Volusia County School Board - School Board Workshop⧸Work Session 6⧸24⧸2025

001Good afternoon. Today is Tuesday, June 24th, 2025, and it is now 12:33 p.m. I'm calling to order the Vich County Workshop. And in a moment, I'd ask that you stand with me for the pledge of allegiance followed by a moment of silence. So at this time, please stand. I aliance to the flag 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. Thank you. You may be seated. Here with me today, I'm going to start over on my far left, I have Mrs. Donna Brosmer representing district 4, Mrs. Christa Goodrich representing district 2, Dr. Gilbert Evans, our schoolboard attorney. Moving over to the far right, I have Miss Celeste Gilmore, who is our agency clerk. Mrs. Jesse Thompson representing District

0023. Um, behind me I have Mr. Ruben Cologne, our vice chair, representing District 5. And then next to me, I have Dr. Carmen Balgaban, our superintendent. And I'm Jamie Haynes, your chair, representing district 1. Today we only have um three items on the workshop agenda. We'll be starting with item 2.01 which is the budget and 5-year work program. Dr. Balgabin. Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Board members, I would like to ask Mr. Todd CE, our chief financial officer, along with Miss Patty Core, our chief operating officer. They will come forward and share with you a presentation on the superintendent's preliminary budget and five-year capital work. uh program for fiscal years 2025 to 2026 and the five-year uh work program. Also, I want to say thank you to um Todd CE and his team because as

003you know information regarding the budget was released pretty um late this year, but the team has been they work weekends, late nights, but we here we are with the preliminary budget for you. Welcome. Thank you. Well, first of all, good a Yeah, good afternoon board members and uh Superintendent Belgen. Um, we're here just to talk about the preliminary information that was sent to us by the Department of Education or the our state as they wrap up their session. And again, this is just preliminary. This is based off of the conference report. The conference report is the basis that they use to set the tone for when they release the second kelk. And that would the second kelk is going to be included um um as part of your tenative budget that we adopt at the

004end of July. So without further ado, let me see where we are. The um this budget workshop is aligned with our 202427 strategic plan supporting student learning, staff quality, operation efficiency and commitment, community engagement. Every investment is considered through really the lens goals and guard rails. These guardrails I'll get my rhythm here board. So bear with me. Okay. Uh this slide like outlines the key milestones in our budget development process from legislative updates to internal planning and final adoption in September. Our timeline ensures compliance with statutory deadlines while allowing time for staff input, public transparency, and strategic decision making. Today's workshop plays a critical role in that process. The budget process is roughly a 9-month process that started back in January and will extend through September 2025. Before we dive into the economic slides, I

005want to talk about their recent FFP and other key changes. This year has come with some significant timing challenges. As we all know, normally by this point in the calendar, we would have had the fourth FFP calculation from the Department of Education. As you can see, we still haven't received that. I don't know if we're going to receive that information. um as of this afternoon again that hasn't been received and the FTE third um the FTE data that we had received for the uh third data survey was reopened and closed again. I haven't received the recalibrated report from that FTE third calculation that took back that took place back in um March February time. So, um, it's been an interesting year. I'll say that. On top of that, the legislature didn't meet its usual timeline

006for adopting the final conference report. We didn't receive the final budget documents until late Friday, June 13th. And I received a revised um, calculation on the 19th. There were some minor little um, errors that they corrected and they resent me that information. I wanted to thank you for your patience and emphasize that we are seeing today's reflect our best interpretation of that material folded into the preliminary framework. Then we'll take a look at key indicators over the last decade, the consumer price index and base student allocation. These trend lines help us understand both the rising cost district face and how state funding is really responding to that as they face challenges up there and trying to um I know they want to save uh money and you know we're all part of that. So the

007next slide here just shows the base student allocation has increased from $5,330.98 to $5,372.60. 60 which represents a $4162 change or.78% increase. So it's 78% of of a percent increase. The teacher salary allocation has been adjusted with a 0.54% increase for the current year. A new categorical program has been introduced titled the academic acceleration options supplement which now includes your API um in those in that categorical instead of being treated as part of sorry I want to add to that piece about the new categorical program because we need to say thank you to um everyone at the district level and especially the parents and the students and the teachers that reached out to all the legislators about the fact that they were going to take that money away. And I want the community to know

008that with all of the support and the letters, emails, and phone calls that were made is we're keeping the money, but they've put it into a new pot because they're going to monitor it and make sure it's being spent correctly. Although it was being spent correctly, it's just it had other things in with it. And so I'm very thankful that our IBA, ACE, um, CTE, CAPE, and dual enrollment programs are going to continue to be funded this year. And that that is the best piece of news I feel that came out of the legislature. And look what it took. It took family. I mean, I I think they were a little tired of getting letters from our parents and our students, but that is a positive thing and I look forward to us showing them

009this year that it is used for the education of those students in special programs and that we'll not only have it back next year, but I'm hoping they'll fund it a little bit more than what it's currently funded. So, I have a little example that I'll share with you a little bit later on and how how that money is being used. But thank you. Sorry, I have to keep playing the glasses game here. Um, the new categorical program has been introduced as we said the academic acceleration option supplement which is intended to support the ex uh extended academic opportunities. Um, and again we thank the legislature um and and and providing that funding to us. The Florida retirement system has a proposed increase in the employer contribution rate for the regular class. It moved from

01013.63% 63% to 14.038% or um 04% increase. Our next slide here just talks about the consumer price index and I just use the information based off of the um Florida Department of Revenues website. This is what they assess um property owners based on the um increases in the consumer price index. So, as you can see, as we assess our financial position, it's essential to view it through the lens of the broader economic uh climate. This chart just tracks the annual change in the Florida consumer price index over the past decade. The red line illustrates the compounding effect of inflation over time and why even the modest annual increase can significantly erode your purchasing power. So using like $1 um as our baseline amount in the 201620 2017 the component changed would roughly equate to $1.35

011now. Okay. While inflation has cooled from post pandemic peak we're still grappling with the long-term cost excellation triggers. Uh this has real operational impacts particularly in areas like construction and utilities where costs continue to outpace revenues. Understanding this inflationary backdrop really just helps with contextualizing the um uh many decisions we make here in the district and reinforces the importance of long-term financial planning and conservative forecasting. The next slide, this slide just illustrates the percentage change to the base student allocation or BSA over the last decade. Um, while revenues have slowly increased year-over-year, the BASA uh changes have been, you know, I'll say somewhat inconsistent at times and often lag behind, you know, the inflation or cost of living pressures. So using a $1 as a baseline again in this example 201617, the compounding percentage change

012would roughly equate to like $118 in revenue in 2023 24. As you can see, there was um several categorical programs in those orange bars. Um like instructional materials, reading allocation were rolled into the BSA. That structural shift made the base allocation look a little bit larger on paper, but the real increase in that 23 24 year was about a 2.4% increase, which is reflected in that green line there. for the 252 for the 2425 school year, the legislature approved a BSA of um the 5,330.98 cent um um that's what they had for last the current year that we're in right now by um a midyear proration. Though what happened this year, it was a really unique year. I'll just say it that way. and um you know everything from the um not receiving a fourth

013calculation because it not only affects us, it also affects the charter school program too because they wait for that information to to be able to properly project and and and operate their facilities. So it kind of affects us all here at the district level. But if you were really just to take that proration that we received, it was roughly about $4.9 million this year. And I just did a fun little calculation and just said, well, we got the increase in the BSA, but really how much since we did get the proration of funds um of 4.9 reduction, how much how would that look implying against um the BSA calculation? So, it would have been roughly a $76 decrease in the what we they originally planned to provide us. So, it's 5,33098 again. But if they

014would reduced it for that um um um proration of funds which would have been a reduction of $764 the true BSA would have been right around the $5,29 254.94. It's just kind of showing the impact of that proration on the district. Um though it's not implied here in that green bar. I just wanted to say it out loud. So I hope that made sense what I was saying. So really it's just like we got a proration of 4.9%. So I was having a little fun with it. How would it look if I reduced the BSA? What would that reduction actually look like if I they gave us this amount for BSA and I reduced it for the 70 $76. So um that affected the traditional virtual and charter school programs. Okay. Uh meanwhile, scholarship funding

015remained untouched, highlighting the continued disparity in how resources are applied across different types of educational programs. This context helps explain why even the modest shifts in state policy can create significant local impacts and why we remain cautious in forecasting year end balances. So the next slide just it it really takes the two line and and puts them together so we can compare them. As you can see, the red line is the CPI and the green is the BSA changes. So, this slide really brings everything into sharp focus. It compares the steady rising cost of inflation over the last decade as measured by the consumer price index in red again against the far more uneven growth of the base student allocation reflected in the green line. The CPI line shows the compounding effect of inflation, meaning

016even moderate annual increases year after year have drastically eroded the purchasing power. In contrast, the BSA has grown slowly and consistent and often for some reasons that don't really reflect those real increases as I explained in a 23 24 year when they kind of combine stuff into the BSA. I I really want you to think of it this way. I needed an analogy that everyone can relate to and I and hopefully Mr. Cologne kind of appreciates this because I always try to put it in um um um in way ways that I think we can all understand. It's like you you take a lake or a reservoir. Okay? And and it depends on a steady rainfall to keep it keep it full and useful. During those drought years, the water it doesn't disappear all at

017once. it it slowly goes down until every drop of that reservoir really counts. So that's where we are with school funding. Rising cost have outpaced revenues and our reserves are being used to weather the dry years. We're not rationing by choice. We're doing it to protect the essentials. Planning for the dry seasons is how we keep the system flowing for our students and staff who depend on it. Okay, the next slide just I just wanted to show this as an example, but I do have some good news I want to share on this as well. You know, there's always bad and there's good, you know, and um I really appreciate I have to say it. I I really appreciate our legislature giving us flexibility, too. And I'll explain that in just a little bit. So,

018this slide shows the cost per square foot for school construction projects in Valuchia County has more than doubled since the 2017. Um that's why you would see your budget would actually increase. So your revenues are increasing over like that 10-year period and also your your your appropriations would increase too. So for an example, in 2017, Pierce Elementary was built for 100 at $198 per square foot compared to a $46 per square foot for Stark Elementary in 2024. And really the the figures reflect significant upward trends in construction costs over the past several years. Um according to industry reports this increase is influenced by several key factors. Inflationary pressures u material cost particularly for steel concrete HVAC systems have risen um sharply and then labor shortages and increasing wages and skill trades have added to pro

019um project expenses. Supply chain distributions and longer lead times continue to affect availability abil availility of key construction components. Sorry about that. Um, understanding these cost drivers is essential for accurate capital planning and budgeting as we look ahead to future facility needs. Uh the good news I want to share with you is that um from the 1.5 mil money that we re we appropriate or um levy um for capital purpose it's it's really keeping up with the cost of construction. So for example in the 201617 school year we received roughly 46.9 million from that 1.5. In the 202526 school year, we are expected to receive of 104.9 million. So, as you can see, even though the cost of construction did escalate, the um the amount of money um that we're receiving through the 1.5 mil

020has really kind of offset that. So, that's good for the capital side of the house. Okay, this slide I'm just going to transition back to Valuchia County is growing. I mean, we're adding more residents every day from the 2020 24 Valuchia County edit nearly 50,000 residents reflecting a growth rate of approximately about 8.9%. While the age distribution um stays relatively stable. So that means like your population 18 years and under compared to like 65 and over over that um percentage is actually stayed pretty much the same back in 2020 to compared to now since we're not so since we're not really seeing any major shift in those demographics. The increase in total population still leads to a greater demand for educational services particularly in areas experiencing residential development or migration from other regions. This affects

021school capacity, staffing needs and long-term capital planning. We'll explore how this growth correlates with student enrollment trends on the next slide. The total the the total unweighted full-time equivalent students accounted for in the FFP third calculation for all program types is 67650. Next year it's estimated to increase to 68,000 or an increase of 359. So what does that really mean for um the various programs that we have? So for Valuchia County has experienced a steady decline in the traditional public school enrollment over the past several years. This trend mirrors broader patterns observed across the state. So all districts are seeing the same um decline in their regular traditional programs. Enrollment in scholarship programs um particularly the your family empowerment um family empowerment scholarship has continued to rise. This growth is particularly attributed to recent legislative

022expansions uh that have broadened eligibility and access. These shifts have a direct impact on district funding, staffing models, and long-term planning. As more students enroll in alternative education options, the district must remain proactive and adapt to how it allocates resources and plans for future needs. So effective fund balance management is really essential for maintaining fiscal stability and supporting long-term student success. One of the things that really um you know and and I I apologize to the superintendent because she she's asked me several times is you know you know where are we at? Where are we at? And my answer was I don't have the fourth calculation from the state. So, I don't really know what the final funding is going to be because what happens is the state takes all the FTE that's reported um

023and the final FTE it makes adjustments for all the school districts. So, I really don't know what the we didn't really know what the the total impact was going to be on us. So, and that was the same kind of information I shared with the charter schools too is that we don't know we never received that information. So, it it it's it's sometimes you feel like you're operating with um uh blinders. you you don't know what's ahead of you. You can only plan and you have to be conservative how you're planning because you don't know if they're going to come back and make an adjustment or not or what that adjustment is going to be because of the late reporting that's coming out. So, you can as from a budgetary perspective, you can appreciate that

024you really don't know what your next paycheck's going to be. Even though we're going to we know we're going to get something, we just don't know what that amount could be or adjusted for. That's the best way to say it. By aligning financial planning with district strategic goals, we are better positioned and navigate unexpended challenges, unexpected challenges while continue to invest in programs that um are meaningful and impactful. Um this is that example I wanted to go back to where we really see the positive things coming out of our CTE program um is really in our district Hback on the job training program which not only equips students with career ready skills but also contributes to operation efficiency. This dual benefit reflects our commitment to both educational excellence and re u responsible resource use. And

025um I talked to um Rodney Smith um who is our director of maintenance and he said that program's just working out bill beautifully for the school districts. Those students are really stepping up and really helping us out and they're getting paid for it too which is wonderful. So yeah and learning. So all I can say here is we want maintain a strong fund balance ensure that we can sustain and expand these types of opportunities even during periods of economic uncertainty. So I I got to go back to this slide again and you know there's you put out information and you want to make sure people get it right. So I guess my messaging is not clear enough. So I'm just being honest with I'll take full blame for this. So the paper had fun with

026this and and other people had fun with this. All right. So what I'm saying here is that we're budgeted to have an operating deficit of 25. At the beginning of the year it was 25.8. Um we had a dramatic decrease in the student population that we didn't really plan for back in uh December of 20 three. 23. 23. Yeah. Because we're in 24 25 now. So in December 23. So that's what um the state starts to use to build the conference report information for this LA for the current year that we're in right now that we're going to be ending and then of course they met in this their session this year which is was late. So um again there was a lot of things that happened this year. It was the um the students

027in your scholarship programs grew faster. you had homeschooled students. So, there was a mis miscount by the Department of Education, how many students that we really had. That's why we got hit with a proration of $4.9 million. So, you kind of know where I'm going with this. So, I think we budgeted pretty good here. I mean, um again, we at the very beginning of the year, we planned that we were going to have more students. So, that's how we outfitted our classrooms. So that's why we had a little bit more budgeted there this year than the actual revenue that we received. Um and then so you know that we're and again when this is budget numbers this isn't actual numbers. So the thing is you budget that you're going to receive this much revenue and

028you're going to have this much expenditure. But if you're like me I'm very like look for ways to save money. even in my regular personal budget, you know, I says, I know I'm going to get a paycheck probably about this amount, and then these are my personal expenditures. We all do this. I would like to think we all do this. And um that you you you want to try to save money each month. So, when you're doing that, even though you budget it this way, you hopefully at the end of the year, you have a little bit you didn't spend everything and you have a little bit left over. And that's the goal. That's what we're always trying to achieve here. This is budget numbers because this is the potential spend. It might not be

029the actual spend. I'm hoping I I'm explaining that well. So, for this upcoming year, the we have a preliminary budget. Um we're about um 8 million. What happened was then since we have this year's projected FTE where we think we're going to hit now, uh the DOE from what we certified in December of 24 made a change to the calculation a little bit that was included in that conference report. We have an undistributed that are reported in your budget book that I wasn't planning for that. So they made they reduced their scholarship students a little bit. So, and our traditional students made an adjustment there a little bit. So, there's unaccounted for FT. I don't know where to put it yet. So, it goes into what we call as an undistributed bucket. And I take

030the money that I would earn for each one of those students and put aside when we know when those students will materialize. That comes into play just like this the current year. You know, we put money aside for undistributed because we didn't know where those students were going to be. I budgeted for it. So when it materialized and there was a bigger growth in the scholarship program um we were able to you know we we we planned for that reduction in revenue and we also held the money aside and we just gave it back to the department of education. Does that make sense? I'm hoping I'm making sense. Absolutely. Okay. So um so this slide just really provides that snapshot of our reoccurring general fund across these key points in time. uh the original adop

031adopted budget is see in se in September of this current year um and it was revised for April that's what you see in the current budget right now and again it's just a budget number and then your preliminary budget next year this is reoccurring and then I got to really um I want to explain it this way and I got to I I need to spend just a little bit of time on this because I think there's a lot of confusion there was confusion in the past too on this um from going back through the budget books from the past. When when I when I came in here to the to this district, when I budget, I budget what's a reoccurring expenditure every year. You get this much in revenues from the FIF program, and

032you want to live within those reoccurring expenditures. Like I was sharing with you, you get your paycheck every year. You have these planned expenditures, and you always want to save a little bit. Or I might have I might have a planned ex um I might have saved for a car. And this is where I'm going to use a car example. I'm probably different than most people. I save up for to buy a new car. Okay? I don't necessarily finance a car. So I put money aside every year and that sits in my savings account. That's no different here. So it's like a textbook adoption. So think of it this way. We have a $12 million textbook adoption facing us. All right. And I'm saving up for that textbook adoption. Okay. So you and that's in

033your assigned bucket. So we we have to use you know whatever a available funds that we have and it goes into that savings account. So if we don't fully use it, it goes and we appropriate for whatever purpose we need it for. This um we do have a textbook adoption coming up. It's not. We're gonna spread. We're gonna depending on how much money I can get Mr. Cash because he's needing $12 million. Um I'm gonna I'm I'm trying to save up for this and get us that um get him some money here to pay for that textbook adoption. But um so what I'm trying to save is I we save up every year. So then that money rolls forward in my savings account. So then when I go to buy my car, I'm taking it

034all out of savings, but it's an expense in that year. I'm hoping I'm explaining that. So it looks like I have an operating deficit when really I don't because it's coming from my savings account that I had a that I was planning to spend for that specific purpose. And that's what I call is like your roll forward um assigned fund balance that goes forward every year. So now you have a reoccurring that we all live with it. So let's let's go back and I'm going to get I'm going full circle and I hope I explain this because I think there's a lot of confusion out there about this. Again, you receive FFP funding from the state and we expend for you know we make sure we hit our class size ratios provide the support we

035need for our teachers and the training that they need. We give we provide that administrative support at the school and then backend support from the district and all of that should equal what you're the amount of money that you're receiving. Okay. So that's that reoccurring expenditure you have every year. Okay. So and if I have to save up stuff for textbooks because I I put maybe 2 million aside this year, 2 million aside for next year, that goes into that little savings. That's called fund balance. So it's a signed fund balance. So again, you're a reoccurring budget and how it wasn't presented in the past, it wasn't presented like that. That's why when I'm presenting the budget, I'm presenting a reoccurring budget where I'm showing the actual revenues, what we actually are expending or plan

036to expend in that year and then are we breaking even even on that? So did that make sense? Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I just have to just Okay. Thank you, Mr. CE. Mr. Sloan has a question. No, I said abs. No, I'm good. You're good. I'm good until after he's Okay. All right. So, so I want to make sure that what what I'm showing you here is for this next this upcoming year I'm planning on using spending down our fund balance by 8 million because what we're doing here and it's really um it's a superintendent directive. We want to make sure that all of our schools are exceed um succeeding and that means sometimes we have to provide a little bit more support and help to some of those schools. So we have to add

037additional instructional support for the teachers, coaches, resources to make sure that they have the resources that they need need to make sure that those students Thanks. Okay. So, that's what we're doing here. So, I think we're doing a I think we're doing a great job of it and I think you're going to see how well we're doing in um maybe a couple weeks from now. I'm not sure. Thank you. So, um I I just have to emphasize yes, it's a controlled spendown. I plan to do this. We all plan to do this. The board approved to do this. And so that's that's the thing about we have the money to do this. So we want to put the money where the money needs to be is affecting our students. So I I hope I emphasize

038a great job. Okay. Okay. So this again this is a controlled spendown and please when you publish this um our newspaper friends you get this right it's a controlled spend down we have the funds available we're adding the resources to make sure that every student succeed okay okay so at this time I think I spoken up and in this budget I want to close with every dollar has a job And every job is focused on student success. Yes. So does anyone have any questions for Mr. CE before we move on to Miss Coror's part? Mr. Cologne. So this budget that you're presenting, is it a balanced budget? I ask every year. Yeah. Yes, it is. Wonderful. And I noticed that this year um it is denoted that we will be uh as you said um

039as we planned going into reserves. Do you know what our uh quote because we know how this always gets reported a deficit was uh sometime around let's say 2018 up. You're good. You're good. Try not to sneeze. Sorry. Um let's see here. So according to the reports and of course this is before your time being here and so and and that's what I really wanted that's the where the confusion came out Mr. Col because when I went back and studied that based on you know you asked me to do that it's it was how the information was displayed. So what was happening is that even though that we're showing that operating deficit every year in our budget because you said it too about um sorry you said it about a year ago is that that

040you always say we're operating in a red. Well, how the information was displayed is yes, we are showing the operating red because what happened is you that reoccurring revenues, your reoccurring expenditures and that carry forward appropriation that's sitting in your savings account, we're using it. So, it looks like we're operating in a red when we're really not. So, in 2018, if I went back and looked at Yeah. my dear friend's reporting Yeah. Love you, Mark. Uh what what was it said at the it said it said that we were operating in red by 18.7 because that included your roll forward appropriations that we were spending that was sitting in your savings account to spend for that specific purpose in 2019. In 2019 was the same way in 2020. In 2020 that was um 2020 you

041actually had you planned a little bit of a surplus that year. Oh okay. But even though you're showing that you were operating in red, you're how much in the red were in the red it was showing that you were 36 million in the red. So what year was that? That that year was the 20 201920 year. So in 2021 in 2021 you you were showing that um your total was 25.3 and that included your recurring non-recurring but in your recurring there was no operating deficit. Gotcha. So then COVID hit after that CO hit um we in 2022 we budgeted a little bit of surplus. It was $87,000 last year in reoccurring but in your non-reoccurring for total it was $41 million in the whole because you had RO for it. Right. So $41 million. Well

042yeah that was a good headline. Yeah. And then after that last year it was how much? Okay. So for the for the well I for last year for the 2023 or 24 or for the current year we're in right now still. So right now I had roll forward um I'm at the $69 million in the hole but again it's not in the hole. I I hear you. I hear you. I got you. It's the savings account was 25 million last year. So the year before in 2023 um 2023 24 it was 31.5 million in the whole in total but for your reoccurring was only 847,000 and then last year um last year okay 25 million oh no the current year we're in right now is 2425 so I do have an operating deficit because we're

043spending remember the students didn't materialize this year we got hit with a proration of $4.9 million. So, it was 25 or so million from a budget wise. It's it's it's from a budget lens, it's 25. How much is it for this budget? Um, for this budget, 8 million. Yeah. So, yeah. I I I mean, and and and the reason I asked for the trajectory is because I can remember from before being on the board, every single year it was, "Oh my god, the deficit." Now, as we have heard, school districts across the state of Florida, that matter their size, because of decrease in enrollment, because of all those variables, he said, are um are are having to make tough decisions. And so, the tough decisions we made last year, the tough decisions the superintendent made

044last year, the tough decisions our teachers, staff, and students had to endure. is that's not gone away from me. Um is what allows us to be in a better position this year as compared to the 18 25 40 41 45 28 25 kudos. Yeah, kudos. So I still have again it doesn't I don't want to say it didn't come without sacrifice. Everybody, everybody, every single member of our team sacrificed something in order to ensure that we are all here tomorrow. And so I want to thank you for that and I want to thank everyone because it's it's easy up here, but the folks who have to do the work every day and have had to live this. But our biggest concern was being able to stay open and being able to continue to serve our

045students. And you know, when you're down to eight, the story of perspective and buy down and how we plan that is a whole lot more palatable than when you're talking $40 million because that doesn't fly. So, thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. This is good, Rich. I just want to tell you that you did an excellent job explaining it and I hope it's accurately reflected what an amazing job the entire team is doing for Valuchia County and what a positive direction we're headed in. Thanks. Okay, I have a few things. Um on page three of the actual budget preliminary budget book that we received, it did it does say this year that the um reoccurring local effort funding adjustment that we're no longer getting a funding adjustment that we've had the last two years. And

046that's on line three. So we lost that amount of money. Correct. And Miss Haynes, I do apologize. Page three of the preliminary budget book and it's line three. And the required local effort prior period funding adjustment. We're not getting it for this coming year. Correct. Okay. So I I want this is what I want to clarify for everyone's knowledge is that this is just a conference report. So what happens is we there most likely will be an adjustment. I'm just not sure what that adjustment is going to be. So it's so at this time they haven't given us an adjustment. That will be in the second calculation because when you approve or adopt the tenative budget between now when they release the conference report the department of education takes that information. We certify the tax

047roles or the the taxing authority certifies what the tax roles are. Then the department of education has to calculate what the required local effort will be. This is just a conference snapshot of what they think it's going to be and then they come back and redo a calculation on what the actual required local effort is going to be and any prior period adjustments. So they're the ones that tell us what we have to levy and that's all included in that tenative budget presentation. Okay. One other thing and it's on page six as well as page 19 of the preliminary budget book. I had heard this and I just need to know I need to confirm is this actually happening or not. Um I had heard that one of the things we were going to lose

048possibly this year was school recognition funds from the state because that's under the state piece. Are we losing that? I mean that was something No, I I didn't I didn't hear that through the legislation at all. But I can't budget for something I don't know what's going to be. So that's a really good I'm glad you brought that up, Miss Haynes. Thank you. Can I add a little clarification there, please, for the public is that what happens is at the beginning of the year, I have uh we have our conference report or our second calculation we received from the state and it shows the Mona FP revenues that we're going to get. That's what's included in your book. And what happens is when we receive that funding, it's normally in October, November time. I'm trying

049to remember exactly when we receive that. That's when we add that revenue in to your recurring revenues and we appropriate that at as a recurring expenditure later. So that's why you see these budget amendments come through every month for these adjustments that are coming in for additional revenue that we're seeing for these programs and also we have to appropriate it for how the schools wish to use those funds. So I have not heard anything about that was one of the things being tossed around up there just like when they were tossing around taking the money from the student programs like AB um AP and IB and all of that they were talking about taking school recognition. So we don't have we don't it's still on what you received. We don't know if we're getting an

050amount. I know that it doesn't come till fall because it was all based on when school grades came out and it used to be school grades came out later. Now that they appear to be coming out hopefully earlier and so but no one has any we don't have any definite answer on that on whether or not we'll receive that this year. I'm not sure. Yeah, I haven't heard to the contrary. Okay. Another question I have is you're going to remove 8 million from the fund balance to offset what we need so that we have a balanced budget. What percentage is that going to leave us in the fund balance on that same in the in the book um on page now this again this is preliminary data based off of a conference report and and

051last year what happened or in the current year that's why I said it's been a really interesting year is that we got the conference report and on when I got the second calculation they already had their first proration of funds AAIL available. So I you know again remember this is all preliminary information. So on page 22 of 44 in the budget book that will show you right now that's reoccurring funds only. I'm not talking about the re the um roll forward money that's going to come that's unspent still. Okay. So that's so I'm just this is just a reoccurring snapshot. So you're looking at on row 30 is your 5% and then row 29 assigned for projected operating deficit in next year is going to be a8%. So the combined is 5.8% right now. Okay.

052And then um on page 15 of the preliminary budget, there's a statement at the bottom under the state categorical program about about class size reduction allocation. So, is that current information that is written in there? And I'm referring to where it says up to three students may be assigned to a teacher in grades in the grade group of K to three and up to five students may be assigned to a teacher in grade 4 through 8 and 9 through 12. And that's going above what the 18, 22, and 25 students are is the way I read that. Is that accurate? To my knowledge, that's the way the current is right now, but I haven't read I haven't there was a lot of information that came in a short period of time. We just got it.

053So I haven't I haven't had a chance to fully study the impacts even on the calculation for the new categorical the API program and how they're actually how we can use those funds. I don't know if there was any big changes there. So I haven't had time to study that as well. to my yes, this is the way it currently is for the current year and then I'll make an adjustment if if I do find any changes for this um um upcoming year. And I know that that when they stepped back and started doing schools instead of individual classrooms for making that determination, that's where I think we need to do a little bit more education with people because lots of times we have individuals walk in and say, "I'm teaching first grade and I

054have 19 students and I'm only supposed to have 18 students." Well, the reality is, you know, if there's only three first grades at your school, even if we take that one child from you and maybe somebody else has one, we don't have enough kids to make a class size. So, I I think we need to educate everyone because when it did come out originally and it started class size amendment, you know, we took first grade classrooms that were as high as 36 kids and we dropped them to 18. And I can say that because I taught first grade prior to that coming out and I had 36 kids and we dropped to 18. And I'm thankful for class- size amendment. But people need to know it's not a set in stone number. You know, it

055doesn't mean you'll only have 18. There could be somebody that has 17, you know, but then there could be a group that has 20 because there's not enough kids because you can't take three kids and make a new classroom. right? You know, and pay for a teacher and the salary and benefits and the furniture and the materials and things like that. So, I I know that's currently where we're at, but there's some confusion there. And I just think we need to educate people so that they understand class- size amendment is no longer per classroom because when it came out, it was and we got fined. Okay, there were school districts fined. It's now by school and so it takes all the students into account and it really should be by a school. I mean you

056should not be adding a teacher for three students ever. I mean that's not being fiscally responsible. But then also my question is on page 14 under the safe schools piece. It says that we're getting a decrease in safe school money this year when our number one priority is supposed to be safety, but yet we're receiving a decrease of funding there. And I know that we've put a lot of things into place. You know, we have perimeter fencing. We have onepoint entry, single point entry. You know, we have police officers, sheriff's deputies, guardians on all of our campuses. Everybody's been trained and is doing so well, but we're not where we need to be. So, I wish I had known they were going to decrease that because we could have maybe gotten our community behind us

057to write up there and say that that's not a funding source that they should have decreased at this point in time. But I would like to know, and not today, but at a later time, what that decrease is going to do to what our plans are and what Captain Smith's plans are for safety and security next year. And because that is our top priority here to make sure everyone is safe on campuses. I'll put it this way. We're fully staffing um per um there hasn't been any reductions. So, and my position's always been, and it's been for many years here, is that even if we don't receive enough money, I make sure that we use regular FFP funding to subsidize the the shortfall to make sure that we have the resources to to secure our

058campuses. And that's that's the position I've always taken. And I think um um Captain Smith would concur with that statement. Um and um so that's the safety's um our number one priority here in the district and I know it is and I I wasn't suggesting it wasn't but I'm big on when they make mandates but they don't fund them. I do not like unfunded mandates and so I know that this is preliminary but we can't say that that's the number one thing and then it's not funded from the state level to be the number one priority. But I too want to say thank you very much for all that you've done and um what you brought forward today, the time and effort because I know you didn't get this information till just a couple days

059ago. Yeah, it's it's Yeah, you pulled off a miracle to be here. It's it's all part of the job. Thank you. So, thank you. All right. All right. We'll move on to Miss Core then. Good afternoon uh board and Dr. Bgabin. Um as you know we also are on a timeline with uh Department of Education for our capital plan that we submit every year. We do submit a five-year capital plan and it rolls um and so each year we do submit the old year drops off the new the furthest out year is added. Um we also um send this to DOE by October it is due. So this is preliminary as well. Um, but what you're going to see here is our capital forecast for our major projects. Um, and the years in which they're

060currently budgeted. I can take any questions you have at this time. Mr. cologne. Is this consistent with the five-year plan that you presented the last time? So, is there anything different on here that is outside of the five-year plan we last approved that you're aware of? Um, not that I can think of, but let me actually Yes. I don't know that we had Pathways. Um, I have Mr. Ron Young here as well. He's my director. Would he come up, please? I don't know that Pathways was on last year's. I didn't bring last year's with me. So, thank you guys. I don't have any questions on that. I'm I'm good. I was just wondering how it how much it deferred from. And so, I know pathways needs to be done for capacity wise. So, I'm good

061with that. I just That's the only one I see on here that is um that is a new Great. Thank you. any other and of course our capital um is funds that are that come from another side of the house. So we have half cent sales tax. We always want to take an opportunity to thank our committee our project oversight committee who works with us on our halfsent sales tax. Um we have a committee that's already started up for marketing for the next one because we would very much like to renew our half-sent sales tax. It does help us um on our capital side fund a lot of very necessary projects. Um, Mr. Cologne, anything else? Mrs. Goodrich, are we anticipating an increase in enrollment at Long Street? Um, we're not increasing um en Well,

062yes. Okay, let me say we have a three-year uh phased plan that we're looking at to rightsize our district um which would include some schools on both sides of the county. um that that plan is not ready as of today to be shared, but we're forecasting for movement of kids based on right sizing our buildings. Okay, I understand better. Yes. Thank you, Miss Thompson. Thank you. So, I see that Enterprise Elementary is slated for 2526. If is that still a go for 2526? And if it's not, if it does get shuffled around or moved, is there a plan to move some stuff or will it just get added to a different year? We'll just stay on whatever. Yes. Considering what we're currently going through down in the southwest, that could possibly get shifted out a

063year. That's not our goal. That's not our plan. We don't want that to happen. But if that were to happen based on the circumstances, we would reallocate um and see what other major projects would come on the the five-year plan. So, that gives us a little bit of time because again, this is preliminary and our final one is not due until October. So this will be coming back before you guys um probably two more times before it goes to DOE. Um but we would have to look at that and we would have to shift and maybe something further out comes ahead of it and that gets pushed back. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you very much. We appreciate Thank you. All right. At this time we are going to take a 15minute break

064and then we will come back in and be ready for the student services um presentation which is item 3.01. So we'll be back in here at 1:45. Thank you. Welcome back. It is 1:48 p.m. and we are moving into item 3.01, code of student conduct and discipline update for elementary and secondary. Dr. Babin. Thank you, Madam Chair. We have with us here today Mr. MacAr, executive director for grat assurance and student services. As you know, there have been some legislative changes, but also on an annual basis, we review our code of conduct. We look at our entries for the whole entire year, we determine whether there are some steps that are necessary for um recalibration when it comes to our code of conduct in additional to our matrix systems was also reviewed and studied with

065the committee. So, Mr. McAlliff is going to share with you what some of those changes are and the communication pattern that we're going to embrace upon moving forward for ensuring that our parents are fully aware of our code of conduct, our students are aware of code of conduct and how we will be enforcing that in a consistent manner across elementary and secondary. So, Mr. McAfee. Thank you, Dr. Balgabin. Uh, good afternoon, Madam Chair, school board members, Superintendent Dr. Balgabin. I'm going to call Miss Crims up real quick because she was a crucial part of this and she knows exactly what the legal standpoint of the law. She didn't want to be called up but I had to. Good call. Yes, staff attorney. You're welcome. And that's just for you just in case you need it.

066Thank you. Okay, we'll get started. So, this is update for policy 208 uh student code of conduct for elementary and secondary. As you guys can see, uh it's gone through a complete revamp. uh we've pretty much xed out everything and we've started from scratch. Um and we did that off of the RSM that some of you guys might be familiar with. It's the internal audit that the school board uh picks certain divisions and departments to say, "Hey, let's kind of see processes in place, systematic things, what's going well, what's not, how can we get it?" So, it the recommendation is coming from the actual feedback we've received from the audit committee. Um, and we've been working handinhand uh with RSM in the past year of how to get all of this information to be as

067clear as possible and not as less and less gray. So, we're going to kind of get started with it. Um, this is covering policy 208E and S, which is elementary and secondary for the student code of conduct. Um, this will of course cover guardrail 2 to provide conditions to enhance student learning. Um, the overall update with everything is like I pretty much touched with it. It's the update. We want to have consistency. We want to have clarity in everything that we do moving forward with the student code of conduct. We didn't have that last year and or the last several years. I will say that to where now everything is more concise. Um we're spelling stuff out. We're putting definitions in there. We're putting state statutes in there. We're putting uh legal terminology in there.

068So, it is now crystal clear or we're getting it to be as crystal clear as possible to a way uh should line to help our parents, our students, and our school uh base employees all become familiar with that as well. You'll also see in here the House Bill 11:05 that is the cell phone um requirement bill that we will discuss and go over here as well. Um and that's the communication for elementary and middle middle school devices about how they are now prohibited and the expectation for high school and moving forward with the policy of that. Um so ambiguity ambiguity to I'm sorry ambiguity am I can't even say it. I'm gonna pass on that one Heidi. All right to clarity. So we want to be subjective to objective. I'll be very honest with you

069and that's what we had all with the last code of conduct. It was a bunch of very broad definitions. Nothing was clear. It would you could kind of say I think it means this and Heidi would say it means this. That's how it is. So if you can see through the entire document that we have shared with you all. It starts on actually page 27. Now the new thing about moving this is making sure parents have a good understanding and knowing the student code of conduct. Um, and that's something that we added in the very front page and it's the number one thing because the parents have to know what they're we're enforcing so they can be on our side to help us out with as well. So the students have to know and the

070parents have to know exactly what's in the student code of conduct kind of moving forward. Um, the benefits of the clar clarity as you can see is the misinterpretation subjective to enforcement more transparency with students and families uh supports administrators with clear implementation and we have consistency now is what we're going for. Mr. Mr. Cologne has a question. Sorry, just a quick one. So, I noticed in this policy revision, it's almost like we started over. There's a lot of red line. Can you explain the thought process behind that because we're used to changing bits and pieces a lot of times more so because of statutory reasons. It's really weird to see all that red. Yes. and which is a good thing because as we said we're going for more consistent consistency and clarity now. Um

071and the reason behind striking out and starting over from scratch is because we needed to. I'll be honest as a district. I don't think we've touched the student code of conduct in probably over 10 plus years besides maybe adding state statues and stuff. So, this is our first re-overhaul of a student code of conduct um with myself and Miss Grims helping out with everything that we were able to do and get stuff is crystal clear, put legal terminology in there, uh spell out every infraction for the parents and give them prime examples. We never had any of that stuff before. And it also gives every level of consequences and things like that that every parent can be accustomed to and should know because the number one thing is here is the parents will know the

072student code of conduct along with the parents for students. One other quick question. How much did the RSM because I know that was something that we asked for. How much did that did that audit reflect how much of that is reflected in these changes? Uh probably the whole thing. Uh and I asked them to do the internal audit again as a whole once I got in here to see if the systems and structures we had in place were actually effective and working. So from their feedback, this is their recommendation to get us more aligned uh to other districts throughout the state of Florida. So, they've played a huge role in this and they've been great with the assistance and providing the support as well. Great. Thank you. So, Mr. McCallif, I'd just like to um

073state one thing for people that may be watching at home or will watch this at a later time. The actual policies that you're referring to can be found in the board meeting for this evening. Um because I want them to know because they're not attached to the workshop, just the power presentation is. But if anyone is watching this later or watching from home or even anyone here that wants to open up and see the changes to the policy, if you go to the board docs and go under 20.02, you can actually click and open up the two documents um that he's presenting the elementary and the secondary one to us here in the workshop. Thank you. Thank you. Yep. uh code of the code of civily is the something that we want to bring out

074to all of Valuchia County schools. I can't speak right now. I know, but we're going to let it go. We're going Dr. B. So, this is something that we want to bring out and to ensure that all campuses, all students, all staff, all parents, all community uh members and business partners all understand. We want to have a when you're on our staff and you're on our campuses that we want everybody to be treated with respect, the utmost respect. So, this is something that we're bringing back to Valuchia County Schools and we're going to actually have this in every office, every classroom, every school so parents can understand what we're looking to do and also business partners can do that and family members, community members. We want every interaction to be with family and students to

075be friendly, to be positive, to work together. That's what this whole plan is about. So you can see it established uh conducts and expectations for students, parents and staff and visitors from the time they step on campus. The communi communication requirements are all interactions with the school personnel must use appropriate language, no profanity, uh maintain calm tone tones, practice active listening and demonstrate cooper cooperative behavior. And then the on-ampus conduct is every school property must follow these rules staff instructed along with the facility or the facilities appropriately and then address the concerns through the proper channels. So if there's an argument or something starts to get loud, we're going to refer back to this code to remind parents that we're here to work together and to solve the issue and we don't want to work

076against each other. Uh the enforcement of course would be the non-compliance of this would be the restriction of access to events, facilities, um other admin administrative actions per DCS policy 418. Uh is where parents can go to find that. Um also could lead to a possibly trespassing if it ever did, but we hope it never would get to that sort. Um we want to set the expectations for respectful communication behavior like I explained to everybody. um parents, staff, students, every time you're on our campus, we're having respectful conversations with each other and we're working to solve a problem and we're not just working against each other. Uh we give schools the reference points when addressing these appropriate inappropriate communications we will have for all schools and we will help create a more positive school environment

077where all interactions are respectful as what we want to see at the school-based level uh prek through 12. Um and then of course this aligns with our district values and of course the prof professionalism as well. So some of the security protocols with that it clarifies the consequences of non-compliance what I've talked about. We reinforce the compliance issues and the safety protocols of why we're doing this. Um and then it also we're looking at doing some things as well to add in the student code of conduct. We had random screenings uh this past year in the secondary stuff and sometimes that students would not want to be screened or would not and that would be fine if they had some type of you know accommodation or if we had something medical written for these students.

078Um, but you will see in here now it's subject to disciplinary consequences if a student is refusing to get screened because that would be of course a high safety alert at that point in time if a student's refusing to give over their book bag um walk through a random screening with the metal detectors or possibly go through the metal detectors if we're talking high schools at a later point um possibly for next school year. So that's just some of the safety issues that we have added to it with the compliance because we had nothing in the previous code of conduct if a student besides insubordination if they did not want to go through any kind of screenings. Uh definition updates. This is where you guys will see uh the majority of this is I just

079randomly selected these just so you guys know. But every update now has a clear definition and a clear example of what it looks like and what it should say. Uh the biggest thing we're going to start here is bullying. Uh that's one that comes up very often and what is bullying and what's it look like. Uh we had a very general description last time. It was very limited with some of the behaviors and the patterns and if we're reporting it. So we've updated the definition to now as as you can see it there italicized is uh pattern of behavior displayed against multiple students or an employee of or repetitive behavior against a single student or employee which inflicts physical hurt, psychological distress or severe or persuasive enough to create a intimidating, hostile or offensive environment

080or unreasonably interfere with the individual school performance or participation including through electronic means. behavior must have been reported and we also want this definition or the bullying thing to be reported to schoolbased officials and documented. So that is something new that we have not had in there. We would get a lot of calls and a lot of things saying my kid is being bullied and the first question you would have you talked to the school have you reported to the principal? So that's actually in there that states when bullying is going to investigate and we're going to go through that route that we want to make sure it's properly communicated through the channels at the school base to where individuals can make sure that they feel safe. administrators are doing their investigation and thoroughly proper

081or um thoroughly investigating it and then also we're documenting it on our end so everybody is aware. Um you know it may include teasing, social exclusion threats, intimidating, stalking, physical violence, threat and harassment. Um and then you can see the more key improvements when it comes to that. this is something that we can have and do something as a better due process on our end that we think uh schoolbased level will be able to assist with us and having that stuff documented and reported when it is uh we'll be able to make sure that everybody is held accountable. Um when we go here to you can see these uh trespassing to remain on school grounds campus school transportation or sponsored event off campus without authorization or invitation with no lawful purpose for entry. So that's

082a new term and just a new definition that was in there prior to what trespassing was in the previous one. Uh you can see we have breaking and entering or remaining in the dwelling structure for conven conveyance uh with an intent to commit a crime. That is a more legal terminology now that we've added to our student code of conduct instead of just our vague terminology that we had prior. When we get into fighting and harassment, this is a fighting major. So this is where you will see in the definition where two or more people mutually participate in use in force or physical violence that requires either physical interventions or result in injury requiring first aid or medical. So when you have a fight and it's major and you're having to separate physically two individuals

083that now becomes a cessor that we have to report to the state for state reporting just so everyone's aware. When you see fighting minor, fighting minor would be if they stopped on command. Hey guys, stop fighting. Don't do that or don't don't do that. And that's would be the fighting minor. If a punch was thrown or something along those we don't have to do and report the minors to cessor just so you know the state reporting it's only the major ones. harassments. You can see that we're added here with uh instances of harassments that are chronic and repeated in nature should be evaluated to bullying and bullying related because of course harassment would be normally a one-time offense if that's taking place with them. So any threatening, insulting or dehumanizing gesture, use of data, computer

084software, or written verbal or physical conduct that places a student or school employee at reasonable fear or harm. If this happened multiple times, repetitive is where we would be then looking to then it would then escalate to uh bullying. You will see here we have the sexual harassment and hazing um definitions. Once again, I'm not going to read these verbatim for you, but they are here. They are defined. They are more crystal clear now for everybody and they give prime examples for parents and students to know exactly what we should be looking for and doing. And every level of the definitions and infractions have one of these um for every category. So you're aware, here's House Bill 11:05. This is the student wireless communication device. So this is the new bill that just got passed

085uh by the governor and it's House Bill 11:05. So everybody uh is aware of that. This ensures that elementary and middle school students are prohibited to have cell phones throughout the school day, which is new because it was only elementary were prohibited to have cell phones throughout the school day. So now this is elementary and middle school are have complete prohibitation of cell phones throughout the school day. High schools are allowed to continue using their cell phones unless they have to be put up when they enter the instructional classroom unless they're being authorized by the teacher itself. So you guys are aware on that one. And of course we have to adopt a policy in regarding this and then also usage zone policy for high schools which you will see on the next picture here.

086Can can you go back for a moment because Miss Thompson has a question? Yes. Thank you. So back to the bullying really fast. Um where it says reporting to the school, does that include reporting any cyber bullying that occurs off campus and after hours? Because I feel like that's where you see a lot of it. It has to be anything like that. that it's going to affect the student on campus and it's going to turn into a campus event which normally all of that does. They'd have to report it to the school and then the school would document it. Does it matter if it's the parent reporting it or the student? I'm we would probably Yeah, either or. I mean, if a parent's calling, we'd call in the student to then have the student fill

087out the statements and do all that stuff. Okay. And then going back to the House Bill 11:05, and this is kind of more for us because as you said, like now we do need a policy on these cell phones. So, I feel like we're going to have to get on that pretty quickly because we have a meeting in July and then school starts and if we have to advertise a new policy that's specifically on cell phones. Yes. Okay. So, correct me if I'm wrong. I thought we did a policy on it and we already banned it from elementary and middle and high school was the only one. We didn't write the policy. We just set up the criteria. It's in the student code of conduct that way. I don't believe I don't believe there is

088a wireless communication policy that's for cell phone related. I think it's more of a IT computer-based if you're searching software programs. I think that's where it is. But we I knew we put it somewhere. So we put it in the code of conduct student code of conduct and we went the extra step and said no cell phones elementary or middle school during the day on campus. Yes. high school, we only allowed between classes and for lunch before school, after school. Yes. Okay. But Miss Brosmer has a question and I have something I want to come back to. Yes, ma'am. Yeah. Mine's also related to the reporting. Um, sometimes uh bullying can be observed by a teacher or something like that. So, is there any restriction on who can report it or how it's done? No,

089I don't think there ever should be a restriction on it to be honest. If somebody sees it happening, they should report it, especially an employee because we're mand man m man m man m man m man m man m man m man m man m man mand m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m mandatory self-reporter. So if we see something, we should always say something and be in the defense of a student. So if they see us that happening, they would then of course go to administration, they would get the student's names, they would do the start the investigation piece. That way you've

090notified somebody and then of course it's going to be documented with the proper paperwork. Okay. Thank you. Y Mr. clone. So in the code of civility, uh one of the things I had spoken I had a great meeting with Mr. McCullifan and Miss Heidi uh yesterday, early yesterday. Um was to add partners in ed to that. Uh it's we have parents, we have students, we have all that, but we don't have the same expectation for partners of ed. So, um I I'd like to propose that on the refusing the screenings. Um I suggested plain language because right now it says uh they would go to DCPC which is and it's it is spelled out on here but that means nothing to anyone. And so what I suggested was adding language that says uh to defer

091potential expulsion leading up to expulsion. And that way if you send that to a parent and they see that they don't know what DCSPC is. And so changing that to plain language meaning you know can be suspension up to expulsion or alternative placement. Then at that point there's no question as to what that is. Uh, and then the other thing, and I know that we're going to need a policy for this in the future, was I wanted to make sure that we add something in there that says, um, because I asked Mr. McAlliff like, "Where do we plan on uh, people putting their phones?" And the in the slide you saw there were little pockets and all of that. And the answer was, well, that's their pocket or their purse. That's their putaway spot. because

092I was of course going to ask my next question was where are we going to spend the money to buy all these things and so in the event that we do take a phone away or have to take a phone away um I want to make sure that in our policy we have something that says that we're not responsible or liable uh for the phone you know we're going from a time when phones were a few hundred to now they're 15 $1600 uh so that we have that and um you know maybe add language that says that, you know, you can still, this doesn't preclude you from I know I don't mean to sound like an attorney, uh, but doesn't preclude you from going to civil, you know, call the police and say, "Somebody took

093my phone, but you know that we're not responsible for it because it's supposed to be in your pocket or in your purse." In other words, we're not going to have those cubby holes where kids are going to put their $1,500 phone and someone can walk away with three of them. So, those were the suggestions that I made. Uh, we talked a little bit about the bullying one, which I know they're going to look into further. Um, I'm sure, you know, as always, that's something that we deal with. Uh, my question was, you know, what's chronic? What's I mean, that almost sounds like, you know, we've some my kids got to get beat up 10 times before we do something. And so, um, I know we're going to be looking into that a little bit further

094as well. So those that's the feedback that I have that I uh am proposing as that we sort of tweak if that's okay. If not, I'm good with if this needs to come back for a different revision, I'm good with that, too. But those are the suggestions that I make. I don't know how anybody else feels about those. Thank you. Anyone else? I like those revisions. I thought they all sounded very reasonable and fair. So, thanks for sharing. Good. Anything else, Miss Goodrich? Okay. Um, back to the House Bill 11:05. So, last year when we implemented this, I didn't hear any real issues coming out of elementary and middle. And I think it's because it was they're they're turned off and put away. High school, though, here's my thing. It's that second bullet that says

095unless they're authorized by a teacher. So, I'm not I don't have a problem if all of a sudden the teacher says, "Could all of you take it out, turn it on, do this?" Last year, the biggest the largest number of complaints I received at the beginning of last year when we started implementing this is from parents saying, "But our kids are being told they can have them out in class and beyond them doing whatever they want." There was not a purpose for them. And some were even and you know I had kids tell me my teacher said I can have it out but if I see administration coming put my phone away. So we can't have a policy and the state now has dictated exactly how it's supposed to be and everyone not follow that

096policy. So I know this is a student code of conduct but I think we need to communicate. So Mr. Macau will discuss that at the end in terms of the roll out implementation um how we're going to be monitoring that. He will be discussing that at the end. Yes, ma'am. Yes. And just getting into this next slide here, you'll see these pocket um protectors that Mr. Cologne was uh regarding or speaking of about students would come in and put that. We're not stating that because of we don't want a teacher, we want teachers to teach students first and foremost. That's what they're here to do. Um, so a recommendation could be when a student enters a classroom that the phone is not visible. It's in their book bag. It's in their pocket for a high

097school setting and all of that stuff. So that's stuff that we can discuss and with the policy of how you guys want it to look like, but this is just an image so you guys are aware. We're not saying this is what teachers are going to be responsible to do. Um, so but there are exceptions to this 1105 bill as you can see here. permitted documentation for any medical release or anything that has to do with educational services which would be ESSE related. So in that policy we would have to have something that states that clearly defines it. Um Angel Sense I know is a big thing that we've have with elementary with some of our uh students that have ASD. Um that's an electronic device. It's a recording device. It's a two-way communication device

098from parents and students. So that would probably look to be some sort of an exception when we're doing a policy along those lines. So just to give you a example like that in in the elementary middle school setting. Um teacher designated storage areas. Uh that's what we were talking about. The designated storage area would be it should not be in sight. It would be out of sight. It's in your book bag. It's in your pockets at all times unless it's directed by the teacher. Uh they are doing a pilot study on six districts a full day implementation of banning cell phones at the high school level just so you guys are aware. So, we're not one of them. So, thank goodness. Um, and then they're going to study to affect it. And then, of course,

099our policies must align with these state requirements as you can see here. So, to tie into that, we've got a lot of kids wearing Apple Watches now. So, what are we doing about the Apple watches? Like, if we're telling them there's no cell phone out, but they're still wearing an Apple Watch, where are we at? Because they can make a call on an Apple Watch if they have that service. Yes. Well, or if the phone is nearby. Yeah. Yes. True. And they can do other things. And that's going to be a great discussion that we get to have here and looks at pros and cons with it. But it is it is something you're right with Apple watches and things. I mean, the whole idea is for them to be focused on instruction and a

100teacher have. So, let me ask a question. I really don't know. So, I'm asking to seek understanding. If your phone is off, will your Apple Watch still work? Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh, so it doesn't have to have a plan to it. It can actually connect to the Wi-Fi in the building that it's in. Okay. You can get you can receive any update like they can get text messages and read them. They can make a phone call out on it. Okay. All of that. That's good to know because I thought if your phone is off, your service is off, your Apple Watch will not work. Thank you for that. Yes. Okay. So, we will probably need to include watch and and we can't specify. She's right. We can't specify Apple because I think Garmin is the

101one that makes the one for elementary kids with five numbers and those five numbers you can call. Yeah. Absolutely. So, it's just something to think about and discuss. Um, you know, it's it's Yes, kids wear them. Yes, kids have them and we understand why they have them, but it's, you know, if we're going to put it in there, then we put it in there. Um, but just some implementation and training opportunities. So, at the admin institute, we were able to go over this legislation with all administrators um firsthand, just so you guys know, so they kind of understand the requirements that are upcoming and they were a breast on everything. Uh, they know that we're going to have to effectively effectively implement this policy pre-K through 12. So if this is what we're going to

102say once it's written, they know what we're going to have to do and implement that and we'll assist them with the training as well. Management, enforcement, disciplinary procedures has to be consistent across the board as you stated, Miss Haynes. Um it's just it's a non-negotiable. If we're going to put something in place, everybody's got to follow it. But I do want to make sure that we caution that teachers aren't that's what they're there to do for. I don't want you to be the cell phone police. We want you in there to teach the students and instruct the kids. And if that's the case, let administrator call for an administrator and then continue with your instruction instead of having a student sit there for 15 minutes while you're waiting for somebody to come get the student's

103phone or something along those lines. So, uh, pre-planning, we'll roll this out to all teachers and staff of what that's going to look like in the implementation school-based level. Um, all the way we'll integrate the policy as you can see. Um, and then we'll make sure that we have those educational and medical exceptions um, in there as well. This is just kind of a base overview of the level one restructure of what we did. It was general list of violations, limited uh descriptive details and fewer specific examples. What we have now added with the new structures, we have 11 specific infractions with clear descriptions on them. Examples provided by each uh infraction and they're also behavior specific criteria for it for a parent and a student to reference which will give us also clear guidance

104to our teachers and our administrators moving forward. So, we have consistency across the board with all reporting aspects of discipline. Here's something new that we have for any type of uh offenses that are the same offense multiple times. I keep having my cell phone out and it's the first time we're going to do a student conference, probably call the parent, tell them what happened. Um, you know, they could do a loss of privilege. The second time it's now still a level one because it's a cell phone violation. We're then going to have a parent guardian conference with probably a school-based administrator as well, possibly offered detention or some other sort. But if the third offense is the same infraction, it now bumps up to a level two infraction now instead of staying at a level

105one. So a kid can't constantly have their cell phone out 27 times and just getting that parent call or that all that. It will now the infraction will then bump up to a severity of a level two consequences where those will then um ramp up. So that's anything with the same infraction happening multiple times, it will always bump to that next infraction. So you guys are aware that is new to this. Um you guys can see here with the restructuring for level two, level three, and level four, we have it broken down with how many specific uh infractions are under each category. So you guys are aware not too too many have changed under those category. We were just more specific about where these should fall and where they should be under. Um so you

106can see 27 uh specific infractions and detailed descriptions in level two, 50 for level three and then 21 for level four as well. Um similar restruction consent we want uh across all grade levels. We want the rules and consequences to be followed. We want uh clear we want to delineate between infraction levels and school-based leadership. We don't want there to be any gray areas. We want everything to be crystal clear, black and white. So if a kid is reading this and a parent's reading this, it's going to match the infraction with it. um they're going to get more specific guidelines for our administrators to be consistent when we do develop this policy and we're going to have improved transparency across all stakeholders as well. Some of the documentation requirements that are new into this thing

107are same day documentation into the system. If a referral is written, we're going to expect the referral to be processed within that day. We know there are stipulations that do come up to where things happen on campus that you can't control, but that is something that we're going to look to try to enforce and do moving forward. um parent notification within 24 hours of the referral being processed. We want a detailed incident form from all staff if anything was happening to them or if something like to get their witness statements or anything. Uh student statements from all parties involved and that should be for all levels one through four. Uh that is something that we have to do a better job as a as a district is making sure that we're giving everybody due process

108and getting everybody statements. So that's level one through level four. We would have to have student statements with it. uh photographic evidence for any kind of level three or level four just in case if it was a damaged phone, broken computer, broken window, we'd want to make sure that we have the evidence that captures that with a picture. Uh monthly discipline reports, we will send those out with the top three infractions to every school. And then of course we will do new this year's quarterly administrative audits and meetings to schoolbased officials to check on their um their clarity of everything of implementation of the new student code of conduct with making sure the referrals are coded properly making sure that the consequence matches what the incident is um and making sure that all everybody at

109the school base understands that and what processes they have in place with that. Mrs. Brosmer has a question. Yes. I um I especially like the idea that uh after a couple of in uh similar infractions it gets bumped up to another level. Uh but I know that a lot of times the teachers and and uh principles get a lot of uh grief from the parents um who object to whatever the discipline is. So I'm curious to know how much of the enforcement is discretionary on the part of the of the individual school administrator. It should be guided with the matrix, the discipline matrix. So once this is adopted, we will then have our discipline matrix aligned to everything that is in here. And the discipline matrix should be their guide to lead them with their

110decision-making process. Okay. So So they don't necessarily have the discretion to say, well, okay, you know, you know, we'll let it go this time. We don't we want no I mean honestly yes they do have that discretion they honestly could as a schoolbased principal every student has a different story every situation is different knowing that as a schoolbased leader myself um so you take those sometimes into consideration but if it's a multiple things the matrix there is to guide our decision-m for any kind of infractions that's what it's there for for us to be consistent across the board. Okay thank you. Uh here's your standard standard appeal process. Level one and level two is schoolbased only. Um level three of course DSPC. That would be the district student placement committee. Um level four would also

111be to the executive director, myself uh within 10 school days to where I would review all stuff and um outline documentation from the DSPC and then I would look to see if the consequence maintains or if something would be overridden to a lesser severe consequence. So we want to do all this for enhanced due process, transparency to families, reduce procedural disputes, and better data informed decision-m for us as well. Mr. Cologne now has a question. Yes. Yeah. So, you know, we are we are the why and not the how. The how is the superintendent. And so, um, in recognizing that, I'm one of five. Just want to quickly share. Yeah, I said quickly. Uh my thought process is you know again the why this is coming from the state. This came from lawmakers who found

112a need to um do this and so the why has been taken out of our hands. However um I I can remember a time when we had uniforms that we spent a lot of time on quote enforcement and kids were not in class learning because we were busy trying to enforce. And so my one of five hope is that we would take more of a passive approach where this doesn't become disruptive to the learning environment. You know, the referral goes in, it goes to the administrator because I the last thing I'd like to see is teachers having to fight cell phones. It's a we know this is an uphill battle. There's no question that the enforcement on this is going to be crazy. However, um you know, I I can remember when I first started

113on the board where, you know, it's there was an administrator who stood at the door and as the kids walked in, if they weren't wearing the right thing, they sent them to the auditorium and that's where they did their non-learning for the first period of the class until somebody brought them a shirt till they're not learning. Um and so, um again, that's that's in the how. Um and so that's just my thought process. Um, and then the other thing is for middle school. Um, and I don't know where we institute this or if it's already covered. So, middle school and high school, this would take a fight video and whoever took that fight video is now on the hook for having their phone out during the school day. Now, I've gotten the phone calls from

114the parents that says, "Well, my kid wasn't fighting, you know, and I've and I've said this before. What cell phones have done to fights is it turns everybody into Rocky because now it's going to be on social media. So, you feel you've got to just pounce on someone because it's on video." And so I I if we have an opportunity maybe with our salt kids to put something together to also bring that home because we know the first thing everyone does when they see something happening and it's true of adults and children is they go and we didn't come up with this law for those people who are going to say oh you just want to use this to hide okay this law came from your lawmakers and so it's not a school board's attempt

115to say don't record. No, this came from lawmakers. And so the reality is we're we're we're we have to comply with the law and it is what it is. So that's just my thought. You know, again, I just don't want to go to that extreme where we were at one point where instruction was be. We've made so many strides in the world of instruction. I don't want the cell phone to become the new distractor from what our kids are here to do. Thank you. Um may I quickly um Mr. Cologne also in addition to the rollout plan that will come from Mr. McCalliff's office. Danielle is our um communicates moving forward, she will be communicating legislation also to our families and shareholders. So, this is one of those um items that she will be communicating

116to all families and then we will have a rollout plan for Mr. Macall's department. Thank you. Parents and families will need to hear this multiple time. But as you stated, this is just not policy anymore. This is the law. Yeah, you are correct, Dr. Bum. Um creating a culture for clarity and consistency. That's the biggest piece I've seen coming into this role is we need to have consistency K through 12 on everything that we do from school to school. No matter if you're an eastside school, westside school, the consistency needs to be there. Um, and you guys will see the key improvements that are here um in this new student code of conduct will hopefully guide us to that and allow us to be able to do that along with our new internal audits. Um,

117you know, because long-term vision, we want to reduce disciplinary stuff. We want teachers to teach. We want kids to remain in class. um you know and it will hopefully improve the climate and culture of some of these schools as well with that trust um factor from that I know is missing at time to time. So this will be more clarity um and give us more concise with everything that we need to have in here. Uh just wanted to show this. I know people say referrals aren't written or sometimes we're not allowed to write referrals. We did have 55,814 referrals written this past school year, which is a reduction from the previous school year of 18 and a half%. So, I kind of broke it down just with this as a subgroups here for you guys

118to see um about the commitment and what that goes into and handinhand with a lot of stuff um because it it's just not a teacher's not writing a referral. I promise you there's good things happening on our campus with our staff, with our principles, and with our teachers that are en enforcing the classroom management. um aspect of it and they put things in place because to work with kids and to get kids um in school. So this is what something I wanted to share with you and then some of the stuff that I think is the improvement behind it is of course the culture and success of our PBIS um that we have implemented throughout the district and we're going to continue to grow with that. We have an emphasis on academic, social, and emotional

119growth. I think that's that full wraparound service that you have to understand and know the kid and know the kids why. Uh early targeted student interventions with MTSS. Miss Rushing and uh her and Mr. Behinger have done an amazing job with that stuff and monitoring and refocusing the implementational piece of that and what that looks like. And then also with we're looking at behaviors is implementing 504 plans if possible if a student needs something along those lines. You know, inclusive and learning supporting environments and then also strengthening our whole student philosophy with the wraparound services. You know, so the dedication with the administrators, teachers, and students is and staff is who this really all comes to. And then real quick, I just did want to do a little gaggle uh heads up just so you

120guys are aware since I do have your time and attention on it. It kind of relates to the student code of conduct because our SSMP students, which are students support management uh plan students, those are students with um high threat assessments or level three risk, high threat level three risk assessments. This is our update of where we're at with our Gaggle um implementation. We've implemented now phase one with it, which is our student approach. As you can see uh what this looks like the parents receive a check-in message from Gaggle itself. Parents can talk to a trained mental health case counselor and then also uh only parents will have the communication unless parental consent is obtained for the student to uh initiate with that as well. Examples of the support, emotional support, establishing expectations and

121boundaries, processing difficult circumstances, suicidal thoughts, um, and then the reachout re resources, which is a serable or sharable handout that's provided from Gaggle to all families. When a family gets this type of message, this is kind of what they're going to receive at first from Gaggle just to see how they can help and implement. Is your child doing well managing their emotions? One, two, is you're trying still but still struggling at times or he needs additional support. So the parent will then base the support needed from their student of what they're seeing. But Gaggle will do this twice a month and check in with these families to provide students just additional emotional support as well. The phase two you can see is the support to our employees. Uh we do have EAP that's currently offered

122to all of our employees. This is going to be something that we offer now to our employees as well which is an outside base um that's not you know that's through a different company as you could say with Gaggle. So, we're coordinating this to have all of our services for our staff that needs it for any type of assistance that they might need for any kind of conversations just to have if they're going through tough times. But, it's another layer of resources um and benefit that we're giving our staff to keep them in a good place, provide them with opportunities for anything to keep them in a good mental well-being. Um so, that's our next phase roll out effect and that should be done uh at the beginning of the school year. So, and next

123steps, questions just what will take place later. No. Yes, ma'am. You want to share a little bit about the committees that you've you've convened whom were on those committees and your roll out plan quarterly, how you're going to be communicating this to schools and families, SGAAs at the schools and the fifth grade program that you're putting together that will be implemented for FABE and threat assessment. Yes. Okay. So, um covering all of that, uh we did have uh principles give feedback to this as well. We had committees from assistant principles, elementary principles, and high school, middle school principles to give feedback on what they need and what they wanted to see. Um, and the message was very clear. They needed clarity. Um, and they didn't even know about the audit and everything that we were

124kind of seeing internally on our end. Um, but that's what they wanted. They wanted that and to be able to say this is black and white right here. This is what it is. And get away from the gray areas because that's where the parents are calling and saying this is what happened. This is what they did and why. So everything's going to be spelled out with them with that roll out plan of what that's going to look like. Um once the policy is developed for 1105, we'll communicate that with communications and and Danielle's office and putting that out to parents, social media and doing all of those. But we need to start hearing from student voice when we're talking about the student code of conduct and not my voice. So, we're looking to get some

125students um together this summer that is possibly going to do some student videos for us discussing the new implemented big changes. So, parents and students are aware. So, they'll relate more of that than they will for my voice being on a social media. Um and we can do the connected and and send the email home. But students like to see their peers, they learn from their peers. So, that's what we're going to initiate doing that as well. Just so you guys are aware, once we get the policy is voted on, we will have that then rolled out to our families so everybody knows and is aware for House Bill 11:05 and then also the new updates for the student code of conduct and the expectations kind of moving forward from student voice so they're able

126to see it. Uh quarterly, we'll be monitoring that just so you guys are aware. Um we actually do it bi-weekly with our bi-weekly reports for discipline. Uh every school will get top three infractions that I pull from elementary, middle, and high. uh we end up disegregating that data and looking at our top three um top three to five schools and we meet with those um individual principles and their leadership team along with the directors and the assistant directors for secondary and um elementary as well. So we do meet with them when we start to see a lot of trends because if we do see the trends then what we want to do is get on campus and possibly do a culture walk bring some fresh eyes fresh bodies there to see what can we do

127to help implement new change new new policies and then give them a timeline to do it and then us come back and reevaluate to make sure that's being implemented with fidelity. Um just so you're aware of that. Dr. Balgabin's uh key points she touched on are a couple things that we have vape 6 through 12 as you guys know for all students. We're doing a brand new program of what that's going to look like because we don't want the students to repeat the same program if they've already done it first. So, that is coming out with a new program um for sixth through 12, but we've also initiated uh a fifth grade vape program which is going to be a four-week class for fifth graders so we can start educating them um and then also

128holding them accountable with things. So, that's something new. And then with we had a lot of threats last year with elementary. Uh to be very honest when we started to see, you know, if it's playful stuff on the playground, if it's just them, I'm gonna shoot you doing the the gestures with their hands and all that stuff. We know kids are going to be kids and say that. Um and we did a hard line of put the kid up for DSPC. We had our own DSPC committee for elementary on Mondays. So we had to revamp and do some things and we made it work. But now we're going to do an educational video first for these kids to kind of do that whole approach of let's educate the student of why they're doing this or

129why they should not be doing this. And then also hopefully, you know, have the parent conference with that teacher and that parent and explain why the student, you know, needs to watch these videos. And then the parent's going to have to sign off on that stating that it's been done. We'll keep that school base with us. And that's going to be K through two and then also 3 through five. So anytime there's a initial threat made, we're going to have a student do an educational video first and then the parent will sign off on it. Along with active SGAAS in every second. Yes. Forgot that. Yes. So my only question is based on the suggestions that Mr. Cologne made, we have um elementary and the secondary policies up tonight to put out for advertisement. Yes,

130ma'am. So, are we going to be able to put them out for advertisement or are we going to need to make some changes before tonight's meeting? We can get that in though. If you guys are in agreeance to those changes, we can make that because I I don't want to stop it because I want this in place when school starts so that there's no question. And I do like the whole educating part because I was going to suggest we we need to start putting even little video things out there. And and I love all the things you touched on and I know this is a touchy subject, but I still think I'm not asking for uniforms, okay? That didn't work when it happened. But I still think there should be some videos put out, especially

131as parents are going out now to be purchasing clothing for their children on what appropriate dress looks like on a campus versus inappropriate dress. Because even though you have it listed there, all those things like the midriff won't be showing and this and that. I walk on a campus and we we we got pajama, we we've got anything and everything going and so if we put a video out or we you know and we share this um then they can't say that they didn't know that we're expecting kids to show up. Great. Yeah, we can. That's something we can easily do. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. All right, Mr. Promer, I'm going to me too on that comment because it seems trivial to to stress um dress codes, but we know as adults that we behave differently

132according to the way we're dressed and so do kids. And so um because student safety begins in the classroom and um and that applies to teachers too. How how teachers are are treated by their students and how teachers behave. Everybody behaves differently when they're dressed appropriately. So our dress codes have to mean something. And I I know it's a it's a pain for um teachers and administrators to have to enforce something that seems trivial, but I think it has a great impact. And I I appreciate Mrs. Haynes bringing that up. Miss Goodrich, do we have clothing on campus if they show up in a midrift or they show up inappropriate that we can put them in? A lot of our campuses do have extra clothing where they do at the beginning. Do they all? I

133don't know that they all do. I know especially at our elementary levels, they they keep clothing stocked as much as possible. Um, title one schools and title one schools do and we have a lot of community members that will donate, you know, just t-shirts, you know, to schools so that there is a t-shirt. Here's my thing. I'm embarrassed sometimes when I walk on campuses and and a student's walking towards me or walking away from me. Right. My I guess my question is we don't you know some kids may come from situations where they don't understand what's appropriate and what's not. And so if we have an alternative for them that might be a nice solution rather than sending them home or them getting in trouble immediately they may not have had a lot of options.

134So, I just was curious if we had that because I do agree how you dress directly impacts how you act. Um, same goes for teachers. And so, um, I just hope that we have a an option for those kids. So, maybe a call out to the community that if you want to get, you know, some clothing for some of our schools in case there are kids that show up, that'd be great. And I can speak just for Delton, Ohio. Yes, we had we had clothing available. Um, if it was even shorts related, it would be your basketball shorts, stuff like that to just throw on. It's not like we have different short sizes, but we'd have tons of extra shirts because a lot of uh kids when they graduate or parents, they like to get

135rid of a bunch of stuff. So, they would come and donate anything that was Deltona High related for sports and stuff like that. We'd fold it up, just put it in there. If they have to throw on a shirt, throw on a shirt. Okay. Um, so normally at the secondary, we can do it. um elementary might have to rely more on some community or churches and things like that which they have done in the past. So it shouldn't be a problem but I don't see anybody being suspended or being sent home because of a situation that they can't really it's not in their control. Right. Okay. But then that goes to the next qu issue that if you're wearing a midruff and the school doesn't have something and we're not sending you home, what makes

136you not do it again? Yeah, I mean it's a valid valid point with it, but I think as long as it's addressed and a phone call is made to the parent to explain, that's ultimately what we would do at the end of the day. Um, if it was something that was so obscene, of course, we would say, "Hey, we need you to bring something to the school for your daughter, your, you know, to help to help us." And normally they would do that as well. So that would be an option as well. We'd ask the parent to bring whatever clothing they have to assist with covering that. It's every site h enforcing it consistently. That's the key and enforcing it. There are cases where it's not a lack of clothing. It's the selection of clothing.

137So, every site needs to enforce. And I like the idea that every school could do a reminder to their families as they're getting ready to get prepared for next year shopping, reminding them of the uh dress codes. Yes. What? Okay. So, you want me to say the elephant in the room? Same thing. I don't What elephant? Um, Miss Cologne, go ahead. You know, I I I love hearing you both because I sat right there and lived every bit of what you just said. And I I can remember walking on a campus for the first time going, "Oh my god." And so I just have a really simple question just perspective wise. Mike, I'm going to put you back to when you were in high school as a student. Oh no. You went to Seabbze, so

138we're not going there. You know, that's a different culture, which is what we run into. New Smyrna is different than Deltona High is different than Pineriidge. It's just a different culture. And so if us as a board, realistically, put your principal hat on. Yeah. Okay. For every torn jean, midriff, drift, I don't know how you even say it. Okay. Um, short shorts, short shirt. That's a midriff, right? Okay. Uh, hoodie, earbuds. If you had to stand at the gate of your school as kids were walking in and a hundred kids came through that door, how many of them would go to the office directly? Probably about 80%. How many? 80% probably. I don't think you can buy jeans. Most jeans have holes and rips in them now. It's like the style for teenagers. Um, so

139that is something I mean, but it's the excessive rip to where like they make it theirel and they cut out the entire leg and it's just like what are you doing? I think that's a different story. Um, but that's just the style that some that we're in right now with. And so having been where you all at cuz I was like we're going to fix this. And then when I saw 80% of the kids instead of going to first period and mind you that didn't really ha actually did happen somewhere but not a big deal. If we did that then they wouldn't be learning now. We want to teach them that lesson by all means trust me I get it. And that's what we're balancing and that's what our administrator and I've had to temper

140my expectation because I said, you know, at the end of the day, yes, I want to teach them those hard life lessons, but their parents sent them to school dressed like that. And so I I just think it's like I said, I've been there and I I've seen where and so this is work uniforms, for example. A child could go all day long. first period, second period, third period, fourth period, nobody says a thing. They wore the same shirt, but when they got to fifth period, every single day, that teacher, rightfully so, because of the policy, would send them away to the administrators. Now, what happened to teachers one through four? Well, we could sit here as a board and say, well, they didn't follow the rules. And that became such a disruption that that's

141seemingly when I got here, it seemed like a lot of what we were doing was that. So again, I don't disagree with you all. Y'all are amazing. You I agree with you a thousand%. It's just how do we balance that so that 80% of kids are going to class and 20% of kids are, you know, there's always going to be that 20. That's just my thought. Thanks, Mrs. Promer. I take your point. Having said that, I think there's um there's a balance in stressing modesty as the top priority. Um and so that applies to midrifts and cleavage and uh skin tight and and things like that. I frankly wouldn't argue about um jeans the pre- ripped uh whatever it's called style. Um there was a time in my past where I didn't advocate for um

142uniforms per se, but suggested just jeans and a solid color t-shirt as you know everybody wear that. But when it gets to pajama pants, I I object to that in the airport. So, and there's nothing I can do about that. But, um, school is not the place for pajama pants. So, there are certain things where we can draw the line and other things that are not necessarily as important and and figuring out striking that balance I I think is a critical point. modesty and and um you know as as it applies to pajama pants uh being appropriate. Yes. Now, and we'll make sure we get that messaging out to parents now so they understand and we'll remind the parents throughout the summer of the expectations of the pajama pants and acceptable uh you know apparel

143to wear at school and what's not when they are doing their back to school shopping. So, we can start that. This is good. Rich. So, while I know we're new, I think that if we don't keep the bar raised, then it will continue to lower. And there are school districts where school dress code is enforced and is effective. And I do believe that Valuchia can get there. And it may take new people every time coming up and saying, "Hey, we understand that it's hard. I get that." But we I can bring you examples of districts where that it does happen and they're the same kids. They're the same age group. So I think somewhere along the way perhaps we weren't enforcing somewhere along the way the ball started to get dropped but it can't be

144you know so now it's too hard to enforce it we don't I think we have to work on enforcing it more and make our standards higher in Valuchia agree I think our staff attorney wants to say something Heidi No way. You covered everything just fine. You did a good job, Mike. Heidi did awesome. She was she was great with the legality piece of making sure that everything flows. And so I have to give her a lot of credit. State the elephant in the room because it was kind of stated and everybody chuckled. So you're going you're going I'm going to say it. As of this fall, it will be 39 years ago that I started my career as an educator in Valuch County. The very first year I taught, I wore a dress or a

145skirt and a blouse with pumps every single day that I taught the very first year until we reached May. And in May, I was going to have to take the students on a field trip. And so my mentor teacher so to speak at that time came to me and said, "You're going to have to wear slacks or a pair of jeans and tennis shoes to go on this field trip." But the principal that hired me said to me the day I interviewed with her, "The way you're dressed today is how I expect you to dress every day that you're teaching." And there was an expectation at that time that teachers showed up and they dressed professionally because that's also how you receive respect from students. Okay. Now, if I had showed up in my pajamas

146or I had shown up, you know, in inappropriate attire, how would I get them to respect me? So, a comment was mentioned about the teacher piece. This has been an ongoing thing for years. And one of the last times when it was brought up very specifically in bargaining, um the former person that was heading the union said, "Okay, well, they won't wear swimsuits or pajamas." Okay, well, unless they're teaching swimming over at the YMCA and they're in charge of the swim team or whatever, I wouldn't expect them to show up on campus in a swimsuit. And I and unless it's pajama day at the elementary school where they're doing a readin, but if you look, those teachers 99% of the time are dressed in appropriate pajama attire. But I didn't wear a pair of slacks

147to teach or move the field trip, okay, until I was eight months pregnant with my daughter. And that was not until 1992. And I felt weird the day I walked into campus and didn't have a dress or what. And I'm not asking people to go back to dresses like women or go back to skirts and blouses. I'm just saying if we want to teach our students the soft skills and the things they're going to need in life, we need to also exhibit those soft skills. And I know I'll probably get some emails and I'll be bashed on social media for saying this, but there's a way. You don't have to spend a lot of money. And and look, I have slacks on now with a blouse and all that. My outfit didn't cost very much,

148but yet it's appropriate. And so I I I spent last week at the FFA convention in Orlando and there's a group of children and students on our campuses that know how to dress and they're part of that group and they show up there and they are dressed appropriately because they know that's what's expected and they do it every I mean for six days last week they were there dressed appropriately every day and they had panty hoes on. Good lord I'm way beyond that at my age. I apologize, but they did. And so I've I've talked about the elephant in the room and I So if we expect it, we need to model it. We Yes, we need to model what we expect. Mrs. Brosmer, thank you for that, too. Um I think this extends to

149student safety. Um, your point about how students teach, how they behave toward a teacher is affected by by the uh position of authority that's reflected in how they're dressed. So, it it does matter. Um, when I when I was subbing at some of our schools, a lot of our teachers wore yoga pants and and big t-shirts. Um, and honestly, some of them are so young I couldn't tell I couldn't distinguish them from the students. Um, and it's very hard for a teacher to exert authority when when they look like a peer. So, I I think that's an important point. I don't know where that fits in exactly in our in our code, but I think it's a worthwhile discussion. uh because we do if we're going to require it of our students, we have to

150set the example ourselves and and so I I do think that it's an important point to stress. All right. Anything else? Well, do you want to say something about the final piece on page 15? Oh, that one was ex We xed out of that one. Oh, you exed it out? Yes. Okay. But I liked that. Okay. Would you like to say something, Miss HS? Because it's not on this one. No. Well, okay. You exed out one of the best pieces and so this is about the new policy and you you got it right. I mean, you put smartphones, mobile phones, smartwatches with communication capabilities, smart glasses with recording capabilities. Okay, that one I had missed out on. Wireless earbuds with recording functions, digital pins, I knew about those. Bluetooth enabled devices with audio video functions,

151many recording devices and microphones, GPS trackers with communication features, and any device capable of capturing capturing or transmitting content would be part of the policy of what would not be allowed on campus. Correct. Yes, ma'am. You are correct. I don't know why you took it out. That was good. But thank you. It's in there. It's in the actual student code of conduct itself. I just took it out of the PowerPoint itself for the examples underneath the wireless communication devices. But yeah, the AI glasses are the new thing. I have I I haven't seen anybody with those or maybe they've had them and I haven't noticed. So, thank you. All right. Huh. Oh, good lord. Thank you, Mr. McCall. If you guys will make those tweaks. Yep. Um and then we'll have it ready for advertising.

152So now we're on to item 4.01 um schoolboard meetings. Dr. Balaban. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um Dr. Evans will share with you for your last request some research was done regarding the board meetings workshops. And I I know that John Cash, our chief of staff, also has some information, but Dr. Evans will lead this this section. All right. Thank you. Along with Mr. Cash if needed. Yes. Thank you. Um, superintendent, uh, board chair and members of the board. As per your request at the last board meeting, um, you asked us to bring this item back to you during the workshop to dis further discuss. The items that we discussed at the last board meeting were whether VCS should um continue to have two regular board meetings or have one regular scheduled board meeting and a

153second board meeting that will be a consent agenda type board meeting along with one workshop per month. The second issue is whether or not board members should make only closing comments and not opening and closing as we have done in the past. And the third issue that we discussed was whether board member comments should be limited to five minutes. So those are the things we discussed at the last board meeting and we wanted to continue that discussion as per your request. But I think before we start that discussion, we have some other factual information that we would like to share with the board. And I'm going to ask Mr. Cash if he would come and share the information that we developed. Thank you, Dr. Evans. Chair Haynes, board members, Superintendent Balgabin. Um, I had the

154opportunity to speak to each of you uh individually a little bit about this information. I thought it was important before you had your discussions to give you some visual representations and a little bit of additional framework that might be talking points simply for you. Um, as you'll see the first slide that I have up and you're getting a packet too that Celeste is passing around for you to have a hard copy. Uh the slide that's up on the screen now or be in your packet is some information that Dr. Evans compiled and it's just some districts. You can see their names there and some information that talks about part of their procedures and the things that they do in that particular county. And there's a second page there where we have uh and it ends

155with Orange County. And you'll see there's a variety of districts that have two workshop meetings and some that have one workshop meeting. So more specifically though for context for us if you look at the slide that I'm displaying now this is just this year our school board meetings so you have a frame of context. We typically have two board meetings a month and we have 13 workshops scheduled this year for a total of 23 uh excuse me 33 meetings scheduled for this particular year. If you look in there I did include information about the duration of the board meetings. Please note that we tried to be careful. It's not an exact science, but um like if you go on YouTube and you look at our board meeting, sometimes there's minutes in the front where it

156says the meeting will start soon. That was taken out of this. So it's not extra minutes that were added into. So the average of this is about 3 hours and a half for our uh current board meetings. Now I had compared four districts and I had an opportunity to speak to all of you. I did speak to Miss Haynes recently too. So I'm going to start with this one. I added a fifth district which was Bvard Miss Haynes that you requested. So let me start with that one. So, if you'll look at this particular slide, what you'll see is now Bvard County has a little bit of a different they have two board meetings a month, but they have 20 workshops. If you'll notice, there's quite a few workshops that are listed over there on

157the right. Now, they don't necessarily call them all workshops. They call them work sessions. And it's not listed here, but so, you know, the average work session they have is about a little over two hours. Uh they do have many of those. Interestingly, seven of those, and there's a reason I'm pointing this out, seven of those work sessions do not coincide with a board meeting. So, typically with us, we have like today, we have a workshop and we have a board meeting on the same day. In in Bvard, you'll notice seven of them do not. They have a total of 38 meetings. If you look at that, the next slide is Collier. And by the way, the counties that were chosen were just to be approximately within 10,000 students of our enrollment. Collier has about

15850. Bvard I for uh failed to mention has about 74,000 students. So if you take a look at CER they have 11 board meetings and eight workshops for a total of 19 meetings this year. And what's interesting about CER is all of their workshops are offset from board meetings. So the reason for that and Dr. Evans alluded to this slightly is that if you needed consent items and I've heard the board discuss this and it really came out of two places that you had concerns. It was Miss Kor's area and it was Mr. ceases areas with procurement. So what some of these districts have done is they have their workshops and they have a standing consent item at the end of that particular workshop. I.e. here's an example. If this was a model that Valuchia

159chose to use if you started a workshop at 1:00 and you ran it to 3:00 because our workshops typically average about 3 hours 1 to 4 then you had a break in there and you had a standing consent at 4:30. If you guys if things needed to come to you for consent and and uh voting or public input, you could do it at that time. If there was nothing that came forward for consent, just the workshop itself would hold. The next comparison is Oyola, which has about 74,000 students. You'll see that they've have 13 schoolboard meetings and nine workshops scheduled this year for a total of uh 22 meetings. And interestingly, their workshops, they had two of them that offset uh many of them coincided with their actual um board meeting, but they had a

160couple that were offset. And their average u board meetings averaged about 2 hours and four minutes. Uh the next county that I took a look at was St. John's which is up at the St. Augustine area. They have about 53,000 students and they have 11 board meetings and seven workshops. They have uh six of their workshops that offset from the board meeting and their average board meeting is about an hour and 46 minutes. And lastly, Seminal County I took a look at and let me put that there. They have 12 board meetings and eight workshops for a total of 20 meetings. and their board meetings, excuse me, their workshops tend to coincide mostly with their uh board meetings except they have two that offset and their board meetings average about an hour and 34 minutes.

161Now, furthermore, now this is just a snapshot in time. This next slide I'd like to show you. This is just our last three board meetings. So, this is the most recent thing in our memory, which is why we chose this. I wanted to do a little analysis of what's happening at our meetings so that you could see this. So if you look, you'll see that we have April uh 22nd, May 13th, and June 3rd board meetings. And the first category is ceremonial. That's we come in, we do the pledge, the national anthem, so on. And you see the times there that it took notice that the May uh 13th meeting was a little longer. We did have the presentation from Sweetwater that did Mary Poppins. So it averaged about um 10 minutes there. The next

162area that we took a look at was our comments and announcements that start. And you can see the average there of 23, 23 and 33 minutes respectively for those particular board meetings. Then we move into recognitions. We didn't have any recognitions, excuse me, recognitions on the April 22nd, but on May 13th, it was an hour and 22 minutes and uh the last meeting it was 36 minutes. The administrative appointments, we didn't have any in April, but the last two, you can see the times listed for you there, 28 and 43. public comments. There's the time listed there, 10, 20, and 14. That's the 6:00 public comment time, by the way. And then the business items, the actual things that you guys are talking about with consent or action items in your discussions. You'll see the

163hours are listed there of 30 minutes, 44 minutes. And obviously, it was worth noting um on the April 25th that was three and a half hours, but there was a reason for that. There was a very important item that you guys had a lot of discussion about entailing the Dear property. Then the other public comments, that's the one that come after that. There were just um one public comment in each of those and then you'll see the closing remarks there, the breaks and the total time at the bottom. So just to close um so we were asked by multiple board members, how would this work from a cabinet perspective or the district's perspective? And so I can tell you at chief's meetings and many of them are here in the room and cabinet members, we

164ask that question around the table. If we move to this model, how would it impact our way of work? And what we found is that we would need a couple of changes if we were to do that. And I think Dr. Evans alluded to this. One is simply when we have submission deadlines for items to go to Celeste for the board meeting. Currently, it's two weeks out is a hard deadline. And so prior to that, what happens is some individuals submit their items up to three weeks in advance or two and a half because they don't want to wait till the last minute on the deadline. We would need to shorten that time frame. Whatever uh Celeste, the board, and all the players would decide would be appropriate. Whether it's a week, a week, and

165a day, not for me to decide, but we would need to do that. And the other thing would be what we've alluded to is because you have brought forth the concern about consent and timing with big things that come up, projects or emergencies to do that is that we would need to offset a consent item agenda at a workshop separate from a board meeting. Those would be the things that came forward. Um, we did ask areas like title one. I know that was an area that we checked in. Um, Mr. Mr. CE is there and Miss Core there that cannot if they're in agreement that they felt like it could be done if this was the will and the direction that the board wanted to be done with those two exceptions and that's all I

166have Dr. Evans. Okay. I believe that we all met uh Mr. Cash, myself and I think Patty Core we met with each of the board members and it seems as though most were in agreement with the five minute limit. I believe Mr. Cologne had even recommended this end times pass with the five minute limit with the and a threeminute rebuttal and it seems as all the board members were also in agreement with deleting the opening comments and everybody making the closing comments. So that I think the item for discussion um would be whether or not we want to move to that one board meeting per month and then one consent board meeting per month. Okay, Mr. Cologne. So I I appreciate all the data and you know I've watched many of the schoolboard meetings I

167think a lot of us have over time whether it's one county different counties etc. And I appreciate the last three minute three meeting uh summary and honestly I hadn't seen that before today or it didn't stick out to me until you presented it today. And so if we look at where we spend our time, it's in recognitions is a lot of it. And there are things that are very valu [Music] I'm one the way that we handle recognitions is a very valu thing that um is not not the same as everybody else, but is a good thing. Then we look at administrative appointments. I'll never forget, Dr. B, when you were appointed in Broward County. I remember sitting there with my wife watching the video for Broward County School Board's meeting and, you know, I

168was uh agonizing over the fact that Dr. B was going to be appointed the deputy superintendent down there. Yes, we were agonizing. And I'll never forget it was like, "All right, next item up on the agenda. Dr. B, uh, to be president, Dr. B comes from blah blah blah. All in favor say I." They were like, "That was it." No, I'm summarizing where in Valuchia, you know, here's the explanation of who Dr. B is. And do we have any comments? People get to give really heartfelt words of encouragement. They get to thank everybody starting from God to the last person that impacted their lives appropriately. So, and so again, could that all go away? Absolutely. I mean it really we could those could be consent agenda items that say this person's going to that school

169or is it a very valu thing that makes a world of difference to their families to their community to the community they're leaving to the community they're going to to the staff that's going to that they're going to be working with who know nothing but their name because they just found out and the rumors either were true or they weren't and there was a lot of anxiety etc. So again that's a very valu thing that we do uh that I think is important. Um I think limiting the the comments I'm good with that. It was my idea many years ago. I remember sending a an Amazon clock to saying this is the one because this one is set to three minutes and we can't adjust it. So, I think having a clock that we could

170pick different I remember having the whole conversation with Angel at the time when he was here. Uh, and so I'm good with that. I for one am not in favor of going down to one meeting. I think that we do the things that we do uh that are that we do well. Um, and so I I I timingwise I don't think this is the opportunity to do that. Um, can we look at what recognitions we do here and maybe consider which ones we do in the board meeting, which ones we don't? Possible. Maybe we could do the athletic one separate. I I don't know the answer to that question. I just don't I I I think that going to one meeting is going to strip down some of those really good Valuchia things that we

171do that are different than everyone else. And so that that's my feelings. Uh and so um while I am in favor of of looking at some of this, my other challenge is of course work. Um yes, it's going to mean a longer day. Uh and so you know sometimes that that makes it very difficult and so when I was elected I'll never forget and I said this before first schoolboard meeting they threw you know here I am thinking two meetings a month workshop at 3:30 and and then meeting subsequently to follow and then I'll never forget Carl said well why don't we move it to the daytime what I remember asking for a break so I can walk over and talk to my boss and say hey boss are you okay with And so those

172are my thoughts. I don't think that this is something the district has asked for, although I'm sure they will uh support it if um if it is the the will of the board. And that's my other concern. I don't think it's something the district has asked for. Although again, they'll do whatever we ask them to do. Um and so for that reason, I am not in favor with all of these proposed changes. Thank you. Or going down to one meeting, should I say. Thank you, Mrs. Brosmer. I appreciate very much all this data um because it frankly reinforces my belief that we can do this well. Um in particular I relate to Seminal the way the way I understand Seminal County is doing it. Um what I had envisioned when I first mentioned this was

173um having doing once a month what we're doing today. um which is the the workshop and and the board meeting in the same day because in my mind the the whole idea was to to condense what we're doing into a day instead of breaking up the month. Um I the consent agenda um addition as I understand it would be as needed only if we if there's some something pressing that would require us to do it but it wouldn't it wouldn't be an every month addition to to the schedule. So we're still one day. Um, with regard to the um opening comments, I'm completely okay with getting rid of those and and I'm fine with with uh limiting the closing comments, which uh looks like we pretty much stay with five minutes a piece anyway. So,

174that works out fine. um the recognitions I think I think we could establish sort of a hierarchy of the ones that that are districtwide that we would that we would do and then there are a lot of uh recognitions that are school-based uh that could be the responsibility of the school and maybe that would give the parents of those kids a greater opportunity to parents and other family members a greater opportunity to participate. Um but in in my mind that's an opportunity for us to kind of tighten what we're doing. Um with regard to the administrative appointments, I I take your point about uh the fact that it's an opportunity for their families to participate in in this this new venture and all of that. And and I think that's fine. Um, and maybe all

175we have to do is tighten up our process for doing that so that we limit how much time we're spending on them. U and I'm not sure what the logistics would be, but I'm I'm just suggesting the possibility of keeping them but not spending it quite as much time on them. Um, but other than that, I I think this is doable. Um, when I first mentioned it, I my my thought was the pressure on the staff to constantly be planning for meetings and and um I I'm sorry, Mr. Cash, are you the one who talked about the length of time that the that the uh that staff is given to prepare and when they have to submit their not specifically their presentations? Not specifically. No. Okay. Um I'm sorry. I I'm okay. My thought when

176I heard that was that the idea is that they would have more time to prepare not and not less um if we're doing one meeting a month. So I think I would need some clarification about uh how that would apply. Uh but other than that uh as I said I all of this data suggests to me that this is that this is doable for us based on how much time we're spending on each category and so I am in favor of it. Mrs. Goodri, I'm absolutely in favor of this. Um I think there's quite a few places that we can cut back and um obviously it sounds like we all agree on the initial comments. So that's fine. Recognitions, I think we have to establish something um way more succinct, way more um established of

177this is when we do a recognition because at times it feels like we're having an assembly at our board meeting. And while we are by some districts, we are not by all districts. And there are districts where people can't get here for the assembly portion of the board meeting or they can't sit families. Some families can't be here at 4:30 to sit and wait for two hours or an hour to get called up for just a minute. And I don't know about the rest of the board members, but when I get rec recognized, I like to be recognized by my peers. So for our students that's most frequently in their schools around the kids that we want the other kids to see what leaders are doing, what the strong students are doing. And so I

178would be a fan of doing our recognitions in the schools or at least having maybe an east side and a west side once in the fall, once in the spring and giving the staff that have to attend all of the board meetings more time to do their job of whatever their particular job is and not just an assembly. On top of that, it gives the public the opportunity to come and participate in our board meetings. The board meetings are for the business of the board, not for award ceremony and recognitions. And while that may be something Valia has always done, as we can see by the times that we're looking at, it's not efficient. Um, as far as administrative appointments, again, I think that any the administrators I've spoken to, while it's nice that they

179come here, we may give more credence to that than some of them do. A lot of them would rather be recognized in their area, in their schools, with the families that they get to see. Very few people actually watch these meetings. Very few people get to see them recognized by the board, but in their communities, that's a great place to recognize them. So, I do think that should be scaled back. Um, I think we can certainly go down to one meeting a month with a second consent meeting. Um, this the numbers speak loud and clear that we're we're not being effective. if we're not being or not, sorry, not effective, not efficient. And so I I think to be fair to our staff and I I know it was said that it wasn't being asked

180at the district level, I have not spoken to a single person at the district that is not indicative that this would be very helpful to their job. So for that, for our staff, for our families, um I think it would be an excellent move for the board to move forward with this. And as as far as being elected and knowing our job, there's nothing in this that says we will not be spending more time at our schools and in our communities and doing our job in other ways. Our job does not require that we sit here for seven and eight hours at a time. In fact, I'm not familiar with many businesses, and you guys know I'm going to always refer back to that, that run eight hour meetings and find that to be effective.

181So, I think we'll still be doing our job. We'll if we're if we're good, then we'll still be out there doing all the things we need to be doing to make sure our schools are running as best as they can. So, I'm in support. M Thompson, thank you. And thank you to everyone who did put together all of this information because I think it's very helpful to have it right in front of you, very black and white. Um I'm in favor of a lot of this getting rid of the comments. I think we're all there. the recognitions. I love the regional idea or even the school like do a fall, do a spring, we can be there if it's our district or if we all want to be there, whatever that looks like. But I

182think that's nice because then the families and the students can see it because it breaks my heart when we do have kids out here, especially young kids that have to wait for a couple hours to be recognized. I mean, that's and on a school night most of the time. So, moving recognitions, I support that. Um, the administrative appointments, I do think we need some sort of level of what that looks like. I'm I'm open to moving that to the schools in the community as well. I think they do still need to be recognized because a lot of the times it is schools getting like a new principal and that's a really big deal. Um so I do think we need to recognize that. Um and yeah, moving it I love the model where it has

183I think it was Simol County where it has you know the meeting and then the consent when needed the workshop. I I think that's a nice model and a lot of the school districts I talked to when we were at FSBA because I was this was like the number one question. How long are your board meetings? how often do you have them and Rub and you hit the nail on the head. We do a lot of Valuchia things and people watch our board meetings too and they're like what are you guys doing where it takes so long and it is like an assembly and it's it's lovely but a lot of the board meetings I mean I'm talking to people who 45 minutes an hour that's their average and then I think more people would

184tune in and watch it if they knew it was a 45 minute or 1 hour adventure versus four five 6 hours. No one's going to watch it for that long unless something crazy happens. But other than that, no one's going to watch it for that long. And so I think we would have more involvement, people being more educated because I think that's what we like to do during meetings as well as educate them on what is happening. So uh that is everything that I'm in support of. Thank you. Okay, it's my turn. Um I have no problem giving up the um part at the beginning. I have no problem giving up comments. I have no problem limiting comments. But I'm going to say this about the limiting comments. When you're sitting in the board chair

185seat, if you follow the rules, you don't speak till the end. And so I sit here and at times there's three, four, five rounds of conversation and I don't speak. And so if we go with this, my understanding is they could go four rounds and have 20 minutes of speaking time in those four rounds, but then I'm only going to be afforded five minutes. So, I'm not I'm fine with five as long as it's equitable for everyone because to tell you the truth, I've talked to other districts about this and some of them say that uh the chair in their district once it's gone one round, the chair is allowed to speak before it goes to round two and round three and round four. And I have nicely at times and at times it's been

186granted stated could I please state something before you go your second or third time and then there's been times when I've said that and the answer's been no. So what I I'm going to tell you how I actually feel. What I find at the end of the evening is after all this has gone around and around or even on a topic and I finally get to speak, they're talked out and they really don't want to hear what I have to say at that point. And yet I have valuable information I can bring to the table. And so I don't mind going to five minutes, but I want it to be equitable. I don't mind it being waited till the end. Now, I'll start with administrative appointments. Most of our administrative appointments because if you notice,

187we don't bring the individuals in that are transferring like the APS that are transferring that is just read aloud. You know that Miss Sunshine is now headed here and Mr. Moon is now headed there. They don't come in to speak. But I will tell you people are listening at home to find out who's coming to their school or who's leaving their school. It's very important to them and that's not something that can be done on a campus. Okay? It needs to be read here in the boardroom. When we are putting people up and they're being promoted into a position, they're they're going to be an AP for the first time, we have them here. If they're going to be a principal for the first time, if they're moving into a district position for the first

188time, we have them here. This is the right place to do it. I'm not for giving that piece up. I'm okay for making sure it's streamline, but I actually think that our communication team does a great job. And when somebody has done the work to be promoted into a position like that, they deserve the few moments, whoever they want to thank or however they want to say they're looking forward to this because believe it or not, if they're being named a principal over here, I'll use um University High. They're going to University High to be a new principal. University High last year knew that Karen Chennowith was retiring. Everybody wanted to know who was coming there. It was a hot topic. So, you know what? I guarantee you, we had a lot of people viewing

189that meeting that evening and that was their first chance to see the person that was going to come on their campus and hear what that person had to say. And so, for anyone that sits in that seat and gives a speech, I find them to be kind, thankful. They usually already have sometimes they come in in the colors for the school that they're going to. And to me, that's a important first impression. So, I'm not willing to give up that piece. That's where I stand on that. I appreciate all the data you collected. I appreciate you going back and getting the additional counties um that I asked you for. So, here's where I stand. Sometimes our meetings run a little longer because actually we needed to talk stuff out in a workshop because what people

190whether you realize or not we can't talk to each other outside of this room. So I don't know what Jesse's thinking about a topic or what Christa's thinking about a topic. Okay? And I'm a person that I'm not I don't predetermine how I'm voting when I come in. I come in, I may know where I stand on it, but I want to hear what other people because you may throw something out there I didn't even think of. So, my understanding is it's one meeting a month with a workshop is what we're going to because let's just stop this whole second meeting consent thing because what's added every time that is said is if needed or as needed. So, here's where I stand on if it's needed or as. that's needed. Celeste, and she she didn't

191know I was going to talk about this. Celeste is sitting here as our agency clerk. First of all, I don't think we can say, "Okay, you don't have to turn this stuff into her till the day it has to be released or the day before it has to be released." Okay. So, when I was on the other side and I had to present and submit all the stuff for federal programs and grants, okay, yes, we had a two-week deadline. It had to be in so that the superintendent could review it. You knew it was ready. It had all the pieces and parts and it's ready to go. So, typically we do the agenda conference. And at the agenda conference, because the superintendent, her staff puts together the agenda. All right. We don't own that agenda

192till we adopt it here in this meeting, but they put it together because all of those departments know what they need to have approved or what they need to bring forward. Well, just this past week, we didn't do the agenda conference until the day it had to be released to the public. And so, as we went through it, anything we found, somebody had to go back and quickly work on. There's a reason why stuff has to be turned in. in a timely fashion. And you can't ask one individual if you look at all the things that are on there. And by the way, I I know Miss Goodrich already did, but I encourage any of you walk in there and look at Celeste's desk and look at what has to be signed after tonight's meeting

193and look at all the paperwork in there. That's what had to be prepared and uploaded and ready for tonight's consent agenda and the few action items that we have. So I I told you on the phone I do not expect this to be a burden on her and I don't want this to be become a burden on her because now she is responsible for making sure it's all uploaded. It's all ready to go because here's the thing unfortunately they're not going to point the finger at whoever turned it in and turned it in late. I mean it's already enough that she puts on there all the things that get changed so that the public knows because that was a big issue we heard from the public. They came and spoke about we you release your

194agenda on Tuesday afternoon early Tuesday evening. People started reading our agendas so that they knew what it was that we were going to be discussing and then something would get changed. We get an email saying something's changed but the public didn't. And if the public went back in there, try finding when you got 65 consent items. If we hadn't started posting on the front, how were they supposed to read all 65 items again to figure out what got changed? Then they would come to meetings and find out we changed something and they weren't happy about it. So it's not just what we want or what works best for us. It's that's why I kept saying what works best for staff. Okay? Because and this is what I keep hearing from you guys every time I

195ask what works best for staff. This is what I hear. We will do whatever the school board wants us to do. We will make it work. That's not what I asked. I didn't ask you to say you would do it because this is what we requested. I asked what works best for staff. So where I'm at right now, there's some changes I'm happy to make. So let's talk about recognitions. I am not opposed to there being some large recognitions. We used to have some of that, but there are things that I still think need to be addressed here in the boardroom. Quite frankly, that's my why. That's the part that makes me happy when I know that there's going to be public input where people aren't happy. Because you know what? It's very rare. Like

196if we went back and checked, when do people come and speak because they're happy? They don't. They come to speak when they have an issue or they're upset. We don't There's not a a lot of thank yous, okay? But the thing of it is what makes me happy through a board meeting is the recognition piece because they're the why. Because nine times out of ten mostly we recognize students and we recognize teachers and pair professionals. There's a small part where we rep we recognize community members, okay, that have come and done things for our schools. But here's my thing with that. That's why we're here. We're here to show the community the wonderful and great things that are happening here on our campuses. So I'm not for cutting out all recognitions. I'm open to having

197some recognitions in other areas and I'll be there. But my thought is if we move them to other areas, however we set it up, somebody needs to be there because I'm just Jamie Haynes. I'm a mom, an nana, and a teacher. But you have no idea how many people say, "I never thought my child would be recognized, let alone at a schoolboard meeting, and what it means to them." So if we take all that away, I think we've taken away a piece of the heart of why we're all here. And I don't think you could even that we've got a recognition tonight. I think if we were to ask who we're going to recognize tonight, would you have preferred we go out to your school, which by the way, we already went to her school

198and we did recognize her there, but she needs to be recognized because she's one of five out across the entire state selected for this. I don't think she would say I don't want to be recognized at a school board meeting. So, where I stand overall, I'm willing to make changes, but I'm a no. Miss Brosmer. Um, just as a point of clarification, I in limiting the closing comments to five minutes, I didn't take that to mean that we got multiple rounds. I assumed it was five minutes and we're done. Um, I realize some comments end up in a a bigger discussion, but I don't see that as part of the five minutes. Um, I just see us as five minutes and and we're finished. So, I just wanted to to mention that as a point

199of clarification. And also with regard to the to the recognitions, certainly somebody who is one of five in the state, uh, it's appropriate to recognize them here. Um, that's why I suggested the possibility of of sort of a hierarchy of of recognitions because so many of them are school-based and and so the families and friends o of that student have a greater opportunity to participate there, but there are certainly uh recognitions that are appropriate to be held here. and and so I I think it's just uh something that can be sorted through in in working through it. I also uh was familiar with the fact that that years ago um it's my understanding that Valuchia County used to do one one east side, one west side um larger event uh every year and and I

200think that is also workable. Um it it's also a um a viable approach. So I don't have a strong opinion about how we do that, but I think if we're going to continue to do recognitions during our board meetings, I agree with with Mrs. Goodrich that that the board is this is a business meeting and so um the recognitions are appropriate, but I think the context is part of what we're trying to to determine. uh and um and and just sort through so that we are focused on the business of the board in addition to uh the accolades that we want to give to anybody who has earned them. Mr. Cologne, I'm good with the rounds. In other words, we go one round. Everybody gets the opportunity for their five minutes. uh where I've seen

201this work the last time I looked into this many years ago was you know you had the opportunity to rebut meaning as folks went around so you went one whole round so let's say you say something that I don't agree with let's say that gave me the opportunity three minutes at most to be able to say after I've considered everything you've all said so first round one two three four five then we can go around rebuttal if you have any questions, need clarifying questions, etc. But you're limited to three minutes. So again, what that does is that makes you more concise in what you're asking. Um, and so that that's that's kind of what I thought about um, you know, will there be topics, for example, could we have done that with the Dear conversation?

202Probably not. we would have probably gone a few rounds of rebuttal um just because we were all presenting something different. But I think that's going to be a case by case. But as far as the chair being able to, you know, and and that how we do that, I'm certainly willing to uh look at that and I think that'll be a good thing because the idea is not to the idea is to create conciseness, not necessarily to stump conversation. So imagine if Ruben what he just said in a minute and a half, he could have said in 30 seconds. That's really what we're trying to do. Not take away the ability to say it. If I understand this correctly. So just for just for clarification, Mr. Cologne, you're saying five minutes, do one round, and

203then when we come back, we'll have a three minute time for rebuttal. And the chair would also get her five minutes with each round and her three minutes. She wouldn't have to wait for all of us to go around and then only get the three minutes. Mhm. And sometimes folks may have nothing. I have nothing. I'm good. Thompson. Yeah, I agree with Mr. Cologne. I think that it would be because I feel like what sometimes when we have these conversations, you might say something that, oh, I didn't think of it that way or we might have something to add from that angle. And I think that the chair needs to be included in that because there are times when you have something to add that's we all have different perspectives which I think is great

204and so I think that needs to be included in whatever that first round is second round etc. So that there's you know each of us have a a turn each time and then that way we'll have a more well-rounded conversation. That's my opinion on that. Rosmer, I think we brought this up at an in an earlier conversation, too, in terms of Robert's rules and and that if if there was a reason to expand the conversation, we could we could make that determination because of the subject matter because it required a um a more open discussion. But as a general principle, it um if we stay with the five minutes, um the data suggests that that is workable anyway. And just for clarification with the board, um I think the recommendation um is the one regular

205board meeting and then a consent board meeting. That's are we saying optional or required because that keeps there seems to be some ambiguity there. In my mind it's optional. Sorry. No, it's I would say optional. If there's things that Miss Kor's office needs us to vote on, then there's going to be times where it's not really optional. There's things we need to be done that have to be done in a timely manner. So when there's things that need to be done, we have one. So when there are consent items that are needed, Yeah. we have the second meeting. Yeah. Yeah. I'm in agreement with Miss Goodrich on that one. That but and I think if we look at the board meetings we have like that it would still fit probably about the same amount of

206board meetings we have honestly but based on what they need. So optional. Okay. I just want to make sure for clarity. Um, am I hearing that we're going to go back and just do the two recognitions, one in the east, one in the west, and we look at maybe national recognitions here? Not national, state recognitions or national recognitions. We still do state or national in Yes. at the board meeting. Reasonable to start. Yeah. All right. So, state and national at the board meetings. This is that criteria I think that most of you all were talking about trying to have that criteria. So, the night we do the athletics, just to be clear, those were all state championships and those were the ones I was thinking of actually as a good example of what we would

207do here. We do here. Yeah. Go ahead. So, we have a few questions we're entertaining. So the first question is do we want to go to one meeting or not and gaining consensus on that. So I don't think we've established that although it's seemingly so until we establish that then I don't feel comfortable answering the question because I don't even know where we so can we start with madam and and again we don't make decisions here because this is going to come to us and we're going to have to see which policies we have to adjust etc. Um and so if we could just get a a consensus on whether where everybody is again I don't want to assume uh and then depending on what the consensus is that will later come to us for

208decision making then we could have those further discussions. Okay. So question is one meeting or two meeting one meeting or we stay as we're meeting now. So, Miss Brzmer, one meeting, one meeting, one meeting. Say we stay as we are now. Stay as we are. Now, may I hit a point of order since you've established that one of the things that the staff did talk about is being strategic with setting the calendar with workshops. The reason we're still going to find there are going to be things that arise. We are going to need consent at some point throughout the year that's not on a board workshop designated day. So being strategic on where those workshop days are set with a standing consent behind it to allow us to have that flexibility is where the real

209work has to happen in planning that calendar. Your name's not there. Okay, that's fine. I'm good. No, go ahead. No, I'm good. And so with that being said, and and this is just a question that you can come back later if we need to revisit uh the superintendent spending limit to address some of this too because if construction projects, if certain spending is elevated, then that's less things that have to come to the board. So again, we're trying to be more efficient here. And so uh that's that. And the other thing that I wanted to point out is this is more about us and sometimes we get into discussions for a long time that really are and I'm guilty of it myself that really are things we should take offline and and bring back later.

210In other words, if I say to Mr. Cash, tell me about the vacancies. Well, if we get we've always been in kind of that habit where Mr. Cash and Miss Workman always felt like they needed to be ready to speak to something that we may come up with. I have those for you if you need them. I don't want to know. Not right now. I'm kidding. And so, and I knew that. And so, again, this is going to be I I think that in streamlining it's going to I think the superintendent's going to have the ability to say, you know what, I don't have that answer today, but I'll bring it to the next meeting. And that's going to have to be okay because you again part of we we just and I'm guilty of

211it. You know, sometimes we just go on and on like I'm doing right now. And so I I I think that we're going to have to probably revisit our way of work so that we can accommodate this and make it work for everybody. And now that we've decided to go to one meeting, thank you. Or excuse me, let me take it back. There's consensus. We have not made any decisions. Thank you. Everyone voted who was um we didn't vote but there's no vote. Yeah. Consensus. So we stated our intent. So Dr. Bman, do you have anything else you'd like? Yeah, I did have one more question. Um administrative appointments. I I'm I just need clarity for administrative appointments. What is the cons? Because I do want to bring up also transfers, right? Transfers are uploaded

212as we all know and Valuchia past practice is that we read them also. So I need to know if we're going to be uploading those and reading them or just uploading them. So I wonder if that would be a good use of the board docs library. We don't have any documents in it right now, but that could be a place where we post it and then anybody who wants to read the the spreadsheet can access it. Well, usually we we upload it there. So, it should be there, John. We need to look into once it's it is public knowledge once it's, you know, approved. Well, it's posted as a as an attachment to the agenda item, but just so that a person doesn't have to figure out what meeting uh uh where it was considered

213if it's just in the library that they would be able to access it at any point and we wouldn't have to read it and make it make it public necessarily at the board meeting. It's just a thought. Matt are you listening to that? And and can I get a consensus regarding the administrative appointments? Okay. So, administrative appointments. Do you want them to take place here for they're going to be a new AP, a new principal, a new district staff member? Do you want them to be able to be here with their family and speak and be recognized or do you not? That's where we're at. Yes or no? First. I'll go first. Yes, go first. Um I'm thinking Yeah. So, um I think we have to establish a level. If it's a district appointment, it

214would be appropriate at the district meeting. Um, I think we need to establish what that's going to be. And then also with administrative appointments and why I wanted to actually speak first on this, Mr. Dr. Cash, can you speak to there's other districts that if there are administrative appointments, um, sometimes we vote on them and so if someone's being promoted and we're not meeting till a month later, does a super can we give the superintendent the ability to promote them and then bring that up at a meeting later? So, so if I misspeak, I'll have Dr. Evans assist and make sure if we don't have the right answer, we'll make sure we get the right answer. is that there are other districts where they do not vote on administrative appointments and I don't believe there's

215anything in our policy that requires the board to vote on administrative appointments. That would be under the purview tradition expectation of this board. So then to what my vote my intention is um I'm I'm still going to stick with I I think it's something that it's more appropriately done in the school. Um I you everyone knows like you talk about that you've taught for 39 years or you're in the schools for 39 years. My background is business and when someone gets promoted in a company it's I don't really know much of many levels that they give a a full background to the to everyone and then you give a full speech at the board meetings. I it's just not the purpose of the board. I absolutely am fine to recognize anyone that's getting promoted and

216um deserves Kudos for sure, but it's not this is just not the appropriate forum to do so. So that is why um I would not be for it, but I would be for it happening at the schools and going and I think a board member should be there and I think it should be the board member from that district and if they can't go, someone else goes. I'm good with that. All right, Miss Thompson. I agree that it should be done at the schools, but I do still like us reading at the board meeting. Like whether it's the transfers, appointments, whatever it is. That way, if there are people tuning in to see their principal who's coming, they can say, "Oh, I tuned in and we read them all off. We read so and so

217is going to so and wherever." Um, but I love the idea of the schools and I agree that we should be there. I mean, that's part of it. And I'd like to say that all of us go to things in our districts and other districts constantly. So, I don't think that'd be a problem with this specific board. So for me, I I I would stick with the way we're doing it right now for the reason of and and I use the example of the turnaround student. It was great. It's at every school individually, but I couldn't make it to every school because now it's 16 stops instead of one stop. One does it at 5:00 p. p.m. Great. Two do it on the same night. Well, cool. We'll make it work. Um, and so I

218I think it makes it more difficult to be able to do that. And so, uh, and I also think that again that's one of those things that we just do really well and and giving folks the opportunity to be, uh, to have that moment that that for many many years and and I'm not a big this is just the way we've always done it person by any means. Um, but it's kind of like the the pins. The pin is a pin. The pin is earned. Okay? When somebody doesn't get their 25-year pin, it's like a stab in the heart, even though it's a 59 cent pin. I think that the way that we have allowed folks to celebrate their promotion has been like a pin to be able to come. And so, um, I just

219I'm in favor of continuing to do it like we do. Do we have uh could we say you've got three minutes to give that speech? Yes, we can. Um could we say if you choose not to come, you don't have to. Like the district folks, some of those folks don't they don't want to come. The school principles, yes. The person going to IT director pro or manager probably not like they want to be in their little closet. Don't blame them. And so I I could see that, but um I I I just think that's one of the things we do. Great. Thank you. You're next. I want to continue it with I mean I'm fine with them being given a time limit. I'm fine with it being read off. You know the How long does

220it actually take to read the AP transfers? You know, minutes. Yeah. and and everybody hears it and they're not waiting for us to go out to a school and you know, okay, I show up at University High and say, "Okay, University High, here's your new AP here the month of March." You know, you knew you lost an AP, but here's your new AP. Oh, now we're back in June. Here's your next new AP. I just And to your point, Miss Goodrich, you asked for clarification, and I see Dr. Evans stepped out. Maybe they were making sure on that voting piece. The example you used, Mr. Cologne, like when it was Dr. Balgaban, it was still the board voted for such an important position like a deputy superintendent, but it was very matter of fact and

221different districts do it different way based on tradition as you've alluded to as well. Dr. B. So, I'm going to share Mr. Coang actually uh tuned into the board meeting to look at the ceremonial production in Broward County. Uh the way it's done there is that they would take like maybe less than a minute to just, you know, welcome that individual. Um and they're done in 60 seconds or less because you were texting me like what happened? provided you. But what happens in the background is that the communications department is set up and that individual will go and stand like behind and you have Broward County, you know, the the the logo there. They'll take a picture with that individual and then they'll put up a little bit do a write up about that that

222individual. It could be and their resume sometimes, you know, some information from their resume and that's put out on social media from the district where they welcome that individual into that role. So, it is quick, but there's a behind the scene to where they take a picture um the communications department. So, they they go quickly, they take their picture, they upload the narrative and welcome them to the county. Okay. So um consensus is three and three board members want to go to one meeting a month. Two board members want to leave it as it stands. Consensus is did we ask that everybody's fine with giving up the comments at the beginning of the meeting? Is there any Okay. So there we have a five consensus on giving that up recognitions. Um the consensus if I

223understand it correctly is that we will recognize state and national level um individuals whether it be students, teachers, whoever is being recognized. Okay. At the board meeting. Um at the board meeting. So let me throw in one thing. What are we going to do with the community member piece? What community member piece? Where are we recognizing the community members that we have brought in and recognized for a variety of things? Um what are we doing there? I would leave that up to the superintendent cuz some of those are strategic. Oh, I mean if if if there is a community partner that again I that's just my thought that donates to every school, you know, or something like that or or not or just did something great. I mean that there's got to be some latitude

224here. Sometimes, you know, and I think you're right. Leave it up to do Dr. Balgaban. She knows when someone's done something that deserves that it needs to be recognized here. She knows. Agreed. There's some latitude in that. And sometimes And sometimes we're going to have suggestions and the answer is going to be no. And I that's and I'm just saying that's okay. Can I add one thing? I'm so sorry because I meant to say this earlier. Um just clarification. At the beginning of the board meetings, we do the pledge, then the national anthem, and then a moment of silence. And we say what the moment of silence is for because I stand here every time and thinking, why am I standing here silent? A am I meditating? What is h? I don't know if there

225had been something h that happened. If there was, you know, something horrible obviously you'd give a moment of silence for, but if I don't I to this day don't know what it's for. So, by law, our students are required to have a moment of silence on campus each day. We do not dictate what that is because depending on their background, it could be a variety of things. It could be they use their moment of silence to pray. They use their moment of silence to reflect, you know, or put themselves together for the day. It it's an openended choice, but it is by law that we have to require a moment of silence on campus for students and therefore we give an example of showing what a moment of silence is but we cannot state it's

226for a specific purpose. Could we maybe say as our students do we'll also be taking a moment because again yeah we can I don't I have never known what it was for and if I were sitting in the audience I'd be like what are we doing now? What is this? happens at the beginning of the day at every school. I know what you're all think what you're thinking. I really am thinking I should am I meditating? Thank you. So, so we could tie into the statement about we're going to as we do on campus, we're going to do the pledge of allegiance, the national anthem, and hold a moment of silence. Okay. So, we do the national anthem as well at all of our campuses before school. A lot of them do. It was a

227mixed bag. There are some districts that do just the pledge. As a matter of fact, of the districts I looked at, in full transparency, I didn't look at all of them, but the ones in Central Florida mostly do the pledge of allegiance. Pledge only. Well, see, we put the moment of silence in when when it went on campuses because it was required by students. I don't have a problem with the moment of silence, but I'm sorry, I'm going to interject. This is the one thing that I'm going to respectfully ask that we please keep the moment of silence. however we want to describe that moment is for. But that's important to me. Yeah. And I I don't I'm not suggesting at no point did I state take it out. I just wanted to know what

228it was for because I've never known. Yeah. Okay. All right. So, we will let me let May may I also Go ahead. So, so in case you're wondering for me, it's Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to say it nicely. That's something I work on. Nice. And it resets me. It really truly does because sometimes we get out of a workshop or we're coming in with the stuff from the day and it just why for that's me. And so I I know you didn't say get rid of it. I hear you. I hear you. Yeah. But it's a good point for the people in the audience that may not know. So, I didn't know something happened that caused us to

229do that. Now, I know what it was. It was legisl but I didn't know if actual something happened. We have used it at times when there's been something happen tragically on campus where we have said and we're, you know, giving this moment of silence in honor of the challenge with that is you do it for one, you have to do it for all. And so one student tragedy, one staff loss is no different than all staff loss. And you know, and so you know, keep it. Yeah. Everybody, it's it's personal to everyone. Yes. I want to just make sure that we all understand that um the administrative appointments, the board is required to approve those, but you don't have to use the methodology that we use. Now you can actually have those appointments on the

230consent agenda and we could do that like that if we if we want to save time in terms of um those appointments since it seems to be consensus to move away from the way we do it Dr. be and if we can look at maybe doing something similar to what Broward does where um you know that clearly would time it quickly um and we could still you know that's going to be a production part and I know sometimes the appointments are um the morning of and so that's going to mean that that team is going to have to be ready to realizing that that that's not going to be a part of the agenda but it is going to be included in the consent agenda. If we can do something like that and maybe find

231an alternative way. John, can you look into that? You and Danielle and there is the behind the scene that the communications department does that you'll make sure that Danielle gets to experience. Okay. So, let's go back and recap. We're going to keep the pledge of allegiance, the national anthem, the moment of silence. We are going to cut out any board member comments from the beginning of the meeting. When we get to um recognitions, we are only going to recognize um state and or national things or based community members based upon Dr. Valgabin's discretion. So, if I heard it correctly, we're removing appointments. is that because we have three people that don't want appointments and two of us that do. Okay. But they still have to be voted on. So now they're going to go into

232consent items. So um that is like for tonight, Celeste would have to have 11 consent items additionally added into that section with all the information that needs to be there. Could I pipe in on this one? um because I I just sort of went along um but I didn't really comment on the administrative appointments and I I like the Broward thing um as striking a happy medium um between eliminating it entirely and tightening it up considerably. So I think that's that's worth that's worth doing. I agree with that as well. I like that model. Yeah. And even if they had, you said a minute to speak and then went out and did and the picture was about them to go on the internet because here when we're all going up there, there's so much then

233it's not it's not just about them anymore. Then it's all of us every time. And I I'd rather it be about them. So let them say, let them speak, let them have their minute, and then go out and have the focus on them. Yep. Okay. So wait, I'm confused. Are we bringing them up here? Which means that it's not a consent item. Correct. Yeah, we're compromising. Uh, we're compromising. So, they're still coming. I think that's what it sounds like, right? You want me to go back to Broward? You could be in the in the boardroom. Obviously, some people show up, some people don't, but you normally know who is going to show up and who's there, but you welcome everyone. You quickly you take 60 seconds and you talk about what role they will be

234be assuming and so forth. They they stay right where they are, right? And um at the end communications is set up in a corner. You have in the back for us it's VCS for them is it's you know their logo and then they go there they take a picture with them and then they have a little write up that they do to welcome them to the to the you know district different roles in which they've served or where they're coming from. When did the voting posted when did the voting at the end after you read all of them? It's like personnel action arguably, right? Or in our case, we could just put it on the consent agenda. Correct. Correct. But there is something that goes on social media that talks about like the way I

235would read, you know, go over here is where they came from, this is their experience, blah blah blah. There is a write up on social media with their picture. Okay. I mean, we can look it up and and John can share with each of you and see if you like it. So, I would I would just hand that to the superintendent. She can work with a team of folks to figure out how to make that work and and and that's and and I'm good with that because, you know, as I hear the compromise now, I'm thinking if I was being appointed and I wasn't going to say anything, do I really want to be there versus say, you know, here's Ruben Cologne, he's going to be the new AP. This is his experience. uh maybe

236Ruben types up a letter for the staff and blah blah blah. So that takes care of that and you know then you don't have to stand here to again I would leave that up to because again our administrators who have been there will now be tasked with figuring out what's good for them and that's my thought process. I think you could talk to those stakeholders and not us make that decision versus and you figure out how to best do that. that would take that I think asking them how we can streamline it and what would be valuable and what wouldn't it's easy to ask us it's not easy you know they're the ones that are affected okay the next step is there will be only five minutes um that you're allowed to comment and my

237understanding is that's also on any items that we're voting on correct correct so you get a five minute limit there's round one everyone gets to speak in round one including the chair then round two goes to three minutes and or if there's a round three or four whatever happens. So that would be for anything on the consent because we're not we're not as far as I know we're not changing anything with the rules on the consent. If someone wants to pull something from consent for discussion that's still allowed. Is that correct? Okay. if they want to pull it for a standalone voting item. That's still correct. Five minutes. Okay. Then there'll be the action items. So we'll follow the five minute three minute rule on the action items and then the comments at the end

238of the meeting will be the five minute and or three minute is that and is Dr. Evans going to be the keeper of the time since we can't change this clock to say five minutes. get a new clock where she can pick the time. Like this one is stuck on three minutes. Could we put that on the agenda to vote on getting one that work? We can get a clock. We get you a clock. And it doesn't think we can figure that out. I'm just saying. Yeah. Like they sell it on Amazon. I could keep the time if that's the pleasure of chairing the board. I have no problem. You give Jamie extra time. Uhuh. Give Miss H. extra time. No, no. I said no, cuz then I'll accuse you of giving Miss Hayes extra

239time. No, I think is there something holding us back from getting one that works? No, seriously. We can get a clock that you guys can see here and we can control it. We can work change, you know, five minute, five minutes. So, five minutes and then rebuttal three minutes and because right now she can't, correct me if I'm wrong, you can't change three minutes, five minutes. Or can we? I don't know. Maybe our vendor is looking into it. Okay. So, maybe our vendor and we don't need a new clock. All right. So, I'm assuming that this would start on the July 29th meeting. No, can't. No, because we have to advertise. We have to I mean, superintendent policy we have to change. We have policies we need to change. Policy says one board meeting up

240to one board, a minimum of one board meeting per month. That's our policy. I looked at it. We already voted on the calendar. So on July 29th, I guess we would need to bring the calendar of meetings back up and vote to change it. That enough time, Dr. B, for all these adjustments. Um, John. Yes, ma'am. You and Celeste with the team say September. H September is fair. Like doing all this July, August, and we've got budget meeting. Let's get past budget. Let's Well, July is one meeting because it's going to be a long one. You guys need to understand that because it's going to have the budget and everything in it. August is two, September is two, October is two. I think November is one. September. Because currently we're doing eight meeting, eight months,

241two meetings, and four months one meeting. That's what we're already doing. Rather than put them on the spot, why don't we let them figure out when that it would make the most sense for them? I'm good with that, too. Okay. So, the final thing I'm going to say is I if they have a whole month to prepare it, it needs to be prepared in time that she We're not going to lessen the prep time. Okay? It's not you can turn it in the day before it goes live or the day of it. I I'm sorry. She's got to have it so that whoever's also sitting in this seat can do the agenda conference and if there's any errors found or whatever, they have time to correct them. I am not going to burden Celeste with

242all of a sudden having to put, you know, 150 items on to consent and 12 items on for action. Make sure everything's correct and she has all the documents because it's already bad enough when people don't give her like this morning we got changes. Okay. When people are handing her the documents the day of cuz then the public's not seeing them. And the rule is is the public's supposed to see them and the stuff's supposed to be there. And we've done everything we can to let the public know when we're making a change. Okay? And that there's been a change from when it went live before we get to the board meeting. But cuz that's where you'll see a side of me you don't want to see if we burden her and the burden is

243put on her to have this ready when all of these people sitting here and the other district staff. So do not reduce the time of when it needs to be ready. That's where I stand. And frankly, that was one of the reasons that I thought this would be a good idea because because it would eliminate the the short time span where everything's coming in at the last minute because they had such a small window to get everything ready. So, it makes sense to me if they have an entire month, then we would have fewer of those last minute submittals. And if special meetings are going to have to be called, you need to follow the rules for special meetings. So if you have to call for consent, we need to follow the rules because there's

244rules for special meetings for how long it has to be posted so that the public knows. All right, Mr. Clone, did you have something else? Nope. Miss Thompson? Nope. I'm good. Dr. Balgamin, no. I I will get with Celeste and John and and the board attorney and we will what you've asked we will look at that calendar and just for for the public to know and everyone here Celeste is part of every cabinet meeting that I have on Mondays and we spend approximately an hour sometimes an hour and 15 minutes in those cabinet meetings reviewing all the items that are uploaded going over those items. So she's part of a continual um journey that we have on a weekly basis when it comes to these meetings. So it's recalibrating and if there is something that's

245not taking place, Celeste, you have to make sure that you're communicating that clearly in advance to us. Okay. Okay. Anything else for discussion? Okay. At this time it is 4:10. This meeting is adjourned and we will have to be back in here to start at 4:30. Thank you.