001good morning good morning everyone uh it's it's 9 30 i know we have a few more people trying to get on so we'll wait just another minute and then we'll go ahead and start the meeting glad to see everyone happy monday happy new year everyone yeah oh who let the dogs out yeah that would be my dogs all right then i'm gonna just go ahead and start the meeting uh officially and as as as people join they will join and it'll all it'll all be good uh well hello everyone and happy new year my name is carl purses and it's my pleasure to serve as the chair this year for the central florida public school board's co-coalition uh i am uh right now sitting in the volusia county school district uh office um and uh
002happy to be broadcasting from here we usually start our meetings with the pledge of a allegiance and uh if everyone would just keep their microphones on mute except for abby sanchez our vice chair and abby would you be kind to us kind enough to lead us in the pledge sure well everyone please stand for the pledge and find a flag somewhere all right i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the oh my gosh i'm like sitting here thinking my dogs are barking right behind me everybody you can do it with me if you want to i pledge allegiance to the flag the united states of america and one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you and have a seat thank you abby and
003uh our our first item of business here i believe is to uh approve the minutes of the uh let's see that was the meeting that we had in october october 11th uh we were approving those minutes at our meeting in december in tampa and uh the issue that we have with the minutes it's kind of funny actu actually is we can't recall who made the motion to approve the minutes in tampa and who seconded it uh was there is there anybody that's currently listening right right now who was in tampa that made that motion any of you well we know that linda cuthbert made made the motion to make abby the vice chair uh we can't remember who seconded it uh but uh so what so what we're gonna do is we're going to does
004somebody know our faculty i think i'm hearing somebody i can't is someone talking no okay uh uh since we haven't uh been able to clearly identify who those people are yet uh we're just going to uh table these minutes and we'll try to find out who those folks are and we will approve those at our next meeting so let's just move right right into it because we have a we have a you know i think a very in in interesting agenda for you as as everyone knows the legislative session begins tomorrow tomorrow january the 11th and it runs for its 60 days it's supposed to end on march 11th and as everyone knows too it's in election year which means anything is possible and probably some things that we never thought of will will likely
005happen uh during this session so buckle your seat belts because it's going to be quite a 60-day ride as you know the governor is is out there and uh the the things that are high on on his priority list we'll hear about some of those things also from uh what the speaker of of the house chris sproul's is uh what's on his mind and as well as the apprentice the president of the senate uh the florida association of district schools superintendents and our florida uh association of uh school boards we have folks uh representing both of those organizations um i'm very proud to have volusia's superintendent on on board and uh he has been kind enough to give us a little uh summary about uh what the uh superintendents around the state what what are
006the main concerns that they have so dr fritz i'm gonna uh turn it over to you at this point and i i don't know where you are but i see you so that's good enough well thank you mr purchase i'm just above you two floors oh so i i'm here at deck um ladies and gentlemen thank you for letting us come today and and share a little bit about the the priorities of the fads group with me are my colleagues other superintendents and i encourage you as i uh kind of start this process to help pick up and fill in the gaps and build to share some more information with you i'm going to start with with the one that really concerns me uh greatly um because i'm worried about you know our business is
007about making sure that we pass the baton to the next group of leaders and and i'm concerned about the uh minimum requirement for the 15 an hour wage constitution um i see some heads nodding so i know that there's been a great concern about that and as we've kind of gone through this i'll share with you some of the things that we talked about some of the things that volusia county has done um as superintendents we got together and we really were concerned not only about the immediate impact of this requirement but the compression issues that it would cause as it continues and goes forward once we met that minimum requirement for example in our in our press release we talked about the importance of a head custodian well a head custodian and a regular
008custodian cannot make the same money so therefore we would have to work with those employees that may be above that 15 an hour requirement to keep that compression moving in the right direction that really is a concern for us and as we we started to look at this one of the things that we talked about doing was to inform our legislators on the fiscal impact that this requirement would have and in volusia county we wrote a letter to all of our delegates and i think it may be an attach i think karen was going to attach it for you as an example but really looking at this it is an eight and a half million dollar impact to our our district just to get to that 15 million dollars but that doesn't include compression it
009doesn't include future expenses as we go forward and so what we're asking for is some support from our legislators just like we did with the teachers with the 47.5 looking for some additional support because i'm going to tell you and i'm sure many of you are in this thank goodness for esser dollars because the esser dollars are truly keeping us afloat and if we didn't have that we would be looking at a serious fiscal cliff so the concerns are addressed in this letter about how important they are and we also in in our letter in volusia county we talked about things that impact the total budget like the family empowerment scholarship so the example we gave is if we lose 1500 students to private schools that really is not enough to close a school but
010it's a 12 million dollar hit to the school district overall and it's a slow siphon of a drain over and over and over and that when we look at the budget that we have compared to 10 years ago it's less dollars to do more work and so we really did my cfo and the team put together a pretty good letter to our delegates um and and we were able to review it with them and at the time the chairman was linda cuthbert and she and i both signed that letter and sent it to our delegates so i i will share with you that was a big push for fads because we're looking at you know years down the road how is this going to look for school districts the other area that i wanted to
011address and i believe i'm going to have some colleagues jump on this is i know we're all concerned about the mental health of our our students and our teachers and our staff the mental health area is a priority for all of us and when you really start to look at it from a k-12 experience when children enter us in kindergarten and they walk across the stage in grade we have them about 10 of their time so when we look at the mental health issue it really is a community issue but oftentimes schools are left to deal with that we need help i think we can all agree that we need help for our kids and for our staff our staff is is you know they are encountering struggles that they've never had this experience before
012in their personal lives and their professional lives and so it leads to things such as burnout and shortages that we know we're all facing and so as fads we we started to prioritize this is a real need for us and and and to find some opportunities you know we we we are hearing all around about other businesses and we'll go back to that minimum wage thing that other businesses and we i think we hear about wawa and buckies and all these other places hiring people at 18 an hour and then we're dealing with trying to get to that 15 minute minimum requirement for our paris and i'm very appreciative of the package that our board has come forward with with our folks but it still leads to people to stress which relates to the mental
013health concerns that we have for our employees that they can't afford uh their expenses and one of the things i really like that my cfo pendant in this letter was that we don't have an expenditure problem we have a revenue problem and if you look back at the history of how much money we've been getting for the last couple years whether it's been for mental health or it's been to pay our employees we we can see that there's evidence of that that in volusia county much like other districts it's really not an expenditure problem i think we spend the money wisely we do a really good job with it but there just is less of it so i don't know if dr pace or or dr jenkins or dr gaulik want to jump in here
014but i see your names come on guys you promised you would i know i'm here i'm listening um dr fritz you did a great job of kind of outlining those things i do think that the salary compression issue is such a significant one particularly when it comes to our veteran teachers i mean it's been absolutely awesome to have funds to raise those minimum salaries i know this year we were able to get to the 47.5 but that really hurts some of those teachers who've been with us for 10 15 years and who are now making you know maybe 50 100 more than a first year teacher in our schools i met with a group of teachers on friday actually um about 25 of our teacher of the year finalists this year and you know that
015was the one thing that they really said is that veteran teachers are kind of out there feeling like what about us so the more we can do to help our legislative delegates understand the importance of addressing that issue not just from the minimum salary issue but what can we do for our other folks either through an increase in the bsa or a little bit more flexibility with the teacher salary allocation i think everybody across the state would benefit so that was just a huge piece thank you the other issue that we wanted to bring forward is there's still a concern with school safety and security um you know after the oxford shooting that just occurred recently it certainly was a quick reminder to all of us about the most important thing and which is keeping
016our our students and our staff safe so we did ask for for continued emphasis and support in the area of school safety for our our schools thank you dr fritz uh dr jenkins are you out there i'm not sure i don't see her hear her diane is there anything else that you can think of uh that maybe we need to add to the conversation as far as our priorities good morning everyone i think dr fritz you did a fantastic job i would echo the same challenges we're facing um the compression we have not been able to get to that minimum number yet for our beginning teacher the beginning teacher's salary so that's a challenge for us likewise school safety with challenges with our current rates in our municipalities is going to be a challenge so
017thank you for doing such a great job of sharing [Music] and we we know many of us will have opportunities to get up to tallahassee this year and talk with our legislators a little bit and these are the priorities the superintendents have agreed on that we would we would try to address um you know along with the shortages of our employees one of the things that we are are concerned about is that burnout and i know that that all school boards are familiar with this as well about the teacher that gets tired after after the winter holidays and doesn't come back all of this is related and when we had this conversation with the superintendents we were really looking at the struggles that we're experiencing we think this is a pretty comprehensive list for us
018not that there aren't more issues but these are the issues that we feel like we need to address this year for for the future mr persis back to you sir thank you so much dr fritz uh dr uh pace uh superintendent gullet i i appreciate you all taking time out of your day and sharing a little bit with us uh the issues of comprehension uh with that fif 15 minimum wage mental health issues school and safety issues and i and i do like the way you categorize it that we have a revenue problem it's not the way we're spending the money it's uh it's this that we need to have more in order to address all the things that we need that we need to thank you so much dr fritz i do want to
019turn it over right now to dr thomas dr thomas are you ready to go i am i'm ready for you and this is uh i want to say welcome to uh you're wearing a brand new hat now yeah we are we are excited uh to have to have you uh with the florida school board association so dr thomas take it away thank you so much mr persis i really appreciate it good morning everyone um as uh mr purses said um i'm danielle thomas i am the new director of advocacy and legislative services for the florida school boards association um so a bit of a new role for me but um i know that i've had an opportunity to work with quite a few of you when i was uh volunteering as a child advocate for
020florida pta so um had a chance to know quite a few of you over the years and looking forward to continuing our work together um and really appreciate um dr fritz and uh everyone who was just talking about um fad's priorities uh we're going to see a lot of overlap with fad's priorities as well as fsba's priorities as well and our legislative platform actually uh covers five areas um this year and uh there are actually two versions of our platform that are available on our website um one is kind of a quick and easy one pager for those who are really familiar with the topics and the issues it's also for our members a really great leave behind if you want to take it with you anytime you're having any of those meetings with your
021legislators if you need a little bit more information wanted some more talking points there's also a two-pager that gets into a little bit more of the details um if uh you know that's something that is needed as well that's available on the website as well so the first issue um overlaps with fads is um mental health really continuing that support of mental health um continuing to provide the funds and the resources in order to make sure that our school districts have the ability to be able to address those mental health um concerns that we um are continuing to see especially from our students um but i i think a great point um was already mentioned as far as you know we need that consideration for our staff as well um and just knowing what a
022toll um especially everything from the last two years with the pandemic as well as just kind of life things um it takes on on everyone um so wanting to make sure that that continues to be addressed the second is uh the assessment and accountability um we actually uh added this one um pretty much right after we had our platform meeting because that was right when the governor's announcement came out um around the fact that he was looking for a revamp of the assessments um and the accountability system so we do already have a senate bill which is actually going to be up in sudden education uh tomorrow around a change to the assessment senator diaz is carrying that bill this year and the house version of the assessment and accountability bill just dropped late last
023week uh representative placencia out of orlando uh has that one um as well we at fsba have also written a white paper um around assessment and accountability which is also on the website just to give some background information on kind of where we've been and uh we reached out to the members of our fsba advocacy committee back in november and asked them to send us information from all of the districts what's working around assessment specifically around progress monitoring what would you like to see going to a statewide model i'm just trying to get some feedback what are the greatest concerns and we compiled those and put that in as part of the white paper as well it's on the second page under considerations so this is um both a resource for our school board members
024to be able to use for their own information for talking points and it's also something that we are sharing with members um as well i actually have a couple of um meetings today specifically around the assessment and accountability um pieces so definitely going to be a priority focus for us the third is really around funding specifically more flexibility um within funding um we are asking for an increase in the bsa of at least three percent um but also really just maximum um flexibility we know how many funds end up being put into specific line items and categories and how much that ties the hands of our districts um so we're really asking for greater flexibility as well as expanding the year-round funding model um for your virtual schools so it matches what florida virtual school
025can already do um we know that that is an issue for a lot of our districts and so that is something that we are in conversations um with and i have actually had conversations with florida virtual school who's very open to the idea of um changing that model the fourth one is um really around workforce and um providing more opportunities for uh workforce opportunities for our students um specifically around ensuring that districts have the startup funds that they need in order to be able to create new workforce opportunities to meet the very specific demands of your particular areas we know the how unique the different areas of the state of florida are and we know that our districts are working really hard to be able to meet those needs but you also need the funds
026in order to be able to do that so definitely looking um at that and then the fifth is um of course around ensuring that we can continue to have the most qualified and talented staff in our schools so i'm continuing to ask for uh that teacher salary increase allocation flexibility with that as well um as well as we're asking for some support in like a grow your own teacher program so kind of a grant opportunity uh if we have maybe paraprofessionals or others who maybe they've completed part of their degree maybe they have an aaa they would love to go ahead and do their bachelor's and and get their teaching certificate but they need some uh assistance in order to be able to do that having some type of grant program in order for us
027to be able to keep our talented you know highly um qualified uh staff that we already have and also encourage them and be able to support them to uh take that next step and um if that's something that they're interested in so these are our five uh platform priority items and things that we're going to be working on throughout this legislative session so mr persis thank you for the opportunity to present thank you uh and uh so well done you know this is one of the times when uh overlapping is a good thing absolutely one of the things that we often would get criticized in public education is that a legislature would say ah you know i come up here and someone from dade county is telling me this and the school board association tells
028me that and the principals are telling me this and the school board association he said you guys don't don't know what you want you you you are all all over the place and and until you get your act all you all lined up you know we we we we just going to do whatever we think is the right thing to do so i i think that the more that we know what each organization is is really uh pushing for uh then we can all help and we can help each each other or when we go to tallahassee and when we call our our legislative delegation uh you know so that so that they start hearing it and hearing it again and again and again and again and then maybe maybe we will have some of
029some influence when we all sing in the same the same song from the same the same page uh thank you uh once again uh danielle thomas i know our next uh group we have some folks who are actually on their way now driving to tallahassee and they are listening in i know wendy dodge she is she is one of those people but i see john boyd and you don't appear to be in your car john so uh if you don't mind john can i ask you to start us off on the next piece sure i'll be happy to i actually um prepare a document that might be useful to some it's on our school district web page it's an outlook for the legislative session as well as the spreadsheet that i've done for several years
030and i think i can share my screen so i'm going to attempt to do that go right ahead all righty you should be able to see the website for our school district and what's displaying is the uh the web page for government labor relations that i'm responsible for and then underneath that you'll see there is a link for legislative updates and then there's some links on that page to several documents but some things i've added this year include a dashboard to let you know which types of bills and the quantity of bills that have been filed and the legislative information that i would normally put in an email that i send to you is on this page so i want to highlight on this document because i think it's very important to know uh in
031order to know where we're going we have to know where we've been sounds kind of trite but it is true so i'm going to switch over here to that document and in this in the table of contents i'm going to focus on the bills to watch i have in this document also what passed last year and what did not pass so i want to start right out of the gate and say there's a couple of things that did not pass last year that are back again and because what i do in our district is largely labor relations i want to point out some things that will affect every district if it's passed um there are several bills that have been uh filed related to the dues that unions would collect and you know that was
032in the last legislative session so these have been refiled for this uh session as well in addition to that there are several bills filed related to evaluations well no excuse me related to the contracts annual contracts there's three different bills it would change the language that took away the local control related to annual contracts um and put it back which sounds like a good thing but be careful what you wish for because you know until they're finished we don't know what the bill will look like until the gavel falls and the governor signs it there's another bill in relation to evaluations i want to point out because some of you especially from orange county are familiar that there was uh an arbitrator's final order related to evaluations uh i'm sorry excuse me correction a perk
033order and that perk order basically uh turned on its ear what we've assumed for a long time that evaluations are management right well there's a bill filed in this session it does not have a companion yet that would actually change it to where evaluations would return to be a management right under the language of setting the standards of service so that being said i'll point out that this list that i provided in this document has over 160 different bills because you know we're always in the uh i don't want to say the cross hairs that's not a good term to use but i just said it we're always the object of attention by the school by the state legislature because the quantity of bills filed related to public education every year for the last 20
034years has largely been at least a quarter to a third and sometimes half related to something that would affect us in public schools and i've been monitoring these bills like this in definite detail for 10 years in particular and uh i see this every year and uh the number of bills filed actually decreased and then went back up again especially when they changed to where all of the legislative budget requests are standalone bills so you now have in the neighborhood of 3000 bills every session so that being said let's look at some of these that are in this document that i know will be of interest to you in addition to the ones that i just mentioned athletic associations comes up every year this would do exactly what was filed last year if it's passed
035where they would set up an additional athletic association in addition to fhs certificates of completion there would be some adjustments to the language related to those that our students receive i'm just doing a very brief once over and then i'll pause and let others interject and even let people ask questions but i don't want to miss the opportunity of pointing out if you see the number of charter school bills that are filed just know that what was in the last legislative session that would allow colleges and universities to become uh charter authorizing or you know applicants is filed as well as they're looking at setting up within the department of education a department of an entity that would actually authorize charter schools this is a definite conflict with local control and our school board's authority
036to manage that because what stays when they would take that away is our responsibility to monitor and to do all the other compliance things that are already in statute related to charter schools okay moving right along civic uh literacy you shouldn't be surprised with all the discussion of critical race theory and everything else in the news there was a bill related to civics because the governor made it a priority and there's additional bills that will be filed i'm sure related to this topic um or amendments computer science um and then there's a bill related to i'm scrolling through real quickly um financial literacy let's see if i can find that one there it is as you recall legislator huckle who is who passed away had tried to pass as a requirement for graduation a financial
037literacy component this bill has been brought back again in this legislative session you see bright futures has some bills filed and then i'm going to scroll on down here real quick um ieps have become a topic i think that's important to watch for there's so many things in this legislative session to watch for related education it will make your head spin but i think just remember that the percentage of bills that finally make it through that are passed is very small compared to the number that are filed but this year i suspect in an election year we're going to see some high profile bills that are definitely going to make it through the finish line for the purpose of being a talking point for campaigns in the fall um i think what i'll do oh
038photographic enforcement of school zone speed limits as well as school bus safety they're talking about installing cameras on the buses for that purpose as well as in the school zones of schools uh where that funding will come from some of the bills detail partially and then others not at all so that's something to keep in mind um yes there is a bill related to the transportation zones there's always the discussion of making it uh reduced from uh two miles to one mile and we go through this exercise every year because the funding for transportation is limited um so i'll pause now and just say if you have any particular topics you're concerned about if you want to know if there's a bill i'll let um i'll take those questions and let my colleagues chime in
039as well because i just did a very uh ten thousand foot bird's eye view of what you just saw so let me unshare my screen thank you john and while while john's doing that uh uh kristen are you there are you able to chime chime in and piggyback on what uh john was saying good morning yes i am thank you thank you chair purses this is kristin davis hillsboro schools government affairs so john did a did a great job as well as dr thomas and of course um dr fritz and um i will just highlight a few items and um jason my colleague in orange certainly please um jump in there was just a few items related to especially the the group here this morning related to school boards many of you are already aware
040so i i will just kind of move quickly through back last fall senator greeters filed senate bill 244 to make school board elections partisan there is a companion bill house bill 35 by representative roach so senate bill 244 was heard last fall during committee or others have not been heard yet but just want to make you aware of that also related to school boards is the term limits bill that just came out last week 1644 and that's by senator baxley no house yet and then related to school board meetings you probably read i think it was in the news over the break senate bill 1300 that's related to how school board meetings are handled in terms of being live webcast uh public comment that sort of thing so many of you probably already in compliance
041but it's just good to take a look at the language if it if it does continue to move to make sure you're you're kind of up to speed or share with your your district council on that and then i was also going to mention working really closely with my colleagues dr thomas on school concurrency some of you this would probably be important too maybe depending on the size of your district and your relationship with your county and your developers but both senator perry and rhett mclean file bills that would strike many um many of the the much of the language that's in statute related to school concurrency that senate bill 706 and house bill 851 this essentially would require districts to apply concurrency on a district-wide basis very problematic at least for a district like
042hillsborough right now i'll give you a kind of a quick example so out in east hillsborough county east south hillsborough county it's it's just it's booming as again many of your your areas in your counties are and so we have we have one high school that just opened last year that's already about 3 000 students and but the developers because it's just growing are just the developments are popping up so right now when a developer applies to the county and many of you know this they we have to do like a kind of a test this the school concurrency test and if it doesn't meet because they need to have capacity there needs to be seats available at the nearby schools the neighborhood schools um to be able to meet this test and if not
043then we work with the developers to be able to make sure we have the right space so if we have a 900 home development coming in we have you know capacity we have seats in our schools so how this would change with 706 and 851 is that it would be applied on a district-wide basis so that means that developer comes in you have a development that wants to be put in south hillsborough county no seats available in any of the neighborhood schools but we do have maybe in in central tampa or north almost maybe up to pasco north tampa some schools with seats that would check the box and therefore they could proceed and those developers and the developments could open up but there would be we would be have to figure out the district
044would have to find out do we bus students do we put in modulars so um there there's many other bills i i'd be happy to sit here and and we could talk about or share with you but i wanted to from my perspective highlight those certainly on school concurrency and related to to your position on school boards and i'll toss it over back to chair purses or maybe jason from orange yeah jump in thank you kristen and before we uh i open it up for some questions i want to give jason a chance jason are you out there yeah thank you board member persis uh appreciate the opportunity i i think my colleagues really have done a great job in highlighting i think that the key bills that we're tracking at the moment here you
045know i would just sort of reiterate that the school can concurrency uh issue i think is an important one uh progress monitoring as was mentioned i i think uh you know there's uh the senate bill anyway we'll will be taken up in committee this week we think the house bill will move uh just as quickly um and then again i would just sort of put in a mention for the uh bill that john mentioned around uh teacher evaluations you know that's an issue that started in orange county but but we've heard already that it's it's cropping up in a number of other districts around the state uh we've worked with representative federoff over in volusia county she has introduced the bill for us that i think would provide a pretty clean fix for the issue
046uh and make clear that that the teacher evaluations are our management right uh and you know just sort of from the process standpoint we we've talked with a number of senators we don't anticipate any sort of issues on the senate side we we think strategically it makes sense to have a house bill and then work with probably senator diaz who's sort of the lead on a lot of the education issues to find a path forward for that issue uh for that fix in in one of the other sort of moving legislative vehicles so uh if anyone has questions about that issue you know we've sort of seen it uh first here and i think we can we can get our our legal folks in to you as well to give you some sort of background
047on on the issue and potentially the impact to your district so uh reach out with any questions there thank you thank you jason wow there's so much going on there's just so much uh about to happen in us it's it's important for us to be aware of these things and to have some influence on where all this is this is going i gotta interject something here this is a little house housekeeping thing uh uh i need for everyone if you just take a second to uh just type that you're here uh on the chat box for those of you who are not familiar with teams if you look on your uh the icons up at the top you probably see the little video camera and to the left of that there's three dots and the
048left of that there's another icon it's that next one that looks like a little cloud uh if you just tap on that one and then and then it'll you'll see a little place for you to type and just type the word here just here it's that icon on right next to the little people icon there right on the right and just click on it and then just type the word here so we'll know that you're here it's as simple as that yeah thank you i see you all are doing it very good yay thank you very very much mr purses here hey wayne you are here i just wanted to i thought i thought you might be driving okay go sir i decided i'd hold off and i'll take off after the call but i
049wanted to kind of pull us back up to the fifty fifty thousand foot view for a second even higher even higher keep it higher we're gonna go a little higher because uh we all need to recall the of the uh the extra asterisks for this legislative session and that is it's because it's redistricting so while we have a lot of distracting bills that i like to like to say that let's not worry about the the guts of of educating children let's you know they're more worried about the governance and and throwing shiny objects to keep us all you know off the the main goal well i mean this year it's going to be redistricting and hopefully for us the redistricting might play into our into our play of games when they start pitting incumbent legislators
050against one another in the same districts so let's uh let's remember to keep all that in the background of you know there's another political game going out there amongst uh the colleagues in the house and the senate and then um also let's let's all keep tabs on that budget uh you know that the governor made a pretty big budget recommendation uh average eight thousand dollars ftes um you know most years we all would tell you you take the governor's budget recommendation just throw it in the dumpster because the legislature looks at it and that's about all they do with it but the last couple years that's not been the case we've seen uh house and senate leadership as well as the executive administration they're all working from the same uh message points and as mr
051boyd pointed out with all the bills that have been filed this year we we are all campaign talking points today it is there's i i mean i hate i hate to talk about it all the time but there's no more they're caring about what's happening at home it is it is self-preservation and and as as frustrating it is we all have to still put our smiles on our faces and go and talk to these people but when you all are having these private conversations with legislators especially our our fellow elected members you board members i mean sometimes you guys are going to have to take you know take the the nice off and and really get on to them about the the whole getting into local control this is not what these guys had been
052elected for and now they've decided that now they know what's best for us at home and i hope that that you all that that also have to face voters every two or four years that that you will tell your fellow elected officials that you know at some point they've got to get out of your sandbox because they really have gotten into the sandbox in making it difficult for you all which then makes it difficult for all the staff and your teachers and uh you know we're all at different conferences we all talk to one another and i'll tell you what when i hear board members and superintendents and they're talking about how personal it has gotten on their own livelihoods and their own personal lives i mean this is when we all got to like
053start tightening up together and not let them take punches at us because um i i am scared what this session what the incoming election is going to bring for us because we've got a lot of people we all see it in our board meetings they are nasty and they are coming at us and they don't they don't care if it's facts or not factual and and we're the ones who have to be out there to to start sharing the facts and you know someone mentioned chair gruder's bill about the meetings um we're gonna have to jump on that one because i mean there's some districts that do it right there's others that have their issues with public comments but again they're getting into the everyday governance of how you all operate and that's not that's
054not what the legislature's supposed to be doing not not getting into your daily business and then lastly senator diaz while he is a a big supporter of education let's be careful with that senate joint resolution bill that he's got and also a bill that's traveling that's going to allow oppaga to do a study on the local taxes that we collect because he's got a joint resolution and we know that the hou somebody from the house is going to you know is going to pick this up the house joint resolution would give the legislature the ability to also redirect uh local tax dollars that's that's your t your your referendum dollars we can't let that happen and and we're going to have to i mean i realize that some of these legislators are our friends and
055and and close colleagues but man they've got a they got they got to let you all operate and do your business without them you know trying to take credit for everything you know they want to take credit for the good stuff but then grill us for the bad stuff and then we all are the ones that have to go back and explain to them and their constituents that no it's in state law they told us how to do it so i i i just want to kind of bring it up to the you know man we got our work cut out for us all yeah yeah uh dope we certainly do thank you wayne uh so much can uh wayne i'll just start with you since you're the last one speaking uh this year in
056the governor's budget is there a recommendation does he have a recommendation for the teacher salary allocation again like he's had the last couple of years where we had the 80 has to go to starting salary in 20 if you're not at the 47.5 is there a language like that again um so right now i would say that the language remains as it is from last year of how we spend that allocation and they and the governor did recommend an additional 50 million so it's now 600 million now i i will use this opportunity to point out that coach p uh coach placencia or representative placencia that did file a bill that would modify the fefp language that districts that that hit the 47.5 target you would then be able to move that the the the
057balance the remaining balance of the money you could use that towards veteran teachers as well as administrators and i'll tell you it's a good bill uh yeah some of my ideas uh can you repeat the sponsor of that one again yeah it's uh it's it's a renee placencia and that is going to be uh house bill 587 and the companion bill is filed by uh senator book that's uh senate bill 298 um i hope that's a good sign that the democrat leader is picking up a bill that has worked with the president last year let's hope but that that's that that bill is a good start and i know that when i was on a call last week with my administrators locally in pasco and some of them were already aware of the bill because
058they had read it somewhere else they were very happy and excited and they felt like that wow somebody in the legislature is like looking out for the veteran teachers and administrators and so you know it takes one bill to make somebody happy now let's see if they can maybe make it better thank you when that certainly sounds like a good one uh uh well let me just uh uh stop right there and open it up uh to questions from any of our uh folks out there listening if you have if you'd like to ask a question uh if you just go ahead and go ahead and talk and we just you know got to be um we can't talk over each other so uh chair yes jacobs okay uh let's let's go with you teresa
059and then uh reverend golden is it i will call on you next thank you um and we might also use our raise our hand that might be um so i just it's not a question i just wanted to shed a little light um representative placencia is one of our local um representatives he was a former teacher here in orange county public schools and i also want to acknowledge one of our board members she's not on the call with us today but member angie gallo i am quite certain her fingerprints are all over this um she's very very uh actively involved in the legislative efforts and very close to representative placencia who is a republican which bodes well for us quite frankly um and so i am i i can say with great confidence that that's
060between her and representative placencia being a former teacher that's how that happened and hopefully he has success we should all back him 100 on that i agree 100 uh thank you so much teresa uh reverend golden you mute okay can you hear me now yes can you okay the the issue with respect to uh mental health uh funding i know that our plan our recovery plan was just approved i think yesterday by the federal government for the state of florida i'm concerned about um as we all are about the way the conversation about public education uh is going and it's been accelerated in a negative way because of the uh because of the um the the pandemic uh and i'm i'm concerned that we are not even yet beginning to deal with the psychological and
061emotional consequences of this pandemic uh is there an appetite and i think dr um school board uh person dr uh was the doctor fritz no the the lady that just talked um that gave us the five priorities that she that she thought that we ought to be concerned about i'm i'm i don't even know how to articulate this but we we are a lot of the negativity that we experience a lot of the negativity that we hear from parents it's genuine anguish but they are they are emotionally and psychologically distraught and i'm wondering if we are going to be well served or not served at all if we don't really try to address that part of what is happening and what is uh what we're dealing with here in public education in florida as opposed
062to just well you know they now want uh term limits and they now want uh all of the other foolishness that they're bringing out and i apologize to those of you who agree that those might be good things but i don't think that those are good things but i think that there are manifestations of other problems that we're beginning to see arise in this pandemic environment and i i just i would like to specifically and particularly address that as as something that we can do something about in public education that we're going to spend money we're going to develop resources we're going to develop our programs to address the coming emotional and psychological crisis and impacts from this uh from this pandemic um thank you dr golden let me uh thank you uh it's a
063very serious topic and i believe we all understand that uh and i'm happy to see that seems like all of the organizations uh understand that as well so let's hope we can get the additional funding and the resources necessary to adequately adequately address this issue because as you just said it is it's not just a student issue it is a staff issue it is issues that our students parents are also dealing with so it it affects it affects everyone and it isn't going away anytime soon i i want to jump to um the reason i brought that up is because i would like to see it as an appetite to take a formal position on those funds coming directly to the school districts so that we can remove as much as possible the impact of
064the political process on dealing with this this very serious issue and so i don't i'm probably not authorized to make a motion or anything like that but i i'm just really this is so important in terms of how we go forward uh just just opposing the people who are on the opposite side of what we think i think that we ought to go on record saying with respect to local control with respect to local districts with respect to being most effective and most efficient in dealing with the mental health consequences of the pandemic we recommend that all funding with respect to mental health issues arising out of the pandemic go directly to the districts in the state this was just yesterday so i know they haven't done anything yet in terms of how they're going
065to try to maneuver and machinate those things but i just i just thought that maybe there might be some some appetite because a lot of these people that come into our meetings and act up and act out and uh they they they they are well i don't want to say what i think they are but i will just say that um that we we can help them better at the district level and being told what to do from the state level that's all thank you mr chairman i apologize that's okay that's okay i need to uh uh move on because the real the real point of this meeting was really to hear and we have heard uh quite quite clearly from our legislative con contacts representing various districts we've heard from our florida school district
066superintendents we've heard from the florida school board association we've heard from individuals and again it's finding that finding that common ground finding those things that that we can jump on that we can have some influence this is going to be as each of you said who are so familiar with the process and as wayne said at the end it's going to be just a wild year they're all sort of crazy but this one has the potential uh to uh to really take us in a lot of different directions because everyone up there that's running for re election is going to want to have that sound bite going to want to have that credential going to want to have that fanfare that notoriety something that makes that person stand out and sometimes those things that stand
067out are way out there crazy things uh so we don't want that but certainly uh the the bill from um was it uh the one from orange the orange county one uh that teresa jacobs talked about where using those uh that allocation for teachers salaries and if you've already reached the 47.5 that you can use that money to toward veteran teachers salary you know that is something that i think we can all jump on and say yes this is what we need because we're all hearing from our veteran veteran teachers uh so things of that nature uh john boyd can i get back to you a minute and ask you are are you going to um did you say that you were going to share that in information that you were putting up on the
068screen yes sir in the chat i actually put the link for the website so that folks can download the documents there and i'll be happy to email them as well okay all right uh members are there any questions that you have for any of these experts in the legislative area we're so happy to have you all joining us uh anybody else with a question mr persis there was one question in the chat um terry berenborg asked uh if the group is getting behind the vaping bills uh can you say that again i don't think i heard what you said go ahead can you hold one second there is a question in the chat from terry farenborg she did not have a camera or a mic on and asked about whether the group would be getting
069behind the vaping bills oh okay i understand now uh there was a question in the chat about uh uh whether we are behind the vaping suit and i think that vaping suit i think that has uh i think each district perhaps perhaps has had a presentation uh about that i i uh oh i i can only speak uh for volusia county we have joined that um suit and then i don't know how many other districts have but that was the question as a as a body uh you know we wouldn't be able to do that so it's really been up to each individual district i hope i've answered that answered that question and i'm not sure where that suit is going or where it is at the moment but that that's all i know about
070about that issue i'll just move on uh with our uh our uh agenda the next item is old old business is there any old business anyone would like to bring up at this time i don't see any is there any new business that we would like to bring up i just talked about the the vaping suit um you notice um i've been very careful today and i will say it now but i until this point i haven't said or mentioned the virus but and that's it i just said it but i'm not saying anything else about it all right our our next meeting is going to be on valentine's day that's uh february the 14th at 9 30. uh whether that meeting is virtual or not that will remain to be seen uh it is
071likely that it that it would be but um uh you know we will certainly let you know within uh you know 10 days before so that so that you so that you could make so that you could make plans uh is there any other anything anybody else would like to say for the good of the group if not once again i want to thank everyone uh you know thank you all so much it's so important what we heard today uh take some notes i hope you did if not we got john boyd's uh charts and graphs all of these people whether it's kristin or jacob wayne wendy they're also accessible whether you live in their district or you do not they are always there always willing to help us so reach out i know that
072danielle thomas with the florida school board association she's there for us too and these people are are you know for the next 60 days this is going to be their their lives basically and so they're going to be monitoring it uh you know every hour of every day so if you if you have questions and you're wondering where some bills are and you can't get it from your own district please feel free to reach out to any of them i know they want to help you and also let them know if you are going to tallahassee for any reason that's very important i know that danielle thomas wants to know that if any school board member is going to tallahassee it's uh it makes a huge impact it makes a huge impact i know emails
073are fine in in telephone calls but if you have the time to actually go there um danielle thomas can set you up so you you can make the best use of your time uh and that is very very important so thank you everyone at this point we're going to adjourn the meeting have a wonderful day and thanks for what you do each and every day to help our students thank you everyone god bless you all you