001Donna Brosmer representing district 4. Then I have Mrs. Christa Goodrich representing district 2. This is Mrs. Heidi um Crims who is filling in today. She is our staff attorney and she's filling in for Dr. Evans. Then over on my far right I have Mrs. Celeles Gilmore, our agency clerk, Mrs. Jesse Thompson representing District 3. And Mr. Ruben Clone will not be with us today in the workshop, but he will join us later this evening for the meeting. And then I have Dr. Dr. Carmen Balabin, our superintendent, and I am Jamie Haynes. I represent district 1 and I am your chair at this time. So, we have um four items on today's workshop. There's a lot of information that's going to be shared. We have timed out how long it should take and we're going to
002do our best to stick to the timings. So, Dr. Balamin, we're ready to go ahead and start with item 2.01, testing calendar focus group update. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to ask our chief academic officer, Dr. Julia Nazari Vay, to please join us along with uh Mr. Kyle Shaker, our interim coordinator for research evaluation, accountability, joined by Mr. Michael Samino, our analyst for assessment and data. They will share with you a presentation about our testing um calendar focus uh group update. Um the team has met with a group of uh teachers on several occasions. They've uh collected their input and they have as a result of that made some adjustments to the testing calendar. Rationalization will be provided by the team. So thank you guys. Go ahead and take it away. Thank you
003so much Madam Superintendent. Good afternoon board chair, board members. um very happy to be here to talk to you about the assessment calendar and beyond that really um look at truly what teaching and learning is about. So um without further ado, I'll begin um the presentation with everything that we do aligns to our strategic plan. And this particular um one is obviously our goal or the only goal that we have. It is about teaching and learning. It's all students who engage in high levels of learning every single day. And so when we look at the um focus group that Dr. Belgabin mentioned um there's reasons why we do what we do and it's important that we refine our practices every single year. So in today's presentation, you are going to hear about um the um
004and and beyond focus group. It really is an assessment steering committee that we will continue to meet with um teachers throughout the school year and they will go into detail as to how many teachers we're looking at across different sections of the entire district, elementary, middle, and high school. Um it's all-encompassing. And so they're going to go into further detail about that and about the findings that they've had. But I want to really talk about the before I get hand it over to Kyle and to uh Mike Samino really truly talk about what is the difference between making sure that we have you know there's a there's there's a there's um a saying that more time doesn't always necessarily equal to great learning. More time of teaching doesn't always um equal to great learning. Let
005me explain that for a second. When we have a plan that we put in in place, think about your own plans that you have. Whether you are a business person and you're thinking about the return on investment for that plan, you have to have checkpoints for that to to truly see is this plan being effective or is it not effective, right? And your plan has to be in alignment with what that greater goal is. So in education, our plan is to ensure that every single student masters the benchmarks that is aligned to the state standards. So that alignment piece is important and we're going to go into that also in this presentation. We have 180 days to teach students, right? We have a curriculum that is robust by the state of Florida that dictates what
006standards students must ma must master and what should they learn and be able to do by the end of those 180 days. And so when we're looking at that of of of that instruction, there is also state guidelines that says a district cannot test more than 5% um of district-wide assessments. Right? And so you're going to see in the presentation through very transparency of where we were at in 2021 and where we're at now in 2025. Um so you can see the comparison of um through the direction of Dr. Belgen. It's not about more test. It's about making sure that the test and that what we are doing in our classroom is aligned to the expectations of the standards that we have to not just expose our students that our students have to master. And
007so there is um there there's a process in order to do that which we um will continue to go over during this presentation. And I want you to think about as we go through the presentation the different um dashboard um reasons why we have the dashboard. what information our teachers are able to glean from that that they cannot glean from a state assessment because there are things that they're able to glean from our Valuchia quarterly assessments and you'll see through the feedback from teachers that is invaluable. It's invaluable because the data tells you how you are able to remediate that's filling the gaps. That's where mediation is. how you can pro use that data to provide intervention, maybe frontload certain things that students struggle with that's different than remediation and how do you also take
008that data to be able to accelerate students that are not just on grade level but that are beyond grade level. So all of that information is very valuable for teachers and you will hear some of the um comments and takeaways from teachers regarding this but you will also hear some of the things that we can do to make it better as we streamline the process this year. So right so we've we've talked about this the purpose of today and so we talked about the maximizing instructional impact but you but we have to use appropriate tools to do that and then minimize that testing time and you can go ahead um Kyle and start the presentation. Absolutely. So, in an effort to increase our collaboration and our communication with all of our stakeholders, we have also
009created social media videos and we've been putting those out. Um, so we're going to play one of those here that ties into the last piece that Dr. Vier was addressing, which was that reduction in testing time. So these videos um video snippets um actually have been released by our communications department to also keep our community um engaged and well informed as to what are the differences between you talk about VBAs or you talk about these district assessments what is that compared to state assessments how do we utilize the data so actually Mike Samino has been the spokesperson and has done over a series of videos of this and so there's a couple of them embedded in our presentation so you can hear what our community actually um has been seeing as [Music] well. So over
010the past 5 years, Fouch County Schools has really been working on decreasing the total amount of assessments that your students have to take. So for example, 5 years ago, ELA used to have between 9 to 10 district assessments that were administered throughout the course of the year. Look at that. Once Dr. Balman became superintendent, we really focused on reducing the total number of assessments that students have to take. In total, we've seen a 70% local assessment reduction over the past 3 years. So, currently now, the only students district assessments that students have to take in ELA is VBA 1, VBA 2, and VBA [Music] 3. All right. So, I'm going to uh kind of piggyback on that video here and share some data with you. As you can see on the screen, over the past
011three years, we really have focused since Dr. Bagman came became superintendent to reduce the total number of assessments that we have. When you look at the 2122 school year, and we look at all of the district assessments that we administered, we administered 1.25 million district assessments in the 21-22 school year. Once we started the VBA process in the 2223 school year, you've seen those numbers consistently decrease. This past year, that number is down to 406,000 assessments. And that's in again each individual assessment that a student has had to take, combination of all of those. So you can see over 2/3 of our assessments have decreased since that 2122 school year. Now, this is really important because the state, as FLDOE legislation states, students cannot spend more than 5% of their time taking assessments. When you
012factor in all of our local assessments along with those state assessments that they have to take, such as PM1, PM2, PM3, SAT, ACT, when we factor all of those assessments in, our Valuchia average currently is less than 2%. And as a direct result of that reduction that we've had by utilizing the VBAs and reducing those assessments by o almost [Music] 70%. So there are two different assessments that students have to take in Valuchia County schools. The first one are your state assessments, progress monitoring tests. So there are three of those assessments, PM1, PM2, and PM3. PM1 is given at the start of the year and is a diagnostic test. That test measures content that students learn throughout the entire year. They take that same test again midyear and again that test measures content throughout the
013entire year of the school year. And then PM3 given at the end of the year also measures content throughout the entire school year. Now that's much different than our VBAs, our local assessments. Our local assessments here in Valuchia County Schools, VBA 1 measures only the content so far taught in quarter 1. Now that specifically measures contents from the first grading period. Then they take VBA 2. VBA 2 measures content that was taught in quarter 1 and in quarter 2. And then lastly, VBA 3 is in the third marking period and measures content taught in quarter 1, quarter 2, and quarter 3. So that big difference between the two tests is that while the state test measures the entire year, every single time, our local assessments are chunked based on the content that your child has
014actually learned. [Music] And that last part's so important. You know, knowing how your students perform on the content that they have been specifically taught by your teachers is imperative to driving the instruction every single day. So, one thing that's huge about our local assessments, it's the data that we're able to get, the specific data that we're able to get about how every single child performs. Unfortunately, with the state data, when we receive the state data, we're given the report as a one or zero for every benchmark. Meaning, it just tells us if the student got that question correct or incorrect. Now, when we look at our local assessments, what we're able to get is a lot of specific information. So, we don't just get the information such as a benchmark, which is a large piece
015of content. we're able to look specifically at the question and then we're able to dive in to those individual student misconceptions based on the answer choices that they selected. So that's where our what you see on the screen here is our student data dashboard. It's a tool that helps teachers take what used to take me honestly all weekend to analyze data. I I used to teach eth grade science. I would spend four or five hours going through all of my data reports. I had an Excel spreadsheet trying to figure out exactly where a student struggled. Here, what we're able to do is we're able to look precisely within honestly two to three minutes and identify exactly where every single student is struggling all the way down to that specific question all the way down to
016the distractor that may have gotten them to miss, you know, mess up the question uh on on that assessment. So here what you see is we have a report that shows every single student what they selected for every answer choice. And it's going to allow us to group students specifically according to their skill set and misconceptions on each of those items. Now this is really huge for three key things. First off, remediation. If a student is struggling on a specific piece of content, we can find groups of students that all struggled on that specific piece of content and provide those remediation activities to make sure when they take their next assessment, they are able to show that they've learned that content or they've learned that material. We're also able to provide intervention, meaning that we
017can then forward plan to make sure that these students, if they're struggling with something and we identify something that they're not doing well with, that we can provide those interventions to make sure in the future they don't struggle again. And then lastly, we can accelerate because a lot of our students end up doing very well on these assessments and we need to see how they're performing to make sure we can move those students forward and continue pushing them to provide extra tools for them to show the next level of learning that they can achieve. So these assessments, it's great to have an instructional tool, but we have to make sure that these instruct these instructional tools are solid tools for the classroom. Now, we measure whether or not our assessments are successful on two key
018metrics. We call that reliability and validity, and they're completely different. So, when we're talking reliability, we're specifically looking at that consistent pattern of those assessment results. Meaning, if a student took a test on Tuesday and then retook that same test on Thursday with no remediation occurring, the student should score the same. It's kind of like how if you take the SAT and then you don't remediate, you don't go to tutoring. You're pretty much going to get the same score on the SAT without any type of intervention or remediation along the way. So that's one of the key things. We have metrics that we use in our office in REA, research, evaluation, and accountability to measure whether or not those tests are statistically showing those consistent trends. And that's even relevant within the answers students select.
019So you wouldn't expect if item number three on a test is a very easy question, I wouldn't expect to see my gifted and highest achieving students getting that question wrong. If my highest achieving students are struggling on a question, it's going to decrease the reliability of that test. And that's how we're able to identify things like guessing to make sure that when we're reviewing data with our teachers, we want to make sure that that data is exactly prescribed based on what they need to learn in that classroom environment. And the second piece of that is validity, which is again, it's a completely different measure. What validity does do our assessments predict a future performance on a future test? So if we are building our assessments with, you know, making sure we're measuring the benchmarks appropriately,
020making sure the rigor matches the rigor of the state test, then our assessment should be predictive. Meaning, if a student scores a level five on a VBA on our local assessment, I wouldn't expect to see that student score level one on the state test. that would decrease the validity. There should be a relationship between how they perform on our local tests and how they perform on the state test. And what that does is it makes sure that we're able to provide the best type of instruction that we can in the classroom because every single student is different. Some students perform really well on assessments and are able to show that and we need to be able to get that data to show how we can instruct them in the future. So in speaking about that
021validity, what this next slide is going to show is how we've changed over the process with our district assessments. So you heard me earlier talk about the number of tests. Back in 2021, we had a lot of tests, 1.25 million. There were a lot of district assessments. And unfortunately at that time if a student scored a 70% or above we could only tell you with 50% certainty whether or not that student would score a three or above on the state test. So we really looked specifically at our assessments and how can we make them better? How can we improve? So in 2024 last year, if a student scored a 70% or above on VBA3, there was a 99% certainty that that student was going to score three or above on the state assessment. So that
022was not random. There was a deliberate action plan set forth back in 2021 when we started looking at this data. We would bring teachers in and have them look at our assessments and have them create new questions. We would look at the test item specs. We would look at the actual release documents from the state, make sure the level of rigor that the state is expecting matches the level of rigor on our local assessments. We would look at our curriculum maps as well and see those, see exactly what is being taught in the curriculum to make sure that our assessments reflected accurately what was being taught in the classrooms. We would go all the way down to make sure we have a literally have a book that tells us what level, what grade level, every
023single word is according to what they should expect to see on the state PM3. And if that grade level is above the grade level that they're in that class, that word is pulled off that assessment. We go through the ELA teams and I go through every single test to make sure we're meeting all of those exact specifications because the last thing we want is, you know, I have a fourth I have a fourth grader and a sixth grader. They're taking these assessments, too. And I I don't want them being assessed on something that's above or beyond their grade level and their level of expectation. And we need to make sure we're guiding our teachers with the correct information because they're making instructional decisions based on the data that they're seeing on these assessments. And having
024a solid assessment not only guides how you're going to instruct those students, but then teachers can also look at those assessments. They're out there on Canvas for teachers to provide feedback. So they're also able to then reply to that data, reply to those questions, and we make adjustments along the way with those tests. and we'll actually change the test items based on teacher feedback. All of those pieces have really helped us make our assessments not only more reliable but also more valid so teachers have better instructional tools to guide their forward progress with their students in their classrooms. And Mike addressed one of the biggest boulders that we see as being an impact for that jump in our validity and that's that teacher involvement and principal involvement. So this school year, just as we have
025in years past, we've invited a teacher focused steering committee. So in these committees, our teachers worked with us on identifying what has worked well and what did not work well this year. A lot of these teachers have seen Mike's progression of DAS, VSTs, now we're on to VBA. So, they've seen the whole scope and different experiences across the board. We had 72 teachers that were able to meet with us. They met with us face toface on the east side, face toface on the west side, and we also provided Microsoft Teams meetings for these teachers so they could join whether they were able to make it to that face-to-face meeting or not. We also had 56 schools that were represented out of those 72 teachers. And all of our tested subjects, grades K12, were included within
026these 72 teachers. These meetings were not just oneoff meetings. They were meetings that we held face toface teams after that and then multiple renditions from principal to teachers back to principles back to teachers in a cyclical nature. And you'll see that on the next slide. We did include principles as well. We had 11 principles that represented all levels, elementary, middle, and high, both representing the east side and the west side of the county. They had the same conversations steeped in what worked well, what systems did you put in your building to ensure that student success was paramount on those on those tests? Um, and also what should be refined? What were some ideas that you had that you would like to see implemented or changes that might lead to greater student success and learning? And
027so here's that cyclical nature. Okay, this diagram shows the intentionality that we have to ensure that our teachers and our principles are the center point to our decisions in our testing calendar. We first met with those teachers in a face-to-face meeting with teams on the side if teachers wanted to join the team's meetings. Once we had an opportunity to digest that information, the teachers and us to provide them a draft of everything that they've responded with, provided feedback in and their experiences. We then presented it to them. We said, "Here's what we have heard and this is kind of our draw, right? Our first draft." And they got to poke holes in it. And we had conversations about why this is good or why this isn't isn't so good. Maybe there's a different way to
028present it. And once they were able to get their hands on the actual calendar to see where those dates line up because when we're talking in our conversations, it's it sounds good, right? You know, we had a lot of great ideas that are proposed. But then when you see it on the calendar, you wonder, oh, maybe that date won't work out, right? Because that's that's the week after we get back or that's the week before we get back from a a spring break or a winter break. So seeing that calendar definitely helps, right? So after we were able to digest that information and bring that back to our teachers, they gave us what they thought would be the better approach, brought that to our curriculum coordinators who were in every single one of these meetings.
029So our curriculum coordinators, our directors, executive directors, and Dr. Vier were all members of these committees meeting with us and listening to the conversation firsthand. When we all sat down as coordinators, we looked at the calendar they presented and we enjoyed it. We really liked what they said. Things that we were able to move, we did move and those are going to be presented to you in our changes as well. Once our curriculum coordinators finalized their our draft for the principles, we presented to the principles. We talked them through here's what your teams are thinking. Here's what the teachers are telling us from their perspective. And then we got their perspective on the building level. you know, things that happen in the classroom versus things that happen in every classroom in my building may be
030different. So, these principles took what they saw and heard from our teachers and they added their nuance to what the calendar was. Once we got that in our hands, we brought it back to the teachers. We said, "Here's what your leaders are saying. This is what they're seeing." And we continued that process. We did that three times. And we met with our teacher teams through teams after that. Right? So we had that first face-to-face meeting, but because these were after hours meetings, we wanted to ensure that our teachers would able be able to meet with us. So we provided them a Microsoft Teams link. And I want to send a a huge thank you to those teachers who spent it was about seven hours total that these teachers were able to meet with us and
031coordinate with us. Um there were some members of the team who definitely put in more than seven hours because we have a Microsoft Teams channel. And these teachers are are are top communicators for sure. So um you know who you are and and for those of you on the committee uh you you be able to see that Microsoft Teams chat and we have those teachers who are providing their feedback to every every little coincidence or or nuance that we find within the calendar. So thank you very much and thank you to the curriculum coordinators and principles who were um within those teams chats as well. Right. Right. So, some of the key pieces of feedback, the the feedback that we gathered here, we have again our our what's working well and our areas for improvement.
032All right. So, our what's working well are VBA data. It's supporting small groupoup instruction. This is diving into what Mike was just talking about. It's that proof of learning, right? We're able to actually see on those data dashboards when those teachers are in their PLC's. They love the fact that they can pull up that data dashboard and get specific to where those students gaps are or where the the opportunities for acceleration are. And that was across all levels, elementary, middle, and high. Teachers also teachers and principles both provided that their assessments are well aligned. And this goes to that validity that Mike was talking about as well. The benchmarks being aligned to our state assessments and to the curriculum maps is essential to ensure that we have an appropriate tool for our students in measuring
033their learning. We also heard the teachers share praises at the elementary school level that their curriculum maps guide their instruction and inform their everyday to ensure student learning. teacher involvement in the assessment creation. Mike addressed that we have a canvas for all of our Valuchia benchmark assessments where these teachers can go on preview the assessments and provide feedback and say maybe we missed a a period or something so little as that or maybe it's a lot more in-depth where this item is not hitting the benchmark right after all of our cycles that we go through. There might be some items that the teachers find more appropriate than others and they provide that feedback to us and Mike u monitors that along with the curriculum coordinators for any input that is provided within those Canvas um
034submissions. The streamline windows was something that was implemented this school year in response to our communication, our collaboration with our school teams. The year prior we had VBA that were staged out. So at the elementary school level, they felt like they that we we were testing every week. There was this new test coming around. So in response to that feedback, this school year, we implemented a DBA twoe window. So everything is condensed into one one or two days depending on the grade level. If you got elementary, ELA, math, and science, or if it's just math and science, it might all be just within one week. Um these administrations were also squeezed into just one day as well. So that was feedback and collaboration with our teams last year and it was something that they thought
035worked well and so that's something that we plan to continue on as we move forward into the 2526 school year. Our areas for improvement and our opportunities here are VBA being scheduled too close to winter breaks and spring breaks. Right? So if you think back, we have our VBA 2 window is at second quarter. Right? We're assessing the standards that are covered in quarter 1 and in quarter two. And where does that always line up? It's with winter break, right? So the teams identified that if we provided that assessment a week earlier, we could actually use that week for makeups instead of our uh having our tests actually begin on that day. Uh so that's something that that we looked at and brought back with our curriculum teams. Uh the second thing is PM1 window
036being true too late to be truly diagnostic. That PM1 test the state progress monitoring assessment is supposed to provide a diagnostic or a baseline level data point. This is where our students start right teaching at the very beginning of beginning of our school year. We have teaching that occurs and the way that the current calendar is we had five weeks before PM1. But our state allows us to provide that assessment on day one. Now, of course, we don't want to do it on day one because you have all the all the nuances of building culture with your class and ensuring that students are are in their policies and procedures uh without question. And we also have technology, right? We want to make sure that all of our technology is working. Sometimes that's difficult on day
037one, especially when you're doing all the other things of making sure that the students know where they're supposed to be in the first place. So PM1 is supposed to be truly diagnostic and when we look at our calendar we do see that there is opportunity for us to address this as well. Development of our school testing plans is is something that as a district level we want to support our teams with at the school. providing a uniform approach to how our schools are able to manage the logistics and handling of certain flexible situations with our student success is something that our our teachers uh listen or responded very openly towards us. And the last piece is commun continuing communication with our teachers. Our teachers are the essential pulse point for us to understand what's going
038on in our classroom. Providing opportunities throughout the year would be a would allow us to have a continuing pulse of what's happening in our classrooms when it deals with assessment. So they would like to see an improvement in the amount of opportunities they have to provide input on the assessments throughout the school year. So, looking forward to the 2025 2026 school year, our testing calendar um as provided has taken all of our feedback from all of our stakeholders, those 72 teachers across 56 campuses and our 11 principles across all grade levels, K12. We looked at that feedback that they provided telling us about the window of VBA 2 and VBA3. Valuchia benchmark assessment 2 is given at the end of quarter 2 and that falls with the winter break. So, as I already alluded to,
039we found dates in our calendar. the curriculum coordinators found dates that align to their curriculum map to ensure that the benchmarks that are covered are the benchmarks that are assessed in these valuia benchmark assessments. So instead of the week prior to winter break being the first day for any assessment, they are now going to have that first that week before winter break as a makeup window. We also addressed this in VBA3 because this was falls at the end of quarter 3 which is the week before spring break. So, our week before spring break will be another makeup window just like VBA2. We're using that last week to provide makeup time instead of using it as a first day of testing the week before winter break and spring break. We also are responding to the school
040events that are being scheduled, whether that is a field trip to Washington DC or our um musical performing arts uh awards. those times. We're going to be flexible with our schools to ensure that they have the time on their calendars and we have the flexibility within our windows to allow them to assess on a different day if a majority of their students are not able to be there for that day. And the last piece is that diagnostic or that baseline. Right? We after three years of administering these progress monitoring assessments, we have now learned that we are able to uh provide opportunities earlier in the year with all of our logistics to move from September 9th and 11th, those were the originally scheduled days, but after those three renditions of those cycles with those teachers
041and those principles, they all agreed that they would prefer to see it at the beginning of the year, closer to the beginning of the year. Um, so this is the third week of school and if I may go ahead and that's very important because when you're talking about the continuity of of instruction to instruct from the beginning of the school year, right, and you go through your routines and procedures and you begin to instruct your benchmarks and then in September, second week of September or so, you then have to stop and give a baseline data because that's what PM1 is. It's just baseline. um that uh that does interrupt instruction to then go back and pick up where you left off. Whereas if we do it towards the beginning of the school year, it'll be
042more continuous in terms of that instruction um piece. So that's important um to note on that part. All right. So so looking forward, we also heard uh common misconceptions throughout our feedback sessions, right, between principles and our teachers. Um, so we do have a video again. Um, our star Mike Samino, um, our celebrity, he's going to, uh, be here with us for the common misconception [Music] video. So, there are a few misconceptions about testing, but there's one that I want to point out specifically because we hear it a lot and we agree 100%. It's the fact that a test score, it's just a number. It's just one point in time that we get one data point about how a student performed on a set of questions that day. There's a lot more to the picture
043of a student. There's the group activity. There's the classwork assignment. There's the time they raised their hand to answer a question and were so proud of themselves that they got that question correct. Those are the moments that are important. Those are the moments that move a student's learning forward. And with the assessment, that one piece, it's needed to a degree because that's how we're able to move and see exactly what the student knows and drive the instruction to meet the needs of each individual child. So, it's not about just the one test, it's the whole picture. It's the learning in the classroom combined with those testing points along the way, we're able to formatively help your child achieve their best results. [Music] Okay. So now looking forward into our next steps. We've already shared the
0442526 testing calendar updates. U our next steps with this uh calendar is that we will provide it to DOE. It is in legislation that we have to provide our testing calendar um to the Florida Department of Education um once the board has approved it in a subsequent meeting. Our next focus though throughout the 2526 school year is to continue to involve our teachers. And so we're going to be bringing it back to our teachers. Every quarter the same 72 teachers are going to be invited back to join us in conversation on what's happening right now. What's some things that you have seen happen? And when we look forward towards the next assessment, what are some opportunities that we maybe didn't think of in those conversations? Right? Although we had three rend renditions of that cycle,
045maybe we should have had four. Maybe there was something else that we didn't catch, right? There's always something that we can refine, right? We need to continually look at that. And these teachers are the essential piece to that conversation because they're the ones 72 voices is pretty powerful, right? Being able to hear the different perspectives that they provide because if if we don't have that perspective, they're just they're just numbers on a spreadsheet to to me and Mike, right? We don't we don't know what is actually happening in the story behind those those scores that we see. Um because there might be a way for us to maximize um the the services that we're providing in order to to prove our learning in our classrooms. Another piece uh we heard within that feedback was the
046school's testing plans. So in order to support our schools, we're going to provide certain guard rails that will allow them to to steer their determination of their testing plan. And first and foremost to that is is we'll need to model that, right, by communicating clearly to our appropriate audiences. So we already post our testing calendar on our schools, our district websites, and our schools post them on their school websites. Um, so that's going to be a piece that will continue uh to communicate via our websites with our testing calendar. We're going to be including monthly principles meetings, agenda items for which we will brooach exactly what we just talked about with those teachers, right? Looking ahead and looking back. All right, we're going to be including it in our parent guide which is provided through
047the communications office. Those monthly principles meetings will not just be to look ahead and look back, but it'll also be to refine and share practices that schools have implemented within their sites that were effective or maybe some cautionary tales, right? Because everybody can learn from a mistake. So those opportunities will be shared within our monthly principles meetings if they have uh testing events coming up or looking forward. We are fortunate that we do have PM1, PM2, PM3, right? So every level we are we are administering state assessments throughout the entire school year. So there's conversations there there's times and opportunities that we can attempt a system or put in a new system throughout the school year. Our testing coordinators also have monthly meetings and including a best practices or a time where they can reflect
048and refine as a team is another opportunity that we will be expanding on next school year. Uh we did address already our flexibility for student success and allowing our schools the opportunity to look at student small groups and provide flexibility around those calendars for those students, especially for our students who need who have accommodations through their IEP, an ESOL plan, or their 504. And my favorite piece as a former testing coordinator is the school testing team. ensuring that our schools have a testing team and we're not entrusting with just one person and putting all that pressure on one person. having the administrators, your school leadership team, and the testing coordinator using teacher feedback and keeping teacher feedback not just at our district level with our quarterly meetings with those 72 teachers, but within your school
049site, reaching out for that feedback, figuring out what was working well at your school site and ensuring that that either continues or if there was an opportunity for refinement that you're hearing that feedback and you're using that as part of your testing team model. So, in closing the presentation, um you know, it it's it's no secret that we um every year since we have had our state assessments incorporated um within our um system here at in the state of Florida. Every year, Valuchia County schools have increased their performance. To date, we are 3% away from an A. That doesn't happen by chance. That's not because I just hope and prayed and and it just happened miraculously, right? It's very intentional with the things that we've been doing with streamlining the supports that we provide schools
050and the assessments that we um also provide as a district level. When Mr. Samino talked about the reliability and validity of an assessment, that is very important that is um that is behind research and statistics. And I asked Mr. Samino, please don't go into the whole stat stats um mind in this particular session, but he can really review all that stuff with you. He was um he he was geeking out yesterday as he was reviewing that with me. Um because there is a lot of science behind that, right? And so um it's it's what to do and how you use those assessments that actually matter. And again, the assessments have to be aligned. I can't sit here as the chief academic officer and with the 25 years of experience that I have in education to
051think that a assess assessment from a textbook publishing company it's it's it's fine and that's what's going to give you um that that that um push that you need to accelerate to remediate or intervene when you need to. A publishing company is there to make money. They take, and I know this because I've worked with some, they take and they put a stamp. California versus Florida versus Mexico. When we're talking about truly aligning these assessments with reliability and validity, again, there is research behind it, but it's not just the research. It's really tapping into what questions are are the ones that are good, which ones are not, analyzing how are students answering this, where are the gaps, where are the holes um in these assessments. And that iteration is what that laser-like focus is what
052is keeping this district from going backwards. Okay. So, if we want to see an A school district, we have to continue this and continue with the um with with what both Kyle and Mike said in terms of having those steering committees to truly refine what we're doing, making sure that we have the best practices because as I say, and as I state and glean from u my brother, the chief of staff, he says, "Nobody wakes up to try and get it wrong." Right? We always do what's best for our kids in Valuchia County Schools. And so when we are inviting our um testing steering committee throughout the year, that is brand new. That is not something that we have done before. This is something we've done before. However, having that bigger cross-section and then saying,
053but you know what? throughout the school year as you're going through the motions of assessing your district assessments as well as the state assessment. Let's bring you back and let's see what worked and what didn't work, but let's also bring back the principles in the conversations because school A and school B might have a different building makeup, might have a different, of course, teaching makeup and student makeup. And so there's still flexibility in how to administer, but there's still best practices that you should see throughout the district. And we want for principles to be able to share that as well. And so again, that is something that we're incorporating for this school year in addition to everything that um the gentlemen here have have discussed. But without with with that, I leave you for questions.
054Thank you, Mrs. Thompson. Thank you, Madam Chair. So I want to thank you guys for a couple things. one the videos that were posted on social media. I saw some of those the other day and I liked it because I know that not every parent or community member watches our schoolboard meetings or watches our workshops and I completely understand and I think it was just a nice snippet to really compare the PMS to the VBAs. So, I want to thank you for that. And also, I really do want to thank you for including all of those teachers from every single grade level because everything that I know we all heard, I feel like has been addressed here. So, I really do appreciate that moving the times around. I just had one question. Um, and it's
055not going to be a hard one, but it uh has the computer-based testing on a lot of them, but not the VBA. So, does that mean they are a paperbased test? That's a great question. They they are all computer-based tests. Okay. um the the emphasis on the calendar for computer-based tests on the state tests is is is not necessarily a designation uh that we wanted to put on our VBAs that are all computer-based tests. Our issue with the state assessments is that some students receive accommodations and that accommodation is a paperbased assessment so that there's some flexibility um depending on the student's accommodation. Okay. So there's the flexibility on the VBAs or the PM1s. the VBAs. Yeah. Yeah. So with with the VBAs as well, we do have paper based accommodations also. We have text
056speech as well. So all the same accommodations that a child would get on any state assessment, they also get on our local assessments. Okay. All right. Thank you. That's all. I think it's a good um designation that we could support in our calendar though. Put putting the CBT on the VBAs as well. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions ladies? Rosmer. Okay. So, I have a couple questions on um the assessment steering committee. Were these individuals selected or did they volunteer? These individuals were selected with their principles um as showing using data to inform their instruction. Yes. And there and there were were stu some teachers that volunteered to be members, especially ones that have reached out to us before. we've invited them to to join our steering committees and um as a result of this
057uh has been very integral integral to our our development of this testing calendar. So was there anyone that volunteered to be on that committee that um was not accepted to be on the committee? No ma'am. Okay. So then that means you have a list of who all was on the committee. I'd love that list when you have time. Have that in before the meeting is over. Thank you. Then you said you spent a total of seven hours with the teachers that served on that committee. So how many um meetings did that encompass? Because I'm sure you didn't take them for just one whole day. You can't get all the information in one whole day. So how many meetings? Yeah. Seven meetings. Seven meetings. Mhm. Okay. And that was split up east and west. So some
058some attended one and others didn't attend the opposite one. Okay. All right. And I am ha I am too. I'm very happy that you addressed some of the things that were brought up such as you know testing the first day back after winter break and things like that. So I was happy for that. I'd like to go back though to the slide about the FLOE legislation where it says that a school district may not schedule more than 5% of its students total school hours in a school year to administer statewide standardized assessments. So my question there is are you only counting is your percentage based only on PMS test for that? No, it's it's the PMS for the state tests. Yes. But that would also include our EOCC's for all the state assessments. Um as
059well as our our local assessments, our VBAs, um VSTs and AC ACTs, per WEDA, um all those those sides and then our local assessments are VBAs, DAS, um VSTs, the science test. So, is there any test that we administer that takes more than one day for a student to complete other than someone that has accommodations? So, like just a gened student that has no accommodations, is there any test that they sit for for more than one day? All of our assessments are geared, especially VBA3 is geared for our preparation of our PM3s or our EOCC's. So all of these assessments, Mike, if you want to get specific on those minutes um for VBA3 specifically because VBA3 is the largest assessment and that would be the one that you would like to focus on, I'm sure.
060Yeah. So our longest district assessment is VBA3. Uh the recommended time is 100 minutes for math and 120 minutes for ELA. Our VBAs typically in ELA and math are around 35 to 38 questions. So they are a little bit shorter honestly than what you get with the PM3 which my daughter told me was like 47 questions or something. So she had quite a number of uh questions on that test. So they are shorter and they um we also do consistently meet with teachers and we are looking at the amount of time students are spending on each item. That's another thing that our teams are looking at is if there's an item on the VBA that students are spending a significant amount of time. We're looking to see if we can cut some of those longer
061items that students are taking and replace that with a little bit of a shorter item to again encourage uh re a reduced number of test time. Okay. So when you're calculating that we are at less than 2% are you calculating the average of every grade level in that and all of the assessments that are taken by every grade level to come up with that score or are you calculating it per grade level especially I I mean because if you look at this testing calendar it tells you when second graders are going to test and how many tests they're going to take. It tells you sixth graders, eighth graders, ninth. I I know when it gets into high school it gets a little trickier because it's based on what courses they're taking and or if they
062didn't pass like some of the EOCC's they have to go back and retake them. So how are you calculating your less than 2%. So it's a K12 measure we take all the grade levels and for tests that are not required. So an EOC that's required right if I'm enrolled in the course I have to take it. the SAT for our 11th graders that's required but then like you said there are o other assessments that students opt into and one example that would be the per which is an assessment that students can take in alignment for dual enrollment purposes. Um so although we have that on our calendar those assessments that are not required for all of our students in a grade level to take are not included in that calculation. Okay. So, I'm assuming you
063have a copy of the calendar in front of you also, such as I have. Yes. All right. So, I just want to cuz if you're looking at 180 instructional days, and you take 5% of that, that's nine days. Okay. But let's just even say if we went down to 2%, well, then that's 3.6 days of instruction. And I do know that some of these tests are taking quite a period of time during the day. So, if I look at just say second grade on your test, second grade is going to take the fast PML, the PM1, ELA, reading and math. Then they're going to come in and take the gifted screener. So, they're we're up to two at that point. Then they're going to jump down and they are going to take the fast PM2
064reading and math. And then they are moving down to the um the VBA for math, the VBA for um the ELA VBA, and I may have missed that one somewhere above. So, I'm up to five already. Then they're going to take the fast PM3 reading in math, and I'm up to six at that point, but I thought they were seven. But here's the thing, they're not yet at nine. But like if we pick third through fifth, they're going to take fast PML1 for reading, fast PML1 for math. Then they're going to jump down and take math VBA1, ELA VBA1, gifted screener for grade three. Let's add that in there for the third graders. Then they're going to take the math VBA 2, the ELA VBA 2. Then they're going to come in and take fast
065PM2, fast PM for math, and then fast PM2 for um ELA. Then they're going to go down and take the Florida alternative assessment, the FFA, the FAA, and then they're going to jump down to the math VBA3, the ELA, VBA3, and then they're going to come back in and take the fast PM3 reading and MA no ELA and then math. Okay, that adds up to way more than nine days of assessments. So how the state calculates it is a total number of minutes. So instead of thinking of instructional days, we have we break the data down by instructional minutes. Uh and I don't have the exact number in front of me, but it's around like 55,000 instructional minutes. So I'm going to speak first on behalf of our local assessments. So VBA1 is a 20
066question test. So it typically takes about 45 minutes for students to complete that assessment. And that gives them about two to two and a half minutes per item. VBA 2 is a 30 question test and we do earmark approximately 80 minutes for that for a student to take that test and then VBA3 is more 35 to 40 questions and let's say the high-end 120 minutes to take that. So when you're looking at and so I'm just going to speak to the VBA3 is the star. So when you're looking at the VBA assessments you're looking at most 120 plus 80 plus 40. So you're looking at 240 instructional minutes out of approximately the 55,000 that a student takes. So, I know there are other assessments that you've mentioned as well, but again, the same metrics are
067used where you're looking at the overall number of instructional minutes and that's how we calculate the overall percentages that you see on your paper in front of you. And every student takes a different number of assessments. So, whereas one student may have like an algebra student doesn't have PM1, PM2, PM3 versus the student that's in eighth grade and is taking PM the PM3 assessment in eighth grade, it's a little bit different depending on every student. And we do take that into account when we are designing the testing calendar to look at total number of instructional minutes that each child has to take for their for their assessments. And this is something that we do provide to the department of education within that legislation. We have to provide that actual calculation to them broken down by
068grade level with those percents um for our state assessments, our district assessments and then all together and that all together is that piece that that is that less than 5%. Yes. So okay. So based on what you just said, you're already submitting this data broken down by minutes to the state. Yes. Yes. Eventually we have to. Yes. Every Okay. So you've already submitted it for this school year, correct? 24 25. Yeah. I'd like that, please. Okay. I'd like to see that because see, this is the first time I've heard that it's an average and that it's minutes because I've been asking about this every year that I have sat here. And and that was a nice way to start off about I I listen I do appreciate the intentionality and there must you must be
069intentional and you must have a plan and you must stick to the plan and teach the standards. All right. But kids also need time to practice. I'm I'm not going to step away from that. But that all right. But my biggest thing here is I want to see it broken down. I I've I've asked for this before and never received it. I want to see by grade level how much instructional time we're losing because I think there may be some grade levels that were exceeding the 5%. Okay, I hear you because you're doing minutes. But then I also ha hear from teachers and remember we talked about this last time that they were taking all day to take a test which I thought for gened was not really the best thing. You would not have
070them sit there all day because that's when they're going to get in trouble and and then they're not going to try their best and things like that. But I have one final thing other than about this. So on the PM1, um I've had several parents reach out and so I have a question based on parent input. Say our students because we know that the PM1 from the state is to um test all of the standards for that entire year. So we truly don't expect most students to score high on that PM1. But say we had some students that did score high on the PM1 at the beginning of the year, some of our brighter students. Well, what happens when they get to PM3 and they don't score high and the teacher has no indication that
071they're not going to they just I mean everything that they've exhibited in the classroom. So, they haven't done a portfolio on these kids because they scored a four at PM1 and they come in at PM3 and they score a two. And one of the um statements I heard is she said, "But I passed and that's all that mattered." So she didn't take her time. She didn't put forth our best effort. And that is one of the things I worry about all the time is we reach a point where it's test after test after test after test and even some of our brighter students just say you know I'm just going to mark because so do we have a true accurate picture of some of these kids that have done this? We don't. So the question
072is because one of them happens to be a third grader and I gave an answer without calling you. I said, "Well, the child needs to go to reading camp then because to ask a teacher to put a portfolio at this point in time together is going to be too much. But maybe it will wake the child up that when you sit down to take an assessment. You need to take it seriously and you need to, as I used to tell my students, paint a picture of everything you've learned and what you know, this is your chance to show off." And so is that accurate that our students that have done that are going to head off to third grade reading camp this summer or second grade reading camp? A level one they would be they
073would be invited in and what about if they scored A level two would not require that a student needs to be invited to the reading camp. It's just that level one. Well, we got to figure out a way to get to these kids and motivate them to not Christmas tree as I've said and just click buttons to be finished. Those are conversations that we have with our our principles um throughout the year. We have our data meetings discussing that the adaptive nature of the assessment um impacts that Christmas tree effect as well. Yeah. Well, you know, sometimes it's a competition to see who finishes first, and this can't be a competition when they sit down to do this. But I would like the data that was submitted to the state this year to show by
074grade level how much time. And just for for clarity, since we are in the workshop that within the legislation, it it's posted on our website. Um, so you can find it on our website, but I will forward to Dr. Via to share. There's there's two things. Um, Chair Haynes, we're going to get the names of the teachers and the steering committee and then we're also going to email you the same thing that we emailed to the state. And I want to rest assure we can't exceed 5% in any grade level at all. The state will put a stop to it. We would have heard from the state um prior to we have to submit everything to them including the testing calendar that was approved and they do go through their iterations of is this really
075truly less than 5%. So, um, we will submit that to you and the board. That's why. Thank you. All right. So, it is now 1:32 p.m. We're only two minutes over on this one and we're now moving on to item. There weren't a lot of questions. You were lucky. I I tried to You were lucky because you went way over your 30 minute presentation time, but um we're now moving on to item 3.01, health insurance. Dr. Balabin. Thank you, Madam Chair. Kyle Shaker and uh Mike Samino along with Dr. Vay thank you very much for all the time that you have spent on this and for the adjustments that you have made. Now I would like to ask Miss Stephanie Workman who is our executive director for human resources along with our chief of staff
076John Cash. Um I believe the committee is also here but you will introduce the committee members right Miss Workman. Okay. Um they're going to share with you some updates as it pertains to our health insurance. Welcome. Good afternoon Chair Haynes, board members, Superintendent Balgabin. Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you this morning uh I should say this afternoon about our health insurance. a very important topic. So, the formal presentation will be done by Miss Workman and Jessica and Fred, but I wanted to take a moment just to speak to you as an employee as well of Lucia County School System on how important a change in health insurance is for the people. And I wanted to share a little bit of information if I may uh at this time. So, how did we
077get here to look at uh losing a carrier that we've had for over 40 years in Florida Healthcare and potentially moving to a different carrier curative? Well, it had to do with cost. Florida Healthcare was estimating that um the premium costs were going to increase by about 20%. And that cost would be given to our employees, which was quite a lot of money to pass on to our employees. So, we had to do our due diligence and and seek out other alternatives. Now, why did that happen with Florida Healthcare? We were paying Florida Healthcare $59 million a year in premium, but they ended up billing or paying in claims about $63 million a year. So their cost ratio was about 106%. So from a business perspective, you can understand why Florida Healthcare had to increase
078costs. So the district recognizes that health care costs are um something that's very important. It's also important to our employees as part of our benefit package. So much so that the board back on actually September 24th of 2024 memorialized it in a document that you'll find in in board docs where during negotiations with our teachers union, we increased the subsidy for uh the district to pay for our employees from $565 uh a month to $65 a month. And that came at no small cost. That's $3.5 million a year in recurring costs annually that this board approved last year to try to help with health insurance costs. And furthermore, it was to really make sure our employees realized a raise, which was about an average of about 3%. Had the board not done that, many of
079those costs for that increased health insurance would have been absorbed by what the employees would have seen as not much of a raise. So, the board did take action on that and I applaud them for that. I think that was very courageous to do. I also want to mention that there's an emotional part of this discussion. If you'll indulge me for a moment, I've been with Felicia County Schools for 34 years. I've only had Florida Healthcare. I've only had one primary care doctor. So, these changes are not something we take lightly. It's something that we understand that our employees have an emotional connection to their to their physicians. And we want to make sure that during the presentation today that if people are able to pay close attention and go back and review this presentation
080after the fact, I think a lot of their questions will be answered that they have questions or anxiety about. Um I want to I want to share this. For example, in Florida healthc care they have 167 physicians that are exclusive. What that means is there's 167 of those doctors that only work at Florida healthcare plans that are employed by Florida healthcare and they only accept Florida healthcare insurance. But Florida Healthcare Network has many doctors, hundreds and hundreds of doctors that are not exclusively Florida healthcare doctors. They accept Florida health care. They may accept other carriers as well. So I think it's important that our employees understand that. Also, when you hear the presentation about Curative, you'll find that well, you'll find that Florida Florida Healthcare is very central Florida located. And sometimes in our recruiting
081process, Miss Workman has even seen this, we're trying to recruit employees that have children that are going to college out of state or somewhere like that. And they would ask questions about our health insurance because that's part of our package. And we would have to share with them that those carriers are not in North Carolina. Those carriers in cover in network are not in Arkansas or wherever it may be. they're primarily in the central Florida area. Um, we also recognize that as we move to Curative, and you'll hear some of this in the presentation, so pardon the redundancy. I just kind of wanted to frontload a little bit of this for our people as they're listening to the presentation to maybe tune in. So, Curative has a network of providers that you'll hear, I think
082in the presentation, if I misspeak, they'll correct me, of about a million doctors nationwide that are available, if if this were be the carrier that we we chose, which would eliminate some of those challenges that parents may have or people may have with relatives they're covering on their plan that are out of state or outside of the Central Florida area. And locally, God forbid any of us get sick or or severely ill, we know how that can change your life in an instant. And so for the local piece too, we want to make sure they understand that curative has a strong local relationship uh with local hospitals, important hospitals like Advent, Halifax, Orlando Health, Mayo, Neores, and Chans. I just wanted to make sure I publicly said that upfront as people are thinking about their
083own personal set of circumstances when you guys have this very important decision to make. Um, I I will kind of end it with that, but and I I I appreciate you letting me say this upfront because this was not a um easy decision. I know that Miss Workman will share with you in just a moment the committee members. This was a group effort by district staff, union staff, Miss Albert and her team were intricately involved in this endeavor. And this is the uh the package that they're bringing forth with you because they thought it was in the best interest of our employees. So, I want to thank all those individuals that took the time and effort to do this. And and in full transparency, I'll say Miss Workman and I had conversations early on in
084this process, not about the adoption of what was going to happen, but about if we changed carriers, and I was bringing historical perspective, my words, that there would be white noise in the system because that's a change for people and it's emotional and we were prepared for that. And we want to make sure that our employees understand that part of the benefit package of Lucia County Schools when it comes to health insurance, we're trying to do right by you. So, I appreciate you guys giving this opportunity to say that upfront. Well, at this time, if you don't mind, I'd like to invite um Jessica Scott from Brown and Brown and Fred Turner from Curative to please join us at the DAS. So, as Mr. Cash stated recruitment is one of our biggest efforts that comes
085out of HR and many times as we are out in other parts of the state and even throughout the country one of the questions we get asked of course is what's your benefits package and we'll you know roll off that we use this for life insurance we use this for um dental and vision and so forth and then health insurance will say oh we have Florida healthcare well what's that I have kids that are in college I even in even as close as Orlando, how am I going to, you know, cover them and them be able to get the care that they need even that close? So, as we were thinking this through and looking at our options, we kept that in the back of our mind because asia has changed and our employees have
086changed and the choices that their children have for life beyond our district has changed, we have to change with them. So, so that's that's how we got to this point. Um, so what does the insurance committee do? For those of you that are that are new to the board, I felt like we needed to kind of give you an overview as to what this committee does. So, we meet monthly basically to review our claims data. Now, most of that claims data does pertain to our medical benefit because that is our largest. You know, we have uh employees who take our entire benefits package, but the biggest chunk of what we do reflects that medical piece. We meet with the carriers to discuss our claims, the plan status, are we having any changes? Kind of like
087what Mr. Cash mentioned, what does our loss ratio look like? And with those carriers, I can say that Florida Healthcare has been a huge partner with us. they they come to those meetings on a monthly basis unless of course we are asking dental vision or one of those other carriers to come. We we do keep it very specific but but they have been a partner throughout this process. We also develop communication plans. Um for those of you who have been around as long as Mr. Cash and I have, you've seen us go from Delta Dental to Solstice back to Delta Dental. that had to be communicated very carefully because of the fact that we are similar to the situation that we're in right now. We're looking at a different network of doctors. Some may still
088be a network but not all. We also at those meetings talk about what design changes do we want? Do we want a lower premium? Okay, if we do, what does that look like in terms of your out-of- pocket cost, your deductibles, your co- insurance? So, when I was trying to summarize it up, I felt like this was the best way to put it. To provide and maintain an affordable and comprehensive benefits package for all employees. At the end of the day, that's what it comes back to. It's what can we offer our employees to make us one of the most competitive employers in the county. So, the insurance committee members are listed on the screen. The ones that are in white, those are our Vue instructional and Vue support members. And the ones that are
089coded in blue are our non-bargaining. I know a year or so ago when we were talking about health insurance, one of the questions was asked now that we no longer have the ask me bargaining unit, do we still have members on the committee? And we have invited those comm uh those members to join. Uh we do have one that is representing uh that group. Those that have an asterric beside their name, I'm going to ask to stand up because they are with us today. They are the ones that actually reviewed the ITN to determine what we're bringing forth today. So, Miss Kimberly Atkins, Vivian Ayella, Miss Carolyn Snyder, Miss Marlo Spalone, and of course, Miss Albert, who has been an integral part of this process. We also during the the ITN had Mr. cease our
090chief financial officer on the committee as well because we felt like his background and his knowledge was imperative to the decision-making of the members that I just mentioned. We reduced the committee down to five once we selected the direction we were going to go with the with the two providers. And I know Jessica is going to get into that a little bit more. Those were the five voting members. So the voting members were myself, Miss Snyder, Miss Spalone, Mr. CE, and Miss Albert. So that kind of tells you how we got here. Okay. And why are we here? As Mr. Cash mentioned, we are currently in a three-year contract with Florida Healthcare. This past year, our rates were increased by about an average of 5.9% depending on which plan you have. The renewal rates for
091the third year are based strictly on the loss ratio. So that's what the contract language says. First year we we get it as is. Second year they usually give you some type of flexible rate. Third year it is status quo. Whatever your rate is is what the increase is. Our rate right now and and I'm not even sure it could even be higher at this point in time was on track to be a 20% increase. So if you think about it and and your your part was, you know, a thousand bucks, you just added $200 onto that guaranteed right out of the box. That led us through many discussions at the insurance committee to decide instead of entering into that third-year contract, maybe we need to go out for an RFP. So we talked and
092and uh looped procurement in and they said nope you want to go out for an ITN which is the intent to negotiate. The reason being is with an RFP you get to a point and you can only negotiate with one person. When you're in an ITN you can negotiate with both all the way through the process and then at the end you make a decision. So the ITN was posted at the end of January and they had to respond and send everything in on February 28th. You can see that we had two responses. Florida Healthcare which we you know expected as well as curative Etna who for those of you were sitting here a few years ago declined because they knew that they could not offer anything less than that 20%. you three years ago
093when we went through this process, it came down to Etna and Florida Healthcare. So, I want to put that out there and and there were a multitude of reasons that we continued with Florida Healthcare. So, over the last three RFPITNs, we've had a total of three different car uh carriers apply. That's that's kind of the grasp that Florida Healthcare has had on our uh healthcare insurance for the last uh 40 plus years. So at this time I'm going to turn it over to uh Jessica from Brown and Brown to kind of walk us through what that ITN process looked like. So through that process there's obviously a lot of evaluation that goes on. Um it was you know overall almost a fivemon process of going back and forth between both carriers um having public meetings,
094interviews and uh negotiations. Um, a lot of great questions were asked of the committee um to the carriers which they had to respond um really um you know and we'll go through the specifics of how they responded to a lot of those requests but the things that we evaluated during the process obviously network is is a huge issue with you know Florida Healthcare having their staff doctors so we know if you were to ever leave Florida healthcare no matter which carrier it is that they're going to be new doctors that have to be found. So, um within your population, you have about 3,000 or half the members that are seeing staff doctors. So, um so we had to evaluate that and look at the impact and also speak to curative about how are they going
095to respond to that? How are they going to find new doctors um for your population? So, um we have Mr. Turner here who will go into more details about that. Um but we obviously looked at um their network and how they can respond to that. But they they do have a network that's already been developed and they are continuing to develop a network. Um we also looked at pharmacy. So Florida Healthcare has their own pharmacy and they also contract with Walgreens. Um that will be a change to curative. Curative uses in Florida Publix. So, um, they have a national, uh, national pharmacy contracts as well. So, if you're out of the state of Florida, there are contracts with Walgreens, CVS, and some other pharmacies, but within Florida, it's going to be um through Publix. So,
096that will be a change that we had to consider. Um, they both have mail order options and um, and both uh, both carriers offer an extensive list of Z medications um, for chronic conditions and various conditions. And so we looked at all of that. Um, as far as employee support, that's going to be very important. Um, Florida Healthcare has done a phenomenal job here locally supporting uh your employees and your HR team, and they're a great partner here locally. So, um, as Stephanie mentioned, they come to meetings, um, on a monthly basis. They're always available. They have their wellness director there, their CEO, their CFO, medical director, pharmacy director. So they have a whole team that they have dedicated um to Valuchia schools and they've done a remarkable job answering issues and and getting on
097top of questions and things that um the the insurance committee has asked for and the employees need. So um you know curative has big shoes to fill there. Um so we had to look at you know how is curative going to be able to step in if if um if the direction is to go with curative. So um doc uh Mr. Turner will talk more about their care navigators but um this is going to be more of a concierge approach that every member will have access to that will help them with their health care along the term of the plan. Um so currently they have about 160 staffed um for that. In addition, they will be providing an on-site employee uh to the school board year round and also um they'll be providing two employees
098during the open enrollment period um on site as well to help with um the the installation of the product and uh to answer questions, meet with employees, those sort of things. um during the process um or uh prior to um HR did speak with references that curative gave um of their larger clients. Um anything you want to share on that? So keep in mind as we all know curative is a newer company. However, they have made a huge footprint in the state of Texas. One of the companies that we talked to has a little over 4,000 employees that they ensure, which isn't, you know, much different than where we are. And those employees are throughout the United States. They they have them in Cincinnati, they have them in California, all over the place. And they
099talked about how having an insurance like this benefited those employees as they had to travel for work. So, so that was a huge piece in talking with the school district. Now, it's small because, you know, Texas does things um on a smaller scale when it comes to their school districts. They said that they actually had an increase in the number of people who accepted the insurance because they felt like for the first time it was something they could afford. So, so that was a huge piece for me to hear because as many of you are aware, we have some employees who they say, "I can afford the insurance. I just can't afford everything that comes after the co-pays, the the co- insurance pieces, the out-of- pocket, the prescriptions, whatever the case may be. So, that
100that made me feel very confident that they had worked with an organization like us, even though on a a much smaller scale. Um, one thing I wanted to also mention back up where Jessica was talking about the open enrollment, that's just the two employees that they are going to have here for that. We also have an entire team of about 25 people or so that will be a traveling road show. And I'll get into that a little bit more, but I just wanted to to insert that there. Well, and Stephanie also brings up a good point as far as getting members to enroll on the plan. So, when I look at your five-year history, um, I'm always looking at, you know, what is going on with your premium? Where are claims coming from? How can
101we get control of the cost? So your stats on that, your premium is pretty much status quo as a whole when I look at that 5-year period and that is because membership has dropped about 3 to 4%. So we are seeing members drop the plan for various reasons. Maybe it is the plan design. You know, it's hard to say, but at the same time, we're watching your claims escalate. And so your inpatient claims have gone up 60% in that 5-year period. Outpatient is about 40%. How do we get a a better hold of these claims? And that's why we are talking to other vendors to see what their approach is going to be. Um, but that is a great point because if this continues, we're going to continue to fight this battle of how do
102we get a carrier to step up and give you a great deal and keep premiums low so that your employees want to be on this plan. Um, so another part of the evaluation, um, the clinics. Obviously, Florida Healthcare has done a great job providing their clinics and it's an $8 co-pay for various services at one place. So, that can be for urgent care, primary care, they can get medications, diagnostics. It's a phenomenal benefit. Um, no other carrier gives you that exact benefit. So curative because of their plan design being $0, your employees will have access to $0 urgent care diagnostics. So similar things at no cost. Um however they don't have that exact clinic model. So it will be you know going to other locations for those things. And and one thing I would like
103to add because I believe one of you all forwarded me a question about the clinics like where am I supposed to go? I'm used to going here on Saturday mornings and so forth. The urgent cares that are covered are all the ones that are open Saturdays 8 to 5, Saturdays, I mean Sundays 8 to 10, whatever the case may be. So it opens up a network of clinics that they can uh use and urgent cares that they can use outside of those 7 to7s that the um extended hour clinics of Florida Healthcare have. Um and then gym membership. Um, another very unique wonderful benefit that Florida Healthcare offers, they've they've done a great job networking with the local gyms and offering that at no cost, not only to their members uh with the schools, but
104to everybody that um is employed by the school board. So, um that benefit is not going to be replicated at this point by curative. Um curative does offer a benefit called class pass. um that will be on their buyup options, their PO or PO Max plan. Again, Mr. Turner will talk more about that. Um but that is their solution right now, but um if we find that a lot of members go to the base plan right now, we don't have a free gym membership option there. Um all members will get access to N uh which is a weight loss a free weight loss app. Um but that's not going to be needed for everybody. So um you know that is going to be an area that we're going to have to further develop. Um so
105other factors that we evaluated obviously premium uh is a huge part of this and you know what is going to be the impact to both your individuals on the plan and your dependence. So we looked at all of that. We also looked at your tier structure. Is it better to go back to a four tier structure or keep the five tier structure that we just moved to last year? And just to remind everybody, the five tier structure just broke out that if somebody's enrolled with just one employee versus I mean sorry, one employee with one child versus multiple children, those with multiple children will pay a higher premium. So we broke that out last year. Um so we continue to evaluate that and does it make sense to go back to four tier or keep
106five tier. Um, we also looked at uh the three-year term with with each vendor. So, what is that going to look like? What kind of rate caps can they give us for that period of time? Um, also funds that they offer. So, um, currently Florida Healthcare gives funds towards wellness and also technology. Um, so we wanted to make sure that was going to be the case um, with curative and um, and then surplus contract. So this is um what Florida healthcare has in place now that if your claims run favorably you basically get to share in any profits and so in the past you have been the schoolboard has received a check back from them for uh the good claim years that you have had. So we wanted to make sure that would continue. So
107next we have kind of the progression and um I broke it out just so you can see the impact to on the base plan for the employee only kind of where we started with bo both vendors. Um keeping in mind that the board contribution right now is 605 and we you know wanted to um if that were to continue we wanted to make sure we eventually got to where we would still have a free plan in place for employees. And so as you can see here through the the various ne uh negotiation periods um Florida Healthcare ended up just over that at 62662 for employee only on their base plan and uh curative did end up at the 605 board contribution. So going into where we kind of ended up with both vendor um for
108Florida Healthc Care's final offer um they did listen quite a bit about the need to scale back on deductibles and offer more free services so that employees had the ability to really engage in their preventative screenings get things done early so we don't have highc cost claimments. So in response to that they were able to make some adjustments to the plan designs that are in place offering z for their staff FHC providers for primary care and specialists pediatricians behavioral health tele medicine and generic medications. Can I insert something right there? That's the 167 doctors that Mr. Cash mentioned earlier. It's only that group. So I wanted to make sure that was clear. Right. And then also um they made some adjustments to the co-pays on some of the plan designs where it did offer some
109lower co-pays um if employees go to lowerc cost places for services. Um we've been asking for that. We made some modifications last year to um with Florida Healthcare on that. But we want to continue to try to drive uh employees to the lowerc cost locations. that's going to help your claims experience and, you know, hopefully overall give you a a sustainable plan. Um, and then Florida Healthcare did continue on their ProShare arrangement. That's where you get money back if um your claims run favorably. They give you 100% um of the reimbursement on that. They offered rate caps for year 1 at 9.9%. Year two, they could not because they're filed as an HMO. So that's why they've been tying it to loss ratio in the past and not just giving a flat cap. Um so
110that's how they responded there. And then funds annually they are giving uh 250,000 towards wellness and 100,000 towards technology uh for each year. Uh this next slide is just a quick summation of the different plans and the different tiers just so you could kind of get an a visual of if I had to utilize my plan to 100%. And you can see that the HMO2 which is what up until this plan design has been our free plan. you can see that that even next year is going to be somewhere around 900 or $9,000 that that they would be out of pocket. So, I just I wanted to put that out there because everybody always talks about what's that bottom line. So, for Curative's final offer, um they did offer plan enhancements as well. So when
111they first um responded to the ITN, it was um looking at both level funded plans and fully insured plans. Um so we ended up um moving towards their level funded plans as the recommendation. Um and that really is mainly because um they are able to offer what we call a value plan for the base plan. I'm going to let Mr. Turner and get into how that plan works, but that's all going back to the education that the insurance committee has been asking for and steerage towards lowerc cost options to help your plan. Um, this plan is designed to do just that as your base plan. Um, and then uh for the level funded option, there's a surplus just like what Florida Healthcare is doing. and uh they would be at 75% for year 1 or
112and 75% for year two. For rate caps, they're at 9.5% for year 1 and then 13% for year two. And then for funding uh wellness fund, they're at 200,000 and they're calling it an optional fund. It can be used for technology or something else. Um but that's at 150,000. And this slide also shows the the comparison to what um I had on the last slide for Florida Healthcare. And you can see that with that uh EPO value plan that that Jessica mentioned, it's 100% free. There's no out-ofpocket costs for any visits, for any co-pays, anything like that. So, we are able to offer something where an employee can get themselves taken care of at zero dollars. The other thing I wanted to mention since we're talking about premiums and what that's going to look like,
113I know we've had some questions about the fact that yes, these premiums are a little bit higher than what we're looking at right now, but in the end, you pay the premium and nothing else. One of the options that we are going to offer employees right now for those of you that have been here as long as I have, it's always been 20 20 deductions. That's how your deductions for your premiums are are taken out for your different uh carriers that you have for your different services. We are going to offer the option to our employees. So, yes, mine may be going up a little bit, but they're going to let me spread that out over 24 checks versus 20. So, so we hear the the concern about the increase. So, we we've tried to
114come up with a solution where we can combat that from the get-go. Okay. Um, so we ended up with a unanimous decision to recommend curative through this process. Um and some of the reasons behind that is that their final offer allowed employees to continue to have a free plan um for premium. Um so and overall curative's base plan was lower in premiums versus Florida Healthc Care's base plans across the board for dependence and employee. Um, so you know, this also allows employees that are buying up currently for um, you know, paying more to buy up for the other Florida healthcare plans because of network. They want a bigger network. They want a better plan design. They're not not necessarily going to have to do that with curative because they're going to get the same plan
115design across the board and they're going to get a national network across the board. So that could allow employees to not have to buy up. they can really um sign up on the base plan and get that free premium and um as long as they do the baseline visit which Mr. Turner will get into um they will have zero zero co-pays on their plan design. So you know with that that helps so there's no cost barrier to receiving care. We hope um you know that ultimately reduces your high-cost claimments your outpatient inpatient activity. we're trying to catch things earlier. Um and then uh as we mentioned, they're going to have a concier service through their care navigators. So again, that's going to help um with members to make sure they are getting their preventative screenings
116done. If they have a chronic condition, that's going to help them to be on top of managing that, getting the care that they need, taking the medications they should be taking. Um, and then, you know, a big thing is this is going to help members uh try to find new doctors that need to find new doctors. They're going to be there to walk them through that process. Um, and then as I mentioned, there is a national network on all plans. So, as mentioned before, you know, for employees that have kids in college, um, retirees that travel outside of the state, they are going to have coverage through these plans outside of Florida. Um, same with pharmacy. They'll have uh national pharmacy plans as well. And then um this plan is going to give what we
117call a zero card option. Um again, Curative is going to talk about what that means, but that is to also help minimize disruption with providers. So um as as Stephanie mentioned as well, they're going to be reaching out to the non-staff providers to try to work on getting them in their network ahead of time. Um but for whatever reason, if they can't initially contract with a provider, this is going to be another approach that they can take so that members can continue to see uh their doctor outside of the Florida Healthcare staff doctors. So, um and this is going to help with their ability to continue to build a local network here. And one thing I want to add before we turn it over to Mr. Turner to give us the meat and potatoes of
118today's presentation is that we did ask as part of the negotiating process if Florida Healthcare if they were not selected as our uh provider would they be willing to become a part of the curative network so that we did not have the disruption of of services for those who have those true Florida healthcare doctors and unfortunately they would not. We also asked them about contracting with the pharmacy because that was another thing that we heard. We really like the pharmacy that Florida Healthcare has and again they told us they would not. So I think it's important that everyone is aware that that we've asked those questions to try to keep as much unchanged as possible. So Mr. Turner, the man of the hour. All right. Thank you uh for having me here to share a
119little bit more about curative and uh and what we do. Yep, I can. Here we go. All right. So, uh I'll start with a little bit of an introduction to curative because we are a newer company to the space. If you go to the next slide, uh we were founded in January of 2020. Uh we actually initially got started trying to improve sepsis outcomes in hospitals. Um, and then the COVID pandemic hit and shut down all of the hospitals. Uh, the team had a background in lab testing. So, we thought, yeah, maybe we can help out with the pandemic for a few weeks until this all blows over. Obviously, lasted a little bit longer than that. We ended up scaling the company from 7 to 7,000 employees over the next 12 months. Uh, we built
120out national testing sites uh all across the country. Here in Florida, we tested all of the staff um and residents at every nursing home in the state, every assisted living facility in the state. In total, we did about 10% of all US CO testing. So, we do know how to do healthcare at scale. We know how to scale up. We know how to hire great people um and maintain the quality as we do so. Uh so, obviously, CO testing very short-term need, not a long-term need. So, from 2020, we started to focus on what comes next. And one of the unique problems that we had is we were a large employer with 7,000 employees trying to provide great benefits for our people uh particularly with two British co-founders of the company who grew up with
121a slightly different health care system. Uh both been in the US a very long time. Um we could not find something that we were happy and excited to offer to our people. uh everything we looked at was chasing a short-term gain uh at the expense of longer term cost increases by putting people off getting the care they need to save money in the short term. Um and so we thought we could build something better. So we got started uh in 2022. We've been growing rapidly ever since. If you go to the next slide, uh we're now about 110 uh thousand members nationally on the plan. Uh coming up now on about 800 groups. We do have uh a sizable number of school districts uh primarily in Texas at this point that are on the curative
122plan. Um and we're seeing great results so far. So you go to the next slide. So we really think uh one of the most significant things that is driving cost increases and negative health outcomes in the current system is the out-of- pocket cost that members face to get necessary care. Um, even when members have that insurance, the out-of- pocket cost they face puts them off actually seeking that care. So, this here is the result uh of a survey that we ran. These are currently people in the state of Florida who get their healthcare from their employer who answered these questions. So, none of this is people on a Medicaid plan or exchange plan. These are people on employer sponsored healthare. And despite that, 55% of people wouldn't actually be able to afford uh to pay
123the necessary out-of- pocket cost uh if they had a major medical condition or needed some kind of emergency care. And this drives this pattern of care deferral. So 35% of people had actively skipped uh care in just the last 12 months. 59% of people that actively skip preventative care. So the stuff you most want people to do is what they're most likely to put off. The statistic that didn't make it on the slide that most shocked me is that 10% of people answered they've cut their medication in half in the last 12 months because of the out-of- pocket cost. Again, this is on an employer sponsored plan. This is the gold standard of US healthare and 10% of people are cutting pills in half. That's going to save money in the short term because you
124didn't pay for that medication, but long term that is not the right solution to manage down long-term cost. So, next slide. Uh there's quite a lot of data out there on the long-term consequences of these out-of- pocket costs. Uh this is a study done uh by the National Bureau of Economic Research. They followed a group of about 50,000 members that moved from uh basically no out-of- pocket cost to a high deductible plan. And they followed them for three years to see what happens. And in the first year, they saw a 12% reduction in claims cost. So it looks like, okay, great. We've solved all the problems. People must be price shopping. must be only going to see the highest value care. They must be avoiding unnecessary things. Unfortunately, when you dig in and you look
125at what's happening, your hospital costs stay flat. Your specialty medication costs still increased. And all of that 12% saving came from people skipping preventive care. So, in that first year, even though colonoscopies would have been covered at $0 out of pocket as a preventive service, they still went down by a third because people don't understand their benefits. They don't read the full benefit booklet. Insurance is complicated. You tell them, "Hey, you have an out-of- pocket cost." No matter how small it is, that financial barrier puts people off seeking care. And you can see that increasing the rate of late stage colon cancer by the third year. So this stuff catches up with you really fast. You end up paying a lot more for it in those later years than you would have paid to deal
126with that upfront. Slide. So this is the problem that we're trying to address with the curative plan. It's a very unique model. Basically, all of our members start out the plan year with zero dollar out-of- pocket. So, no co-pays, no deductible, no co- insurance as long as you stay in network. And was already mentioned, it is a million providers nationwide. I'll say more about that later, but all of that in network care is $0 out of pocket. So, you can go see your PCP for $0. You can have a baby for $0. You can get cancer care for $0. And everybody gets that for the first 120 days on the plan. During that 120day window, members have to complete something that we call the baseline visit. It's basically a mix between an onboarding to the
127plan and a preventative health visit. You do it with our team. It's virtual, so it's usually a 45 minute to an hourong Zoom call. And as long as you show up and do that visit, then you'll continue having the no out of pocket cost for the rest of the plan year. So just 45 minutes to an hourong Zoom call and everything could be free. If you do not show up, if you won't give us one hour of your time once a year to think about your own preventative health, on that 121st day, you will revert back to a $5,000 deductible, 20% co insurance, and co-pays on most services. So, it's a big financial car and stick to get people to engage once a year. Let's get you engaged. Let's make sure that you're getting the
128care you should be getting upfront and ahead of time. And we do find that most people for $5,000 do engage. We get 98% nationally of our members who engage and complete that baseline visit. Um so most people do do that and get that zero dollar out of pocket. Go to the next slide. Um so we do find we have to show people the benefits grid or they don't believe it. It is really all zeros on the left. That is the happy path for 98% of our members. If you do your baseline visit, it is everything at that $0 out of pocket. Um if you don't do your baseline visit, that is this middle column here. uh with that $5,000 deductible. Again, that is only 2% of our members who ever end up there. Um there
129is an out-of network benefit as well. I'll talk a little more about this on the plan options. This is showing our standard uh PO plan, which is one of the middle tier plans that does have a out of network benefit, but it is at a $10,000 uh deductible if you do go out of network. So if you go to the next slide. So I'll come back in a little bit and talk more about the baseline visit and how that works and how we actually drive the cost savings to pay for this. But first let me touch on the four plan options um that we are putting forward and particularly the EPO value plan um which as was discussed this is one of the ways that we can drive substantial cost savings. So we are offering
130these four different options of plan. Now in network it is all zero dollar out of pocket with the baseline visit. So the usual thing that you would vary between plans right is that cost share but that is always zero. We want people to engage proactively. We want them to go and get care. So we don't want that financial barrier to be a reason they don't do that. Um so primarily we vary the out of network benefit we vary the pharmacy network and then on the EPO value plan there is a steerage component. So let me explain how that works. on the EPO value plan. When you're seeking new care, you reach out to us through your care navigator or through our online tools and say I am looking for X. I'm looking for an MRI.
131I'm looking to see a dermatologist and we will give you five options uh for that who you can go to and that way that is determined is based on a mix of cost and the quality of those providers. It's also ranked based on distance. So if there is somebody who is closer to you, but they're slightly more expensive, we will still rank them higher because we want people to be able to access them easily. Uh and so we do all of that computation on the back end. We make that list of recommendations and then as long as you go to one of those recommendations, it's going to be zero dollar out of pocket. What if I don't like those recommendations? If you don't like those recommendations, you can come back to us either via your
132care navigator or via the online portals and say, "I don't like any of these five and we'll give you another five. still don't like any of those five on the EPO uh value plan, you can always go to any provider in our full million provider network, but if you ignore our recommendations, then you would be subject to the deductible as if you hadn't done the baseline visit. So, you always have them available. If you go if you want to go see one of those other providers, you always can. And that $5,000 deductible, I believe, is still actually less than the current deductible on the HMO2 plan. Okay. So, uh, an additional question on that. If I do choose to go to an out of network or non-recommended doctor, does that $5,000 deductible just apply to
133seeing that doctor and everybody else is still zero, or do I then move to Everybody else would still be zero. So, if you choose to go see one out of network provider, it doesn't affect all the rest of your care. You can still access all of those through those recommendations at zero. Thank you. The main difference there to our EPO plan is if you don't want to go through that process of coming to us for a recommendation every time, you want to just be able to go wherever you want within our network, that's what you can do on the EPO plan. So if you pick that buyup option to the EPO, you don't have to come through us for that recommendation. Everything within that network would be at zero. Uh PO plan is the next
134buyup option that starts to include out of network coverage. So, these are providers that are not in our network at all. You could go to see those providers, but again, that would have the $10,000 out of network deductible. We do also include the Class Pass gym membership on that PO plan as well as on the PO Max plan that was mentioned earlier. They have a national network of about 25,000 gyms and uh fitness locations. We provide 25 credits a month you can go to and use it uh polarities gym uh all sorts of different locations. Um and then we had the PO max plan. This is basically if you want to go absolutely anywhere. This is the buyup option. It extends that $0 out of pocket to the out of network as well. So $0
135out of pocket in or out of network uh for any provider. That PP max option also extends the pharmacy network. So as was mentioned earlier, our standard pharmacy network is Publix. Here in Florida, we do also have the curative pharmacy that does free next day delivery. It's based in Tampa, so it's very close by. We can get medications next day and we will deliver everything. It's not your typical specialty mail order. We'll deliver a $2 antibiotic. We'll deliver a $3 ointment. Whatever it is, we can ship it to you next day. Outside of that, you'd have the Publix option. We do deliberately exclude CVS and Walgreens because we find on average they're about 8% more expensive for exactly the same medication. So if you have somebody who desperately wants to go on that Walgreens, we
136do offer that PRO Max plan option, the highest tier buyup that does include CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, Write Aid as well as the Publix and the Security Pharmacy. But since those drugs cost more for exactly the same thing, that is that more expensive plan option. Questions on that? I think so. All right, for now they may have some. So coming back to the baseline visit, this is usually where people ask what is the catch? How can so much of the care be available at zero? This is really where the baseline visit comes in. So again, all of our members in order to access that $0 out-of- pocket must go through the baseline visit. It is all adult members on the plan. So dependents if they're over the age of 18 must also do their own baseline
137visit. It is every year and you have to get it done within that 120day window. Now we make it super easy. We have evening and weekend appointment slots. We have them available in English and Spanish with our staff and 210 other languages. and ASL through a translation service. We want everybody to get the baseline visit done. We don't want to catch anybody out. We want 100% completion. That is our goal. We reach out to members super proactively before the 120 days is up. You're going to hear from us by text, by call, by email, by postcard. We want to get everybody through that baseline visit. So, what does it actually entail? It's split into two parts. The first 30 minutes is with your care navigator. So as was mentioned earlier, everybody on the curative plan
138gets assigned a care navigator. They are basically your personal concierge, your point of contact. You can reach out to them by text, by email, by call, and they are there to help guide you through the healthare system. So if you need helping an appointment to see a provider, they will sit on the phone and help make that appointment for you. They will call up and make it on your behalf. You need help transferring a prescription, they can help you with that. If you need help uh with a prior authorization and getting that done and on file, they can help guide you through that. So, they are your personal point of contact, they're always available to you. And for the first 30 minutes of that baseline visit, they on board you to the plan. So, they
139will go over with a member what is a co-pay, what is a deductible, what does a network mean? Because we find a substantial portion of members don't understand the basic words of, you know, of health care. It's gotten so complicated. You have to do that basic health uh literacy education to really get people to engage. So we found it's not enough just to remove the cost barriers of why people don't engage in the preventative care. You also really have to remove that fear of cost. If they think it might cost them something to go get that preventive visit. That's one more reason why people don't engage. Don't get that checkup. Don't get that screening done. Um and so the care navigator will go through look up any providers they're seeing now. Show them how to
140use the search tool and find them. If they're in network, great. need help setting up an appointment. If they're not in network, let's help get them nominated so you can keep seeing them on the zero card. You taking any medication? Let's check that it's on the formulary. If it is, great. If not, let's find you the uh recommended alternative or let's get an exception request put in. And so the member really comes out of that, understanding how their plan works, knowing how to get care, knowing where to go to get care, and being set up for success for the rest of the year. It also helps to develop that relationship with the care navigator. So if something comes up during the year, I need this type of care, you know, I'm trying to find this
141provider, you have that relationship with your care navigator. They save their number in your phone. So if we need to reach out to you, my phone rings, it says Kyra, doesn't say 1800 curative. You have that established relationship where we can reach out, make recommendations, and you can reach out to us, and you start to build that trust with the health plan. So that's the care navigator portion. So what if my care navigator is not available? So if you call us at 3 in the morning and your care navigator is not available, uh it will call through to our member services line, that is 247 365. It's 100% US-based W2 curative employees and we will always pick up the phone day or night. The average wait time is less than a minute. And so if
142your Care Navigator isn't available, uh then it will call straight through to that member services number and someone will be able to help you. The primary difference there is that obviously they're not going to know your specific details. Whereas your care navigator is going to have, you know, top of- mind more familiarity with your specific situation, but the care navigator would then follow up the following day based on the notes from the member services. You're always going to have that available day or night. And we do have people call us at 3:00 a.m. on Christmas Day. That is always there. So the care navigator portion of the baseline visit that is then followed by the clinical. So this is 30 minutes with either an MD or a nurse practitioner. And really what we're focused on
143is finding gaps in care. So if you're seeing your PCP every year getting your blood work done, everything looks good. We're going to make sure that you're aware of the various programs that we offer, but we're largely going to leave you alone. We're not trying to disrupt any existing care. We want people to be able to uh continue accessing care. And so what we find though is a lot of people who come through and maybe haven't seen a doctor in five years, 10 years, maybe they, you know, saw somebody a few years ago and they recommended a medication, they took it for a while, but it was costing $10 a month. And so, yeah, I feel fine. I don't need to take this now. And that is too often the approach that we see people
144take. Those are the members who will eventually end up in the emergency room, in the hospital, on a specialty medication where that is so preventable. all those conditions. If you can get ahead of it, if you can get that member into care early, you can save that long-term uh unnecessary spend and also get a much better health outcome for that member. And so our team will sit down with that member and say, "Look, we need to get you in with a PCP. It'll be $0. We'll make the appointment. All you have to do is show up. They're probably going to prescribe you this medication. It'll be $0, and by the way, we'll deliver it to your house for free next day. All you got to do is take it." Even with all of that, there's
145always someone who doesn't engage, right? You're never going to get everybody, but it's not about getting everybody. What this approach allows us to do is to get all of those basics covered with a much larger portion of the population. We get through all of the basics, the screenings, the things that we know work for preventative care. We get that done for 98% of the members. May not all follow those recommendations perfectly, but they follow them much better than if you didn't reach out and didn't do that proactive approach. And this is then followed up with the care navigator reaching out to that member throughout the plan year saying, "Hey, you know, we talked at the baseline visit about that colonoscopy. I see that it hasn't happened yet. Can we get that set up? Can we
146make that happen?" And so through all of this proactive outreach, we're able to get members to engage in their care early, get them to do those preventive things, and ultimately keep them out of the hospital, keep them out of the emergency room, and keep down the long-term cost for the plan. Yeah. So, we find the members really love it. They engage with this. Again, 98% of curative members do complete their baseline visit. Uh, of the people who don't, it tends to be either college age dependents who ignore their parents no matter what or it is people who are already interviewing somewhere else and not planning to be engaged. Um, but 98% of our members do complete that baseline visit and they rate it very highly. We get a net promoter score of 78. That means
147at least 78% of people gave us a nine or 10 out of 10 on their experience. So members have a very positive experience doing this baseline visit. And we are able to identify 94% of all chronic conditions from this baseline visit. Um and that allows us to do extensive follow-up with those members, get them to engage in the right kind of follow-up care. So you go to the next slide. I go through all the various programs and how all that works, but I don't think we have time to get into everything today. So to show the the end result uh this is the curative hospitalization data as compared to a Millan benchmark. So the Millimman benchmarks they're a large atural consulting firm put out these three benchmarks. Poorly managed is the red line. Moderately managed
148kind of your national average is the yellow line. The green line is wellmanaged. That's the aspirational goal for health plans. Curative is the blue line. So when members join our plan, we do all this preventative proactive care. we are able to cut their hospitalization rate by close to 30%. We see this across the board across different types of groups. Doing this upfront, getting members to engage, we can avoid a large number of those preventable hospitalizations. This is it in terms of admits and we see the same trend as well in terms of bed days per thousand members. So all of this adds up and works at actually decreasing those long-term costs. I think one of the things we really try and focus on with the program is building that sustainable uh long-term cost structure where
149you're not seeing those large spikes, those high-c cost claims that drive up premiums year after year, but actually investing now in keeping the population healthy for the long term. Network was mentioned quite a few times. Uh we do have a broad national network. It is about a million providers nationwide. that is a mix of direct agreements that we hold ourselves as curative and also something called the first health network. Uh it is basically all major health systems that participate in that. We want people to go get care early. The whole model is built around prevention. So we want people to be able to get access. So the network is never should never be an impediment to that. We want you to be able to keep getting the care um that you're already accessing. We also
150offer curative telealth. So this is through the member portal. members log on, click a button, and you can be speaking to a doctor in just a few minutes. This is a really great way of getting members instant access to care, keeping them out of the emergency room and making it accessible. This is 247, 365. Uh it is available in all 50 states, so members can immediately get that access and take care of those basic things without generating an urgent care or an ER visit. Um, as was mentioned earlier, we do also offer something called the zero card. This is very unique to curative. So, as well as getting your member ID card, all curative members also get something called the zero card. It is a Visa credit card issued in your name but fully funded
151by us. And this will work at any in network provider. So, anything that shows up on our search tool, zero card will work. Won't work out of network. won't work at Chick-fil-A, which for some reason is biggest place people try to misuse it. Uh but it will work uh at any network provider and this provides basically two two things. The first is a guarantee of access. We are newer in the market from time to time. Some of the smaller providers uh may say oh I haven't heard of this curative thing. Almost certainly they do have a contract or they have a contract via first health uh but they all know that they take visa. And so no matter what, if you're ever in a situation where the provider is saying, "I don't know." You can
152say, "Okay, I'll pay the cash price. Here's my zero card." And what we find is the cash price is actually often cheaper uh than the price that they will negotiate with insurance companies. So this long-term saves the district money as well. So you have that guarantee of access no matter where you are. Now, the other thing this allows us to do is to continue to expand that network beyond what's possible with a traditional insurance carrier. Um, so if you nominate a provider to join our network, which you can do either by texting your care navigator, uh, there's a 45 second to fill out form on our website. If you nominate a provider, uh, we will try to contract with them, but that's something that can take a long time. It can take 3 to six
153months. In the meantime, we'll give you an answer within 5 days of whether you can immediately go see that provider using your zero card. We accept 94% of those nominations. Once it's accepted, it'll show up in the search tool. So once one person nominates them, anybody can go there with the zero card and so you're not waiting for that contracting process. You can immediately continue getting that care. Other place we've seen this be very valuable is providers that don't take any insurance. So particularly in the mental health side, there are a lot of providers that just don't take any insurance coverage. They're cash pay only. We allow members to keep accessing those providers using their zero card. So on the mental health side, that gives us by far the largest network of any carrier out
154there because we have all of those cash pay only providers in that network. All right. So there is uh also full tooling available as well as that care navigator who you can text, call or email. Uh there are self-service tools. We have our member portal is available online and on your cell phone. Uh you can get your uh member card through the portal. You can get your zero card and add it to your Apple wallet. So, it's all very tech friendly and very accessible. Uh, anybody with a cell phone can get into our tools. Here's the next slide. There's some screenshots just kind of showing how this works. Um, that's the the map of uh providers. So, you can go on there. It's all mobile friendly. You can look up a provider. You can look
155up any medication. And that's all available from a phone. That's the land, by the way. The map he has up there. Yes. Yeah. It might be too small to to recognize. Uh we also offer uh a pretty large number of programs that come again at $0 fully included for members. Uh N was mentioned already. That's a great tool for anybody with weight loss goals um to use. But one thing I really want to highlight here that we offer is the gallery test. This is something from a company called Grail. It's something called a multi-cancer early detection. So basically from a single tube of blood they can detect up to 50 different types of cancer at stage one or stage two that usually you wouldn't detect with symptoms until stage three or stage four. So these
156are things like your pancreatic cancer, your lung cancer, the difficult to catch ones where usually they end up being caught too late and there's nothing you can do about it. If we can catch those at stage one or stage two, the outcomes there are significantly better. Often it's treatable or curable. Other thing is for the district the cost difference between treating a stage one and stage two cancer and a stage three and stage four cancer is about eight to 10 times X. Right? So you're potentially at the stage one or stage two cancer $40,000 surgery versus at that stage three or stage four00 500 $600,000 of claims and you're not getting as good an outcome for it. So we want to catch these early. We want to find them as early as possible. We offer
157this test for anybody over the age of 50. It's fully covered at zero. You can get it every year. It's something that we push heavily during the baseline visit. Uh we are, I believe, the only carrier in the country providing this broad level of coverage for this test. Uh and again, I think it shows our commitment to actually trying to drive prevention upfront and keep down those long-term costs. This does increase your cost in the first year because you find those stage one or stage two cancers that usually you wouldn't know about them. They wouldn't show up until next year as a stage three or stage four cancer. So we want to invest, spend that money now on treating them when they're actually curable and avoid those claims next year because your high-cost claimments, your
158high-cost cancer claimments next year, they're already on the plan today as a stage one or stage two cancer. If we can deal with that now in a preventative manner, that's going to get much better outcomes for the employees and save money long term for the district. So we really excited about this test. It's one of the things we really love uh doing. Sorry, cut you off. Well, and to that point, um, for the district's employees, when I look at claims, 24 out of your 50 high-cost claimants are cancer. So, this is very very on the drug side. Uh, we also, I'd say have a unique approach, but we are able to get members their medications at $0 out of pocket. So, we have our own custom formulary where for any condition you might have, there's
159always going to be a $0 option. So if the only drug available is a very expensive specialty medication, there's going to be a prior orth. You're going to have to meet the criteria. Assuming you do, it would then be $0. We don't think it's helpful to charge 100 bucks a month for that expensive medication. All it does is put members off taking it. Doesn't help pay for that $500,000 medication. Just increases the chance they end up in the hospital and you're paying for the hospital and the drug. So we think that's counterproductive. However, if there are conditions where there are many different options available, there's a generic and there's a brand name drug, we will have picked that lower cost option, and that is what will be available at zero. And if you want that
160brand, when the generic is available, it would be at either a $50 or a $250 copay. But again, there's always that $0 option. If you try the generic and it doesn't work for you, you can submit that and if it's for a genuine medical reason that you can't take that generic, we would then cover the brand at zero. has to be a real medical reason, but we want everybody to be able to get the medication at zero. So 98% of drug fills on the plan do happen at $0. That includes a lot of specialty medications that right now people would be spending a lot out of pocket on, they will be able to get on the curative plan at $0. Um, and we also see really great medication adurance numbers. So 90% for all the
161chronic conditions. Again, it's not rocket science, but if you don't charge people um a fee to take their life-saving medications, they're more likely to take them. And long-term, this really helps keep people out of the hospital. This really helps keep those costs down um as you manage the plan. So, as I said, we really want to be a long-term partner for sustainability. I think we've shown this through the rate caps that we've given. So, there will be locked in known costs for uh the first at least three years. you know what this is going to cost and um through all of the work we're doing through the prevention through the baseline visit we're able to manage down that long-term trend. Go to the next slide. Um so we do have data on groups that have
162been with us now for over two years. This is the first cohort of groups that joined curative back in 2023. Um what we see is as I mentioned earlier at the the beginning there is a slight uptick in spend. There's all the pent-up demand. There's the things that people kind of know they should have been doing. they've been putting it off the care that they should have gotten and haven't gotten. They go deal with that and it happens pretty quickly within the first six months, but that quickly subsides and that investment in keeping people healthy leads to lower costs in that second year. So this cohort spend over $100 per member per month less in the second year than the first year. Usually medical trend is a number that people tell you will always go
163up and to the right, but through that proactive management, we've been able to actually keep that trend at bay and manage costs down over time. Uh members love the experience. Again, net promoter score of 78, we have all these stories of members who were choosing between getting a surgery or repairing the roof or they're choosing between putting food on the table and a medication. And those are not the choices that we want people to make. It ends up driving again more cost uh long term. And so being able to provide that zero dollar out-ofpocket for members, we've seen this be an incredible tool for recruitment and for retaining employees um to have such a rich benefit. And uh we are obviously we know we are a newer company in the market. So we know this
164is important. We are a minus rated by AM Best. We just had this reaffirmed for the third year. Um so we do have the financial stability to be around for the long term. Um and yeah, we are excited to answer any questions. One more thing we want to cover real quick and then we'll be ready. So, um the last thing we want to talk about is the impact to the open enrollment timeline. So, tomorrow if you approve this tonight, there will be an email that will go out to all staff that will have an overview video from Curative, a Q&A document, and how to engage with a care navigator, which will be a HIPPO release form. because technically if the contract is approved, we do not go into contract with them until October 1st. However,
165they're willing to work with us starting tomorrow forward to start moving our employees over, get making sure those doctors are in place, going ahead and having those care navigators assigned immediately. So, very proactive really five months before this goes into effect. Um the open enrollment meetings will be July 21st through the August 15th and I'll talk about those more a little bit. Um the other piece too is that they will start engaging with those who are currently in treatment. So we do I know Jessica has mentioned um that we have a lot of employees who are currently seeking cancer treatment and treatment for other highcost type um uh issues. they will go ahead and start working with them to help transition them over as needed. They will also start working on the um reaching out
166to current non-staff providers. So, for example, I looked up my doctors. Two of my three doctors are already in the curative network. My third one they could reach out to go ahead and have that in place. So, come October 1st when I need to go for my annual physical, the the person's already in the network. So, open enrollment, one of the things that we have changed in the last couple of years with open enrollment is that it has gone from basically a very short timeline to an entire month. With that time frame, what we are doing this year, instead of just having an east side, west side, one night type thing where you can come and get help, we are going to have a road show. And the road show is going to start here
167in Dand and then conclude on August 14th in DeLeon Springs as well as a second one here in Dand because we want to make sure that we take this team that we're talking about for registration out to our employees. They will be at school or uh district sites and it won't just be like a 4 to 6 type thing. We'll be there from like 9:30 to 6:30 or 12 to 8 or whatever. So that if you work morning shift, evening shift, overnight shift, we have something available for you to come and get the assistance that you need. So um the I know I believe yep, the benefits team, they all snuck back down in uh just a few minutes ago, but they're ready. They're ready to start with this as soon as uh we're given
168approval. So with that, we are available for any questions you may have. This is good, Rich. All right. So, you said you have over a million providers nationwide, how many of those are in Florida? Uh, I don't know the exact number in Florida. I can get back to you on that. Okay. And of the 427 primary care physicians that are in network, are those in Valuchia County or where is that number of the 427 that are in network that are accepting new patients? Yes. Belia County. All right. Um, what's curative's largest client? Uh, how many employees reference that we provided as their current largest clients? Okay. So, we would possibly be six to 8% of revenue. Yes. Um, about the gym membership, but I don't use our healthcare anyway. So, but I think that's a
169I think that's a miss. We have been looking at um and having some conversations with the local gyms and starting that up again. We just didn't want to promise in case we're not able to make that deal happen, but we are actively working on that. And and something I'd like to add to is we're we are looking at using some of the wellness funds if we have to to to offer something as well to to go into contract possibly with um the Y, which is also uh one of the companies that uh Jessica works with. So, we're looking at partnerships, but honestly, that's not something we can move on until we know that this is going to be the direction we head. Um, that's all I have for now. Thank you, Mrs. Brosmer. I I
170first want to thank the committee um because my impression is that you've all done a really thorough job investigating all of this and the time you spent on it. um in so much detail. Uh and a lot of your a lot of this information answered um many of the questions that I had. But I think my biggest concern is that you know it and now we know it, but the people who are most directly affected don't know it. Um do I understand correctly that First Health Network is affiliated with Etna? subsidiary of Etna. Yes. Okay. And so opening up so using curative allows access to effectively Etna's network of providers. Not identical to the Etna network, but it is similar. How similar? And and I realize that's a really weird question, so it's I know
171it's hard to answer, but um in full disclosure, I'm retired. We have private insurance because my husband is a chronic cancer patient and so we the district is actually ahead of the game with us because we don't we don't use the district's um insurance. But I'm thinking of it in terms of if we did uh and and what I would have to do to make sure that my husband's needs are met. Um so um it happens that we use Etna. um how do they compare? Uh because I wouldn't want him to have to change doctors. So what do we do for people with chronic conditions in that situation? Very similar to that network. So if they're currently accessing someone through Etna, it's most likely there would not be any change. We also do contract ourselves
172on top of the first health network. So we also do direct agreements. So if there are any providers that are not in the first health network, we work to fill those gaps ourselves with direct agreements. And then on top of that, you have the zero card. So if there is a provider that's not in either of the networks and you want to keep seeing them, you can nominate them and then just keep going there using that zero card. We don't even need to have that agreement in place again because all the providers do accept cash. We can get that nomination done and provide that continued access without any gaps. Okay. Um, so that that sounds like it could be workable. I I think where I'm still struggling is with the timing of doing all of
173this. Uh, you said a five month five months until it's implemented. Correct. It doesn't go into effect until October 1st. So, so we have that fivemonth window that we can really start to be proactive in a lot of these things we're talking about. Okay. Is it possible between now and whenever the um the road show starts uh to make available to our 6,000 plus uh potential employees uh who will use this um the specifics of a network. uh your your point the point that you made about uh if you call a small provider and they say they never heard of you. That has happened to some of the teachers who contacted me and and some of them are really worried because they're trying to provide for a child who may need special services and and
174they don't know if they if those um provisions will be local enough for them to be able to use it. Is there a way to make that network information available to them so that they can research it be between now and the road show? curative.com/providers. I'm sorry, say that again. curative.com/providers provide. Okay. And I will say I was just going to say that's also going to be part of the announcement um that we send out right away. They're going to have that information in there as well. um trying to put all those resources in there so they can start reaching out writers too. Okay. I I think a lot of the the discomfort um and and in some cases panic I mean I had one teacher call me in tears um is is because of
175of a lack of communication between us and them. And and so I I guess I just want to make sure that that uh I I wish we didn't have to vote on this tonight. Um I I actually wish that there was a lag time to allow for the um for those who are most directly affected uh to get the information that they need that would give them comfort with all of this. May I address what you just stated? Sure. Okay. So, um, keep in mind that this has been, um, a process where we have to maintain a cone of silence at throughout the process. So, we're only allowed to share so much as we move through it. So, the email that went out roughly 10 days ago was the first thing that we were allowed
176to put out and that was after all of you had been notified that that this was the direction we were looking, the next step was to make our employees aware. But even in that, we can only share so much because I can't share the contract because we were still within the negotiations and so forth. That's why tomorrow morning, if approved, every question that they've been asking, I believe will be answered either through the video or through the Q&A that's going to be sent out. If not, the team behind me will be prepared to answer those questions. That's really helpful. I appreciate you explaining that and and I think that'll be helpful to to those who are still waiting for information. Um, and I and I like that there's this five-month lag period where everybody can
177get their questions answered and fill in those blanks because healthcare is such a a personal decision and and it's so critical to how we all function. Um, but I appreciate your information very much and again I I thank the committee for being so thorough in in investigating all of this for us. This is Goodrich. So, she made me think of some other questions. Of the 3,000 um employees that are using the providers that won't be able to switch providers, do we know how many of those have are chronic conditions? Florida Healthcare has not shared that that specific point. They're not there are certain things obviously through HIPPA that they can't share. Sure. Sure. It's just she brought up a good point. If someone's going through cancer treatments and then to have to change providers would
178be pretty difficult for the providers that aren't coming over, it's only the 167 staff providers. So if they're going through cancer treatment, for example, that would be an existing network provider who's most likely already in the curative network or would be able to do on the zero card. Most of the staff providers are primary care kind of lower severity specialties. Okay. So members who are getting high severity care, they're already seeing a network provider through um Florida Healthcare. Okay. And then my next question, um, because again the panic for the teachers and the lack of knowledge about this for the reasons that you stated, um, what would the timeline look like if we didn't vote on this tonight and voted on it a month from now? I I will tell you what that will do
179is it will just shrink the amount of time obviously that we have to make the transition. And it's not just the transition of saying we're no longer Florida Healthcare, we're now curative. There's a whole behind the-scenes process that has to happen for open enrollment. Um, that's an electronic process that we do that that allows everybody to to go in and select their benefits. It will also delay us being able to answer some of the questions that they have as well as being able to provide the support that they need in trying to find that new network of doctors. because I'll tell you the summer is the best time for us to be doing those kind of things be a delay on the care navigators as well. So we're making the full care navigation team available
180so people can get their assigned care navigator immediately and start having those conversations rather than trying to navigate the tool. It is all self-service if people want to do that, but having that point of contact where they can have a conversation and explain the care they're currently getting, be walked through how that's going to work on the curative plan that we want to make that available as early as possible for people. Miss Thompson, thank you. So, I did also want to thank the committee that, you know, I know a lot of time went into this and I appreciate it because when I first got on this board, one of the biggest things I heard from teachers was we want to be able to afford healthcare. You can't and insurance is just a giant pain in
181the butt. I also wanted to thank u Miss Elizabeth Albert for being a voting member because I know that you really do speak for the teachers. So, thank you for being part of that and bringing their voices forward. Um, I had one question. This was very informative. Uh, I had quite a few teachers who emailed me and had a question. You know, they didn't like the idea of switching doctors, but then they're like, I'm gonna have to switch doctors and it's going to cost more. So, comparatively, if you have a similar plan and you switch over to curative, what does that look like? Is it going to cost them more? Um, it really depends on obviously the level of coverage that they have, whether it's just themselves or family members. But what our plan would
182be would be to direct everybody towards the either the EPO value, which is the one he was uh discussing with the five doctors, or the EPO plan. There's really honestly unless that out of network piece is truly what you want, there's really no need to go to that third or fourth tier, no offense, uh third or fourth tier because you're going to get that same level of coverage. And if there is an out of network doctor or a doctor you've been seeing that isn't in network he he's already talked about you know multiple pathways that the biggest obstacle we're going to overcome or have to overcome are those Florida healthcare doctors that is going to be the number one obstacle I feel like we have because they have been so embedded in VCS for as
183long as they have been. But as I mentioned to the committee when we were talking about, you know, if this was a direction we wanted to go, I mean, we can either be on the forefront or we can be chasing from behind, but we're not the only district that is that is looking at making this move. So, I I do want to put that out there as well. And so, do we still have the plan options? Because you mentioned that last year we did the one with if you had a single parent with one child, two, we still have all of that. We did. We decided to leave the five tiers alone as as we had it because we didn't want that to be an additional decision someone had to make. Correct. All right. Thank
184you very much. Other thing on cost as well is I think it is important to consider the total cost for members if they're using any of their benefits during the year. That is, you know, co-pays, that is deductibles, that is out of pocket cost. The current out-of- pocket maximum I believe is $9,000. So if anybody has something catastrophic, it's $9,000 out of pocket on the curative plan. That would be zero. God forbid you have to go to the yard or anything else. Mrs. Rosmer, I think you may already have answered this question, but my expectation is that in this transition period, there are going to be um a lot of phone calls and and uh what do I do now kinds of things. Um, is a point of contact uh number or something going to
185be made available to to the employees so that they can get their questions answered when they're when they're able to sit down and do this. Talk about the care navigators. Yes. So, the care navigators will be will make those assignments basically as soon as we have the contract signed. We'll be able to make the assignments to the list of employees. They would get the number, an email, and they can either reach out by phone, text, or email to those care navigators. They'll also have the member services line. Again, that's 247365. So, they can call that, you can text our member services line. If you don't want to sit on the phone, you can email um and get back a thoughtful email response. So, those will all be available um immediately. Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry. Plus,
186we'll also have our team that that will be available as well. and I know that they have been uh fielding questions through our insurance and benefits email box. So, so we've been trying just like you all have been emailed, we have been too and we're trying to respond but again our responses are limited to what we can say at this point and and I do think that's a really important point for the for this moment. The the uh care navigators are assigned at the time that the baseline assessment is done. Uh did I understand that correctly? So typically we assign them on the first day of the plan. Uh that's how we usually do it and then you can reach out to them before your baseline visit but you meet with them at the baseline
187visit. What we're doing here is making a special exception and we're assigning them the day the contract is signed. Okay. And just as kind of a random question maybe um on on you said that each person who is covered needs to do a baseline assessment um and everybody who's over 18 on the plan start date. So a parent does it for a child and does um I guess um let let's say um the wife is a teacher and the husband works someplace else. Can she do uh can she provide the information since it's virtual? Can she provide the information for everybody for her husband as well or does he have to make his own contact with you for the baseline assessment? He would have to do his own baseline visit. Now, we do make allowances
188and we can have um you and your spouse on the same call. We can do that if that's of interest, but both members would have to show up for the call. And only one is necessary for a child. Is that correct? Yes. As long as at least one of the parents has done their baseline visit, all of the children under 18 would be covered at zero. Okay. So the child doesn't have to have a separate uh body of information. Okay. To get the parents through the baseline visit. Now once that child hits 18, they would have to do their own baseline visit. Okay. Thank you. I think that's all I have. Okay, Mrs. Goodrich. I just want to also thank everyone for their hard work because I didn't say that when I spoke earlier. So,
189thanks for all your hard work. As always, I want to thank everyone that um volunteered to be on the insurance committee because that they spend a lot of hours and days and times doing that and I appreciate it. And as I've said in the past, if you want to be a part of it, you just got to step up and volunteer. um because they will be happy to add you to the um piece. But I sincerely mean to everybody that served on it, thank you because I know you gave up time and I want to thank you for this presentation today. I first learned about this on April 30th when we did the agenda conference for this next board meeting. And at that meeting, I immediately said because I've been with Felicia County Schools 38
190years, and I've always used Felicia County Schools insurance, even as a single parent, I did that when I was raising my own two children. Thankfully, they're grown now, and I no longer have to provide them with insurance. I'm very happy about that. But I've always used it. I still use it. And so I take it very seriously that when I do cast a vote for any changes such as this, it's impacting myself directly also. That's why I appreciate all the hard work that has gone into this. Um just a few questions I have. Um your plan was very clear and in depth. I appreciate the time that you took today to try to cover all of it. I do like the fact that you Stephanie, your team and all has been answering questions. I understand
191until we make a final decision, they can't set us up and answer everything. But I found the website myself to be easy to look just for some of like my primary care physician and things like that. But when you say we're going to switch to Publix Pharmacy, which I have no problem with Publix, okay, Publix has been very good at times where some of the medications they offer actually at zero cost for people. Um, so I'm used to using them. My only thing is their pharmacies is just kind of like with Florida Healthcare. If you didn't get to Florida Health Care Pharmacy within X number of hours, then that's when you had to go to Walgreens. And where I'm at, there's only one Walgreens. Even though there's a Walgreens almost on every corner, it's only
192one of them that will allow you to get the prescription after hours. So, what are we going to do about because we know invariably it's usually with children. They get sick and you take them to an urgent care and you need that prescription to get into them right away because they're running a fever or whatever. What are we going to do if the public's pharmacy is closed and parents can't access the medication that they need that evening? Yeah, I understand this. I've had this happen personally to me with my son at an urgent care with a pharmacy after hours. So, we have a list of uh acute medications. They're generally lowcost things like antibiotics, inhaler refills, steroids, uh and those you can fill them at any pharmacy. It will all the claim will always go
193through. Now, these are very generally very low dollar medications. So, the fact that Walgreens cost slightly more, it doesn't matter in that case. What we're trying to really avoid is those expensive specialty medications getting filled at the CVS and at the Walgreens. But if you have that $2 antibiotic, but you need it at 11 PM on a Friday, you can go get that at any pharmacy. It will just go through. Okay? Because that was one of the things that came up with the pharmacy piece. And then any child that because we we deal in students lots of times and I mean but even for our adults anyone that is born already with an issue or having a medical condition and they already have a stat you know they could they could be 10 years old
194they could be 25 now and they have had care for that. I realize you're going to try if they're their specialty doctor is currently not in, you're going to try to get them in, but you're going to at least guarantee a short period of time while you're working on that that they will not have to change doctors. Correct. Everybody apart from the 167 uh Florida healthcare providers, yes, there's a transition of care period. they will not provide care through the uh staff providers and there's nothing we can do about that. But everybody else, yes, there is a transition of care period and we'll make sure that if people are going to have to change that that is done that they get time to complete their current care um and that we make sure that transition
195is as smooth as possible and we would always try to avoid the transition if we're able to. Okay. So, the biggest message we need to get out in the event that this goes through tonight to families is if your doctors don't show up currently on the list tomorrow or the day after, you need to go ahead and recommend that they be put on the list so that come October 1st, their care will continue. and and in reality 167 doctors is not a very large percentage here even in Valuch County for the number of doctors that we have. So there's only 167 being excluded because I think a lot of people thought that just if their doctor took Florida healthcare that they were being excluded but my doctor has taken Florida healthcare but is already as
196I said on your list. So I know my doctor um the practice is not going to be excluded. And then if because here the people I think that are struggling the most with this are people that already have conditions, type 1 diabetes, stage three or stage four cancers. Those are the things and those are the people that we need to continue to care for and ensure because we don't want someone with type 1 diabetes to not have their medicine or have access to what they need. We don't want someone that has already been classified as being terminal to have to go through some struggling situations in a time when what they're already facing is not ideal. And so I think that's the part we just need to realize is we're here yes to make a
197decision. And I truly love the fact that everything can be a zero copay because truth be told, I probably at times have skipped a few of those things myself along the way thinking, well, I I've never hit my deductible, you know, so it's always out of pocket. And the fact that you're setting it up to say no, we want you to receive that care, I think is a is absolutely what our community needs. I've said this before, some of our pair professionals, some of our office specialists out there, possibly some of our bus drivers, I've watched them work just for insurance. And there was a time period where some and there may still be a few they've had to after they get paid come in and write a check. So ideally they need a spouse
198because they take home no money. It all goes towards insurance and then they've written checks to us to cover the rest of their insurance. And we need to move into a situation because when that's happened, I can guarantee you they're not the people that are getting the preventative care because they're looking at, do I have any more money to move forward with that? But thank you for being here today. Thank you for being thorough. I want to thank Miss Workman and everyone for answering all the questions that I posed to you and put out. And seriously, the insurance committee, once again, everyone that served on that, thank you so much for serving and spending the last couple months to try and figure out a way so that all of our because I've always said I'll
199accept their recommendation. Now, if they ever were split, it might be a little harder, but my understanding is this was a unanimous decision. Yes, ma'am. It was. And it was probably one of the easiest decisions because we voted one time. Oh, and that's not usually typical. I know sometimes you've gone back to the table and listened to the presentations and asked more questions. We have, but but we were all on the same page. Great. Any further questions? Okay, then we will be moving on to item 4.01, which is supposed to be short. Thank you very much all of you. 01 quarterly report on house bill 1473 school safety. Dr. Balaban Captain Smith would you join us please? As you know Captain Smith is our director for safety and security and it will probably be one
200of the shortest presentation of the of this afternoon. Welcome Captain Smith. You have a record to maintain, Captain Smith. I'll do my best. Good afternoon, Superintendent, Madame Chair, and board members. I'm Captain Todd Smith, the director of safety and security for Valuchia County Schools. Today, we will be discussing the quarterly safety report in accordance with Florida State Statutes. This presentation aligns with policy 511, safety of facilities. This presentation also aligns with guardrail 2 provide conditions that enhance student learning. In accordance with House Bill 1473, school districts are required to report four things each quarter. The number and percentage of schools, including charter schools, inspected or reinspected during the quarter. The number and percentage of schools with no school safety requirement deficiencies. In the third quarter, eight schools were inspected or reinspected by the Office of
201Safe Schools. This represents 10.39% of the schools inspected or reinspected. Eight schools had no school safety requirement deficiencies. Therefore, 100% of schools had no school safety requirement deficiencies. Very good. Before I conclude the presentation, I'd like to touch on something real quick. There are hundreds of ways a school can fail this audit. If a single door is unlocked in the entire school, they fail. If a single gate is out of compliance, they fail. If they are missing a single document of the hundreds required, they fail. The principles and staff are taking these audits serious. The results show that they care and we have created a culture surrounding safety and security and we're working hard to ensure compliance. This concludes my presentation. Thank you. And thank you to everyone out there that has done a great
202job. They're doing great. Any questions? We appreciate you. You did it in record time. Thank you, Captain Smith. All right, we're going to take a very short because we're behind um restroom break and so can we be back in here at 3:20? It's 3:10 now. Okay, we're going to start back at 3:20. Thank you. We preloaded for you. Expedite just in case. Welcome back. It is 3:21 p.m. We are now moving on to item 4.2 4.02, planning for student growth, the school concurrency process. Dr. Berman. Thank you, Madam Chair. We have with us here Miss Patty Core, our chief operating officer, along with Mr. Ron Young, our director for business and planning services, joined by Mr. Voggas, our coordinator for planning, and Mr. James Roberts, our specialist for planning. Um, they will be sharing with
203you today a presentation that pertains to planning for growth, the school concurrency process. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Belgamin, Chair Haynes, school board members. um we were asked to bring forward this information. So, we're happy to share with you uh some detailed information about how the planning department works. Um with us also is Cody Shepard, the newest member of our team sitting behind me. He has joined us and is um working on the west side of the county planning area while James handles the east side as well as other duties as assigned. Go ahead. Um this presentation conforms to the following district policies and there are four. You can see them there. policy 611 through 614 which are all centered around our planning process and our school concurrency process and it's the
204work that um that Cody and James do on a daily basis. This also aligns with our strategic plan in Guardrail 3 to improve our operational efficiencies and maximize resources to support student learning. Um in a moment I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Voggus who's there there is a lot of technical lingo and jargon that goes along in the planning process. So um we're going to just kind of frontload some of that information to make it a little bit easier as we go through. Uh so Mr. Vogus will start us off and uh and James and um Mr. Young will be jumping in at some point and I'll be taking notes. All right. Thank you Miss Core. um appreciate the opportunity to be here today with y'all and talk to you a little bit
205about our planning process, the concurrency process and what we go through to ensure that we have adequate capacity for scholars across our district. Um, as much as my inner teacher wants to do some vocabulary exercises with you guys and maybe a foldable activity, I know we're a little bit pressed for time. So, I'm just going to go over these words quickly, some of some of these uh terms um with you guys quickly and and these definitions come out of our interlocal agreement and are also part of the policies that Miss Core mentioned previously. So, I want to make sure we have transparency and that we're clear on some of this terminology. Mr. Roberts is going to be detailing this. We go into this more depth um and having more information regarding these terms. Um the
206first one on here, these are in alphabetical order just because it felt good. Um capacity enhancement agreement. That's basically an agreement we enter into between a municipality, the school board, and an applicant to make sure that we're ensuring we have adequate capacity um student stations within the area that there's either being a revision or um reszoning or any kind of an increase in residential density that we've been made aware of. In order for a developer or um uh uh in order for a developer to move forward or any applicant, we have to issue a certificate of school concurrency. And that basically means we've reviewed that. James will go into detail about that, but that we've gone through the um application, we've looked at the number of houses that are going to be coming in and
207that we've made the determination that there is adequate capacity. Um, concurrency service area is a little bit different than some of the areas we talk about in the district. Um, we'll go into that in more detail, but basically it's a geographic area. When we're looking at concurrency, we're looking at the schools within that area that are being impacted by either the resoning or the change in the comp plan. So, it's the area that is in question. The other thing we put down here was the day 20 membership count. You probably hear lots of different numbers. The number that we use when we're looking at student enrollment for the current year is the day 20 membership count. It's kind of the generally accepted indicator of what the average enrollment at that school is going to be
208during the school year. We know that our district is transient. People come and go. We know they have choices. They make different choices throughout the year. But the day 20 number is really the one that our department uses and many of the departments in the district use um to ensure that we have some sort of commonality across the board. So we look at that day 20 count. Uh once again a finding of adequate school capacity is on here. That basically means we know we have adequate capacity in terms of student stations to meet the demands that that um subdivision or that applicant is going to place on us over the next 10 to 20 years. So, that's a forward-looking number. Making sure that we're ensuring that we've got either in place or in our five-year
209plan um either through construction, resoning, or any number of a means to have the ability to support those students that are coming in. When we look uh when James looks at an application that comes in, one of the things we do is we look at the number of houses that are being built, the number of uh multif family units, the number of mobile homes, whatever may be involved. And we applied what's called a student generation rate. So that student generation rate is going to he's going to tell you about that a little bit, but it is different for single family residents, for multif family residents, and mobile homes. But that's a number that's um come up with and we'll be talking about our impact fee study and how we determine that. Um level of service
210LOS, we've talked about that before, but that's basically a measurement of the utilization of the permanent capacity at the school. What is the level of service? Where are we now? If we have a thousand seats at that school and we have 750 kids, we're at a 75% level of service. just to to make it easy math. A mitigate a mitigation agreement is something that not too long ago we passed at the school board. Um that's an agreement with a developer that typically provides some sort of compensation to make sure that we're getting to adequate capacity. Um they're going to pay school impact fees. They may be donating a piece of land. They may be doing something to ensure that we're going to have the ability to provide the student stations needed to cover that development
211that's going to be happening. So, a mitigation agreement is something that comes up. The other number is permanent school capacity. That's the number of students that could be housed at a school site at any given time based on satisfactory permanent student units. And it does not include portables. And I think that's an important thing to keep in mind. Portables are meant to be temporary. They're relocate relocatable, if that's a word. um they're typically meant to be there for five years or less, even though in many instances we have portables on site for longer. Um but it can have a significant impact. Um I was looking at a school just the other day that has a permanent capacity of 702. Um which would put it at 105% capacity, but there's seven portables there. So at about
21220 students per portable, that's another 140. So, it gives the appearance that that school is underutilized, but it's because those um those portables are on site. So, when we're looking at development, when we're looking at the future, we're looking at that permanent number without the portables because our goal is to eliminate those portables. It's just a short-term solution. We want to have permanent student stations for all of our students. Um, that being said, um, I did want to align some of the policies we have or review some of the policies that align to the work we're doing that, um, are also tied in with the ILA. I'm not going to read them to to you, but I did just want to reference them real quickly. Um and and to mention again when it comes to
213um school planning, when it comes to looking at uh resonings that municipalities are doing, um looking at work that developers are doing, we do not approve or disapprove those developments that are coming in. We simply state whether there is or isn't adequate capacity and we pass that information on to the municipalities within which those developments are happening. So it's not our we don't throw a red red card down and say no you can't do this development. We say we need this sort of um mitigation in order to provide adequate capacity um and give that information to the developer as well as the municipalities. Um under the school planning policy we do look at resoning. We look at land use changes by municipalities and we also look at comprehensive plan amendments when those things are put
214into place and we are um involved in the process the whole way. Policy 613 deals with school concurrency. This was originally mandated mandated by state law. It's our our guidelines and our our uh guard rails as we like to call them here are the interlocal agreement which defines the level of service and also defines the concurrency areas um that we look at whenever a developer is requesting site plan approval for a subdivision. Um that approval process has to come to us first before it goes to the municipality. And that's what I meant by we look at it, we give an opinion, we don't approve or disapprove um the plans. We also have school impact fees. In fact, impact fees. Very good. Um, which are under policy 614. Those are determined by, and it's interesting because
215in many of our districts in the state, they're actually determined by county ordinance. But for us in Valuchia County, we're the only county where we have the task of determining those school impact fees, which we do through negotiated rulemaking, which means that we actually engage our stakeholders in the community that come together and then we'll be coming back to the school board to determine those final impact fees in the future. At present, um, we're due for an impact fee study in the 2026 year. So, we'll be putting a committee of folks together. We'll be doing that work. We also hire a consultant to assist us with that work. and then we come back to the board and the board actually approves the impact fees that are charged in Valuchia County and managed by the county.
216With that being said, I will now turn it over to uh Mr. Roberts who's going to tell you a little bit more about impact fees and the process we go through. Uh good afternoon, Superintendent Balgabin, uh Chairman Haynes and the board. Um this is a uh comparison of the impact fees for uh many of our partner uh school districts. Uh we are about middle of the road. Uh something interesting to note here, Lake County Schools and Orange County Schools both have a tiered impact fee system for their single family homes. Depending upon how large they build a house is a different uh impact fee. So, for the purposes of this comparison, uh, I took the 2,000 ft to 2,499 foot, which is about the average size of home being built in Florida at the moment
217to show a uh almost onetoone comparison. Uh, our current in impact fee for single family homes is $7,000 uh $22.70, multif family is 3,728.95, and mobile homes is 141525. Uh this was determined um by the board based on recommendations of our uh consultant for our most recent impact fee study which was uh conducted in uh 2022. Um uh interesting uh point there is that the consultant actually remembered uh recommended higher fees than what were adopted by the board. They recommended in excess of 8,000 for single family, over 4,000 for multif family, and uh just over 1,600 for manufactured homes. Um if they were if we were to do a flat impact fee for all types of uh residential development, they would have recommended a $7,000 um for all uses. Uh this uh student generation rate
218is also determined during the uh impact fee study. Uh again, the most recent was uh 2022. Uh currently it's set at uh 0.258 for single family, 137 for multif family, and uh 052 for uh mobile homes. What that means is that uh our generations rate says uh for every hundred single family homes you're going to end up with about 26 students. For multif family you're going to end up with about 14 students and for mobile homes you might end up with about five. Um these numbers have been changing over the past few uh impact fee studies. Um in 2013 the single family was actually a um uh 305 multif family was 104 and mobile homes were 036. As you can see the uh single families have fallen uh from 2013 to today about 15%. The
219uh multif family has risen by 31% as have the uh mobile homes they've come up about 44%. Um we do expect in our next impact fee uh study which we'll be um beginning the process of at the end of this year that that multif family number is going to increase a little bit more. The interlocal agreement I mentioned before is an agreement we have between us and all of the mis municipalities in our area including including the county. Um that was mandated by statute. It allows us an opportunity to share and coord coordinate information for existing and planned schools and help in the whole growth process as it relates to public school facilities. Um it is implemented feas a little it's implemented on a um or reviewed on a five-year basis and we actually are
220coming up in 2026 with an opportunity to review the interlocal agreement. Um on a twice a year we meet with a technical coordinate technical coordinating committee which includes all of the planners from the different municipalities. Um and then twice a year we also have an oversight committee that meets and includes I believe one of the board members Miss Goodrich maybe um who's attended that meeting and we look at the interlocal agreement as well as the work of the planning department at that time. Um it has resulted in a district-wide uniform school concurrency program and has been a powerful tool for us to use in the management of school capacity. So to talk about level of service in a little bit more detail, uh as we previous said previously said, it's a um measure of the
221utilization at our schools expressed as a percentage. Uh so number of students versus how many student stations are available in a given area. Uh that given area is of course the concurrency service areas as defined in our interlocal agreement. um the elementary and middle school CSAs are co-terminus with the attendance boundaries of those schools but the high school concurrency service areas are not they include um multiple schools uh except in the case of the southeast where there's only new beach high and northwest where there's only Teddit Taylor um in our in our um northeast it includes Seabbze mainland Atlantic and Spruce Creek in the southwest it includes Pine Ridge and Deltona and in the west it's the land high and university high. Um what you'll see here are just maps of those concurrency service areas.
222Uh as I stated, elementary and middle school are both co- terminus to their uh attendance boundaries. And then here are the groupings for the high schools. Um uh concurrency service areas in our determinations on adequacy um as mandated by the ILA and um as part of our concurrency process. Uh this is just a quick overview of that concurrency uh review process. There are two phases. The first is we call the finding of adequate capacity. This comes when a developer is seeking a comprehensive plan amendment or a future land use map amendment. Um these are the ones uh that uh BJ mentioned are on a longer term planning horizon. Um the second is the uh reservation certificate and that has to be uh issued and um has to be issued and accepted by the municipality before
223they can issue a final development order to these developers. Uh the process is essentially do we have capacity? If yes, we issue a certificate. If not, uh we then move into a um a recommendation that we negotiate an agreement. Depending upon the phase, it could be either the capacity enhancement at the adequate capacity phase or the mitigation uh agreement at the reservation certificate phase. Uh with a successful negotiation, we then issue the certificate they need and they proceed. If the developer chooses uh that they do not wish to have an uh negotiate agreement, then their project will be uh postponed. It is not again we we do not ever say that you you are not able to build here. That is not within our power. that falls to the municipalities, we simply issue our uh
224a letter based on whether or not there is capacity available at that time. Well, if the surrounding area has capacity that Oh, okay. Uh this is just a a quick glance at the application that developers are required to submit. Um the third page is of note. It has to be reviewed and signed by a member of the local municipality's uh planning department so that they're fully aware that the developer is applying to us and so that they can verify the information the developer does provide in the application. Our um concurrency al uh evaluation uh it includes whether we have capacity right now or within uh three years after the final development order. Um if we do not have capacity in the concerny service area that's affected, we look at the adjacency. Uh the adjacency is
225uh another uh concurrency service area of the same level. Um concurrency service areas are not automatically an adjacency. Uh it depends on travel time. Uh diversity islands do not count in determination of adjacencies. uh the inter coastal waterway it may be uh you know Long Street and Port Orange may be next to each other but because the inter interlocal uh inter coastal waterway separates them they cannot be considered as an adjacency and then any capacity reserved at the schools for specific programs if that capacity is taken up um they are not considered to have the availability in their agency. Um if there's no availability in any adjacency then we move on to mitigation which is again the negotiated agreement. Uh this includes um things such as the donation of a school site, um funds for
226construction based on um student station cost. Um those are the two most common. Um and those are matched dollar for dollar by impact fee credits given to the developer to use as they see uh fit. Um uh one other consideration that uh has currently expired in the uh interlocal agreement are um interm levels of service. Certain schools that are constrained um may be declared uh are given an interimm level of service at which point their level of service cannot exceed whatever that set percentage is and therefore they cannot be used as adjacencies either. Currently we do not have any but when the interlocal agreement was started there were a handful that included um uh what is now Burns and Samsula. Uh this is a a brief look at the school concurrency calculation. Essentially uh to
227um calculate your uh level of service you take your current enrollment based on day 20. Uh you add in how many reservations have been produced by uh developers that have come before. That's your projected enrollment. You divide that over your available capacity within the CSA and you have your current level of service. Um, when determining for a new development, you add in the projected uh students that that development will create to your calculation and you get your projected level of service. Once again, if it's below 115% uh 120% at high schools as determined by the interlocal agreement, we issue the certificate. If it's over at 115 or 120 or above, um we bring in the adjacent CSAs. And if it's still over 115 or 120, uh that's when we recommend the uh proportionate share mitigation
228um agreement. Uh as I mentioned earlier um proportionate share mitigation uh it allows developers to proceed with their construction uh even if uh we don't currently have the available uh seats by providing for uh seats in the future. again through upfront payment of impact fees, contribution uh contribution of land uh upfront payment of impact fees uh sorry payment for land acquisition um or uh even mitigation banking. Um now uh just a quick uh aside here, this is our VCS development reservations map. It's available currently on our uh uh district web page. Um it uh live tracks all of the uh development information that we are um given by our developers. We update it um when those applications are received with where the development is, how many um dwelling units are associated with that development and
229how many students are projected to be generated by that development. Um this particular site has a few functions. You can um activate municipalities. You can search for only developments within certain municipalities. Uh you can review by specific types if you want to look at only reservations versus only adequacies. Um there are also uh no impact types of concurrencies. These are uh developments that are 10 dwelling units or fewer. And then there are exempt uh concurrencies and those are 55 plus communities. Um there's another one that we have here called not reviewed and those are for uh large developments that we know are incoming but have not yet officially um submitted their application. Uh they're all tracked here. For example, we do have uh Dearing Park here in the southeast. And I zoomed in way too
230far. As you can see, if you click upright, here we go. uh all of the information I mentioned uh the total um single family homes single family uh multif family homes this one is an adequacy so this is the total permitted and this is the reservation associated uh with that same development um for uh the first phase they have 444 uh single family and 93 multif family scrolling through that will give you uh more information such as the student generation we also have south village still in the southeast moving further north. No, Avalon Park, though it's currently in development limbo, uh is coming at some point. And then we have Orman Crossings here in our county, and uh Orman Station, which is just over the line in Flaggler, which we're also accounting for as we're
231expecting it to affect our uh local schools. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, board members, Dr. Balcomin. I get to talk about the fun stuff, the stuff that you probably already know about, but we'll talk about it again. Uh, some of our recent capital projects are Beachside Elementary, Deltona Middle School, Tamoka Elementary School replacement, Toriti Elementary School replacement. Uh, so we had some ongoing projects as well. Of course, Edith Ice Stark, the elementary school replacement, Orange City elementary school replacement. Some of the um things that are in the pipeline are the Enterprise replacement that will um provide service for Enterprise and Deberry, uh New Simra Middle Classroom Edition, and I'll just skip down some and include the Silver Sands Middle School um addition. Um they will provide middle school relief in that uh south mostly that southwest
232area pathways elementary classroom edition that's an 11 classroom edition and that's to provide relief for a lot of the things that James was just talking about in the northeast also with what's happening in uh Flaggler County Pineidge High School classroom edition uh that is to provide space for all the growth that's going on in that back behind Deltona and Ostein as well as some relief for uh University High School Repatillo Elementary. As James stated, uh there is a large development coming in in the New Smyrna area out on the 9544 area corridor, if you will, and um over 6,000 dwellings at present that we know about. I think it's going to be much larger than that. Um and of course, the Timberrest classroom addition to Timberrest is overcrowded as well. So, So, as Ron just
233mentioned, we do um we do building replacement expansion to handle the growth that we get. We also use um attendance boundary adjustments and there very other various other tools at our disposal to handle the growth which none of us can deny is happening in our area. Um, one of the the things that our department does beyond just concurrency is we do manage the interlocal agreement. As I mentioned, we have oversight committees, we have technical coordinating committees. Um, we also are involved with the um halfsent sales tax project oversight committee and we'll be greatly involved with the halfsent sales tax initiative as it moves forward. We also have one-on-one meetings with municipalities with the planning groups um and often um are involved in different projects. We're going to be bringing you something this summer that I
234think is a great win-win with a municipality who is in need of some property to expand their sports plex. Um they have an echo grant. They have some other funding, some things that they're doing. They sort of uh were in need of some property. Coincidentally, we needed some property that they had. Um, and it is truly a win-win situation where when when things go through hopefully, um, we'll be in a position to expand one of our schools to help with growth and they'll be in a position to provide the the residents of their community with a phenomenal sports plex. Um, and those are the kind of the things quite honestly that are that are really fun that we get to do and and work with the municipalities uh on a one-on-one basis. We're also involved
235with their planning boards. We get to attend a lot of evening meetings which you guys are very familiar with. Um and we're also engaged with the development community. Um we are members of the Valuchia County Growth Management Council. So we daily receive emails on any applications that are going into them for any revisions or any new plans that are hitting the comp plans in the municipalities across the county. Uh we've renewed our relationship with Valuchia County Association of Responsible Development, which is great because that gets us in with the developers, the lawyers, the engineers, with the people that are doing a lot of the work in our area. And we're also very involved with the Valuchia Flagler Transportation Planning Organization or the TPO um because we know that part of our equation is making sure
236that we're getting schools close enough to kids and when they can't walk there, they need to drive there. We need to get buses there. So, we're involved in that whole transportation process as much as possible. We also like to remain engaged with our business development community because if we know what businesses are coming, where those businesses are going, we also have an idea on where families are going to be moving, where they're becoming. Uh we know like for example with that French aviation company that's going to be coming to town. They're bringing families with them. Those families are going to need places to live. We suspect a lot of them may be down in that Daring Park area, but we need to be prepared for that because we know that's a reality. We're also involved
237with Valuchia County Economic Development and the team Valuchia Economic Development Group. So, we try to to to follow the processes, protocols that are set in place by the ILA and by district policy, but we also reach out and we try to make sure that we're in our community and active so that we can do what's best for the families and the scholars of Lucia County Schools. Great job team. Thank you. That was a lot of information uh quickly. So we are here for any questions. Chair Haynes, Mrs. Bromer, I just have a couple of questions. My background in in uh comprehensive plans and and concurrencies is generally limited to roads and water and and uh storm water. Um and this is fluid in a whole different way. [Music] Um, how does reszoning affect all of
238this? Because if if you're relying Sorry, Ron, but if if you're relying on on B uh school boundaries for some of these assessments, how does that factor in? That's one of the tools we use to manage our capacity. So, as we have growth in different areas, we see some, you know, obviously some neighborhoods age out, a students aren't there, students are there. Um, what what James and Cody are able to do by looking at um uh their computers, as the old man would say, is they're able to see where the students are, where the student growth areas are, and where we have capacity at schools. We're looking at making adjustments to those attendance boundaries to make sure that our schools are hitting that sweet spot around 95% um with their level of service. Ron probably
239wants to add some to that. I just just that these guys work on that all the time. Uh Cody and James do a great job and uh Cody's been working on the west side uh since he came on board and made some great strides and and soon uh we'll be proposing some zoning changes for the coming years. It'll be a multi-year proposal and I think that's that's one of the things that we're trying to do is is get a grasp on that and come up with a plan to bring back to you guys that will look at a three to five year type of a plan instead of what we don't want to do is move kids from school to school. Um but we also don't want parents or buses driving by a school with
240a busload of kids that could be going to that school going to somewhere further away. We want to try to get that uh proximity. Um, I appreciate that and and thank you for that explanation. I think that's what I'm trying to reconcile here. Um, there's a a 10 to 20 year time frame and a three-year time frame and then almost every year there are some boundary adjustments. So, it seems like a very fluid process to me. Um, and and I'm trying to figure out where all of these various time frames fit. Um my only other question is about student uh generation rate because it seems as though that's also very fluid and has changed considerably over the last number of years. So how does that affect um maybe where we are now? Does it force
241us to to uh change one of these time frames and and re-evaluate sooner than we otherwise might? So the uh student generation rate is uh set as part of the impact fee study. Uh it's done every four or five years. Like we said, we have one coming up uh for 2026. Um and it and it it sets that student generation rate for the uh next period until the next uh impact fee study uh comes due. And over the past few years of this impact fee study, it has changed as the uh demographics have changed. Um we used to have uh multif family in this county was traditionally not producing many students. Uh but that has significantly changed. Unfortunately those studies can only capture what is happening right then and in in the past. It can't
242they can't predict what's going to happen in the future. So we can only uh adjust with those impact fee studies based on what's come before. And as I mentioned we are expecting that multif family student generation rate to increase again. um that uh single family may may slightly decrease again as well. Uh it's all based upon um how many students we have and uh what type of residents that they live in. Yeah. So, we're looking forward to next year going into this student generation rate because it is fluidly and it's not fluid in the way that we agree with it being fluid, but uh we'll take that up with the demographer next year. Well, I and I think just not to beat a dead horse, but if you look at some of the the east
243side versus west side, there's some differences in multif family. And we know that there's if you take Daytona Beach Shores for example, that typically is multif family development, which has been occupied by people who are closer to my age than childbearing age. Um, but in just talking to their um city manager not too long ago, they mentioned that they're starting to see families move in. they're seeing a change in those in in some of those condominiums. So, as that happens, one of the things James and the crew wants to make sure we do is that we're capturing that. I I think that's what got me thinking about this because um it would be hard to stick to a 3 to five year planning period with changes being uh changes occurring constantly. So, you may have
244a 3 to 5 year planning period, but but you have to stay on top of it um and and update more often than that. That that was my only reason for asking. That's why we bring that five-year capital plan back to the board every year. So, it's a it's a it's a floating budget. Yeah. Thank you. Any other questions? I'd like to say thank you. And um Mr. Mr. Clone and I were here the last time when we had to talk about the impact fees and it was a tough subject but I still think that we did the right thing at that point because based on the data that we had we needed single family homes need that's where the bulk of our children were coming from and yes there is a change I think
245part of the change of what's happening right now why we're seeing multifamily um increase with students is the lack of affordability of homes Um, and so they're renting apartments and I I'm running into a lot of families that that's what they're doing andor they relocated to Florida and that's what they were used to doing from one of the large cities where they lived was renting apartments. So I I think it's going to continue to change. I think as they build more homes though, especially up there in the Orand area off of 40 where they were predicting at first that one community would be 10,000, I think they've lowered it to like 8,750 now or something. I think there's going to be a lot of kids coming out of there. But thank you for everything. And
246if there's no further questions, it is 3:57 p.m. and this meeting is adjourned.