001good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the orange county school board's regularly scheduled meeting this tuesday july 27 2021 in case you're wondering about the odd starting time of this meeting on tonight's agenda we are taking up our budget our budget hearing and section 200.065 subparagraph 2 e2 florida statutes requires budget hearings to be held after 501 pm thank you so much for being with us tonight most of our board members are attending in person however member lopez is attending us telephonically so let me just check and make sure that member lopez is able to join us remember lopez are you with us and good afternoon madam chair good afternoon okay i want to remind the board members and the public that we will not be engaging in outside electronic or digital communication during
002the meeting so that we can focus our full attention on the business before us here to my fellow board members and to anyone who is speaking to us tonight let me remind our staff members let me remind you to do your best to speak directly into the microphone and close to the microphone so that we can hear you not only in the chambers but so that we can pick up your voice clearly for youtube and our orange tv viewers and i also want to thank everyone that's here in attendance this evening in advance we appreciate your presence we will begin our meetings as we do each meeting with a moment of silence and then i will invite you to join us in the pledge of allegiance thank you and the i pledge allegiance to the
003flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all dr jenkins before we begin with any formal recognitions i wanted to take a moment to recognize somebody who joined us in our pre-agenda meeting and unfortunately we didn't get an opportunity to hear from her but i think it's important that the board and the public have an opportunity to hear from her she's miss florida from the junior team one of our students taylor stewart with cypress creek high school and that's not what makes her special what makes her special is she is one of our local ecg success stories and i wanted to take just a minute to ask taylor if she would take a moment to join us at
004the to come up to the diocese and say a few words if are you comfortable with that okay thank you for people who don't know orange county school board recently adopted a requirement that our children participating in sports go through a preliminary ecg test to make sure that there's no abnormality in their heart that might cause serious injury or death welcome taylor madam chair yes and as the board secretary i have inserted miss taylor as our recognition for today's meeting absolutely it's official absolutely you are our official recognition for tonight miss taylor miss stewart go ahead hello my name is taylor stewart and i'm a sophomore at cypress creek high school i'm here today to share with you my experience and gratitude of the recent requirement by ocps for student athletes to have an ecg
005as part of our athletic clearance just like many students and parents i was annoyed and frustrated to find out a few months back that another step has been added as part of our clearance this year it was another appointment another paper in the process and more money for my parents to spend my school sent out a message letting people know that an organization called who we play for was coming to our school on may 27th and we could schedule an appointment for 20 to get an ecg done my mom immediately scheduled one of the first appointments that day less than a week after my ecg my mom received a voicemail from a volunteer at who we play for letting her know that my ecg had come back abnormal and she'd be getting an email with
006details and next steps that email had a lot of information including a potential diagnosis and a list of pediatric cardiologists that we could contact to schedule an appointment we went that friday june 4th to see dr deadloni at nemours children's hospital where they did another ecg to confirm that i did in fact have wolf parkinson white syndrome there was concern about my diagnosis because my ecg showed signs of wpw every single time my heart was beating which meant that this was more of a severe situation than we initially thought the following week on june 10th i went back for a stress test to confirm how my heart would react during exercise and it was during this appointment that dr delany and the surgeon dr tishma discovered that my heart continued to show signs of wpb
007wpw each time my heart was beating even during a lot of exercise this meant that the risk was higher of something happening to me during sports or even during my everyday life over the next few days my procedure was scheduled to get rid of the extra passageway in my heart and hopefully stop any potential risk for wpw or cardiac arrest my procedure was almost six hours long and when the surgeon thought she was done and they had removed the catheters and everything my heart went into tachycardia and was sustaining over 270 beats per minute my blood pressure dropped and i started going into cardiac arrest which proved that if i had not known about this diagnosis and not had this procedure done it could have been life or death down the road i have bounced
008back pretty quickly since my procedure i'm just still super tired it was about a month ago and i have done a follow-up ecg showing no signs of wpw and i'm so happy to say that i'm all cleared for sports for the 2021-2022 school year i'm here today to let parents and students know it's understandable to be frustrated that there is another step in this process but i want you to know that i was an outreally perfectly healthy 15 year old girl with no symptoms that i knew of i've passed my physical every year and just this past year played volleyball flag football and cheered for my school's varsity cheerleading squad it's a very scary thought that at any moment i could have gone into cardiac arrest and no one would have known why this happens
009to people you know this could happen to your child too we were just lucky enough to find out before something bad happened and to be proactive to keep my impact on the life lower this is all thanks to this new ecg requirement implemented by all you ladies here today i think having this happen to even one student should be reason enough to prove that this requirement for testing is worthwhile i just want to thank you guys for implementing it because it saved my life okay i for one i'm completely speechless thank you so much and what a reassurance that is i remember the day that we passed that how good we all felt about the fact that we might save somebody's life we would never know for sure if we did or not and to
010have you here with your testimony is not just incredibly gratifying to us but hopefully hopefully we can continue to spread that message that's the key thing we want every child not just not just the ones that are in our sports but every parent to know that this is something to look out for we look out for a lot of things with our kids this is an easy thing to do and a life-saving so god bless you thank you mom and dad for being totally on top of this and i'm taking such good care of taylor oh wow okay karen dr castro dental sorry did you i'm sorry remember cobard no i've got buttons pushed here thank you chair well i think we're we're all tearing up here and that's because we're just so proud of
011you mom and dad for getting her in to do that night that we passed it we felt really good because we care about all children and we have to as you see make some really really difficult decisions and we care about all of you very very much and i met you a few years ago so when i heard about your story i was just again so proud of you and i just want to thank you it's not an easy thing to get up here and speak in front of people it's one of one of the biggest fears that people have so for you to share your story so that it might help someone else and understand that it's worth it to go through this testing we don't know how many more lives might be saved
012so thank you so much we are all so proud of you and we cannot wait to see what becomes of you in your future and for all of you in the audience also know that because of this experience taylor goes and volunteers for the organization that came in to do the screening who we play for so that's just the kind of person that she is so again thank you and we're so proud of you thank you member cobra remember gallow thank you madam chair i just want to thank taylor for coming tonight and sharing your story with us it was a great it was a great story and i'm so thankful for the entire board to that we implemented that test as part of our sports physical so that we could we could catch this
013and other things for our students is so important your stories actually shared from me when you shared on instagram from a board member over in brevard county because they had been a big supporter of including this as part of the sports physical and had been helping who who we play for i think that's really the name of it and it was shared with me and then i immediately shared it with the district but i read i read your story and i was kind of scrolling through and looking at your instagram and you're quite accomplished young lady so congratulations to you and to your parents and i'm just so thankful that this worked out thank you member gala remember gold kayla thank you for sharing your story i wanted to share with the board members we
014had a young man into shepherd's hope last thursday night on a follow-up and his family for the first time ever had lost their health insurance and what got the test through who we play it for and was able to get a follow-up at shepherd's hope thankfully he didn't have to have the procedure that you did in the follow-up but it was a relief to his family to know that we caught that a disruption in his heart arrhythmia and that they are actually going to continue to watch it even though he doesn't seem to be in any danger but he just wants to play soccer and act so that's what he wants to be able to do so thank you for highlighting this and making it even easier and more okay for other kids to do
015it awesome all right mom dad tell you can stick around with us for the rest of the evening if you want or since you have been here since like well before four you're free to go enjoy the rest of the evening god bless you like everybody said we want to stay in touch we want to know what what becomes of your wonderful life okay dr jenkins we have any appointed newly appointed administrators to recognize non-madam chair all right thank you and we have no strategic plan update which brings us to the adoption of the agenda dr jenkins any changes to the agenda as possible no changes madam chair all right no changes to the agenda let me recognize that we have we have a number of well let me first ask for a vote to
016approve the agenda as published is there a motion to approve the agendas published so moved to motion by member covert is there a second second by member bird all in favor please say aye aye aye and remember lopez remember lopez are you with us all right i'm going to assume that member lopez had to step away for just a minute let's come back to oh and the motion passes with all members present in the chambers voting in the affirmative we have a number of speakers excuse me i'm sorry i'm sorry hello remember no problems i'm having a problem with my computer well yes i thank you so much let the record flow the show that the motion approved you know passed unanimously the next item up is the public hearing request for approval the adoption
017of the millage before that we do that we have a number of speakers that wish to speak to this issue take i'll take just a minute to remind everybody our rules for providing comment we do have a code of civility i don't think we'll have a problem here but if you're in agreement with something a speaker is saying do us a favor and either give us a thumbs up or wave so that we can know how many people in agreement or if you disagree a thumbs down but please refrain from cheering clapping bowing or hissing or any audible sounds we appreciate the respect that you pay to each of your fellow speakers and with that i think that most of these are on the budget and i do i'm going to begin with i'm taking
018them in the order they came i'm going to begin with miss dormel is miss normal here welcome mr storm i thought you must be but i didn't see you madam chair i just want to let you know we have two callers on the line as well oh thank you so much and we have two callers on the line wonderful thank you welcome mr normal thank you so good afternoon i'm here to speak about the district budget and priorities budgets reveal what is valued and what is appreciated your budget exposes what your priorities are what does cta believe the district's budgeting priority should be employee salary should be an a priority especially when district leaders asked teachers to make the impossible possible last year a year like no other the teachers certainly did and then some
019teachers are professionals and expect and deserve a raise that reflects their expertise devotion and commitment what should be a priority a longevity supplement for veteran teachers should be a priority they should be rewarded for their years of loyalty and devotion veteran teachers were left behind last year by tallahassee's mandate to raise every teacher to a minimum salary of 47.5 it is unacceptable that teachers with 10 years of experience make a little more than teachers who are just starting their careers to retain quality experienced veteran teachers a longevity supplement should be a priority what should be a priority affordable benefits should be a priority insurance increases penalize those who get sick the members of our bargaining unit cannot afford increases in insurance deductibles what should be a priority providing supplements or paid hours for teachers guidance
020counselors and lead nurses and others who put in extra hours to advance student achievement address student mental health concerns or ensure healthy schools what should be a priority school health and safety teachers working conditions determine students learning conditions with over 850 million dollars in federal esser funds ocps must prioritize health and safety we cannot put students first if teachers are last it is essential that our professional experts the dedicated teachers and instructional staff should be a priority when the district sets its budget priorities it is essential that student and employee health and safety be a priority we request that ocps leaders rethink their priorities informing their budget process to be able to recruit and retain quality teachers thank you thank you mr normal let's hear from our next speaker ashley modesto and following this modesto
021we'll hear from ann allsup hi my name is ashley modesto my address is 49 burn tree lane apopka florida florida32712 i am here coming to you as i begin to enter my sixth year in ocps as a teacher i feel like i've been at ocps much longer as you may know i've been i was a student k312 and i've also had the pleasure of almost my entire family being an employee of ocps including my mother with 28 years currently in the in the district i saw the way that ocps used to be i saw the way it treated its teachers the investment it put in ensuring that we had the top quality educators who were up to date on current practices and also the top quality supports education support staff when i saw the new
022budget proposal i was heartbroken i love my job i love edu being an educator i love my students i like to think that i work at the best school i think miss felder would agree with me but it's it's hard you know sometimes when i see a budget like that i turned 30 this past weekend and i feel like this is where i really begin to focus on my career and i pray that i am able to provide for my family as others have that i'm able to whenever i decide to have kids that i won't have to continue working additional jobs as i do now that i will be invested in the same way or at least close to the way that i invest in my students i know the way that ocps used
023to be i've seen the things that they used to do i remember my mother going on trips going through things and i just wanted to be like that i want the teachers to not have to work multiple jobs to keep food on their table and their power on supplements once again do not pay bills you know it is temporary we need something permanent we have to have something permanent in order to ensure that teachers will be permanent i think that is a long process last time i spoke i was challenged to go to tallahassee i did i went to tallahassee several times and during covert i went to tallahassee via zoom i spoke to our state representatives and they sent me back here and so as much as i love that four hour drive back
024and forth i will continue to do it because i believe this is a career worth investing in and i will continue to fight for it for my mother my sister my aunts who all work for ocps i believe that we could do better and i think that we must in order to ensure that we have the best teachers the best support staff to give our kids the best education and i want to say thank you for your time this evening i really do appreciate the hard work that you women do and i'm definitely happy that i'm in the classroom and not in your seat but we definitely need to ensure the best for everyone thank you miss modesta i can't tell you how happy we are you're in the classroom and i hope that at
025some point we will all be able to be in a position of rewarding you the way you deserve thank you for being here and thank you for championing this in tallahassee as well thank you we're going to hear from ann alsup and then we're going to hear from bonnie cox hi how are you welcome hi my name is ann allsup i'm from apopka florida i'm here today to speak to you about the budget as an orange county teacher i began my career with ocps in 1985. after 10 years and three children i left education for a career in real estate because the demands of education were too great to be the kind of mom i wanted to be to my own children when the real estate market suffered a setback i came back to teaching
026and education our education had changed and technology was just coming to the forefront of educating our children so i sought my master's degree at the time in education media design and technology to enhance my high school mathematics classroom with technology as a single mother of four i struggled financially and once again returned to real estate to support my family four years ago with my children finally raised i returned to teaching once again to make ends meet i continue to work part-time in real estate i love what i do despite working harder than ever before last year the state provided money to raise the starting pay of teachers in florida when all was said and done i found myself with 18 years of experience a master's degree that the state does not recognize despite its profound
027contribution to my students i was making 625 dollars more per year than a beginner teacher with the proposed twenty five dollar cost of living increase my salary this year will be forty eight thousand one hundred and fifty dollars i will never make as much money as teachers that i formally worked with years ago because orange county apparently stopped valuing their teachers again i love what i do and i would i would just like to receive compensation that is more commensurate to the work i do last year i got an 825 dollar increase in pay but no bonuses for my effectiveness in in the classroom from orange county or the state i worked in difficult conditions as a hybrid teacher my understanding was that the state was providing a one thousand dollar bonus for those who
028taught last year while i appreciate the fact that you want to pay this to all teachers this money was for last year when you turn around and propose this as part of my compensation for this year it's insulting please find a way to adequately compensate the teachers who give so much to the children of orange county thank you all right let's hear from miss cox followed by santa javis i believe miss cox welcome bonnie cox 32818 i am not present this evening to solicit for a pay raise for i am cognizant that ocps or any other district for that matter has the financial means to pay my colleagues and i what we are worth the value of a great teacher is priceless you all will decide on raises for yourselves i am here to remind
029you that we are all here for the children this board continuously proclaims that you all value and appreciate teachers however oftentimes your actions speak otherwise your actions suggest that you hold leadership personnel and administrators in high esteem as you should but do not forget your teachers when an adult is asked about their school experience it is rare that they mention an administrator although i must say mark mike armbruster he is one of them majority of the time what adults will mention is a teacher in fact i am a teacher because of all the phenomenal teachers i experienced as i traveled through ocps as a student from kindergarten through 12th grade i am here to request that this board find ways to demonstrate that you truly value teachers maybe that could be by not gutting the
030safety manual that protects us and our students maybe it's by finding funds to assist us in paying our recurring bills i believe where there is a will there is a way and i feel confident that this board can find a way after all as david putnam says a country that fails to value its teachers fails to value its future thank you let's hear from santa help me out with your last name if you wouldn't mind my name is sunnah hafiz s-a-n-a not sure where the t came from oh i am so sorry yes i apologize so once again my name is senna hafiz i am with the orlando dream defenders i'm a university of florida alumni and a community organizer first i want to say that we stand with the black and brown residents of
031the historic senior park and demanding that their voices finally be heard and respected i am here to discuss the way that the budget has been used to begin a new magnet school in winter park without any care for the desires of the black and round constituents winter park is a historic black neighborhood with one of the first public schools for black children in the united states but today there are only 20 to 50 black kids left in the area due to gentrification and disenfranchisement this is also why critical race theory is essential to be taught in schools these families have been fighting for a school winter park for generations it's a slap in the face to this community to find out that a new modeling and simulation magnet school is coming to the area the
032residents and organizers have pleaded to be a part of this process in determining what kind of curriculum and type of magnet school will be built in winter park the students that live near the school and their parents deserve to have a say in what kind of school is coming and if that school does not serve the existing community it is simply another tool of gentrification to push out black families community organizers such as lawanda with equity council have been fighting for years and were shut out of meetings and lied to multiple times the only reason we know for as a fact that this school is coming is because an informal announcement was made to lawanda not to the families in winter park not to the residents the parents of the children that live in that
033district lawanda has been slandered with racially tinged insults as she demands the rights of black winter park residents to be respected additionally earlier in this meeting a measure was sorry one second my phone is glitching a preventative measure was seen to show success a young girl herself said one student is enough of a reason to go through this tenting this testing this preventative measure the school physical why is a mask mandate any different it's a preventative measure to keep our students safe it's very clear that you value your comfort more than the lives of black and brown students dear deaths don't matter to the budget there's no budgetary items that's fine i'm thank you concluding so all right thank you so much so i'm not allowed to finish well not on the subject of math
034but if you want to talk that's all i had to say on that all right thank you i appreciate you being here my final statement is on behalf of cfar c4 has made it clear that they expect that the budget reflects the desires of the residents and they also have made it very clear once again that they will work day and night to make sure no one is re-elected that doesn't respect that thank you thank you all right let's take our next speaker and that would be kate hammond followed by david grimm is miss hammond here oh hello welcome i'm sorry good evening sorry i'll try to keep only one of us speaking kate hammond gilson court 32835 district 4. excuse me many of us can agree that late july has a sunday night feeling
035for many educators there's a shared exhaustion in this room between all of us and i appreciate you i hope you appreciate all the teachers who are speaking here tonight i should be enjoying my last week off with benjamin but he won't take a bottle so he's here i'm here i hope you can understand how valuable this time is to me i should be enjoying my time with benjamin but i feel the weight of a district that doesn't care about myself or my husband who have given a collective 27 years to this district the last two bargaining sessions were messy and unprofessional and i thought very not civil there was a disrespect and arrogance displayed and when you speak to our bargaining team who are ocps educators without civility you are speaking to all 14 000
036educators without civility i received my back to school letter today and it was noted we would accelerate our students academically through rigorous and engaging standards based coursework getting students back on track with social and emotional learning and high expectations and restorative practices and coursework that is data driven i in turn expect the same from ocps data tells us that institutions that invest in their employees are more successful these are my expectations if ocps can pour money into different computer programs and our top heavy administrative roster they can certainly fund the people inside the classroom every single day last year angry parents stood before you in particular our esc and esau students parents demanded better esc teachers in particular face both physical and emotionally daunting challenges every single day you promise better refusing to budget raises
037for those teachers is a failure to those students and parents as a parent myself i cannot help but wonder why my son's i ready score seems more important than the women and the men that stand before him every day his teachers deserve better he deserves better as a parent i care i demand that investment in my son's education you fund what you value lip service doesn't pay my bills as one of the largest school districts in the nation our pay scale dwarves in comparison to similar size districts i myself will be teaching a new curriculum this year but i will no longer be able to afford to work unpaid away from my own children i know i am worth more lastly during negotiations your chief negotiator talked about the math of the budget and the
038insurance quote-unquote adjustments let's call them insurance increases if any teacher is planning on having a child i am happy to share benjamin's nicu bill from january the cost of my delivery the cost of prenatal specialist his physical therapist his occupational therapy my unpaid days off the real cost of these insurance adjustments because they are a burden to my family then i can share how i spent benjamin's first days folks our district is bleeding teachers bleeding them i spent the first day of benjamin's life on microsoft teams in the nicu talking to my students because we could not find substitutes and when you're postpartum you cannot separate the difference between how you love your own kids and your students thank you thank you so much all right david grimm david graham 32832 in district 2. that's
039member lopez's district i'm a former teacher of 21 years all in orange county public schools i'm also a proud graduate of colonial high school and for over 30 years ocps has been a huge part of my life i'm a parent of an ocps student a husband of an ocfps teacher and a concerned citizen as well as an advocate for teachers students parents and this wonderful community many wonder what led me to my decision to leave ocps but the reality is i have never left you see education is my passion and this passion passion will never fade history shows that this budget meeting is a formality but i still believe there is some information that needs to be shared last week the orange county teachers union declared an impasse as another round of bargaining demonstrated the
040district's priority in their annual budget this is the third impasse since 2013 and the fourth in the past 11 years the district has shown what they value sadly the teachers of ocps haven't felt value for quite some time really a 25 cost of living adjustment you invest in what you value the following data is the average allocation on various categories since the 2016 2017 school year the average cost of around 400 school-based admin 156 000 recently over 200 administrators were classified as senior management bringing the total to near 300 where most florida districts include less than 10. this gives nearly 20 percent or what's equal to twenty four thousand to sixty three thousand dollars per year to these individuals retirement funds curriculum training and technology over 115 million dollars the offices of the superintendent deputy
041superintendent chief academic officer chief of staff and chief of communications officer over 33 million dollars the average cost of fourteen thousand dollars fourteen thousand instructional employees eighty four thousand dollars you invest in what you value the average revenue during this same time period of the one mill tax voted on by the citizens of orange county over 141 million dollars many of the other large districts in florida such as broward county have designated a large percentage of this money directly to instructional compensation this gives up to eight thousand dollars eight thousand dollars excuse me added to annual salary supplements for teachers in broward county school board members i am asking that you create a committee of orange county citizens to oversee how the one mill dollars are allocated in ocps so that when this referendum is
042on the 2022 ballot there's accountability and that the majority of the money is allocated for all instructional compensation other than parent involvement there is no larger factor in a student success than a teacher during the 20-20-21 coven 19 school year the parents and community members of orange county realize this the question now is what do you value your investment will ring loud and clear thank you mr graham all right let's hear from rita harris followed by rebecca jacquez hello everybody is it okay for me to move the microphone down yes it is okay all right my name is rita harris 13547as road that's orlando three two eight three seven i'm gonna be really honest with you this is the first time i have attended a school board meeting i don't know if i should say
043this in a room full of teachers but i homeschooled my daughter not because of teachers though and i always make a point to say that because my daughter right now is going to ucf she's very smart she's on the dean's list and it has always been because of my friends who were teachers and that really speaks to how selfless they are because even when they're not getting paid they would still take time to help me any questions i had my friends who were educators always took the time to sit down with me and give me any assistance that i needed and hearing all these teachers talk about the lack of respect and the lack of pay they get really makes me want to cry because i think of all the things they go through i
044think of going through september 11th with my daughter and she's just one little person that i'm trying to shield from all the negativity in the world and these people have a classroom of little souls that they have to protect from all the evil and then we have school shootings and we have all these things so to keep it on topic i agree with all of the comments before me saying that there needs to be allocation to pay teachers more they deserve so much more i mean teachers should be making 10 digits easily i mean it's a you have to be highly skilled to do the job you got to put up with a lot and it takes a lot of time also i agree with what sauna said about the young lady and i'm just
045gonna make one real point here i see that you're following cdc guidelines right here and i ask that you do the same when it comes to masks thank you all right i'm gonna in case we have more people here to speak on math i know those are short comments but we are going to stick to the subject on the agenda or every meeting from now until the at least the end of the year we will be hearing mass comments so in order to stay on schedule please if your comments are related to the budget we'd love to hear from you or anything else on the agenda but mass are not on the agenda let's hear from rebecca rebecca thank you and help me with your last name and then drew pout my name is rebecca
046jacks i live at 13837 ancilla boulevard windermere florida my daughter is a rising seventh grader at bridgewater middle school she participated in launch ed for the entire school school year last year excuse me and i actually did come here today to speak about mask but as i reflect upon the opportunity that you have i think in looking at the budget as someone shared earlier there's absolutely when there's a will there is a way so as you look at the budget spending for this coming year i ask you to consider the value and the priority that can be given to fighting some of the things that are coming from leadership and within our state from up above i also ask for you to please indulge me in reading a statement from a friend of mine who
047is actually the president of the democratic public education caucus of florida after the past school year it's more critical than ever that our children receive quality education face to face with their teachers the goal for the coming school year should be to keep as many students in school as possible to that end the democratic public education caucus of florida calls for every eligible person to receive a covid 19 vaccination and for the mandatory wearing of mask in elementary and middle schools i'm sorry i don't know how to be more clear i that is not on the budget i don't not on the agenda i'm asking you to spend on resources and i'm telling you this and that's not really related and we are going to do this every single meeting so please abide by the
048rules thank you let's take the next speaker that's not on the agenda but thank you it's not that i don't agree with you i want to be clear about that but we do have rules and we follow those rules let's hear from drew followed by matthew hazel i believe that's how are you welcome to see welcome good to see you drew boutz six haverstraw avenue three two eight one two i'd like to start by speaking giving you some quotes from 2019 school board remember gallows said we don't like 27 of our teachers not having a living wage and being overburdened with the cost of living here in orange county and we want to do better remember lopez said i remember school board member karen school remember angie and myself apologizing because we did not speak
049up enough i think that this time we're going to have more feedback we're going to have more experience remember gallo at a later meeting said you deserve so much more than you're currently being paid we're on the same side our end goal is the same to get you more money to get you a better raise you said take the fight to tallahassee we did several thousand of us and as i walked ex-member castor dental for about half a mile she knows 14 of us stayed for another day myself included meet with senators and representatives as well as make our presence known in the rotunda as they entered the session we've made our plight known the governor later declared the year of the teacher which was good pr but that's about it moving forward base salary
050increases later that did nothing for veterans except increased comp compression then kovid struck we stepped up we put ourselves on the front line we worked tirelessly to teach hybrid and face to face with mass we heard we didn't know we'll do better in the future now you know and now is the future will you live up to those words our budget documents continually compare the budget to the cpi-adjusted peak of and show less purchasing power using that to rationalize underpaying your employees and causing them to be victims of that same inflation when many of our teachers make less than those from the period with similar experience how about you calculate how much we're being shorted then adjust for cpi and publish that for the public to say each year i don't think you're going to
051have sympathy anymore at that point i've emailed public comments regarding how the proposed insurance copay and deductible increases will lower short-term utilization costs but studies show missed preventative care ends up causing higher hospitalization in the long run we have to stop being pennywise but dollar stupid this hurts employees finances as what and wellness as well as the long-term stability of the insurance fund when analyzing per-pupil expenditures district indirect costs per pupil accounts for more than five percent of our costs while miami-dade broward palm beach osceola all spend less than three percent at the district compared to the other four large districts and our four neighboring districts only volusia spends more money per pupil outside the school rough calculations based on ft and per pupil spending say that two percent difference would be around 38 million
052recurring dollars that could be spent in the schools on things such as teacher salary we're a large district with the advantage of economies of scale which should result in less overhead not more we can't be the one thing that you're constantly saying there's no money for but not controlling costs elsewhere you've consistently underpaid your employees and with a seller's housing market and skyrocketing local rent your employees are suffering are you going to do better as promised thank you sir is it matthew hazel nicholas anderson will be next welcome i was also asked to remind you as you have people on the phone i tell you what can you pull the mic up a little bit i don't want you to spend everything i was asked to remind you have people waiting on the phone as
053well i believe i thought we have one caller two yes and free agenda we rotate back and forth i think what we have definitely done is now that people can come in and thank you for reminding me but for the folks that have taken the time to come down here we've been taking them first but thank you for reminding me we will definitely get to everybody on the phone matthew hazel 10108 match luck drive orlando florida 3-2-8-2-1 shame shame on all of you after your teachers left everything on the field for you last year in a year where social security is raising their coal as six percent given inflation you didn't offer six percent or three or two or one or a half a percent or a tenth of a percent you offered close to
054a 20th of a percent cola to your 14 000 teachers a cola of 25 you budgeted zero dollars for raises that budget zero dollars for raises earlier a teacher came up here and said she didn't envy your seats up there on the dice you have to earn those seats and you have to show your voters that you deserve them i live in district four i vote and if you don't change course and you don't budget raises for your employees who went above and beyond for you in the middle of a pandemic that you will prove to me and you will prove to every voter here and you will prove to every voter in orange county that you don't deserve to sit where you're sitting and come next election all of us will remember and please
055don't thank me for speaking and please don't thank me for teaching words don't mean anything actions matter so act or don't but know that we're watching you nicholas nicholas anderson thank you followed by ashley i am going to butcher this name too hopefully there's only one ashley welcome sir good evening my name is nicholas anderson i live at 1084-6 waterford court orlando florida 3-2-8-2-1 i think the most important thing that we need to understand is that when we are here again to talk about the budget as teachers and when i talk about the budget all the time as a member of the bargaining unit bargaining team for cta we need to remember this is not just a discussion about this year's budget this is a discussion about how this year's budget is going to impact
056the future of this district and the students who attend the schools here when we hear continuously that there is no money in the budget it needs to be understood there is no money in the budget because you didn't put any there there is no money in the budget as it is written and as it is written every year we have line items that are always over well in excess of what the expectation is year over year over year over year we go back and we see what the projected budget is what the actual spent is and there is always a massive difference between the two and the difference ends up being saved conservative budgeting practices are an important part of the healthy fiduciary responsibility of everyone in this room and is something that teachers and
057students and community members need but there is a point at which we go beyond conservative and we become miserly especially when we see that in many cases for example with the insurance trust projected in the red ends in the black we see constantly the way in which we are told we need to save money in case if there is an emergency if this last year has not been an emergency i don't know what is and yet continually we cannot spend any more we cannot alter our budget priorities what we need is a budget that is more in line with the reality of what is actually spent and when that has happened suddenly recurring dollars can be found they can't be found if you continue to write it with the same mentality that it has been
058written because there is an emergency right now and the emergency is every year the amount of vacancies that we have is increasing and it will continue to get worse as now we are adjusted for income more expensive than san francisco or new york city we are now becoming one of the fastest growing most unaffordable communities in the united states of america meanwhile cities with similar metropolitan areas as us pay teachers 5 10 12 20 grand more what we are asking for is a little bit more so we can keep our head above waters and what's responding is you see those classrooms emptying we build a school system from the classroom out because if you fill the front office with administration and you fill all of the secretary positions that's all very important but if there
059are no teachers in that room you don't have a school and we are on track to become just like hawaii is right now with a revolving door of teachers who come in for a year or two bright-eyed and bushy-tailed right out of education school and then they're gone again and that is the exact future that we are looking at and that is what's happening today and it has to begin by going back and changing the way that we approach and think about things ashley followed by well show me robinson welcome hi my name is ashley frame and i have been a teacher with ocps for the past six years i'll be starting my seventh this year one year ago the district announced that they would delay teacher pay at the beginning of the year i
060frantically applied for mortgage assistance looked in my freezer to assess my food supply and investigated what i need to do to get help paying the electric bill i thought it couldn't get worse i was wrong when i've explained to my friends and family that we have been offered a 25 raise they laugh they imagine the worst and they go a week right when i say no their eyes grow wide and they say a month and i still have to shake my head i explained to my mother that it was technically more than a penny but less than two cents an hour at the height of the recession in 2008 while i was working in retail even then i was offered a quarter a dollar a raise an hour no one can escape the headlines that
061the price of everything from rent to groceries is skyrocketing my income based student loan payment has largely stayed the same as my career and an educator it was projected to go up because they thought that in your career you would make more money you would get further from the poverty line i haven't it is shameful that the district has neglected the thousands of teachers that work for ocps i urge you to dig deeper look harder and show up for your teachers like they show up for this community every day thank you thank you good evening i'm shami robinson orlando florida three two eight one zero i'm going to go ahead and put my olympic gold medal on so i feel validated as a teacher here in orange county and i think that's important i've been
062teaching for orange county public schools for a decade i've come in given speeches in school board meetings on behalf of our young people and i'm an advocate for our young people i also represent team usa on the racial and social justice council so what i stand before you guys today is a lot more than just about the students and the salaries but it's actually about our social emotional health and our well-being and i have buried five of our students and i am currently on a legal absence sitting here trying to decide do i even come back into the classroom because what is most important is our health and our well-being of not only the educators but our young people as well i know that we have a mental health program that we're going to be
063working out with the sheriff's department i can tell you guys that i started the yoga program in orange county i designed the program that donna taught at edgewater high school i created what's called the circle every friday and the kids sat in the circle and they asked me to make that a club at dr phillips and i was denied making it a club but what i decided to do is i decided to make a non-profit call all ears and i decided to go to the federal government and what i'm going to do is i'm going to make this a non-profit that's worldwide and it's going to be a safe place where our teenagers can come and sit and talk that we can put in every single school district what i would like is for orange
064county public schools to be the school district where we start to get it right we can talk about mask all day and we can go sit in the classroom with the kids but i'm supposed to go tomorrow instead of a third grade classroom but what am i supposed to tell the kids i don't even know how our teachers are feeling this way in terms of the salaries that's why i don't have to have a speech as my lifestyle many of you guys know in the legal department the things that i've complained about the way that minority teachers and students have been treated and i have to be honest since we're being here and being transparent the black and hispanic teachers were left out the best and brightest i was a highly effective teacher and i
065missed out on forty thousand dollars and i sat beside two of my white male colleagues who spoke about buying a truck and fixing a fence where i sat with another woman who was trying to feed her five daughters and i'm an olympic gold medalist saying i represent this country and the athletes right now tiana daniels who went to our school she's about to represent us in 100 meter dash that's who i took the phone call with our athletes now can go out there in tokyo stand and give a test and demonstrate about racial and social justice based upon me sitting every day on friday at three o'clock p.m leading team usa about what's great about this country and what's great about orange county is that we have some of the best young people with the
066best imaginations the best educators the best opportunities we're the eighth largest school district in the nation we should be the example to the country of how to get it right ten of the largest school districts five of them are here in the nation five of them are here in the state of florida and none of the other five repeat themselves that means we actually in the state of florida design and affect the united states of america and i finally had to come and speak because i think that we need to be the example of getting right but we first have to take care of our children as well as our teacher and it's not just about a dollar it is definitely about our mental so that's what i come to say so thank you so
067much i appreciate the time thank you all right let's take our first caller our first caller is alexandria welcome hi my name is alexandra maroca zip code 32806. last year teachers were heroes we were building the plane as we flew it last year i did three jobs i taught in person i taught fully launched classes and i taught hybrid you commended us on taking taking on such a daunting task yet here we are begging for a livable wage in 2021 let's look at some facts ocps is the ninth largest school district in the united states yet we rank 49th in the nation for pay ocps is the fourth largest district in florida and we rank 18th for pay how embarrassing for those who make the decisions we teach in one of the lowest paid states
068yet ocps's vision is to ensure every student has a promising and successful future that's a lot they expect so much from us and gives so little in return what about my future what about my child's future the cost of basic necessities have gone up drastically since we went through these negotiations two years ago median home prices in the orlando area have gone up 19 in a year coupons for free coffee from mcdonald's won't cover the increase in my property taxes here's the thing the school board knows all of these facts the lawyers are superintendent they know and they show us how much they care by giving us heavily taxed bonuses they're going to tell us that the money isn't there and that it's impossible teachers think about all of the things we did last year
069that initially seemed impossible we got it done over and over we have heard them say you we have heard you say that you'd have to dip into the reserves to give us raises how do you think we were able to teach during a pandemic and still provide the quality of education that ocps expect do you think we just had that energy stored up inside us no we used up our reserves now you can use up some of yours we want a raise that is consistent with the amount of work we do for our students their families and the community thank you thank you let's take our next caller our next caller is michelle welcome hello hello welcome hi it's michelle ramirez hi first before you start the timer i just want to say welcome to
070stelder to the board congratulations my address is 66 6612 hilltop road orlando florida 32810 i was finally able to purchase a 60 year old home just before the housing boom it is the only home i could afford and it needs a lot of work on my salary i never thought it would happen but thanks to student loans being put on hold the stimulus checks and a generous friend and most of all a car accident settlement i did it i literally had to break my back to buy a home and i still have to have someone living with me to help me with the bills repair costs petrify me if my water pipes go i'll be bathing in my neighbor's hose i want all of you to think about your struggle for those of you who
071are teachers did you struggle on your salary or depend on others to help dr jenkins think back to your teacher salary did it ever add up did you ever just want to go do something fun to relieve the stress of the job and be worried about the cost or charge it on a credit card and have to pay it off over a year or did you just sit down thigh stare off into space and grade papers instead did you ever have to choose between health care or car repair did you think that was fair i don't like to brag i have always had to work hard for everything in my life but right now i'm going to brag about some things because i earned them number one highly effective since year one of my profession
072number two promoted to department chair beginning of year two number three recommended for clinical educator certification and had my admin bring district personnel in my classroom as a model in year three number four mentor and intern supervisor since year four number five recognized as a leader within the district in year five number six runner-up teacher of the year in year six number seven teacher of the year in year seven and finally i will receive a salary of about two hundred dollars more than a first year teacher i mentor in year eight of my profession now the last one isn't a brag it's a heartbreaking embarrassment veteran teachers have been continually slapped in the face and my mask can no longer hide it i'm so happy for our new teachers but all of the hard work
073i did for merit pay was just erased before any of you or your staff go back to the bargaining table in the future before any of you cast a vote on a salary package or a budget remember your past and how you felt and consider operating with this last bit in mind no one who works for the very future of this world deserves to struggle for their own thank you thank you all right do we have any more callers all right we thank you all for being here i know i'm not supposed to say that but i do thank you for being here and i think this is probably not the time to get into a dialogue over what we can and can't do but i look forward to us proceeding forward and hopefully there's
074a point where we work together and can do better than we are right now let's take the next item on the agenda which is dr jenkins budget thank you madam chair doreen conklin who calculino who is our interim chief financial officer assisted by judith padres budget director and certainly by rick collins our former cfo will walk us through the tentative budget just to remind her the task tonight is to adopt total millage and the tentative budget miss concolino thank you superintendent good evening school board chair board members i'm going to bring you your fy 22 tentative budget we'll start with our agenda here's our agenda for today's presentation we will review the proposed millage proposed budget and ultimately you will need to adopt the total millage and then adopt the 2021-22 tentative budget we will
075also establish a date for the final hearing when you're talking about millage rates you're talking about property taxes and property taxes impact both residential and commercial property who is responsible for each component that determines your property taxes just value or a property's market value comes from the property appraiser the save our homes cap is established by the legislature also establishes exemptions such as the homestead exemption and they determine the millage rate which is then approved by the board on slide five are our property tax values to help fund the upcoming school year this slide is based on the economic and demographic research estimates from march 2021. last year we had a 7.5 increase in taxable values this year our taxable values increased by 2.5 percent based upon the certified tax roll by our property appraiser
076the current projection as you can see is fairly steady growth of around five percent per year over the next five years this year the state legislature deviated from their practice of rolling back the required local effort to allow for an increase in taxable property values to fund the needs of education the required local effort is a specific amount that we must levy in order to receive state funding this is equalized statewide so that if our assessments go up our state revenues go down discretionary millage is the maximum amount allowed by law because we levy the full amount we receive 4.3 million in additional state dollars to get us up to the state average per student additional vote voted millage is the amount approved by the voters in august of 2018. capital projects millage is the
077maximum amount allowed by law to support our capital program overall there is a rate reduction of 0.12 mills or 1.75 percent this may seem like a contradiction to the previous slide where stated there is no rollback of the rle this year this reduction is because statewide taxable values increased compared to the original state estimate used in the first fefp calculation the legislature approves a certain dollar amount to be generated by the required local effort the significant increase in property values would have resulted in more local funding beyond what was approved by the legislature and therefore a reduction was made to the rle to generate only the dollar amount approved during the legislative session this is the history of orange county public schools millage rates required local efforts set by the state is in the red
078rate in the middle of each bar you can see that the rle has decreased by 1.936 mill since fy 10. the legislature sets the millage rate school districts are required to levy based upon feedback from the board in fy 20 this slide was added which represents the percentage increase in the property value statewide as compared to the percentage increase in revenues generated by the required local effort throughout the state as you can see in fiscal year 17 and 18 the legislature did not allow any increase in the revenues from the required local effort in fiscal years 19 to 21 they have only allowed revenue increases based upon new properties added to the tax roll the legislature halted their policy at least for the current year and has allowed the average rle millage rate to remain
079the same as the previous year this is to address the revenue shortfalls at the state level on slide 9 the rollback rate is a calculation that eliminates the impact of increased evaluation it is used only in the advertisement of the budget and in the millage adoption language rolled back rate we're required to disclose this to you the required local effort is 2.89 under the rolled back rate the total millage is one point three one percent under the rolled back rate with save our homes residential property can only increase at three percent or cpi consumer price index whichever is less cpi is only 1.4 percent so that is the maximum increase for applicable assessed values with the increase of 1.4 in assessed value and a decrease in the tax rate of one point seven five percent
080the homeowner of a two hundred and twenty nine thousand dollar home would pay six dollars less in taxes commercial property is not limited by save our homes when the increase in property values is combined with a 1.75 reduction in millage rate the change in taxes paid for the owner of a piece of commercial property valued at one million is an increase of fifty eight dollars free per year or about five dollars per month next we'll discuss the proposed annual budget on slide 14 you can see the budget process is continuous year round remember the budget is a plan for the year we must adopt a millage and approve a total amount for the budget how the dollars are spent is not set in stone it can be amended throughout the year our budget summary identifies
081items that impact the district budget the most noteworthy aspect of the new budget year is the elimination of the hold harmless provision or 54.6 million for ocps the hold harmless provided a substantial increase in per student funding in the prior year saving the district from adverse consequences from the loss of enrollment due to profit 19. in 2022 the district will have more students with less money board members continue to identify staff as a priority and this budget includes non-recurring bonuses or supplements for employees as you know categorical funds are restricted and must be spent as intended this budget includes an increase in the teacher salary categorical funding of 3.2 million which will provide for a minimal recurring increase in classroom teacher salaries also included in the proposed budget is an increase of 1.2 million in
082the mental health assistance allocation which aligns with the board's priority to support social and emotional learning the temporary infusion of federal funding has contributed to an increase in fund balance by allowing operating expenses directly related to the pandemic be shifted to s or funding the 2022 proposed budget maintains focus on the district's strategic plan and preserves academic programs retains highly qualified teachers and projects arts athletics and student activities thankfully our local citizens value public education and continue to support the special millage the spell special millage is folded into the operating budget and treated as recurring revenue to support our current level of operations here is a summary of the five major funds that make up the operating budget each fund has unique types of revenues and appropriations designed to accomplish specific purposes the capital projects
083fund does not include carryover project balances they will be amended in september at the final hearing special revenue now includes our food service program as well as other special revenue our general fund the general fund is the operating budget of the school district the primary source of funding comes from the florida education finance program or fefp per student funding is equalized statewide equalization means that increased revenue from local sources does not necessarily cause an overall increase in funding for instance an increase in required local effort revenues is offset by a reduction in state revenues however the additional voted millage is not equalized which means we keep all revenues generated to benefit the students of ocps on slide 20 is the actual fte for past years along with the projection for next year our current projection
084for fy22 is 204 thousand 857 fte an increase of 4006 fte over the fourth calculation of two hundred thousand eight fifty one this forecast incorporates all k-12 students including charter school mckay and family empowerment scholarship students however it does not include vpk students it is worth noting house bill 7045 eliminated the gardner scholarship program and will fold any gardner scholarship students residing in orange county into the district's fte similar to the family empowerment scholarship students since these students are not included in our present enrollment forecast it is possible the district will experience an increase in fte a student reserve allocation has been set aside for this purpose and will be handled as pass-through funds this graph represents the total state appropriations operating and fixed capital outlay as a percentage of the total over the last
085four years the first grouping education includes early learning public schools community colleges and universities as you can see the percentage of budget slightly increased from the prior year it went from 28.5 of the budget to 28.6 percent of the budget this graph includes all funds including the infusion of federal funding this graph represents just the education appropriations as a percentage of the total over the last four years and compares the 2021 first calculation to the 2022 first calculation as you can see in the second grouping less money has been appropriated to public schools the reduction is primarily due to the statewide decline decline in student enrollment on slide 23 we have a comparison of funding per student over the last 14 years this graph is based upon the second calculation for all years for this
086year our regular per student funding is 466 dollars above july 2007 second calculation shown in orange or 6.37 increase for f for 2022 regular per student funding is 29 above last year's amount shown in orange this equates to 0.38 increase in per student funding note that this chart is based on a point in time the july 2020 funding is based on the second calculation where we were estimating 209 400 students the chart is intended to demonstrate a trend over time using the same data point each year and to show the public that we are still trailing behind in buying power from 2007 including our special millage shown in dark blue our total funding increased 66 dollars per student even with the special millage and including all the categoricals you can see we have we still
087have a reduction in purchasing power of 714 dollars per student over the july 2007 amen amount without the voters in orange county supporting the special millage we would have a much larger shortfall in needed revenues the cpi or inflation factor being used is less than two percent on average over the past 15 years here is a graph of the state general revenue in support of education the percentage of revenue going to education decreased from 51.3 percent to 48.8 percent the percentage remains well below the pre-lottery amount of over 60 percent and at nearly the same level as during the great recession this graph shows you the percentage of general revenue going to support k-12 schools over the past nine years you can see the percentage of state general revenue supporting public schools has decreased this
088year sly 26 are the lottery appropriations in the early years of the florida lottery 60 to 70 percent of lottery dollars coming to education were for public schools you see the green bars that number is now only 35 percent there are no dollars allocated again this year for the school recognition program of the 35 percent coming to public schools none of these dollars would be considered educational enhancement 87 percent supports the regular fefp funding and 13 is for the district's post-secondary program the orange or russ color bar at the top is primarily funding the bright futures scholarship program here is a breakdown of our estimated revenues by source there was very little change in these percentages from last year appropriations slide 21 excuse me slide 29 identifies financial implications that need to be considered when
089approving the district's fy 22 budget it is difficult to estimate fte enrollment changes the pandemic has provided parents an opportunity to explore other options for their child's education and we have seen an increase in enrollment in virtual education again our funding is based on a projected enrollment of eight 204 and fifty seven fte an increase of four thousand and six students over the fourth calculation of the prior year if the projected enrollment is not realized funding will be impacted the legislature increased frs rates by nearly one percent the impact to the general fund is about 8.4 million if we add in food and nutrition services as well as grants the total impact is 9.5 million to all funds the family empowerment scholarship program began in 2020 with an impact with an impact to ocps of
09010.6 million in 2021 the legislature more than doubled the number of scholarships available and the impact to ocps was 3 323 scholarships going to private schools resulted resulting in a reduction to the district of 21.5 million dollars student enrollment has projected family empowerment scholarship enrollment of 3997 for this year with an estimated financial impact of 25.7 million to ocps as for funding is being infused into the general fund budget freeing up non-recurring dollars for other purposes functional appropriations remain fairly constant around 75.5 percent of all appropriations are in the instruction and instructional support functions the instruction and instructional support area shows the greatest increase in appropriations this year and now judith padres will present the capital budget the total capital budget is 1.4 billion the primary re the primary revenue sources are sales or tax
091property tax and impact fees this budget includes minimal state support for capital the primary uses are for comprehensive renovations new schools capital renewal and dev service and operations this graph reflects our five-year forecast of capital revenues the light blue line for other state revenue shows our c-o-n-d-s projected appropriation these are generated from auto license fees and mostly used for safety purposes we are anticipating to receive 8.5 million the pico line in burgundy shows the funding that we will receive from the state as passed through for charter capital the estimated amount is 8.75 million as a reminder there are no guarantees that the legislature will continue to fully fund charter capital from pico funds moving into the future the gold bar represents our sales tax revenue projections we're estimating 233 million for fiscal year 22. this
092is an increase from what we had previously presented in the last workshop due to the march and april collections which came closer to fy 19 than what had been previously anticipated in addition we're also using edr projections as a basis we will continue to review our numbers to ensure they align with collections and appropriations the dark blue bar shows our impact fees impact fees are difficult to predict we're anticipating to receive 53.3 million for fiscal year 22. the orange bar represents our one and a half capital mill revenue projections this is the equivalent of 247.8 million this graph illustrates our proposed capital project use of funds for the upcoming year carry carry forward funds have not been incorporated into the budget the largest portion of our budget is used for deaf service at 31.59 percent
093follow for this followed by district y capital at 30.64 which includes expenditures related to district-wide construction functional equity safety ancillary painting capital renewal and site improvements and the third largest use of funds is additional schools at 15.05 percent on slide 35 the proposed capital plan re reflects the following funding for 23 relief schools 13 elementary schools 1k 8 5 middle schools and 4 high schools the opening year is based on recommendations received from the advanced planning committee functional equity these are projects primarily intended to add permanent instructional space and reduce some portable instructional spaces allocate funding to a to a list of pre-2003 sales tax schools these are schools that never made it to the original sales tax list because of the recent construction work at the time funding is also included for repurposing schools
094and capital renewal in accordance with the referendum a portion of the sales tax revenues is transferred to the capital renewal fund to cover major system replacement needs this plan continues to fund that transfer based on anticipated projects we're projecting that the capital renewal fund will be fully committed by fiscal year this are our proposed five-year new school openings our cip is funding schools based on the opening year recommended by the advanced planning committee we have three new schools opening next month following by five schools three elementary schools 1k8 and one middle school opening in august of 2022 on slide 37 in august of 2023 we're opening one middle school in august of 2024 we're planning to open three elementary schools one middle school and one high school as mentioned at the budget work session in
095june the opening year for three of the sites included in this slide has changed from what's in the fy 21 adopted cip site 129 is now replacing site 45 and due to this new location the ap recommended opening year is changing to accommodate the construction schedule site 118 is being proposed to open in this change in the opening year is due to limitations related to finding a site in the target zone also in this proposed plan the opening year for sci 50 is changing to 2024 due to overcrowding and growth in the area again the opening years in this proposed plan alain aligned with the advanced planning committee recommendations on slide 38 comprehensive projects that are in construction this slide only shows that the projects that are moving into the construction phase this year orange
096technical college at orlando and building eight at hunger for elementary school as you know we have projects that are in their second year of construction those are not reflected on this life such as meadow woods middle school the next slide comprehensive projects in design the design of orange technical college at mid florida west side and winter park is projected to be completed in fiscal year 23. these are part of the final school projects from the original list of 136 sites in addition five pre-2003 sales tax projects will be moving into the design phase during fiscal year 22. those are colonial high school howard middle school layview middle school three points elementary school and winter park high school on slide 40 our proposed cip plan also includes the funding for buses which are on a 10-year
097replacement cycle funding for portable moves and leasing which included which is included to help manage population fluctuations of the 28.4 million 10.1 million is for leasing and 18.3 million is for portable moves and installations charter school funding which is just a flow through from the state and there are dollars again included in the plan for district-wide painting needs and for digital technology replacement which addresses replacement of classroom technology and digital curriculum related infrastructure this concludes the capital portion of our budget presentation the debt service fund this fund on slide 42 is used to retire the indebtedness the school district has incurred for construction projects the primary source of funds is a transfer from the capital projects fund there is no significant changes in the debt service fund our special revenue fund the special revenue fund
098for past years included the district's food service program beginning in 2022 and based on new reporting standards the district is required to add special revenue other funds to the financial statements these other funds are primarily school internal accounts and extended day programs the food service program is supported primarily from federal reimbursement and usda commodities and also from fees charged for meals served food nutrition services will expect to end fy 21 with a gain and fund balance the usda has granted flexibilities that have allowed program operators to continue serving free meals to all children and this will continue through 2022 economy of scale and food preparation along with federal reimbursement for all student meals has allowed us to operate at a gain there are no changes in meal prices for next school year slide 46 points
099out that's pres excuse me that special revenue other funds are restricted or committed for specific purposes school internal accounts are used to account for monies collected and disbursed by each school through fundraisers and other student related extracurricular and co-curricular activities extended day accounts are used to account for all monies collected and dispersed in support of the program the extended days program before and after school activity provides a safe and supportive environment for all children the main source of revenue is user fees internal service fund the internal service fund accounts for the district's employee benefit trust fund property casualty loss fund and printing services fund the employee benefit trust fund revenue comes from board contributions for employee coverage and deductions for employees and dependent coverage the expenditures of this fund include payment for medical claims prescriptions
100and mental health through esser funding the district was able to reimburse the employee benefit trust fund for the cost of covet claims and prescriptions totaling 12.8 million the district currently offers three plan options with one of the employee only options available at no cost to the employee board contributions for employee-only coverage is 9289 dollars per employee the property casualty loss fund includes payments for property liability workers compensation claims revenues for this fund are from charges to other funds the printing services fund is self-supporting and receives revenues from charges for services to schools and departments and now our remaining actions i will turn it back over to the superintendent for comments and discussion once discussion is completed the total millage must be adopted and subsequently the 2021-22 tentative budget must be adopted and establish a date
101for the final hearing thank you miss concolino excellent job members of the board madam chair certainly ready to answer any questions hear your discussion again the opportunity today or the goal before you today is to adopt the total millage so that we can transmit it and adopt your tentative budget madam chair mine is not a question mine is more of a comment i mean every time we look at the budget and we look at the restrictions within the revenue it's always so challenging i know that where we have the ability to change things we can change it throughout the year unfortunately those buckets every time we go over the local effort the millage rates the states reappropriating dollars that were traditionally public school dollars that gets tighter and tighter and i know that in our
102communications committee we're going to be talking about the best ways to communicate not only on the local level but certainly once again back to our legislators and our government in tallahassee to try to break that logjam of getting them to understand that the budget is always challenging but as we heard from many of our speakers this evening it's even more challenging when you have housing rates going up 19 percent and so much topsy-turviness because of the pandemic so it's more observation than it is comment there's not a lot to comment on at this juncture thank you thank you madam chair i do just have a couple of clarifying questions that came to me as you're going through your presentation and thank you so much for that presentation and for all the time that you spent
103with all the board members going over the budget the last couple of days i know we all had had questions and kept you past your allotted time so we appreciate your patience we were you were talking about the military so it's correct that the state did not roll back the millage rate for this year correct and what did that mean for our district dollar-wise so the issue has been with the rollback is that we have only been able to generate those dollars for new construction but this year where i mentioned that the legislature deviated from prior years is that they were allowing not only the new but the increase in property values the issue and why it in why we are showing a decrease in our millage of 0.12 is because the property values went
104up so much more than what the state had originally budgeted for that the fefp cannot exceed the total local dollar amount so in order to not exceed what was approved by the legislature not just orange county but across the state then millage rates had to actually come down because property values went up so is it and i'm just trying to understand it because if i have questions i'm sure that those listening and do as well so even though the millage wasn't rolled back because house prices went up exponentially and the legislature didn't project that we actually are losing dollars and what we could have made based on actual actual dollars correct the only thing i want to correct you on it's not the housing price that went up as the property value the value i'm
105sorry i knew that i misspoke at any time when that happens is it just this is what happens or does a legislature like ever come back and adjust those numbers to give us the millage that they stated i don't believe so no okay and do they ever backfill the millage in their budget like we've heard in in past that when they reduced or they rolled back the millage they have then backfilled it in other areas in the budget categoricals or or in other areas that would be flexible dollars no the the dollar amounts various categoricals and such within the fefp were established the second calculation what that does is is provides we get the final assessment from the property appraiser's office and then based on what that total statewide valuation is the millage rate is
106established that's really what occurs during the second calculation okay okay that makes sense okay and then you said we had a 61 dollar increase to our bsa this year in the fbi 29 29 okay let me let me get there what do you do you recall a slide no i'm sorry i just i wrote it down i might have written it down wrong as you were talking i thought i heard sixty one dollars i should know this i look at the budget all the time i mean the fefp that comes down from the state i just don't remember i remember saying 61 i'm just looking for that slide i think you're right i think it was in the i don't actually remember gala what was your question the bsa the increase in the bsa from
107the budget from the state the per state funding increased by twenty nine dollars overlapping and our class size reduced by how much 25.5 million let me just confirm that for you yes 25.5 million dollars class size reduction okay and then my final question is my time up maybe be to the superintendent if we could just get our current projection for enrollment i know that there's a 10-day count but i mean could we just find out where we are where we stand like right now with enrollment of students are we even near that projection of the 204-850 we can certainly see what's available we won't know until the first day of school and they actually show up okay happy to get you our projections as best we can provide thank you and then finally i know
108that we used to be really good about in in our little pocket book we would say the percentage of dollars that are attributed out of the operating fund to administrative cost and it was always quite low was usually one the lowest in the state if not in the country and i haven't seen that in our pocket book in a while if that's something we could add back in or if you could share with us what that percentage is i'll get that for you we'll put it back in the pocket we're still in the very lowest number especially among urban districts we are i believe still the lowest but we'll get that and i and i like your idea we do need to put it back in the pocket facts so everyone has that on hand
109all right thank you thank you thank you member gala a couple of questions tag teaming on that i think i think it was mr grimm who mentioned our the percentage of our expenditures that are outside of the school outside of our individual schools as opposed to other districts i want to go back and look at that and see what that statistic was mr grimm it was something you mentioned i'm going to go back i think it was your comments i'm going to go back and watch that because i want to make sure how that compares to the numbers we always look at it as the administrative costs because while it's a big number it has always given me some comfort when i look at it relative to other districts and so some of the testimony
110i heard today has you know caused me to kind of rethink that i think the one other and along the lines of remember gould it's not a question i had and doreen i need to thank you i think i took about twice as much time and to the rest of the board who was waiting i pushed everybody's schedule back and i think we probably all did that because this budget in particular has been very complicated because of the one-time impact of esser and the kind of ripple effects and trying to understand it was harder than it usually is one of the things i find also challenging about our budget is trying to explain it in a way that makes sense without spending hours days and weeks learning it is really challenging but yet i think
111that the issue of our teachers the situation that they're in remember good you talked about it is so disheartening and yet there's understandably very very little trust in us and that is also disheartening but i'm going to go back to saying it's understandable i think when i would be asking the same questions if i were a teacher i would be demanding answers and i think we have to find a better way to communicate this really complicated stuff so one of my one of my simplest ways of looking at it is the year before i was elected our teachers our classified employees got a four percent raise the first year that i was on the board first year that most of us were on the board i mean we came in just determined as the previous
112board was i think really determined to do right by our teachers by our classified employees we gave a five and a half percent raise that's nine and a half percent in two years so we're the same board we care the same amount if not more and then last year classifieds got nothing nothing nobody else in the organization got anything teachers if you were a brand new teacher was a good year if you were a relatively new teacher it was a pretty good year if you were a seasoned teacher it was a lousy year it was a lousier and the belief that we have a bunch of money and we just didn't want to pay our teachers that this doesn't it doesn't make sense to me why it's not like if we don't budget the money
113it benefits us and every one of us understands that without our teachers education doesn't exist there's there's no more important component there's no more important person in education than the teacher so we couldn't do anything last year and we got more money last year than we had gotten before but different from every previous year the governor decided that it was he was he was going to move those dollars we usually got move them into a semi-categorical and tell us how they would be spent and his certainly his right to do that to get our minimum wage up it makes us look more competitive nationally to have our minimum wage up but it didn't do a whole lot for the average wage and it was completely unfair to veteran teachers i don't know how many times
114we all discussed this i know every one of you is in tallahassee with me one of our big challenges is that our delegation is with us almost completely with us but they're the minority they're the minority they're democrats and this is a very partisan issue frankly so last year we weren't able to do anything except for what was given to us what was suggested by the governor and given by the state by the state this year we're in virtually the same position we do have the ability to do one-time funds because largely because the impact of the esser dollars that's offsetting a lot of our costs has allowed us to offer bonuses and i totally totally completely understand why a bonus doesn't it's better than nothing but it doesn't cut it you can't buy a
115new car with a bonus you can't rent an apartment with a bonus you can't even pay your utility bills based on a bonus you need recurring revenue you need recurring revenue that's what our teachers need that's what our classified employees need they need recurring revenue the same challenge is and i and i heard this i watched the bargaining session and i will tell you it was the hardest thing i ever watched and i was not happy i i've never watched one before i felt that there was i it was rude and there were things that i don't like but the hardest thing for me was that i would have walked out of there not understanding a lot of things so the issue of recurring revenue i kept hearing why don't we budget for raises and
116the challenge is it's just like a private citizen with their you know my family i can't budget i can't budget a raise i mean i can put it on a piece of paper but i can't make a raise happen i can't budget to spend more money than i have i can i have to get a raise from somebody else in order to spend more money just like our teachers do just like our employees do they have to get money from us we have to get more money to do that we can try to juggle our budget around we can look for places for efficiency and the other thing that troubles me is we spent a whole year the year after we approved the five and a half we knew that was a stretch we knew
117we had four four percent that we could do and we knew we needed to figure out how to restructure our budget to find that one and a half percent because the only other hope was the state would come through and they didn't so we went through a process every i don't know how many meetings we had to go through line item by line item to figure out how to get those efficiencies that mark richards i think that's his name talked about he did a very good job but he talked about we needed efficiencies and i frankly wanted to to just come through my laptop because i thought but that's what we did and i'm never saying i'm never going to say whatever we've done is enough that there isn't an opportunity to go back and
118try harder i'm never going to give up trying harder but we can't give raises unless we get additional money we can do it if we start just cutting everything but we're cutting teachers we're cutting programs we can't do that we need our teachers we need our programs we need our bus drivers right so we have to find if there's any extra fat and at some point there's no more fat on the bone so can we look at it again should we look at it should we look at it every year absolutely but the bit but but the idea of having 60 million dollars in recurring revenue that we didn't get this year that's that's money we need from the state and if every time they give us extra money they're going to tell us exactly
119how to spend it then that doesn't leave us the flexibility we need to spend it the way we this board believes we need to spend it and that's on our employees especially for me it is our employees for me it's not our administrative employees it is the employees that are on the front line that are making the least that can barely afford to live in the community they serve it troubles me enormously it troubles me that because of our employees our kids that live in this community can go to college and yet the employees that are helping educate them can't put their kids to college that's wrong that's just wrong and it angers me and that's the message we take every year we go to tallahassee and that's the message we've got to continue to
120take to the public to make sure that when that referendum rolls around we have their support because without that we are really in trouble now we're talking about having to cut programs and lay off employees so i know i didn't when we had the tools when we had the ability we spent it we gave a five and a half percent raise things changed it wasn't our it wasn't us that changed it was the money that we come in what we have coming in and the flexibility to spend it the way we thought we should so i commit i know my whole board commits to continue to carry that fight to tallahassee and to do the absolute best we can and to do whatever we can figure out how to do to build the trust because
121impasse maybe that will be a help maybe in the end that will be a vetting process that needs to happen so that somebody outside is looking at it but trust is extremely we are in this together whether you believe my words or not we are still in this together remember gala thank you madam sharon and i think i speak for me and probably the whole board when i say we absolutely agree with you in the predicament that we're in and i think that in light of of getting extra dollars from tallahassee we've got to be creative in in how we figure out to give our teachers and our educators and our classified staff the money that they deserve so i know that we've had a breakdown of the one meal before the one mill is
122getting ready to come back before us and i believe it was mr grim in the audience who mentioned looking at that one mill as going towards salaries and i know we don't want to cut programs and i know that a lot of that money goes for programs but i'm just wondering if we could look at the millage look at the dollars that we obtained from that millage and see if there's a way to to bring it so because we do pay teachers out of that one mill we pay our art teachers we pay our athletics out of that one mill but is there room within that one mill if we're really looking at everything we can do then i think it would be imperative that we at least look at that and the dollars that
123bring in it and see if there is room to pay teachers or to include that in the one mill when it comes back up to the ballot okay i'm going to call on dr jenkins i do just want to reiterate if we get the one mill it's not additional funds this is the funds we've been getting every year but i'm wondering if we could look because we went through the budget we went through the budget like go through the one mill like we did the budget and see if all that money is still being used as cost effectively as possible if if it's still warranted and if they're yeah just let's make sure we're doing due diligence in every area that we possess absolutely i completely agree let me dr jenkins has pushed her button
124and i'm going to go to vice chair dr jenkins thank you madam chair i wanted to speak to member gallows comet i think two things are important to note number one the money from the one mill actually in the language that got the community to support it is what you have to spend the dollars on some other districts have actually run additional millage and said it is for teacher raises and then in those instances sometimes it's negotiated with the teachers the raise is good for these four years if it doesn't get renewed after four years then you revert back and you lose that additional money our language actually says what we have been spending the money on and every year we have to give an accounting of how that money has been spent it shows
125up on our website and we have to publish those outcomes so the next time the one mill comes around this board could very well say instead of what we said previously we'd rather trim some of those areas it was to support some of some of the programs when the state was short cutting us if you decided to go that direction then you just need to counterbalance and say what you're going to do about those other programs but it has to be stated to the community up front what you're going to spend it on and that's why we are limited at this point next time around you might consider like some other districts have done saying we want to use that for a supplemental teacher salary does that answer your question yeah i would just yeah
126i think it's worth the review yeah i think our teachers deserve that i do too i think the public would support it honestly i think they would i can't imagine that they wouldn't and i think we can make a compelling case i think the one thing that we'll have to look at is that if we are if we are cutting valuable programs that one is that okay and two will the public support something that's a trade-off so we've got a little work to do but thank you for bringing that to the table and let's definitely explore that vice chair thank you well you and the superintendent said a lot of it but it's my recollection and i didn't go back and look it up but the majority of those dollars still go into supporting kind
127of the instructional and the functional because let's face it the biggest part of any budget in any operation is your wages and salaries and benefits that so whether you're talking programmatically or you know core subjects it would take a lot of surgical precision to look at these programs and say okay let's chop arts let's chop the it's not it music let's chop chess let's chop you know these athletic programs let's chop in these areas that provide the social emotional and often engagement so i just wanna i wanna lay it all out there i don't wanna just right now we're very emotional all of us about the predicament we are once again in trying to face all of our staff not just our teachers our frontline staffs that have had a huge gap in minimum wage
128to market wage for years this is a very emotional issue but we're going to have to step as elected officials we're going to have to step back from the emotion and figure out and weigh very judiciously the impacts on not only the employees we currently have but also the well-rounded education programs that we offer that were allotted for so i just don't want to leave that out of the conversation and those teachers that are teaching those programs right so that's weighing and choosing staff if we have to surgically remove any components of any program let me hear from member lopez member lopez it's so good of you to chime in you know you're under the weather i hope you're feeling better yes i am very sick but i'm here i'm sorry i'm getting better so
129i agree with cher jacobs and school board member galo our veterans teachers deserve a better salary and the state has to allocate more money for salary raises and benefits for teachers and also i want to add the classified employees as well because i think that in order for us to be more competitive in terms of salary and have and recruit more teachers and more employees we have to be we have to we need to provide a great salary but i know that we have an obstacle with the state and i am glad that you clarify that as well i also have a question and is about the reserve fund what is the percentage of the reserve fund you want to answer that and you know what while you're on that subject if you can take
130a minute because that looks like a huge amount of money you could take a minute to explain that in answering not only remember loss passed this question but just so that there's a chance that people can better understand that was the first question i had when i looked at this budget go ahead so for fy21 which we are still in the process of closing out we won't be done until mid-august with that so when we bring back the final adopted budget we'll have firm numbers but we do see an increase in fund balance in fy21 and that was twofold primarily twofold one was we got the 54 million dollars health harmless from the state we really did not cut resources so we had the same number of staff but we did have 8 000 less
131students so that created some additional reserve but primarily it is the infusion of the federal funding and what we have done is take in expenses that are part of general fund recurring expenses and anything that could be tied to the pandemic we have moved over to esser which has then freed up our general funds which has created an increased fund balance which is what you are all using or a good portion of it what you are using then to provide the bonuses and supplements that you've offered thank you yes do we have a limit on the percentage that we should have in that reserve funding i wouldn't say that there is a limit i would say there's a floor oh i'm saying i mean yeah i was thought she was talking high limit yes there
132is a there is a floor we of course are required to keep the three percent and then it is a good fiscal policy to in total have between five and six percent so that if there were a hurricane or or some other major emergency that we could dip into those dollars thank you so much thank you member lopez member byrd thank you chair five or six percent what where does that put us how much would that be well you're three percent your three percent is the approximately 55 million dollars so six percent would be about 110 million total in your unassigned fund balance okay can you just clear up one thing that i have already asked you this question but could you just share it again as far as our line by line budget and
133what we project and what our actual costs are every year how accurate are we typically because there's been a lot of talk about how we over budget our categories and that was something that i asked you so could you share that with us sure so if you look at our financial condition ratio and that's straight out of the kafir which is our assigned and unassigned fund balance that has decreased fairly steadily consistently since 2016. so and i could provide you all a snapshot of that but i and i do expect i think we all do for 2021 we're going to see that go up but from 16 to 20 that was coming down if we were consistently over budgeting the our financial condition ratio would not decline it would increase member goals vice chair gold
134so i want to go back to the clarification on the reserve we are required by state statute to keep a minimum reserve of 3 and based on this budget about 55 million okay so when you talk about a hurricane just to let people know if we have a hurricane that wipes out three high schools that cost how much to build over 100 million over 100 million each each we would need to dip into those funds because 100 million is a lot of money so i want people to understand and having to open two high schools this year i knew it was a hundred million dollars to open the two new high schools so and we are required to keep maintained the three percent correct so the delta there is really the one to two percent
135of what we have to spend or if we go below that we have to make up back up that three percent within that first budget year we don't we would not touch that three percent that's why we're saying we want to have somewhere at five to six percent right because we've seen what's happened to other counties when they have dipped below that and there has been some fiscal impact as well as state intervention state intervention so i you know when we start talking about these big giant numbers they're that's a lot of money but when you talk about having a catastrophic of one-time event of you know mass flooding tornadoes going through whatever those things might be all of the sudden it's not that big when you look at the capital infrastructure of our entire
136enterprise so i just wanted that ratio to be understood that is really one high school's price tag so to speak to come from the ground up now hopefully if we ever had you know charlie jean francis year again not wishing that murphy's law that we would not be replacing whole high schools but when you spread it across the district there's a lot there was a lot of impact even i think it was michael or eugene i don't remember now that impacted so thank you for that clarification if i can add on i think even if even if you were to subscribe to the idea that the three percent was enough i think the other the other thing that is hard to understand about this and i understand that is that reserve even though we see
137it there we see a large number every year it's not it's not a recurring number it's my salary is recurring every two weeks i get a paycheck my savings account doesn't do that if i draw down my savings account it's drawn down it only recurring is if i put money back in so if we used all the excess which we used a lot of it in i want to the 2019-2020 budget that's how we got to the five and a half percent not a not something i have ever agreed to in all the years i've been in office before but we had four percent in recurring and we said well we've got a large amount in our fund balance we'll use it this time and hope that it gets replenished it didn't we went back
138to the drawing board we took a hard look at our budget and you can you can't do that every year you can't find that every year so i think i always want to look at that fund balance and make sure that it's not higher than it needs to be i personally believe i mean at the county we ne ours was seven percent we didn't that wasn't our requirement we just that was a comfort level that we had and hurricanes is a good example counties have to do a lot of not just not just their own buildings but a lot of cleanup so that was that was our number i'm not saying what percentage it should be but i think it needs to be more than three percent right now we need to better understand those
139esser funds and a big part of that as i understand it is what makes up the proposal that we put on the table for our unions and so once that's gone it won't be there again next year but i think we have to go through this process of asking these questions we need to we this board needs to always ask the questions one of the things would help me is if we could identify going if maybe going back over the last couple of years where are those fund balancing balances when they go up where are they coming from because we hear the you know we this idea that you all are intentionally over budgeting so that we can slide this stuff into fun balance and again i understand i'm actually kind of a suspicious person
140so to be quite frank i think it's an asset but i get it i would be i'd be asking these questions and mr grimm i remember from last year you spent a lot of time really delving into and understanding and learning this so i definitely want to get your data from you and look at what you were talking about earlier but if you could show us each year what made up the increases to the fund balance and then also when we drew down any of the fund balance where did it go i think what i'm talking about is essentially a sources and uses statement for fund balance for each year so we can at least answer those questions because you can't build trust if you can't answer questions you know and again it just i
141watched all that and there were so many things that i just sometimes i felt like i had the answer and i wanted to you know just like could i get into the room and can i try to explain i'd love to see a powerpoint presentation you guys know how i am about powerpoint presence i love a good powerpoint presentation i'd love to figure out how to bring this down to a level where if we're getting it wrong we can get it right if we're not getting it wrong you can understand where we're coming from so we can get back to a place of trust and we can get back to a place where we can figure out how to to use our collective voices to be more powerful this is a frustrating legislature but i
142you don't you can't give up it you guys are you guys are way too important we can't give up without you we again we don't have an education system so we can't give up any vice chair gold and i'll let you close this out so i think we've we've talked enough about that but i want to say thank you to the teachers that stayed tonight and i want to call out mr pollock and oh espa who always stay to the end of every single financial discussion and are very well versed on our discussion points i hope those that came and gave testimony listen to the rest of this tonight and understand that we don't ignore the testimony we take it into the context of what we have before us in the numbers and so i
143want to thank ospa for for always hanging in there and trying to to fully understand what's going on even when we don't agree on how it all should be used so thank you very much thank you for pointing that out because mr pollock like mr grimm spends a lot of time understanding stuff that is extremely complicated you take your job so seriously you do it so well and again we don't always agree we don't i know we are not measuring up to what you need and what you expect but it is helpful to have people like you people like mr grim that are willing to dig in to the weeds and try to figure this out so we ready to move on we are ready for a vote i did it again you did it
144okay all right sometime i'll tell you my story about names she made me do it okay i am willing to entertain a motion right and i am would like to move chair so the recommended am i reading both the do we have to take two separate votes yes okay yes okay so the first is the resolution for the millage correct whereas section 200.065 florida statutes requires the school board adopt a proposed millage for the funding the tentative budget and notify the property appraiser of its actions and whereas the 2021 tentative budget is based upon a total millage of 6.737 mills which is less than the rollback rate by 1.31 as commuted pursuant to section 200 065 florida statutes now therefore it be resolved by the school board of orange county florida that the board does
145hereby adopt the following proposed millage to support the tentative budget for the 2021 fiscal year millage rates required local effort 3.489 basic discretionary 0.748 additional voted 1.000 capital improvement 1.5 0 0 total 6.737 be it further resolved that the superintendent immediately informed the orange county property appraiser of the action of the school board in a manner prescribed by law that's my motion may i interrupt excuse me for one second can we can i just clarify that's the year oh i'm sorry did i say it differently 21-22 fiscal year yes all right you have a motion do we have a second a second show motion by by share gold second by member covert all in favor please say aye aye aye aye opposed i'm sorry remember lopez let me go to you separately hi thank you
146any a physician motion carries unanimously second item the second item is the resolution for the budget itself for the 2021-22 fiscal year the resolution is number one approve the 21 22 tentative budget for the general fund of two billion three hundred and nineteen million seven hundred and thirty seven thousand and ninety one dollars approve the twenty twenty all these can be done at one time right amy general counsel okay approve the 2020 1222 tentative budget for the special revenue fund of 227 million 511 approve the 20 21 20 tentative budget for the debt service fund of 229 million three hundred and four thousand four hundred and eleven dollars approve the 2021 22 tentative budget for the capital projects funds of one billion four hundred and twelve thousand three hundred and thirty twelve four hundred and
147twelve million 313 approve the 2021-22 tentative budget for the internal service fund of 343 million 346 thousand one hundred and forty four dollars approved the date for the final public hearing for the fy21 budget for 501 pm on april 14th at the ronald blocker educational leadership center 445 west emily street orlando florida emotion do we have a second excuse me i'm sorry buddy read mine you re-read the capital i corrected it but we'll reread it just to make it absolutely correct in the budget so capital funds approve the 20 21 22 tentative budget for the capital funds pac capital project fund of one billion four hundred and twelve million three hundred and thirteen thousand six hundred and fifty five dollars fifty six vice chair on here it's 55. on my paper that i got from
148deborah it's 55. sorry 56 that's dollars 1 billion 400 and twelve million three hundred and thirteen thousand six hundred and fifty six dollars and vice chair could you clarify the date of the final hearing i heard april but i think it should be august september oh september there we go september the approved the date for the final public hearing for the fy 2122 budget for 501 pm on september 14 2021 at the ronald blocker educational leadership center 445 west emily street orlando florida okay is there a second second that was a lot faster let's take a vote all in favor aye hi remember lopez i opposed all right motion carries you know perhaps you know perhaps what we could do is have it on the screen and move the requested action instead of making a
149board member read it all is there any reason we can't do that i was told it had to be read into the record but maybe that's archaic at this point i think for for the viewing public it's probably easier for them to hear it as well instead of just okay okay we will research it thank you all right thank you all right let's move on to the consent agenda we have no public comments is there a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved motion by remember caster dental is there a second i second the second by member gala all in favor please say aye aye aye remember lopez for member lopez remember lopez aye okay thank you opposed motion carries unanimously we're on non-consent 7.01 general counsel members of the board this is your
150reappointment of an alternate citizen member to the value adjustment board and the name that was proposed was sandra fatmi hill and we have confirmed that she meets the requirements all right castor dentals remember cast down you want to render offer a motion yes i move to support my recommendation okay surprise proposition by member casa dental to support her own recommendation is there a second second by member byrd all in favor please say aye aye aye aye thank you member lopez opposed motion carries unanimously and now we're on to information items dr jenkins do you have anything other than the commerce the information we're going to discuss regarding protocols i do if the board will allow me just a quick a correction of an error earlier because people were listening online so there were some assistant
151principals appointed on the personnel agenda i will run through them quickly so they can hear their name please michael byrne is the new assistant principal at eagle creek maria demura is a new ap at legacy middle laquel glenn is a new ap at meadow woods elementary sarah ann harper is the ap at west ridge smart is the new ap at meadowbrook latoya finn is the ap for liberty middle tammy young is the ap at windham lakes and katie heiser is the ap for corner lake middle school thank you madam chair for letting me provide that oversight correction happy to speak to anything regarding next year's protocols when you're ready thank you thank you as i had promised the board at our rural development meeting last week i wanted to bring back status on data collection
152from our local hospitals so between the superintendent and i we've reached out to all three of our major hospital partners and they are all working together to try to to develop a framework to provide us hopefully weekly data broken down by roughly by school levels which i think would be very helpful as we try to whatever what is the term strategically identify places surgically that's the term surgically identify if and when and where we should have mass in place or any other layer of protection some of the key points from the information that i've obtained so far and again this is we had two of them were completely out of town two of our hospital infectious disease specialists who have given us a lot of their time in spite of traveling so i wanted to
153recognize dr alexander with the he's a pediatric infectious disease specialist at new moore's and he's very know well known and respected and you guys have probably seen him on some youtube videos explaining to people a lot about covet and protections and they're also doing great work in terms of providing information about school protocols he has gathering data from nemours what he was able to give me for today is the current status they have five covid patients of course those are all pediatric patients three of which are in icu i know that is not a big number but it's it's a starting point to understand it does it did concern me a little bit that of the five that are in the hospital three or in icu that's obviously a little alarming the second doctor is
154dr layham dr laham is the medical director for orlando health arnold palmer hospital for children and he is also a pediatric infectious disease specialist i have asked i have an email from him and i want to just use his his own chart so if if our avi team can put that up on the screen that would be really helpful thank you i want to say at first as you look at this is kind of two charts so the first three columns or bar charts are for those pediatric patients admitted and then the second three are those not admitted so if you look and you just see this continuous spike they're really two different charts so if you look at the bottom starting at the bottom column which makes a little more sense for me less
155than six years old you'll see that for the month of may that says may 1 but that's all actually the total patient counts for the month of may total patients admitted at was seven and these are pediatric patients at arnold palmer in june it's eight and then in july and this was as of july 25th it was at 15. and the row right above it is six to 12 years old in may it was three and in june it was five and currently it's at four so it's fairly static at that age for admitted and then if you look at 12 to 17 years old you start in may with nine three in june and eight in july moving over to the not admitted category you see much larger increases in numbers starting at less
156than six at the bottom 35 in may june drops down to 13. that's a good thing but then you see in july it jumps up to 70. and i think as everybody knows we the delta variant arrived fairly recently and i think we're just starting to really feel the surge from the rapid spread of the delta variant six to 12 years old in may the number was eight not admitted but children that had visited the er at arnold palmer three in june going down again and then jumping all the way up to 26. relative numbers are low but the rate of of increase from 3 to 26 alarms me 12 to 17 years old may number is 11 in june it goes down also so kind of interesting to me to see that you see
157this maze kind of big june goes down and then we hit july where the delta variant is really taking off in our community and it goes all the way up to 29. that i'm trying to think of dr shu who is i think he is the medical director he's been our mac chair he has he's been at a conference and i think on vacation with his family and he is gathering similar data the idea being that hopefully we'll be able to collect this data on a weekly basis so the board can monitor not just what we hear from the health department which doesn't consider hospitalizations usually it's more just positivity but we can also see what's happening with our children in particular as far as hospitals i think that will be meaningful i do i
158do wanted to share with the board that i said at the meeting when we approved this i remember i talked to the audience and said if i believe that we would be better off with our children in math i'll be back here advocating for this i have given a lot of thought i am concerned that our children do not have the layers that they had in the past we had launch ad last year we lost that ability this year so our children really most of them i think are going to be returning to the classroom we're not going to be able to socially distance as well as we did we're not going to be able to socially distance in the cafeteria parents that have written to me and would like their children in separate classrooms
159like a mass versus non-math classroom in talking to dr jenkins and she's explained some you know very obvious reasons why logistically we can't make that work and also i was hoping that at least if i had especially an elementary school child that i sent in and told them to wear a mask that we would have some way of enforcing that and that the teacher would make sure the child wore a mask i'm not confident that we have a way of doing that at this point so for me i if this were my decision alone i know it is not i'm just one voice and this board has to work together to make decisions if it were my decision i would have a mask policy mandate in place for the beginning of the school year monitor
160it and look for the opportunity to lift it depending upon what happens and i also again i mentioned the we're aboard we have to make joint decisions i'm going to suggest that if we re if other board members reach a point where they think that we need to come back here and revisit this and discuss this as a board as we get more data that you communicate that to the superintendent and if there are four board members that believe we should discuss this i think we need to come back to the table and have that conversation and let me open it up to comments from board members remember bird i didn't think i do want to clarify where i am not putting this out here because i'm trying to find a quick clever way to
161you know to brush this or push this through i just want to make sure that everybody knows that here's how we can move forward if the if at least half the board feels like we should move forward with that conversation remember bert thank you chair and i really do appreciate your comments because you know i too have been talking to hospitals local hospitals and their concern is so great right now more so than when i talked to them before our last meeting when we put this policy in place this week the tone was totally different so i am really concerned as well i do however feel like we already did the board discussion already had the policy i am i like our policy the reason i voted for that policy was not because i did
162not think kids didn't need to wear masks the reason i voted for that was because it allowed our superintendent to put things in place if we gave if if she got guidance or it looked locally like this was a concern that we needed to address so i am comfortable share i think in my opinion we could just share our con our feelings with the superintendent and she could make that decision based on our current policy and i don't think that needs to be adjusted so i am in favor of masking our unvaccinated our children that do not have the opportunity for vaccines because we've got as you said we do not have launch ed anymore we don't have another option for these kids and when you look at those those numbers and granted a lot
163of those kids were not hospitalized but all of those kids would have to miss school and we're going to have such an issue of chronic absenteeism and that's going to really affect their schooling i think if we can do anything to put a barrier in place to help an additional layer of protection until they have the opportunity to get vaccinated i'm all for that now because the numbers are definitely worse thank you member bert i am sorry i jumped over vice chair i do want to clarify in case there was any confusion i'm not saying that we need to change our policy and i think the board the superintendent did her team did a great job of bringing us a policy that builds in flexibility so i am not if anybody thought i'm trying to
164change the policy no we have a provision in there what i want is i want the board to know what is the means to bring this forward and what would it take to bring this forward if we're going to have a discussion at the board table i agree with you the superintendent also has that authority without coming to the board table but it is an option member vice chair gould thank you and thank you for clarifying your position chair because i did want to point out that i also think that we wrote a good policy to be able to be responsive to the community in sickness and in wellness so i do think that's very very important because what we don't want to do is corner us in either direction and not meet the needs
165of our students you know the masks are absolutely the first line of protection and there's there's global research on that so i don't think that's in dispute here i think the utilization of the masks and where cases are in our very large county need to be taken into account and that we need to be able to and i know we're working on better sources of data and real-time data through all of our resources and not only in the medical community but along with the doh so i think it's very appropriate that we continue the conversation and support communication with the superintendent as well as that two-way as she may hear more quickly about certain datas in certain parts of our community that you know we respond back and that we just as we did last
166year kind of come up with a rhythm of knowing you know when we're going to put a school out to launch ed when quarantine is going to happen i don't know that we know all that right now the cdc is still working through that the doh is still working through that it's a very tough predicament because we see the delta variant going up i just don't want to put our community back into an isolation mode soon or too late and that there's a fine line in there i know so i'm agreeing that we need to continue to have the conversations i'm agreeing that we do need to find what we feel is that trigger and it may be you know tomorrow when we feel like we have to bring that back to a table and
167maybe even have a small workshop on it to set some of these benchmarks as as data comes out i am not ready personally yet even based on the data in working in the medical field to maybe do vanilla across the board i think we do need to look at the areas of high risk and so the one thing a takeaway from that is it would help to have more localized data within our community in terms so that we can i can try to request that from the hospitals so that we can look school by school perhaps that would make okay i just want to kind of want to at least hear from board members on the thoughts so that we can determine what data we do and it's not just the masks are we going
168to go back to screenings are you know how do we encourage vaccinations how do we make sure all of our hospital partners have excellent short videos on vaccinations for all age levels nemours just put together a whole education package how do we make sure we get those tools not just the mask tool but those tools in the hands of our parents and our staff so that they have the best data in order to make the right decisions because frankly we can govern this all we want but without everybody pulling together to make sure our neighbors our children our elders are at risk that can't get a vaccination healthy it's all of us working together to make it happen and it's the masks are a tool but it's not the only tool all right thank you
169member gala you're recognized thank you thank you madam chair and i appreciate you continuing this conversation and i agree about the data i think one of the most frustrating things as a school board member is the lack of data available to us on a daily basis we used to get daily numbers that aren't available the numbers that we get from the state are weekly numbers when you look at the most vulnerable which are the unvaccinated children be zero between 11 they group it together last week in that age group across the state there was 6 999 cases of those that age group testing positive for covet we don't know where they lie we don't know where in this state they are we can look at the positivity rates but if you look at the positivity
170rates from the data that the state provides you really got to look at the count per 100 000 because a positivity rate is dependent on how many people tested so you could have a small number of people tested but a large positivity rate which drives that number up and it's not really a true indication of the spread of the virus in a community it's just not information good enough information for us to be sitting here to make a decision to mask all children throughout ocps i did vote for the policy i voted for as i stated at the time that i do believe in a parent's rights to choose what's best for their child i voted for it because i believed it when i asked several doctors what is the protection for the person where
171in the mass do they offer some protection and they said yes and i voted for it because i knew that if things got really bad and the situation's turned on a dime and it has over the last week that it gave the authority to the superintendent to to require mask if necessary i think that we need more data i would like consensus from the board to send a formal request to the department of health and ask for the following things i want daily covet 19 case counts for all age groups especially are those under the age of 12 but i want it separated out by age groups i want daily coven 19 positivity rates i want the daily covid 19 hospitalizations i want the daily coven 19 deaths in all the age groups so when
172i list these i meant by every age group that they track and they track them all and then i want the daily covid19 vaccinations and then i would like to add one more criteria to that and that is the breakthrough cases because we are seeing some breakthrough cases we don't know how bad those cases are and that's very important information for us to have as a board so that we can protect our students and our teachers who have been vaccinated because if we're finding that this new delta variant is breaking through are the are those that is breaking through are they mildly sick are they very sick are we finding that those that were vaccinated in december that it the vaccine is wearing off and they're getting more sick with this new delta variant there's
173so much information that we need so that we can make appropriate decisions and do our jobs appropriately i believe in a person's choice to get vaccinated or not as i've mentioned many plenty of times i got vaccinated because it was the right thing for me to do for myself for my family for my community my fear is that we are masking and we are putting the burden of this virus on our children because the unvaccinated refused to get vaccinated and i don't think that's a bird that should be on our children that doesn't mean i wouldn't support it if the numbers called for it because i want to be very clear before you start emailing me and telling me that i know more than the cdc and the american pediatric association because i do not
174that i just want to make sure that we're not putting a burden on our children because there is a risk with mass i know that people say well it's just uncomfortable it is uncomfortable but there is psychological effects of wearing a mask there has been infections these masks do get gross the younger kids don't wear it appropriately remember gould mentioned the utilization the mask is the first barrier defense but only if you wear it appropriately and how many kids are wearing appropriately and the stealth of you know variant is extremely contagious so i don't know if i could get consensus now but i would like consensus to issue a formal request from the school board of orange county for this information from the department of health we could add a date range on it i
175have language that i've already kind of come up with that i'm i can share with mr howitt but i would i would i think that's important that we request that information so i don't know if you wanted to now i do have some more comments but i don't know so and i'm sure i'm sure this goes with that's orange county you want specific just specifically to orange county yes anybody disagree with that yeah no i think i think that's excellent let's get that to mr howe and get a letter out as quick as we can perfect i'll give it to him right this mean and the only other comments that i have is i'm really concerned as a member byrd mentioned about learning loss about absenteeism we don't have the same modalities that we had
176in place last year will we be allowed to quarantine will quarantine be off the table what will quarantine look like what will the guidelines be from the department of of health my biggest concern is i want to make sure that our teachers are safe that our students are safe and i want to make sure that we don't increase the deficit of learning loss from last year to this year because it's a constant revolving door and we don't have the ability to make sure that those kids continue to learn because student outcomes and student successes that is our job and that is our responsibility thank you madam chair all right thank you member gallow member felder thank you madam chair and my fellow board members i so appreciate your concern and your passion about this with
177regards to the mask wearing and dealing with this pandemic in addition school board member gala with your wanting the statistical data having to do with the number of cases i would like to add that districtwide in terms of if there's a discrepancy or if there's a larger portion say in my district district five when they were started off taking giving the test they had zip codes up to let you know which ones you know were more severe and i want that added so that we can know because you know quite frankly we don't know you know this and i like also a copy of that graph just you know because it has grown tremendously from may to july and i think parents reserve the right to choose if they want to vaccinate their children they
178want to vaccinate themselves i want to wear a mask because my concern is and i show this at the earlier meeting do it again but we have to be concerned if we mandate mask wearing and the habit of this country has been when people don't agree with what you're doing that can be some serious fallout and what i'm saying on the first day of school the little first grader of the little pre-k first writes a passage in school and this is all but these are some pictures of me in 1962 and i'm happy i was a first grader and no i'm not concerned about anything but going to school and being happy when you have children coming in who've been locked up all summer the first four or five years of their lives they come
179to school and if there's we've made some decisions that a lot of people don't like and even though they're not allowed on our grounds they can be on the street and it causes trauma the first day of school should not be traumatizing to children should be happy should be wonderful their little lives are beginning so i am concerned about the mass but i also know that we live in a country where you have the right to choose we have learned in past that even with your right to choose there are some very negative ramifications behind that i want us as a board whichever direction we go in to be prepared for any ramifications if they come whether we say yay or nay also i did vote for optional because i do believe that you should
180have the right to choose but i also understand little children under the age of 12 who cannot get vaccinated whose parents may not even understand the necessity of the need for vaccinations that they are vulnerable and we've been elected to make sure we watch over our district to do the best that we can with the members of our constituency but i just wanted to share with you that whatever decision we have to be strong in the decisions that we make and understand that we have to reach on the inside to do that which we know and believe that is the right thing to do as we make choices for these 200 and some thousand children that we serve in this great district that we call orange county so i wanted to say that and it
181is my hope that we have already said that if things come up in in variance change we've given the superintendent the right to make some choices you know but as school board member galloway said if we could get that data chair chairperson jacobs to keep us abreast so that we can make informed decisions and i seriously want to add like i said the districts so we can see the numbers because that will help us make informed decisions as our county mayor was making them when he put those zip codes up we got to do it because you can't make people do things so anyway thank you so much absolutely and member gallow has already written down modifying that to ask for it by zip code excellent observation remember lopez thank you madam chair do you
182hear me we can hear you well thank you i want thank you so much for bringing this conversation up because i was very concerned i am receiving a lot of emails and even myself being sick make me think about so many safety concerns as well i'm in agreement to continue the conversation and closely monitoring the positive rates in orange county i think that the one member galo idea is perfect i think that we should do it and we have to provide a safe environment for all students and the staff i just have a question when we are talking about having the conversation and you are thinking about doing it very formally publicly or just follow up with the policy that we already have through the superintendent because of the high high rates of positive cases
183dr jenkins and miss emvil i'm going to ask you all in terms of my thought was if if half the board members wanted to come back and have a public discussion and provide direction but i'm going to leave it to dr jenkins what your comfort level is i'm happy to hear from individual board members and alert you when we have four or more who wanted to come back for a formal conversation i'm certainly happy to oblige that i am also happy to hear conversation from individual board members if they feel the need to do so as long as they don't mind me publicizing the feedback that i've received should a decision be necessary okay so what i hear you saying is if the board wants to come back as a board you're you're obviously you're
184going to support that if board members individually want to discuss their direction their suggestions for direction you will make a decision based on that and inform the board and publicize what that direction was i guess from the board yes okay yes okay thank you remember covert i'm sorry member logo oh gosh oh i'm sorry remember lopez go ahead yeah i'm sorry i did not finish so when we're talking about formally we're talking about i want to be clear on this because we're against the time the school are gonna start it's gonna start and when we're talking about formally we're talking about workstation rule development and school board or we're talking about public hearing so i need more feedback on this matter please dr jenkins i'm sorry i should have been more clear remember lopez actually
185it's not talking about going back through rule making trying to revise that policy again your policy has a provision for the board to direct me or for mandates to come down that would provide for an immediate adjustment to our face mass policy and that's what we were referring to it would either be a public conversation among the board members or it would be individual feedback to me that gave me direction that i could compile then for any decision it would not be going back through the rule making policy to try to change your face mask policy again perfect thank you so much thank you member lopez member caster general thank you madam chair first i want to address the members of the public for being so engaged in this issue over 500 parents and teachers
186have shared their opinions about how to keep our children safe and i have read every email watched every video that was sent and followed the links provided by to me and i've heard we've all heard frustration from the people representing both sides of the mask and the vaccine issue and it helped me understand when i was able to really listen that each person truly is speaking from a sincerely held belief for those who don't believe that covet is a serious virus the mitigation strategies that we use are seen as an overreach and are harmful to their children those who believe that covet is a serious threat view the mitigation strategies as uncomfortable but worth the inconvenience to save lives and i believe that collective action with all the mitigation tools is the most effective strategy
187we have when we are all in the middle of a health crisis at the beginning of the summer when we were developing our new mask policy i considered removing the mask requirement for most people when vaccination and rates were going up and teenagers became eligible for shots and covet cases were going down and it looked like we're on our way to conquer this virus but since then the vaccination rates have stalled at 50 percent in our county and the delta variant as we all know is rapidly infecting those unvaccinated i believe it would be a great disservice to not use our constitutional authority to provide for the health and safety of our students we must protect not only the most vulnerable students and staff but everyone who enters our buildings because they return to their
188homes and their places of worship and their grocery stores and restaurants they don't stay within the walls of our schools ocps is a data driven organization as member gallow pointed out and the data out every day this week for our state and orange county is already compelling when it comes to masks for the upcoming school year i strongly believe that we should abide by the recommendations of the medical community our medical advisory committee the american association of pediatrics and the cdc which each recommends that we all wear masks when indoors until factors indicate it's safe not to the effects of our actions go beyond the schools what we do to keep our schools operating safely affects more than those in our buildings it affects our small businesses which have struggled to stay afloat it affects
189the ability of our tourism industry to rebound it affects parents ability to go back to work especially our mothers it affects the hospital's capacity to take care of patients it affects women who are pregnant and it affects every corner of our county you cannot have both unmasked and unvaccinated people in our schools and expect our larger community to find our way out of this pandemic of course we have the orange county virtual school as an option but for most parents that's simply not practical as they return to work our whole county is under an extreme risk i believe we have enough information for the superintendent to act and i hope that by acting sooner we can take advantage of the early stages of the delta variance growth before it becomes uncontainable and before innocent lives
190are lost and i don't believe we have the luxury of time with teachers back next week and those are my thoughts all right thank you member caster general any other comments from board members okay then i think the only i'm sorry general counsel you have any reports for the board okay and we have no committee reports any other issues that any board members want us to schedule for discussion coming up in the future remember i'm tired remember gallo thank you madam chair it is late so just so that i understand because you'd kind of ask that the superintendent for an update like of our processes and related to the coveted cases yes and now will we receive that tonight or no yes okay thank you oh my gosh yes dr jenkins we'll have the faq
191ready to go online for parents and others to view in the future what the board asked me were some general provisions and what could we do if anything for our more vulnerable students i indicated at the time that our abilities are quite limited let me just go through a few things that will be included in the faq first of all the best defense we have when school starts back is for anyone who's not feeling well to stay at home we're asking parents to monitor that and certainly our own employees not feeling well particularly if you have a fever it indicates that you need to be staying at home our website will include the symptoms for covid but if a child were sick with the flu and running a temperature we would also say please do
192not bring children to school when they're not well secondly our dashboard will be up and running as it has been even over the summer for summer school it will be up and running to keep information available transparent to all of our community questions around quarantine and isolation fdoh will be responsible for that we will coordinate closely with them as well on contact tracing as they receive their direction then we will work closely with them as well questions around whether or not we have the capacity still for classes or entire schools to be able to pivot our digital platform is still in place we don't have a capacity for synchronous learning unless a teacher and the entire class go out together and the teacher is still able to instruct so we're going to be working on
193that as well we have to deal with it in a case by case basis we do not have the capacity for hybrid either we will not be asking teachers to instruct individuals at home while at the same time they are instructing students in class however it may be an opportunity for teachers to voluntarily turn on their camera and their sound so that johnny who's at home with the flu or with covet can listen he won't be instructed directly but there may be an opportunity that the teacher can voluntarily allow the student to listen in on class so that but that notion of pivoting an entire school or pivoting one classroom our platform still exists we just don't have the ability to offer that and still be paid on per student basis for offering that at
194large next we will certainly still have our hand washing and sanitizing protocols in place both with custodians and classrooms having those materials available masks will be available as well at school if children forget or want to have a mask we will have those available i want to stress again we under our current policy would not be able to ask teachers to enforce johnny i always say johnny i'm i apologize for someone who has a child named johnny but that's just what comes to mind i should say i should say harrison that would be my son who's how about lucy what about lucy do you ever think about the young women you know what so harrison would be more apt to take his mask off let me just say harrison comes to mind more so than
195hillary so anyway so we don't have the ability to enforce can't ask teachers to watch based on parents choices but we can certainly encourage children and parents can encourage as well when it comes to bullying and harassing we have a code of conduct our administrators we'll make it very clear we've made it clear to employees as well there can be no harassing or bullying based on those preferences that will be stressed and then our code of conduct will be enforced and then lastly our lpns will be in every school again our ends at those special ese units but lpns and our other schools to help support our children now let me speak specifically to some of our ese students or those students who may have some special needs for families who are choosing to send
196their children to school for in-person learning we will have the ppe masks gloves shields desk barriers extra cleaning of the classroom and social distancing because if you're in a self-contained ese unit there are far fewer students and adults in those classrooms will be able to provide more social distancing for those families who decide not to send their children to school i want to stress that we still have increased opportunities at ocvs better than we've been able to offer in the past esc students can expect additional staff support if they are dealing with ocvs and we can provide some specialized services another option is that we are expanding our hours for hospital homebound we've revamped those services so that it can have increased additional hours for instructional services and then we can also have options hopefully
197for in-house services or virtual services for some of our students for all of those students who won't be returning to school we certainly encourage parents to be in touch with their local school to make those provisions our ese staff has been dealing with questions and making calls to some of our special needs students to make sure we are clear on what we can provide and assisting them with those decisions the faq is much longer than that i wanted to hit those highlights we will try to go live with the faq document tomorrow awesome any member castro dano thank you madam chair i have a couple questions i guess for the superintendent can we add some information on mask hygiene we heard a lot of problems about dirty masks and wet masks and how important it
198is to have them washed and cleaned at night and so they have extras during the day okay and then my second question is about meet the teacher next week is that going to go ahead as planned or is that is there a recommendation to go virtual or anything like that it's going to go ahead as planned we're encouraging face masks for those who will okay all right thank you member caster dental all right if there's not any further business to come before the board meeting is now adjourned thank you all so when can i get that graph oh you