Superintendent's Workshop 4 p.m. 8-29-2022

001good afternoon this is uh monday august 29 2022 this is the superintendent's workshop it is 4 p.m and we are meeting in the joann idol at junior teacher education center i'm going to turn this workshop over to the superintendent thank you madam chair and our first presentation is a look back at our district strategic plan and as i begin this presentation i'll remind our board that our strategic plan is 100 aligned to the superintendent's evaluation system this was a unique uh initiative that we took on two years ago upon my arrival to ensure that we are evaluating what is important and there's nothing more important than the district strategic plan so no better way to align my evaluation to that of our district's strategic plan also remind the board when we created the strategic plan

002we created it in the midst of a pandemic and in its creation we did not push back we did not hold back and we didn't dilute any of our expectations in the creation of this plant there are many systems that took advantage of the pandemic and reduced or watered down their expectations this strategic plan the benchmarks that were created within the course of each of the years for a total of five years the standard remained high the standard aligned to everything that i declared upon entering the school system so what i will do is go back uh quickly review the plan i've had the opportunity to meet with each and every single board member to review our outcomes of the course of the last year to receive feedback i will conclude my presentation for for

003thanking the board for that feedback but as a point of reference and to say it up front this board holds a very high expectation in terms of what this public school system does for its children and the community in which it serves so when you look at the very first slide what you're going to see here is in 1819. why are we comparing to 1819 that is the baseline of our district's strategic plan so it is a point of reference over the course of five years when we conclude this plan we want to be ranked in the top 10 in each of the areas in which we're holding ourselves accountable so in 1819 which is also the last full year that we had minus a pandemic or no impact from the pandemic so it is

004a great baseline year so in comparison to where we finished what does ranking of 38 mean that is all of the components that are used to determine the school grade and you add up all of those numbers that is the district's that is the methodology used to create the district's grade so there's no wavering of numbers or redoing things here it is simply the exact same methodology used to determine what a district's school grade was so in the 1819 school year we were 38 out of 67 not to go backwards but for those of you who are on the board when i interviewed i wondered why we were 38th out of 67th because the short time that i was becoming familiar with indian river county that made no sense as to why we weren't significantly

005higher in state rankings and the longer that i lived here and continue to live here uh absolutely we should be in the top 10 in each of those specific categories but let's talk about the growth within the very first or the end of two and a half years so as you can see we move from a state ranking of 38 to 22 which is a state ranking improvement of 16. same environment same conditions but a significantly different outcome when you're looking at what this district and its employees did that ranking improving 16 state rankings is the highest rate of improvement in the state of florida for 67 districts the only district that kept pace with us was washington county which i learned yesterday during a presentation at a one of our local churches where actually

006one of the members of the church went to school in washington county and she informed me that there are six schools in washington county uh so significantly different in terms of the scope of work and the size so this is significant in terms of what we have leveraged through it talks through um despite the obstacles and challenges with the high expectation that we've set the district continued to thrive and when i say thrive i'm not claiming victory i'm not saying 16 it may be the best in the state and it is but it's ultimately so much work yet to be done when you look at surrounding counties all of which very similar scenarios indian river county same percent of points pre-pandemic with none of the pandemic impacts three years of two and a half years

007of impact from the pandemic same exact percent that is significant what was that impact in brevard a reduction of a letter grade a reduction of a letter grade in martin in okeechobee also a reduction of a letter grade st lucy hats off to you congratulations you were able to maintain the b now looking at each of our plan i do not have to review the components or structure of our district strategic plan with our board members because they ultimately live it on a daily basis academic success looks at a few key areas overall students scoring level 3 and above in ela math as well as our early learning programs improving that state ranking as well as our high school acceleration programs so when you look at those components you'll see in early learning programs we

008started at 14 40 in our baseline year moving 10 spots to 30 significant ela students scoring 3 and above from 38 to 27 in a middle school acceleration point from 56 which is way down there because there's only 67 counties uh to a ranking of 21. so those are some of the opportunities for improvement we're going to talk through some of the strategies to continue to ensure that we hit our outcomes towards the end of this presentation equity culture and climate as you know this district uh is still in a desegregation order that has taken way too long to address i will not go into the specifics regarding the volume of time and commitment that both my staff staff and myself have taken really to put our shoulder to this work to partner with our

009community to ensure that every single student walks into our public school system regardless of the zip code in which they reside in this county the town that they live in but when they walk into our schools it is a free and appropriate public education when students feel safe comfortable secure and they can focus in on the quality instruction that's being provided we have made this a priority in our school system and we're continuing uh to see improvements still yes absolutely board members work to be done but there are some signs that we are beginning to make significant progress as evidenced by our our performance gap in africa ela african american students and white students going from 45 to 37 looking at our ell language learners going from 22 to 18th that is also the the

010looking at the gap math where i just economically disadvantaged students going from 45th to 16th least restrictive environments which was 40 once again significantly low moving it to 20. that's really ensuring that we're putting students in the appropriate places that is a adult behavior that we quickly addressed and we're reaping the benefits for that communication and engagement which is the third element of our district's strategic plan once again this is the opportunity to leverage support and communicate with our families regarding the work that's being done and really creating very authentic opportunities for our community to engage so we have in fact karis increased the numbers in terms of opportunities for district activities and numbers going from 32 to 65 parents accessing our our parent uh portal called focus going from 59 to 87 which is

011significant and then the number of workshops from 31 to 150. we are looking at creating opportunities in school sites now that the schools are completely open we're functioning at what has been the most typical or normal situation since i have actually been here really trying to maximize engagement providing real authentic opportunities for parents to engage and be involved whether they have two jobs or three jobs we understand in problem solving with them there are clearly defined opportunities to connect and engage those families with our students looking at talent development and support this is really looking at how we're growing our work team the the biggest piece of our strategic plan really focuses in on the energy and focus around improving the quality of instruction and our strategic plan has been extremely heavy in this specific

012area really focusing in the first two and a half years about building capacity once you make that investment in an educator that skill is there forever so the skills that we have been developing over the course of the last two years will continue to have a compounded impact on the teachers i'm sorry the students that will be served by these teachers each and every single year as board members were briefed today some and the rest of the board members will be briefed on thursday we are now continuing to look at our out-of-field waiver report going from 10 in 1920 significantly higher than that in previous years down to eight percent uh that is significant that two percent is significant uh especially when you consider the volume of new teachers that have been coming into public

013education of the course of the last several years referencing back to our desegregation order moving from nine percent to 12 percent of african-american instructors is also a significant improvement that number of nine was stagnant for a number of years wasn't moving uh but a very specific plan created and implemented we're beginning to see those numbers increase hispanic instructors once again slight increase from five to seven percent that is our fastest growing population in our community so we need to continue to monitor that big piece of our meeting today is organizational and fiscal responsibility uh and we've done some really great work and to be very honest with you some of the work that's being done and right-sizing the district around our priorities and spending dollars aligned to our priorities and having a long-term plan in

014place just not a one-year plan but a multiple year plan that looks at indicators around student performance and pulls back on strategies and cost over time based on the capacity in which we're building part of that plan is really to look at grant funding we've gone from 2 million to 3.2 million dollars as you know we're going to be aggressive in that this year continuing to increase that 3.2 it was an increase of 1.2 is significant but we know we do not as a school system want to leave any dollars on the table 100 compliance with material and fiscal audits which is a major accomplishment uh the florida school safety assessment tool 100 uh compliance and 753 indicators of say the health the safety inspection down to 538 still work to do there but with

015your managing 22 campuses we will continue to see decreases in that number so looking forward as i have already discussed with the board multiple times regarding shifts and modifications to our district strategic plan and not only are we kind of highlighting and talking through where we have come last year specifically but over the course of the last two and a half years more importantly where we are still need to go so in looking at some of our annual targets you have noticed and we've had conversations about revising some of those targets to ensure that we are appropriately hitting the 2025 overall outcome so what that means in some areas in which we did not realize the progress that we wanted to we don't continue to not hold ourselves accountable we've adjusted our targets over the

016course of the next three years to ensure we need to hit that focus in 2025. so as an example in some areas in math we didn't perform as we would want to but we didn't go backwards and say let's reduce our expectation because we didn't perform as we wanted to let's ultimately continue to improve and we have to do better in math and our goals that we set for ourselves 100 percent reflect that enhancements to our district strategic plan looking at academic improvements looking at processes and support to professional development and coaching so really looking at doing development in isolation last year really understanding the roles and responsibilities of a principal of an assistant principal of an instructional coach using those as examples and once we have that deep understanding which we believe that we

017do really pulling the units or those specific job titles together to ensure the system has a deep understanding as to how those different job titles support one another and doing the work so moving from an individual isolated approach to development to a team approach looking at the different roles and responsibilities to ensure that all of the systems to grow quality instruction around the classroom are in fact in place and they're supporting one another in order to ensure that we're growing educators and supporting educators in the most effective and efficient way and then really looking at shifts to program evaluation and i'll use the example of alternatives to the suspension we spoke about the high numbers of suspension that were in place prior to the pandemic those numbers were aggressively high and students do not learn

018when they're not in classroom and we have very very high expectations as we have opened up this school year regarding how students well act while on school and what is expected in terms of behavior and we're upholding those expectations and we know if we're looking at the systems that surround and help students create those behaviors that lead to success versus simply punishing them and being more efficient and effective at evaluating those systems and making real-time change or modifications to those programs to ensure when a student is an alternative to suspension program or an indoor suspension program it does provide them the opportunity to a yes be held accountable for that behavior absolutely but at the same time provided the support that is necessary to understand the behavior that led to the consequence in order to

019ensure we are going to maintain students in classrooms so i will conclude by once again thanking the board the conversations that we've had regarding the overall outcome of our district this board continues to push and this board has never taken their foot off the gas regarding the possibilities of what this school system can do i can tell i am extremely proud of the work that this district has done the the work that our teachers administrators uh this district staff it is 100 committed to students it is an organization that moves at an extremely fast rate but at the same time is really reflective on its practices and willing to learn from itself and i am looking forward to continued success uh we captured a great deal of success and we have getting a great deal

020of opportunities to go and share and celebrate the work across the state in the coming months but ultimately uh we think we're going to be able to attain the goals and targets that we've set in our plan for 2025 and with this district's uh board support i know we'll be able to achieve that thank you madam chair all right thank you sir board members any questions or comments okay i saw doc jones first one thank you dr moore um congratulations moving from 38th to 16th i think we're all very proud of that can you explain to the public why did we increase so much in the middle school acceleration the the state uses a the denominator for that score of any student who is in seventh grade scores a level three four five and passes

021the algebra one exam in eighth grade we were denying students the opportunity to participate in that accelerated course in eighth grade even though they had a score of level three one of the first things that we did is to ensure if you had that predictor the state's criteria to be in that algebra one course you were afforded the opportunity so we increased that state ranking by by providing access to all students to participate in that course um and provide the additional support and development for our teachers and uh we have proven to everyone when provided the opportunity would provide the access the students uh well perform okay when we looked at district activities i saw that we increased from 32 to 65 and i think it's great when we have activities for our parents but

022one example that i saw last week at rose what i thought was just fabulous with the mcan going to the school and then having the parents come in right after drop off i attended a few of the meetings last year by zoom or being there and i think it's much much more efficient and easier on parents if we do it that way you know coming to the district office and having six to ten parents you know that's great but i think where the parents want to be are at the school so i know i've got that date for the next one i think is vbe but i thought that was a good beginning of what we need to do to bring it to our parents and the last thing for program evaluation when we look

023at all alternative to suspension on campuses and then our our programs off campus have we had a percentage rate of those who don't go back there or how is that working through the chair the initial data is positive so students who do participate in that program i know if ms dampier has it off the top of her head i don't want to put her on the spot so that that data was in fact good but the opportunities to improve it still are there the volume of students that are still being exposed to those programs uh we want to begin to reduce that so there are still significant opportunities to improve that that number over the course of the next year or two and as a former principal i would want the students off campus for

024a while but i didn't want them on the streets so whether they be in the program at school or at another site and given the work i think that's to their benefit thank you dr chef you know what happened as soon as i put a nut in my mouth yeah following up on uh dr jones's comments about alternatives to suspension i i really i appreciate the need to do this to increase the number of bodies in seats and in schools rather than in in or out of school suspension in strengthening those programs so that kids don't recidivate so that they are in seats more can you talk a little bit about what's what is what are some of those initiatives or ways by which those programs will be strengthened through the chair and to be

025very honest with you it's very specific to school sites so looking at who the instructor is the level of connectivity in terms of the assignments the kind of work that's being done the quality of support that's being provided to the students as well as the follow-up work and support when the student returns to class so we would be a little naive to think you go there for the one two or three days um have that support and to think that just automatically fixes the behavior that may have been in place for a number of years so really connecting that ongoing support once the student returns so it's just not a dosage that is one time it is a consistent being consistent over the course of the school year to follow up with a student a

026stronger communications with the teacher some of the things that we're doing is ensuring that the the students while in the program understand the impact of their behaviors on others and then taking the necessary steps to communicate and follow up with those that may have been impacted by those specific behaviors so really kind of healing some feelings that may have been hurt whether it be with other adults or whether it be with other students rather than just having the consequence without having the opportunity to resolve a possible conflict will just lead to more conflict in the future so being more aggressive about a someone is receiving a consequence for a behavior but sometimes it's just not that student we need to connect with to grow or mend a relationship that ensures that they are in fact

027in class each and every single day yeah thank you that's um almost exactly how i would have hoped you would have answered because what i hear you saying is there's a focus on building relationships one of the complaints that we hear from teachers is that students are disciplined or receive some consequence but then there's no follow-up so that the teachers aren't aware what happened nor do they have the ability to either mend the relationship with that student or create agreements moving forward that uh that increa that enhance the relationships between the teachers and the students and whoever else might have been involved because often it's not just that that individual student so thank you for that and again um agree that the movement from 38th to 22nd not 16th it was the 22nd 20 seconds

02816. and and the note um about putting that in context of other districts in florida is is noteworthy and i agree with you and always have that we should be in at least the top 10 if not the top five so i'm happy to hear that we're continuing that and look forward to seeing um how we're going to get in the top ten i agree we will i'll be gone but but the district will thanks that's it mr rosario i just lost my internet connection so what i really wanted to to look for i can't find it right now but i'll do my best um so i have a a question about um what i was looking for was tonight's meeting agenda this isn't is this this isn't coming to us for a vote no

029no this is just the opportunity to get public the initial round of feedback for the board and then we'll have follow-up conversations um and then we will the goal is to approve the strategic plan at our next convening okay perfect but not tonight you're correct okay because we just received this on friday right okay um so i have a few um suggestions the first one in academic success what i don't see is an attempt or an um a goal to increase cte or vocational programs or students in attendance in those programs i think that would be that's something that we have consistently talked about um as a board um and it would be nice to see that added if we could add that to the academic success um obviously for obvious reasons for students to

030have the option of having school choice and then also for students to be able to um if they wanted to use the you know the dual enrollment program and come out of the traditional classroom to do dual enrollment then you have less of an impact of discipline issues than you would otherwise something what page are you on the targets i'm on page seven okay i'm just looking at the overall targets in terms of the bullets on the top so if you look at 20 25. so if you look at the high school acceleration performance that that component is derived from two very specific metrics a student's enroll enrolled in college ap dual enrollment courses as well as students participating in industry certification exams so we're capturing that criteria and looking at that ultimate outcome so

031you see that number is still pending because it's kind of lagged from from the state so even with the attendance impacts we had last year because of the pandemic we still anticipate seeing growth there but i i think what ms rosario was saying and i don't disagree with is maybe kind of highlighting the maybe the areas of growth within each of those two different indicators i mean if if you wanted to have a specific number you know of increa you know i don't know if that's what you're looking for i was just looking for in that bullet to say something along the lines the last bullet increase the district average and accelerated program and accelerated performance wait is this a program or are you looking at performance specific the performance of the program the performance

032of the program um then maybe including include say including cte vocational programs or something to that effect or if you wanted to add a specific number uh i'm open to either one of those i just i'd like us to be able to have it in the strategic plan that this is a goal of ours moving forward something else that i thought was interesting here is that you included ela and math but you didn't include the science and the social studies now the science overall science achievement is the same as the ela overall science overall achievement so science achievement is 53 ela is 53 just wondering why you didn't also include science in this so as we design the plan and i will be very honest with you mr rosario i get that question a lot

033specifically from science teachers um so maybe adding some kind of an addendum or a specific look at i i'm not going to look at you right now miss varenborg i'm wondering um well the driver was ela and math and to be very honest with you in the design of this uh upon my arrival we wanted to really put literacy at the forefront of the conversation literacy is in every core content if you're able to improve um that specific number you can approve all other um numbers one of the kind of side effects to that it wasn't that we were not holding ourselves accountable because the school grade is made up both of those science and civics in u.s history and the level of attention that we pay to those exp especially this year because learning

034gains will not be a component of the school grade so i i do agree when you see a final version somewhere we need to capture um that growth because in a lot of ways i think it's going to be it has been significant in the past but i think this year we're really going to do an outstanding job well you know and then in that same breath um and this wasn't a part of my notes but in that same breath i'm sure social studies teachers are going to say well what about us it happens so how about a a look at improving the scores on the core courses you know ela math science social studies not excluding everything else but having a preference to look at those core courses and improving there with regard to

035academic success and i think that's why why why we do this there's a there's a way of capturing it without anyone ever accusing us that we're trying to change our focus areas two years into the plan so as we always do we'll problem-solve we'll get your input we'll be able to um create something well we're not changing the plan well you know you're just the target is an annual target of what where we are getting where we're going and in part that's what you use for your evaluation so basically we're talking about your evaluation next year okay all right i'm gonna pay more attention okay no no no i mean these targets have changed throughout the last two years anyway um and for the better because every year there is movement every year there's it's

036fluid right where we were last year's the two years ago was not where we were last year and where we're moving this year is not where we were last year so i would i would imagine it would be appropriate for the targets to change target's correct i just want to be completely transparent on what we're assessing so if we were to add or modify something i would want to say that the board has made a decision and there have been areas where i got to be honest with you in using communication as an example there may be opportunities to add some stuff to communication because we're only three or four percentage points off a target that we set in two years there's some opportunities to shift in some of the compliance issues and organizational fiscal

037responsibilities because we've created in some cases the organization of behavior and i don't want to sell the organization short saying we have that system or that adult behavior in place let me just continue to because you're right mr rosario this is my evaluation and some some of the criterias we will hit every time for the next two years because the behavior of the organization has been created so as we come back it's working with the team to say all right well what's next if we're 100 uh compliance you know how do we make sure that we get you know all of the the door stops completely out of the school system or just a higher criteria okay um so the next area that i wanted to mention talk about is equity culture and climate um

038the first two bullets uh i think it's the wording that i'm not i'm i'm definitely not okay with so we did not have this wording in the last uh in this year last year's i'm getting my years mixed up in last year's targets so last year's targets you looked at the first bullet in this area was out of school suspensions and then underneath that it said african-american white disparities african-american to white disparities and classroom removals and you looked at risk ratio there in this one you wrote maintain a recidivism rate for alternatives to out-of-school suspension and then eliminate disparities in classroom removals of all racial ethnic subgroups of students again looking at risk ratios um i have a i have a problem serious problem with recidivism with the word recidivism and with the disparities right

039so the way that it's written recidivism and coming from a household that that was focused not focused that um understands law enforcement when you use the word recidivism you're actually referring predominantly to the criminal justice system to juvenile detention centers or to jails right when criminals are put in jail what they look to do is to reduce recidivism meaning uh you know the the reoccurrence of certain actions the reoccurrence of certain criminal acts i would like to not use that word with regard to our students if we could change it and simply state something along the lines of reduced misbehaviors from reoccurring very simply put reduce the number of student behaviors by event occurrence because actually in the in the power bi data it it states uh suspensions by event or suspensions by student so

040if we can actually capture here any of those options right so the first one i said was reduce misbehaviors from reoccurring or reduce the number of student behaviors by event or by occurrence either one of those i'm okay i just don't want to use the word recidivism i understand what you're saying but that is the intent the i think dr schiff was just mentioning sending the same student for the same consequence without being able to reduce the behavior that got we we've got to focus in on the things that we're doing to evaluate them to improve those things to ensure when we provided intervention for a child or a consequence for a child that ultimately it is in fact reducing the occurrence of the behavior that doesn't lead to success but under that's we're saying

041the same thing you're you're you're stuck can we reward we got a few good we have a few good words we we don't always have i i see even even molly even machotic is like shaking her head like yeah you know because that's the word that's used in in in in legal terms and i don't want to see or i don't want in our document to have the same word that's used in the legal system and then have you know someone throw a finger not saying this is going to happen but throw a finger and say you see you know there's that pipeline or you know this is what the purpose is and you know so i would just rather find another way of of wording it which brings me to the second bullet eliminate

042disparities in classroom removals of all racial ethnic subgroups when i read this i read because we know disparities are just differences right great differences between subgroups you know in the hospital in the care system the health care system you often see the disparities occur by socioeconomic status or by geography or language or gender or any any number of of subgroups or any number of those mentioned but we hear what it looks like and what it appears to be is that we are identifying or trying to eliminate behaviors based on race and that should not be the case we should be eliminating behaviors misbehaviors based on the actual misbehavior not based on race when we look at behavior based on race or when we're trying to eliminate these disparities based on the racial differences um you

043know we're actually segregating more than we are bringing together and and i don't want us to capture that in our target i would like us to be able to again if we could wordsmith it um not look at it we should look at behavior because what we're really trying to do is not target specific subgroups we're targeting the misbehaviors right aren't we targeting the bullies aren't we targeting the ones that are cutting class aren't we targeting those not target i don't want to say target um aren't we trying to identify the the the action of bullying the action of cutting the action of you know violence or fighting or misbehaviors disrespect in the classroom so we're looking at changing the behaviors rather than changing or rather than identifying and separating those by subgroup and and

044that i think is it's a big difference there's a big difference there so i'd like for us to take a look at that if you can change it somehow fix it i don't know how you there's it's a and i understand and value what you're saying the florida department of education as you know upon my arrival this district was just coming off a a discipline plan placed on us by the state for the that same criteria in which you're looking so the uh over-representation of african-american males that were suspended um so we're being evaluated one specific way so yes evaluated right now by that so where is it yes well they they continue to monitor and look at those numbers there where there is no punishments for us currently right right now but it there

045it's i understand what you're saying is yes a hundred percent we're going to look at the behavior of a child and we need to ensure that every child regardless of the color of their skin um that behavior yields the same consequence um and students were being identified that the writing of the referral is based 100 solely on the behavior so it's really kind of being comprehensive and looking at it in its totality to ensure you know everyone is treated the exact same way i'd like us to really i'd like you to take a look at that you know i've spoken with a lot of teachers um many of which many of whom have said you know if a behave if there's a misbehavior in the classroom what they are told not all many what they

046are told is don't write up a particular student because they're african-american and i that's what this bullet is about right reducing that number and not writing them up because they are african-american when indeed the behavior may have been or hispanic or something else where indeed the behavior may have warranted a proper referral if the if the behavior warrants a proper referral and it needs to be addressed then we need to look at it based on that not based on and and that's coming from someone who no i i've i've heard the same and and the reality or the response is the expectation is the you don't make a determination based on you make a determination writing a referral based on the behavior and the appropriate support is provided to the to the the child it's

047not you know we're not trying to reduce a number that's that if that was a reality uh the system as a whole will be going the absolute complete wrong direction but that's what this is saying this is actually saying eliminate disparities in classroom removals of all racial ethnic subgroups of students so the risk ratio of the subgroups in comparison of is equal to one i mean you're still eliminating based on racial subgroups that's what this is yeah maybe i could lend a little insight to this i know uh mrs barenborg you haven't gone yet and and i really want to respond to this because i think there's a misinterpretation going on here are you calling um hold hold on hold on um she's she's pointing this out you brought up what the state said before

048correct and you have not brought up what the deseg order says could you enlighten us what the deseg order says on this uh [Music] of the all right well i'll i'll get that in a second yes because i believe decrease this should be decreased african-american white disparities and classroom removals by six point six four risk ratio points that's part of the african-american achievement plan okay is that from the d-seg order the d-seg order also so the joint plan in the section that is related to student achievement indicates that we need to eliminate gaps which would be the disparities in things like academic achievement discipline etc so it is found i can get the exact language for you if you like okay and then one other thing if you could clear up this doesn't necessarily mean

049not do the suspension means trying to eliminate it by prevention also correct 100 okay okay well i think that's a good that's good language prevention right if we could look at maybe aligning it better with the desegregation order so that it doesn't appear as if we're doing something completely isolated from what we're already charged with needing to to accomplish um and we have time right so we can continue to have this conversation correct okay i'll move on if you don't mind thank you for for hearing me out thank you for that clarity mrs berenborg um the other thing that i had a question let me come down here um is the academic this is the last part in this one section there is an academic achievement gap decrease the academic achievement gap it is the

050third bullet in the equity culture and climate section why did you put that there and not in the academic success achievement gaps achievement gaps decrease the achievement gap between all subgroups why put it here with equity and not under academic success that's just where we naturally felt it fit because in equity culture and climate that those are that would be the key indicator in which you'd be looking at to say what they always say what's what's the gap so evaluating the reduction of the gap would be a pretty good way of looking at that specific area okay i just don't under i just don't see it with equity culture and climate you know i see equity culture and climate as well no the culture and climate part i see it as a result of what

051our whatever the results are of the culture and climate surveys that went out right to me that's culture and climate what did the students say what did the teacher say what did the administrators say what did the parents say about the culture and climate and then from there we draw what our targets should be with regard to culture like to me that's culture and climate the feel of the district the feel of the school the feel of you know belonging the celebration of cultures in school you know that sort of thing that's what i think of i don't think of academic achievement gap got it okay i'll stop there madam chair okay um mr barefoot do you have any comments or questions um first of all the uh overall they were terrific but it's all

052with uh relative performance absolute performance or two different things and my concern has always been particular particularly around me and we've had a like um i know that there's some it's uh but as far as i'm concerned um well maybe not as important as um but it's right up there in the two skills that young people ultimately be successful and uh any initiative be taken to make sure that the time they get to the fourth brick or at least or close to great uh or is really potential going on in through middle school to even ap court so um of all of the positives in all the air rep the one area that if i had all the votes that cared about nothing else if on math and doing everything those kids better going forward

053like that okay thank you uh we're we're catching like every a couple of words or not coming through for some reason um he's talking about math yeah so uh i just wanted to say as far as the science goes if we're looking at a lot of stem schools and that's been our focus that to me should be one of our focuses on this uh if we're looking at stem as a you know a lot of our schools have chosen that as a choice program and i also know that um on this i haven't had the time to go through it like everyone else i was out of town so i know that i'll be able to ask any questions i want in my am i meeting with you okay absolutely okay i do understand though

054why the equity culture and climate why what mr rosario is pointing out is there because i believe that that achievement gap is what is central to the dseg order information and that would fit under there correct i believe so okay all right all right thank you uh each and every single one of you our next item and we do have guests in the room i'm sorry can we come back to something on the disparity and disproportionality i want to clarify here that when we're having a conversation about the behavior of course that's true that all students should be treated for the same for the behavior the problem is they're not and that's why we calculate rates of disproportionality and disparity it's not just indian river county if you look across the state if you look

055across the country and there's data on this that has been ongoing for the last 10 to 12 years what happens is that different kids are caught are written up for different behaviors under the same title so what's considered for example teacher disrespect is written up differently for different subgroups it's not it it doesn't show up in the actual write-up the idea that you shouldn't suspend certain kids for certain behaviors isn't the point the point is that we have to look more closely at the behaviors and who's being caught in which nets and this is what that's what this is designed to catch it's not designed to catch certain kids over others it's designed to make sure that how discipline is occurring is meted out equally across subgroups that's why this is significant in the dseg

056order it's significant in the joint plan and it's significant in our data and i think that's what we have to keep sight of it's not are we are do we want to stop bullying of course we do it's that what's considered bullying for some subgroups is different than what's considered bullying for other subgroups and it's not intentional and it's not conscious i've sat in rooms with hundreds and hundreds of teachers and administrators who are quite sure this isn't happening in their classrooms and in their schools until you look at the data that's why this is significant and important that's why it's an issue in the african-american achievement plan at the state level and in the dseg order and i want us to be really clear about that absolutely hold on a second um i'm going

057to say a comment about this because having been a principal at a f school turnaround school with a lot of discipline problems one thing i noticed right away was when you are in a different when you grow up in a different culture and you don't understand what's acceptable not acceptable from another culture how you handle it let me just give you one example of a child who won't look a teacher in the eye when the teacher is talking to them their culture believes that they should look the an adult in the eye they should look down and yet the teacher that was upset says you need to look me in the eye that's rude so there's a cultural difference that's why i'm such a big kids at hope person because they teach that cultural changes

058and understanding cultural biases so i think that's something i wanted to see we're doing it right okay all right all right so that's why i think that training is important because once a teacher realizes oh that's what the child's culture teaches them then it's not a oh i'm going to take this personally it's a okay i have to deal with it a different way the child still is wrong but i need to make sure that they understand why they were wrong not wrong about looking them in the eye wrong about whatever the behavior was the behavior may have been but the response was exactly what what can is considered disrespect or defiance or inappropriate talk about it does vary by culture and you're right and that's where the write-up matters because it's subject it is

059subject to interpretation and can be subjective and that's what we're trying to get beyond okay dr jones um i do agree that um eliminating disparities in classroom is under equity culture and climate as much as i have studied the dseg plan uh joint plan the dc plan from the 60s 90s and so forth i think it's right there and miss berenbaur what you said is so very important my mentor was dr a ronald hudson and what he taught me that i didn't know when i first came to vero beach was absolutely a lifesaver for me as a teacher an administrator a district person and everything else i think it's very very important that we understand that and continue to give training to our our staff members one thing i wanted to say obviously this will

060come before us with some changes maybe and then we'll decide what we like but when we look at i'm switching a little bit here at the progress monitoring and dr moore we already started the first testing the first or second week of school the progress monitoring yeah yes ma'am we're well underway and we talk about you know science would like to have this social studies and all the subjects really want to know but what are they actually testing and what kind of information will we get for our parents will they have an english science social studies math on every progress monitoring or what will that look like progress monitoring um will be specific to the accountability area so k through 10 ela k through eight in math uh the eocs remain as they were in

061place although new standards um not necessarily progress monitoring based on that specific system but we do provide updates for those students just not in civics because that's the seventh grade assessment but in other you know sixth and seventh grade sixth and eighth grade uh history courses so we do provide that but that's not the information which that is being provided from the state okay just as an update for parents i'm sure they this is new to all of us so and without gains without gains i'm going whoa well how's that gonna look okay i just wanted to say that about equity culture and climate um i think that's a good fit right there as far as the disparities in classroom removals all right thank you our next item items b and c will be covered

062by mr fakin thank you dr moore through the chair to the board members today we're going to talk about the tax anticipation note sitting behind me are two fine outstanding individuals mr john ford he's vice president for ford and associates who has been our financial advisor probably for well over 10 years the other good-looking gentleman next to him is ritesh patel an attorney he is our bond council he's been with neighbors gibbons and nickerson for probably for 10 years as well they represent us in all financial transactions such as this i also want to thank mr wells fargo they're the gentleman's who gave us the lowest bid for our tan so acknowledgement to them a little brief history going back about 14 years to 2009 the district issued nine tans over that 14-year period the

063last time the district issued the tan was in 2019 in the amount of 15 million dollars this time will be in the amount of 17 million dollars and will be repaid on december 12 2022. interest rate on this tan is 2.49 percent it's based on an rfp process approximate interest amount is 119 000. closing costs are approximately twenty four thousand for a total cost of a hundred and forty four thousand this was a tan tax anticipation note there are two methods to issue a tan one is a public offering which you issue a created offering you just go out to the public and sell it on the open market or you can go through an rfp process which you is send out a solicitation banks respond then we chose the rfp process for simply for

064simplicity and also for the short term at which we wanted the bonds i mean the loan four banks responded huntington tnc wells fargo and zions of course wells fargo was the lowest bidder you may ask why do we need a tan ron well the tan is required because the projected cash flows approximately a deficit of 17 million dollars beginning in the month of september going through the month of october also beginning this year our cash beginning cash in june was three million dollars less than the prior year so i'm starting off in the hole and the projection for next year based on prior year expenditures shows us at 17 million i also do another analysis where i looked at the actual daily cash balances held in the bank for the last from june from last

065year through november for the last two years i do this actually look at the true cash in the bank account not necessarily what's on the ledger um the projections basically show a deficit of getting not a deficit of getting down to probably less than 15 million dollars of cash that's really too low of a number because my projections are not that good and so if there's a five or ten million dollar swing one way it's good but if it's the swing negative then i'm going to have to have an emergency meeting and you're going to have to approve a tan then so i figured it'd be better to be safe than sorry um also the expenditures are up a little bit from the prior year and also remember that we get most of our funding

066through local funding not state funding this year our local funding is going to be 68 percent prior year was 64 so all those factors added together uh matan is really required for this year to make sure that we have enough cash we do not go overdraft at the bank and that all vendors are paid on time any questions board members questions yes just a quick i know we've had these conversations in private but for the benefit of the public how common is it for districts to go out for tans how for example compared to other districts in the state and i know that it is sometimes different for larger and smaller differences because of tax revenue could you explain that a little bit i'm going to have to turn around and ask my financial advisor

067because he can probably tell me immediately right now how many districts are issuing a 10 but i will probably say out of the 67 districts you probably have about 30 that issue at 10 on a regular basis perfect stand at all i'm not sure exactly how many issued attend this year or last in the past it's been somewhere between usually about 10 or 20 a year smaller districts tend to try to squeak by even if they have a lowered a deficit in their general fund some of the larger districts that do it each and every year as a habit include dade broward palm beach pinellas lee flagler does it from time to time manatee monroe st lucy so there's quite a few and that's very typical because it's more linked to the funding split between

068local and state taxes than anything else right so my understanding is that in districts like this one which where much of the local funding comes from property taxes and those taxes don't go up to and then return back to the state for us i mean i'm not sure if i'm getting this exactly right this is not my area of expertise but it's it's based on how the money goes up and when it comes back down that has us have that small window of a gap when we need a tan to ensure that we can make payroll in other expenses that's exactly right your expenditures are roughly level through the year you pay salaries every month your revenues are not level through the year your property taxes come in between thanksgiving and the end of january

069so first the first several months of the fiscal year you're actually drawing down on whatever fund balance was reported in your annual financial statements and that gives people like mr fagan here a lot of heartburn so that's that's what's going on but but then so i so it is tied to the property taxes when they go back how they're distributed because our property taxes don't come back to us proportionate to what goes up because they're spread across districts right so property rich districts help support property poor districts no i'm getting that wrong no i'm just going to say you as you know as a homeowner i'm sorry uh your property tax bill comes at the end of october beginning of november you can pay your property taxes in november december january february or march most

070people pay their property taxes november or december you get a discount for paying it early but as the school district whose fiscal year starts july 1st you are drawing money down until the last the majority of your revenues come in in late november all of december early january it doesn't go to stage it comes to you directly from the tax collector in new river county but it's just a function of how taxes are billed and when they generally come in okay thank you dr johnson just one question mr fagan and thank you for always answering my questions um individually what's our general fund balance now percentage through the chair through the board your budget and ending fund balance for 22-23 is 5 which is what the board has and you ended last year with approximately

07113 okay thank you mr feyen at our last budget meeting going forward tan was not part of the discussion how did we go from there then to now through the chair projections are an ongoing item that you look at periodically when i looked at june it was one of those things as was stated might be able to squeak by once we dived in a little bit deeper it's not a risk i want to take so i changed my mind and said no i'm not going to subject the district to that potential risk so what usually in the past the you may have said it and i may have missed it but usually in the past sometimes in the past the tax collector will forward um the some monies to us in advance so that that

072would prevent us from going for a tan through the chair the property tax will give us about two million dollars in early november as a little bit of an advance your big money is about 90 million dollars which comes toward the end of november but that's not enough to stop you from getting a tan it helps and that helps us squeak but it's not enough to avoid a potential deficit and we haven't gone for a tan in two years is that correct since 2019 okay so more um i i trust your decision making because you you have done really really great um work with our finances leveling it all out since you've been here um you know i i i'm a little disappointed because i would hope that we could continue that incredible streak of

073not needing to go for a tan you know um we've done it successfully in the last few years um and um i wish we could there was some way that we didn't need to do it now um but i i trust your your advice one something that you mentioned in what you were just preparing for us uh you said you'd rather get it approved now in case you need it uh is there a chance that we may not need it if we approve it now is there to the chair no amount once it's approved tonight cash would probably transfer tomorrow okay and then what is the timeline for paying it off we'll pay it back on december 12th okay so we're just a few months just to get us through that bad part of november

074then we should be okay for the rest of the year what what am i remembering um something about you know going for it and it might have been i'm not even sure if it was with you it might have been before you going for a tan or going for some loan and then investing it or something what was that about that was in 2018 when i arrived we issued a tan and we didn't pay it back i believe until april or maybe may it's where we borrow the money but then you can invest that money and of course earn interest on it because you don't need it and the interest rates are a little bit higher and if that yield curve is positive where you can potentially earn some of that money back you can

075get to a point to where your loan your tan cost you nothing or only cost you a little bit because you will earn interest on that money that you don't need anymore did we earn anything we came close to breaking even but we pay i had still had to pay a little bit because you never can control the market okay um we're not doing that now correct this is straight line i've got you on speaker we're we're not going to take any chances right through the chair no ma'am we pay back on 12th all right thank you uh mr barefoot no question no comment okay you know how i feel about this i am not happy with the fact that we are a property-rich county and we help support other counties that's great but then

076our county it costs us more money to send our money up there and then get our money back so in other words how much money is it that we will effectively i hate to say the word lose but um lose in this the cost of the tan will be approximately 144 000 with interest and all cost so that's the price of i'm sorry but i put it in the price of people um an assistant principal yes ma'am yeah so we're losing a um an employee because of going out for these stands nothing personal guys i i appreciate what you're doing for us but i would like to have us seriously meet with the other i think it's 14 districts that are always in this position where we put our money up there and and we

077don't get as much money back talk to our legislators about how we can help get the revenues leveled throughout the year i think that's the term that you used leveled throughout the year and i don't know how that can be done but i i think the fact that it's costing us an employee every time now when i first did this i think it cost us um an aide or a teacher and now we're up to an assistant principal so i just imagine it's going to continue to be several people in the future so i think that the only way we're going to be able to avoid this is maybe talking to our legislators about helping us with this to the chair i did reach out to contact have a doe and many many years ago

078they had a thing called a forward advance that was part of either law or in the in the general appropriations where districts who were in this in this situation could get an early advance on their state money to help with that cash flow problem but that went away that went away we need to bring it back all right um i understand that if we don't vote for this then there's a chance that our employees won't be getting a paycheck in october is that correct through the chair no ma'am they'll get paid okay they could just be overdrawn the bank will be overdrawn we do not want to be in that position okay thank you sir anyone else how much how much is in our um in our fund balance right now well keep in mind

079fund balance is not cash fund balance approximately you ended last year with approximately 20 million dollars and how how much cash do we have now currently right now ballpark i want to say 30 million and we would need 90 million i'm sorry no you'll get 90 million in your your in your middle part latter part of november your first big check from the property appraiser's office is approximately 90 million so how much would we need and that's the night oh to get through the crunches about 17 million is what the projections are showing that we would be deficit so we would be short 17 million currently we have 20 million correct and yours even though we have the cash what you're saying is that would leave us with three million which is way too short

080for us to to leave an entire district um with just the three million dollar cash flow okay well let me just explain close yes ma'am but there's there's two ways i look at it financial advisor trained me very well i'm going to look at the ledger what is the actual cash going to do based on beginning balances and then what did we spend last year and what does that look like based on revenue then i go looking at actual hard cash to see what it's looked like over the last couple years one number shows a negative 17 million the other number shows me basically maybe at 10 or 12 million as a cash balance a 10 or 12 million cash balance based on my hypothesis is too close for comfort there's too many variables that

081can sway that number so between those two methods a tan is needed based upon the analysis of the of this 17 million is the max so i'm sorry um i know that we talked about this probably just refresh my memory again because this is what is the difference between the state of our district last year this time and the state of our district this year needing to go for the tan what what happened best way to describe it is your cash flows are fluctuating or a fluctuating item they constantly change throughout the year case in point i o that we owe or will need to pay the charter schools approximately four million dollars for their share of s or money that's an additional four million dollar requirement that i have in the next 60 days

08230 days that it did not have last year so your condition didn't change just your timing of your cash flows in and out changed but esther money is something completely different still got to pay it out first before i can get paid back so i have to have that cash in the bank first i get paid back after i pay they don't give us the money up front okay so that's one example that's one example and then i ended the year with three million dollars less to begin with some already not don't have the cash flow that i had in the prior year okay thank you mr fagan oh you're still on the floor i'm sorry the chair next item is an item we discussed regarding when we went out and solicited dental vision and

083flexible spending accounts with various vendors in order to help save the employees some dollars based upon this proposal we have some new vendors we're going to be using and it's a three-year agreement approximately say 592 thousand dollars this is what we call the cafeteria plans that are under the benefit program vision deadline etc board members anybody okay thank you thank you the next item will be i'm gonna set up the next couple items uh miss passer will present item d mr bass will present items e and f through the chair good afternoon members i have two items that i'll be bringing forward board members you've all been briefed during the individual board briefings of these two items the first one is the professional development catalog this is a document that's updated annually and submitted to

084the department of education this plan has been revised to reflect any legislative changes and has been edited for some clarification and the purpose of this is it inc it includes component numbers that identify the type of in-service credits that are awarded the second item is the student progression plan this is also an annual plan that is brought before the board and uploaded to the doe the state requires us to maintain a student progression plan that outlines policies and procedures related to promotion and retention this plan has also been revised to reflect any legislative changes and has been edited for clarification i'm happy to answer any questions that you may have board members um i'm just pulling it up now okay sorry that's okay um dr schiff yeah just to clarify i know we have this

085conversation in our briefing but um just to clarify for anybody who's watching this professional development are the professional development standards that are required by the state to be aligned to curriculum standards it they are not professional development that we are providing or are voluntary or are outside of anything that has been directed by the state correct that is correct thank you all right mr rosario uh thank you i just wanna i'm just kind of scanning through to see the changes that we talked about privately in the student progression plan yes ma'am that was on page i believe it was page 12. so i'm just scanning it now so i want to thank you for making some of those changes on there um and then with regards to the virtual program that was all yes that

086was really just cleaning the language up uh that was a good catch on that um and to your point about the the home education component it was also just adding clarity to what was already there around the annual evaluation thank you and then in the document that's on board docs as i pull it up there are these little yellow post-its on there oh okay i'll go back and look at that i yeah i don't know i mean they're not you can't click on it so just you can it's i see on page 18. might just be something to clean up so okay dr jones um just looking at professional development the first one miss basara yes when we look at all the requirements by the state and then the schools so when you look at

087elementary schools middle schools high schools working on their professional development how are you guiding them according to um the standards and the achievement levels how do you work with the schools to make sure what they're doing is what's going to be most effective for their students well that's based on a needs assessment and that is driven by data okay so do you have any idea what they're focusing on this year any of the elementary middle or high school so a little precursor to an october board meeting will be the sip plans they are currently in their uh phase one of their sip process and all of those components that they're working on are embedded in their action plans for their school improvement planning process okay and when we look at um the other one if

088a board member is recommending a change could you note it so we look at it and we just don't see you know you look through these things and you highlight what you have questions on but if there's any corrections then i can go back and see what it did say compared to what it says now and whether i vote on it yes ma'am thank you i do have a follow-up if you want me to go last that's fine uh mr barefoot anything no thanks okay mr rosario um yeah i just i als i just wanted to clarify for any parents who are listening and for the community the student and of course miss basura correct me if i say anything out of place the student progression plan is really just a document that helps anyone

089in the community mostly teachers and parents and administrators um it shows them the progression of students from one grade to the next how do you get grading how do you move from you know third grade to fourth grade how do you graduate how do you collect your credits on a transcript that sort of thing yes that is correct and then last year the quarter grades was there a change either last year or the year before in terms of a student receiving a zero i think there someone mentioned i see it here that a 59 to a zero or zero to 59 is an f now that may not have been the case last year the change in this document is uh in previous years a d and an f equal to d for the semester

090grade when you run those calculations a d and an f equals an f so we reflected that in the grade chart i think that's fantastic i've heard a lot of teachers bring that up it's one of the reasons why i wanted to bring it up again that someone a few of them actually told me oh i just heard that they changed the grading so and they're very happy about that because a zero is a zero is a zero you don't hand in something and then you don't not hand in something and then get a d um so i think that you're gonna we're gonna get some support there on on many of these changes and i think some parents might actually you know be supportive of that you know that it accurately reflects what the

091student has actually done correctly so thank you for clarifying that thank you all right i have got item cf which is the guaranteed maximum price for the sebastian river middle school classroom wing edition i briefed you all this is in the capital budget 6.9 million this is for phase two of this project replace the seven portables that were removed there with 14 classrooms and two science labs all right next item this is a perfect example for someone not understanding the process um even as a um and even still i have questions you know being here on the board um not quite four years yet but i still wonder um and so if this would be a good opportunity to clarify it for the community who are listening who just heard us say we don't have

092the cash flow or we don't have enough money we may need to go for a tan or we are going to go for a tan and then here we are spending 6.9 million dollars on revisions to these it's portable to the classroom to the structure of one of our schools can you help uh clarify this for the community and distinguish between the diff what the difference is through the chair the way that's always been very simplified to me is categories categorical funding so you've got different light items that you can spend different things on so obviously you have your operational money which is going to pay for salaries and in the operation of the district but then you have this category which is k which is capital dollars and you can't spend capital on teacher

093salaries you can't spend capital on uh you know different operational costs so we we get our money through tax revenue for capital that is set and we projected this out because we know what we're going to get each year so as you know as that money rolls in we're going ahead and working these through so that's that's the simplest way is different categoricals is why you can spend one thing you can't spend on the other and this is already included in our five-year capital plan yes ma'am it's been a five-year plan thank you okay all right so the next item is uh the resolution's gonna be presented to you tonight to be a member of the small school district council consortia this is a group that is school districts is available to school districts that

094are 20 000 students and less even though indian river school district is much bigger than the school district i came from it is still a small school district we would be joining 38 other school districts in the state of like-minded school districts that share a lot of the same concerns problems and and views on educating our students it gives us a great voice legislatively the the organization started in 1982 and right now the 38 members that are in it covers 14 senate districts and house districts so strengthen numbers we would be one of the larger districts in this group they have done many many positive things over the years the ssdcc i served as one of the executive officers for six years while i was in my other district and have worked closely with them

095since 2003 uh very very advantageous for us to be a member anyone i seem to be the only one okay just sister sorry don't go anywhere else you want to get in somewhere no go ahead um i um i'm excited about this i this differs quietly quite um uh by by a lot actually from the florida school boards association some might question why we would be a member of both um i think the florida school boards association since i've been a board member has really provided some pretty good training for board members a lot of what i've learned regarding how to be a board member has come from the training from fsba and it's really been very beneficial on the other side of that coin is the fact that not every one of the florida

096school boards association legislative platform aligns with ours and i think that's where this membership would come into play because they have such like-minded challenges and i think that that's really going to benefit us it doesn't it's not a lot of money in comparison i do ask that i do wonder though do they give any training or is it just legislative and other kinds of support they through the chair they don't really give any training but it's that legislative voice um and and to your point what makes this organization different from fsba is you're the superintendent and and you designate one board member those are the people who drive the priorities of the organization so we we we have got a huge voice in determining what we want to move forward with in their platform or

097in ours in the ssdcc so you so they have a platform and then we have our own platform which a lot of times the small school districts your district platform will mirror or take in some of the same things that ssdcc is fighting for also it did i looked at theirs it's not too far off i mean one of the concerns that they have um as a challenge and they added it to their platform their legislative platform was about transportation at some point we we also included that in ours um so i i i think when does that start though when does the selection of the board member one board member and the superintendent begin as soon as as soon as you all approve it then we would then at the next board meetings identify

098who would serve are these positions virtual positions or do we go in person they will have a meeting at the november fsba fads joint conference they have a little breakout session they also have a breakfast that we go to that dr schiff and i attended i think last year and they provided he gives out a packet of information and tells where they're at with everything um so they have breakout sessions there and then also a lot of it is through email correspondence if they do something they need to have a virtual meeting they do it virtually just because you're talking about 38 districts that are spread from escambia all the way down to south florida to you know henry hendry county so driving to a spot is not feasible okay thank you mrs berenberg just

099one question mr bass in all your years of working with this organization what has been the strongest legislative impact that they have pushed i guess you could say for for me it was back when you had a digital classroom play dollars and originally legislatively though that money was only going to go out to districts based on your fte so if you have a school district with you know 10 000 students your money was going to be significantly less than what you would get if you had you know 300 000 students what ssdcc did in this and the additional safe schools dollars was to establish that each district would get a baseline amount that was the same and then above and beyond would be based on fte for example small the classroom digital plan started out

100at 500 000 a year so for our district and other smaller districts that's a huge chunk of money that would help us for technology needs safe schools the same way and then they added on top based on your fte so that was two things that were very strong that they did and then also one of the things and over the time and i don't know what the years of this is but ssdcc has advocated for 1.4 billion dollars in school construction for small school districts through the special facility project a special facilities project probably would not be an avenue for us to go because you give up your your capital dollars for three years appoint mils of them and but for small school districts smaller school districts than us they get that money back from

101the state because the larger school districts agree to give that pico dollars to build schools so very strong in that um and then just a little small things like um i know the um school um superintendents the elected versus appointed you know a couple years ago the state tried to say okay everybody's going to be appointed and ssdcc fought to say hey no we want to keep you know this the smaller districts is you know i think pasco county's largest elected district in the state want to keep those superintendents elected and being on that side of it at that time that was very important to me yes um so they've done lots of lots of things i could go on and on so strength in numbers yes ma'am okay thank you dr chef yeah i

102will say um the breakfast you alluded to that we went to was one of the more informative events of these types of coalitions that i've gone to when i passed everybody the info he handed out a whole packet of information that i made sure you all had access to from that as well my suggestion would be i'm completely in favor of it my suggestion to the board would be that moving forward this will affect you all more than it will affect me um but i'm not sure that there's value in being part of the central florida school board coalition as well as this one and if we're going to be part of a coalition and this is the one that better suits our needs i'd suggest everybody consider dropping out of the central florida school

103board coalition which i'm not sure we receive much benefit from frankly i've gone to some of their online meetings and some of their breakfasts but i found the small school board i can't say that acronym as well as you that one was actually much more productive i gained much more from it another one uh that i also find is good i'm going to forget the name of it the one that goes around the south sarah's um it'll come to me right i know what it is but that one is the greater the greater school board good and sort of waiter is that what it is i'm not sure that one i've also had some experience with that has been really informative at their meetings passed out really good information represents some some significant districts so

104if we were going to be choosing between i i would say that central florida school board coalition is the one that is of least value to us and that we could we should drop out of that one join this one and perhaps even consider the other one do oh sorry yes go ahead do we pay for the central school boards coalition is there a fee for that one yeah it's fee for all of these it's a membership fee yes ma'am i'm not aware how much we pay for that one or if it auto renews i'm not sure we can provide that information to the board two hundred dollars per year for that oh yeah then it's not big money it's not a lot of money but maybe we should consider um i would i would

105accept that recommendation from dr schiff to look into i mean i don't know how many people actually attend it i know i get the invitations but i have not been able to attend i actually have i've attended for the central florida ones and there have been some things on there that i found very informative so um i haven't attended this small one as many many times although i did have conversation with chris dolan up in tallahassee when i was up there so um it was nice to be able to have a face with a name that represented us when we were in tallahassee to talk to him about some of our concerns especially one that i brought up earlier about the tan so it is nice to maybe stay with some of these to especially

106when you're talking about the big ones if we're going to talk to other districts about getting together with our legislators about trying to avoid tans in the future that might be something to have conversations with different groups with if it's only two hundred dollars for each of them it might be worth it for us i think that's accurate but i don't know if you could find out how much they were thank you mr bass and the following uh two items so the last two items will actually be miss dampier thank you through the chair and school board members i have two items on the agenda tonight the first one is the 2024 school health services plan this bi-annual plan outlines the provisions and responsibilities to provide mandated health services and we've gone over well i

107have gone over this plan with each board member and tried to answer as many questions as i could pertaining to this particular item do you have any questions board members yeah i have i mean i don't have yes okay mr barefoot do you have any questions while she's searching okay i'm sorry i forgot to ask you on the last one i don't have i don't know if i have a question i just i think i need to just well yes i do um during our um one-on-one sessions what was explained to me was that this plan was really originally supposed to be created by the health department not the school district and that they have typically not done a good job with it didn't know all of our programs are everything that we were that

108we provided for students statutorily and and by policy um and that it was it then became kind of like our thing to put together so that we are sure that we're submitting the right document is that all accurate um in the past we have done created this plan in collaboration with the department of health mrs bernie we thank her for putting this together and working with the different uh committees with shaq but there have been some turnover uh with the department of health so that has led to some of the plan with mrs bernie having a a knowledge to be able to answer some of the questions and to be able to put the information in and reference to the state mandated goals and expectations so one question that i didn't have when we were

109when we had our one-on-one about the dental program so if you look at page seven of this document number six says preventative dental program so what the form looks like there is a template from and i'm just saying this out loud in case others don't aren't aware there's a template and correct me if i'm wrong that the the department of health has created the first column uh is put in this template and we cannot edit that first column the second column also is kind of entered in by the department of health we cannot enter or edit those columns i see a shaking head i listened i heard you that is correct uh the first column is statute and or rule references that is outlined and already uh completed by the dle and then the second

110section which is the program standard slash requirement is already listed the areas that we can we are responsible for in putting is the local agency who's responsible for uh implementing this uh statute and then the strategy and activity we work in collaboration with the department of health it is some you'll see throughout that it is a collaboration as far as who who are who's implementing the the statute so um i have concerns with this and it's not it's not doesn't seem to be anything that we can actually um have an immediate impact on because if everything is driven by statute then we have no choice but to follow the law and to do what is being asked of us to do but like the preventative dental program um the local implementation here from the district

111is that the coordinator of health services collaborates with local dentists and school staff to provide dental health education opportunities how does that work you know kid has a cavity and where is the parent and all of that well as you know we um outline in the parental acknowledgement form it had the screening for dental screening where parents could consent to opt-in or opt-out if a parent consents to opt-in of course the dental the student will receive that dental screening but then if there are additional services that are required then which would be like a dental ceiling etc they still need parent permission for that they can't go any further you know besides just the screening so essentially a parent and and i'm stating the obvious but i want to be able to say it publicly

112essentially a parent has the ultimate say to opt in or up their child out of any of these screenings whether it's dental vision scoliosis there is a another one here for growth it's vision hearing i forgot hearing vision hearing growth and development scoliosis you know and and i know that there are many children in need of these screenings but overall i just wish that we weren't looked upon to be the medical facility which we are not we should be able to refer um but again it's not and something that it seems is in our control which is very frustrating as an elected official when we make decisions here we we make decisions on education right with regard to policy and procedure and there are many policies here that align with these statutes but it just

113seems very 25 pages is pretty shocking and with those screenings there is a copy the parents have a copy that they there's a link that they can go to and see the questions that are on the screen so they have access to that before they make the decision whether or not they want to opt in or opt out so we made that available uh via focus as well as if there there was a hard copy appearance and have access to to that there are hard copies available um we should really be having these conversations when we're in public meeting because there are some parents that may benefit from hearing some of the stuff last question mrs dampier on page 23 there is a um let me see 23. part two it's a comprehensive school health

114services rather than supplant basic school health services is the title 39f states that we are supposed to provide a and or coordinate health education classes to reduce the incidence of substance abuse or misuse suicide attempts and other high-risk behaviors the implementation on our end is to provide a five-hour mental health training um for grades six through twelve now what i didn't ask when we were one-on-one is this the new rule that was just put in place or just approved by the doe in this last legislative session there was a new mental health no we've always well since the stoneman douglas and we received funding from mental health there was a five-hour mandated you know uh mental health course course a set of courses that students have to take six to twelve and we've been doing

115that there's a there is a new uh rule in one of the new legislative one of the new bills that was signed and it has to deal with a mandated five-hour mental health course it might be redundant it might be the same thing i just want to make sure that it's not five plus the new five and then it's really ten but if it's the same five hour you know course or whatever it is required of four students who determines that this rule where is where does that training come from well um of course um we are required to report that's one of the required reporting we have a through i think it's o um and on there um there is a requirement for the fire of our mental health services and we do provide

116that via online component as well as we have our sac which is a substance awareness team that comes in and they provide that at the middle school level and they've been doing that since we've implemented uh been required to implement this in our school district so now that we are in a new season of ensuring true curriculum transparency especially you know aligning with the parents bill of rights in education and the other bills that were signed how are we going to ensure these online components are going to be transparent to parent to to parents i think that's i don't know if you all have had those conversations um it just occurred to me now that we haven't had it so what are what is the district going to do to make this transparent uh we

117were just audited and we've used we were using another program and now we're using a different program um our mental health specialist as well as mrs bass and myself are vetting the curriculum and reviewing the curriculum to make sure it is aligned to all the requirements that are outlined that we must cover for the mental health to make sure that it is appropriate for our students as a matter of fact we're having a meeting with dr moore this week okay thank you miss bear yes mr stampier is also middle still our only full service school we just have more yes that is um we will be moving forward with trying to acknowledge one of our elementary schools who meet the requirement okay but we of course wanted to get the plan approved first and there

118is an elementary school that meets the requirement just a question when you look at part two comprehensive school health services for example 39 i collaborate with interagency initiatives to prevent and reduce teen pregnancy you have the local agency responsible but no strategy and activities why don't we have that there and also for reducing involvement and sexual activity what why aren't we helping our students there we have the local agencies but the local implementation strategy where are we i'm sorry 39 is in 39 f i 39 i and 39 j and 39 h that whole first three areas n a why are those n a when most of the other ones do have local implementation strategy and activities we do have some of those areas that are covered in another section pertaining to teen pregnancy and

119all of that that's and parenting program can't call it off right away mrs bernie do you know um i can't hear you honey sorry miss bernie she's it's on can you hear me yes thank you sorry we work in collaboration with the department of health as far as referrals for our teen pregnancies because they do have a teen pregnancy program so that's addressed in a prior portion of the plan um and i was just also made aware that we do have an additional we had a person reach higher within the district that was covering a portion of our teen pregnancies whenever she was made aware of that and so i was just made aware that we do have a person that's picking up the slack there so we are covered we just don't have that

120portion addressed in that section so we probably need to add that thank you is that all um the only other thing i was going to point out is number 37 it says parental consent for health care services and i know that's in statute for the parental rights and i appreciate on the right it says written parental consent and physicians orders are to be obtained prior to administration of medications and or medical procedures so is that all in under focus where the parents are filling all that out as far as i don't think that's part isn't that written that wasn't a part of our we do have a process where the parents fill out the forms but they have to bring in the doctor's note that's all still paper and pencil medical can uh medication consent

121is a separate consent where they are having to when follow the procedures that we have the paperwork outlined and they have to sign the specific medication consent form before we are allowed to administer per statute and that was in place prior to house bill 1557. and do we still have the same procedure where we have one person and then a substitute that can administer the medication and certain medications not others per statute we have two medication trained backups in every school a minimum of we've actually done a really good job of increasing that number across our district over the past few years okay and we do have some medications that they even can't administer a parent has to come in and do there is an occasion yes okay that is correct thank you thank you

122all right uh the final you have more bam i have one more the last item is h and that's on the agenda tonight we have a review of uh neola policies volume 23 number one and the special update each cabinet member has had the opportunity to meet with board members to review these policies and answer questions during board briefings this item is on the agenda tonight to request approval to set the public hearing which will be on 1024 each cabinet member is available to answer any questions that pertains to those specific policies if you have questions just republicans i do okay mrs rosario i am full of them today right um okay so the one with the 20. we talked about this um let me get it out sorry is the selection and adoption of

123instructional materials it's one of the items that has been a topic of discussion um and for some even argument with regard to what is considered non-adopted instructional material non-state adopted instructional material we keep going back and forth on this you know because many believe as is included in statute that non-that library books are non-instructed non-adopted instructional materials they are not adopted by the board they are purchased and in this policy here what we do not have is clarity on that now we've gone back and forth about this you us and the superintendent and your team um one of the things board members that we discussed was that this section might also include and i'll tell you why this is a concern for me in just a second um that this section uh could be referring

124to the curriculum let's say for example this year we're going to adopt um social studies and the civics so if social studies in civics is this year if we do not adopt one that is recommended by the state that one would be considered non-state adopted instructional material so if social studies a is not recommended but we want to go with them then we would have to follow this process which has a specific committee and specific procedures that have to be followed to adopt that curriculum that is not state adopted and that is not a state adopted instructional material but what is not included here and i went back to the new one that will be passed tonight that we'll go through tonight is the clear understanding of what is where is the process for library

125books that's what we we we're missing somewhere like a clear understanding of the process for adopting library books library and media center instruction instructional materials that's what's missing in all of this so even though this seems well and fine and good what are we going to do about that that's the part that we need clarity on so at some point we're going to have to kind of figure that out because we now have as of tonight we will have a process for challenging the materials but we won't have a process for actually library media center so you might see it in one or two places but there isn't a process for it if we were to adopt this here and say yes library books are non-state adopted instructional materials which aligns with statute then this

126process here would have to be for the vetting of the library books or media center materials and i'm not so sure you want this to be that process is your about sense i think we spoke about it a number of times as i have with a number of board members um as you know we are in the process of literally watching state board rule meetings where they're creating those specific or creating the guidance slash state board rules that we will be able to put in place so if it's the will of the board to create something that's more specific than what's currently in policy because you're right mr rosario it's kind of referenced throughout but to be extremely explicit in the creation of what exactly those procedures are my recommendation if directed by the board

127to do so is let that rule making happen as i communicated with the board we think we may have information to go on as early as october which is before what we were initially saying we can begin the process of saying this is proposed policy that the board can debate and we can come to a place as to what that specific procedure policy would be but then what happens with current i mean where schools are just going to wait until october i think we need to be a fiscally responsible and in terms of selecting and purchasing there's a a number of guidance that we would need in order to determine what is or is not appropriate and we can't unspend the money that we we would spend or select something or possibly allow very similar

128to what has happened before when you when you buy or select materials and something is in there that you're not 100 aware of so you need to a b fully understand what in fact age appropriate is based on the information from the state and then we locally here at our level create the system uh or process in which we will collectively follow across the system in order to go through that process dr mark i'm sorry miss barenborg yes when you look at the information i agree on i don't like waiting but making sure we do it right and making sure that we don't spend money that we don't have but when you look at library material not everything in that library is instructional material there are thousands of books that we have in our high

129schools and middle schools and elementary school that are not used as instructional materials so i think we have to be very very careful on the delineation there but as far as what we can do for our district our media centers our parents our students make sure we get it right and especially with our finances we don't want to do things ahead of time unless we are unless we are sure okay so i know you have more questions but since you brought this one up i have a couple questions so if we could stick to this one and then we'll bring up the next one um if you look at that same exact policy on page two and the first part of the green the very first sentence it says instructional materials recommended by each review

130viewer shall be to the satisfaction of each reviewer accurate objective and so on so does that mean one reviewer can object for all or is there anything in here where it means like they take a vote and it's the majority of the vote because the way it's worded right here it looks like one person can say yeah i don't believe that that works and so that one person can throw out material because of that that's a lot of power for one person that's i'm asking not shafty so in reading that the first line has singular reviewer but then the second line has reviewers shall consider so it would be the interpretation of those two lines together i'm going to tell you that's going to cause a problem i think that needs to be cleaned up

131i think it needs to be very clear as to when somebody is going to be on an evaluation committee that they know what the rules are and what they're responsible to do i don't want to put anybody in a predicament where you know like a 12-member jury or you have one person that's you know holding out and it's causing issues for everybody else it needs to be clear as to what we're going to choose to do i'm not done yet it's okay i want us to pull this one in okay so if we could look at that let us look because i'm having a hard time understanding in other words what it says to to me what it says is to the satisfaction of each reviewer so if one reviewer says i'm not satisfied i

132don't think this book should be here or i really think this book should be here you've got the power of one person you see what i'm saying that's the way i read it that's not how i read it but let us okay look at it again and then the next part on um the next page page three oh never mind that's okay i got that one figured out uh the last one page four i'm going to read that part where it says purchase of instructional materials run underneath it it says following adoption by the board requisitions shall be issued to purchase current instructional materials from the state adopted instructional materials list so that each student in kindergarten through grade 12 will have a major tool of instruction in core courses of the subject areas of

133mathematics language arts science social studies reading and literature in other words this tells me that those need to be on the state adopted list in our policy that's the one i brought up to you in our meeting policy 2520 it's on 25 20 page four underneath where it says purchase of instructional materials i'm fine with that but i just want to make sure that you understand that that's what we're voting on okay those were my biggest concerns with that one mr rosario did you want to bring up something else yeah um what you mentioned here on page two i just wanted to clarify that um the title for this section is referring specifically to the textbooks right so to that would be for textbook reviewer adoption process right the ela the math this year coming

134would be the social studies textbook adoption process right so if one if the committee all likes one particular social studies book but the way i read it one person could say i don't like it yeah so because of that one person saying i don't like it they don't can't adopt it well i we could do that for every single one so they could go round and round around for months well i don't disagree with you i think i agree with you on that it does need to be cleaned up to um to be specific but as you keep moving down you know as you keep reading one two and three it is very clear on what each reviewer shall do right but i think that one should not be based on their personal opinion it

135should be based on what is required of them in here would this be something that we would have to just pull for tonight to review again and bring it back to us because tonight starts in like it doesn't seem to be there doesn't seem to be anything on here that is pressing through the chair not pressing but let us look quickly and if we have to pull it tonight and you're right in a little bit of time we will but it may be a simple word or two that we add to bring a level of clarity yeah okay i just think it needs a word or two yeah that's all i i don't disagree um i did want to just add with regard to library books and media center books the the issue with those

136books and the media center items is that any teacher can can not always does any teacher can require a student to use or to pull a book or to pull a material or supplemental you know activity whatever it is at any given point in time and if that is the case then it is considered a classroom instructional item um but it is we don't always know that right because we don't know what teachers would require of their students in advance so in that case that's why statute has it written that all items in the library slash media centers would be considered instructional material and i'll show you in statute 1006.28 number one halfway down it reads with regard to school board school district school board and then it has a subtitle courses of study adoption

137number one reads and i'll only stay here number one each district school board is responsible for the content of all instructional materials and any other materials used in the classroom made available in the school library number one or included on a reading list whether adopted or purchased from the state adopted instructional materials list adopted and purchased through a district instructional materials program or otherwise purchased or made available so essentially it really doesn't matter library books and media center materials whether supplemental or used directly in the classroom it really doesn't matter whether they're adopted or not they're still considered instructional materials each district school board shall maintain on its website a current list of instructional materials by grade level purchased by the district and then it moves into a different category different definition there so just

138want to make that clear instruct library books and media center materials are still considered instructional materials that's it they're just not adopted instructional materials dr moore question on that when i look at that when it says each district school board is responsible for the content and other materials used in the classroom made available in a school library so does that denote the thousands of books or just those that the teachers use for instruction for example when i taught and we had novels we kept them in the library for example great expectations a separate piece so are we talking about every single library book or those made available for instruction everything is made available no not every book in the library is available for instruction um thank you um through the chair if i may respond

139um the way that that reads they are saying the board's responsible for the content of even library books and i think that that's clear because library book challenges will ultimately go to the board for final say so that's how you're responsible for what's in them very good so we have to go back and review every library book that we have yeah thousands of library books yep um thank you if they're challenged that is when they may come to the board through our challenge procedures for the board to make a final decision on whether or not they meet our criteria and the legal requirements so what what's the cost of this if we have to go through every single book in every single library in every school what's the cost to the district of that i

140know you don't know the answer right now but that's thousands and thousands of hours right that that's not random that's a cost to the district that's a cost uh that has to come out of somewhere so before we if if we if there is some dispute about this i think we need a clear and strong legal opinion before moving forward i don't think this is something that we necessarily decide you know as meetings are starting right now um on something of this significance i agree so i'd suggest that we table this conversation for now we move on at a further date where we can get our questions to the superintendent in advance and get those answered so we can have them in a future workshop i agree okay um i do have two short little

141things that i want to state about the policies copy of school safety and security is policy 8405 school safety and security i'm going to look exactly at because of something that happened i'm going to refer to page four of eight at the top where it says recommendations of the school safety specialist the last line in that paragraph says the school safety and security plan is however confidential and is not subject to review or release as a public record could we make sure that this policy is handed out then at our safety meeting so that every person in that safety meeting knows that this is a confidential plan thank you yeah wait say that again i'm sorry where are you i'm on page four of eight recommendations of the school safety specialist last line oh the

142school safety and security plan is however confidential and is not subject to review or release as a public record okay okay and then on policy school visitors i don't know if this is new or if it's just been the practice of the district in the past that when we visit i know a lot of times if i walk with the superintendent they say you don't need to sign in when i go on my own i sign in and i sign out unless of course it's after school i notice that legislators can do the same thing now because of the new legislation but i would encourage all board members to make sure that you sign in and you sign out when you go on school campuses okay no we haven't in the past that has not

143been the the the norm in the past but it here i just want to point out that it is in the policy okay yes ma'am those are the only ones i had and that concludes workshop okay it is 603 and we now have an interestingly full room in the last two minutes we are going to take a break board members how long do you want four minutes five minutes okay so we will resume at 608. you