Superintendent's Workshop 12 p.m. 7-25-2022

001to call this meeting to order today is Monday July 25th 2022 this is the superintendent's Workshop calling the meeting to order at exactly 12 noon P.M the purpose of today is for us to hear from the superintendent of all the things that he'd like to bring before the board so I'd like to turn it over to Dr Moore thank you madam chair and I hopefully I hope everyone had a wonderful and relaxing summer and we are here to kick off the 22-23 school year and no better way to do that than talk about the tentative budget for this upcoming school year so with that I'll turn it over to Mr Fagan for his presentation now you see through the board through the chair through the board yesterday we want to talk a little bit about

002the 22-23 tentative budget before I start I need to give some acknowledgments to the staff and the finance department sitting to my left is Mrs Kim Coleman she's been here since 1998 she started out in high school working for the district 88 sorry okay 88. been here 34 years I have another seven members who total years of experience with the district is approximately 115 total total work experience professional years is over 180 years without them and their dedication and their hard work to this this work would not get done it would not be as accurate as it is going into the budget originally when the fourth count came out we were expected to get about 6.7 additional dollars when the second count came out that jumped up to an additional one million dollars uh so

003to about 8.9 or basically eight million dollars but as you already know there are several items that have been earmarked for that eight million dollars you have an increase in teacher salary allocation approximately 1.3 so of the money they give us they've earmarked and mandated it to be spent you've got negotiated salaries of performance pay of approximately 1.8 million FRS increase that our cost of district and properly approximately another million dollars family empowerment last year was 3.6 million when the second count came up that's going to be approximately 4.6 million so that's going to cost the district another million to a million and a half to budget for insurance for casualty and health is approximately a million dollars charter schools of course get their proportionate share that's about six hundred thousand dollars energy price of

004gas electricity other stuff is going up as well contractors filling the pinch so their contract CPI and Etc all in all no matter which number you look at will basically probably break even so all the money we received from the state has pretty much already been earmarked foreign there were trim advertisements were posted on the 22nd Friday in that there was three ads they tended to budget the proposed tax increase and the capital outlay as you originally mentioned the attacks proposal increase had a percentage of 17 percent that was before the second count came out the actual percentage increase is only six percent not 17. that was the final document we were waiting on overall your millage is going up approximately five percent or 0.238 School taxable values are 25 billion dollars this is an

005increase of 3.9 billion dollars in one year that's approximately 17 your prior year is increase in property taxes some somewhere range somewhere between the four five and six percent range so in one year you went from basically six percent to 18 percent total amount to be levied tonight with the two resolutions that you'll be approving tonight is approximately 148 million dollars total budget is approximately 361 million dollars impact to the average homeowner depending upon their home their assessed value and exemptions they have any any exemptions that are allowed out there based upon the mandatory rates that we're required to assess a homeowner could see somewhere with a 250 000 home could probably see four percent maybe sixty thousand depending upon some other ones you could probably see as high as 108 dollars for the year

006all depending upon their assessed values their their exemptions and Etc keep in mind the only thing we're assessing and increase of which is really a decrease we're assessing the required local millage which is required by the state it actually is a decrease five percent but because of the property values which increases your assessed values your property taxes will go up so we're not imposing anything more than what's required and actually our rate is actually lower than the prior year uh to recap the 18th you approve the trim ads they were published on the 22nd today we'll have the hearing on the number on the first public hearing on the millage rates on September 8th you'll have the final budget hearing and on budget rates at millage rates and total budget some high points we ended

007the year of June 30th 2022 with the 20 million dollar fund balance this is compared to 25 million dollars in the prior year this decline was planned it was planned because of additional academic Services provided to schools the additional teachers the eight period day we also allocated more teachers through Sam in order to give the schools more resources to assist with the regaining those learning losses because of covet we go into 23 22 23 some additional items we did we did add 10 Behavior techs funded by Ida the FTE is aligned with actual FTE earned from the prior year we added five security monitors at the high schools eight at the middle schools and of course we returned to the seven period day Esser money Esser one and two 99 has pretty much been expended

008and collected a vessel three we collected 5.2 million dollars in the prior year so we have the balance of 26 million dollars to collect over the next year that ends my presentation I'll pause and answer any questions all right board members so we're not going to go through this entire book then to ask questions only if we had something absolutely just ask me questions all right well get ready all right who would like to go first uh Mr barefoot yes sir in the yes or month oh and the property values no in the fund balance in the fund balance no we want to try and maintain somewhere between 18 and 20 million dollars moving forward yes okay um Dr ship yeah my only question also related to the fun bet first off thank you um

009the evolution of this book and how it gets cat how it's categorized how it's color coded how it's organized um has really evolved in the last four years I've since I've been here making it far easier to read to go to specific places so thank you all for your work on that thank you um you said that 20 million balance can you just say what percent that is based on last year's Revenue was 17 17 which far exceeds our mandatory or our board mandated five percent balance correct to the chair yes ma'am your five percent is a budgeted requirement to have at the beginning of the year by state law you've got to have at least three percent at the end of the year and we have 17 now yes ma'am okay and so is

010that in the past we've had conversations about how much we hold in the balance and for what reasons and I know those are one-time only funds um but is it Our intention to maintain such a high percentage balance and why through the chair yes ma'am you want to maintain that high fund balance primarily because one it gives you that cushion if you do have a one-time expenditure that you need to buy you can purchase it number two definitely assist with your bond ratings the bond if the bond rating companies feel that you are overspending your funding versus your expenditures your bond ratings will come down that ending fund balance shows them one that you've contained your expenditures and you're maintaining your Revenue thank you that's all okay Dr Jones good thank you Mr Fagan Miss

011Copeland the whole department I really like that our budget is really focused on our strategic plan and guiding principles I think it's important to know where we put the money and as Mr Fagan said or is in our book about 85 percent goes to salary so we kind of go from there on what we have and thank you for saying what the taxes would be on individual homes regarding their property value Mr Fagan when you look at our debt and you look at the capital money that we're using to pay our debt what percentage of capital Are We Now using for debt to the chair I don't know the percentage over the top of my head but approximately 12 million dollars is coming out of your Capital your total right now is about 37 million

012dollars okay so that now over the next four years that debt will slowly go down in five years you will the only debt you'll have is a small qualified School construction bond which goes out to 20 39 I believe so the bulk of your debt will be paid off for the next five years okay um when we look at budget and what we have for our schools and obviously we had um Ms Bieber help all of our schools with their Master's schedule because Dr Moore Miss baser when we look at Master schedules how are we going to be in the core classes and what were our electives look like with numbers or opportunities through the chair I'll I'll take that so we will be at class size over the last several years we've been significantly

013under class size uh more so in our secondary schools we'll be at class size and hold true to that we will continue to protect that ratio in the core you're going to see a better balance as well with the seven period day going back into effect in our elective courses um so we have done a great deal of work as you just referenced in order to ensure that we have students sitting in the right seats with the right teacher and the instruction that is being provided is aligned to the standards in which we're obligated to teach in order to ensure that we've maximized outcomes so I cannot say or give enough praise to the work that's been done by our School site leaders Mr Sir and her team and creation of Master schedules that are

014in the best interest of children relates to this a little follow-up with Master's schedule Mr Bass do you know where we are on how many teachers still need to be hired through chair it was 43 Friday okay all right all right um and just a note on this the behavior techs that were trained to help in our ESC classes I think is wonderful adding more security monitors obviously to middle and high and Dr Moore can you just tell us what they will be doing and why you thought it was necessary at our schools it's looking at what are we honoring everyone's time and the reality is based from feedback from students through my superintendent student council from listening to our school site administrators um and looking at how they're spending their time so having individuals

015who are able to move throughout the school day to assist with a rival assist with dismissal as you know we are moving our teachers to a seven and a half hour day and we want to spend every single free moment that they have planning uh we want to protect planning for those individuals these individuals can assist with those procedures they could be supervising lunch significantly more eyes moving throughout the day that frees up administrators to be in classrooms to be the instructional leaders in which they have been charged to be thank you very much that's all for now miss barenberg okay Mr Rosario yes thank you so much for all of the work that you you do and I I will agree um on the evolution of the entirety of the budget process um when

016I first came on and um two other board members can attest to we had a very detailed Page by Page line by line introduction and kind of discussion that ended it was over a few days to really digest and understand this as board members that has changed quite a bit now it's only if you have questions then ask I'd like for us in the future to kind of think about whether that might be something good to do it was helpful for me as a new board member coming on so I just thought I'd mention that again for for the future or maybe even um when we're ready to um approve the budget I will say that the the Strategic plan creating this the way that we see it now the pie chart on page 13

017of 448 it really shows us that we are just a little less than half percent with regard to our focus on academic success so I I appreciate the way that this is now aligned where we can see that the Strategic plan drives the budget not the other way around it's not like we're creating the budget and then saying oh and by the way we have this plan and and we're going to try to fit the plan into the budget so now the way that a novice might read it they can clearly see that this is the priority and so I would like to see more in academic success um but I think that the the the formatting of this um is definitely um uh more understandable I suppose I have a question about the trim

018notices so I requested the trim notices but I requested it too late so I apologize for that the trim notice that went into the paper um last week the proposed top the notice of proposed tax increase can you talk a little bit about there was a concern with regard to Charter Schools not being on that trim notice um and then what I wanted to see with the previous trim notices because it's not that trim notice is not in this book the one from last week so this book was created before and printed before the trim notice went into the paper which I which I understand but previous books do not have that trim notice online so that's why I asked for it um in email today can you talk a little bit about the charter

019school role participation our responsibility to the charters with regard to tax notices increases where they fit within our budget I do see they are on our report to the community for fiscal year 2020 and what is allocated to them on the bottom is just like a summary report that you gave us um so I'm just going to hand it over to you if you don't mind and explain that part and portion of it so that we can be clear what happened with that with that ad sure through the chair to the board uh we'll start with your last document that report to the community is a report of expenditures which is true Charters do get a proportionate share of the critical millage going back to the trim ads trim ads are governed by the state

020of Florida the Department of Revenue you're not allowed to change any wording on those ads unless it refers to the numbers the dates the years and Etc Charter Schools cannot be mentioned in that and the reason why charter schools are not mentioned in that is because the school district is the taxing Authority we're the only ones who can Levy Charter Schools cannot charter schools are entitled to a percentage or proportionist share based on Florida statute in their contract in which case we do appropriate them in the budget I believe what the confusion was is that in a few years ago Florida statute changed and Charter Schools were required and were eligible to be to get a proportion of share of the one and a half Mills that was paid out in one year after that

021year the State of Florida has continued to pay that directly to the Charter Schools without having to tax or take any from our one and a half Mills that may have been where the confusion was that the charter school says well if I'm supposed to get some of this money then why am I not in the ad you can't be in the ad because it's not not governed by Department of Revenue number two if you are supposed to get the money through Florida statute we will appropriate and expend the money through Florida statute has nothing to do with the ad they are two separate vehicles so they get a proportion of the FTE yes they get their per their portion of the FTE and we are contractually legally obligated to provide for them their portion

022of the FTE we are not what I'm understanding is we are not required to provide for them the portion of the millage because the state directly sends it to you now the state now directly sends it to the charters is that through the chair only the capital outlay Millers the one and a half Mills only the capital outlay military okay you'll get their percentage of the critical millage and everything else just so they're still getting the okay Council of the state okay so thank you um I know that there was some confusion in the community over that so it's um I'd still like to see the previous um ads so we can compare and make sure that it wasn't in previous because I think the concern was we were mentioned in previous ads so I

023just want to kind of be sure that that wasn't the case I also had a question about the um let me see if I can go back the Esser Esther 3. uh I know that we were approved for about 30 million and you I think I heard you just mention the balance of the 26 million will be collected over the next year did I hear you correctly on that do the chairs the grant goes to the next two years whatever we can expend and collect we will collect as much as we can to expend all dollars as fast as possible so we don't have those funds currently through the share you have to spend the funds first and then you get reimbursed oh okay so you just kind of like you have a grant once

024you spend it you submit the claim they'll pay you back okay and the sr1 and sr2 funds are complete do we have a balance on the sr1 and sr2 funds through the chair extremely small amount less than one half of one percent okay and then the so what are the what are the plans moving forward for the sr3 funds and the the interesting part here I mean I've mentioned this before it's not um it's not new the concern that I have is that the that board the board and the community are not having a direct input on what those funds could be used for the sr3 funds for those who are watching and listening and real layman's terms it was money that was granted to the schools during covid during the pandemic correct me if

025I'm wrong during covid and to sustain and keep schools open and then we could use those funds for anything to to to um to say that we were indeed keeping schools open and keeping students safe from the pandemic now we have Esther III which I don't think a lot of people thought we would receive post pandemic of 30 million dollars right of 30 million dollars and so what are we using it for which is a which is a great thing but what what are we going to I don't what I don't want to do is I don't want to just put it into salaries that we can't sustain long term over time I don't want to waste it just because we have it I want to be able to to strategize and hear from the

026public as what other districts have done they have had Town Hall meetings they have had open you know open forums just to kind of do the review of what Esser is and then here is the balance what could we use it for what are the needs in the community so have we yes I see you're ready no go ahead I'm done on page 174 of the budget book you'll see a narrative of all three of the essers s or three approximately 30 million dollars we extended 5.2 million in the prior year of the balances left is a minute and a half to buy additional computers and Technology requirements for the district uh 14 million dollars is for mental health services and academic support to form a counselor Support Services Etc we got approximately one and

027a half million dollars to replace hva systems throughout the district 1.4 million dollars is for summer school learning 4.3 million for your next two tax textbook adoptions and approximately 1.1 million dollars cost the primary focus of the application that was filled out for Esther was to utilize the current expenditures that the district has for ongoing support increase those which is what we did last year with your a period day your supplements to teachers to work their planning periods also the additional teachers that were allocated in the last years all that was part of your sr2 and three that's why 5.2 million got moved into prior year in order to give those students and those schools the academic support they need in order to get those gains there were the point for next year in the

028next two years is the same what what we can spend the funds on is legally anything that we do in the schools in order to enhance academic performance the main objective is to use federal funds first general funds second build up the fund balance and maintain that fund balance moving forward yeah I still think that we need to open it up to the community I still think we need public input to hear from the taxpayers where they see a need um rather than it be told to us what it's going to be used for I don't think that we have had much engagement in that communication um so I don't know how board members feel about that but I I it is taxpayer money and it is um it's a grant rather and it's certainly

029something that I think that we should look more look deeper into provide more opportunities I also think that you mentioned the fund balance whatever is left over goes into the fund balance or keeping the fund balance High what was mentioned previously with the three percent and the five percent and why there is a high fund balance in there though I I don't disagree that we should have a high fund balance to ensure our bond ratings are you know where they need to be and so on and so forth we have a policy that says we have a statute that says that we're supposed to have a three percent three percent of our budget in there right we have a policy that says we're supposed to have five percent so that kind of gives us a

030little bit of cushion to make sure that we don't go below the five percent to ensure that we have some funds there right but what we don't have is a ceiling we don't have a cap on how much is too much to keep in our fund balance have is Am I Wrong do we not have through the chair uh no Mao and I would love to be in a position where I tell you there's a 50 fund balance of 75 million dollars what would you like to do with it is one-time money or what would be your Slow Burn Down rate it's guess it's one of those things that have never come to pass and therefore it's a great problem to have I don't want to talk about it because probably be a while before

031we ever get there yeah just I you know it dawned on me that you know if we keep like let's say you know if we get 26 million and one shot from Esser if it sits in the fund balance just hypothetically speaking not that that's going to happen you know at what point do we say too much is too much you know we receive the funds to use them we don't receive the funds to sit on them but then at the same time we do we might have a recession or we might have issues with our you know in our economy um with inflation so you know it's it's kind of like what do you do where do you where do you put your priorities and I suppose that's the the responsibility of the board

032to make the decision um on the budget on that so that I think board members it would be uh really prudent for us to continue to have these conversations Mr bacon chair you bring up a very good point one object one option that I did not mention just a minute ago and that is another reason to have a good fund balance is you know that our funding comes from the state and sometimes that can be a little bit fluctuating so if you have a 100 million dollar budget and you roll 20 million dollars they give you another 100 million dollars you're pretty good you can spend some of that 20 million one time but if they come in and say I'm only going to fund you 80. well now you need all that 20 just

033to balance your budget now you have nothing in reserve so because our revenue is not fixed and standard to where you can always count on a b and c that extra funding source helps for you in case the state does come in and cut you or does cut maybe a program that you have utilized and you want to keep and now you've got to figure out something to do in the next couple years but at least it keeps that funding going for the next couple years but it's a very good point yes I got it thank you I appreciate it thank you so much okay all right a couple things thank you for bringing up the trim ads so I wanted to make sure that's clear that people understand about what that is if you

034send the former trim ads to one board member please send them to all thank you um I asked a question of you this week that I'd like to bring up now because other I can't speak to other board members so they don't don't know but I did meet with some band boosters and some Orchestra people this last week or so about some concerns they had in the budget and noticed that there wasn't really a line item for Performing Arts and so I asked you about that and I understand that now there is some money a hundred and fifty thousand dollars it's going to be divided up between the different Fine Arts performing arts groups could you expand on that yes to the chair Midway through the year we met with the band directors and Kelly

035Shore and we're thinking so what kind of needs they needed and their funding has been very volatile very what I'm sorry volatile okay I thought they might get 350 000 next year they got 15 next year they got 100 maybe the following year they got zero so we met with them and asked them to give us what do you need what's out there what's Brook what's what's what what's your wish list wishlist came back about 300 000 he said well that might be a little tough in the first year what do you really need so we originally said okay we can probably guarantee 50 000 for sure but this is in the beginning stages of the budget let's see what we can do later on when we get done the budget was done there's a

036hundred and fifty thousand dollars allocated for this year between the secondary and the middle schools for Performing Arts we've asked them to give us a list of how they want to spend it and we want to use that as a guide building the next year's budgets next year in the following year to maintain that level but not to under fine but not to over fund too much at the same time so it's kind of a new line item in the budget for Capital that we want to not have these Peaks and valleys but we want a pretty much a steady flow of Revenue in there so that they can buy what they need when they need it okay so that's capital money correct so that means it could be used on repair of instruments purchasing

037instruments I don't know about uniforms um but music so that is something that a principal can make a decision like with curriculum instruction money or discretionary funds um transportation to events that they have to attend not extra events things like that um and you know I think also building principles I'm learning they probably could use your support and really understanding their budget and how to be creative with it I learned that when I was a principal sitting down with the my CFO is show me where I can purchase instruments show me where I can purchase things like that because sometimes it's not very clear but when you realize okay I can use Capital money for that that's great then I know okay that's something I can take out of there um purchasing music to me

038is like purchasing textbooks so you know where are we going to come up with that money so the chair that would probably be a new project for next year the non-capital items that the schools need for specific programs such as music that does come out of the school's discretionary and which case do schools have to balance between do I buy music or do I do this right it just would require some discussions next year to see what we can do I I know like for example as a coach I had a booster club and I know booster clubs help tremendously with these programs which you know they probably need to because we can't afford to do a lot of it however if we're going to offer programs like that we need to fund the basics

039and so I had that concern that I couldn't find it in here so I appreciate you telling me what you told me and now publicly they know they have 150 000 in capital money okay I appreciate that um the fund balance doesn't keep in a high fund balance keep us from having to go out for a tan do the chair yes but no okay explain it if you do have a high fund balance that means at the end of the year you had revenues greater than expenditures okay but it doesn't mean I have cash flow cash flow means when I start the beginning of the year such as we are right now if my expenditures were higher than the prior year and I ended with 20 million dollars in the beginning what is my actual

040cash flow going out the door Revenue minus expenditures as an accounting numbers just gives me a number at the end now we're talking cash flow how much money do I have in the bank what do I have to pay so that tells me if I had when I before I get to November before the 100 million dollars hits am I going to be negative right so that's the difference it it tells you you have plenty of fun balance but it may not necessarily be all 100 cash okay which brings me to the other um so every time we see kind of property values going up and we see more required local effort money we know that money is going to not come until November correct and if we get less money from the state then

041we're in this position now that we have to worry about October November paying salaries correct correct and then this is and for 22.23 you're down a million dollar funding from the state that concerns me that's through the course of the year it's it's amazing it's not going to us but we're still looking at the class cash flow right now to determine if it's tan is required okay can you can you describe the difference between um the 361 total budget and the 309 budget number that's being used also we've got in the beginning of the book somewhere total budget at the top 309 on one of the pages I want to say it was the page that was referenced earlier page 58 maybe 309 or earlier not 58 sorry you have 309 and one the budget

042item number and then I believe the 361 includes all of the project funds and the um uh Enterprise funds and all those other funds correct through the chair yes ma'am that's the timing difference between one the tenant the budget and when the book was printed when the tenant to budget went out and number two this only includes Appropriations that tended to budget includes fund balances so the big difference is your fund balances is not in the 309. okay it just shows Appropriations right because there's been some confusion out there about what our total budget is okay so uh the last thing I have are specific pages so if you go to page 58 where it says general textbook allocation FTE I know um with purchasing textbooks you can roll over funds um and you've got

043this as a rollover fund from because it's from last year so did we have money left over from purchasing Ela materials we're going to move them to math or page 58 the negative 32 000. yeah yes that's uh again preliminary budget that's the anticipated role I expect that role to probably be a little bit higher to cover that so again this is 10 10 budget versus final so my question is are we okay for math purchasing through the chair yes ma'am and also you have Sr money set aside for purchasing purchasing say because here we are having to to purchase textbooks but we're using Esser funds are we using that just because we want to protect our general fund or or do we need to actually use Esser funds to cover textbooks through the chair

044it's the best use of the funding available to use a federal Source over General source and number two if you did not have Esser and your funding sources was limited then you'd be looking to make some adjustments to be able to fund textbooks textbook is a big ticket item every year and you have two choices one you got to start cutting every year and putting some away so you have that big ticket item or three you hope something like Astro comes in to help fund that okay can you before you go on um could I finish please yes I'm asking you for the page where you were I just said it page 58. what line um it was on the rollover funds very very low at the bottom say it again at the very bottom

045very bottom yeah page 58. okay okay can you go to 119 page 119 okay so under assessment which is really important to look at because we're going from FSA to progress monitoring this year um so I'm looking at those numbers and the grand totals at the bottom where it says final budget book and tenant of budget book is this due to progress monitoring um you know explain to me about last year's look at how much we're spending on assessment and this year's look so the chair you're looking at the 80 000 decrease right at the beginning of the year you always have people that are moving between um facilities and so in this particular case that 121 000 simply did not get put on that on that one lineup that person is being accounted where

046somewhere else so we're talking person not correct assessment yes I want to make that very I saw that but I want to make it very clear that that's why that number looks like that it is the difference between tentative and final remember we finished the year we get the tenant to book out we will finish making some final adjustments and these these items like this will come out before the final there was no decrease in assessments thank you could you turn to page 122 and again I know this is tentative budget still but this is the time to bring these things up so we can kind of make some adjustments if we need to um okay so I looked at this compared to years past and um definitely an increase in especially was it discretionary

047and general non-discretionary salary so under the salary does that include the attorney or is that just the executive secretary because that's 375. do the chair well that's only a two thousand dollar decrease no I know but what does that include who's whose salaries to the chair just a board in Secretary got it okay and then legal fees project could you explain that through the chair that's your outside counsel Legal Services was that the attorney search that we did you see that on the last one was higher through the chair yes ma'am okay and then um the last one discretionary is that from security no school security is separate um is that cell phones what is that through the jury anything and everything that's non-sour cell phones supplies travel Etc okay because we don't see a

048breakdown of what those items are unless of course we ask for them correct to the chair yes ma'am if we want to see that kind of detail the book would probably triple in size okay I understand so as a principle when you have your whole budget you have a breakdown of everything through the Charities and you get a book similar to this not maybe this size but a pretty good size book that tells you where he spent everything and where you plan to spend everything next year so who does that for the school board through the chair one you have a bookkeeper at every school I have a team of people that go out and visit the bookkeeper and the principals they go into Focus they teach them how to use Focus run the funds

049that they need run reports and be able to see what they spent where they're spending currently and what they're projected to spend for the rest of the year okay so so who is overseeing the spending of the School Board office that would be the school board and the executive assistant executive sector but we don't get the breakdown like the principals get you would have it once we were to either meet with yourself or board secretary okay I think it would be probably good practice and transparency to put that out there to the chair yes ma'am we could Supply that I think it's only fair for the taxpayers to know what we're spending also how we're spending money and then the last one 176 and thank you to those of you that were answering my question

050on this but um I've caught something on page 176 that kind of bothered me and I think you've got an answer for me Mr Bass it was uh the breakfast price will increase for 25 cents for students and adults the lunch price will increase 25 cents for grades K to five 50 cents for grades 6 to 12 and only 25 cents for adults so could you explain why we're increasing for students by 50 Cents but we're only increasing for adults by 25. yes ma'am that was a typo okay it's only 25 25 cents across the board for all categories so are these numbers correct at the bottom then the numbers at the bottom are correct so last year's it was price fifty to two it's 250 is going up to 275. okay I believe that

051was the number for six through 12. okay I just want to be make sure we're being fair and we're not assessing kids more than we are adults yes ma'am okay um that's all I have for now I'm sure when we get to final budget uh lots of conversations between us on details anybody else yes Mr Rosario yes thank you um there were a couple of things that were mentioned here um and I'm probably going to work backwards with the breakdown that you're going to provide us for the school board budget can you also please provide that for the superintendent's office budget yes ma'am thank you um so that would be for those who are listening or watching page 122 is the school board and then page 123 is the superintendent budget um I had another

052question here let me make sure the textbook I think it was with the textbook um that the point that was made there was actually pretty good in terms of and the Performing Arts in terms of where that money is coming from so I don't know who who decided that they would have that schools would have to wait or that this was created and because this was created already that they would have to wait until next year we're in the tentative budget planning session process now so if we want as a board to collectively agree to edit this budget to add Performing Arts now we can do that now we don't have to wait until next year so we can charge you all with a reassessment or re-evaluation to ensure that even with the sr3 funds

053coming in to use three hundred thousand dollars of 24 million I mean if you look at the Esser I lost the page now because I was on the other page that Esser breakdown that you provided earlier page 174. that Esser breakdown sorry um that Esther breakdown has 14 million dollars 14 million dollars are allocated to Mental Health Services and academic supports Jerry yes Mao 14 million dollars for something of data that has not been provided to us chair we can give you a copy of the Esther application that will list any and all items and I believe I may have already supplied that no it was what was provided for us was information that the a and a committee decided that their priority would be on index cards that was the data that was provided

054for I'm talking about data that justifies 14 million dollars worth of mental health services and academic support to the chair the 14 million dollars consists of and I don't have that off the top of my head goddess galsters so sex coaches uh math and reading coaches various other positions that are in the district right now that provide direct support to the students as well as your Mental Health Counselors and Etc it's not fourteen thousand dollars of more because if it was fourteen thousand dollars more then next year you'd have to cut 14 million dollars right that's my concerns well we're not doing that I'm taking the 14 million dollars I have today and moving into Esser so the next year I'm moving back to General and the budget stays solid well let's not do that

055let's decrease this 300 000 and Supply the schools with their wish list that wish list for Performing Arts is really critical especially for the schools that do incredible work with their Performing Arts we've been to some of their performances their audio equipment their you know the lighting the the stage you know work the I mean they're there they need help painting even I know that probably comes out of capital um you know curtains probably comes out of capital I'm not sure but I would agree I mean I don't think that we should wait until next year if there if this is an area that has not been provided a line item for just readjust the sr3 give it to them I I'm in full support of providing students and these schools with the with the

056Performing Arts materials that they need instruments whatever it is that they need it's three hundred thousand dollars out of 30 million it's probably a drop in the bucket to the chair yes ma'am I can work up a proposal and submit it to the board for consideration so how many people would lose jobs if you do that to the chair it depends on the amount of money I wouldn't say they'd lose their job would be a matter of just shifting funding from A to B to take me a little time to figure that out but it would be resubmitting an application the application to Dewey has been submitted we'd have to submit an amendment get an approval and then have to back down so it's just a little bit of a process we review again what

057is in that 14 million I don't have the details of anybody would be your guidance counselors Support Services coaches reading coaches math coaches basically anyone's right these are all direct school-based positions that are at the schools that are directly touching students doctor how would that affect our strategic plan well I think there's there's two things the additional hundred and fifty thousand dollars as being Apple goes into the capital plan which is coming to the board in the coming months which will go directly to the schools the other point that's being made is really working with the allocation of funds the discretionary funds that are available to school principals those of you who have sat in that seat uh including the college President understand you know the being to create a School site specific budget to

058make local decisions in order to prioritize where those funds are being spent as the board chair was saying there is significant opportunities now that we are not in crisis and going through the the midst of a pandemic uh really to work with principles to Define what those priorities are in order to ensure that we've meet the needs the so many needs that are out there specifically here talking about the Performing Arts and and really looking at what is available creating a priority the truth of the reality is you know we're never going to have enough money to do what we need to do um but I do know a hundred percent when you look at the level of Performing Arts in this school system uh it probably supersedes every other school system in the State

059of Florida the commitment that this staff has in this board has as it relates to Visual and Performing Arts uh is not wavering and will continue to continue to be that high level of support So in looking at that allocation so that's the Performing Arts and ensuring that we're continuing to grow in honor that specific work I think what we have in place is going to continue to move that forward and grow Visual and Performing Arts specifically band to answer your question specifically Dr Dr Jones um we have the ability to to move money from from Esser to offset the general fund and that is the science so um if we were to readjust it um ultimately we'd have to put it back into the the general fund which in which we lose flexibility I

060think the appropriate course of action is to look at what our one-time expenses that we could expend looking at us or what are the things in which we definitely need the what we are able to do with textbooks two years ago uh was significant you were going to celebrate some of the outcomes that we had in our elementary schools make no mistakes about it the quality content that we put in front of our children and the resources and the volume of development that we were able to purchase had a significant impact on a very statistically statistically different outcome being significantly better than compared districts looking um at the the the volume of development that we've been able to ride it is in fact significant so really looking at where are the opportunities to enhance the

061district look at the we are a one-to-one initiative District we weren't a one-to-one district uh in terms of a device in every single hand of every single child in the school system without Esther dollars we were able to provide them immediately and then create a plan moving forward uh to right-size the budget to plan for so Mr Fagan is talking about when you're buying when we have to re-up for amplify or another Ela curriculum in four years from now we're saving for it now when we have to re-up for mathematics in five years from now we're or six years from now we're saving for it now so we've been able to right size the budget and not spend a hundred and seven percent of the money meaning you're spending seven percent more than what you

062are receiving But ultimately moving ourselves towards spending that 97 98 that's the work that Mr fagin and team have been able uh to lead over the course of the last three years it is absolutely amazing that we've been able to right size that and then moving forward we do have the opportunity to engage in dialogue with the board regarding what is the most efficient and effective use of of those lesser funds as we move forward and Dr Jones um I too have met with a couple band directors and be meeting with parents next week and obviously I know there's a difference between site-based budgeting in Sam but I was able to give a lot more in my site-based budget to Athletics in in band and um you know so that's something we need to take

063a look at and I've also talked about you know supplements I don't think they've had a raise in a few years so you know we have a lot of people doing a lot of extra time that that are there for our students whether it's coaches band directors choral directors drama whatever so I want to make sure that we continue to honor them and what they're doing with students and actually some of our band numbers have gone down in certain schools and I'm concerned about that so um I know all of our parents are doing well with our um booster groups and so forth and one thing I'll just put out there I I would not do pay to participate as a principal I just felt that and I know our schools are doing it and

064it's not a lot of money but still we have a situation sometimes where a student doesn't even want to ask and yes every coach and band director will tell you they will not eliminate a student if they cannot pay and that is wonderful but I think if you talk to principals you'll see that they just can't give as much in their discretionary to abandon Athletics like they used to so I just want us to continue to look at it and I know you met they met with Mr Fagan and Miss Bay sir and I appreciate that and I know it went from 50 to 150 000 and I appreciate that so let's just keep our eye on on it because as we all know one of the best Dropout prevention programs we have are extracurriculars

065Dr Schiff yeah a couple things um what in Rio Valley so first off I am I support the amount of money that we can give to mental health allocations I think mental health is a crisis right now I have heard it from parents I've heard it from teachers I've seen it in research I've seen it on the news uh and and don't find that to be in question in reallocating that money I have two questions uh one is the question here or whether you are going to look at taking it specifically from mental health allocations or whether you are looking from taking it from other places as well and there's going to be some analysis on that if that's true what's the impact of that on the budget process which we're now in July public

066hearing is tonight I think public hearing is no I'm sorry public hearing is tonight um and what's the impact that of that than on moving the budget forward to the chair the impact on tonight's 10 of the budget is no impact you basically approve the tentative we have to come back in September to approve the final if we do the analysis and answer your first question would it directly impact or would the funding come directly from the mental health no we would look at all the categories within Astro 3 to say where can I find this money the next question is the state has to approve this amendment if I try and move banned equipment into sr3's grant they may kick it back and say no that doesn't meet the requirements they so far they've

067approved everything we've asked for but you never know so the first process would be where where can I take from not from mental health maybe we take it from the HVAC work as an example so I cut 150 out of HVAC work added into musical instruments send the app to do up to doe they approve or disapprove if they disapprove everything stays the same now I go back and look in general fund either in capital or in general say where can I find this additional 150 000. that may be done before September it may not be I'm just saying don't know the timing but if it is found we can always do in a budget amendment through the year to move that money so there's no immediate impact on tonight nor September we can handle

068this either before then or after that and then and so what I'm hearing is there's not an automatic presumption then that that comes out of mental health money correct and it would not Dr Moore would not allow me to take it out I would take it out of some place less of an impact thank you appreciate that um I want to uh make sure I know you sent an email on July 27th about the impact of the trim on Charters and I want to make sure I'm sure that was sent to All board members correct so we all receive the email in response to the question about um charters in the trim notice to the Jerry yes thank you just want to clarify that um I am curious uh this is this is actually directly

069to Mrs Rosario you mentioned you want to create opportunities for more public impact in a public input into the budget can you tell me how you're thinking of doing that other than the budget hearings not the public hearings which we have every year and people are that's an opportunity for the public to give input into the budget yeah I've shared it before not the not the entirety of the budget just in Esser funds with regard to just Esser funds so there's a uh gosh what is that website what is that um Hillsborough County Mr Fagan yes ma'am so Hillsborough County if you go to Hillsborough County second I think it's [Music] hillsboroughcountyschools.org and then you search Esser there they have an entire and I've shared this um publicly as well and I've shared it privately

070with Mr Fagan and Dr Moore they have an entire um uh page or two on Esser funds only to show the complete transparency with their District what each one is what it's for when it was assigned when the funds are supposed to Sunset and then there are some training videos if you want to call them training there are some training videos that kind of explain the Esser in um in more understandable terms for the community but they did have and whole held um Town Hall meetings to talk specifically about Esser and they did that during the pandemic they did it I think a few times just to receive some feedback from the community as to what the priority should be they have a presentation up there as well as our funds presentation and then some

071of the impact not some of the impacts some of the feedback that they received from the community during these Town Hall meetings they were Town Hall meetings during these Town Hall meetings they that information was then applied to wherever they used their Esser funds um so that's the kind of not done some other District I know have done it their website is really really clear it's user friendly you're more than welcome to take a look at it there so that's what I was thinking about with regard to the the budget and even if it was with regard to the entire budget I mean the entire budget is not our own we should receive be welcoming to receive Community feedback on it but my particular comment was just specifically with regard to Esser okay and obviously

072I'm sorry sr1 and sr2 is done but now that we're still in the in the process and in the middle of sr3 that's what I've been talking about as I understand it for sr3 we have to submit to before receiving those monies we have to submit to the state what we're going to spend them on before we can receive those funds correct through the jsbomb application has to be submitted and approved once it's approved then we can begin expending funds and that application was already submitted correct to the Jerry yes some time ago as I recall wasn't it I'm the greasm and we're still waiting on those funds correct well see you through the chair the grant has been approved I.E the the 5.2 million dollars we were able to recoup from last year so

073the Grant's been approved so as we spend the funding we get to pull the funds back or pull the funds down so right now the Grant's been approved as is and as we spend the money then we'll draw it down correct okay if we what is the impact then of changing any of that have to go through the amendment we have to go through the whole process they may or may not approve if they don't approve it reverts if they don't approve does that mean that they could decide not to allocate the money to the chair no matter we would basically rescind the app the amendment and the funds would stay where they were before we submitted the application okay thank you anyone else uh Mr Barefoot I I would just add it it seems

074to me that um there's built-in controls it's not as if you can do whatever you want the amount of money is fixed you make a a an executive decision as to what to spend it on you haven't spent it yet you get approval to spend it and once you've spent it you get reimbursed for whatever you've been approved to spend so the the process that's in place seems to work pretty well and and you need the use the word management needs the flexibility to be able to after the fact move money around as the need arises and as long as there's a process specific to the Esser funds as long as there's a process that you can't do whatever you want without the state signing off on it it seems to me that the system

075that's in place now works pretty well to the chair yes sir and if and if it any other dollars I mean the money is fungible as long as there's a process that you go through and you make a decision based on need that may be different three months from now that when you put the budget in place from a line item standpoint you have the flexibility to do that most businesses on a quarterly basis will provide the changes in the line items and if there's a question that's the reason why they're usually a footnote pretty pretty straightforward manner in which finances are run this is a business funded by the taxpayers as opposed to generating revenue for products and services I think the way that it's been set up with this accountability particularly with Forester

076works pretty well so seems to me that that things are are are well in hand and um simple is best and not try and complicate things other than people understanding what the process is my comments um Dr Moore I have two other questions if I can Okay um Debt Service fund so we brought up in our conversation about big payments that are happening this year and that you've got us in a good position to be able to not only handle those payments but at what point are we going to be out of debt I know but would you tell us all right through the chair um majority of your debt will be paid off in the next five years you have one that's a qualified School construction bond which goes out to I believe to

07720 31 to 32. that's uh million five I think a year going into a seeking fund and so we're all good with having money set aside to pay off our all our debt this is the chair yes ma'am I love hearing that so I appreciate that thank you so much for that thank you to your team that my my other comment is thank you to your team for putting all this together and I know it's not just you um the two of you that are sitting here but it's your entire team Kim thank you for all you do and for your entire team because I know that hasn't been a happy place in the past and it seems like every time I walk through there everybody is really happy so I appreciate whatever you're doing

078um that the people that are helping write our paychecks are in a happy place so we appreciate that and also we're in a good situation you know we're stable and we're moving in a really positive direction we're going to be able to pay off our debt so things are looking pretty good we appreciate that work my thank Mr Fagan and team is as well I came here Saturday early Saturday morning and there was Mr Fagan's truck and Kim's car came Sunday evening and there was Mr Fagan's truck once again so this is not a nine to five job these are individuals who are committed to providing the resources that we all need to be in service of our children and to be very very honest walking in as superintendent this was one of the biggest

079concerns or issues that I have the lack of stability regarding funding and how things were being managed and resourced to where it is today it's not me it's Mr Fagan and team so we all should be proud and have a level of comfort with the leadership that we have around the dollars and our ability to maximize those dollars for kids and on that note we will move to the second item which is still Mr Fagan will review items that's going for the board for approval this evening thank you to the chair yes ma'am yes sir to the chair um I have four items um review Chromebooks go and proc purchase approximately 33 additional Chromebooks for grades through two through four and also about 6 700 cases have an item we mentioned before about a construction

080manager at risk this is for any facilities project as we need them they already be in contract we hire them and engage them as needed we have the purchase of student identification cards which includes the pictures the students ID and Etc scan etc for next year and of course increase for health care benefits and the koala and the stop loss premium policy any questions board members any questions on any of those but just to clarify um so anybody viewing knows this we've gone over all of these in some detail in our weekly board meetings with both of you so the lack of questions simply reflects um that we are aware of what's going through not that that we that we didn't necessarily have questions in the past yes ma'am so the only clarification I like

081is um where the Chromebook laptops coming out of what budget and um capital capital budget okay next item um for the very first time our new assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction clap it up and give her some encouragement she will present the the items in contract for curriculum instruction Ms basura thank you Dr Moore through the chair good afternoon board members um we as reviewed in individual board meetings this board briefings this past week we had several annual renewals and existing agreements that I'd just like to go over with you we have out of Treasure Coast Technical College a review of The Homeschool dual enrollment articulation agreement the high school dual enrollment articulation agreement we have the Treasure Coast Technical College school calendar their tuition fees and two other parts for technical uh Treasure Coast

082Technical College we have the affiliation agreement with Stewart health group and also the review of the ACTS retirement nursing agreement and those last two are for our students to get clinical experience we also have up with CTE the review of the Palm Gardens agreement that is also so our students can get 40 hours of clinical education experience um our early learning Department with principal Brooke flood has three agreements for review the rcma that's the Redlands Christian migrant Association agreement the collaborative agreement with the Economic Opportunity Council and that's in collaboration with Indian River and Okeechobee counties and lastly out of the Early Learning Program we have the voluntary Pre-K provider contract and that's with the Early Learning Coalition for the 2022-2023 school year last up out of the academic success Department we have an amendment

083to the dual enrollment Collegiate agreement with Embry Riddle aeronautical we went from seven sections to 11 sections so we'll be amending the 2021-2022 agreement with them and uh last but certainly not least is the contract with Edgenuity for credit recovery any questions board members questions doc just one miss base here so when we get into the um Palm Gardens and I know for our students on their clinicals do we have enough contracts for those students I know we kind of dropped that with covet and so forth so are we going to be okay there with our CNA and our clinicals yes okay that's one thing I had because I know we dropped well because of covet and we couldn't be in there so that was my main question thank you anyone else have a question

084or comment wow you get off easy thank you very much that's your first time only I know it was your one pass with this Motley Crew right here congratulations thank you and then our um next will be by miss dampier the entitlement grants afternoon through the chair I have one item that's um on the board meeting agenda this afternoon it's the entitlement grants we have 17 grants that um I've reviewed uh which each board each board member for a total of approximately 14 million 528 880 836 dollars These funds the majority of them are used for salaries purchase um also for resources and services to improve student achievement do you have any questions board members no okay I just like to say first of all to both of you and I know you're not done

085but um you know we thank everybody in finance for doing everything they do but I don't think people realize how much writing there is to do agreements and to do Grant ready and so we appreciate your team for doing that I know how hard that is for I see somebody going yes back there I know how hard that is to to keep up with all that paperwork and make sure we we are putting it all in on time and getting what we can get for our district so we appreciate that Mr yes Dr Moore Miss dampier our new grant writers have they started and have gotten us any money yet through the chair we have submitted grants after just one week on the job with one of them so we're looking forward to really maximizing

086uh the use of those individuals really to offset uh The Continuous impact on and shrinking funds to our to our general budget but we're looking forward to a high yield on that investment you so our our hearing on our next item is also miss dampier she will uh review a policy that is going for the bill in response to house bill 1557. good afternoon again um I would be remiss if I didn't thank my team who's worked tirelessly throughout the last couple of months to make sure all the different changes that have come through I have Dr Lewis I have Miss bass I have Tracy Magoo and team and the whole entire student services department Mental Health Department they've worked above and beyond to make sure that we're in compliance with when we open school

087so without further Ado today I will provide you an overview of House Bill 1557 parental rights and education which also requires the developmental procedures for student and parent complaints which we are going to you'll see on the board agenda tonight policy this is an overview of House Bill 1557 which points out the parents Bill of Rights which sets forth parental rights and their minor child's education as well as health it also prohibits us as an organization from infringing on fundamental rights of a parent to direct the upbringing Education Health Care and mental health of their minor child it's important to note that important information relating to a minor child should not be withheld from the parent relating to the minor child's health well-being and education and that's all part of that parental rights bill the

088requirements of House Bill 1557 outlines that school districts must notify parents at the beginning of the school year each health care services offered at their student school and the option to withhold withhold um any uh consent or decline in any specific services and that's important my team has really worked hard and they worked I think we really think I.T to come up with a process and so the I.T department has really been working with my team to make this come to fruition which is parents will have the option to opt in or opt out of mental Wellness or health services that option will be through the parental acknowledgment form and focus so when parents log on the first time they'll have a series of questions um that they'll have uh they'll be able to opt

089in and opt out we'll have paper copies for those parents who do not have technology we've already spoken to the principals on Friday about making sure that they have access space on their campuses for orientation for parents to log on to focus um we also will have a pop-up screen so on the website we know a lot of traffic is going to be coming with parents uh coming actually looking at the buses cafeteria all of those things if they have not signed up for parent uh parent access to focus that will uh pop up when they log on when all of us log on so that's um encouraging all of our parents to get access for that requirements of House Bill 1557 also that we must adopt procedures for notifying parents students parent if there

090is a change in the student services in relation to mental wellness and physical health as you can see the procedures that we've created in note as far as noticing the parents is that first Contact would be by telephone for the parent to come in for a in-person meeting we also will require email or Written Letter to inform the parent of the change circumstances and to request an in-person meeting all of this is making sure that we have the parents come in for in-person meeting at the meeting with the parent we're going to explain and talk about the change circumstances and receive information offered by the parents so it's a collaborative conversation explore options for the student then we're going to uh after the meeting send the parent a follow-up email or a letter via US

091mail to document what was discussed uh in the meeting and the Planned outcome and then we're going to schedule a meeting if we're not successful of getting the parent to come in because we really want the parent to be there we'll have our student services team go out to the home to try to have the parents schedule like we would normally do if we're trying to get in contact with a parent procedures for responding to parent concerns there is a requirement that if a parent contacts the principal in writing with concerns the principal would need to respond to the concern for resolving the concern within the seven day timeline a written receipt of the complaint the principal if the concern is not resolved within the 30 days the principal must provide the parent with a

092statement of the reason for not resolving the concern and along the way student services will be working with the the principal to make sure that you know we're in compliance because this is important that we follow a protocol with making sure that we meet the needs of the parent within that 7 and 30 day window timeline netsteps August 2nd we're going to be training all of our school counselors Mental Health Specialists and school psychologists on these procedures they'll it will be outlined to make sure that they know where all the forms are located they will look at the opt-in and opt out procedures so they have an idea what that looks like and we just want to make sure we review the requirements of House Bill 1557 and procedures to ensure compliance because it's our

093diligence to make sure that we follow our policy which will be 5710 are there any questions board members questions Mr Rosario yeah thank you um I am I'm thank you for uh putting this together um thank you for for listening um to community members and um capturing what is in what is required of us to do now um in this I had a follow-up question with a conversation that we had last week side by side with the current policy that we have that is student and parents rights some points that is policy 5780. um what I did not see and I may have missed it was a a note I think we agreed that there would be a note here that said for parent and student rights C policy blah blah blah did we put

094it in there yes oh I didn't have that one I have my old one yeah it's at the bottom of page one okay it's in pink but I said on Friday and we're going to do that on our on the policy right say for complaints C policy we haven't done that yet yes okay okay um and I guess uh for board members and for the community what we were talking about is that we already have a policy 5780 which is the student and parent right and so they kind they go hand in hand um what what I was requesting which was already done on this new policy was just a note that said for you know to see your right student and parent rights see policy blah blah blah and then vice versa with the

095other one so that's upcoming thank you um the concern that I had was with the exception and what I've been hearing the exception from withholding information I just want to be careful that we are not misinterpreting that statement that that statement through the the true eyes of what is considered abuse not what is interpreted to possibly be abuse that that understanding will be provided in the training that there would be a clear distinction because obviously we we are trained we are mandated reporters and if there is abuse we report and it is anonymous what I don't want is for the misunderstanding that that you are perceiving an abuse to occur and so therefore you are going to withhold information from the parent and that's what I that that would be a miss a gross misrepresentation

096with the with the law with the statute and what is written now I know what we wrote here is exactly what is in statute but I just want if you look at the um history if you go back and you pull up the summary analysis of the bill you'll be able to see that what I'm what I'm expressing here is captured in the summary so how are we going to ensure that that's that that won't be an issue obviously it would be very important for us to make sure that our training provides that and and ensures that there is a distinction between those two to protect our employees obviously um and to protect the students and the parents but how do we what are we going to do for that there's always a training that

097the Department of Children and Families puts out to all staff has to have that they have to have that training sorry in terms of the mandatory reporting excuse me there is a training that's required that our staff has to have that will review all of those procedures and requirements in terms of when we have a situation that arises as a mandatory reporter what you have to do so that is something that is done every year every school year but it will be we will make sure there's a distinction and we're mandatory reporter and what the statue says okay that will be part of the training all right and what are where does it say anywhere and I don't know if I've I've seen it so I'm just asking where does it say anywhere that we

098are not writing down um when there when there is an abuse or not when there was an when an abuse has occurred um where does it say that we don't capture that in writing I know that it's been practiced but I don't know if I've ever seen it in writing I I just know when you you call 1-800 96 abuse they usually give you a number and you usually write that number down and who the person they ask you your name and that kind of thing but um they capture usually what you say and then they determine whether or not they are going to do you know proceed any further at that point in time of course I would always just make sure they decided that they were not going to perceive any you know

099but it's I don't know of anything that's written that says you but as far as to your question was putting it in a file yeah do we capture that in a student's file when DCF gets involved and they tell us you know this child they'll come in and they'll say hey this child uh cannot be with the parent and then at that point in time we do put usually put something in the system saying that at this point that they cannot have that contact but that's usually when we have documentation from DCF or the police Etc that tells us that or some type of document there has to be a legal yeah something legal yes not that determines that yes but otherwise do we capture I mean maybe Miss Shada can answer that question do

100we are we obligated to write down in the student's file folder any potent any concerns or potential concerns for abuse I don't recall ever doing that as an administrator but I'm just wondering if something has changed along the way um yes no go ahead I'm sorry thank you I'm through the chair can you hear me okay um so as um Dr Lewis and the stampier were saying with regard to DCF reporting that's something that's under chapter 39 it's something staff are trained on being mandatory reporters DCF being a separate agency than us once we do the mandatory reporting they take it from there and their files would not typically be enmeshed in our files so whatever kind of DCF whatever they are doing in their investigation isn't necessarily going to be reflected at all in

101our files it would only be reflected if we did get something from them that was directing our Behavior like for example if a parent had lost parental rights so no it would not typically be something that would be in a student's education file things related to child abuse abandonment or neglect it would be something that would be in a DCF file which would be kept by them as a separate agency but everything else would be captured in a student file everything that would not be considered a DCF report correct so what if there is an intention what if there is I don't know let me think of an example what if there is um concern or a a counseling session um where a counselor says uh or a counselor may assume that there might be

102abuse but there isn't it isn't reported um does that get captured in a student's file folder again they would have to follow procedure and contact the DCF and indicate what was discussed in that in that situation and then DCF has to take it upon themselves to you know pursue it and so what's the point where did the where with this new law where do the parents fall in in this in the in the not withholding there has been no abuse where and there has been counseling provided where does the parent fall in this line of communication to ensure that we're not withholding from them okay so typically DCF would you know investigate from situations example the parent may be again they're contacted by DCF they would you know from my knowledge go to their house

103for example and investigate the situation so in that moment they would be informed of that's why they're there to you know identify what has taken place so they can do their due diligence and determining is what was stated from the school standpoint if this if there's a a concern so that's how that works so they are notified if in that situation when you know in terms of their investigation process but again it's a case-by-case you know there's different situations that you know may warrant even the police to come be the part of that yeah but that that's when it's already reported I'm talking about when there doesn't there there isn't a need for a report there is a counseling session going on and it's not whatever it is that's in the counseling session is not

104shared with the parent we I guess my point is we need to make sure that we're sharing everything with parents we need to make sure that we are not withholding information from parents okay so there is an exception there is an acceptance there's an exception if there is abuse if there is assumed to be if there is and it says it here the exception is only if a prudent person would believe that the disclosure would result in abuse I get that but everything else has to be shared with parents and even then we still have to make sure that we're looking at things through the eyes of transparency not through disclosure not through non-disclosure and and that is correct that's why um the parent is going to give consent if they say no they don't

105do not want their child individual yes so that checklist that parents will be able to opt in or out at the beginning of the year is going to be on Focus um and it's going to have everything like a la carte menu item yes group counseling I agree individual counseling I agree same thing that we have I can give you a few examples like for Health Services care treatment for illness or injury vision screening hearing screening scoliosis growth to get to pick and choose for School counseling that area is peer mediation conflict resolution short-term Individual Counseling group counseling bereavement counseling those are the normal you know counseling this does not denote academic Counseling of course right we're going to continue with academic but this would be the menu and the parents would select yes no

106yes no you know and we're doing library books on there as well library books there is a section and on this parent acknowledgment form there's tons it's all offices combined Federal programs everyone is for you know for our homeless students and things that we have to do that's the lunch forms of the lunch forms on there because you said Federal programs no but that's pertaining to like the homeless some some requirements that we have to fill out for that it's a whole menu of when the parent logs on for the first time so okay I think that's a great thing and then to be able to capture it all in one place is important I just don't want us to share the message of any misinterpretation of the statute so I want to make sure

107that we are clear about that um and and that's on the guidance that we're going to be making sure that our counselors and all of our staff uh have that clear understanding uh we'll also have an icon for the for those who decline parent consent that says they do not want we'll be able to see that when you log on so that will be noticed as well if a parent that's why we want to make sure that parents sign up for Focus so they can answer these questions so we have that information ahead of time and running those reports so where are the the permission for to take pictures at the beginning of the year that's part of that that's part of that as well the parent acknowledgment all of that I.T for technology that's

108a part of it library books so thank you very much yes Dr Jones uh the first part about responding to parent concerns I think um well I did that before there was a state statute and you didn't get back to him in seven days you got back to him in one day it's number one but on looking at House Bill 1557 starting with line 82. a school district may not adopt procedures or student support forms that prohibit School District Personnel from notifying a parent about his or her students mental emotional physical health or well-being or change related services or monitoring 100 understand that the parent needs to be notified now we may not discourage or prohibit parental notification of an involvement in critical decision affecting a student's mental emotional or physical health or well-being this

109subparagraph does not prohibit a school district from adopting procedures that permit School Personnel to withhold such information from a parent if a reasonably prudent person would believe that disclosure would result in abuse abandonment or neglect okay number one whether and I reported situations to DCF many times in my 17 years as a principal what is the what are we doing what are we doing to make sure that this doesn't happen I mean sometimes and I'm speaking as a parent grandparent everything sometimes the issue is the home so what are we doing to make sure that we are protecting these students and making sure that they're getting the best help possible it says it does not prohibit a school district from adopting procedures that permit School Personnel to withhold such information from a parent if a

110reasonably prudent person would believe that disclosure would result in abuse abandonment or neglect and I don't know about you if you've been a principal and you report to DCF I'm checking on that kid every day you want to make sure they are okay because I knew sometimes I could make it worse but it was my job to do so what are we doing in this case Dr Moore and Mr ampere I don't care who answers Dr Lewis again there's a protection the school administrator has 24 hours right during that time period while DCF or whoever is investigating the situation to protect the student so that's something that is in place and that's part of the statute so that's something that we have to follow that's Our obligation and after that investigation then what well again

111whatever is founded and if there's reason to believe that what was stated by you know whoever um immediately that student would be in the protection in the care I'm assuming of for example of DCF or so there's no issue they notify the school district so we know the student is okay yes I mean I haven't been there for a few years yes they do yes and then what do we do from there if we know that the the kid is okay of course and I would make sure that the kid feels supported at the school as the principal as well as if the counselor you look to make sure that you have permission to you know speak with that student um based on now that we have these procedures uh to make sure that that

112student is safe and feel safe and secure and as a parent and I know that you want all children to be safe and sometimes the circumstances are hard to you know even discuss but I I just don't want any child caught up in this and you know going back to um budget it does relate Dr Moore when you hired Elementary counselors for our elementary schools you have no idea and I've talked to many of them what they are doing for our kids and our teachers in our parents coming and talking with them I never want to have that where okay I better not be able to do this or I can't do that I don't want people thinking just because this new state statute that one we've been doing for years is it state law

113now notifying who who wouldn't notify a parent that is what we are supposed to do as a parent I want to be notified as a grandparent that parent one my kids want to be notified but I just want to make sure no student gets caught up in this and there's an issue we've all talked about this at last board meetings with the mental issues and what doc I'm sorry Mr Pagan sent out earlier for the for the nation on mental health issues there's an issue here folks it said all the time our kids our parents our teachers there's an issue so I want to make sure that this doesn't hurt any child Senator Jared just just a a level of reassurance we we are like-minded we can implement this policy ensuring that parents are properly

114notified communicated with and partner with uh in terms of supporting them uh with the any services or support that they would like for them to have while at the same time in the most egregious and unfortunate cases the as you referenced this is not new this part that you're referencing here is something that's been in practice for a very very very long time um and unfortunately I have had the opportunity to call DCF as a counselor as an assistant principal as a principal uh easing even as a director walking schools and observing things in which that notification was taking place and there's a very systematic procedure that's in place it is a dance between the division of Children and Families the school system unfortunately in some cases law enforcement in which we have great Partnerships

115to work the protocol to ensure uh is it a immediate threat in which we need to intercede prior to the dismissal is it something in which DCF will follow their their passive approach in which they call and do the investigation at the end of the day we're advocating for children while the same time honoring parental rights so I'm very comfortable in the process that this system has followed and will continue to follow our Educators our administrators they are champions for our children while the same time I think the women's dampier and team have crafted this policy uh maximizes the ability uh to get that access and that communication to parents on the very very uh very first day of school and if anything highlight the opportunity to keep parents informed as they should rightfully be

116informed moving forward so I I think what we have done here really is a a nice balance to meet the intent of the state statute while at the same time ensuring that we can move Swift Enough through a legal process in partnering with other entities in order to be best by kids yeah um thank you Dr Jones for reiterating that our first and foremost obligation is to the children who are in our schools for six to eight hours a day there was this notion out there that that schools and districts and teachers are somehow intentionally harming kids or keeping information away from parents and I want to make it a hundred percent clear that is not what we ever do intentionally and to disabuse people of the notion that that's what's happening in our schools

117to that end a couple of questions um Ms dampier I I know that the state is putting out or has put out guidelines on this have those come down are they sufficient and I assume that's the basis on which all our policies are crafted alongside legal obligation yes we did get procedures and we vetted those procedures and we made some changes and they're embedded into our policy to make sure that everyone knows when they pull this policy for parent complaints this is the procedure that must be followed and like Miss Rosario said we're going to make sure that in the policy 5780 we put that parent complaints this policy number to reference that as well because this is a new policy for us yeah it's a new policy consistent with State guidelines legal obligations all

118of the above consistent with best practices in Indian River County yes the um as I read this and we had this conversation the obligation here specifically and it was in your PowerPoint and it's in is when there is a change in and services related to mental Wellness or physical health so that's not simply an observation about a child that's not that's when the school district determines that there is that there that they have observed that there is something that would require a change in services to the children to a child but not simply an observation randomly about a child it's only when Services happen that it invokes uh these these procedures correct that is correct and you will see that first we want to make a phone call but then we also want the parent

119to come in in all of those cases we're asking we're going to send a social worker out there we want to collaborate and make sure that we meet the needs of the students with the parent so what happens um and and you who are closer to schools than I am and have spent more time in schools uh I'm relying on your expertise here what happens or is it common does it happen or to what degree when there might be a concern of a school administrator teacher some school Personnel DCF may have been called but it does not rise to the level of a formal DCF complaint or removal from the home or DCF intervention but yet there's still a concern that that child could be if not in in direct path of harm or in

120Jeopardy but that something's not right what do we do and how well how often if it all does that happen and if so how do we best protect the child under those circumstances a meeting is called which is part of the part of the procedure something we've always done anyway is ensure that we have this meeting invite the individuals who could be a teacher could be student services you know staff that have information that you know there there's some needs for the student that they would want to organize and so again it's that collaboration so the parent will be invited and we will come come together in a meeting and again problem solve around the student and to identify you know what are the next steps for this student how can we best support this

121student academics and their well-being their success does it ever occur and I don't mean to be sounding like a lawyer here and putting you on the stand um but I'm curious because I really don't I want to clarify the answers to these uh there let's say there was a concern about some form of abuse or a neglect it does not rise to the level of DCF but let's say there's bullying in the home by a parent let's say that there's another adult in the home not a parent who the child is uncomfortable with any number of scenarios where um a conversation with the parent would have to be managed very carefully I assume we have policies and procedures in place but can you talk a little bit about that so again um it's a once

122we have that information from the teacher for example I'm just doing like a scenario and it was investigated but it did not rise to occasion where the student was removed from the home for example we will continue to again observe the student and monitor um you know just ensuring that the student is um safe supported we would you know again student comes up monitor the situation of the student has concerns and you know again we will make sure that we are just being observant and if again we we are mandatory reporters so if the student does make again some sort of you know account of there's something that's taking place we would have to continue to do our due diligence to protect that student and pick up the phone and contact DCF we just have

123to continue to do do the best that we can I've seen it where sometimes uh we maybe have a social worker sometimes has to go out to the home as well just to check in sometimes if we are really feeling the student is in danger for example I've uh you know we like to ensure that we talk to our law enforcement to do a wellness check on the student so that's another layer of protection so we have a continued concern yeah I I understand um all of this I appreciate your hard work on this policy I appreciate I know you've worked with all of us individually um on this uh and there are so many gray areas that we have not yet confronted that I I think we're hearing the concern expressed here so but

124we we can't address those unfortunately until they happen so um but rest assured we do have a process in place we have our school psychologists we have a team at the school that's there to make sure that the student is safe but of course if it's not the parent or the guardian we're gonna always make sure the parent is contacted and you know we collaborate together to make sure that our children are safe that's our number one priority thank you Mr barefoot okay okay um I have a couple questions so was this created with the Neola we do we have Services through Neola however we went through they gave us a little guidance because we do pay them for that however my team went through and we looked at it and step by step we

125eliminated some things we added some things that we felt like needed to be in there for procedures so it is a combination the reason why I asked that is because in the past we have approved a new policy as a board and then we wound up having to change it because neola's policy came out and it was quite different um how are we going to make sure that that's not the case here well with this I've already had a conversation I did strike through some things um based on conversations with Neola last week and our attorney as well and based some parts of the Neola policy was a stretch that they um their interpretation but it wasn't in statute so if it wasn't in statute and we had questions about it and we felt like

126um it just didn't fit um we we you know took that out but uh I'd rather we follow stats yes okay we want to make sure we follow statue and there were some things some items in there that did not think I questioned because it was not in statute so if it's not in statute you know why was it there and so I even reached out to our attorney and we had conversations about it and so but this this policy and procedure was vetted and it makes sure that we're following uh State Statute and those procedures are embedded in there to make sure that we follow that okay um next question so I see where it says any parent or legal guardian with concern regarding the implementation of the provisions May file a written complaint

127and it says ABCD okay so there is no such mention of a form it's just a written complaint so we have trained our principles our and we will be training our teachers and our counselors on on the fact that if they get a note from a parent might be scribbled on a piece of paper a little scrap a piece of paper that that's a written complaint yes so what is it that they have to have on there so that we have verification that that's a written complaint their name the date or whatever is there some sort of thing that they absolutely have to have or just their name and what the complaint is the name and what the complaint uh we want to make sure that it was vague enough where the parent you know

128a lot of times if we have so many barriers to making sure that those complaints are answered but it's a written form there's not a form that they have to if the parent you know answer the paper is it going through the drive through us and they're going to scan that and make sure that that paper is uploaded into our Focus system for documents that's what I was going to say there's documentation then that it was received and the date and the time and okay absolutely that's great um at the bottom where it says the parents Bill of Rights and it has to strike out through criminal justice procedures could you explain why that's stricken out that was one of those items that I had a conversation with Neola with and based on Neola there

129wasn't in statute that it was an over how did she put it an overstretch of just making sure that say for instance if law enforcement if a kid they gave the example if us they've suspected that there were drugs and they had the dog go in and all of that that that would cover Us in that case but we're we're already covered in other policies with that I just didn't understand why that was placed in this policy okay and so I had conversation with even our attorney do you want to talk about your interpretation of it as well well let me give you an example a real example I had and this is why I questioned this because my very first week as a principal I had a fifth grader arrested and put in the

130back of a car it was something that happened the year prior in school and so they decided to arrest him in school uh fifth grader so I was very concerned a parent wasn't there that they didn't talk to the parent they just grabbed the kid and put them in the back of a car and took them off at that point it was okay who calls the parent um why isn't the parent and part of the investigation of why they're doing that where are we in the fact of Defending children when things like that happen and how can we get the parent involved from the very beginning so the parent doesn't find out late hours later that where their child is um thank you chairwoman so with regard to how it's worded in here it says

131the parents Bill of Rights in Florida statute chapter 1014 sets forth parental rights in their minors child's education and health care and criminal justice procedures and we crossed out the criminal justice procedures as it reads in that sentence it doesn't make sense because if you look at the parent Bill of Rights in 1014 it actually only speaks to things such as the rights of the parents to direct the child's upbringing Education Health Care and mental health and it never discusses criminal justice procedures so what do we do so but in the instance that you are referring to I completely agree with you that if there's a law enforcement action taken with a child you know a minor child in an elementary school that parents should be notified and I would assume not being at school

13218. under any child under the age of 18. what is it that we are doing if a child is taking in the back of a car me because it's not written here what's a procedure that we're telling people to do in other words who contacts a parent and when is a parent contacted I guess that policy is not addressing that if you can if you are involved in a criminal act um it moves from whether it is on school campus or not once you are you conduct a criminal act it becomes a criminal investigation uh and law enforcement takes a lead in that specific scenario so once they have the lead they have the obligation to report as if it was a minor in a 7-Eleven or if it was a someone in the particular

133school um the the practice is once that investigation is conducted and the student is turned back over that legal criminal investigation has concluded that it's turned back over to staff and then we notify the parents this is what happened um typically the relationship we have with our our law enforcement they're making that conduct and having those conversations but once it becomes a violation of a law and they conducted a criminal act it is the lead in that investigation is in fact the the the Police or Sheriffs so so child is removed from the campus a parent comes to pick them up after school and I haven't notified them to tell them that their child is not on the campus if I'm the principal or the teacher or whatever so I can see there's going to

134be a problem with that well that's not this policies that's why it says it was crossed out so that's why I'm asking do we have it somewhere in policy that we are notifying a parent when their child is removed from the campus when they're removed from the campus let me not let me find the policy and which is which it's reference but the procedure the procedure is just so you know this is what happened there was a criminal investigation the officers have arrested your son or daughter and this is where they were going I can't think in the three years that I've been here where that's actually been the case where they have not been notified the parents whether it be in Partnership uh with the sheriff's office in partnership with the assistant principal who's

135handling the case that's never been an issue I don't think we've had a situation where you know I understand that it's a okay a oral agreement but I think it should be in statute or in policy or written somewhere who calls and that the call is made if we're going to protect parents rights and tell a parent a child's been removed from the campus the question is is it the sro's job is it the arresting officer's job is it the assistant principal's job is it whose job is it but somebody needs to contact that we can we can provide the procedure because it's depending on where you are in the investigation um it's a different person's responsibility right I understand that but miles removed from a campus we happen it can provide if you could

136provide the board with the policy and direct us to where it is thank you um thank you for procedure for giving notice B I know you and I had a long conversation about that I appreciate you striking out the telephone contact is not successful because um again paper trail paper trail parents need to have documentation the school district needs documentation for defense so I appreciate the fact that we're putting everything in writing so I thank you for that um the last thing I have is when a parent um two things when a parent fills out the form at the beginning of the year and they maybe they select a group counseling or something are they notified there who's doing the counseling which agency or which person is doing the counseling and if that changes are

137they notified then the counseling that we're talking about is the group counseling is that the school our staff doing that if they do any type of other counseling that is another form where parents have to agree to that so they're not agreeing to that at the beginning of the year with you know I need substance abuse counseling or something okay this is when our school counselors are doing this great and then at the beginning of the year they're clicking all this but then let's say mid-year you know teacher feels like they need group counselor or whoever so that change then how does that change then we put it in writing to the parent and then the parent goes in and clicks on that and agrees or how's that done we're worse work is still working

138on that uh with it I don't want to say that but but the goal is is that they can go in and make changes and it will show that when they made the change who made the change via so it'll be a paper trail as to the date and the change time yes okay yes that's what I want to make sure that's all I have anyone else yes uh Dr Jones for the parent acknowledgment forms and the parents opt-in or opt out online or paper copy who collects all that and gives the information to everyone at a high school of 3 000 students well what's the goal is that's why we're trying to do everything via Focus because he's looking and getting all of those so it's going to be uploaded in the in the

139child's information so when when you log on as a parent you go in and select and then it's inputted into that child's okay folder that says whether or not he or she that you've updated the parent contact so it's not just our items it's parent contact information is going to be there's going to be I.T whether or not the code of conduct they received a copy of the code things that we've normally been doing along the way we just added this layer so when you go in and look at the student you'll be able to see whether or not they you have permission for for example for the library books that you selected yay or nay for that for us it will be the mental Wellness whether or not you've selected to opt in uh

140so every teacher get a copy of their students and all of the it will be on the computer where they can see it so if they pull up the student so they'll have all the students yes in Vero Beach High School and you go in and click yours yes so if it's John Doe you would pick John Doe and you'll be able to see what choices were selected for John Doe we're trying to make it easier for the mental health and Health Services to where an icon comes up for the services that were that if the parent says no they're opting out that would be the easiest than us going in we have to go in if they didn't opt out and look at what services they selected what if they didn't answer paper or

141Focus that's when our social workers are going to go out to the home our goal is to make sure that everyone has completed that in focus if we do it via if they do it paper and pencil we'll have to scan that form in and then it will be up under mental health folder so we're really trying to get parents to do it electronically because it's because it's easier to read it so if they didn't hear anything they could not assume there's going to be an opt-in so they really can't offer any services that is correct and then we'll be checking as well Mrs bass's team will be checking to make sure that we're looking to go out to homes to make those home visits if we have not heard back and the schools same

142thing we do for if there's an attendance issue thank you okay anyone else Mr Rosaria um I have some questions that uh might be a legal question I'm not sure so based on the information that is provided in statute on um required reporting of child abuse abandonment and neglect the signs for physical abuse the signs for sexual abuse and the signs for neglect are all described even on the Doe's website as those observations that have been observed or received observed I see physical Bruises And there has to be a there should as well because the the it says on there if there is a pattern of these observations then you're mandated to report it um if there is um you know regular or or not torn stained clothing um whatever itching in certain areas um

143neglect of so many other different reasons that are here so those are observed or heard I come to a teacher or a guidance counselor I have been abused or I have been this what this is what happened to me a student says so we report that abuse that's clear in the statute right it's very very clear what I have not seen in the current statute um and and and this is where I think there is a conflict is that the current statute is clear on what is observed or what has happened that you have been told then you report it there doesn't seem to be the same language that's in this new statute so the language in this new statute says um information from a parent if a prudent person would believe that disclosure would

144result in abuse abandonment or neglect that language is not the same language that's in current statute so I think there is a conflict there so so far in current statute it just says if you've observed it if there's a pattern or if you've been told then you report here it's saying if you believe the whatever is happening will result so you're assuming that there might be abuse and that's dangerous there are children who come home every day kids my parents gonna kill me because I didn't get an A my parents gonna kill me because I didn't you know submit my homework could that be a presumption for abuse or neglect and and I think that it's not anyone's fault here I just think that there is a misinterpretation of what's currently in statute and then

145this new statute language seems to me to be a little conflicting with current statue that's that's where I think there is a concern yes through the chair so I I agree with everything that you're saying that with DCF reporting you report when there is known or suspected abuse abandonment or neglect that's something that maybe you see like you repeatedly are seeing bruises it could be something that the student is saying um but what this new statute is saying is the whole focus is if we are making any changes to a student's education our health or you know well-being in our schools that we are involving the parent in that that we're notifying them of what we're doing here they are carving out an exception that we could withhold information that a student tells us if

146they are basically telling us oh my you know my parent May kick me out of the house or my parent may hurt me if um if you notify them so this would be something where students basically maybe telling a counselor something but asking that there their parent not be informed because they're afraid that if their parent knows that it could result in them doing something like kicking them out of the house or something else that would fall under abuse abandonment or neglect does that make sense no I I hear what you're saying but it's still conflicting because we have chapter 39 is in this statute as defined in 39.01 but then when you go there it's not it's it's just it just seems very again it just seems very conflicting in our in our policy

147we are adding after that statement we have added a line that says or a paragraph that says uh please note as a reminder under state law and policy 8462 student abuse abandonment um neglect School Personnel who know or have who know or have reasonable cause to suspect that a child or a student has been abused um but there's still what I think with the fine line here is the assumption that something may occur that hasn't or that a student might exaggerate a situation and then it winds up being report it happens all the time right students please don't tell my parent but really nothing's going to end the parents like what what you know that's just silly uh parents compli I mean I've witnessed where parents are completely supportive and the the kid is just

148a teenager you know um not to say that that doesn't happen when there's real abuse I'm just saying sometimes it happens the opposite way I'm I'm just wondering what would happen I guess my next con question to you is what happens if current statute um or current law has just recently been passed but it conflicts with another law which I'm sure has happened at some point right so then which one do you follow and yes thank you for that question so it would depend there is precedence um or rather a hierarchical order to law so something like a federal law takes precedence over something like a state law something like the Florida Constitution takes precedence over something like a Florida statute takes precedence over something like a state board of education rules so sometimes you

149can make those determinations just based on that hierarchy otherwise you have to look at other factors a lot of things in law can be dependent on facts of the situation so it can be kind of hard to deal with hypotheticals I think here in the types of things that we're looking at here you always kind of want to take into consideration what was the purpose of this law so here the purpose is openness right communication between the families and the Educators so to uphold that purpose you want to err on that side but also here we are talking about upholding the purpose too of always protecting child safety of that always being a focus of never putting children in harm so I think you have to look at those interests and do you know based

150on whatever the facts are and trying to pull those interests the best of your ability making those decisions on a case-by-case basis here I think that what that line is really getting at is you know don't do something if you know that it could be endangering a child's welfare yeah and I think that's good I think that's a um a good lens to kind of look this through I guess I'm bringing it back to miss Sam Pierre and Dr Lewis to ensure that when we're doing the PD and when we're doing the training that that's what we're that it it's not just that the student is uncomfortable with telling the parent that's not abuse or that's not supposed abuse abuse that's just the kid is just uncomfortable whereas endangering the the welfare of a child

151like serious abuse physical like Siri I don't know I don't even know but you you do get what I'm saying like just when you mentioned before like distinguishing the difference between them that's what I'm that's what I think really needs to happen but thank you thank you for answering those questions Dr Dr Jones um Miss attic Dr Lewis Miss dampier now tell me if I'm wrong here that's how I did it for 40 years if a child reports abuse to me I call DCF I am not the one determining if it is abuse DCF determines that and several times not all the time I would just get a call from DCF to say whether it was or was not and that's why I said earlier I'm going to check on that child every day I

152don't want to send a wrong message to staff and sometimes a teacher come in and say would you call Doc no they said it to you I'll be here with you while you call but it is your responsibility to call it is dcf's responsibility to make the determination of whether it is abuse or not am I correct okay yeah nobody said anything otherwise okay so before we move on can it's been two hours so I'd like to take 10 minute break do you mind if I answer a question go ahead yeah yeah no I don't mean to butt in thank you chairwoman um had previously asked what our policy is regarding notifying parents if law enforcement takes a child from school and I looked and the policy is 5540 which is schools and investigations involving

153students and that policy does very specifically speak on that issue if you scroll down to the bottom of policy 5540 which is the schools and investigations involving students it does say that attempts to notify the parents regarding investigations of child abuse neglect and other law enforcement investigation shall be documented shall be documented when an authorized law enforcement officer or the DCF removes a student the principal shall also notify the parents and the superintendent and it goes on from there but so we have something in policy then thank you all right it is 206 let's take 10 minutes here we are back in business I believe we are up to item f Dr Moore thank you madam chair uh this item will be presented by Dr Shafi so we're going to clap it up for her

154too as this is her first presentation and her new role which is the uh presentation of the PowerPoint and Associated policy with House Bill 1467 Dr shafty I'm going to provide you with an over [Music] over in compliance with the legislation so the overview of the bill is to make sure that we are transparent with all things instructional materials to include the library media centers and reading materials so as we go through these action steps we will show our commitment to preserve the rights of parents through some of our updates and steps we have in place um we thought it was helpful to show some data about the usage in our media centers this is in particular one of our high schools so if you start to on the left side of the screen that

155is the total count of materials at Sebastian River High School 35 064. when we look at last Academic Year 697 materials were checked out when you go to the user level when you look at specifically our students 228 students checked books out and that includes if there's a repeated frequency so as you can see underneath 108 students checked out one book 35 students checked out two books and so on and when you remove dual enrollment which there's a course that requires a novel study calculator check out sat or any sort of test prep books we had 32 traditional checkouts and traditional would be I self-selected I went to the media center we made up that term but that's what it would boil down to when you removed almost the required checkouts so even taking the

156larger number 228 that would mean that students at that particular location access point seven percent of the books in that Media Center so we thought it was helpful to include usage as that is very critical in the procedures we're about to Define and anytime we have a chance to highlight the great things that Miss Carrie wall does we have that in there but we thought it would be really prudent to look at how we could reimagine that space because clearly the space is not being utilized by the number one user being our students so I will ask Mrs ball to share a little bit about the reimagining of that space so what we know with the media centers especially at the two high schools they are the Hub right they are the heart of the

157school but if the students are not traditionally doing what they used to do which is check out books how can we reimagine that space for it to serve all students at the school level so we did bring this idea of reimagining the media centers to our radar which is our I.T task force and then we create I mean our I.T committee and then we created a task force specifically for this we surveyed teachers media Specialists coaches District staff and then we also surveyed 175 students asking them what they felt the use of the media center was what they would like to see in the media centers and that is what we used to create the requirements for the design some of the things that Dr shafty brought up was how we can make the space

158inclusive um how we can make it bring it up to date so what we're going to be looking at is redesigning Sebastian River High School with new flooring new furniture um including school photography having those small collaboration spaces throughout the media center both in an open environment and a more private environment much like you would see the um uh the tutoring rooms they have at the public library that students can reserve to use so those are some of the things we are looking at when we brought in the the design team to help us reimagine that space so that students can work they can work on Steam they can work on collaboration classrooms can come in and work plus they can utilize the the books and the print materials that are available thank you so

159looking at the required items of the 1467. the first thing we realized that we had a great opportunity for growth was to elevate our transparency so this is a screenshot of the web page that will exist for instructional materials and follow a step-by-step approach to this is what the statute says and this is how we're providing that transparent layer of accountability so we will post on here a list of all instructional materials utilized in our school sites and then the next steps these are the actual screenshots of what the web page will look like so you'll have familiarity with it these are some updates and additions that we have to be remain in compliance with the legislation all school websites now in the I want to Quick link have search School library materials right now

160the statute requires that of elementary schools but we went ahead and all schools have it all of our locations have that we added to our student access form for our libraries and media centers and opt in for please restrict my child from checking out all materials currently under review you can keep that in mind as we talk about procedures in the policy that will be coming forward that makes sense for anyone who has pause or any sort of concerns about those materials and then our reconsideration form we're transitioning from paper to electronic to help with State reporting that will be something starting in 2023 that we'll have to submit to the state and that will be another transparent layer all reconsiderations will be directed to that form and we'll have the form in its purest

161state so as you can see from all of these centralizing these access points for our families really helps Elevate that parent voice to one location they won't have to search all over the website it will reside here on one page so our next steps will be the um to move to public hearing policy 2522 and I'll talk through that but I know that you are quite familiar with it before I talk it so I just want to thank you for your patience that was the first policy I was able to write in my new role and your feedback and expertise was quite helpful in getting through the process so as we look at policy 2522 the first page of it is very much driven from instructional material statute there's nothing in there that we interpreted

162it's really very much by the book we are really leveraging parents returning to the school site as the first form if they have an issue so we found it to be very important and when we shared it with our principals they were very happy that a lot of the concerns that we had there was an escalation straight to the district and when we went back to the principal they were unaware they did not have an opportunity to address it at the school site so part of this policy is we are asking our families to if they have a concern about any instructional material just to begin with the principle because if they could recommend for example an alternate text or if they're just aware of the issue some of that problem solving can be much

163more immediate as opposed to elevating at the district level so that's written in there first but the next layer of this is the district level appeal process if the issue is not remedied at the school so beginning on pages two three and four as if you printed the policy that is what will happen if the reconsideration is not successful at the school site and it needs to be elevated to the district level we will establish a committee to oversee that so there are kind of the selection of members membership we walked through all of that with the policy and you gave us really great feedback to make sure it's clear it's grammatically correct and again in alignment to the statute and then once this policy goes to public hearing and is approved we need to

164make sure that our existing policies so this is our challenge policy but what about the selection of instructional materials that would be 2520 we want to make sure there's alignment and our policies are not contradicting themselves so after this policy is in place we will conduct a full review to make sure that we are succinct with our expectations and then the net our next step will also be the state will release an online training program for anyone who selects instructional materials the earliest we anticipate receiving that will be January 1st but they also have into June of next year so once we have that information released we will move swiftly to go through that training program we have shared this information preliminary with our principles and our APS last week we look forward to having

165a professional learning session with our media specialist on August 5th for the district-wide professional development day and we're just very committed to making sure that we do this right so if you have any questions for me I'd be happy to answer them okay board members Mrs Rosario thank you so thank you for all of this thank you for the work that you all have put in to create this new policy 2522 for the challenges also known as the objections right the objection process um the 2520 policy 2520 the selection of adoption and instructional materials do you suppose we're gonna because there's another one that I mentioned earlier with Mrs dampier that needs to come back to us because it needs to be kind of aligned with the current is that going to come back to

166us pretty soon because I I think it should be pretty quick to just kind of red line things out um the other reason um why I want to before just bringing it back to us with a red line what I think needs to be in what we need to identify in here the selection of adoption instructional materials really talks about um the selection of the math El the math selection you know adopted textbooks Ela textbooks next year is social studies and Civics but it doesn't really clearly highlight the selection criteria of library and media center books so what we've what we have right now and I think this is a good opportunity to share with the public who are listening what we have right now is a really great first step to creating the object

167what do we do when we when someone has an objection to it at the district level what we don't have is the objection process at the school level so that we don't have yet right well they will start at the school level to share any concerns that they have about the material whether it be a library book or an or a state adopted instructional material but that's not here that's not captured here this is just District level Appeals so what I think we need to add here somewhere is the what happens at the school level just a procedure you know something that says at the school this happens first if if a parent has an objection it goes to the teacher and then escalates to the principal and then if nothing gets addressed then it

168comes to the district I think that just that portion and in kind of taking a look at it I had not thought about I know we talked about it privately does it say it I think you might have is did you print your updated version before Friday oh it has it in there okay sorry let me take a look I'll take a look so if it does that's great and then um for so going back to the selection of adoption of instructional materials I think we just need to make sure that we identify what the selection of library and media center materials should be that that is not clear in the 2520. okay so I'll take a look at this one again because I know you guys have been updating um thank you for that

169I had an idea for the re-envisioning of the libraries uh I don't know if you all probably talked about it but public libraries now have this space in them that are 3D printing um friendly for anyone who uses the public libraries they have a 3D printer they have you know the paper cutter the the laminating machine all of the materials that are necessary the the paper is even there um really a a student just needs to show up and have an idea connect I think their computer with the printer and then voila they have this 3D thing that they've created maybe we can think about something like that as well so that there is a workstation or an area where students could just be free to create right and then if they have projects like

170science projects have a station that you know they can actually create it there where there are 3D presentation boards available in those letters that get put on those boards or whatever the requirements are I know a lot of students don't have the access to participate in a science Affair at home or doesn't they don't have the materials to participate at home but if they have a space in the school building that they can work on it while in school keep it there and if they don't want to bring it back and forth that might be another area to kind of extend from that just a little thought process just thinking out loud quiet areas and study areas if we're going to re in in re-envision libraries and bring students in it's going to get quite

171noisy so other students who might want a little quiet place to study right without the disruption or read without the the chaos can we create ensure that there are going to be some quiet stations somehow or another um the list of instructional materials I'm going to go back to that presentation elevating transparency and on the PowerPoint you had a a slide that says view the list of instructional materials can you just remind me again or repeat again if you because I may have missed it exactly what that list is going to lead parents to so they they click on a link where are they going so it's going to take them to a searchable by grade level state adopted curriculum so if they wanted to see what their first grader has as their state adopted

172Ela curriculum the spreadsheet will have the title of the publication as well as the publisher so that they're very clear what we use and our supplemental material is going to be on there as well so we are very very much encouraging our teachers to stay with the state adopted curriculum when they go through and elect to use supplemental material there's a an approval process for that as well that's heavily vetted by the principal and then subsequently Mrs basura or the line of the chain of communication um so when we are differentiating instruction um which is what I'm told that we are doing um which I would love for us to be a differentiated instructional District that goes through the full process of that um the materials that a teacher would use might not always align

173and it might not just be only supplemental maybe it would be right um to be an additional material to provide for a student of a parent who has an objection and or of a student who's at a different level right so you can teach the same skill with different pieces of info different reading materials for example one might come from the approved adopted textbook and then one might come from somewhere else so I I get that we it it has to be pre-approved but in the planning process as teachers are preparing their lessons in advance would that stuff be accessed on the instructional I would assume that it would be on the instructional materials list the differentiate differentiated instructional materials [Music] you bring up a great question and we have District approved supplemental materials um

174and I think off the top of my head things like Sunday in our primary grade levels um things like that those we do have District approved supplemental which will also make it to this website I think what Dr shafty is referring to is if a teacher goes outside of the scope of our curriculum and finds curriculum that they think will help their students there is an approval process that they will go through for that process to happen okay okay um thank you for that and then I had a question back to Dr shafty the difference between reconsideration and objection what would you define the difference between those two s ometimes or are they the same they are one and the same okay okay so reconsideration would be I think we we kind of talked about

175having reconsideration at the school level just to distinguish between the between the two levels reconsideration is a school is going to reconsider a particular material because a parent has an objection to it at the district level it would be the challenges or the objection process right yes all right thank you so much you're welcome are you done yes I'm sorry all right uh any other board members like to speak Dr Jones when I look at all the information thank you I know this is a lot of detail and a lot of work I attended the um principal assistant principal meeting on Friday at Storm Grove and we started talking about these State statutes a lot of questions came up and there were good questions um Dr Mark just going back a little bit how many

176families in our district have said our children cannot access any library books dude I think at the end of the school year I think it was 12 to 15. okay when I look at this and look at all the state statutes that we now need to follow and I'll have a few comments on the committee just in general when you look at and you know how much I love my sharks when you look at 32 flipping books checked out with 1800 students they're not going to the library to read now believe me technology I have kids and grandkids are on their Kindle or whatever they may be as well just help me with my MySpace account last week but anyway I'm thinking to myself I I know but anyway we we're missing the boat forget

177everything else that we have to go through now we're missing the boat for what we need to do for our students now I saw a little bit more information on Elementary checkout and so forth and I don't I can't remember what it was at Vero Beach High School but they we have to totally re-envision that and I know we've got some media Specialists can do that we all know they're not going there to check out the regular books so that's that's my main issue when you look at all this when I look at the district committee and I've said this before I want that make and I know it looks like a board member will each get one person we have a media specialist and so forth I want to make sure that it's a

178diverse committee that represents this community in every respect that's number one because when we look at things and one thing they have in the District committee we want to make sure there's no bias you know we've got to be very very careful when we accept books from others and I know donations come in all the time you know we have to be aware of that now here's a question I want to ask when's the last time a media specialist was able to order a book or what anything we are moving through this process last year and knowing that we're still pending information from the state I want to say it was January or February we asked them to hold off on ordering uh and we gave the assurances to the media specialist at that time

179that money as well as their total allocation for this school year would remain intact so as we go through the process for this year uh we'll be able to really begin to look at which books we want to order while at the same time looking at the volume of books that we currently have that are not being used in it right right I think it's important to note as Miss wall presented her information I would encourage each of you after school starts because she's pretty busy prior to the opening of schools uh scheduled her and see some of the designs and com Concepts that are in place for these two media Specialists will go back and taking that and vetting some of that really Innovative thing some of the things that you said Mr Rosario

180uh we have captured other things we we I saw Gary feverishly writing as you were you were sharing some of those ideas it is really really Innovative and I'll remind the board I was tasked this board tasked me to look at innovating those two particular spaces so we've got to look at the volume of books that are just not being used uh to bring in some of the Innovative neat things that um Carrie has in mind as well as Mr Rosario was sharing there needs to be a a weeding process or a reduction of books that are just sitting there not not being used and um there's one other thing on the committee so let's say we or we get time to order our books are we are we going through every book that we

181order as we as as reference we will bring the a full policy review there will be a process to vet books in order to ensure that would be School site specific by the media Specialists there's training being provided by the Florida Department of Education in order to ensure uh what we're putting on our shelves is aligned to the state's expectations as well as the sports expectation so there's still a little bit of of waiting time not to redo work or be redundant and asking folks to do things twice or three times right um that we're willing to do um as you know our media Specialists have been off enjoying their families taking a well-deserved break and they're going to come back uh to a heaping load of of work waiting for them to ensure that

182we're we have everything in place isn't that training by January of 23 that they have to have January of 23 but we really can't order books until all that training has been completed they based on the statute the the selection of any new materials needs to be vetted by someone with the certification that an educational media specialist would have right that training could come be released as early as January 1st but they also have a little bit of a window and it could be as late as either June or July of 2023. okay and there's some questions at the principal's meeting about class libraries that you know especially Elementary they just live with those libraries so where are we on do we have to go through all those libraries so they're they're we do have

183a process that we're putting into place the answer to that question is yes um we want to ensure that the parent understands the information that's being exposed to their children we want teachers to know what can and cannot be exposed to students and we want the district to be protected as a whole so we have created a process that we're pushing out to schools in order to ensure um we are on the up and up completely transparent everyone is well informed regarding the content we're putting in front of our students us Dr shafty to quickly review some of that procedure sure so we do have a form in place we're working on the mechanism with which to have oversight of accountability but the form has our commitment to staying in alignment with the statute the

184form will progress to say I either maintain a classroom library or I do not if they do not maintain a classroom Library the form hopefully the way we envision it would close but if they do choose to maintain a classroom Library we did outline based on State Statute all of the aspects and criteria that they need to be aware of the form allows for uncertainty they can select it either does and the material is removed and handed to the media center or they can select I'm unsure and then it's also removed in a space that does not hold our teachers in a place where there yeah we just we just we want to protect our teachers and we were not comfortable saying no classroom libraries so this process allows them the choice they can maintain

185one um in compliance with the statute or they can elect to not maintain one but we will know either way of their decision thank you Dr Schiffer Mr Barefoot yeah that's my only comment and to some degree this was covered in Dr Jones's comments is um and this will be up to the committee for how they do that is is how we determine and evaluate bias free content which will depend on as Dr Jones mentioned a diverse representative of committee but also that the committee will have to is one of its first obligations determine how it will do that whether it will be by consensus will it be by vote how will how will they make those assessments and what will constitute bias free so I'm sure that direction will be given at the time

186um but that's predominantly everything else is has been covered in individual meetings uh except for that one I remain attentive to Mr Barefoot yeah the common first of all I'm I guess shocked that the number of material that are available and how little is being used sort of a sad commentary and what you hope although I'm skeptical is that there's a lot of of that the need being filled with with technology but I fear that there's too much watching of tick tock and not enough of what I'll call educational related material and and what a shame um and I'm sure you know this but universities colleges have been going through this transforming libraries for 10 years and there's there's more models out there there's been more money spent and um a lot of it if

187they had to redo it and some have had to redo it they made mistakes along the way now the age groups are a little different and there's I think there's a much more teamwork and collaboration emphasized at the college University level so you have workspace for let's call it study teams five six people and education at that level is more like a job education at the elementary and secondary school level is probably as much social interaction as it is learning which is a big part of course of learning so I would just and I'm sure you've done this but you know there are Consultants there are a lot of and you're dealing with the population in these schools that mirrors a lot of um the smaller colleges I mean you go up into the New

188England area and you go to the nescac schools which is the Williams the Amherst the Middlebury is the Bowden the base et cetera et cetera those School populations are very similar to what you're talking about here so how did they organize the space to accommodate the numbers not just the activities which will be different you know at the college level than you're going to find at the high school level but and and I would offer for those kids that go on to college uh being exposed to a college-like Library environment before they get there we'll make that transition a whole lot easier so in your in your research and I can probably be somewhat helpful I don't know the who's but I can put you in touch with someone who will know give you maybe

189some ideas on um organizations or even some schools that have gone through this and had to to change you know a year or two out and maybe avoid making some mistakes that others have made in the past all right just my thoughts but I think it's great I think you're absolutely on the right track okay so I have a few things um I know that when you first brought up the forms and the parents that filled them out there were I think 90 and five said you know they didn't want access to their books so it would be helpful I think for board members to see you know what parents are concerned who filling out forms what what is happening with those forms um maybe at the end of the year versus what we were

190given when all this was going on before um you mentioned you did a survey where those 175 students just at Sebastian River High School both high schools so they were all high school students that were in the survey so the survey we were just getting feedback for what it was to give the design teams um a focus on what the students felt was important and we asked them questions like you know what kind of prep materials there should be do you want computers do you want desktop computers or laptop computers do you want high top seating uh you know the high table seating do you want soft seating some things we expected some things we did it and we were surprised and we actually changed what we asked the design companies to give us based

191on that what it was was just getting that initial feedback from the students going forward for the next four months Dr Moore has planned out for us to get in front of students again uh specifically Sebastian students now that we're looking at their Media Center the superintendent student advisory Council and to get more concrete feedback before we commit to a design I know is a past experience as a teacher teaching fourth and fifth grade when students were doing science fair projects let's say it was it would be helpful if I could have sent them as a group working together to the library and said do your research there work together collaboratively but the answer was always no and the reason why is because that librarian was tasked with teaching students so they couldn't watch those

192kids for me so that was a concern at the elementary level it sounds like at the high school level though that's not that concern the and like Dr Mark said I'm happy to you know to meet with you and show you the presentation but I can tell you that the focus and the redesign is collaboration is the media specialist assisting students with things like research perfect and collaboration and there is space for steam that's what it should be it should be a place where we send students that they can collaborate they can work together absolutely um yeah nice I can't wait to see it so um you know thank you for all um the all School search materials links I know that in statute it said just elementary schools so I appreciate the fact that

193you've opened it up to middle schools and high schools I think that's important with everything that has happened for the transparency so thank you for that um what happens when in the future because before when a book was objected to the book was put on a shelf and the um the media center office right so that it wasn't on the shelf for students what happens with those books now moving forward because I don't see where that's going to happen anything in here and you know I was going to ask this question so we have that in the policy as well we want to maintain a level of fiscal responsibility the members of the district committee will need physical copies of the book If available so the first kind of attempt will be if a material

194is selected for district level review we would use our existing inventory to pull that material because either way they need to review the actual physical copy with the same ISBN number but then after that if a student wishes to check out any books currently under review they would have that note in Focus that says they can or cannot where is the book sit the remaining books will remain on the shelf on the Shelf not in the office of the media center is that because who makes that decision is that a board decision or is that so that's in the policy here is that in the statute that says that or is that the interpretation of the statute it's a procedure so I guess my question would be I think board members have have expressed in

195the past board members have expressed in the past they're concern about books your your mic okay board members have expressed in the past they're concerned about where the book's sitting while it's being judged and I really feel like maybe that might be a school board part that we put in the policy I know it's a procedure I get that but procedures follow policy and I know that that's something that's come up several times with all of us on the dice in the past so my concern would be is that something that we should vote on or is that just going to be part of the procedure just to be clear we have embedded the procedures into the policy so it is binding in terms of the action the system or the district or the superintendent

196has to take so that is written in the policy where we've included the procedures that would be followed so it does say just as Dr shafty voiced that would be the system that would be in place I personally this board member has a concern with that because I feel like if if it's potentially a book that would be removed while it's being objected to if I'm a parent that says I don't want my child to take that book out you know I don't want my child to have my their hands on that book then so I know when we were going through this before those books were put in the office and a parent that was fine with it that child can check out the book from the library um from the librarian but I

197have I don't know I have a personal problem with the book sitting on the shelf I do I'm not done Mr Rosario please um the next thing no one's interrupted you okay I'm sorry I thought you were putting your hand up like I want to speak I was but no one was interrupting okay all right so the next thing um I want to bring up is a timeline no sorry uh the idea about these that is now sweeping the nation because I've been looking at this of what different Librarians our libraries are doing Across the Nation not just School libraries but public libraries and you'll notice our public libraries have stem carts if you haven't noticed please go notice stem cards can be checked out by families it can be checked out by a group

198that comes in they can be checked out by individuals and not just with laminating and all that stuff but with some stem things see microscopes and things like that so it would be nice if those were available because a lot of times as a science teacher I'm going to just go to science for right now I'm working with Biology let's say and the students are working on histology looking at uh individual cells on a plate and I won't give them a project or whatever they want to go on and look at cells themselves they don't have that opportunity unless they make a time to come in and see me versus having that opportunity to go to the library and get that same ability to do that wouldn't that be cool um so I'm thinking really

199thinking outside the box here with talking to our teachers about what they wish was in there I remember when I was a teacher and the Librarians say I've got X number of dollars which wasn't much give me titles of books that you'd like and I said oh great because I'm doing this study and I'm doing this and we're learning about the coral reef I can't buy that because we got to buy this instead we got to buy all the books that you know have the medals and all this stuff we can't do what even though it was voiced to us it really wasn't that partnership between the classroom teacher and the and the media because their their funding was very limited I get that but if you're thinking outside the box here and we're really

200thinking about revisioning this then I think we need to also talk to the teachers and what their needs are because they might say the same thing that I just said which is I wish my kids have access to microscopes not just in my classroom or something else um and I'm not worried about the media centers not being able to order materials right now because if they have volumes sitting there haven't been used yet not buying another 300 right now isn't a urgent thing unless of course they have to buy new berries and all caldecotts and all that stuff I get that um but I think that maybe holding that money and being able to do some Innovative things like this is really kind of worth it to hold that hold on to that money um

201you know I've been it's been said that when I brought up the community standard which was what I asked for in other words when we went through all this people have parents and and community members have a different understanding and aversion in their own mind of what's great appropriate for children you know there are some people that allow their kids to watch certain movies and other people that only allow them to watch G-rated movies I always err on the side of caution you know um anybody that came to my house they had to have permission to watch something I usually was a G-rated movie anyway but you know the the term plan to make a plan has been said about what I came up with with this community standard the reason why I brought that

202up is because I thought if we're going to move forward with all this people have to come to an understanding of what they agree to is is great appropriate and that when it boils down to it that's what it comes down to is what's appropriate to put in front of children you may think it's appropriate you may not think it's appropriate what are we going to agree to so I'm glad to see that the state is actually coming up with a state standard so we don't need a community standard I guess unless we want to go above and beyond what the state says but when is that state standard going to come out of what's great appropriate for each grade um so we went to a leadership conference I think in June and they were

203seeking individuals with expertise to serve on that rulemaking so they we don't we do not have a definitive timeline on when we can expect a definition for age-appropriate okay so um that's part of the problem here is people want us to act right away but sometimes when you act too quickly you have to pull back because new statutes come down and then you have to redo it so I'd rather do it correctly um so I'm anxious to see what the state standards going to come out with um does the state have all procedures and the PD in place for moving forward it sounds like some of this stuff is going to be introduced in this fall it sounds like some of it's going to come out January to June somewhere in there so we're kind

204of at a hold pattern for some of this at what point though can we put this do we have a timeline for this policy in other words at what point are we going to have a committee where we each pick somebody to put on this committee and we're going to have a committee that's actually looking at books because you know when school starts we're going to have you know people concerned about books so at what point can we move forward with this wait your mic's not on can you start over all the way back through the chair so tonight we're asking the board to approve this policy it will then go out for for public hearing at our following board meeting which is um next month follow the day after that board meeting we'll do

205the advertisements for individuals wishing to be selected by each board member to serve on the committee going into that upcoming board meeting we anticipate having all of the remaining policies modified for your review to be approved which is the whole kit and caboodle for like a better way of saying it surrounding these specific issues so we can begin to seat the the committee they can begin doing some of the groundwork some of the the procedural work some of the training that we can provide for them and and move forward swiftly so we want to move as fast as we possibly can for the same time ensuring that we're not having to redo work or re-review information based on a a change of what age-appropriate is that's being provided from the state so there's a lot

206of things that we can do after we approve this this policy to really you know kind of lead from the front for lack a better way of saying it that we are moving as fast as we possibly can but safeguarding the the opportunity not to have to redo work um or by any means expose students to any content that their parents would not want them to have okay so we're not going to just wait until all of it comes out from the state we're going to start moving good and um that brings me back to my other concern which is about the books that are being objected to while this committee is being formed and moving along so is there going to be that list in Focus that says this book has been objected or

207how's it going to say let me let me read directly from the policy because I I think as it is written I think we are in a a pretty good place and preparation for is review challenge materials will be provided to the members of the district construction committee I'm on page three uh section e procedures it is in yellow in my copy okay so I'll start over in preparation first review challenge materials will be provided to members of the district objection committee from the current circulation of inventory so if there's 11 members on there we if we have 11 books we'll pull 11 books if we have to go out and get four more then we'll have to go out and get four more but as you have noted it has to be the exact

208same book ISBN number that is actually in the library so we're reviewing the actual material itself during the entirety of the district level appeal process any remaining inventory of the challenge materials will be required parent approval before a student can check out the material so what that means is it's just not the opt-in or opt out it is bringing up a book that that is being reviewed because books will come on to review and books will come off of review throughout the year it will be a fluid process so we'll have to create a system so the media Specialist or aide who is checking out the book that says I need to inform the parent that this book is being reviewed prior to checkout unless the parent already says hey I get permission for my

209child to check out books that are being reviewed so I think the way that it is written it is leading with Choice from from parents regarding objectional material and in the case in which the form hasn't been completed or it's it's not it's not completed we would be required based on how this is written to get permission so is that because if you anticipate a thousand books coming forward then we'd have a thousand books being pulled I have never thought of it being a thousand books but um the answer that question is yes and I really want to honor the the time of Staff while the same time honoring the choice of parents and I think this allows us to create a mechanism in order to do both so there will not be books checked

210out that are being reviewed unless the parent gives the okay for it to to happen okay so let me ask this question I think it's of you so um when I stepped into that role for a year I know when I did a checkout with fallette if I um gunned the book which is what we called it you know hitting it with a little gun and it popped up red in fallet saying that you know this book is not available for checkout for that child is that how it comes up now I I don't think we could speak through the what the actual ex there is a flag that comes up that notifies a media special this is a hands-off book or this child doesn't have these permissions so we've already created the system where

211I you know any books that are on that have been moved from elementary to middle you can list titles of books that they can't check out um there's a great deal of flexibility I just want to make sure there's a very unique way to stop a child from getting access to a book that's subjected to that is in place okay or will be in place do you want this I can get the specifics um what happens in Fall lead is it actually Flags the child not the book so when the students ID numbers entered it says this student has restrictions right and then the media specialist goes to focus to see what those book restrictions are so if you um you I don't you like to use the word gun but if you can't okay

212if you scan thank you if you scanned the ID of the child right and then it comes up and then you scan the book are they connected at all to what their permissions are no the media specialist has to go into Focus to see which books are listed as having an exception for that student so will I have is it certain will it say that anything on the objected list okay I just want to make sure that that's being stopped so that kids are protected if their parent says they don't want them having access to any of those books yes okay anyone else Dr Schiff I just want to respond to something that you said which is the notion of the state giving guidance versus Community guidance and standards and norms and I want to

213go back to I think you originally some time ago suggested a a way of assessing that in the community a community group or something which I think is you know when the state gives us guidance that's helpful but counties are very different Broward county is different than Palm Beach is different than Indian River is different than Leon is different than Glades so State Standards cannot really address implementation in an individual Community or even to the level of individual schools so while that's a starting point I don't know that I'd say that's an ending point and would actually go back to your idea that I don't think that this the state Direction obviates the needs for local community input right so that Community standard that I brought up before I'm assuming that this committee might come

214up with that I'm not presumably reflect yes would would to the degree and is it the intention that this community that this committee is a is a true reflection of the community then yes then this committee would hopefully meet that meet that standard okay thank you Mr Rosario yeah um I want to be clear about the community standard that the community standard that the committee sorry that the committee is functioning under the eyes of the law first and foremost using the law as their filter not their personal opinions Dr Moore yeah it would be policy looking at State Statute and just not someone's opinion we've had a number of opinions provided that are all legal opinions but yes uh based on policy based on law they're um questions or statements here that I I wanted

215to bring up the form Dr Shafi you mentioned the form that was that is being drafted now to be given to staff to teachers so they can check their school libraries to ensure that classroom libraries do not have some of these objected some of these materials that are not that are prohibited in the classroom so I'm trying to think of the right words um are we going to be able to see that when it's done are you going to show it to us you know in a in a workshop are we going to see what that looks like then and the presentation that we heard about earlier I'd love to see that presentation as well as we reconvene I would be more than happy to show the the outcomes of those particular things so I

216think the protocol that's been created really leads the teacher through a thought process regarding is this something that is really non-negotiable in terms of being okay to expose children to or do I have questions or concerns and it runs them through the various scenarios whether it be critical race Theory because there is a a rule on that um whether it be pornography runs them through that so it it leads them more through a thought process and takes them to a place where they have any kind of hesitation or concern they could seek additional guidance from the media specialist who will be attending that training and then providing feedback to them when it's most appropriate thank you no I I know that I've seen it I've seen it when we met personally privately but I but

217it in the effort to be transparent with the public who has had who have had objections to the entire process that's what I just wanted to you know rather than rely on no we are definitely doing so well we're doing something and this is what it looks like like that's all that's the only reason why I was asking um I love the form I love the idea of the detail that's in it I think it's definitely another check in the box of moving forward to complying with being transparent with our curriculum and with our library books so it's definitely a move moving a good move forward um donations there was a I think that I heard something about we've received donations we have not according to what I understand we have not received donations lately

218uh with regard to libraries or library books I know that there was a donation that was um offered but I don't believe that the district received them yet am I right I think you're speaking of one entity but there are numerous entities throughout our community who are are donating books or would like to donate books so as we receive them we can be in receipt of them but before we they have to go through this process that were the process of free yes okay so we want to make sure that we create that review of the selection of materials and make sure that Library selection materials vetting process is in here before we actually receive the donations correct okay thank you and then um I think I'm wondering without waiting until December I mean without

219waiting until January or um the proposed January date for the training from the Department of Education I'm wondering if there might be exceptions if we provide for them and I'm thinking out loud so bear with me if we provide for them once this policy is passed and we have our selections process aligned with statute I'm wondering if we can provide this as proof that we are along with the check-in list or the checkout list for the the checklist for the classroom libraries if we can provide this for the Department of Education to allow us a temporary release to begin purchasing new aligned books maybe we don't have to wait until January maybe we can prove that we are one of the first districts to get ahead of you know the the curve here where other

220districts I believe are really not even as far as we are in the process no I the chair I I'm pretty comfortable we'll be able to begin ordering books because 98 of them are have no issues or no concerns no one's ever going to to question um so we had to get media Specialists back we have to look at it and we have there there are books in which it would be of concern in which we need additional support but there are simple resources that we could provide that 100 align to our curriculum are supplemental to our curriculum but we need to have those who are charged in making those decisions and beginning that process and have a level of comfort from them uh because ultimately they're the ones who have that certification they have

221that that training I I can't speak because to to their level of comfort in making an order or making a selection because they have that state certification without going to that specific training my assumption is they would be more than comfortable saying this is this book is is right down the middle of the road it is 100 supporting this this is a classroom third grade aligned to the standards piece of material um I just don't want to speak for them I want to assess that as soon as we have them back I think that's some of the information we'll be able to bring back to the to the board at our next meeting thank you for that um I think that a few parents have shared with me their concerns over some summer reading lists

222that were provided for their kids um and based on the very few that I have talked with the selection of books there there aren't any um about or around the topic of career or vocational training or career Focus or any of that I think when we move forward when you move forward in the training process of the library media center specialist on August 5th I would love for for you all to consider adding to that discussion the importance of ensuring that the books have a an equal amount of or a much broader amount of books that address or that teach or that talk to the subject of Career Technical Training courses that are out there if we want students to not I mean we know that not all students are college-bound but why not also

223provide an extensive you know variety of of those kinds of books as well and from what I understand in previous workshops through citizens that have spoke about it or have done research on folet that they were very very very few student books in our libraries that really address that so I think that would be pretty important as well um there was a a statement about the all School website um search the search for school library materials that's not new that's always been on full let so if you go directly onto that full let learning through the district website you can select all School search so that or you can select Independent Schools and select a book through through that process yes ma'am it takes you to there but now every school's website has a quick

224link to fall out beautiful and when when is that going to be up and running it's up and running now okay that that I'm glad to hear that um let me see what else um and I just wanted to say uh a last comment on the parents opting out there was a question about how many parents opt out how many don't I know quite a few parents who don't want to opt out of something that they wholeheartedly believe is an illegal process or allowing books that are um inappropriate to students that they just it it's like I'm not putting my student in that situation so I don't want to opt out so it's not that parents are allowing some parents or not they're just not saying yes you can go in there or they're they

225don't want their students to go in and therefore they I think what I'm saying is some parents are refusing to fill out that opt-out form because they don't agree with the entire process of it right and the fact that they believe that there is a potential liability for legal issues allowing giving permission for their child to allow for the books or not and then allowing giving an opportunity for the child to be singled out I know some parents have this concern whether I agree with it or not I'm just sharing it out loud because I just want to make it clear that not everybody is Black or White some people are somewhere in the middle with gray and you might have some parents in there who um feel that way about this entire process of

226opting in and opting out but other than that I am I'm proud to support this new policy and and um I'm eager to get it started so thank you all right thank you for your hard work on this many more policies to come Dr Shafi thank you very much and now speaking about other policies the last item Madam chair is Doc Jones item and it is hers to present and we'd gladly answer any questions or support uh you as needed thank you Dr Moore school board members as most of you know I'm a board member serving on the dseg work group and the judge decreed for us to do that and it was a change from the equity committee and it's been good work and it's been hard work and it's been detailed work our

227next meeting is tomorrow digging into the data um I think we all know that we want the same result to close the gap we are back in court on September 8th and I know Dr Moore uh updates the board as so needed with that um looking at the deseg overs from 67 to 94 and then the joint plan in 2018. the joint plan talks about making progress and I believe we've done so in some areas I really do but we all know we need to do better with closing the gap and I think we can move forward but something really stuck with me during one of these meetings it was a rep from the NAACP who said you know once we get through some things again we're starting at the beginning with Pre-K but once

228we get through some of these things we're just going to start over it is never ending and we can never become complacent I believe the board sets his policy we're studying a high standard and in my opinion after being here 40 some years it's time to be proactive instead of reactive nothing moves until we get unitary status and we're talking about all subgroups here race special education ese ell socioeconomic we're looking at everyone and I'm sure you've all looked at Power bi and look at our data on that and you can see we're lacking I do believe with the new organizational chart with some shifts we are in the best place to achieve that now but we all need to push forward and I believe as a board we would be setting a professional educational

229policy to stay in existence for a minimum of five years again after unitary status and we are just not reacting to issues now if you looked I'm sure you all read the policy in detail if you look at it same type of work group we have now that was established by the court it's the same type of work group and we're just committing to the process to continue I think it's what we're talking about is what we will do instead of what we won't do I asked Dr Manning to get some information and I will share with the board at a later time I'm sorry I don't have that now but if you look on power bi and you look at our subgroups we've got a lot of work to do the one thing I

230want to alert you to is the board commitment on this new policy if you don't mind me reading it the school board in all schools in our system shall take active measures to maintain high expectations for all students to eliminate persistent disparities in the academic performance of individual student subgroups based on race and ethnicity active measures shall be defined as those which promote Equitable inclusive and supportive educational environments that are free from discrimination um I know you saw that I brought something earlier on sustainability policy and now we're looking at all all of the groups here and I just think as we move into this new school year after a couple you know a couple really tough years that we make this commitment whether any of us here in five years or the new board

231looks at some things differently this will be set in policy so that we will continually monitor this for all of our students um we're a diverse school district and I'm very proud of that we have a great um parent group supporting and I think it's just time to move on from that to move on forward with that and before I even ask for board questions if you don't mind if Dr Moore or Dr shafty would just like to share a few things that you can from the work group to let us know why you think this may be important through the chair I'll start in Dr Shafi more than welcome to to add onto my statement I think the policy provides a clear and unwavering expectation by the board that this is a priority I

232will share some information this evening during my um my presentation and looking at our achievement by different subgroups and you'll see improvements in those rankings but still in the bottom 50 percent across the state so we're moving up but we're not we're not moving up to where we need to be when it comes to um our different subgroups so putting a focus in on the gaps across the entire system really ensures that we are being best by all kids when you look at this this policy that you have crafted it is a very strong policy it guides the work of the superintendent as all policies do there are certain expectations that must be upheld it ensures that we continue to move the work forward just not to be done with the desegregation or that is

233absolutely not at all the intent of this policy um it is solely to continue and build upon the work I think the work that is being done in the established work group is very focused it is really digging into a specific area which is student achievement it is sharing and discourse regarding some of the outcomes that we've had historically and really putting all things aside and working collaboratively to dig deep in terms of what are the root cause issues and what do we have to have so I look forward to continuing to to work with with the work group and really building and problem solving over the course of however long it needs to be but to have this in place is a a strong statement that we take this work seriously and we who

234serve all children regardless of the ZIP code are doing things and a way which ensures every single student has the opportunity to maximize their full potential Dr shafty studies on districts that are in situations where they are under any sort of compliance whether it be through a desegregation order or not they revert backwards Trend wise so to have something like this in place for the stages that we're at really sends a strong message that it's our mission it's what we say we do we transform for all students so having something like this memorializes the work that's being done now so it becomes part of the fabric moving forward and it's not lost a couple things mrenberg um Dr Shafi just alluded to this of the 67 counties six are in litigation like we are 26

235have unitary status and 35 it's never been an issue under litigation or anything and if you take a look at the achievement Gap many many who are already in unitary status or never had an issue have a wider Gap than we do and we just talked to a couple of counties when you talk to them and even responses they get well we achieved that or you know Court said fine put it on the Shelf okay this is something I don't want this school district to do this school board to do put it on a shelf you need to continually continually look at this and the mediator this is nothing I shouldn't say it said that you know he he doesn't know of a policy like this and was very supportive the one who is a

236mediator within the um the work group and well very supportive this because we will continually look at all students so I just you know obviously would like to hear from you what you think and I think it's on tonight whether it goes for 30 days obviously we'll have time to look at it but just your thoughts thank you Miss berenberg thank you board members uh Mr Barefoot well I I think it's great and um this is a both a challenge and an opportunity and uh I think you're right that once once uh you think you've solved the problem people tend to forget about it and pretty soon if you take the time and you look back you find that you know you've slipped and that's what the Dr shafty just said that the the data

237shows so I'm 100 behind it okay Dr Chef yeah pretty much ditto that um thank you for the context thank you for the way in which you presented this both um compared to other districts as well as articulating our ongoing commitment I think this has been long overdue I think the efforts we have attempted either through court or through our Equity groups of not result produced the results we've hoped for um and so rather than doing the same thing and expecting a different result uh I think this is an excellent way to inculcate but to um can't find the right word ongoingly established I'm sure there's a word for that um our commitment to closing this achievement Gap not simply because other districts are doing poorly and are not under court order but rather because

238it's our commitment it's our priority and it should be our Legacy this is Rosaria um the the I think it was um a year ago May when this came to us or we started talking about this as a unitary status policy sustainability policy I I agree with the the idea and the premise to commit to the work that is um that we are obligated to address with regard to the um court order and the African-American achievement plan and obviously closing the achievement Gap with our African-American students and others and other group of students I have for a long time talked about the achievement gap between our Hispanic students and everyone else and I have forever said that that that is a very very large gap um as well so there are always going to be

239achievement gaps with students just like you're always going to have your lowest quartile it doesn't matter where you are you will always have even if your lowest quartile of students you know increases and and is now no longer lowers quartile you're still always going to have a bottom quartile and so addressing the quartile or the achievement gap of students based on cohort is something that I don't see here and I think that having a district um eye on closing the achievement Gap is great and all but I I just think that that could be something that the superintendent can create his own committee to do I just don't see the need of creating a policy for that if the policy was strictly to address the items that are in our court order I can see

240that it would be um it would be it would align well but right now we have a mix of different things in here and there's so many items that have been added um and a lot of items have been taken away that now the focus of this work group even though we are mentioning even though in here the purpose is to address the desegregation order of 1967. and to to ensure compliance with that uh with the requirements of that court order it then goes in to say that we are going to establish a work group to review the achievement gap of all students um not just your African-American students so I'm at a little bit of a a quandary the purpose of the work group according to the court order was to address the items

241that were in the court order to be compliance with the items that are in The Joint plan rather um and the we met every single item except for two that's my right okay we met every single item recently when we went to court in March got it um except for mentoring of teachers in the African-American uh Community or rather teachers who are African-American um so the mentoring portion of the new teachers and instructional staff and then the other the other item that we did not meet was the academic the hot the African-American students in higher um courses no student achievement okay so if we are still If This Were addressing all of the items in the joint plan or even those two items that are still missing to focus to begin now I would say

242that that would be great then let's just do that let's create a policy that says we are now going to focus on addressing the two items so that we can meet unitary status compliance work alongside the NAACP and get the work done um but that's not what I see here what I see here is a commitment that won't go into effect for another five years or three months you know we don't know when we're going to reach unitary status and that's my issue is again putting the cart before the horse not that the intent to address these issues is not important it's the creating a policy that seems to be in a rush rush just to say that we're in the commitment to do it um and then throw in all of the other aspects

243of all students instead of specific to the Joint plan or monitoring to make recommendations um again specific to what's in the the most recent court order uh it it's just it's very um it's very it feels a little all over the place it feels like we're piecemealing things together just to say that we're going to make a commitment and then not have it go into effect for until whenever so here's my other concern too a year ago there was a an incredible push and a rush to create a sustainability policy just to say that we needed to do that and make the commitment a year later it's now completely changed into something like this because of a court order what's to say there wouldn't be another court order in another month or two or three

244months or six months or a year from now that'll say forget about the work group you'll do something else or you'll be required to do something else and so then we would have to come back to this policy which has not been taken which has not taken effect yet and recreate something else again because we were putting the cart before the horse so I just think that we're being too premature I think that if we had a proclamation or a promise or some kind of agreement like a written contract or something that says that we promise to do this that's not written in policy I mean policy drives our work and Dr Moore you could do this you can do an achievement Gap group at every single School the best way you know to handle

245achievement Gap is not just necessarily at the district office but at the school level where they're looking at their own students so looking at a district-wide achievement Gap is great but unless we bring it back to the schools I mean you can do that you can do that right now without a policy you can create a citizen's work group to do that if you wanted to do I mean I just I I don't see the the need for this particular in the way that it's written it says that we're addressing the desegregation order but then what's written in it is that we're not that we're then going to look at everything else so I I don't know I'm I get the idea um I I think it's incredibly important that we do commit to the

246work uh but it's something that we're we are doing we are committed to it um we have to legally do the work to do it so uh I'm not okay with approving or discussing a a the approval of a policy that won't take effect until whenever that I haven't I have big concerns about that Dr Jones this is your item do you want to respond um as said earlier and also in writing this is enacted after unitary status and what we're seeing then the composition of the works with the new work group would be very similar to this and we will look at all of our subgroups so I think it's a commitment that's about let me see how you're 40 50 years behind and I think it is very very strong when a school

247board puts us in policy we will continue with the work group I'm on it we will continue with it you know someday we hope we get unitary status we're hoping and we're working hard but this is not enacted until after unitary status so we don't contradict the current work group so that's just something um and I just think it's important right we do go by policy and that is important for us to acknowledge it we want to I believe the infrastructure is there right now we are adhering to minimum requirements in the joint plan of 2018 and I'm sure you've all read that many times they are minimum we want to sustain those efforts and raise expectations we want to continue with the mentoring the hiring of important contributors we want to do our jobs

248as far as helping our students but again this is enacted after unitary status so we don't contradict the current work group I I think that all the information on the superintendent's achievement Gap board group is very important we're going to continually look at data you know have data drive us so I think in general this supports the district unified mission um Dr Moore the the purpose of this work group that's in process right now that only discusses um the achievement Gap does it only address the achievement Gap with African-American students and other groups of students or in that current work group are you looking at our achievement gap for everyone chair we're working through the the gap of African-American students and white students and that is the the primary focus that we're looking at I

249think what this policy does is keep the Integrity of the current work group and the problem solving that it's engaging in continuing that specific process I I want to be clear in in my mind this is not in reaction to the unitary status this is not in reaction to anything that there's a pressing need to get it done other than the fact that it needs to be a priority at all times and if we can make that declaration the absolute strongest way why would we not so it keeps the Integrity of the work group happening um this this has been shared with the NAACP uh the representative from the the work group has provided positive feedback regarding it um so we're in a place to say this board has a high level of commitment to

250continuing and growing and expanding this body of work so why not just create an achievement Gap oversight work group now for now apart from the work that you are doing in that other work group so that you can address the achievement Gap with all students district-wide and then not make this one specific to the desegregation order through the chair I think this superintendent and any other superintendents work at the will of the board and the reality what what I would do versus other superintendents would do um varies but every superintendent will have to uphold policy as it is written so if there's an opportunity to create policy that dictates the work that is a priority for the elected officials to ensure that every single member of our community is being provided quality education and we

251are eliminating gaps then I think that's what we should do but to give a level of comfort to you Ms Rosario we do have a strong focus it is part of our school improvement process where we're looking at subgroups that are underperforming and writing specific action steps to address them each of our secondary schools have an African-American student council which gives voice to those individuals at specific schools we're still driving and Mining that work we have seen some good foundational work be done in the last two years but the truth of the reality is there's significant work to be done um and we need to protect that work in order to ensure that we're continuing to to grow the the entire community so if we if if we keep that work group I mean obviously

252we have no choice where you're still working with the current work group that's in in progress that's going to continue to happen so board members what about just removing the whole everything here about desegregation and allowing the superintendent to begin the addressing the achievement Gap district-wide now instead of when we until we reach unitary status uh Dr Schiff yeah first off I think he's already doing that second off I think the intent of this policy is to demonstrate ongoing commitment not simply board policy to direct the superintendent but what it communicates to the community about this board's priorities I think um while we may have been addressing this for some time as you alluded to I don't think we've done a great job and I think that's part of the reason that we don't get

253as far as we want to there is nothing in policy it is the superintendent's commitment to stay focused on this issue and he's done considerable work towards that but there isn't something in policy that continually directs him to do that and I can't imagine personally why we would not want to demonstrate to ourselves to this District to the people in it and to the community our commitment to this issue into closing the the achievement Gap I cannot I don't understand any reason why whether substantively or symbolically we would not want to communicate that so at this point if this is going this is on the consent agenda for tonight if it's something you object to feel free to pull it and we can vote on it otherwise we will put it through on consent but

254I think we can debate this all day long and and and you object to it some of us support it we'll just put it to a vote tonight then Mrs Baron Ward you haven't spoken so if there's anything you'd like to say about any of this sure yeah thank you you know I think this shows a good faith um good faith to something that this board and previous boards for years and years and years and years and years have been dealing with and this shows good faith that we're not just dealing with it we're moving forward to help kids I appreciate the fact that we're going to be helping all kids so I'm moving forward with the group you know making a policy instead of having a superintendent procedure shows that the board strongly supports

255the work that has been done towards unitary status I think that if we don't have something now that we're looking forward in the future let's say we get unitary status in September then we're sitting there going okay now what you know we're behind the the card is now behind or in front of the horse now it's behind the horse and now it's dragging way behind the horse you know I'd rather have something there that we can tweak if we need to versus not having something at all so yes I will be supporting this Dr Jones summary and thank you for your input um I've read every policy I don't have a memorized but take a look at how many policies in this book truly relate to student achievement I couldn't give you the percentage but

256it's not real high and again this is just something you know unitary status maybe we'll get it someday soon maybe it'll take a year your two years I don't know I don't know but to me it just says at this school board in this school district has the intent to move forward with this yes I know we're working with our students our ell students I know we're working with our Hispanic students in African-American our special needs students you know economically disadvantaged that's a subgroup you know you take a look at all of those and yeah we're doing some improvements but this just shows to me personally and professionally for someone's been watching this for 40 years here that this school board will remain committed to student achievement in all areas anyone else okay um thank

257you doc Dr Jones for serving on this committee but also bringing this forward and for the work that's been done with staff and I know we can't talk about the committee but it is a really really good group of people we're working hard we're going to continue to work hard and I'm proud to be a member of it okay yeah I I have a hard time with something coming before us on on the dice and changing it right then if you've already vetted and done all the work so I appreciate the work all right Dr Moore anything else that exhausts the agenda that does exhaust the agenda it is 3 45 we are adjourned