning sessions with our Esau liais
033on Cadre to ensure that they are up toate with best practices in both instructional coaching and esol instructional strategies our last section 11 is extension of services uh in here we really discuss the pathway to to determine if a student will need an extension of services so if a student hasn't met the criteria to be exited in three years what do we do we dig a Little Deeper is it an English language proficiency barrier are there other things that we need to look at so we will continue to monitor that student in the esol program and utilize ongoing evaluations teacher feedback grades standardized test scores and alternative assessments May indicate that the student might be better served by another instructional program or a combination of programs to best meet that that students needs the goal
034is to have all students exited from the program by year six so there's no action that's needed today but we are asking for approval of the district TL plan at the board meeting next Tuesday again if changes to the plan are requested by the doe those modifications will be made and resubmitted for your approval at any point during the duration of the plan in the next three years we can make changes as our program grows and new policies are enacted and we'll amend the plan and ask for your approval from then as well so we'll take questions at this time any questions from the board Mr Edwards when you um do your parent Outreach I because um I know this is a dilemma across the board across the board um what is your success rate
035do you do you capture that we do all of our schools are required as part of having an annual night to submit to us their agenda sign and sheets um parent feedback a lot of our school choose to do surveys if a parent really appreciated the night what they got out of it what they would like to see next so we do house all of those records within the Esau Department um a lot of our schools recently have pivoted and have been hosting some virtual events for families and those have been really successful as well lately that's great I'm glad to hear about the virtual accommodation um what I've noticed in general about parents and families overall is that um sometimes after after hours it's just not the time um and I know that with
036Union requirements and all that sort of thing being available on the weekends is sometimes difficult do you still capture that data do you still find out if that's the better time to meet we do and a lot of our schools are really proactive in scheduling those and asking parents what days and times work for them um we see a lot in the elementary level especially daytime programs we have lunch bunches with parents of Esau students we have homework help for for parents during the school day that our uh school-based Esau Liaisons are facilitating with parents so our schools have been very receptive to how they can best support parents and really bring them in we have a phenomenal parent Outreach facilitator on the team Ruth back there and she works probably harder than the most
037on I know that's the hard that's the hardest job I know it's the hardest job um do you think we're at 50% 30% what would if you had to take a guess yeah yeah but could you just give us a take a stab good answer until it's 100 good answer yeah I would say it's probably somewhere between 40 50% of our our Esau parents are coming tonight so we're going to see schools with much higher percentages we have schools with much lower percentages as well but um we definitely have some some standout schools where we're getting very very high turnouts when you actually engage parents do you find they need additional wraparound Services ever do you do do you assess those needs I was going to say we actually bundle a lot of this because
038we know you can't just have an Esa night or a math night or a reading night we try to do nights that incorporate a lot because when we have you on campus and we've been looking for you we're going to take advantage that while you're here yeah you know in our homeschool aison and our and our tile one schools do a lot um we have have a POS positions in certain schools that are specializing like what Ruth is doing and making sure that we're grabbing all of our families so it doesn't just stick with this population of adults it's actually any adults so I think sometimes that percentage is hard to capture because you look at who's coming to what and how do we make sure we have more people and we take care of
039as many things as possible especially in our Title One schools I know that's a it's a general challenge Ruth thank you that is one hard job um the monitoring process um what what is the criteria by which what are you actually monitoring you well she's looking do you mean while they're in the program or when they're out of the program monitoring for two years okay so while they're in the program we monitor their growth on standardized assessments compared to their subset of of colleagues and cohorts as well as our general population of students we make sure that they're growing at the same rate as everybody else and that they're receiving the services that are most impactful for their growth when we look at monitoring the program we look at things like our parent engagement nights
040right are we doing those things or do we have that that Outreach when students exit the program um we follow their academic success as well that's all monitored on more spreadsheets than I think you know we need and schools schools do a lot of that lift as well our school-based Esau Liaisons are such a powerful and important part of this work and this role because they're in the classes still every day with students supporting them and and supporting teachers so they are really the ones who are in there monitoring student learning and student growth and pivoting and making changes where they see that that changes need to be made to best support students like in our general literacy programs um and they're monitored um I I when when you find early on that they're not
041where they need to be what do you do so one thing just to go a little deeper on what Miss prto said the waeda test that they administer that's different than everyone else's standardized test that gets into um their abilities uh to speak the language of the country that they're in and the language proficiency is really where we're digging in and how to develop those skills because that is the barrier to learning it's not a disability It's actually an exceptionality they are multilingual Learners they're more advanced than our um than us and our monolingual Learners right so we have to embrace what they what language they do speak and try to enhance them into speaking our language so they can access the learning equitably like all other students so that is really what data they
042look at within the program as EOL aison in partnership with that core teacher and literacy approaches because we're still teaching literacy skills at the foundational level although they may be a fluent reader in their own language but to get to that point they have to be able to use our foundational skills in English to put words together make meaning and context like a general reader that's what's happening in the program when they exit we are looking to make sure they're getting to proficiency on the our English test right in in English getting to proficiency if they're not we're looking at what else is going on because we could have two another thing there could be dyslexia there could be other issues that are preventing that student from progressing so that's that two-year monitoring period to
043make sure they get to a proficient on grade level range Even After exiting the program if they don't as Miss prento said they dive back in they provide more supports and we look into why we're not progressing at the rate of peers if I've learned the language and exited the program and to add to that you have two two suppl resources that we're using one is Imagine Learning which is helping provide an instructional a personalized instructional pathway for students especially for our students who are speaking whose uh primary language is not English as well as we have invested in a new teacher repository of elll resources our elevation platform has a tremendous amount of support for teachers to help Stu their students who are elll um thank you for um that work it's a challenge
044I was um in a Northport um Elementary classroom and one in one classroom there were six different languages being spoken which is I I'm completely overwhelmed as to what that must be like but so thank you so much for your work good job Miss Ziggler thank you well no I I know I said this last time you guys presented I couldn't be more excited that we're able to dive in and your enthusiasm and I know you guys are Off to the Races and there's a lot of work to be done um you even to what Mr Edwards just said just knowing that each and even I know it wasn't picked up by the mic but when it was talked about parent parent engagement the response was that it varies from school to school and grade
045and and that makes complete sense um and so being very prescriptive at each place and I I think you guys really provide that support I think my question then is as we look ahead now that you've really been able to lift the hood what do resources look like to really help our students achieve that or support our staff when you have an known of six per you know six different languages um and they're coming in at different levels um so that's one question and two just when thinking of levels how many because I don't know how frequent it is you were you mentioned that some you know we pick up credits and we will continue Services if they come from uh come to us from a different District or different state whatever um that have
046had esol services but some don't is that common or is that rare I mean I'm going to start with the first and I I'll have piggy back um two things that we just did recently in progressing towards the future typically during Staffing allocation time you have to look at the budget and you have to figure out what are we earning to support our students and the superintendent just made a commitment to go well above and beyond what we budgeted for our um esol Paras and our liaison because you know we may have been one or two or three or five children off from maybe meeting that threshold which means okay we have to cut the unit Surplus the staff and then see if we get it back but what ends up happening with that is
047you may not get that staff back and they may either be placed at a different school or they may just leave you know all together and then we have a vacancy in our support but he's committed to overstaffing in 10 different schools which equates to a number that Miss Pinner is very familiar with which is upwards you know close to a million dollars um allocating to make sure that that staff stays in place because we know that um that population can be a little bit more migrant than others and allowing some of that dust to settle and keeping that St on until the start of the year and re-evaluating those numbers in a more realistic time frame so that we don't have any gaps in services so that's a change to how we do our
048allocations for a certain you know student group in addition to expanding the use of elevation um which I'm going to let U Miss PTO talk about she's very excited but that's going to enhance the role of our esol Liaisons there's some we're bogged down in some paperwork and Miss prto has envisioned a way to release that which then allows you to put your hands on students more so if you'd like to answer that yeah we are very excited about elevation um it's a online platform that has a three-prong approach to supporting our students one is fully dedicated to professional learning self-paced modules for teachers and liaison we've been very um focused on building up our Esau liaison Cadre so that they can have all the supports they need to support others and that includes instructional
049strategies and coaching um and coaching teachers within their school so we're very excited we've utilized a lot of Grants to actually fund professional learning for our Liaisons that really helps them be the be the knowledge holder and knowledge sharer with the teachers um the best part of elevation for me is the compliance piece it takes it's going to change the way of work for esol Liaisons I was pretty clear I think when we presented our our plan for the division I want I want school-based people working with kids you know you're in there every day I don't want you in an office with paperwork it's very important that you're working with teachers and students and so taking that lift off of them as well wor the fund for elevation because it it releases them a
050lot more to be able to do the work that matters within the schools so we've rolled out elevation this year just to Liaison at school so they can really be the champion for it um and really understand it and love it and and know the impact of it so that they can Champion that program next year to teachers so teachers haven't seen it quite yet they're ready for feed so they haven't seen it yet teach okay leison have seen it they love it um liaison have shared it with their administrators who have reached out like can you show me more tell me tell me more report so instead of having to go in to Axiom and to focus and to find all of these different pieces of paperwork and documentation for these students it's all
051right there on a homepage awesome it tells you what day things are due it tells you what compliance pieces or overdue or coming up so it really streamline streamlines the work process um for liaison so it really releases them a lot more to to do the work that matters that's excellent she's also championed another project I'm going to brag on you a little bit more um using title $33 um which is funding that we get for that specific student group but really um relooking at that budget in partnership with Miss duza to free up dollars to fund projects to again support students and so we were able to fund multiple schools with additional tutoring after school for teachers that wanted and uh needed to take the time with those kids and get that compensation so
052we do have multiple schools that are doing that right now awesome well I'm excited to hear about the resource allocation that we're you know putting an additional buffer there because as we've scratched the surface I would hate to see us lose that momentum so I couldn't be more excited about that and then my final question was how frequent or how common and that's a kind of a loaded question so I apologize but I just have no concept of are we getting you know what that looks like as far as at the high school level that's it's very minimal the majority of our incoming El students come to us at the elementary school um that's just typically what we see we do this year less than five high school students have come to us with interrupted
053education um probably even less than three I would venture to say so it's it's rare it's not something that we see often and we really do a lot of digging and um some background on how we can best support those kids and put them where they're going to get the best success for the time that we have left with them excellent well I am very excited again to see our focus on this to elevate those students and look at the opportunity and then the final pieces as we look at Staffing I know from the HR component we talked about this before too and that collaboration of how we can fill those spots so um whatever we can do as a board to help support your efforts let us know thank you Miss Parker um welcome
054aboard Mrs parento I'm so thrilled personally to see you here um and I know that it's going to end with great outcomes for our elll students and those have been a subgroup of students that I I think really do need our care and attention and so I'm just I'm I'm very pleased to have uh you on board doing that work I was curious about how many of our general Ed teachers are taking advantage of some of these new um professional learning opportunities because as you said you know our elll students are all in those classes and every teacher is an Esau teacher so if you could talk a little bit about that sure so our priority this year was to really grow up our Esau Liaisons um and let them do some job embedded training
055with teachers um at the school we know it's very hard to get teachers out to to provide professional learning and training to them right now so we've worked monthly um with our isau liaison to to give them some TurnKey things they can take back to their building we have not had FaceTime with our teachers yet it is a plan that we're developing and it's a it's in progress but that is that is a lift for the Department in addition to that we try not to make it just about one thing again because when we have teachers we have to really um co-mingle a lot of these efforts so literacy efforts embedded with Esau strategies embedded with ESC strategies within our curriculum Frameworks and our our supplemental resources because it's all integrated and when we Silo
056it out it's a much then people have to put it together so we try to deliver that in a package deal now if there is some outstanding in massive issues which we did have for a period of time in ESC you got to Pivot and isolate that but right now it's coming in very cohesive and then when we look at what we need to do after growing that that leadership team the E all the aison well we can do more um but starting there is what we've that was our initial approach yeah Miss barelli thank you thank you for all the work and Mr Connor Thank you for looking at those title one schools at the elementary and their resources not waiting until after school starts to not take anything away because there's two people
057in this room that have a a big history with elll and um Mrs Rubenstein and I worked together at Southside many many years ago and at that time I was a counselor and I was also the elll leison so trying to balance those two and get to everything you've come a long way and and that just benefits our students and our families because you know if if you historically you look you can you can track it's like the wave of the students and what language they are bringing with them and then coming in and trying to learn English but also what people don't realize is the Customs that come so you have to be aware of the Customs as I've said before when we had the Vietnamese come we I had kids crying in the
058cafeteria because they and I couldn't figure out why because they never had used utensils before and that's all they had so I I still carry that guilt of thinking oh gosh I wish I would have known so that training piece I think what you guys are doing is is just excellent so thank you but I do have um two questions for parents if if whatever the whether it's during the daytime or nighttime weekend and parents need Transportation are there any um like we used to give the bus passes for parents that if they could take the bus or so do you provide any is anything provided so parents can get there if they need to or fit a criteria for yeah the the resource as you're referring to through student Support Services is the same
059so that would be a teacher or liaison connecting with guidance social work or The Homeschool liazon saying hey they come together on all of those cases in which we can't um easily connect and remove that barrier so that's still wrap around you got everything like you said everything about a child and I appreciate the questions that Mr Edwards was asking and and Mrs Ziggler everybody because we forget in the education world we kind of know what we're talking about but the community has no idea what the level of services and education that is provided for our students whether gened ese elll 504 it's it's tremendous so my compliments to all the teachers and staff and everybody and at The Landings for you guys providing that guidance and then when you mentioned the after school tutoring
060is transportation like the busing is is is that provided for the students that if they if they need it they can request that we do have that more in the secondary level than we do in the elementary level but we do have if that is a need then that is something they can request from the team and that we work with Transportation depending on drivers that's something we have discussed that that could become an issue because you don't have anyone to do that part of the transportation but we do have activity buses for a variety of programs and we don't know exactly which schools as far as the elll program that we have in place is using that but if it was a barrier they would let us know okay yeah well thank you and
061I'm I'll say it again I'm so glad that Ruth Rubenstein is on staff to provide that so thank you everyone and I just Echo the same things thanks for all the hard work great presentation I know that's a you know something that especially when we look every student every day that's every single student and uh we need to make sure as we know as a board we've made that our priority so thank you for uh an excellent presentation and a great job so thank you superintendent Conor thank you very much we're going to transition to our last topic which is a strategic Plan update pillar five which is centered around Communications government Affairs um marketing efforts as well as our family and Community engagement uh this primarily is going to cover our communication government Affairs
062and marketing efforts as you know uh as I was recently quoted in the heral Tribune around uh school choice uh we have to treat education like a business uh and we want to be a top Premiere competitor for students of Sarasota and families to choose us because we truly believe we offer a premier educational experience as a part of that Communications in our marketing efforts are really really important as well as what we're doing on the front for government affairs with our legislative uh delegation and the communications that are happening there so I'm excited to present the awesome team of Communications and government Affairs today led by our director of communications Mr Craig maniglia who is going to present an update on pillar five of our strategic plan uh thank you superintendent good afternoon school
063board members I'm excited here to share where we are as a department today but first I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce my team that's here with me I have Mina azra back here he's our digital Communications manager I have Kelsey wheelie over here who is our digital Communications manager I'm that's that's Mina Kelsey is our man media relations and Communications manager I have toi who's our marketing manager and obviously Chris PTO is here and our government Affairs supervisor and John flowy is in the back he's our uh broadcast engineer and also does in charge of production over at STC um we also have a few other team members who aren't with us here today who are working tily to make SCS shine in our schools and in our departments the the the Strategic
064plan is a working document and the intent is to show the progress we've made and where we are working to improve on these action items pillar five Priority One has 25 action items it's one of the larger ones in uh in the district which is good um and uh many of these are connected in one way or another especially when we're measuring the success of the goal so as you go through you may hear the success is tied to many of the things that we've done as as they kind of relate to each Topic in a different manner while many of our items have been completed they still are ongoing over time and our goal is to revise this plan and continue to address the needs of the district and align with current practices and
065policies the Strategic plan is a document of priorities and is a fraction of the day-to-day work that our team accomplishes so strategy one 5.11 was to revamp and enhance the school district's digital presence including the website social media platforms to ensure userfriendly upto-date and accessible information for all stakeholders in April of 2024 we launched the new District school website including STC which are fully translatable we added Aid driven search capabilities that respond to both Voice and text inputs additionally we converted over 300 policies to HTML web pages making them searchable by word and translatable into over 130 languages coinciding with the website launch team introduced a revamped SCS mobile app which provides families and staff with easy access to school lunch menus districtwide updates and other essential tools these enhancements have made it easier than
066ever for stakeholders to stay informed and connected with their home run go pillar five strategy one continued here we've introduced a new social media campaign titled behind the scenes in teacher Tuesday which we're ongoing from last year to highlight the work of our amazing classified and instructional staff they have both been very popular amongst our community and they have proven to be an amazing source of positivity we also trained all School social media Personnel on school board policies guidelines and best practices in platform specific strategies to increase their schools visibility so since August of 2024 on the two programs I just talked about team behind the scenes and teacher Tuesday we've had an enormous 475,000 interaction and 34,000 engagements so to measure the success we can look at our Target from 22 23 20 our
067Target our Baseline what we did in 23 24 Baseline and 2425 so you can see in 2223 the website hits were at around 9,500,000 in 23 24 we've updated those to over 11 million and currently we're at 12,388 to the website the social media rate is 8.3 in 2223 it's climbed a full percentage rate which is absolutely phenomenal to 9.3 and we're currently sitting at 9.4 so the the Strategic plan fits directly into some of the key performance indicators that we'll talk about later in the scorecard so further to uh yeah and uh in 2024 uh strategy 2 we in partnership with it we launched rooms a two-way communication app that can be translated into 130 languages simultaneously what that means is whatever the the stakeholder has their phone set up to the language will
068come into that language so there's no set my phone to this language or not so um this technology enables instant messaging between staff students and Guardians with email alerts sent whenever a teacher sends a message so not only you get it on the phone later in the day you'll get an email that says you got a message in your rooms the vendor continually makes updates to this software based on our recommendations through preview abilities now we know it's not perfect but we have a very strong tie with this vendor and we're on the phone with them every week talking about changes that need be made to all of their platforms and that's been a very positive situation to give you a little numbers around the rooms and alerts data to date currently we have 45,700
069messages that have been sent from our classrooms or coaches over 25,000 Guardians logged into the system a total of 33,000 app downloads and more than 10,000 classrooms are active in the platform that's about 80% of our classrooms an added benefit is that all Communications are backed up and retrievable from a single Source making record retrieval more cost effective this also adds an additional layer of protection to our families and staff for comparison in 2324 we had 200 324,000 remind messages which is kind of a competitor to this and and then alerts and robocalls and texts this year were just under 11,000 to date action three in July 2024 we updated our crisis communication plan to incorporate student services and threat management protocols the revised plan outlines clear procedures for immediate action during a crisis specifically
070who is responsible and what steps should be taken uh item four which is complete proactively Pro proactively seek opportunities to expand the district's visibility in media highlighting Innovative programs achievements and initiatives that showcase the district's commitment to Excellence and Community engagement the media relations team is continually maximizing opportunities to tell great stories of Sarasota County schools from proactively pitching story ideas and media opportunities to responding to inbound requests for interviews and background information the media relations team recognizes that even the simplest of engagements can yield quality results further building the positive reputation of our school district so between 23 and 24 and 24 25 this current year you can kind of see the numbers what's astonishing here is when you get to the third columns where you see the interaction content interactions so in 23
07124 we had 16.5 billion content interactions that means Sarasota County Schools showed up all over the world somewhere that many times with the advertising value equivalently of over 52 billion if we had to pay for those acknowledgements currently right now we're sitting at 18.4 billion content interactions although media hits are lower that just means that bigger Publications are covering what we're sending and what they're receiving and what they're asking about which was an adver advertising value of equivalency of 170 billion now those are fictitious numbers obviously we're not going to get that money but it's something that's used in advertising quite frequently to judge is your message out there whether it's good or bad you know good or bad gets out there publicity is always a good thing strategy five is complete introduced a strategic
072marketing initiative to elevate the district's brand emphasizing unique strengths and successes to attract and retain students in increasingly competitive educational landscape again in January of 2024 Communications launched a direct mailing and digital marketing campaign designed to attract families of students who are not enrolled in traditional Public Schools we also in 2630 we also in the same time frame in did the millage referendum in 26 through3 uh which also is added to this initiative so a few examples of how we're highlighting our District's programs and initiatives through media is to increase District's visibility and showcase how committed we are to Excellence so we've done school choice ads throughout this campaign cycle with ABC7 we've also had material on Niche we've sent explainer videos out we send them to all our constituents we send them to the
073media they're out everywhere they're on our website they're on our homepages so success measurements again in 22 in 23 24 we received 1600 new applications as a result of the campaign and saw 9% enrollment increase in 2425 we received the campaign we revised the campaign and added streaming television ads and web banner ads through ABC7 this resulted in an increase of what at the time I built this PowerPoint and we put this together was 600 applications but I just got word today from Millie wheeler that we are at 2800 not 2200 so some of those will be duplicate because some people apply to three schools at a time but we're talking about a significant Rise by marketing and the way we did this marketing why I scripted this is so I won't do what I'm
074doing right now but I feel it's important to get down in the weeds we did a geofence marketing campaign where we only marketed to people who had school aid kids than their house we sent streaming ads to them and uh we put it around a fence of you go to a mall you'll get a popup you go here you get that we drove I forget the exact number but I think it was like 90,000 people to the website based on that ad campaign so marketing works it just costs money but uh it works um if the applications hold true our ft increase would be astronomical they all don't hold true some of the students are already here we get that and they're choicing to a neighboring school all we need is one and it pays
075for the entire campaign that we did so the second campaign was the millage referendum it passed at 85% the highest in Florida we sent 10,000 informational cards uh distributed to libraries and whatnot and had some of the community members helped send those cards out for us over 200 web and social Graphics were created we held six Community forums and digital toolkits were shared with all principles action action six is complete created an annual schedule for the Trading Spaces with Terry segment to Showcase District job roles and staff the annual schedule fluctuates based on the superintendent schedule and program top program topics have been identified six months in advance we completed Eight Episodes to date the ninth one will Air this week and and uh it's showcasing BJ over at Sarasota high school as an athletic
076director we have 43,000 views on this series so far 92,000 Impressions and 620 engagements part of the measurement is to see the feedback the series has proven to be very successful to our community recruitment efforts have also given the superintendent an inside look at each job class that he Shadows which helps in making decisions when we're in the cabinet because he's actually seen what nurse does and sees that we can't cut nurses because oh my gosh they're a valuable asset so it's a different perspective that most school districts don't get to see how that works and he takes the time to do that so we're very thankful for that and if you you can see these comments here from nurse Emily is the best thank you Mr Tim we love this so and this is
077just a little snippet of over like I said 600 that come in when these things happen action seven is complete create an annual schedule for the InTune podcast to Showcase District initiatives an annual podcast schedule has been set up but it's flexible too to change for special editions or hot topics the current production is distributed in multiple languages and when I say a Hot Topic like in the beginning of the year we were worried about the policing so we had all of the sheriffs and Chiefs of police come in and do a podcast Roundtable segment overwhelmingly popular and uh that's what I mean when we we might interrupt our regularly scheduled program to fit in something that is very important topic of the day uh success measure is is uh the listener statistics and engagement
078so in in YouTube we have uh is our main platform right now in English we've had 14,674 59 views Russian 533 views for total views of 15,590 now you might think oh that's not that big that's incredible for an educational system sending out a podcast that's 12 minutes on a topic that most people don't care about so those are pretty big numbers um we're hoping to uh we also these are also available on Spotify and apple and that's a growth area for us because we're trying to figure out exactly where those should land and those to pick up more listenership eight is also completed uh strategic action 8 tailor engagement strategies to provide unique and relevant content for the the Spanish-speaking Community all website content and two-way Communications are translated into Spanish additionally we've translated
079numerous Flyers videos and podcasts to Spanish as well satisfaction surveys are being deployed in later in 2025 to see how that's all working and in addition We're translating all videos relevant to the elll department into five languages when I say relevant when we're talking about food nutrition services or we're talking about how to register all the videos that we've created or have been created around that Department are now going to be translated into five languages it's going to be Spanish Russian Ukrainian Brazil Portugese and Haitian Creole success measures here as you can see there's some flyers here that we've done and we've the focus portal is also translatable into the languages and the website obviously is translatable in the app but in our climate survey we do a Spanish speaking survey that comes out of
080the it department or actually it was uh research in uh Denise's department now Mr Ben wier's department but it comes out of there and the question was do this school communicate school policies and PR procedures clearly to parents and Guardians now mind you this was just in Spanish to Spanish speakers so 475 people highly agreed or agreed 24 disagreed and 32 weren't sure how to answer it so there was only 531 respondents so the key is not is it working the key is how do we get them to respond to the survey so that is a good insight for us to say okay some people are taking this survey how do we get more people and that will be through help with Miss OD day and her principles to say let's spread this survey make
081sure your Spanish-speaking communities are taking the survey which should tell us a little bit more on how we're getting to that point action nine is complete provide school board members with frequent updates on District initiatives to communicate with their constituents prior to February 2025 we sent a Schoolboard briefing with highlights from the district each month in February we launched the new InTouch Community newsletter with insightful articles and events happening in our schools the newsletter is a full of information and geared towards staff and families in the community 10 is also complete establish coffee with Connor fors to discuss state of schools with the community the first event was held in July of 2024 here at The Landings and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive the second event was held in September 2024 in Northport at the
082library connected to STC and the next event is scheduled for March 12th at the Fruitville library at 10:30 what's really cool about this is we're we get an average of 30 participants at each one it's a two-way dialogue between the superintendent and a a a variety of parents and Community stakeholder members and our food nutrition services team caters the event with coffee and light snacks so it's it's really a high class situation uh our team goes out puts tablecloths down so it's not like you're walking into a you know hard chairs and everything we dress it up so it they feel welcome and uh and I think it goes a long way with our community that we we put that handshake out there strategic action 11 is in progress organize an annual schools presentation leveraging
083Community Partnerships to update stakeholders on progress and plans one of the reasons for launching the InTouch newsletter was to better connect with our greater community and keep them updated on our district happenings in addition we plan to hold a state of schools in September where we can showcase some of our accomplishments along with some of our singers our dancers and programs and uh the progress that we're making as a school district that would also be open to the media and obviously any Community member can come to that it is the state of schools and uh we're hoping to have that at a big venue and get that sponsored so that is a it's a it's a big deal action 12 is in progress develop a communication style guide for school and District leaders that is
084inclusive accounting for translation services and accessibility and sometimes I say in progress It's coinciding with ongoing okay because there's a lot that's taking place so language line which we've taken over is now available at all traditional schools digital toolkits were shared in August of 24 support materials delivered in September of 24 and quarterly quarterly trainings are currently underway the district style guide is available on the website for all employees to use it includes colors logos fonts and PowerPoint templates we continue to support schools with language line translation from now until forever we've taken that program over priority five uh the to continue on with this in addition we have seven school style guides complete and they're available on the school sites for all stakeholders to use including colors logos fonts and slogans 7 out of
08540 uh we'd be further along but things like the Strategic plan crop up say build this PowerPoint no but we're we're working really diligently we have like nine other that are in draft mode right now and we hope by the end of 2025 they'll all be done strategic action 13 identify and train marketing leads in each school to effectively use a school marketing toolkit and Implement effective marketing strategies this is also in progress we train social media leads at each site with guidelines on how to use social media platforms correctly this is ongoing as new employees take these respon take on these responsibilities all schools have been trained to date additionally materials on how to use their website Marquee newsletters Brandon style guide and Etc to better position themselves in the marketplace will commence by
086the end of this year item 14 is complete schedule and facilitate engagements with policy makers to Foster relationships and Advocate advocate for the district's interest so we're proud to say that five of the seven priorities last school year were addressed in the legislative session so far bills have been filed relating to five out of the six priorities this year since October the superintendent and Department of government Affairs have had 20 different meetings with local and state officials including the governor the governor's office commissioner Diaz other Florida Department of Education officials local delegation education committee chairs and other influential state legislators to discuss priorities accomplishments and their areas of importance to Sarasota County Schools this must this is more than double the time spent last year in in includes the significant increase in the leadership engagements
087this number does not include weekly check-in calls and bills discussed with our lobbyist or legislator meetings they are having on our behalf 15 is complete Define the district's legislative priorities in collaboration with the school board and superintendent development of the district's legislative priorities began in June of 2024 about 6 weeks after the 2024 legislative session ended a draft of these priorities was presented to the school board at the August 21st 2024 workshop and approved at the superintendent at the approved at the September 3rd 2024 board meeting we created a one-page flyer for capitol city with specific details to engage legislators on Sarasota County School priorities following the approval one-page handouts as well as double-sided cards were printed for board members District leaders legislators and our lobbyist to distribute in their meetings to measure some of
088the successes here we currently sent out 12 legislative updates since November 2024 and currently tracking over 180 new bills that were put in and filed as late as Friday last week only one item on our priority list of this year did not receive a bill to address it and that's the construction cost which was not included as a priority this year by legislators but we are very optimistic will gain some traction and be reconsidered next year strategic act strategic action 16 is in progress establish quarterly roundtables with appropriate support for these priorities at local state and federal levels ensuring unified approach to advocacy in an election year it is very difficult to hit quarterly meetings only time a group meeting is feasible is in the delegation meeting in November and December the department of government
089Affairs meets monthly with local elected officials and local leaders to discuss updates on District priorities and initiatives this includes ways to collaborate on mutually beneficial items that the district is focused on so we can use our reach and influence to Advocate with the same message very important meetings that are held monthly 17 is in progress share the district impact and achievement with elected officials to maintain visibility and support by creating the Sarasota County soures communication plan to include our Sarasota County School Source showcase social media initiative planning on an achievement we are planning on an achievement briefing to digitally send to legislators in July the district's impacts and achievements are shared at monthly meetings with local effect local elected officials and Municipal leaders additionally we are planning a quarterly or by anually message to our
090local delegation members highlighting District accomp accomplishments like things like grad rates school grades recognitions Etc to keep them engaged and up to date with What's Happening Here in Sarasota 18 is complete formulate a detailed communication and marketing plan with defined goals to be reviewed annually I have a bound copy here for you today that I'll give you after this uh you also received a digital flip book from the superintendent I believe uh several weeks ago um and it talks about Communications government Affairs overview from the previous year the over review encompasses all commun all communication metrics for 2324 school year it's and uh we have also created marketing plans for the InTouch newsletter ABC7 Niche and other District events like recruitment needs strategic Action 19 is in progress complete comprehensive toolkits for schools to embrace
091their recruitment efforts including promotional materials guidelines for open houses and strategies for engaging with prospective families we created new brochures for each School site showcasing their programs we have added school specific videos when available to each of their webites that showcase their programs and we are continually working with schools to increase their marketability so uh measures success here all schools have received over 1,000 of those brochures that they can have at their front desk and send out the families as they come in to inquire about the school uh we have had social media and marketing training this year and they are ongoing again we also record these trainings so that people can view them at their own time when they can't meet one of our virtual meetings uh the pictures here are an example of
092our recent marketing campaigns so we did the school choice TV ad which is here and then we also now have moved on to HR recruitment tv ads and we've done job fair posters and and also flyers and those have all been put out in multiple languages strategic plan 20 is complete set tangible targets for websites and social media usage aiming to increase engagement and reach we reviewed the 2324 school year analytics and de developed social media strategies to meet the goals including launching the team behind the scenes and and the media campaign bringing and and continuing the teacher Tuesday and increasing focus on short form reels we are trying to move away from the long 4minute videos and go into more one minute 120 videos which get much bigger punch and much bigger view so
093far this year we've had 5 million impressions with this strategy and uh let's move over here so we can talk here about some of the targets that we had and some of the results so in 2324 the websites were at 9.6 in 23 24 11.2 we've talked about some of these metrics earlier 9% social media engagement the 9.3 social engagement rate here and so forth on you can see the climb what's important for you to know here is the industry standard or standard in any industry is between 3 to 5% for a social media engagement 3 to 5% anything above eight is considered phenomenal we are going to go well above 10 this year we still have four months so that is a accomplishment not only to the marketing team and Tory but to the
094whole unit here creating the stuff that is really drawing people to look at and share so strategic action 21 create this sces showcase to advertise and communicate the opportunities our schools offer by partnering with media Outlets to highlight success stories aiming to enhance our image and Community engagement the media relations team continues to seize opportunities to highlight to success story Sarasota County schools by proactively pitching story ideas and media opportunities as well as responding to incoming requests for interviews and background information the team understands that even the smallest interaction can generate meaningful outcomes further enhancing the school district's positive reputation this year we have had 257 media inquires and sent 64 press releases and also sent 88 alert messages we currently partner with ABC7 for chalkboard Champion segments while we continue to pitch compelling Stories
095We recognize that we cannot control the final coverage and I got to put this down a little bit The Source showcase will be by annual showcasing District achievements to legislators and government officials locally we are utilizing the InTouch newsletter and the state of school scheduled like I said before in September strategic 22 is complete Implement an an efficient internal communication strategy to keep staff informed and engaged this action actually happens throughout the entire strategic plan we created and maintained the administrator Weekly Newsletter awn with distribution to all administrators in their AAS this document shares action items and informational items for schools and departments all additions are searchable and and archived weekly emails are sent to the department heads to collect content information and there have been 64 editions created and sent and 1,140 documents shared
096with over 72,000 views in addition we have built and scheduled the launch of the teacher Weekly Newsletter tww for distribution in April of this year so measures to success the InTouch newsletter has a lot of pertinent information for staff and parents and community members also we've partnered or not really partnered it also sends out a weekly email thumb drive Thursday to all of our staff with helpful hints on how to navigate technology whether it's software or Hardware which it does very well and uh I will say this on the in touch we launched our first magazine uh last month and while it had an open rate of 50% of the people we sent it to which was pretty high it garnered uh like uh 250 so engagements 240 this last one in 24 hours already
097had over 800 so like anything else people have to know it they have to see it on a repeated basis and then they're going to go to it it's full of unbelievable items and while it is a big lift for the Department it is so great to hear community members numbers send emails and say this is what we needed this is great because they feel like they're in touch with what we're actually doing now 23 is complete we launched the new district and school websites including stdc which we talked about being fully translated we launched thrill share rooms a two-way communication app which simultaneously translates into again 130 languages we converted over we converted and created over 300 policies to our HTML web pages making them searchable by word translated into all languages language line
098is now available in all traditional schools digital toolkits shared in August which we talked about support mataras were delivered in September of 24 and quarterly trainings are underway uh additionally we have translated num numerous Flyers videos and podcasts to uh throughout the district for many departments into other languages this next slide I'm going to show you is very interesting another way we track data is through Google anal anal ICS to see who's actually visiting our site and what their uh operating system are set up as so what we're seeing is a little bit of a drop off from last year by language but there's still three and a half months to go we attribute some of the drop off to the new website being more efficient and highly searchable with AI searching features versus the
099old site which was highly navigable the room's app may also be cannibalizing some of the hits the web due to the ability to translate instantly which they can get it right on their phone and not have to go to the web if you look at these two comparisons here after a full year we had 32,000 Spanish speakers which is not part of this thing but I just want to show you in comparison to this year 22300 Spanish people who had their operating setup coming to our site the the other 75% of the language Russians Portuguese and Chinese are juxtapositioning between numbers Russians down about a thousand that could change over the next four months CH China has actually gone up and uh taken a 25% versus 18% role and then Portuguese has also uh gone
100up a little bit so the big three are still there China is new to the district seeing this and we have to dig a Little Deeper with our schools to find out what the population grab is is this just outside people again we're advertising we have uh marketing campaigns on Niche which is a worldwide campaign for best schools so when people are searching best schools in Florida we the number one hit the pops up and so there could be people from Asia there could be anywhere that are looking at these things and why it's coming in so these are just data points that help us trigger what languages we should be doing so that we don't spend a lot of resources doing a language that is only have a one off or two off we
101maybe convert that page and let them translate to the website so they can get the information and just for just for sake over a million people have English that have been to the website so uh measur sucess here we've translated 34 videos the average view duration which is very high for school video is at 1 minute 20 seconds we've had three language line trainings 20 participants per training or more we have calls completed 2700 with 31,000 minutes of talking 12 minute average duration and Spanish is still the number one and again the average view time doubled from 2324 to 2425 strategic 24 is complete regularly conduct surveys to measure parental understanding and information dissemination Effectiveness with the goal of reaching 96 positive feedback now I obviously didn't put that number in there our superintendent put
10296% so it will it will take multiple years for us to achieve 96 approval rating but we're up to the task uh the new launch of the organizational Excellence or and their survey tools will better position Communications to succeed but we did get a 92% positive feedback from the school leaders here with an average rating of 4.6 out of five our highest ranking was 4.8 and we ranked 4.4 higher in all categories that were surveyed so more success for measures here additionally data additional data points will be available with the administration of the employee climate survey scheduled for later this year in addition we conduct site surveys when there is a principal opening to help understand what the stakeholders from that Community want as well as to help the transition to the new principal so
103they have some idea of what they're coming into action 25 is in progress develop Partnerships with real estate agencies to provide Sarasota County public schools with Swag Bags to be shared with new families moving into the area providing resources to enroll in one of our Public Schools currently we have delivered some District marketing materials to enhance awareness of Sarasota County Schools they are in schools County Libraries and a few Realtors and Builders we currently do not have a budget for swag items uh we have launched the marketing campaign in touch which has the opportunity us for raise money so hopefully down the line we will be able to provide different marketing uh Avenues more pertinent ad buys and possibly swag items so our report card in the Strategic plan so what we're looking at here
104on this slide is the Baseline that was set in 2223 the target for 2324 and what we did in 2324 so media exposures print and broadcast went up uh District website engagement went up social media engagement rate went up District school Mass messaging is uh went down and that's also we we instituted the new alerts halfway through the year um but I will tell you that we have a goal from our department is not to overpower the messaging from the district because we really want the schools to be in touch the closer you are to the classroom the more apt you're going to listen to the message so we don't want message fatigue so we're intentionally trying not to send as many messages as a district and push back to the schools to send those
105messages whether we write them or not the goal is for them to come from the schools and increase open enrollment participation the target was 1400 we did 1,600 last year if we move on we've been again like I said trying to decrease the amount of mass messaging sent out to avoid the fatigue U messages decline based on cannibalism other possible reasons messages have declined is the possible cannibalization from different avenues like the new app and addition of rooms and these numbers have the numbers with plus signs mean that we still have three and a half months to go but uh what I'm most proud of is the last campaign we did which was the open and enrollment our Target was 1,600 even though it says 1400 here goes that's what we did last year and
106we are sitting at 2800 right now so that that's incredible that that is just if you'd have asked me would that have happened with this campaign I'd have said no we'll be lucky if we get 2000 when the 22 number came in I was like well that's pretty good and then 28 is crazy so national awards uh this is not part of the Strategic plan but it's something you all should be aware of where of every every submitted entry we've put in we've won the highest in the category so our two marketing campaigns that went in last year the school choice open enrollment which we revamped this year won the highest level Gold Award and then our SCS cares re recognition program also won a gold Achievement Award national award our video series that we
107put in uh single single video and video series have all won awards at the highest level of Excellence and with that our strategic plan overview progress all actions have been completed are in progress or planned we've completed 17 of the 25 of all of the actions and even though they're completed they're ongoing so it's not like we can add more actions we can just keep maintaining the process and with that every student every day and I'll try to answer your questions and I have a team here full of answers if I can Miss Ziggler well I'm gushing because I just really I am so impressed um just over the a decade to see the transition and it's not lost on me you know I I believe all of you agree with this and and it's
108something I've felt strongly about is that our ability to communicate really is if you look at any issue in the past if we it almost would have been averted if our ability to communicate or get in front of it and and we didn't really have the right systems in place or you know the technology was kind of we it was moving mover faster than we had the staff that was able to do it so to look to where we are now it's not just that we're fulfilling a need we're exceeding it to extraordinary proportions it's A+ all the way around I mean the templatized for our dist for our schools is extraordinary for them to be able to brand and market and seamlessly do that because that's not their core Focus um love that I
109love just looking at the engagement but I have I have the the pleasure of being able to work with Schoolboard members across the country and this topic recently came up and I had them come to our website because it's come a long way I mean I think poor Mina used to get beat up all the time about the website um and you know there's just so much information but it wasn't structured and the fact that you guys turned that around how three months months I is unbelievable and and I've worked for larger organizations that had much more bandwidth in in from a human capital standpoint and it didn't ever some sometimes I don't think it ever got done properly so my hats off to you but to to the feedback I've received from people in
110various counties large and small um has been just overwhelmingly positive and and using us as a model I I I think that again I could gush all day um one question I know we talked about this a little bit earlier but and I'm not I know enough to be dangerous but when I look at some of the engagements and I know there's different thresholds based on the platform but as we seek out different areas to you know the monetization aspect of YouTube or X or whatever I know there's different is that something are we taking advantage of that is that something we can take advantage of I'm look at right yeah exactly so absolutely yeah so that is something that's kind of got put on our radar this year is if we can monetize our
111YouTube some of our content is restricted because some of it we say it's made for kids not made for kids we have other restrictions on it you also have to meet a certain threshold for your YouTube channel in order to be eligible to monetize it so we're working to reach those minimum threshold and also trying to figure out how we can still get our content to everybody uh monetize it but still allowed to be played in schools if needed perfect that was my question I didn't know what the what the rules were but I wanted I think we have all the you know the interesting content and really that's not easy to do when you're a school district I know we eat breathe sleep at all the time but to see that level of Engagement
112and it's just really starting to take off right so if there's a way for us to optimize the monetization um let's do it so um really great job everyone you guys are an amazing team I'm really really really really impressed so thanks for all that you do Miss Marinelli thank you I'm I'm very impressed I I I would that is a lot of work I mean no wonder you guys get tired but my team's not happy with me right now so please move on to the next topic but I think it this was supposed to happen in [Laughter] April more deliver exing those it's it's wonderful so thank you all and you know being out in the community you you can tell that people are becoming much more aware and like superintendent Conor says we
113want to be everybody's first choice and to get that information and correct information out of what's going on in our schools because you know once something goes out that's incorrect it takes a tremendous amount of time to undo that so I appreciate everything and I have to say the one that I I get the most feedback on is Mr Connor's doing going visiting the schools the community just [Music] loves to look at him and to see what he's doing so the training places is very very popular and and the magazine the so I I just thank you it's very much appreciated thank you Miss Parker uh you definitely make us look good thank you thank you very much um and you can add an extra two messages to your rooms count because while I was
114sitting here I informed my child's teacher that uh she would be staying late for Lego Club so thank you for that truly that that that ability to reach your child's teacher quickly and not just from a safety standpoint but a a just an everyday standpoint it makes a huge difference huge difference um so thank you and I'm sure that the glitches with that will just continue to get worked out over time and I've seen already some of the glitcher things get a little smoother um the the only thing I I wonder about and I hear from other folks is there a plan to merge like the rooms app with the portal um having the two different apps can sometimes be a little bit tricky um and also is is there a way to make it
115easier to like submit an absence note for example I know you can do that on the website and I'm not completely you know useless but it's very difficult some of those things uh I'll take up with our leader of it he's here but but as far as the we have had conversations Joe and I have had conversations and we've had it with the vendor on how we can get the the things to show up in the app the problem is just Pro proprietary the word I'm looking for proprietary language that doesn't allow for them to share some of this and that but they're both getting they're both very popular apps and there I think the apy stuff is used in over almost 6,000 school districts in the country and focus is used in just as
116many So eventually they'll have to come together with a way that we can share that information even if it's just the thing sitting in one app that they can click on and also you got to be careful with people being pushed outside of something so I'm in one app I go here now I'm in something different what happened and you have single sign on issues that how do I get into this now I got to sign in so we have talked about it we'll continue to talk and like Joe knows I think it's weekly or every two weeks now we meet with apog and their development people to tell them what we want and I'll give you an example the newsletter the first newsletter went out and they had a glitch in their system where
117you had to click it twice we called them and said this is not going to happen this can't happen and within 24 hours they fixed it it's awesome that's pretty amazing and a place that has 6,000 districts so they're listening we've had their Chief customer service person one of the older owners before they sold it was in our conference room talking to us and so it is uh it's pretty good relationship we have as far as the attendance thing attendance is tough I recommend you send your kid to school I'm trying attendance is tough Joe Joe can respond to that Joe will respond uh yes this has been a request that we've heard repeatedly we've shared that with Focus they have confirmed it is on their development path for the app um so we're waiting
118on which release that'll be in but uh that is in the foreseeable future that's very exciting for all of us thank you um and then may I ask one more question when we look at our legislative priorities um I know in our previous board meeting we heard a lot from the community about um just being unsettled about what's going on nationally and and and a all of that we don't have control over but in terms of the way that we Advocate and how we Advocate I was I was looking at our legislative priorities and I I think people would be really encouraged if they took the time to read through because a lot of what they're asking for we are advocating for um at the state level and at the local level and I just
119wonder if you would maybe be able to give us just a little snapshot of where we are with our advocacy work and and what we're looking at Mr prto thank you absolutely and just because something's not on our legislative agenda doesn't mean that it's not something that we're advocating for or advocating against at the state level there are as Mr migia said over 180 education related bills that have been filed and I've got them all in a spreadsheet ones that we support ones that we oppose and a lot of these bills have multiple components to them where there might be pieces that we like and pieces that we don't like so those conversations happen at least twice a week with capitol city I'm on the phone with them all the time text messages emails back
120and forth making sure that they know when they're there every single day and they're having these one onone meetings on our behalf when we're not there what our position is on each of these different items and they also come to me with other conversations that they're having and they're hearing and asking about what those impacts would be to us because one of the things that we want to be able to do when we're advocating is provide legislators with what the Practical impact of something would be not just Statewide but what it would be for us and if we're able to quantify that and do that on a daily basis for those legislators it provides those more concrete real examples of what's in front of them and what it may look like if it if it
121eventually passes so those conversations happen at the state level capitol city just merged with another firm and they have a Washington DC based office now so we have that access as well that we work with them on some national issues and And discussing with them what could be coming things that they're hearing up there that may not even be publicly discussed right now things that are being publicly discussed so that we can through the superintendent's Direction and the board's Direction Take a position that we need to take to make the best interest of the district and those that we serve Mr Edwards thank you um let me start by saying that I'm grateful for searchable policies I'm grateful for being able to look at the website in multiple languages um I I know I've said
122thank you for those things before but they really do matter um the the first question I have is is when when you were all marketing the rooms app one of the big things was the retrieval of the information have you had to utilize that those that piece yes absolutely it's it was used almost in the first week and it saved not only enormous amounts of time but it also was uh free okay that is that's a big word that's a big to and and what when I said earlier in my presentation that it not only does it protect the student it protects the teacher because there's a lot of falsities that happen unfortunately in our world and if it happened in a system that we don't have the back end to We Can't exonerate anybody
123we have to wait and pay and wait and pay and and this was instant uh I got off the phone with Todd Gardner like I I think rooms was up for one week and he said oh my God we already have a public regy I have it in seconds so uh it it is working and there may be many others that CU this is a partnership with it too so it has got part of the back end of this we're trying to share the resources here uh so uh he has Todd Gardner and uh Adam no Todd Alexander and Adam Gardner I just combined the two because I talked to them but both those guys are helping from an ID Department with helping making sure teachers or rooms are set up and making sure that
124if there's a little glitch here or there they can get into it and helping fulfill the public records requests so there's a reason why I asked that question um I think that we you did a fantastic job of talking about our Outreach and our hits and how we're we're in there um but there's a lot of Cost Containment strategies that are embedded into this process and we're not hearing that and and that's an important component for us to hear and to share with the public so maybe in April no just kidding um take a time and list where where where the where the money savings has been where Returns on investments have happened uh where economies of scale all those kinds of opportunities where we're leveraging the new technology because we always have to you
125know cast votes for millions of dollars being spent but it's always nice to hear that there's a return on those and and I can tell you right off the bat from where we were a year ago we not only decreased our outlay of cash with switching to this vendor we improved our capabilities so the money did while they're similar they're lower and we added more features so and we also built in A Five-Year Plan a three-year plan with twoyear tiers which included the addition of five new schools with no charge so every time we bring on a new school they build it and there's no char charge another reason why parents want to send their kids to traditional public schools because we spend those dollars saved back in the classroom absolutely um so I also
126want to just point out um I love in touch thank you it really takes all of the website and drops it into one place and the magazine format is brilliant it's so well done um and I can't thank you enough for that when you answered one the question about how there's marketing and advertising capabilities how are we approaching that what are we doing about that so we two twofold what we did is uh we in our magazine as you see your ad here you click that if you click that and fill it out it'll fill out a smart sheet to us it'll give us all the information we need and then we reach back with costs and what whether you want to full page half page quarter page or whatnot so that that's one Avenue
127and I have Chris over here uh man of many hats helping me with managing the ad sales portion of the magazine now we know it's going to be a slow roll we also send out an invitation to all of our CEOs and schools with the ability to be able to advertise in that and you can imagine that some of the bigger ones have bitten the Apple but they have big companies so it takes a little bit of time for them to get in plus earlier in the year we brought earlier last year we brought a policy the board to enable us to even do this so it was strategically planned that we had to have a board policy that would allow us to do this we've gone with our legal team to address what are
128the roadblocks we need to be careful of so we've written contract language so that when someone does sign up they know that it's an educational system we have the right of first refusal we don't have to take this we went into consideration of how you're going to pay for your ad whether it's all upfront or you're going to pay for a peace meal uh we will take credit cards but we will charge you the 4% for the credit card fee um and uh so we we kind of thought it all out so a smart sheet comes in once they do it and the chain starts there and then they're contacted almost immediately once we get that with here's the ad sales and of course uh since it is a new publication there's a published rate
129and there's a new publication rate so you have to call to get that well I would be uh one because I know how popular our schools are hence the passage of the referendum um I might suggest investing in a staff member whose job it is to get out there and find Those ads Mr Edwards I wholeheartedly agree with I think it's a I think sounds like a setup over here I think it's an no it wasn't a setup I'm just but I'm a but that's how I buil my business so um I I I get the the return on investment of of that I think that's a no-brainer but like I always said I've run businesses my whole life I've been in education for now 10 years often time in business when a company is
130struggling the first person to let go is the salesperson it's like well that was really yeah no no I would say there's there's a huge opportunity right in that in that place I'm this is my last um place um this is something that we banter around all the time about parent development or professional develop M for parents or parenting skills or any of those kinds of obscure questions that parents might wonder about can there be a a place on our website where best practices or books that should be read or any kind of thoughts that we could offer uh for parents to just go in and research and find um great skills absolutely that can happen the the the struggle we have is throughout the district there are we don't have the mindset of what
131every Department every curriculum Department what the questions are so it's culminating that information easily build frequently asked questions page but we have to have content and we can work on that with the team and with uh the Chiefs and say what are the questions that are coming in and kind of build that and uh that's a great idea we do have frequently asked questions on many different things especially when we approach back to school but now that we have the in touch newsletter we have a a link there that could drive anybody with any questions go here so we have Avenues now to send people like almost a digital website that comes into your inbox with the things that went out that week or the things we're talking about like this is literacy learning week
132month so this whole Edition was on literacy and thanks to miss o day and her team for giving us some information we could write these articles and then try to tie all the other things and if you also notice the schools in this magazine that are being highlighted are the schools that have maybe more seats than other schools so we're going at making sure that people understand that right there in their Community they have this great school here's their all their offerings and also here's a video about that school so you can see it so there's there a lot of thought process that goes into this whole well what I'm really looking at is I hear all the time I I don't understand how they're teaching math to our kids and I can't help my
133child with homework so that that's a piece that that I I would say I hear all the time something as silly as this from teachers and school-based administrators behavioral issues with their children and teachers are so how can we get some of that information to parents that might want to know want to be involved want to try to help but don't know where to go to seek that information so it the information may already be in our schools in ter and not coming from the parents but just re resources for parents that that we at the school district think they might want to jump on board with um great um great great work thank you so much thank you Miss Ziggler I just wanted to follow up on Mr Edward's comment on the something Mr
134Connor and I have talked about on resources for families was I you know whether it be as we build well as they based on their capacity obviously that's the hardest part right our our teachers trying to give a snap shot of where there are maybe some recommended books I know that was what I was thinking of when I'm constantly looking for books for my child having our teachers do something and if we can utilize our social media platforms whether that be in your practice and just seeing this thing out the cuff here but the the templatized piece in my mind is such a huge game changer because then that allows that capacity to be built for more creative things to be done and you just drop it but you know whatever it is if it's
135a quick V video if that's what they feel comfortable doing or if it's a quick and again each School BAS uh process is going to be a little bit different on what that you know social media process is saying process a lot but I think there is an opportunity to expand on where we are now because we've hit such a great like stride and then tap into our great um you know the resources that our Educators have and these are the things that they're doing on a regular basis with newsletters I'm looking at your face I don't know if you guys have already had this conversation because I constantly can see areas where one it's going to help us build engagement if there if we're consistently being a resource of and I can think of
136just again from an elementary mom's standpoint of if we're talking about whether how do you do certain math problems it's been a really long time or we're talking about Middle School I'm G terrified for that because I'm I'm be in a lot of trouble and I was really good at math but um you know those kind of elements where we're able to bring them and they're going to come to us for that especially so whether it be resources of books or how to you know how to decode a certain you know from from reading standpoints or from math standpoints I do think there's a real opportunity there again I completely respect the fact that our staff has very limited I mean the resource that we can't build upon is more time but I think the
137efficiency you guys have built in really does um lend itself to expanding on that so hopefully just to say you're looking at the team I know I know I know have a graphic artist that's you remiss not to mention our production people Jamal our graphic artist the people in the back yeah because we talk about it they do it yeah and that is a big deal I I I'll tell you that Meredith Clifton is our graphic artist she runs the on not only is she doing the graphic she's actually pulling all that information out and building that and now the tww so it's about maximizing your people and their strength without killing them 100% And it's very difficult line to to ladder and for things that like this I think there are people who just
138genuinely want to do it and then there's you don't want to force anyone to it right you want it to be really organic and exciting and I think that's what's going to gravitate to people but I think and we do have the video producers don't forget about though those people they Rock they're out in schools all the time filming and making their reels and stuff thank you the biggest thing is is thanks for the website I mean it's so much better than what it was because the information there is as well as the interactive calendar the calendar is is is really that's the biggest thing I ever got was hey what's going on what are you doing what you do now there's a million ways in order to find it so it's uh just I
139mean everything is just great to reiterate everybody said I mean it's night and day from couple I mean it's just night and day from just a couple years ago so I appreciate uh all of the hard work that your team does and uh and you know keep up the great work thank you superintendant Conor no thank you for the feedback team awesome job they probably want to ring my neck every now and then because like they're always go a they're charting a course and then I come into the office and I blow up the whole plan and I say I got a hairbrain idea we need do it and so they're always very flexible and they've uh they always pivot and they do such great quality work we're very proud of the work that you
140do so thank you so much um just to close out just to give you just a little bit of a preview of some of what was talked around some of the parent resource Pages we have had conversation so this is like in the oven but it's not fully baked yet so uh Rachel you want to give him a little bit of a insight to that yeah Mr Connor had already broached that conversation gave us a good long runway for it because what we want to do is make sure what we present is family facing a lot of our stuff is student and teacher facing so we have to convert that we have to take what we think is most important big Topics by category so that parents can go after the very best reources but
141facing what they need so that requires us to identify that and kind of convert that and then put it out there in addition to vetting things because we're going to have to look at other things that we can't create on our own but that would be really good tools for parents but there's a process for that so we're working on that and then we will work with uh Craigs team to create that landing spot they'll handle the back door and same with uh Mr biswanger they'll handle that we will give them what needs to go in there so there will be a digital parent resource set that's coming it's going to be wonderful and it'll be something we can continuously update like you've said the other thing that's exciting that Mr biswanger is investigating is
142AI tools for students so homework help but virtual homework help where is as long as they have the internet they can get on and they can get help with a problem get coaching in reading and in math there are other areas in our country that are utilizing that and we are investigating what's working what's not working so we can also bring that forward and see how we can activate support like that so that parents can just make sure they're giving students the time and the place and they can learn together from an AI related coach in those content areas that are more difficult parent universities coming up in the spring we are going to be doing it at Venice High School we are focusing on parenting skills in this day and age with Internet safety
143social media platforms and all of the tips and tricks that are involved with that we are going to also utilize that that contracted services that we're going to be providing for parents to also meet with certain pockets of students in schools that have had more social media issues than others because there are definitely certain pockets and demographics that that's more prevalent so we're going to utilize that um contracted service which is a speaker to speak to those students and then provide tools to any adult po that would like to come to that event I've already talked to Mr Enos about vetting our selection and making sure that we've made a good choice before we sign the dotted line um so those are just some of the things based on what you're already thinking that we
144are working on and we typically will pull back in the spring those program specialists in curriculum directors that have to heavily work on this but they're in schools so there's a season where we pull back we start lining up those projects extra Duty days that we do in the summer to make sure that we can you know meet the needs and the expectations of not only you but our all of our stakeholders students amilies and teachers Mr Edwards one quick question you mentioned about um if internet access do we still have a substantial amount of families that do not have internet access the only families that we would have that do not have internet access or by their own choice and what I mean by that is we continue to be a a partner with
145T-Mobile with the 10 million uh program and we have free hotspots for any family that would need them um at some point when I uh give my update uh to the board one of the things that we'll talk about is our home access program that's been a big success um where we ensure that students have the devices and the connectivity that they need to be successful thank you and and I'd just like that you'll be able to upload your excuse note which I'm I'm I'm really looking forward to because my my children were still in school this would be another game Cher for them as I know uh Mr or anything further sir that is it sir thank you on to member comments Miss Barker I I don't have much to say thank you all
146I really appreciate it and um I'm grateful for each of you miss Marinelli same here thank you all great job today and Kudos Miss Ziggler I'll try to be brief I know it's been a long day um I had I know during our Retreat we talked about some priorities and one thing that I had brought up was is broader but it was about healthy initi are healthy students and whe we're talking about school lunches um or U I know cell phones was another piece and I'm glad we're at least enhancing that um but another area I had recently come across was the let me get this right the presidential physical fitness uh award which was something that I vaguely remembered I didn't do extraordinarily necessarily well on it but um back then I still wish
147I could do a pull-up but um but that it went away in 2018 it did some research and I know that there there's something in my mind that I know we spend and talk a lot about the mental health and the the wellness of our students and we're really in this battle of trying to figure out ways to really enhance and improve that and so I had sent something over to Terry Mr Connor excuse me and um just to get some thoughts going and to see if this is something we could really Implement here in Sarasota County um so I'm going to maybe tip it over to you to see what uh what you guys were able to discuss and get feedback from yeah so just preliminary discussions with the team I think it would
148be advantageous to put a task force together maybe some parents and some uh interested stakeholders around this I I do believe you know nutrition Healthy Living physical fitness all those things lead to better academic outcomes for students so we could potentially have a nice creative unique situation around that some healthy initiative campaign that we could do for Sarasota County and make it our own if that's the desire uh in which we want to go I think I think it's a worthy Endeavor because it ultimately is going to move the needle for us whether indirectly or not I think that would be U worthy Pursuit thank you Mr Edwards wait can we get thoughts on that sure miss Marinelli uh being a product of that was a Presidential Fitness Award and it was by President Kennedy
149and I grew up with that and I absolutely loved it and I know by looking at me now you would never know but all the way through high school I basically was the winner of all that stuff but no on the serious note we we focus so much on academics and instruction we sometimes forget the whole child and there needs to be that play there needs to be that physical fitness because and and to get fresh air and I'm I'm not politicizing anything or acting like a flower child or anything but there is so much research on the whole child and we have just been pushing and pushing academics on our children and forgetting the aspect of play and everything that goes in with that especially kindergarten kindergarten now is almost like second grade instruction
150and I understand the push but I wholeheartedly support looking into that because we've got to find ways for for kids to interact and be healthy and to use their their body in a positive way and um I'm all I'm all for that but it was President Kennedy started that um like in 19 62 Miss Barker um I agree and I I would just add to that um there is a lot of research about um unstructured playtime and and recess time and I you know sometimes I wonder if we don't do quite enough of that um unstructured not directed play and um there are districts who have increased their recess time and have seen accompanying raises in their achievement um measures so I'd be very interested in exploring that aspect of it as well as as
151part of the the healthy kids initiative and also um when we take that recess away from children and what that looks like and how many minutes are left I think that's an important piece of the puzzle as well so Mr Edwards um I really love all of the programming and nutritional part of the conversation I'm cautious about the brand laying over it because I think that's venturing into a world that we are trying to avoid from a discussion stpoint I think we can brand it as a Sarasota initiative and and and own it as our own and incorporate all of those incredible conversations and move forward I love the idea I I that was what we had talked about and it was kind of more of the to make it Sarasota um and I had
152just written down academically and physically fit like we're focused on that area whether it be structured whether it be just elevating the aspect that there's a lot of ways to really that that's all very positive for our students and for our staff and knowing that we only have so many hours in a day I know so it's creative of trying to utilize that time and I yes that's always the challenge and I know we're working our staff really really hard but um so I'm excited about having a task force to really come to the table and think about some great ways because there may be some unexpected benefits at the end um as well so thank you well I I haven't commented yet but I I would like uh ice cream and Oreos that are
153they are nutritious and they do serve value so as long as we don't trade out our carrot sticks and celery uh and and we eliminate cookie cakes uh then I would be more than in favor of it uh but ultimately yes I think that that's something that anytime we can do that we we can uh we should be able to put that because it's for the whole child not just for the just for the academic Mr Edwards um I uh share the fact that it was a wonderful Workshop I loved all of the conversation and thank you for a wonderful um morning and afternoon well I also concur I also would say apologize out there I know I got some text messages about what was going on uh executive session did run long because of
154Safety and Security um and as a board I could tell you as well as staff is that that's one thing that we're 100% committed on is to making sure that our kids are safe and our students students are safe and we do the very very best and sometimes um that does cause delays and and that was for the reason for today uh seeing that great presentations as always as we continue to move forward to be the leader in education as well as everything else in Sarasota as we should always lead and never follow here because we have the people the students the families and the backing of our community to do it seeing that uh the board will reconvene on March 11th at 3 p.m. for an expulsion hearing um but that is closed to
155the public and then we have 6:00 p.m. will be our next scheduled board meeting uh with that we'll go ahead and adjourn for today