001let's get this going 11 o' no no s take it away J take it away J six thaten ready good afternoon and Welcome to our Tuesday November 10th meeting can you please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance a pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all at this time I would like to introduce my colleagues at the Das to my far right I have Mr Carl persus representing District 4 next to Mr persus I have Mr Ruben cologne representing District 5 our school board attorney Mr Ted Doran to my far right I have Mrs uh Aaron Len our agency clerk next to Mrs Leven I have Mrs Jamie Haynes representing district one
002next to miss Haynes I have Mrs Linda cber my vice chairman representing District 3 next to miss is cord I have Dr Carmen baban our school superintendent and I'm Ida White Wright the chairman representing District 2 at this time we would like for our colleagues as we talk about our district Vision uh vision and mission statement who would like to go first this afternoon go right ahead Miss CER good afternoon everyone um we had an election uh one week ago today and I wanted to congratulate the schools in my district who opened up their doors to be precincts and that is Spruce Creek Elementary cornado elementary and Indian River Elementary thank you for looking after our voters um and staying around especially the administrators staying around from seven to seven and plus a few more
003hours I was able to work at the Indian River um helped U Miss Jen hreen for a little while and it was delightful to see our um democracy in play so thank you very much thank you Mrs cber anyone else go right ahead Mr cologne and so this morning I had the pleasure of uh standing alongside our Delona high and so I'm representing today actually we have a few delt on high masks out there today uh representing and so we stood on Howland Boulevard uh with the jrc students honoring our veterans for Veterans Day it was super exciting to see the students uh patriotism their gratefulness along with the gratefulness of our community as they drove by and honk their horns it was uh it was quite the experience for myself first time I've done
004it and so um I just wanted to recognize Deltona High RC for uh recognizing our veterans and a job well done this morning thank you thank you Mr cursus thank you madam chair yeah I had the great pleasure this morning of going to MC inis Elementary School in the Leon Springs with Dr Renee Clayton as uh we walked into some classrooms this morning and saw what the students are learning what the teachers are teaching and uh it's just the best it's always the best to go into classrooms especially kindergarten classrooms in first grade second grade and but I love going to the kindergarten and you'll love this Miss HS I walk in there you know I walk in you know you walk in with your suit and the principal with the suit and Rene and
005so three people walk in with suits and it everyone stops and look looks at you so I go walking in the little kindergarten Boy comes up hey my name's Jeremy what's your name oh hey Jeremy my name my name's Carl Carl Carl CSUS he says okay great hey Carl he says come over here let me show you what I'm doing probably like the future mayor or something over there I I don't know but anyway it's great to be in part of Valia County Schools always great being in those clubes class class groups thank you madam chair thank you go ahead Mrs Hayes I too want to reiterate just what um Mrs cber said and thank all of our schools that opened up and served as polling locations um which made it a lot easier I
006think for a lot of our community because they know where the schools are located and sometimes I know when you're new to an area you're not sure where to go so I appreciate the fact that everybody you know did that and they gave of their own time to be open and everything and I also want to thank all of our administrators out there that have worked fast and furiously to adjust schedules um that rolled out for this new nine weeks because some of them I know worked till late at night and all weekend long to get those schedules and I know now that they have some cleanup to do and so my thought is would everybody just kind of give them some Grace right now and if your child schedule is not exactly the way
007you wanted it you know reach out send an email and just say can we talk about this or can we make an adjustment because everybody's working hard to meet the needs of all of our kids and then on a personal note um and I don't know if they're listening but sometimes they do today happens to be my parents 58th wedding anniversary and I and I haven't been able to talk to either one of them yet so I'm hoping that you know we're finished before midnight so that I can give them a call wow and wish them a happy anniversary but it's you know that's that's a milestone nowadays that um you hope everyone can reach and I have two wonderful parents and um I love them dearly and I'm happy to say that they're still
008here and they have reached that Milestone it's something that I myself will never reach but I appreciate thank you thank you thank you colleagues thank you Miss Haynes um I too want to thank the schools in my district who open up during this election cycle thank you hopefully we will continue to use our schools I think they're very accessible and a good place for us to uh even give our students some opportunity to understand about our democracy our Democratic process and to have somewhat of a Civic class um today is my last meeting and I it is Bittersweet but I'm looking for whatever my next challenge got has for me but I would like to congratulate Mrs Anita Bernett I believe unfortunately she may be sitting out in the atrium as she become the representative
009for district 2 and that she knows that I'm here to support her because our children they're all of our children and we can't allow anyone to fail so I know that you each of you will welcome her to the board make her feel comfortable and loved but we have a lot of work to do and I'm I challenge Mrs Bernett that when she takes this seat that she understands that we have an awful lot of work to do it has been a pleasure working with each of you audience it has been a pleasure speaking before you my colleagues principes teachers it has truly been a pleasure and an honor and Jamie we will get out of here before 7 [Laughter] o'clock thank you thank you thank you thank you so much moving on to our
010agenda agenda item 2.01 have there been any changes requested to the change to our agenda superintendent Bagan no Madam chair colleagues would you like to make any changes to the agenda hearing none I'll call for a motion move approval second the motion was made by Mr persus second by Mrs cber any discussion hearing none Ruben cologne yay Jamie Haynes yay Carl perses yay Linda cuberg yes Ida rright yes thank you moving down to some of our favorite parts of our uh board member meetings always recognitions um superintendent baban you have the pleasure thank you madam chair can everyone hear me I concur with you you this is perhaps the best part of the agenda for for this evening um we have a few recognitions today and I would first it it is a pleasure and
011I would like to introduce and call up to the to the um to the table um Miss faru hini who is in our audience and we would like to recognize her board for her incredible commitment to the students of valua County Miss hosini can you please come forward to the Pres State thank you anywhere yes anywhere thank you thank you welcome Mrs huseni um it is a pleasure to share some information regarding Mrs husse and everything that I will say to you I've been able to experience it in I I think it it was a two-hour meeting that we had this is just such an incredible person that we have here sitting with us blessed in our Pres today two words that embodies Mrs husi hope and dream as the founder and chair of food
012brings hope Mrs Faro husen has dedicated her life to fulfilling her dream that all School AG children in our community will be free from hunger and be given hope hope for a future and opportunities to discover their full potential by providing the necessary programs and also the services for those students she wholeheartedly believes that dreams can come true as she shared with me her own personal story um Mrs Mrs husseini has worked over the years tremendously when it comes to providing our homeless and low socioeconomic children the opportun to be successful she started the Hope brings uh food brings hope in 2007 and she started this with 27 students at Hinson middle school and I believe Hinson middle school is also the school where her daughters were students now food brings hope impacts thousands of
013students and their families look at how that dream has come true the after school programs known as Kids Zone in elementary schools and T-Zone Teen Zone in middle school and high school is now in 28 of our schools in Belia County this program provides additional academic guidance enrichment opportunities and nourishing meals to all of those students in 2012 the FB honors initiative was started with a special focus on stem education this program was created in memory of Mrs s's nephew and it started with 24 students at Westside Elementary the program is now in nine of our schools with 132 students in partnership with Halifax urban ministries the weekend feed a family program provides weekly food bags to hundreds of students to feed their entire family throughout the weekends so Far Over 1,500 bags are distributed
014each month or maybe more the project hope or hope project is another initiative of food brings hope which was established by The Hope House to provide a safe and stable stable living environment for unaccompanied youth to help them continue their high school education and begin a clear path to a career and you've shared with me so many of those stories as well in our to our meeting initiatives for this school year includes the virtual home homework helpline for food brings hope students which is facilitated by VCS uh certified teachers and the VIN uh 32114 property initiative to provide support to residents living in the 32114 uh Co zip code in the areas of Education job training housing food and child care Mrs hos your tireless effort can be evidenced in your resolve to unite which
015is a powerful element to unite and equalize the playing field for all students we want to say thank you to you for all that you have done in this community for all of our 64,000 students that we currently serve in Valia County some people have a unique gift and you Mrs hosini you certainly have that unique gift children and education are both passions of Mrs husin she serves on numerous boards that are in alignment with her passion and has received many many awards recognizing her for her community service we would just like to add one more award today for you and we ask our chair and our co-chair to present this award to you Mrs hosi on behalf of the school board of Luchia County please accept this award in appreciation of your continued commitment
016and and generous support of public [Applause] education what a generous recognition thank you so so very much I appreciate that the fact that you allow me to come to our schools and serve our children it's truly an honor and although I've been on it numerous times this is very very special car perses was in my brainstorming session and writing the business plan in 2006 I remember before V I don't know if he was there by choice or by force but he was there and and Ida right is right now part of the 3214 Prosperity initiative that we are working on so it's really um every one of you have reached out and helped in some way every time that I have called and asked for help you've guys always been there but the fact that
017you allow us to come in to your schools and teach or work with our kids to make their their lives a little easier to make to um you know have a a a a Level Playing Field um I'm a huge believer in public education Carl knows that all three of my girls went to public school it was a deliberate decision for my children to go to public school because I wanted to make sure that they know what real life is and so all three of them there were calls kids for a while and then they eventually had to move on but um but I'm a huge believer most of my nieces and nephews all go to to public school because that's what I promote and so again you know we are serving 1,700 of your
018students today our aim is to reach out to every single home uh uh homeless or economically disadvantaged uh student in our district and I'm also a big believer and I know every one of you agree I've talked to Ruben I've talked to Linda I've talked to everyone that I think we all agree that no child of ours should go to bed hungry or no child of ours should be sleeping in a car and I'm going to work for Judy who's sitting right there Judy R executive director until we make sure no child ever goes hungry or any of our children we can change the world I don't think we can change United States but we can change Rua County and none of our kids should be sleeping in a car and Judy and I will
019not quit until that happen happens with that I am very appreciative thank you very very [Applause] much and trust me when you work with her she will not let you quit either will she Mrs winch thank you for um Mrs Farooq now moving on to 3.02 recognition of heretic Middle School yes Madam chair thank you um I'm pleased to call Miss Patty core our assistant superintendent of middle schools along with Miss Nancy wake facilitator for volunteer and partnership programs to present the recognition of Heritage Middle School for being awarded a 2019 20 family community award from the Department of Education for their family fun night Take it Away Ladies yes thank you good afternoon Sherman Wright school board members and superintendent Dr Balaban I'm Nancy we your facilitator for volunteer and partnership programs and with
020me is Patty core who is the assistant superintendent from middle schools and we'd like to invite Mr Thomas Bon who is principle of Heritage middle and Sonia Pina uh and I'll move out of the way in just a minut come in March we came to you um with the district winners of the family and Community involvement award and of course the purpose of this award is to promote and recognize Innovative School practices that increase family and Community involvement valia's nominees were submitted to the doe for consideration at the state level and I am super proud to announce that Heritage Middle won for their family fun night [Applause] thank you Mrs wa and I'm really excited to be here with you today and to give my personal congratulations to win a state award as we know
021is a big deal and I've known Thomas and we've worked together for quite some time now we were actually in principal intern uh ship together and the one thing I know about uh Thomas is he's extremely collaborative so it does not surprise me that he and his school won this award um because he is always looking for new and innovative ways to bring in the community and others uh to help the children of Heritage Middle School be successful so at this time I'd like it to turn it over to principal V and Miss pan they can tell you about more about their event thank you Miss core and thank you madam chair esteem board members and uh Dr balaman our superintendent for having us here today it's certainly a humbling uh spot to be in
022especially following Miss husi I remember those days back at Henson Middle School with Mr petach Chin in that picture that was awesome seeing that so um but uh certainly uh the words Bittersweet were used earlier because as sweet as it is to be recognized for this amazing achievement is bitter because we're at a point where we would have had this year's by now and we're missing that but I will tell you that the purpose of our family fun night is about having fun but it's also about bringing in those Community Resources to our students and their families remember Mr clone being there at Advent years ago and and continuing to expand um the type of Community Resources that we bring into it from that we've had a spin-off kind of like your favorite comedy they
023have spin-offs right but uh our spin-off was a job fair and we've had two already um and again postpone this third our third annual right now but we are actually finding ways to get the community into our school for our families and finding jobs for our families uh it's it's really a lot to do with this person who I right right here miss Pina um you know and she's very Innovative finding new ways to get those Community Resources to us she's die hard every day we touch Spas with one another to ensure that whatever resources are out there in the community our families are getting to them so she deserves a huge round of applause for her accomplishments and making sure this happens she made me promised headset in front of the mic thank you
024so much for having us here today we appreciate Mr Von on behalf of luch County School Board I'd like to present to you this beautiful Crystal trophy from the Florida Department of Education recognizing you as the family and Community involvement winner for the state thank you so uh Mr vaugh Miss Pina and so that they're very humble because they left out the part that this is only 10 recipients in the State received this award and so uh just like you mentioned before prior to me being on the board I was I am with Advent and Miss penino invited me to this event and every year since then we've always been a part of it and uh one thing with Miss penino she doesn't give up for the community and I will share something that she
025is uh working on right actually you know what Miss Peno do you mind coming up and sharing what you're doing with Daytona State come everybody needs to hear this because what is happening at Heritage is amazing what exactly are you talking about Daytona a lot of things happening Daytona State College and the parents and the Esau parents oh okay okay um within the we it's a whole new world so we've had to come up with different ways in order to reach out and be there for our families so one of the things that we did was we normally partner up with dayona State and our parents get to go to classes for either esol GED classes or even the Fresh Start program where they can go ahead and go back to school and kind of
026test the waters to see if they want to continue their education or they want to go back into the workforce this year we can't really do those things but I was able to go ahead and convince Daytona State to do waivers and do online classes for our parents so our parents are taking Esau online absolutely free and we also recently through uh Family Health Source were able to virtually uh present to our parents and get them all enroll in those services that many of our families don't have so um we're taking different angles but we're making it happen so I believe that's what Mr colne was talking about and so I am not only honored to be your school board member but I'm honored to be your friend as well as Mr vau who um
027thank you who I'm eternally grateful for in the way he took care of my own daughter so thank you thank you Mr cologne you have been extremely supportive of our school every single time I pick up the phone and call you I email you I invite you and you show up you show up for the students and the families of Heritage Middle School and for that we are eternally grateful thank you okay that was that is very exciting I agree with you moving on to 3.03 recognition of Daytona Beach police officer sorry AR Beth Lee okay thank you Madame chair board um let the celebration continue I want to share with you that it was October the 14th that I visited seab breze high school early in the morning Dr Bia the um assistant super
028high school was there in the principal's office and I accompanied him and we we sat there with Mr Rollins and the story I'm going to share with you that I'm going to narrate to you was so fir handed that morning to me and it brought chills and um so I'm going to read it to you it was T Mr Rollin shared with me that that Tuesday which was the day before in the evening it was October 13th 15-year-old Julia boset was in the gym at se's high school and she was starting her first day of conditioning for Varsity uh varsity basketball Julie and other student athletes had just stretched so they were getting ready to do a warm up activity around where they will be jogging around the court after the first lap Julia collapsed
029on the heart floor coach Rogers at seab breze High which and and the resource officer our resource officer irth uh lee who was off duty but she was helping with the conditioning session they rushed over to Julia immediately as they saw her go down as a matter of fact I believe officer Lee said Dr B I didn't see her put her hands down you know to protect her her body or her face so that kind of created some some unease so they R rushed over quickly this the sophomore was faed down on the floor she was unconscious and had cut her chin in the fall officer Lee initially thought Julie had suffer suffered a seizure but when they turned her on her side Julia's face was turning blue so officer Lee our Daytona Beach police
030officer assigned to CB's High School couldn't find a pulse and quickly realized that Julia wasn't breathing officer Lee placed the student on her back and began to administer CPR coach Rogers ran outside to get a cell phone signal to call 911 Orman Beach Fire Department paramedics arrived in seven minutes and discovered Julia was in Cardiac Arrest they restored her heartbeat with a defibrillator shock and she was transported by volution County Evac Emergency Medical Services to Halifax Medical Center Julia's brother Matt who had been a football who had been at football practice on campus witnessed the entire life-saving effort Julia within hours was airlifted to wol some children hospital in Jacksonville where doctors discovered that Julia had Long QT syndrome which is a disorder of the heart's electrical IAL activity that can be caused by sudden
031irregular heartbeats in response to exercise or stress she had many many many medical tests and surgery to implant a cardiac deflator designed to restore a normal heart beat if it goes out of rhythm again Julia has no permanent neurological damage and has been discharged from the hospital she has returned to school and is expected to make she has made a full recovery including it seems like she's returning to Dance cheerleading and possibly other sports so I want everybody to take a quick look um we have a video from Fox 35 that capture the story if we can take a look at that and then I will continue heart attack at school a resource officer saving her life and the story now getting the attention of the NFL Fox 35 Stephanie buffamante has more Julia BOS
032said back on the sidelines tonight she can't cheer for another 6 weeks but she's thankful to be back with her team a standing ovation for sebres high school cheerleader Julia boset she's back on the sidelines for the first time since going into cardiac arrest it was just really scary to think about Julia has a heart condition and collapsed while playing basketball in the cbes high school gym about two weeks ago it was a matter of seconds from when she fell and I started CPR school resource officer IR Beth Lee off duty at the time jumping into action she's walking and talking and that was my de my fear that she wasn't going to um be herself it's crazy that within seconds if she wasn't doing CPR that things would have been totally different so I
033am beyond grateful for her while Julia spent the week in the hospital her brother Matthew a football player for the school dedicating a game to Julia the cheer team wearing Julia's name on their shirts the crowd holding signs saying for Julia the sand crabs took home a win that day Matthew scoring a touchdown praying for his sister's recovery and then you just pointing at the sky like that call God that's all through him their football coach reaching out to the New England Patriots who the bosset family cheer on every Sunday hey boset family Devon mccordi here defensive backs Devon and Jason mccordi sending them words of encouragement me and my family would be praying for Julia that was crazy I've rewatched that probably like 30 times since I've been out I just keep rewatching it
034like when I saw it for the first time I was just blown away now a warm embrace Matthew and Julia thankful to be back on the field together surrounded by their teammates and Community I've gotten so many cards and texts and emails and it's really helped me a lot Julia now has a defibrillator in her chest the school will be recognizing those who saved her life in November reporting in Daytona Beach St new Monty Fox 35 News So today we're thrilled to have in our audience here today Julia and her family alive and well as we honor also coach Rogers and officer Lee for their quick response of action taking at CB's High School on that day first officer Lee you are committed for your exemplary service your quick assessment and courageous response with full
035seven full minutes of CPR which saved a human life please come on up today Bela County honors you with a LIF saving award for your heroic actions on October 13 2020 we will be forever grateful to you for your exceptional service officer Lee would you like to say a few words sure first I would like to say thank you for this award school board members thank you I appreciate it um also thank you to the police dep department for always um training me very well I did not hesitate one bit and I owe that to my training with uh the Tona Beach Police Department I also wanted to tell to the Boston family you are my family from now [Applause] so thank you thank you officer Lee next coach Rogers where are you sir please
036come on up Miss coach Rogers today you get the assist award sir vucha County Schools honors you with a certificate for standing service for your exemplary actions and coming to the aid of a student in need a moment that a coach hopes he will never experience your assistance immediately to call 911 help save the life of Julia Bossip we thank you coach you you get to say a few words too sir you know nothing will make you pray like trouble and when officer Lee and myself seing beautiful Julia she was just there with a million-dollar smile took one lap and fell out when we seen her we knew she was in trouble so uh you know we di 911 officer Lee she was she was the MVP that day she uh she was right there
037we we laid her on her side and LA on her back and I went to get the phone to di 911 I called uh 911 I called my athletic director and then I called my pastor's wife and I said pastor Dawn Ry I need you to pray and she was in the middle of the restaurant and she stopped what she was doing and they interceded on behalf of uh Julia and uh I'm just thanking our Lord and savior that she's okay appreciate [Applause] it it's in charge yes yes yes yes I'm gonna so we again we want to thank both of you and we would like to Now call up the boset family they're here for a few words we're so happy to have Julia here with us today also well on her way to
038full recovery well I I don't think I need a microphone I think you can hear me uh and what I'm going to say has been said before but I don't think you can say it enough um first of all I want to congratulate everybody who was recognized tonight um but obviously I want to uh talk first about Coach Rogers thank you so much for your immediate call to 911 to get those minutes on the clock because every minute counts in the situation and again we heard that it was seven minutes from the time essentially that she went down to the time they arrived to to administer the so thank you so much for that um and also for coming to the hospital um Halifax hospital within an hour or so after the incident uh meeting
039with my wife and I in the lobby of the hospital to find out how Julie was doing but also to call us into prayer um that means more to me than than you'll know and that was a very moving uh time for us among other things that were going on so thank you so much um offer Le um first of all to the family I know family is here um you should be so so proud of of your mom she's amazing she's an amazing person and um you are you are our superhero for sure and um part of our family and both of you are in our hearts that's not a p that truly are in our hearts um and I just can't thank you enough I can't say enough um so thank you very
040much um I also would like to say uh to principal Joe Rollins he called us called me the very next day uh to reach out to me find out how Julia was doing also checked on just our wellbeing as a family my son matad as you mentioned who saw almost everything um can't even imagine still in that agency you know a family member or a sister go through that but thank you so much for checking in on us we continue to talk either by phone or by email uh really for the next several days while we were in the hospital we still continue to to uh trade some conversations back and forth but that meant so much to me that obviously he was checking in he mentioned that there would be uh you know counseling
041available to students at the school that might need to work through through this situation as well so it just shows sincerely how much his students mean to him and obviously that means a lot to us to you know have our children at C which I'm a graduate of as well um my son couldn't be here tonight by the way because the uh football practice we're going to try to win our first playoff game um and then if I could and I know there's a a a celebration later for anniversary happy anniversary to your parents so I don't want I know you have an agenda and we're on your time but if I could just mention that three things that they said my wife and I would like to see uh at some point Statewide uh
042and maybe some of these things are happening already but some might not be is uh CPR first of all we talk about it seconds count and and in this case uh you know with officer Lee being there within seconds administering CPR we would love to see every adult that's at a high school in the state of Florida who who's around children uh be trained in CPR not just Tred into CPR but how to recognize that the CPR needs to be administered um and it's not just you know officers or the health the nurse or or the athletic trainers but every adult you know I think should beain first of all second um aeds or defibrillators I know that schools all have them some might have one or two some might have more I don't know
043what the right or wrong number is on that but uh you know I don't think you can have too many whether it's a traveling sport whether the sports at home whether it's just practice Like This was um you know having those resources close by that are accessible uh obviously are important and then lastly um her condition which is called Long QT syndrome other cardiac arithma conditions that uh that are out there as well uh they can be uh found by doing a an EKG an electrocardiogram or ECG it's a very simple test and um and and it's something that if she had had one done if we knew that she had this condition we would have been able to find us out long before her ever going into a sudden cardiac arrest so we would
044love to see every County in in the State of Florida at some point making that mandatory as part of athletic physicals right now I believe only two counties perard County and aola County do that and I think Indian River county is coming on board uh very soon um but again I know it's work in progress but I just wanted to mention that that you know these are uh you know time and money I don't know I I can't put a price on my daughter's life so I just would like to see these things some at some point but thank you all very much the school board for recognizing uh Heroes and uh and my daughter and obviously someone who I love very de say anything that's good you covered it yes I have I taught
045at e m Beach High School for 26 years I've always huge supporter of the Barracuda football team however that night they played seab breze I did not mind them losing so I was behind you thank you any other the comments go right here Mr and I will share with you that uh at Advent Health where we do the health physicals we are actively engaging uh the possibility of doing those EKGs and so it was a conversation we had in fact when we had uh the sports physicals at the speedway uh the organization that does that was out there and they were also teaching how to use the defibrillator Etc so it is a work in progress and I will find out and hunt you down and let you know what's going on all right pleasure
046thank any other comments colleagues go ahead Mr uh person yeah thank you madam chair uh I just want to say that night that it happened uh uh Mr cologne's phone was blowing up because Coach Brown I believe was coach Rogers was was calling you uh Mr Rollins was calling me and we were just like oh no oh no oh no you know and and then the next morning uh Dr balgan uh was in the Mr Rawlings office with u officer Lee and then we were all re reliving what occurred the previous afternoon and uh I I just got to say as uh I'm also a cbr's graduate and and uh I just want to say just uh how proud I am of the effort that everyone uh coach uh principal and and officer Lee I
047don't know you must have wings on the back of that uh uniform or something but you you certainly are the the angel that uh that that that saved her life so uh uh it's uh just an in an incredible story and I just can't think of a of a of another way or a or a better way to just demonstrate you know that we are all about kids you know we're we're all about ch ch children and it doesn't matter uh you know what uniform or what clothing we have on or what our titles are we are all there and uh I'm so proud to see that fuchia County School effort I'm and the most important thing Julia is to see you and to see you and you can watch that Patriot clip over and
048over and over again anyway just want to say happy you're alive and well yeah thank you and thank you for coming out and we have taken notes of the three things from the CPR the defibrillator and the EKG we will make sure that uh we start in our district being the leaders of making sure that we we are complying I think very reasonable request but as a parent and all of us are parents you are right Mr boset nothing is like the lives of our children and I always tell people um I I expect to die before my child I do not expect for my child to pass before me and I would hate for any parent to have to experience that so whatever we can do to make sure we're protecting the lives of
049the children in Vala County we will do that so thank you for that recommendation and it's a joy to see your lovely daughter we thank God for that thank [Applause] you moving to 4.01 public participation concerning the consent agenda do we have any speakers thank you our first speaker will be Miss Amy Kennedy thank you thank all of our participants yes any seat yes ma'am you want me to take this off or you want me leave it on either way either way either way whatever work pull that from post to you okay and if you state your name and you have three minutes yes ma'am yes my name is Amy Kennedy I live at One Fox Hollow Drive in Orman Beach Florida I'm gonna have to go a little fast because I got a lot
050to say I am the wife of Alex Kennedy who was com who was employed for over 13 years with the Valia County School District as the assistant director of applications and infrastructures he had multiple promotions and had over 40 direct reports I say was because after 13 years of dedication his contract was not renewed and we firmly know it was in retaliation for his multiple complaints over the Oracle Fusion Software System that is years late in millions of dollars over budget I am speaking on his behalf because he is out of the state at the moment the newsjournal article posted last night that the school board would be voting on whether to approve the one-sided Gray law firm report who was hired by the school district is voting on that tonight my husband within a
051week of receiving that report wrote a rebuttal that you all have now I believe he emailed it all to you Additionally the writer of the article Cassie Alexander claims that she reached out to my husband but she nor the new Journal News Journal could produce any evidence that they attempted to contact him additionally Miss Alexander had my husband's email and phone number as he repeatedly tried to report this waste of taxpayer spending with no response as you all have done as well his pleas have only fallen on deaf ears and have been completely ignored I am here on his behalf to compel you to do the right thing and to look look deeper research more and ask more questions and look at all the court documents and the exhibits that were attached you were voted
052by the vucha county taxpayers to serve and you all should come clean about the total total not just the little fragments where they keep coming and asking for more money it should be The Total Money phase one is less than 50% complete phase two is there's no one in sight despite what you have been told this Mal feance is not normal and if due d had occurred it would not be the case mistakes were made early on in the selecting of the software with the wrong software and the wrong vendor which Alex had said all along and continues to attest to he did his due diligence and found out that the Oracle Fusion software has never been implemented on time or in budget anywhere in the United States K12 school systems let me repeat that
053the system chosen by every one of you and your financial officer Deb Muller has never been successfully implemented or operating in any K12 school anywhere in the United States period the response to Alex's complaint tries to pawn the his expertise as a mere difference of opinion that he didn't agree with the choice of the software but it was much more than that Alex knew and warned through multiple documentations multiple times this was going to happen and now taxpayers are paying the high price for your poor decision we believe he has he was let go to silence him regardless of this outcome tonight with your vote this litigation is ongoing and is now going into the interrogatory and document production of document stages there was a better Financial system out there there always was it was
054called focus it was completely integrated with the systems that you already have the sign-ins are all the same it would have flowed very nicely it is fully integrated more affordable and is currently successful operation in three Florida school districts already in Florida I hope others will be brave enough to come forward and speak about the system and the problems that they're having with it thank you thank you our next speaker is Miss Elizabeth Albert good afternoon Madam chair members of the board Dr Balaban and members of the audience I would like to begin by taking a moment to sincerely thank you Mrs Wright for your service you are appreciated I would like to draw your attention to consent agenda item number 13.01 salary schedules for View support as you know there has been a bit
055of Correspondence between Mr Dorne Mr penley and I about your decision to direct the district bargaining team not to engage in bargaining salary increases for for support staff further you should know that as the bargaining agent for bu support we have engaged in legal rep with legal representation and on October 30th we filed a grievance with Mr penley and we are prepared to take this to arbitration to date we have not received a response from Mr penley but in the spirit of Truth and transparency Mr penley has until next Monday to respond I want you to know that I listened intently to all that was said this morning during the workshop and I have thought deeply about how I could keep this message positive but I am struggling I'm struggling because the comments that were
056made and the the emotion behind the message are in opposition to the actions taken by the board's Representatives you see all we are asking for is the opportunity to come to the table as we believe is contractually appropriate the refusal to bargain and subsequent agenda item that you have before you send the message to the support staff that they are not valued that they are not worthy of continuing the process process of bargaining their salaries while your words indicate a different mindset or position it is the action or lack thereof that makes the greatest and Lasting Impression and let's remember that this is about the folks who run our schools the men and women who are on the front line every single day those who continue to give their all during this Public Health crisis
057and when I say all I truly mean all and did you know that some of your support staff members your office specialists in particular cannot completely enjoy this Veterans Day that is upon us because they have been told to work four 10hour days this week due to the holiday that everyone else will enjoy again it is not what you say it is what you do that leaves an impact thank you thank you Miss Albert we'll move on to items 5.01 but there items any items uh for the requested for the removal from the consent agenda superintendent Babin no items Madam chair colleagues are there any items you would like to remove from the consent agenda yes ma'am I'd like a further discussion on the purchase of the buses uh that is agenda item which one
05815.1 15.01 okay 15.01 anything else colleagues uh yes I'd like to have 10.06 six uh no 10.04 George Marks uh yes it has to do with um the extra money I think okay no not I thought that was it am I wrong is that 10 is it 10.04 I think it I think it's 10.04 okay but no it has to do with the um uh the ex the added extra money that was added for the tornado clean up at George Marks okay am I on the right okay it's 10 104 it is 10.04 Miss haes um yes 104 I have further questions about 10.03 and then I also have questions um 10.09 I asked about this morning kind of when we talked about the chillers but my other one is 10.10 so are you asking
059about 10.09 as well no I'll n because of this morning okay so currently we have items 10.03 10.04 10.0 10.10 and 15.01 am I correct okay I'll entertain a motion to accept the consent agenta as printed uh with the said items to be removed so moved that we accept it with removing 10.03 10.04 10.01 or 10.10 and 15.01 second the motion has been properly moved and second any other discussion hear none I'll call for the vote Mr Ruben cologne yay Miss Jamie Hayes yay Mr Carl Fus yay Miss Linda cuber uh yes and I right yay so we will now um start with 10.03 Atlantic athletic field maintenance program Dr bamman and probably Mr Aken yeah Mr Aken can you join us please and Miss Deb Muller you're available is she here yep Deb's here
060as well 10.03 is the athletic field correct uh proposal to remove 180 Acres from the ABM contract to uh bring an in-house for our staff to perform those duties uh part of that proposal this evening is uh to break down of the Staffing and the equipment uh requirements for us to be able to get started by April uh of this year coming up so we have to start a little bit earlier to start uh obtaining the equipment that we need through capital and then uh set as side funds for uh staff to be hired after the first of the year get them trained and ready to go for next uh like I said starting in April for the growing season so uh what specific question did you have Miss Haynes so I will say that
061in the middle of the day today um did send me an email with some additional information but my my thought here was when you guys did your presentation it was was kind of shared that if we remov this piece from ABM there would be a cost savings but yet when I'm reviewing all of this and and I do understand the purchase of the equipment up front because when we went with you know Outsourcing custodial services and things like that we sold all all of our equipment so I understand we have to bring equipment back in but it appears to me that we're actually not saving money by taking this over so I just need to know know financially where we're at with this and is it you know if if the difference is not that
062much though is it that the quality of work we're going to get is it a higher I mean I need to understand because when we start spending money on grounds on something that we outsourced at one point and now we're bringing it back in I need for the community to understand why we're doing this and if it's going to cost more what's the justification for why it's going to cost more yes ma'am anytime we do a proposal moving forward we always understand the first year is going to be the most expensive year and then we look at return on investments our Roi so our Roi in this one is one year later we should be able to recoup our money back from the field to athletic fields quality is the main thing the main reason
063we're doing uh moving into this direction it's going to cost us a little bit more because we have to buy special mowers for our football fields and our baseball fields uh currently right now we're using uh sort of like Bush Hogs uh that you do for regular cow Fields so uh the quality should be better uh we're going to use uh more fertilizer than we're currently paying for currently right now now there is a reduction uh in the ABM contract and and Deb correct me if I'm wrong I think it's 221,000 or something close to that um to be able to reduce out of their contract uh but when we start looking at uh return on investment we'll be getting that back after one year so everything we're going to spend up front we should
064be able to self-maintain there thereafter and I can bring up Miss Miller she's got she's my numbers lady on this one here she's so so she has that num and and maybe something's printed wrong here but in the part that's the public content on board docks it states though that annually thereafter this first year because yes it talks about the first year what's going to have to come out of general and what's going to have to come out of capital and the capital piece is the part for the equipment but it says annually thereafter we're looking at ,05 annually and I understand that that a portion of that is salaries so salaries will increase you know and so that's going to go up so the 221,000 that you're referencing coming back from ABM does not
065set does not equal you're you're 100% right quality what we're looking at is what we're currently getting right now is uh correct me if I'm wrong uh how many mes are we getting currently right now with our Fields uh maybe once every other week so once every other week uh for sports Fields currently right now on the recommendation want speak into that our recommendation is twice a week um that's what the athletic directors are asking for um it also um right now it's like ABM has a contract for mowing but it's not it doesn't state in the contract to take care of those grounds for sporting events so what we want to do is provide a better program um to cut down on um student injuries specifically as well as to provide um a better
066quality in our football field and baseball fields for our students to play on so my question is this we have 10 high schools but not all 10 high schools have their own football field so how many football fields are we talking about let me see got Taylor I don't have Pine Ridge let me see you got uh Taylor uh Pine Ridge right Deltona High we've got University uh Atlantic high school and I guess see um Spruce Creek High right five because cabb plays somewhere else right I don't know all of them I'm trying to remember I know I know new Mor Beach plays at the municipal stadium so does d land University doesn't have a fi I mean they got their their football field there now um I know I can tell you on all
067of the fields we spent Main in last year $50,000 just to bring them back up to standards um and if we by us taking this program over uh we'll be able to maintain that and that's additional savings we would have that we wouldn't have to spend above and beyond um but I think it's six football fields yeah that includes also your baseball fields your soccer fields your your play fields or your your um your training field you know the practice field fi that they have as well so we actually feel that um when you look at the numbers here of how many people you're going to hire that this is a year round you know requires this many individuals in order to keep up this many fields at this cost that's what I'm asking yeah
068so if they're not mowing if there's a downside a downtime for not mowing there's other duties they could be doing on the sports fields for example on baseball fields they can redo the clay uh the pitchers mound those type of things uh that need to be done on a regular basis as well and and the seeding of of those play Fields as well yeah reeding of Ry grass ref fertilizing uh weed killing those type of things that take a year yearlong process that's all the questions I have thank you okay anyone else all righty moving down to 10.04 change order number 11 um my concern when I looked at this yesterday a second time there was information on here for allterrain tractor it's not there now it was change order 11 was like from $90,000
069is it for George Marks I was looking at the wrong one for George Marks Elementary School yes tornado REM uh removal yeah let me bring up Dave boletto he's the one that handled the it's not here now I don't know why it's not on board do I I can't answer why it's not on board dogs I'm sorry I I didn't pull anything it was live last week so is it on there now or no no it's not there now well he can answer any questions you may have about George Marks the tornado response to George Marks uh it was and the cost associated with with that there were three um there was about uh there was the the money of the delay of the project plus two separate invoices from allterrain tractor one was for
070$91,000 and one was another amount and I was I I contacted you yesterday about the expense um because I didn't know the hours that were worth the equipment that was used and that seems to be an absorbent amount of money right uh I did respond and you said additional F fencing had to be added to it yeah so the fencing for George Marks was already up and then when the tornado came through it damaged that fencing so the fencing had to be replaced okay where is some of that I don't have all of it down do you have the invoices or somebody uh Nicole may have the invoices she can they can talk about it more probably more in depth on what you're asking yeah that was and if it's not here that's fine um
071I you know I don't I was just asking for that invoice which is not here today sure um which which is here well she's got the copy of the invoices here What's the total right one that's Sterling what you were looking at what what was provided was um they had taken out had requested for a 4518 project was security fencing um the trees that fell on the fence surrounding George Marks Elementary School that was Sterling replacing that fencing and then alterrain came in to clear that area so that we could put the fencing back up so we requested for that to be broken out that fencing piece in the clearing in the surrounding area to be placed on the 4518 which is security fencing but uh Capital Money which was a total of $161,600 that
072that just in exorbitant why didn't we have our own maintenance department clear uh we we are not equipped to clear that amount of debris uh in especially in the time frame that we were required to clear it so when that hurricane hit us on the 18th to tornado hit us on the 18th uh we literally had days teacher planning was already progress um there were teachers trapped in the school they couldn't leave the campus there were um walkways driveways blocked there were people trapped in their homes uh in the surrounding area from our debris so um you know along with this security fence line there was a massive amount of debris that really uh would it was devastating so there was no way our team we were equipped to handle that amount to work uh
073we we absolutely needed the assistance of allterrain and and others so um it it was massive okay did you take pictures yes documented we give them to you right here so I uh I can go both ways here one you just want one pack okay so that uh that first picture there that was just to show um you know we never had that kind of Devastation during any one of our hurricanes so this tornado and as you flip through the packet um you will see the damage to our campus in the immediate area was uh massive and devastating to not only our school and our people but to our surrounding neighborhood um the density of the area unfortunately was so thick um that's what generated the amount amount of debris and and the debris the
074thickness of the trees we're not talking small little 6in oak trees but they were massive so the operation was a huge undertaking and these pictures still don't even do it justice CU there's a whole bunch of acreage that we're not seeing um so there was no way we unfortunately I wish we were we were equipped inhouse to handle this we absolutely needed the help of all terrain and and other people we also have a drone aerial uh of the I'd be more than happy to to put it for the board to be able to view on their own as well um part of the internal audit that was done they did suggest that there were more details um I don't know if you can upload photographs on board dos or anything but it would be
075a huge help okay for us to have more of a a a Clarity sure where where all that's coming that that would be wonderful especially when it was just all lumped together I mean to have that $160 some thousand was just I my eyes went pop so thank you for the explanation absolutely just get put it in perspective during Hurricane Matthew which was one of our stronger hurricanes countywide um Bergeron at the time they removed a total of 511 trees that was countywide in this tornado we we had to remove somewhere between 800 and a th000 trees so that really will give you a good idea of the devastation um so it it was there that volume was enormous thank you very much I let's just put that in the narrative in the future that's
076it's very thank you for the clarification you thank you very much sir thank you Mr a Mr Val M Miller thank you go ahead Mr col I have a procedural question so this happened in August how did this amount not come before us until now I mean procedurally because it does exceed the $50,000 and it clearly was a emergency a huge project was there a was there an emergency did we approve an emergency one in between then okay so during a time of emergency um our first priority is life safety to life and property so on the 18th we actually respond and it was later in the afternoon so the immediate um concern was the people at our site who were trapped at the school and the people trapped in their homes so we did
077go ahead and bring on a contractor and like every other operation there is a period of survey to come up with an estimate these events are very hard to come up with an estimate because the scope of work as a moving Target until you clear out a certain area of debris you don't know what else you're going to have to clear out so we spent the first three days uh first and foremost getting everybody safe and you know clear trees driveways homes to school that was the first three or four days then the survey took place to try to come up with some kind of estimate and it took a few days to come up with that estimate and that initial amount was uh requested via p po um as far as the actual time
078requesting the PO um yep there was a little um time lapse there it could have been requested sooner but at the time not making excuses you're dealing with covid we're trying to create plastic shields for everyone we're delivering signs again not making excuses could we have you know asked for that sooner yes but unfortunately it just took us a few extra days um it wound up being approved uh on the 8th and we actually requested that a little sooner but um our Software System our finance software system unfortunately the way it works when you request an emergency po when that system takes it it actually bypassed the whole finance department so uh Miss craft and her Department didn't even say it but it was it went in the system and it was approved so they
079finally saw it on the eth and um you know could that have been expedited a little sooner sure but um and regardless we're talking a couple days um so that's how we got here now thank you sir so just to re I'm sorry just to reiterate on your change order was dealing with the the current construction project because they did some of the cleanup as well and some of the additional fencing so on this as well okay when it bypasses Marie Craft's purchasing department Who's the appr who approved it who's the one who approved the the work order I don't know how the actual approval worked but I'm speaking from the point of when it was requested and submitted um we were being told at the time that there's no PO there's no PO in
080the system we don't see it and you know of course our position was well we submitted the PO we submitted and then finally um Mr Brian Clem came back to us and said hey guess what you're right you submitted the PO we just didn't see it because the way the system identifies an emergency po request that s has been fixed yeah since since that time it has been corrected the system they had an adjustment was made in our Software System okay so as we move forward because I'm sure this is not the last tornado how will that system work know let's knock on wood because I hope it is the last one but I I would just I'm sure we would like to know who has the final approval to move it forward okay I'll
081address yeah I'll address that that um I just want to I just want to let you know that yes when with our financial controls that was something that we discovered that went directly to purchasing um Brian Clem and Maria craft also contacted me directly to discuss this um and to make me aware um so it's something that we are following up with um there were a couple of instances that we talked through and we said yeah we definitely need approval of workflow in those but it was something that we discovered at that point in time that it wasn't set up um as well as um I'm sorry I forgot your other the second half of your question what do we do going forward if an emergency like this occurs again it's such a dramatic effect
082that we have to take care of immediately especially living on the coast with Ed us out in the Gulf we just don't know what's going to happen who has the final say to say yes Mr Bel vot for it um it actually the PO you know really would be uh the approval of the PO is unless our leadership team unless Mr Aken you know gives us a directive hey I know you're putting in for the PO let's get the PO in there but let's start planning ahead of time um but the PO pretty much is the is the approval of of moving forward doesn't somebody have to sign the purchase order I mean I would think the superintendent would know eventually we sign the super yeah that the the checks and balances needs to be
083fixed and put in place which would be going all the way through you guys would get a copy i' see that as well so I think that's what Miss meller was kind of alluding to so right because that was over 50,000 then it definitely well even over if Mr Aken approved it um then it still would have gone to um Dr balabin as a superintendent and then up to 50,000 it would have gone had have gone to the board um and eventually it did get to find Finance after um M or uh yeah Mr Clem alerted us um so again that was something that we had identified and um have corrected uh with the system but also um just so you know that is that is why we have multiple levels of approval and um
084controls in place so that is something that you know if an auditor comes and asks you are you aware of any fraud or anything like that and those are the types the things you say we place whenever we ask questions we ask about the multiple um division of responsibility in our financial systems so that those things are reviewed multiple in multiple times so that if one fails that there's another check IM balance in place because I remember we received a phone call all of us about uh HVAC failure at Orman Beach um Elementary and we got a phone call and just to let us know and we all at at least I said yes I mean the school needs air and you and they had to bring in a what a chiller I apologize for
085not knowing your no you're right it it was bring emergency U Chiller because the company have had one in their stock because it was designated for somebody else um and we we approved that you know just by verbal but I think uh maybe the Board needs to know too what's going on that way we won't have sticker shock a couple months later well and there and there are um in our purchasing policy you know there are U pre preo pre-approvals of contracts that are put in place um for instance when there's a hurricane so that we have debris cleanup all of that is is put into place prior to hurricane season so that we do call that contractor because this wasn't um officially um I don't know a FEMA event there was no Declaration of
086emergency there was no you know right so it became a little bit different and they had already done the initial cleanup and I as I think um that Mr bedo said that the the um it expanded in scope as they went on but the other thing that we are following up on is making sure like I said that that process in place but also getting all of the tickets the dump tickets the um the labor charges and everything um connected to it for the backup so that we can review it and compare it to the um debris cleanup uh company that we have in place and make sure that it's reasonable before we ever pay it so I know that um Maria craft has done that and has been made has met with the company
087to review all of that thank you thank you and go ahead and thank you madam chair I just want to say that you know if any of you haven't driven over there yet in that neighborhood the devastation that's still there there are still people without their homes and everything um those pictures don't even explain the whole story of what happened in that area um and I do appreciate Mrs cubert asking about it because you know I as we all know there needs to be some checks and balances but in the case of an emergency yes there were people that could not get out of you know the school or that surrounding area due to the Devastation there so I understand you need to to step in and do it but it would be nice in
088the future even if it was just a text that came out to us or something letting us know that you know this is what's happening and what we have to do so thank you thank you and and one thing I was going to say colleagues um I think moving forward as as we look at our policies it's probably helpful if we have an idea of what an event like that will cost so that next time if an emergency should arise we we can almost tell someone you know what we're willing to pay or not pay for the simple reason I was here when it actually took place and so if you wasn't you you just could not imagine the devastation even a full air conditioner from the Burger King in the middle of the street
089I mean it was a mess and I was here so um I do think we got to have something of emergent nature cuz sometimes they just won't be able to call us they got to make some split decisions but there should be some parameters of how uh the money is spent and maybe some guidelines in the event this should happen again that you all we should just create and make it have a policy go ahead Miss and regardless it does have to come to the board eventually I mean it does have to and that's why it's being brought forward now because we do have to even after the fact be transparent and bring that forward so that you are well aware of it okay all right any other questions for miss mu okay thank you
090thank you very much you're very welcome moving down to 10 1010 Miss ping the child's Academy you know are you are have they participated in discussions about this are they aware that this is your intent to go in and Destroy some of the buildings in order to look at the structural piece which buildings are you going to you know go in because I've been there you know several times and I so appreciate what that school does you know because they bring in our young girls that are pregnant and they continue to educate them and they also teach them about being a mom and you know we have everything from newborns up through four and five year olds on campus there and I just I don't understand how you're going to go in and demolish something
091with students and babies on campus so I need to understand what you're doing okay yes it's a good question um the word demolition I think is maybe a little bit uh harsh by selective demolition what we mean is we'll be carefully taking walls and ceilings and Floors toart to in inspect the structure underneath it with the intent of putting it back so there's no real demolition going on as you would think with that the way that term is being used uh and it's going to be done during a period when the building's not occupied uh over the holiday so the the uh Academy is is aware of this they walked the building with us when we took our structural engineer there to do the initial analysis on it um we did leveling tests that second
092floor of that 1926 building is what we're really concerned about so we we went down there uh with our team Chief our chief building officer uh and some and I know maintenance has been there several times and we we're concerned that there there's something the floors aren't level it's not being occupied it's been basically closed off off because of concerns for for what might be going on there uh so after we did our initial inspection it was determined we could really know what's going on we need to selectively take apart the building the the surfaces of the floors the ceilings the wall in certain areas to take a better look at it because we we to be able to determine what the next steps might be so it's the main building that you're going to
093go in and do this are you going to do it on the first floor or the second floor well there may be some access from the first floor to the second floor that the problems are on the second floor and we're we need to analyze that and in order to do it we have to kind of uncover it the carpet the flooring kind of get down to the structure look at the way the structure and the walls are are coming together uh it the floors are definitely not level you can drop a marble on it and it's going to roll one way or the other and so for that reason and and for other reasons just because of the it's it's not really habitable so we we feel it's in our best interest to to
094for liability purposes and just after years of of uh having some real uh identifiable issues we we felt we really need to get in there and see what we have so this is scheduled for over the winter break yes and so is there a guarantee that it will be put back in place prior to them returning in January so that we don't have them coming in that's right okay that's the intent all right and to to say uh I went out there about three years ago this has been an issue and actually if if that's a building we plan to maintain the first building is considered historic we will have to do a major restoration to that building and the two back buildings to the right will have to be demolished I mean it is
095it is a school that needs much much much much much repair or to be rebuilt to some extent go ahead miss you said what I was going to say yeah so thank you I'm saying so yeah I was aware of that U just from going out there a couple years ago having this conversation with when Sarah Lee was here and the architect about some of the issues at the institution are are you fine Miss hes I am okay moving to 15.01 new school buses go ahead Mr cologne so Greg so in the uh background it is saying that we we are replacing the 20 school buses as a result of the 5-year bus replacement plan and our total request is 23 or 2.2 um are we replacing these buses because they are not working and
096we are down buses or are these replacing buses that are currently operational and just aging out so when we talk about the 5-year bus replacement plan every year C sort of like our 5year maintenance plan it's a bus replacement plan for 5 years when we uh put in for our uh The Replacements of school buses those buses have to meet certain criteria 12 years old or 200,000 miles or with a blown engine or something we can't really fix so the 20 buses that are currently requested uh in today's uh um uh on today's agenda uh 16 of those buses are regular 77 passenger type-c buses four of those buses are what we call type A buses or 29 passenger uh with lift buses uh currently IEP staffings requires to have a smaller bus to get
097into the tight neighborhoods called the Sachs uh apartment complexes to pick up those students uh historically what we try to do is is change out 10% of your um of your your route Fleet that's driving every day um just to maintain a good average age of about eight eight years of of average run on buses so these to replace older buses that are now time to come off the road and be sold so my concern with this colleagues is that on a regular year you know this is on the rotation Etc however we're not on a regular Year we're on a year where ridership is not up even though the number of routes are still and so I I ask myself and I'll ask you Greg what would happen if we didn't do this this
098year so if you remember back in 2010 uh because of the recession we were in uh we didn't buy buses for 5 years so a lot of our um a lot of our buses started aging out and so for therefore our uh cost to maintain those buses increased slightly if we pushed one year it's not going to be the end of the world um and we would probably get away with it but if we go with another four or five years with pushing it down that can down the road we' be back to the same problem we were with five years ago does that make sense yeah so in a year with so much uncertainty and us not knowing what next year will look like or even what January would look like I I I
099I caution you know again I I think what from what you just said this may be something that we can hold off on for a year Well my recommendation we do need the four type A buses okay for ESC so if we want to make any not modifications then my recommendation to the superintendent you would be to push this or push this board item to next board meeting allow me the opportunity to readjust uh the recommendation um and then come forward and and have just the four type A buses on the list um and then we can readjust next year and the fiveyear plan thereafter I I I'd even give I'd even propose a a better give than that and it is you know I have no problem approving it however I think this is
100a subjective amount of funding that we could look and say okay we need these four buses because we need them let's go ahead but let's let's once we have a little bit more clarity then we can go and say okay maybe there's five buses we absolutely need and I don't want to limit the need but I want to limit the want and you know in a year that we don't have a lot of flexibility on needs and wants um I think that it would probably you know and I'm good with you know our communication and so i' have no issue approving this as long as we uh cautiously you know make these purchases because I don't want to uh cost us money so I'm very cognizant of that but I think you know given the
101ridership is down where and te Etc I think yes if we need the four buses then Kudos we can do that but let's keep the other money in our pocket okay because of course we're in a negative and so you know and we don't know what next year is going to be like rather than dropping the PO for 20 buses tomorrow and so I'd be willing to approve it that way if that makes sense to you Miss superintendent Deb mher uh and Greg um you know because we we are going to need to find I mean if that's okay with the rest of the board because we are going to need to find the these little and this is straight up Capital so this is you know it maybe a place where if we needed
102to use that we could so I mean I'll open it up to anybody else but that was my thought on that uh on that agenda item so can can I ask just clarifying question may I real quick so what you're saying is is you you don't mind approving the 20 buses but only buy four now and or maybe just change it and if we need some more we'll come back is that what you're saying I'm not sure sure because this request is for 20 I TR I trust you and Dr balaman and Deb Muller to you know I mean it could come I mean I don't want to limit you but if that's what you want we can do that as well um but you know I'm just I just don't want to drop a
10320po just because we it's part of the plan because this year is just not the same as every other year sure so I mean however you would rather handle it I'm okay with it um I think the intention at least if everybody else I don't know how everybody else feels I'm only one but that was my thought so the so we'll have a slight reduction in Miles traveled probably some Savings in fuel but the buses that are out there running are going to run what they ran last year does that make sense so we're at 183 and we were at 221 last year so we have about 40 buses roughly that are that are not running right now uh that could be running after the first of the year depends on who comes back what
104do we need how we expand back up to full capacity so so our concern my only res reservation or concern would be just as long as we have vehicles to be able to transport the students moving forward and and pushing it off for a year I think we can work around some of those things how sorry I just want go ahead no that ahe I would like to hear how the rest of you feel because I did talk to Mr colong earlier today and and I did talk to Mr Ain as well I think this was in the works and that's why it's here presented today I do agree that we need the four buses for eight that's ad ada8 compliance because that will assist us over overall and we won't have to pay these
105special services for our students who needs that service but we can certainly revisit the add the 16 and come up with a more staggered plan moving forward if it's okay with the rest of you if that would be your recommendation okay go ahead Miss um I I agree the four that we need the model a um do we have many buses that are over the limit I mean isn't there a certain mileage limit we're supposed to have then we have to retire the bus well we go to our 10 our replacement cycle for a yellow Fleet is 10 years uh 10 to 12 years excuse me 200 to 250,000 miles so we have buses that are there that we will be sending to auction this year already how many are those I'm I'm sorry do
106you know how many there are approximately 22 buses we're going to be selling this year um but we could hold those buses doesn't mean we have to sell those buses okay so those buses could be used are they serviceable I mean we want our children to be on they yeah they're good vehicles they're inspected every 28 school days so they're they're well within the safety regulations of being able to be maintained what we look at is once you to get to 250,000 mil on a school bus the maintenance cost just like your car the maintenance cost start really going up high and Peaks out so you're spending more money in your maintenance cost than it would be to replace that vehicle um and so right now we have a replacement uh we have our spare
107bus fleet is higher than normal um so therefore I don't have any reservations of selling the 22 buses holding on the 16 figure out what we need to do order the four and then look at next year and see what we need to do to save the money this year now do we get a price break with a um like a BOGO for for I wish so so all the manufacturers actually do what they call a state bid so these are State bid items and so it's sort of like uh uh when you special order something you can say I want it in this color except for buses they're always yellow and black but you know you want this and that and whatever so there's a a a list of things you can get and
108all of it's on a state bid that's already set price for every vehicle that's that's sold so our school bus is a type ABC and D those are set prices for a standard bus and then you add on to those air conditioning is one of those three-point seat belts a cup holder for the for the operator you know to hold their Cup in or their water in uh those type of Things Different seat designs those are extra money for some of these items that are on school buses and and I think what we also need to know how are are we at a high need moderate need or a low need I think right now we we have a 7.4 year average age on our route buses which is very good um because the average
109is eight years so we're just below the national average um so we're right where we need to be if we skip like I said if we skip this year with a 16 but we have to buy the four I mean there's we have some ADA requirements right now we have one we're Outsourcing one student to be transported um it's very $250 a day so and we have a couple of the others that are coming up in this Arena we have to have a bus to be able to get in to get those students uh and then pick up other students moving forward those are the four I have to have the other ones we can kind of hold back on redo our Five-Year Plan for next year and bring it back to the board okay
110that's what I'm telling the board I mean that's where we can do thank you thank you madam and Miss Muller and I spoke about this a few weeks ago so goad I'm I'm perfectly fine with supporting the four especially now that I hear what it's costing to transport the one student um I'm in favor of holding on the 16 at this point in time and my question would be could we you know so that he didn't have to bring it back could we not just go ahead and you know vote on it tonight and vote with we're approving because it's there's two separate attachments and say that we're approving one attachment but you know asking them to hold to the board okay okay yes ma'am you're you're correct you have the type a uh Po
111and then you got the the type c are you good Mr persus yeah I I uh I guess my and I understand you know wanting to save some money but I'm concerned about will the costs go up next year I mean or the year after and then so what are we really saving and we know we're going to need the buses and I hate to spend the money on maintenance on an old bus and I don't like kids to be riding in buses that are way older to another buses on every bus to be the best bus and uh uh so you know I'm I'm inclined to just run with it let's do it it's it's just part of an ongoing expense every year you have to keep doing it because as soon as you
112start pulling back then you're now you not only do you have that 16 but now you have maybe 20 more so when are you going to do 36 plusses in a year I mean you know then you start getting behind in it's like a huge amount of money to catch up and even though I'm all for saving at I Mr clone made a great point about who knows what the future will bring Finance wise but I know what the future is going to bring as far as buses go they just get older and they fall apart and we don't want that for our children so I don't know if you want to respond to cost that's all my concern I do so the uh State contract is normally good for a couple of years so
113what the prices are today this year will be will be the prices next year so and then they come back in with another state bid so they kind of do that every couple of years two years yeah some some are less than that two some are more than that three um in our case we're very fortunate uh on the fleet that we currently have today um we got 148 buses over the last 4 for since 2015 was that 5 years ago um that are less that are 5 years yeah and so the majority all of our R buses right now are are um the ones that are projected like I said a 7.4 years old so we're in good shape of our route buses our spare buses where we have concerns with but but we
114have uh a lot of spare buses right now if you remember and I knew he back in 200000 and two 22 2001 2003 2 and three we ended up having to buy 50 buses 50 buses and we started going back down uh because of that the same reason you said we pushed the can too far down the road and we're able to recoup soon enough and therefore we had to buy more buses up front that would be the only concern to push it off of our 10 10% replacement cycle uh on our rep our 10e 10 we do 10% of our yellow Fleet route buses every year to maintain a 10e replacement cycle does that make sense hard to say that yeah and that was going to be my similar question um if we approve
115this uh you would be able to issue the purchase order and just ask for a later delivery date meaning that we wouldn't be actually um build or invoice until it shipped am I correct yes ma'am so if you approved this agenda item this evening I would take the the PO with the four type A buses and process that tomorrow okay um or Thursday or whatever day we come back uh the other 16 I would hold uh until further notice so we would hold those although it's approved I could hold that until we make a final determination I come back in front of the board um if you wish although it's already been approved but with the with an explanation of why I wouldn't go ahead and move forward with those 16 buses okay so no
116that's not what I'm asking so I'm asking could you not submit both purchase order and ask for a delivery date 6 to eight months out from this date that's you could do that they're already six months out so if I order tomorrow it' be six months before I can get the first bus in right and so my question is if if you order the four uh you submitted both of the purchase orders and you could ask for delivery for the one in the six months but the other one you would ask for in a year if that makes sense um I don't know whether they can do that I've never done that before but I can ask I mean that's that's a great question they will and they'll just invoice you when it actually shipped
117but at least the order is in and then you wouldn't necessarily have to come back to the board you've already we've already placed an order but it has allowed us to have some cash flow if we need to Sure within now 2021 until July of 2021 if that makes sense yeah yes ma'am I understand what you're you're saying I'm not I I'll I can find out that's a great question that we've never done that before so I can't okay I can't answer it so can you find out Tom I can find out I'll find out you know I can let you know by Thursday or whatever but we'll take all of these items 1 by one um because we know we got to make a change to 15.1 so let's start with 10.03 um is
118there a motion to accept 10.03 as presented and that is dealing with the athletic field maintenance program Madam chair I move that we accept um 10.03 in the consent agenda the a uh athletic fields maintenance program second the motion was made by Mrs Linda cuberg second by Mr Carl persus any other discussion hearing none I'll call for the vote Mr Ruben cologne yay Miss Jamie Haynes yay Mr Carl persus yay Miss Linda cubber yes and ID right yay moving on to item 10.04 change the order for master plan project at George W Marx Elementary um uh entertain a motion so moved second the motion was made by Mr Ruben cologne second by Miss Jamie Haynes any other discussion hearing none I'll call for the vote Mr Ruben cologne yay Miss Jamie Haynes yay Mr Carl
119perses yay Miss Linda cuber yes I it right yay moving down to item 10.0 10.10 um structural investigation project at bana Elementary so moved second the motion was made by Miss Jamie haes second by Miss Linda cuer any other discussion hearing none I'll call for the vote Mr Ruben cologne yay Miss Jamie Haynes yay Mr Carl perses yay Miss Linda cuberg yes ID right yes moving down to item 15.01 purchase of new school buses Madam chair I'd like to make a motion to approve the purchase of of the news of four school buses uh immediately as needed and um the remaining 16 as needed and approved by the superintendent so we're ultimately approving it but just that initial four and then I'll leave it up to the superintendent and her team to determine the need
120for the other 16 if need be second okay motions made by Mr Ruben cologne to approve this purchase the initial four and the remaining 16 at a later date as designated by the superintendent second by Miss Jamie Haynes any other discussion hearing none I'll call for the vote Mr Ruben cologne yay Jamie Haynes yay Carl perses yay Linda cuer yes and Ida right yes the motion approved at this time we have public participation uh for items of general interest pertaining to public education in valua County a total of five of 15 minutes will be provided for public comments at this time do we have any comment cards thank you only doing five that's fine okay thank you the first person is Miss Kate Kaminsky Miss Kate Kaminsky okay while we're waiting for Mrs Kaminsky is
121it a Joseph ay Avery Mr Avery please come on up please state your name and you have three minutes thank you good afternoon um my name is Joseph Avery um I am a vucha County resident taxpayer and a father of two wonderful schoolage children while our duly elected public servants are cowering behind plexiglass panels as if the words of their bosses carry some sort of germ I'm here today to spread the germ of Truth something in this very in every race corrupt politicians have worked to cover up worldwide sound science has proven that mask wearing does little to nothing to stop the spread of covid what a mask does is to cause the wearer to recirculate their own bodily waste to the point of weakening their immune system it also causes numerous infections to take
122root in one's throat and sinuses and as we have observed many people have developed sores around the mouth and nose although I'm not a doctor these facts are widely available on PubMed and have been confirmed by the CDC along with these Horrors just being forced to comply with such orders destroys the spirit of the student they take on social features that are common in prisons instead of developing students to be creative inventive freethinkers you are squelching their Spirit to live as Pawns of the deep State using the fake premise that wearing a mask will curb the spread of man-made GMO virus now let's consider this mask issue as adults we know from well-published testing that the co germ is about half the size of Airborne cigarette smoke we have found that six- foot rule of
123social distancing held far greater Merit we also know that this virus is virtually as dangerous is the common cold to most age groups especially children so for you to expect some measure of safety by wearing a mask it would have to be the type warn in combat or in a disease research lab such as a gas mask even those n95 masks do not stop the flow of this germ so let's get back to why you want our children to suffer with a phony protective mask let's hear the real reason thank you [Applause] thank you Miss Kate M kisy is this okay yes thank you good evening everyone that's right those are lovely thank you we will miss you but I'm sure who knows what wonderful things this the future holds for you in public service
124right um I came here today just to um talk about one thing believe it or not um I just want you to be careful as I cautioned you last time I spoke to make sure you look at those numbers of leaves of absence and resignations and compare them with last year um you can do this research yourself um but I just took your board documents did it for October of 19 and October of um in October of 19 in the board actions for human resource whatever Personnel actions items um you had 20 teacher resignations this past October you had 55 um you had in October of 19 you had three teachers approved for leaves of absence this past October you had 17 okay you guys can do the percentages support staff is really concerning okay
125in 19 in October the month of October those two board meetings you had 24 resignations in October of 2020 and your support staff you had 67 res ations in October of 19 you had two support staff approved for leaves of absence this past month you had 20 you are hemorrhaging Personnel you are hemorrhaging personnel and especially with support staff who in some cases give their all it is a real slap in the face for you not to work with the Union to give them the compensation and the support they deserve you are losing people exponentially um just support staff leaves of absences up 2,000% from October of last year it's crazy you guys need to look at facts do a little research yourself maybe your lens is too narrow maybe I know each one of
126you board members personally you're really brilliant people you can do the research I did when you pull up these documents and see where they're going okay so please please do that all right or I'll just have to keep sitting here bringing you the numbers have a good night thank you m Mrs Stephanie Mano Monaco Miss Stephanie Monaco leave CH had to leave okay Miss Britney Walker Miss Walker State your name you have three minutes my name is Britney Walker I am a central Florida native a business owner local taxpayer but most importantly I am a concerned parent myself and thousands of other parents are worried sick about what the future holds for our children in the public school system many parents are not financially capable of opting for private school education to avoid the disaster
127unfolding within the Public School Systems I am here today to be a voice for those parents the vucha County School Board should be ashamed of the decisions they've made to expose our children to a prison likee classroom setting where they must wear muzzles and socially distanc from their friends it has been proven over and over that children have over a 99% chance of recovering from covid-19 while the majority will not experience symptoms at all school boards and local governments have taken it upon themselves to invoke unconstitutional mandates while depriving children of social interaction in cafeterias and outdoor playtime at recess my question to the school board is how do you sleep at night I assume many of you have children in the public school system how can you look yourself in the mirror daily knowing
128the distructive settings you created in our classrooms our children have a fundamental right to Quality the education that is now suffering due to heavy-handed government restrictions under the guise of covid-19 education is suffering so severely that superintendent Dr Walt Griffin of simal county found it necessary to forego letter grades in 20121 to cover the mess made in public schools America was established under the principles of Freedom why do you feel that it is your right to revoke freedoms given to us under the US Constitution it is nor the local government govern officials right or the school board members right to overstep parental rights to freedom of medical decisions for their children parents make medic medical decisions for their children not the school board and not the local government elected officials we are calling on the
129vucha County School Board to immediately resend Mas mandates in our school system and allow parents to exercise their right to a decision that is best for their families now hear me clearly I am not saying to take masks out of schools completely I am asking for you guys to give parents the right to make a decision that is best for their families now that means if there's an elderly folk in the home and they want their children to wear a mask to protect that elderly folk then then the child can wear a mask but every parent in this room has the right to a decision for what is best for their families thank you thank [Applause] you Mr Jim Gail Mr Jim Gail no okay uh Miss Amanda Hut Welker Miss Amanda the H welome
130is that Amanda okay yes state your name and your address and you have three minutes okay hi my name is Amanda Hut Welker and I'm here today as a concerned parent I do not want my kids wearing masks in school 30 hours per week indefinitely the school board has not provided clear benchmarks or a timeline for when we can expect the mandate to be lifted we deserve transparency and demand better communication from the school board there's overwhelming scientific evidence that children especially under the age of 14 are are less likely to have symptoms of covid-19 and even less likely to spread the virus than a teenager or an adult however you implemented a one-size fits-all mask mandate expecting a 5-year-old kindergarten student to be held to the same 7h hour perday maske wearing standard as
131an 18-year-old high school student your mask mandate does not follow the science and it's damaging our children physically and emotionally the science is clear about who's at most risk of having severe symptoms of of covid-19 and it's not school-aged children school-aged children have a 99.997% survival rate and in fact it's also not teachers in Florida either the average age of a teacher in Florida is 43.7 years old so nearly all the teachers in Florida have anywhere from a 99.6 to a 99.98% survival rate from covid-19 It is Well documented that the median age of of a covid-19 death is actually 83 years old the school board has disregarded the rights of parents to make medical decisions for their children you've made access to public education contingent on full and complete Mass compliance you've ignored the
132science and overreached your Authority I've heard story after story from Desperate parents about the negative effects on their children from wearing a mask all day complaints range from feelings of isolation and depression to trouble trouble breathing an inability to concentrate and even exhibiting symptoms of OCD and anxiety maske wearing should be a Schoolboard recommendation share with parents the science that's driving your mask policy if the science is clear and compelling then I'm sure parents will comply your current policy of forced compliance with zero transparency is alienating parents and destroying our trust in your decision-making ability parents have had enough we will defend our parental rights and fight for what's best for the health and safety of our children both physically and emotionally I urge you to resend your mask mandate parents must have a right
133to choose what's best for their children we are unifying we are coordinating our efforts and we will fight for our children thank you thank you Mr Brian Dada Mr Brian deada is Mr Brian delad out there oh okay okay that that's it he he's the last person thank you for he's not okay thank you moving on to item 18.01 administrative appointments and Human Resources Dr baban thank you madam chair um we have two uh appointments tonight first I would like to ask um for Discovery Elementary if is Jennifer Deets here in the audience yeah she's back there she is M can you please come up thank you Miss de for being hi madam chair board members I'm recommending this evening Jennifer de as the principal of Discovery Elementary School Miss Deets has been with valua
134County school since 2007 she's currently the assistant principal at at uh Champion Elementary and her effective date for this new position if approved tonight will be November the 11th colle you've heard the superintendent's recommendation is there a motion madam I'd like to move uh that we accept Miss Jennifer DEET as principal Discovery second the motion has been made by Mrs Cub second by Mr Carl persus is there any discussion yes there's something missing on your resume you survived my English class you're a ninth grader course she's a baruda full I mean we're talking about Cuda Pride right here so um congratulations many many congratulations um you haven't changed a bit you're as exuberant and lovely as you were just a few short years ago so I I wish you well and please invite us all
135out I will cross the county to come visit you in um another's territory there's a toll booth for that I know so but thank you congratulations congratulations to your mom too she's got something more brag about yes she does go right ahead Mr cologne and so uh I want to congratulate you and now that I've known that you survived her English class I know you are um more than ready and able to take on uh Discovery Elementary is a very special school to me in D5 and uh welcome to D5 and I look forward to working with you and and helping you in any way possible to make that school even more amazing than it is now I know the staff is looking forward to to uh a little bit of stability and uh and
136and I also want to um thank Mr mlan for his service he he uh uh has taken some time however his service to our school district was very very long and uh I'd say he's a happy man he is happy I he's just really happy and so uh he's happier than I could ever be uh and so uh again welcome and I look forward to uh visiting you at Discovery Elementary go drag it look forward to it as well thank you go ahead Mr persus yes and uh I'm so happy so proud of you as as well and all of your service with the bluch County Council PTA uh and H how many years did you have you served on that um since 2014 since 2014 so that's six years with the Lucha County Council
137PTA so she's been wearing dual hats probably more than dual triple four uh uh but uh certainly your input has been very U valuable to that or organization and I think it's funny uh what Mr clone said but getting back to Leslie uh Leslie was the principal of champion and now we have another champion going to uh Discovery and uh I know you're going to you're going to do well I know they're going to love you there too thank you um you're well I won't say but you know I I I think you're you're going to be very well received there and all of your energy and just the way you've been around Champion I can just see that going o over there so it's going to be super just yes any other comments if
138not congratulations uh M and I will call for a vote I made a motion and you second so M yeah I did say call Mr Ruben cologne enthusiastically yes yay Miss Jamie Haynes yes Mr Carl persus yay Miss Linda cuberg oh yes and Ida rright yes congratulations Miss de thank you speech we going a speech yes of course you're the first one the first one back to say few words yes well good afternoon and thank you Schoolboard chair Mrs uh idri Schoolboard members superintendent Dr bgin um colleagues family and friends principal ship is an incredibly distinguished recognition and role for which I'm very grateful and blessed to have the opportunity to fill I would like to first thank God for providing the opening in my life that has directed me to this position Proverbs 16:9
139tells us the heart of man plans his way but the Lord establishes his steps never did I imagine as a student in vucha County schools that one day I would have the opportunity to lead a school in this capacity I began my career with Lucha County schools in 2007 as a fourth grade teacher at Westside Elementary under the leadership and mentorship of uh Mrs Judy winch who recognized things in me that I did not see in myself after teaching for three years I moved into an intervention position and became an assistant principal in 2015 in the role of assistant principal I've served RJ Long Street Elementary ter T small Elementary and most recently Champion Elementary I've spent these past 5 years growing and learning with some of the best administrators teachers faculty and staff I've
140had the honor of working with some of the most dedicated principles in vucha county and would like to recognize them for their inspiration and instilling in me that it's always about putting kids first Mrs Judy winch Mrs Judith Watson Mr Steven Hinson Mr Cameron Robinson Mr Les mlan and Dr Rick in each of you have molded and shaped me into the leader I am today I'd like to give a special thank you to Mr stepen Hinson for always pushing me to see the big picture and for always picking up the phone to provide advice and guidance to Dr Rick in I appreciate the time that we have spent together and I'm grateful for your willingness to help me develop the skill set I needed to lead a school allowing me to make decisions under your
141watchful eye and for being an adviser in addition to the principal's mention I would also like to thank uh Mrs Vicky Presley and Mrs Rose Roland for providing Direction and Leadership to me throughout my career to my family and friends all of you are truly my rocks and I could not have done any of this without you to my parents Gail and Charlie de I appreciate um your unwavering love and complete confidence in me to do whatever I've set my mind to in life to my Champion family I'm sadden to depart ways but I'm happy to have had the pleasure to work with all of you the growth and development we have made in the last two plus years is phenomenal and I'm confident that Champion will continue the great work and thrive in the
142coming months you all are some of the most devoted and energetic people I have worked alongside and your hard work does not go unnoticed I've learned so much from all of you and appreciate the lifelong relationships that we have made this is not a goodbye but I see you later to my new family at Discovery Elementary I'm elated to become a part of the Dragon family together we will create a culture where every student faculty member parent and Community member feels valued supported appreciated and loved my promise to you is that I am and will remain 100% committed to ensuring the success of everyone I'm here to be your rock I look forward to building relationships and getting to know all of you to Mrs Miss scale Walden Miss Brandy hog Mrs Nancy W Mrs
143Carrie CAC and Dr Renee Clayton I appreciate you believing in me as well as your faith and trust in me thank you to the school board members and Leadership of alucha County schools for your support and confidence in me as I embark on this new Journey I'm eager to begin breathing fire and making the grade with my Discovery Family breathing fire thank you yes um second do we have here with us here Bobby Joe grivey AG no okay um I'm recommending um Madam chair board members for the assistant principal position of University Bobby Joe gy who okay did you say something Mr West G grieve okay sorry BJ grieve as the curriculum assistant principal at University High School Miss geve has been with vucha County for the past 15 years and and for the last
144four years she has been an assistant principal at De Delona High School her effective date will also be November the 11th okay thank you you've heard the recommendation from the superintendent for Mrs Bobby grieve is there a motion so moved because she was a district one girl and then went over to District 5 so she's coming back to District One okay all righty I will second that the motion was made by Miss Jamie Haynes second by Mr Ruben colog is there any other discussion and so we are sad to see her leave Delona High representing today however I'm glad to see her grow and uh she's only going a little bit ways to University High and so we'll keep her with Within Reach so congratulations Bobby and we are happy to have her back at
145University high thank you any other comments hearing none I'll call for the vote Mr Ruben cologne yay Miss Jamie Hayes yay Mr Carl persus yay Miss Linda cuer yes Ider right yes thank you and congratulations to miss greed you want to take a picture we want to move back up to the super attendance announce take a picture is she here with Deets oh let's do the announcements then yes Miss Deets uh please do not leave just yet thank you moving back up to 16.01 uh superintendent announcements thank you madam chair um just a few announcements tomorrow as we know it's Veterans Day and it will be a holiday for us um November the 11 2020 our heart heartfelt thank thank you goes out to all of our veterans and their families for the sacrifices that
146they've made and they continue to make for our country in honor of Veterans Day all schools in district offices will be closed our school board organizational meeting is next Tuesday November the 17th 2020 at 9:00 a.m. and it will be here in the boardroom at our District Administrative complex that will be followed by our valua County School Board leasing corporate meeting also Tuesday November the 17 2020 immediately following the school board organizational meeting the room at the District Administrative complex will be available for the the um leasing meeting our next School Board workshop and work session session will be Tuesday December the 8th 2020 at 10:00 a.m. in the boardroom District Administrative complex and finally our next regular school board meeting will be Tuesday December the 8th 2020 at 3:30 pm PM in the boardroom
147here at the District Administrative complex thank you superintendent um Miss can we take a photo with you we're going to take a 10minute break and we will resume it is 5:50 we resume at 6 at 6:10 so after debate [Music] e thank you we're going to resume our meeting moving down to um items 19.1 operations update Dr Bagan thank you madam chair Bo thank you um board you've asked for us to provide a monthly update to you regarding our Operations Division so we have with us here today Mr aen um who will share with you a a quick update he said very very quick no more than three minutes thank you look you're you're about to get a stand in Ovation stick to your your word on PPE HVAC and custodian Grounds Maintenance Mr Aken
148go for Madam chair board members Dr B Goan thank you for this opportunity uh for this presentation this evening um as uh asked we were uh asked last board meeting to provide masks to every school we've done that we also put them in the cafeterias with Ziplock bag so we're doing very well with our masks and getting everything out there including giving those to our charter schools and our private schools in the school district that were provided by the state uh our burn rate has slowed uh slightly as you heard earlier today uh we were at 104 now we're at $50,000 per week so we're moving in that direction in the right direction and still maintaining a clean and healthy environment for our students from a safety standpoint we're still looking at the safety for
149students first the Foy IQ is almost 100% install it is 100% installed um right now uh it's a better product that we have out there for our students uh and our masks and gloves are out there for everybody to use we also have signs that are there today the EOL laab uh which is the one we talked about earlier uh it's from Advent Health it's a uh hydrogen peroxide disinfectant takes 30 seconds to kill it's a dwell time uh we are now deploying that uh to all of our schools along with uh our new uh wipes that we have they're roll out it's called the ecol laab wipes and those are going to be uh easier to use for our teachers uh this new product does not uh have uh any hazards associated with it
150and therefore it's a it's h safe for our students not I mean our our students and teachers for wearing PP equipment they don't have to wear any so uh disinfectant we have this out there now we're going to send this out to all of our teachers um as they get the product into their campuses so they be able to go through how to use that product and move forward with that HVAC um earlier today we talked about 750 failures at the start of the year uh currently right now I we have a daily uh morning brief what we call a huddle meeting and an afternoon huddle meeting to go over all of our problems in maintenance uh today we have as of November 6 I should say we had 11 uh AC issues currently that
151we are repairing uh core inspections um right now uh last time I uh presented it was 90% for custodia now it's 89.9% dropped at 1.1% our grounds maintained Uh current Open tickets we had eight as of uh August I mean I'm sorry November 6th one- day turnaround uh as of today we had 19 this morning with a two-day turnaround um and for grounds there was 14 failures I mean four failures for grounds for 92 inspections total date four 4% failure and 14 failures at our schools out of 106 failures which is 133% failure rate uh We've logged in 57 locations with e-ting uh from August 31st through November 3rd any questions colleagues any questions go ahead Miss cord I just have one um I have noticed some schools are having repetitive the same kinds of
152problems like cornado and Indian River uh with um custodial concerns is ABM doing anything to correct that because it's almost like it's every day yes yes ma'am so when we we get notified based on the uh Power flow or powerbi any issues that we see repeat Nicole Miller that was here earlier she's the one that follows up with an email and I'm copy that an email about sustainability um and any repeats that we have there's 46 repeats currently right now we want to make sure those are done we're asking ABM to go back and take a look at those to they're but and they're resolved I think at the end of the day but it happens again so sure I wonder if it's night crew it is in Staffing retraining I talked to Brandon we
153just had our meeting yesterday with Brandon Clark and their executive team uh one of the things we talked about was repeat failure or repeat issues uh and also sustainability so those two things we're concentrating on currently right now and identifying uh those those issues that are brought to our attention and I can give you I can send you an email with the the seven or eight schools we talked about yesterday and your two were on there same with uh Woodward there's several schools that were on there that Drew our attention to it to to make sure they can fix it some of it's staffing issues some of it's training issues okay thank you any other questions okay hear none thank you m aens thank you ma'am well that's a record it is all right let's
154[Applause] give honestly guess it's not Mr Akens it's really my colleagues who carry this way longer than need be but thank you Mr Akin our next presentation will be 19.02 District update do uh Dr B thank you madam chair we have uh two presentations under 1902 they will both be very brief also but at our last board meeting I did share with you that we wanted to provide the board and our public with an update of valua online and we're you know we've come a long way so where are we currently with Valia online what is going well what are some areas that needs Improvement and what we're doing about it also you will hear what we're work some of the things that we're doing to assist our seniors that are enrolled in valua online
155so that they can meet all graduations requirement Miss Patty core has been instrumental in working with the team along that I'll share with you that we have a great team there some of them have been volunteer some of them have Vol been volunt but regardless they have been doing exceptional work so I want to like to thank Miss pator and ask her to come up our assistant superintend of Middle School along with Dr Peterson principal of alucha online Miss Danielle ller principal intern for um middle school and then Miss Melissa Shaw the assistant principal rucha online Elementary they will be providing you with an update this even this evening sorry good evening Dr B chairwoman Wright and Schoolboard members prior to April 20th 2020 valua online learning was supporting 130 full-time virtual students and part-time
156students taking 7,000 semester courses when our full-time application opened on a on April 20th our numbers steadily increased to a Max full-time enrollment of over 9,000 students in addition our summer part-time enrollments were more than triple from the summer before no one could have ma imagined how much V could and would grow my dream for V came true very fast I would be remiss if I didn't take a moment to thank the V Administration and staff for this for their tireless commitment this summer Christa Chapel Mary timaran Emily Copa Amy shelf font Shanda Larson Rachel McQueen Deb Harnett Marjorie Fagan Deb Boseman and Renee Gutierrez V would not exist without the time energy and dedication of these Superstars and the veteran vucha online learning instructors I would also like to thank lesli frzy Stephanie Workman
157and miss Patty core and District level Administration and Schoolboard members for recognizing the challenge of this exponential growth and calling for an all handson deck approach to support valua online learning we were supported also by middle and high school counselors and data assistant principles and other District level support support Personnel that assisted us to provide what our families and students needed to get started in their online courses we are listening to feedback and making improvements to our programs that include a new phone system that is based online and streamlines customer service we have improved our processes for enrollment and scheduling as well as managing withdrawals and transfer grades we are thinking ahead to the second semester and improving the process to begin so that our students can begin on time our team of teachers school
158counselors and administration are closely monitoring student progress and pacing in their courses and are implementing interventions to guide and support families to be successful the start to the school year has not been without its challenges and we recognize that but right now our students families faculty and staff are settling into a routine that will ensure Student Success I am humbled and honored to have also been allocated administrative staff to assist with instructional leadership and management each has brought their own expertise to V to round out the administrative staff as I call their names I would like for them to stand so that you can put a face with a name they are all true leaders in every sense of the word and I am thankful for them every day principal intern of the High School
159Division Miss Danielle leer assistant assistant principal of the Middle School Division Mrs Christina WI man assistant principal of the elementary division Mrs Melissa Shaw assistant principal of ESC Services Mr Kevin Clark and not with us tonight specialist curriculum and of curriculum and instruction Mrs Christa Chapel our current numbers as of November 4th are shown in the chart that number is approximately 1/8 of the total vucha County school student population full-time virtual students take six courses with us and can still participate in their Zone school activities this is the first year that we are offering full-time virtual opportunities with valusa County school and vucha online learning teachers first students in grades K through 12 part-time vucha online students are those students who take virtual courses in addition or as part of their brick and- mortar school
160schedule Elementary part-time students can take up to four virtual courses with us secondary part-time virtual students can take between one and five courses with valua online learning it is important to note that vucha online learning does not only provide instruction for those students that choose either full-time or part-time virtual learning opportunities but we also provide instruction for students in the credit retrieval Labs the e-learning labs SE EBD classrooms Hospital homebound off-campus instruction home instruction and partial enrollment for home education off also new this year in enhanced vola online learning we are offering the full Continuum of services for students with disabilities including consultation support facilitation co-taught separate class and access courses as well as support services for our English language Learners and gifted education Learners while this may look different in a virtual environment it
161is truly personalized learning for all students in fact no other District in Florida is off offering this level of services for their students additionally now that schedules are solid we are jumping into offering extracurricular activities for our students having our students vote on a school mascot planning for school pictures and More in any type of virtual scenario collaboration between families students the brick and mortar schools and vucha online learning is essential to student successful completion of courses we appreciate the re the support we've received from all stakeholders to do what is in the best interest of all students we offer many courses that mirror what the brick and morar schools offer to meet the scheduling needs of our students our school counselors spend hours personalizing each student's schedule to promote achievement grade promotion and graduation
162in addition we offer many other courses such as 11 advanced placement courses three courses that offer students the opportunity to earn an industry certification four World languages outdoor education africanamerican history driver education for permit forensic science peer counseling and many many more because of the unique needs of our diverse student population we offer our courses in three platforms Florida Virtual School or FLVS Edgenuity and canvas each is unique but offer each student choices based on their academic history course interests in learning needs we are one of the only districts in the state that offer core courses in two different platforms FLVS and uity for our secondary students to meet their learning needs our students in grades 6 through 12 can take most of their courses in either uity or FLVS and many of our electives
163are offered in canvas our students in grades K through 5 take their courses through FLVS in our franchise agreement because we are a franchise of FLVS we must follow the policies and procedures put forth by FLVS currently for each platform we have the following semester course enrollments in FLVS we have approximately 19,000 semester course enrollments for canvas we have approximately 3,000 semester course enrollments and a genuity we have 4,300 semester course enrollments that's a total of 26,300 semester course enrollments prior to this school year vucha online learning had 3 to faculty and staff currently we have 320 plus faculty and staff this team is truly amazing and so very student focused from packet distributions to Friday evening Bal alongs and movie Nights this group of Highly skilled Educators have taken a leap of faith jumped
164in 110% and out of their comfort zone and are making online learning a reality and a viable solution for so many students their dedication and knowledge is all inspiring at this time I would like to invite Mrs Melissa Shaw to speak more about how the elementary division is ensuring that their students are successful similar to a traditional brick-and mortar School setting valua online learning and District staff work together to ensure the academic success of all students classroom teachers monitor student progress in each course and identify students in need of additional support interventions or remediation teachers then schedule small group lessons or one-on-one sessions to help students Master necessary skills Andor Concepts additionally teachers identify students who are struggling to keep up with the Florida Virtual School pacing in a virtual world students are still required
165to adhere to compulsory education laws however it looks slightly different from our brick and mortar Schools student attendance is no longer tied to seat time instead attendance is tracked based on consistent forward progress in the students courses teachers work closely with our school counselors who play a key role in ongoing progress monitoring for our students together our counselors and teachers work hand inand to continue and conference with families to ensure students are receiving the education they deserve for students in need of additional supports teachers and counselors complete the PST process for for either attendance or academic concerns our administrative Team Works closely and collaboratively with school social workers who are attached to the students home schools to provide students and families with the necessary guidance Andor resources to ensure Student Success I'd now like to
166turn it over to miss leer so that she can share some additional information about progress monitoring at the secondary level as Dr Peterson shared each of our SE secondary full-time students has six V teachers that provide teacher initiated tiers of support instruction teachers begin each course with an individualized welcome email and a welcome phone call in addition they provide follow-up communication via email text messages phone calls this occurs weekly all teachers offer weekly live instruction one-on-one tutoring and offer additional or alternative practice activities to increase student understanding if needed we have eight secondary school counselors three in the middle school and five in high school broken up by grade level with two counselors covering our senior cohort all counselors are completing credit checks for their students to ensure they're on track to graduate and they're
167in the courses they need our senior counselors are conducting senior meetings with their students and their parents or Guardians just like our brick and mortar counselors do we want to make sure our families are well informed and that they have all the resources they need to ensure graduation for their child as you know our seniors get walked back to their zoned high school at the end of the school year and count towards their zoned high schools graduation rate as such it is so important that we work closely with each zon School's graduation Assurance team to monitor the progress of our students and ensure they're being provided the resources they need to be successful whether that is with vo or back at their brick and mortar School currently we have 552 seniors that are supposed to
168graduate at the end of this school year 24% currently have below a 2.0 29% still need to meet the graduation requirement for Algebra 1 and 51% need to meet the graduation requirement for English language arts we have provided each high school with a spreadsheet of their V seniors including data on all graduation requirements and testing with the support of Information Technology Services all high schools now have access to view Valia online learning student data and focus making it much easier for us to progress Monitor and communicate with parents and Guardians as a team we also provide each high school with weekly updates on student progress and individual courses together we are communicating with students that are not making adequate progress in their courses to problem solve and ensure that each student has what they need
169to be successful so they can earn credit and graduate on time additionally we're working very closely with with the Zone School social workers to contact our students and families that have not accessed their courses and are not answering teachers or administrators before I pass it back to Dr Peterson I would like to share that in the transition from the first quarter to the second quarter in middle school we have retained 96% of our students and in high school 97% of our students and I believe it's due to many of the things that I just talked about and the support that we're offering our students and our families at this time I would like to pass it back to Dr Peterson to share some positive things our students and teachers have been doing thank you both
170like I said this is a wonderful team I couldn't have picked it better I mean I didn't pick it we have many high have had many highlights this school year including Elementary packet pickup which is an excellent time for our teachers to interact with their students and families online contests such as who can dress up the mummy the fastest live lessons in Civics regarding responsible citizenship faculty and dress faculty and staff dress up day as super dress up as superhero day the V created newsletter called voltage and engaging live lessons uh we are just getting started we are planning more extracurricular activities school pictures and online events to solidify the relationships we are building with our students and families this is only the beginning of something great that will be ingrained in Valia County schools
171for a long time and we are ready I would like to show um a couple of highlights um if we can and our newsletter is called voltage um this was created by our journalism group of students middle school students and if you look at it there is um uh student choice and student voice thank a teacher um help us pick our school mascot um artists needed there's November updates um get involved that's about our clubs that we're um beginning to start uh Student News um there's a pol these are written by our students politics environment um Sports analysis um a paw and Pals so students wrote about their animals so they're really putting into practice their journalism skills science fiction um if you click on the top where it says Elementary there's a tab up
172there that says Elementary there is uh students of the month and a teacher of the month for each level um ALS also and there's our November teacher of the month Amy shont who is also our teacher of the year nominee um and if you click on Middle School please oh you can't see it okay because of the webcam there we go nice and again we have students of the month and teacher of the month and we're going to be doing this for the month of December also um just things that our students have created which I think is awesome also in addition we have a sample of a live lesson this is um Mr intrado and he is an elementary teacher okay Charlotte you're gonna get to choose someone okay and try to pick someone
173that we haven't called on yet it was hat day okay um Jessica Jessica okay thank you Charlotte okay Jessica going help me out here what you get for four time five you get 20 need 20 okay and can you help me with the number line what did I need to do with the number line so you have to go by fives cuz you have four groups but you're doing by five okay so how many little five uh little bubbles do I need or half bubbl only four four one two three four and then I that's when I check my work one two three four and then I can add these together right five plus five what's five plus five Jessica 10 okay what's 10 plus 10 20 20 is the answer good job and let's
174say s is that what you did yeah I see Jackie did it too okay and can you uh what happens if I switch the numbers around it's going to be the same then it's going to be about five time four but still going to be the same yeah five time four it's going to be the same I see a bunch of people are super excited to gu it right give me a thumbs up if you got it right oh yeah I like that okay good job guys we're g to move on we're almost done here we're g to move on to the next slide or next PowerPoint fun is kind of fun right fast and that's just a sample of what we're doing every day in vucha online online learning thank you and I'd like
175to open it up to questions thank you colleagues anyone who would like to start I'll start with you Mr persus thank you madam chair great great presentation uh exponential growth I think you said yes to say the least right did did you ever imagine no it could ever be like this no no way but it's awesome it is well it is um so miss Le you were you made some comments uh throughout a few St statistics about 29% of students uh failing or not passing algebra and 51% not uh passing uh what was it the other course not having met the graduation requirement for English language arts so I'm assuming that is based on this last grading period that just ended I mean where they are they still haven't passed or do they got a
176I mean those are year-long courses right so that data is specifically to the testing graduation requirements for Algebra 1 and for English language arts so the FSA Ela and Algebra 1 which they can earn concordant scores on Alternate assessments as well but as of today right um 51% of our students have not met that Ela graduation requirement yet right and so they will have to um I mean they are currently taking those courses yes they are currently taking English and math courses with us um the the biggest concern and the biggest um barrier we're facing right now are these students are primarily inua online learning because they don't want to be at a brick-and-mortar school due to the pandemic so getting them to come to school to take their assessment is a challenge yeah um
177so we are teaming up with the high school testing coordinators to make sure that the students are personally invited that they know when the assessments are where to be and the safety protocols that are in place to ensure that they're they're safety okay and and then how how do what's your strategy with the algebra what same thing same um same strategy for algebra um also making sure that the students are aware of the alternate assessments that they can earn a concordance score on so particularly Algebra 1 our senior cohort this is their last year that students can only albra 1 EOC Zone schools as well okay and so you said you had two guidance counselors that track that for you yes we have five guidance counselers in the high school broken up by grade level
178two that are covering our senior cohort you know that not all of our students scheduled to graduate this year are seniors at this time so some of our other counselors are covering the students that are supposed to be graduating this year year um but just supporting them making sure they're in the courses they need for graduation and making sure that they're educated on the assessments when they're being offered and where they should be going and when and um you were at the high school um yes sir at a couple of high schools so you know you know the student that you're dealing with right and you know the reluctance and the excuses yes and uh you know yes oh I didn't know correct that's why the team approach is so important all of that and
179uh so and honestly for some of these students virtual may not be the best option so we're trying to support them now if you're not being successful now let's team up with your brickin mortar school and together let's make sure you have the resources that you need and we want them to feel welcome too at their Breck and morar school hey we'd love to have you back we'd love to support you here's what we can do for you to make sure you're going to graduate this year sure and is it is it are I'm sorry I'll stop after this but is it because I'm so concerned about the seniors I mean you know I mean no the other kids mattered but right now it's the three weeks to three nine weeks to go and um
180so do you is it the teachers and the counselors that communicate with the parents about hey your child still you know needs to pass these courses this requirement is not going away just because we're belua on online that's correct and that's what we do our teachers are Stellar at making sure that they're offering additional resources to our students to help them prepare for those assessments and prepare to pass and be successful in their courses and toward their graduation requirements in uity we have um EOC prep courses the algebra 1 prep course we have um the FSA prep course and sat we have um act so that students can earn those concordant scores or do what they need to do do to earn those graduation requirements our teachers pinpoint exactly what those students need in order
181to pass those assessments well I think you're all doing fabulous fabulous job um I know you have some amazing teachers who have we do transferred to your pro program amazing teachers and principles hate you all very much much don't don't expect any Christmas cards or anything that's okay because you're not getting them I'll tell you that all thank you madam chair okay Mr colog and so how many seniors do we have 552 that are scheduled to graduate this year so I will share this concern with the superintendent that I think that the strategy of them coming to us is not going to work they are not in school for a reason and I don't know how many great minds we could put together to figure out and put because we've really have to put some
182resources behind uh the students and and and helping them be successful and um aside from document document document but still the goal is to have them graduate that's a lot of students and um you know there are some who are going to say you know what I'll come to the school but there's a reason they're not in school right now and it's you know a lot of them are legitimate and so um I would challenge you know if what do we have that we can do you I'm sure great minds of V could figure it out and and you know we could probably throw some more resources at you know whether it's you know I know they have Algebra Nation and those but you know we really have to you know I mean you guys
183have been drinking from a fire Hydra and I think we almost need to turn it around on them and say Here's Ela here's algebra let's do this uh because there's a very short time period in which we can get them there whether it's with uh sat whether it's you know per whether you know we just got to get them there so that's my biggest concern and so I'll just and I'll share with you Mr Kong this is preliminary data as I shared within the last board meeting that counselors were given assignments and they were starting to look and see like attendance right um School how the students were fairing academically so we will be putting a plan of action for each student that would be the next step as we continue to progress monitors this
184is just preliminary wanted you guys to know where we are and and again thank I mean I can't thank you guys enough I've I've bugged you enough Susie Susie yes you weren't supposed to smile so happy oh yes but you know I acknowledge your hard work and the hard work of your team and uh I mean drinking from fire hydrants the only way I could think of what your year has been like so again thank you and uh we'll continue to do good work thank you thank you Mr clone I didn't understand your question so what was your question so right now we've got 500 students who are seniors 500 change and how many have not passed Ela 51% 51% and so um the strategy that they mentioned was having the the local school reach
185out to the student to have them come in to get to the resources versus the resources coming to the student where they are because those students are not in school for a reason and so you know the thought that all of the sudden they're going to say yes I'll come back to school if they have a legitimate reason not to a lot of these kids have probably taken algebra one years ago so just to clarify we have the resources to prepare them for the exams the the barrier that we're facing is getting them to come to school to take the assessment right so I mean again just whatever we have to do to go Miss H so I realized early on um just kind of paying attention to what parents and students were saying that
186that was going to be one of the biggest issues they were going to face was just getting these kids to come to a brick-and mortar setting to take the assessment so I had talked to Dr balaman about it and I think it's time that maybe we could assist with this as board members um I said maybe we needed to select other options or locations where they could go to take the assessment for example in Deltona if we could maybe get the center at Deltona to allow the assessment to be administered there you know where they're spread out further it's not a building where a lot of people spend the entire you know day or a lot of students you know even when seab Brees test they test at one of the hotels you know on
187the beach side or something so I feel like if we can't get them because that's what's holding these kids back what's holding them back is they have not passed the assessment to earn their high school diploma and so we may need to think outside the box and look at where in our communities you know maybe there's you know an area at Embry Riddle or an area at Daytona State or an area at bethon cookman that if we can set it up that they could go there in smaller numbers or something to take the assessment to overcome that hurdle because that's what I have noticed is some of the parents just making the complaint about not wanting to send them because they can't take the test virtually there's no way to do that and that's you
188know when you look at those numbers so it's about 280 of them need to pass the ELA assessment or they're not going to earn their high school diploma and our goal is for them to graduate so I think we need to look at some so Dr B I'm going to chime in a little bit on that so are maybe that is something at the state level because if you're going to offer a true virtual program testing has to be truly virtual you can't send someone somewhere in a true virtual program so it's not a valua issue so it's not you but you cannot offer a true virtual program and then expect people to go somewhere else for testing I I absolutely agree and I work with um all the other um leaders of the virtual
189schools and the districts to to talk about ways that we can approach uh Tallahassee um and our group to try to get virtual education recognized uh that it is different than brick and mortar and testing is involved in that so we work closely um together to try to um make our voices heard in Tallahassee uh we also have Herbert Street Center where we do have a room um a a we can call it the testing room the training room where we can bring students in there the um the challenge can be the testing calendar making sure that we can uh fit them all in in the time frame to get the test done we've done that in the past not obviously not with this number of students but we have brought students into a site
190uh to test so that is something that we're already preparing for our testing coordinator um is Christina wisman at the secondary level and she has been coordinating with all of the schools uh their testing coordinators getting our students in making sure our parents and our families know they get the calls the school messenger calls text messages and emails regarding those tests um just making sure that the families are um fully informed and we're working very closely with the schools she does a great job so colleagues that that I challenge you all to make sure you take that challenge to Tallahasse because if we're going to have Florida virtual and even if I if we have a partnership with Florida virtual you can't have a virtual program and not actually provide virtual learning from a to
191Z and testing would be included in that does Florida virtual online tting Florida virtual does not they send their students back to the Student Zone school to test and and so as we think about I I don't even want to think about FSA wasn't even thinking about that because the reality is that you know it won't be socially distant um there will be and I was at one school where they were I don't know what assessment they were doing but there were students who were home students and school students and you know it was just very challenging because of the number of students that were in that one area that's not what you know they're they're keeping their kids home for a reason and so when we think of FSA you know we don't have
192the capacity to and and having lived it with my own son there's a difference with the computers the way they log on it it it's I don't even know how we're going to do that with that many students students in the fall and so I I think your thought process is good because you know maybe the testing needs to be on a Saturday or Sunday in a gym where there is no other bandwidth being used across the district where they can socially distance and do it in waves I mean I I can't I'm not even thinking that far and some of the High School principles have offered their locations and also just um important to know that 51% those students did take the ACT NCR this fall and they did their retakes this fall that
193we don't have the assessment data back yet so I anticipate this number to go down yeah so I mean again we're thinking big picture because we're going to have FSA in the fall and I can't even imagine how we're going to get and and and so I I would rather us think proactively to get the numbers rather than uh encouraging families to opt out because of the pandemic and that's a whole another can of worms uh you have a question either one of you I I have a comment um I have two or three um based on what you said I've been a an assessment Proctor you know quite a few times as far back as the hsct um and FCAT as well as um but not the FSA now I understand why there are
194some foreign names on my list of students show up and invariably these students did not come so this has been a an ongoing problem for for quite a while so it does need to be addressed at the State Legislature uh level to accommodate those students so thank you for bringing that up um I saw you you you are doing uh AP um uh advanced placement uh classes are you also doing IB we cannot do IB by the international Borat um guidelines okay and then the last one is a comment um you had to move physically move you had to set up all your laptops and all your wires in a in a brand new building you had to enroll and talk personally and schedule students with their families I mean at one point almost 13,000
195and the phone calls that you received um I'm worried about you sleeping at night because a lot of times parents would contact me especially or or all of us to saying I can't get through the a u v what can you do I would send you an email and it was always taken care of that afternoon or the next morning and I just wanted to say thank you uh Miss Peterson you were under a great deal of stress under a great deal um a time constraint that I don't think Superman would have been a or Superwoman excuse me Superwoman could have achieved and and I think there was a lot of misinformation out there thinking that if they didn't start the first day of SCH school then something was wrong but I I do know
196it took what weeks what three four weeks for everything to settle in Plus for us to be able to understand that you needed extra help at the administrative level counselor level not just teachers and you all um really work together um so thank you thank you all very much and also you miss pat patty core you don't get away with it either that she kept us informed a lot of what you all were doing so I just just want to say thank you very very much but we were very at least I was I was very concerned about how you are handling the time especially the time constraints to get everything together so quickly with so many Families Our intention was always to do what's best for students um and so that's where I um
197felt the stress is because I knew what the students needed and with this team um I have been able to sleep better at night and so has the so has the the eight of us that were running in the summer with this program thank you so thank you very much thanks anything you have anything you have anything okay all right anything else that the back no ma'am all right thank you ladies thank you very much next um item yes Madam chair um our next presentation it's also a um update that I've promised the board in relation to our assessment calendar if you recall I've shared that um our coordinators and Specialists and assistant soups and directors we began this work a couple weeks ago and actually we've been able to go back look at our
198assessment calendar and determine how we can streamline that process even further um I'm delighted to call up here to share with us today we have two phenomenal phenomenal K12 coordinators um many of you have met and I hope all of you have by now Miss Tammy Deary she is our K12 cordinator for math exceptional knows her content area phenomenally well um we we also have Jen Taylor I think everybody knows Jen Taylor right Jen Taylor is our K12 coordinator for Science and we have also with us here um Miss Melanie Castor research evaluation and accountability and Miss rabinsky Desire rabinsky are specialist for ELA they're going to provide us with an update um in regard to our assessment calendar some adjustments that we've been able to make and some commendations and um hear from you
199go ahead team good evening Madam chair school board members and Dr balabin thank you for the opportunity to provide a brief update on the assessment with you today at a previous school board meeting I had the opportunity to discuss the topic of state and District assessments with you where you requested that I gather feedback from teachers on this topic during during our update today we will be sharing information related to that feedback as well as some action steps that we've taken as a result I'd like to turn it over to Jennifer Taylor to discuss the purpose of formative assessment with you Miss Taylor thank you good evening let's take a look inside a classroom join me in looking at this picture what do you see I see a teacher who's formidably assessing his class to
200find out what his students know and what they might still need support on what conclusions might he draw does everyone with their hand up know the answer do you remember being a student in a similar classroom with your hand up do you remember not being called on and maybe you had the right answer too should the teacher now move on because most of the kids in this classroom have their hands up asking a question during instruction to check for understanding is what we call a formative in education the information that the teacher gains as a result allows them to make decisions about where to continue instruction there may be very um there are many different types of formatives but the purpose of a formative is to diagnose learning and to inform the teacher if they
201need to move forward with new content or do they need to retach the same content but maybe in a different manner formatives should be quick they should be informal doesn't require studying the night before they're naturally woven into instruction and they're not necessarily graded and counted in the grade book this is an example maybe we can all relate to have you ever tried to lose weight especially after the holidays no the scale is a formative assessment it's a quick check each morning that you can use to determine if you're on the right diet and exercise plan to accomplish your goals if the scale starts to Trend down you continue your plan if the scale goes up you start to make a few adjustments either a little more exercise or a little less food but with
202both the scale is your formative assessment that tells you if you're going in the right direction so let's look back at this picture for just a moment no matter how amazing our teachers are and they are amazing as you know they have superpowers most are born with eyes in the back of their head they can answer a thousand questions a day with a smile and no matter what obstacles have been thrown at them this year they have found a way to rise above for their students but no matter how amazing our teachers are no one has the ability to just look at a student and tell their level of understanding just by a hand that's raised so let's take a look at this picture again there are a few students we haven't talked about what
203about the student in the blue t-shirt without his hand up do we assume he doesn't understand the content and he needs intervention or could he just be shy or maybe unengaged what about the child in the back of the room he's kind of doing the thing I used to do I'm not really sure if I know the answer or not what do we know that he knows and more importantly what does he need to become proficient in order to answer that question our teachers use formatives such as topic checks topic checks allow teachers to do individual checks for understanding in order to ensure all students not just the students with the hands up are learning Desiree our Ela specialist is going to share a math topic check with you and talk a little bit about
204how teachers do that to make sure all students are learning do thank you Mrs Taylor tonight we're highlighting one formative that an elementary student might take this is an example of a fifth grade math topic check it has five questions and should take students about 10 to 15 minutes to complete it's an it's important to not not that this is not an activity that students necessarily need to study for it's not something that has to go in the grade book this is an activity that students would complete as part of the lesson that would give the teacher deeper knowledge about what each individual student understands and what information or additional support that student needs these topic checks have been developed to blend into instruction and not to be a separate event these topic checks Drive
205instruction they help the teacher make decisions about the focus of the next lesson even better than hand raising they help the teacher make decisions about what topics and what standards to reteach this quote is a powerful statement about the purpose of formatives formatives are not not and I gotcha they are a how can I help you the purpose of a formative has always been to support teachers in supporting all of our students that support sometimes looks like what you see in this picture here the teacher working with a small group of students a teacher uses the information gathered from a topic check to group students based on what they need sometimes that need is intervention or remediation because a student requires more instruction or practice to master the learning sometimes that results in enrichment because
206a student is ready for the next step when others in his or her class are not quite ready to move on these actions generated by the information that the teacher has gathered from the topic checks create a learning path for each student time is something that we never have enough of therefore how does a teacher quickly and efficiently collect this information one way is to use the tools from school City Melanie is going to provide us some additional information and details about school city thank you Desiree to better meet the needs of students and teachers this year we have implemented a new assessment platform called School City through the technology of school City Teachers school and District leaders can monitor students progress to make data driven decisions in real time do you remember the example
207of the fifth grade math topic check we looked at a few moments ago after the students have completed the topic check the teacher will utilize the time-saving feature in school city called grade cam which is featured on the right side of your screen to upload those results in a matter of minutes the teacher knows which student needs supports on the given topic so they can begin to address the individualized students te needs I also wanted to share a little bit about our plan for training and ongoing support for all stakeholders using School City for the first time to prepare for the implementation of school City we hosted a series of training for all teachers over the summer and throughout pre-planning in addition to training the teachers we also trained school-based leadership academic coaches and District
208staff academic coaches serve as school City contacts and the first point of contact for communication and support for teachers additionally we have established a Microsoft teams for school City contacts that we monit her which serves as our main source for sharing resources communication and problem solving the ongoing two-way communication with the academic coaches through teams has been instrumental in the rollout of school City throughout our collection of feedback from teachers positive feedback on school city was a common theme that we noted we have highlighted some of the comments on the slide a common theme throughout the feedback from teachers is the emphasized focus on teaching and learning as well as the time saved collecting and analyzing data I will pause for a moment so you can read a few sample quotes from our teachers as
209I mentioned earlier at the recommendation of the board and Dr balabin we reached out to teachers for feedback on many topics including the frequency of Assessments the data reflects that 65% of teachers surveyed were happy with the number of formatives while 74% were happy with the number of summatives it should also be noted noted that this percent includes a small number of teachers who selected that they would like to have have more assessments provided by the district you'll also note that 35% of teachers wanted the number of formatives reduced while 26% wanted a reduction in the number of summatives the feedback resulted in the reduction of 19 Ela assessments from the elementary assessment calendar also based on teacher feedback we have left those assessments as optional for teachers who still wish to use them at
210this time I'd like to turn it over to Dr Tammy Deary to to discuss additional feedback so as we continue to look at our teacher feedback and be responsive we wanted to share our re revised assessment Windows because we thought this was important for you to be aware of in response to the feedback it was clear that a common structure was needed for assessment Windows if you notice in the chart the table will show the consistent assessment window for each level for elementary the number of school days for both assessing and scanning has been increased to 10 in secondary that same assessment window is at seven that includes assessment and scanning and for any assessment that is a writing assessment they are given 15 school days to administer score and scan in results that is
211in response to the deed to ensure that we have consistent windows that teachers can understand you'll see the data that 70% of the teachers surveyed were comfortable with those assessment Windows it should be noted that this percentage also includes 14% that stated they were struggling at the beginning of the year but now are more comfortable with these assessment Windows of to note is the 30% of the teachers that were surveyed that say they're still struggling a bit with meeting those assessment windows in response to this our revised windows are now more consistent increased communication of the change has happened which will allow some of the narrowing of these anomalies that they faced prior now that we have streamlined the process it will allow for consistency across the grade levels as we look at the next
212slide you'll see what looks like a pie chart had to put that in there MTH person as we are continuing to strive for that true continuous Improvement we must also be able to address the true concerns that are shared by our teachers throughout our collection of the feedback some consistent themes were noted when exploring the top three issues being experienced by our teachers you'll note the following the test security of vucha live students taking assessments from home lagging internet causing vucha live students issues within School City and the third piece of the pie the adjustment to the assessment Windows when looking at the the visual you can see that about two out of the three concerns are related to the valua live implementation of the assessments we will continue to monitor to ensure the Improvement
213of the implementation of those assessments for our students through school City and for our vucha Live program even though we know we have areas to continue to improve as as we continue to support our teachers we want to share that we are also receiving some accolades from many different stakeholders one of those accolades is coming from our state you'll see there that during instructional reviews our Department of Education Representatives have stated that our assessments are exemplars for other districts and have asked them to come and see what we're doing one of our principles Mr Tucker Harris from Palm Terrace States a student's performance related to specific standards is the purpose of teaching and learning to effectively monitor the progress of the children an assessment calendar is not simply needed but necessary and from a a
214teacher voice Robin dietrix a teacher at Citrus Grove Elementary shared this with us these assessments have made my life so much easier I do not have to worry about creating the right number of formatives and summatives assignments for my grade book book it is making it parallel across schools I think that Robin's statement about being parallel across schools is important to note for equity for all of our students no matter what school they are in in our district I'm going to transition it back to Melanie as we finalize our presentation at this time I would like to open it up to the board for any questions you may have go ahead so first of all I to congratulate you I didn't hear one acronym in that whole presentation so kudos to you and and and
215I want to thank you for um breaking it down uh I'm glad we didn't have to take the uh formative uh assessment no leave the scale alone we're not even talking about the scale we'll leave that alone uh but I I I think it's it was important for not only ourselves and the public to understand what is our goal and what we mean when we're talking about these terms you know as I stated to you when we met the last time when I went to school and it's funny you said the hsct because that's what I took when I was in school um but you know we had tests we had quizzes we had midterms we had finals that was it and so you know now you successful yes there go and so now we
216talk about you know formatives summatives midterms finals SATs PSATs I I mean per there there's all kinds of Assessments when in reality like you said you know it's really just saying you know did everybody get it and not just waiting for the kids who didn't get it to raise their hand because the reality is they probably won't so thank you thank you thank you and that was an awesome presentation thank you let go um good afternoon are the assessment times that you the the days that you said um have is that something that we developed or is that the maximum the state gives us so I would like to clarify what we have discussed today is for our local or District assessments these are assessments we have made within our district so we regulate the
217the windows as far as their Administration so that's an internal decision as far as these dates okay um I I think that's wonderful thank you for extending them um I'm just concerned with the frequenc you know mixing hours with the state and especially with writing like we we've talked before and and I'm very appreciative of the con of the communication you've had with us because it it does help understand a great deal um I just encourage you very much to keep up with the writing um especially the frequency the backto back of the writing assessments because it does take a long time to do those and I and as we as we do the dasas or what do you call the VTS usually English teachers do not need a full essay in order to understand
218whether student is getting the point can make an a statement um can back it up with evidence facts details and then write commentary you could find out in a paragraph and um and so thank you for listening to the the English teachers in the county um at at all levels even at even at the elementary level when Ela is taught it's so very important but I think more than any other um I guess curriculum the ELA teachers are the most um and and not to say the science and math and social studies are not I I don't mean that but but we we really are looking for feedback written written feedback um and I would love take you know I could take the fifth grade math I mean because it's a one answer it's a
219selection and it's one answer but Ela it's all written out and you have to judge whether the point was made and you need feedback on a lot of that and the feedback takes longer so thank you for extending the to 15 days that's three weeks but it's only two weekends um because a lot of that grading is done on a teacher own time not done during the classroom so um as we move forward just keep your ears open so thank you for having that initiative to in improve communication and to Stamp Out the misinformation but it's very very important because the heartbeat of course I'm I'm a little I guess colored in all of this I I do believe that the English teacher is the most important and just one of those things I must
220say you know um we're the heartbeat and we connect all the other curriculums together without us the rest of you can't communicate so I just want to put my two cents in but thank you very much um and I look forward to more communication from you and thank you thank you for that feedback Miss cfor so I want to thank you and I want to thank you for the present and for all the questions you answered when I spoke with you um about this prior to this presentation you shared when we talked um that as far as the topic checks go for math that they don't have to be entered into school City and and is that correct they don't have to be entered into a teachers's grade book in order for them to receive
221that information immediately and then be scored they are actually scanned into school city that is the platform that they go into yes' all right so they can go into school City but they don't have to go into their grade book all right um because you know I had still heard some stuff about that so I want to be clear and I apologize for Miss speaking on that but what I would still like to see um because I think this is what we need to still see is take these assessments and I appreciate the fact that you reduced you know 19 and I know Desiree that was you you had to do that out of the ELA for elementary but I still would like to see um and possibly it could be an Elementary calendar um
222you know and a middle and then a high calendar that just shows the the sheer number of Assessments that we're giving not just our local assessments but also have the state assessments on that and I want to piggy back off of what Mrs cber said because how this originally came up was what were we doing with the window for the state required assessments because the state extended their window for their required assessments but yet we had not done that and so you know I appreciate the timeline that you've given here for the local assessments and how much time you've given for teachers to have to not only administer them but have a chance to you know um score them and scan them in or whatever um and writing does take a lot longer so I
223appreciate the 15 days but I'd like to see just a calendar that shows how many assessments we're giving at each grade level in elementary and and you don't have to put I would prefer if you not put middle and high you know on the same like just give us an elementary timeline and middle a timeline and a high timeline that says and identify the difference between what's required by the state and what we are doing and how much time we're giving because I think that would give all of us a better picture um because people can go in and read this and say they haven't even looked at this presentation or they don't watch the presentation they're going to read this and they may just think that this is all the assessments together and it's
224still not this is just the local ones and I I think we need to be transparent with how many assessments we are requesting that students have to take and what the time frame is on those thank you but I appreciate your work and thank you desire producing 19 that's across all sixth grade levels so that's it was three to four per um per grade level so it sounds like a really big it sounds like a really you know big number but it is across across all of them so that's person yeah thank you madam chair I do also appreciate the uh great presentation and all the work that you're doing behind the scenes I appreciate the time we had individually as I answered you answered my my questions I my main concern was the uh
225to lower the frequency of summatives uh formatives I'm not you know formatives come and go and whenever you need to have them you have them and and the to make sure the teachers understood they didn't need to put those in their great their grade books and not to get all stressed about extra paperwork and extra time it's just to help them not to hinder them and uh and I think you're you've been you have addressed all of those things so that's great thank you thank you thank you any other questions um I think you you address addressed my concern um I I know three of us was just concerned about the amount and so then when we heard teachers complaining about or had a concern about the mouth and the window uh that was concerning
226to us but thank you for clarifying that and providing us with the information and uh as well as the survey that you did with the teachers thank you ladies thank you it's a happy day we're just clapping away we're a church here I don't know what what did y y'all got about 10 minutes before I leave y'all I'm moving down on to item um 20.01 and before we vote on the item if we have any cards as relates to this action item can we have them do we have any related to any of the action items okay thank you and most of these we have um discussed doing our board Workshop so 20.01 the audit committee Dr ban yes Madam chair we have again with us here um if you have any additional questions so
227she will share the recommended internal audit for fiscal year 2020 2021 briefly and if you have any questions we will answer good evening again Madam chair board members and Dr balabin uh would you like me to bring up the uh risk assessment or are we okay without no I think we wanted to just vote on what yeah Madam chair you you just need a move to approve the audit report is that what you're looking for uh but we also have to come up with the next action so that's two different items that we need to provide we need to approve this correct I believe that the other audit uh acceptances were on the consent agenda this is just strictly for deciding on the the new audits that you will the new on to do yes
228so you want to know the the the two or three items yes the yes the the ones that were recommended Ohad right I know the audit committee had recommended number two operation Services maintenance and operation they had um the White Fleet the operation Services of the White Fleet and the last one was Financial Service of healthc care but we decided that we wanted to look at Food Services am I correct a schoolway cafe so I'll be ready to make a motion and so with that being said what what are the items we want the committee to look at go ahead Mr President well I just I she were you going to come back with us with some schoolway Cafe what did you say the federal audit was this year so they've had uh they have
229had audits during um this fiscal year the desk audits um where they've looked at claims um and I believe that um Mr aen had sent you some information I'm not not sure that you had time to review that but basically they looked at two different months and they found no um concerns nothing to um comment on um I will say that a couple other things um that we did uh look at and you were sent but I know that back in um the early uh early summer I believe it was that they did uh send around um from around the state the department of agriculture requested information on um the projected losses the fund balance um how much less Revenue they were taking in from reimbursements as well as from sales um and I did
230um find something that the Florida agriculture commissioner um Nikki freed she had asked at one point for the state to give cares act money to the school lunch uh programs and reference that several states have used used it the estimated loss of the summer program providers that she referenced um for serving lunches during the summer were two was $262 million Statewide as well as that they may face additional uh losses in the first half of the fiscal year 2021 of $370 million in nutrition funding so I mean I do I do want to stress that um this is obviously an issue but I have never felt that there has been any um of course not mismanagement but I feel like the staff there is is very good they're very um on top of everything and
231their audits have been good I really do um feel that this is a result of the pandemic and the reimbursement rates that they received in the spring were um significantly lower based on the summer rates not the normal school year and they were required I remember that we did serve um free lunches and um breakfast so um I it's not that I'm discouraging that but I do feel like we will have other audits um including their Federal audit coming up uh and that if it's something that we wanted to we wanted to look at we still concerned about later on that we could take a look at that further um but of course it is all up to you but that is that is my recommendation so my question is based on the email that
232we received about what the loss and revenue was for the spring and then what the loss of Revenue was up to this point you know where I'm still struggling with this is then what the total suggested loss of Revenue was going to be I just don't I can't take those two numbers you know the the one we were given concerning the spring the one we were given for the first part of this year and jump to where you're you know someone saying this is where we're going to be by the end of the year because it just doesn't those numbers don't line up like you don't take a 1 million and a and a two million and get to almost you know 15 and a half or 16 million in a loss and so I
233I think what happened was we each got that information and I'm speaking for myself it just doesn't add up you know that all of a sudden you know you take a group that typically funds themselves and actually makes money and you turn around and put them in the hole in one year's time there and since so my issue is since no one's been able to tell me since we got that email and started asking questions no one's been able to tell me or sh show me how we're going to get to that point and so I think that's why you know in the middle of all of this because had um had we not met as at an as an audit committee and already came up with two recommendations to present for you to present
234tonight had I had that information going in when I met with the audit committee I would have shared that information and said here's a it's a red flag so I mean is the information shared with us still valid that we're still looking at that type of a loss by the end of this school year or is somebody's math wrong well I I think that what they were projecting is based on if we do nothing and these these losses continue they they continue to not have the reimbursements and the sales based on the number of students at that time I mean I think it was a projection in time and I think what they were doing is being very proactive to um address that possible um level of loss um I mean we can sit down
235and go through all of those um their financial statements if you know you're still not feeling comfortable with that I'd be happy to do that with um Mr Aken and with Heather and and any of her staff um but I I mean I understand what you're saying but I think that this Pro I think the problem really was twofold again it went back to all of a sudden we were in pandemic and everything was closed and there was no Revenue but then we started serving meals to the community um to students and then found out I mean it's similar to what we've been experiencing you know you start down a path you're doing the best that you can for students and you're trying to juggle the different parameters that are going on and that are
236changing daily so um you know I hope that we I'm confident I shouldn't say a hope but we have budgeted um in the cares act to get some of of their money back when like the bus drivers and all of the extra PPE and things like that that they had um paid for upfront you know because they certainly were one of the first ones to need all of that PPE to address serving those lunches to students and then that continued on through the summer as well that they were serving them and so that was another that was another scenario you know that continued on and um it wasn't that they ignored it I mean they were um anticipating that you know they were starting to struggle but it wasn't a critical point until we came
237back to school I think and um you know I I do think that they did the best they can to move move positions around and again to not to not uh eliminate any jobs you know I mean I think that has been a resounding um direction from the board and so I know that they moved um staff where they felt like it was needed in vacant positions and then move them from where schools that they thought didn't need as much staff because of the level of um of students that didn't return but again it was all projections so you know I and I know that this was brought forward to begin addressing and we were discussing it but I think that they were trying to be proactive and saying if we don't do anything thing
238this is what could happen and the general fund does if they don't have a fund balance for 3 months the general fund will have to fund that and so I think that's the other alarming piece that they wanted to make sure that they clearly communicated so I don't think it's necessarily a point of mismanagement as it is we are trying to be proactive and communicate this to um to the board and to District administration well and so I think one of the questions I'd have to ask is so when we went into spring and continued Into Summer you know we became summer feeding sites which is what we've done every summer for years and to the best of my knowledge I've never heard that during the summer we've lost Revenue you know by feeding during
239the summer so I'm just still not totally grasping or understanding because you know we didn't start feet I mean we fed based on the fact that they went ahead and called spring summer feet you know so we weren't feeding any differently than what we do I mean yes okay the one thing we did differently is we did put some buses out on the road and I still support the fact that we put buses out on the road because we had children that would not have had food if we had not put those buses out on the road but we didn't even continue the buses for summer I mean we just did the buses for that short time during the Spring and then in summer we were just kind of like okay parents if you need
240food you've got to get to a school and even now you know for the parents that need food that have chosen to stay at home they're still having to come to the school so we don't have that cost I just don't I just don't know and I'm not saying that someone mismanaged something I'm just trying to really wrap my head around you know have and the question would be have we lost funding every single summer when we've done summer feeding and if we've never lost funding before during summer feeding why have we lost it now and you know I understand the piece about maintaining the Integrity of not laying employees off but my understanding is we didn't fill some of the positions in schoolway Cafe and we're feeding kids breakfast lunch supper snack and we're
241getting the food out to the community so I just don't know where the breakdown is is it that the state and or federal government is not funding the summer feeding or funding feeding in the way it's been I did bring up the fact is it the additional cost of US double triple wrapping and packaging some of this stuff because you know I don't know how the rest of you felt but every day that I went and served breakfast lunch or supper somewhere it just made no sense to me to double triple package some of this like it's not even good for the environment all of the packaging that we're using and the packaging has to be costing a lot of money and I've talked to them about that and said you know I don't understand
242why if we we're cooking the pizza the way we've always cooked it now we're double packaging it before we hand it to a kid you know it just doesn't make any sense to me but I just don't know how that we get to 15 A5 million dollars as a possibility of being in the hole and because even if you lost your entire staff you're not going to make up 15 and a half million dollars so okay so Linda um miss cuber you had something um yes I have to do at schoolway Cafe I have two suggestions for auditing okay okay I have um I would like us to look at number two which is the operations and maintenance and um maintenance and operations and that's number two and then number 10 finances which it has
243to do with our health care those are the two I suggest our next auditing because number two it it it did say that this was a priority of the auditing committee and so my question to miss Mueller was they they listed all three so are they saying potentially they could do all three no we haven't budgeted for all three so it's just two we've budgeted for two and um I think that was what we intended last year but we kind of got we had a time crunch so they did them quickly but um really ideally they would space them out okay cool Mr colone so you know we have audits Federal audits but they are not audits designed to optimize operations they're audits designed to uh determine compliance with laws and rules and you know
244anytime you have an audit of that kind and you have no findings that's a plus when you do an audit of this kind you're looking for that optimization you're looking for that and you know yes this recent happening was a red flag FL but there were other things along the way in my 2-year Journey that have raised concerns uh in operations um in in things that just didn't raise red flags enough to say you know maybe one thing was more important you know we pick our you pick your battles and so you have to determine okay so we have this going on we have this going on which is the one that really really goes ding ding ding ding ding and sometimes it takes one convers ation two conversations three things to happen before you
245go whoa there's a theme here and for me this right now and so what the way I Envision this is not so much that something is not that something's being done wrong versus we could be doing something better based on best practices based on industry standards based on and so you know right now for me this is you know where the red flag the fire is right now and so if we don't put a fire for my impression if we don't put a fire line in front of it it's we're we're going to have a problem and so it doesn't necessarily mean and yes we could figure out what's attributed to covid and all of that but when you're doing an operational you're not only looking at today but you're looking at operations policies procedures
246and all of that and so um you know that's just my thought and um I think that's what's Bur burning right now when we asked earlier today about adding this additional if we wanted to look at schoolway Cafe what was the auditor's response she said yes they they could add a third one I mean that was your response at that time but I mean whatever I mean their recommendations they're going off the risk assessment and so I think those recommendations um are what they attributed to the top you know the top 10 um in their opinion when they did this um so I think that what she was saying is they would recommend the skoy cafe as a third one but you know there would be a cost again for that okay Mr Fus well
247I I thought it was U uh operation Services White Fleet Management was that one those were the two recommended audits based on the AUD and op a Services White Fleet Management that's one no it's two no that's two so and operations and it's number two and number six and then I thought there was maintain and then number 10 I can't read my own writing maintenance Properties or maintenance maintenance something well I think so the number two there's two that both of those are operation services but one is maintenance and operations number two and then number operations is the White Fleet Management maintenance and operations is one yes and then operation Services White Fleet Management is two yes that's correct so those are the two and then and then there is the um and then she
248said the financial services Health Care yes was that was a discussion you remember that was the last one well and I think that was only because the audit committee recommended the other two but that one was one that they F and you're saying in our budget we can only fund two of these well that's what we budgeted for I think it needs to be those those two but I don't know is that what you said Miss C I forgot what your motion I said the the one with the finan the finances number 10 about health care uh we've talked about that a lot um in the years past and because of what we're faced with with um healthare for teachers as well as I I I I understand but that's not what they said uh
249no it's just I just gave my two recommendations she that's what she was asking uh beforehand what two did we you know prefer I just pre I was just stating I preferred number two and number 10 yeah I I thought we talked ourselves away from healthc care because we just that that's I was just saying we just we just got two new bids and we just got all new bids so what's there to audit I mean that so I think where where we're at is a cross point because I think most of us have agreed on number two but I have two colleagues who would like to look at schoolway Cafe Miss cuber would like to look at Health Care the health plan the financials number 10 and you're saying stay with number two and
250number six correct so I'd like to stay with uh maintain op what is it operations uhhuh and maintenance and and operation Services White Fleet Management those are the two I actually support what the committee brought forward which is number two and number six my thought was if we could have added a third but we are not budgeted for a third then at that point that's when I would have asked that it be schoolway Cafe because of the new information that's been brought to light um I still think two and six are very important and and when we spoke you know as a committee and talked about them you know there are two areas that um you know are very popular audits that they do for a lot of districts you know to look at the
251processes and financial management pieces because both of those involve a lot of money also okay so saying the same thing so someone makes a motion we if we can't do a third one I'm I stand with what the committee recommended fine so can we have a motion I make a motion that we go with well actually no it's not best for me to make the motion it's best for because I sit on the committee oh that's sry you sit on the committee does she get to vote I move I move that we uh move forward with the audit to have uh two additional audit reports on did you call them items two and six yes items two and six Madam chair a second the motion has been made to move forward with uh two audits
252operation Services maintenance operations number two and operation Services White Fleet Management which is number six made by Mr Percy second by Miss cber do we have any cards for this one miss Schultz no okay any other discussion hear none I'll call for the vote Mr Ruben cologne yay Miss um say Miss Linda cuberg go ahead Miss cuberg that's okay I'll go yes thank you thank you Miss Jamie Hayes yes and Mr call pures yes and I right yes and then guys I I guess what we could ask if they want to look at schoolway C another one could you find out what that could potentially cost and bring it back to the board yes absolutely okay so they can she find that out and bring that back to you all at the next meeting okay
253thank you all right thank you moving down to item 20.02 authorization to advertise proposed to school board posy 303 Dr B thank you madam chair thank you board members I i' like to call up Miss Amanda WS who's our executive director for ESC Mr Kevin pendley our general counsel and okay they're both here thank you at this time they will share with us their recommendation as it relates to item 303 special programs and procedures for exceptional students thank you Dr bamman Madam chair board members uh item 20.02 ask for authorization of the board to advertise proposed amendments to policy 303 concerning special programs and procedures for exceptional student education this is an annual uh amendment to our local policy to address an align with required State uh statute and Federal Regulation it's a straightforward proforma
254authorization to amend that policy to be consistent um Miss WS is here if you have any questions about the specifics of that colleagues do you have any questions do know uh Miss WS yes M um is there a way in summary very briefly what what are the changes the changes this year consist mainly of the numbers that we have to input from last year to this year so the policies and procedures stay the same however um as I came on in July I did have some edits that were required um and that consisted of changing from 1819 to the 1920 numbers a few things were not addressed correctly and so I had to go in and make some adjustments for that I also had to make some additions to our fsaa um that's students on
255access points and how we test those students students um and so we did have to make a few adjustments to that um the the state's goal is for one% of our population to be tested and we had to make special um recommendations as to what we were going to do to to reach that goal with 1% okay thank you you're welcome any other questions heing none superintendent backman yes m'am chair I recommend approval to advertise the proposed amendment to school board policy 303 special programs and procedures for exceptional students uh you've heard the superintendent recommendation is there a motion I'll make the motion to advertise uh changes to policy 303 is there a second motion has been properly moved by Mr cologne second by Mrs CER any other discussion hearing none I'll call for the
256vote Mr Ruben cologne yay Miss Jamie Haynes yay Mr Carl P yes and Miss Linda cuber yes and ID right yes thank you team thank you thank you thank you moving to item 20.3 approval of pre-employment fees as you can see Mr Wes is already here good evening thank you Mr Wes proceed sir thank you ma'am and thank you board members uh good evening just wanted to bring before you the uh request to approve uh our pre-employment fingerprint fees we're very excited we have our new fingerprint machine we have it installed uh we have been trained on it and now we're just putting in place the fingerprint fees uh I've uh attached for you the actual fees for our pre-employment for all of our employees I'll take any questions that you might have at this
257time go ahead Mr persus when you get the results fingerprint uh they're immediate so basically uh that's the great thing about it is that we um we're actually able to finger print those right there and then get the uh report back from from the I guess I think it's the FD or that's correct yes any other questions go ahead Mr pal how does this compare to our current fee schedule using the third party for someone who's coming to work in our district this is actually cheaper than um our Field Print that we're using right now um for U because of course they have their overhead fees that that they charge as well so and what we what you'll notice is that we've actually made it cheaper for our uh support employees and our substitutes because
258um we're we're actually able to absorb some of that cost and you'll administrative fees that we have down at the bottom down here um that there's there set State fees Federal fees and and uh monitoring fees that we have in place and then the others are basically administrative fees that are are attached on there for that great thank thank you yes sir yes ma'am go ahead um I see our senior interns have to pay a fee yes ma'am they do they have to do that currently right now in order to to come into the it's like um a JLA screening it's basically it's not as high level as becoming an instructional employee but they still have to go in because they're with our students they actually we have an agreement with all of the colleges
259that we um have our interns come in with and they have them do that process is that customary with all districts yes ma'am it is um in sometimes I see the support hires it's $55 yes ma'am um is there a way and and I see where it has to be paid beforehand there's no way that can be deducted from your first we we've actually talked about it and and maybe like a um um you know depending on if they're hired uh what we want to start with and when when we talk to other districts about doing this since we're new with the the fingerprinting machine they actually recommended that we get the fee up front because if if an employee an applicant comes in and they don't pass obviously the fingerprinting they're not going to
260be our employees so we're not going to be able to use to garnish the wages but what we've talked about is possibly after they get hired to actually pay that back initially so initially we're going to we're going to take the fee up front and then as we start to um get hires and maybe get some money in in the coffers will'll be able to to to um I'll say garnish their wages once able to to do that yes ma'am so you're saying we we maybe pay that fee back to them afterwards is that what I heard you say no what I'm saying right now is that they would pay it to us up front but after we have it established there's a possibility that we may be able to say to let's say a
261substitute um will will hire you um and and that kind of thing and instead of charging you right then and there since since Fi print's not doing it we can do it and we can take it out of their first couple of paychecks okay okay anything to help because that's a lot of money agree 100% and that's what we're trying to do is to help particularly our our support employees yes okay thank you any other questions go ahead Mr car regard to the fingerprint is the fingerprints uh are are you getting information about arrests made in Florida or the whole country it's a nationwide database it is um but what we actually have to do is um and it is strictly just law enforcement so there have been questions about other things that come up
262as far as identification and that kind of thing and it really is just fingerprint so basically if you've been fingerprinted before you're going to show up if you haven't you're not but it is a nationwide database question yes' um six years ago when I was elected I had to be fingerprinted yes even though I was an employee just two years before that y um and if a teacher is out for a year and comes back to teach after retire you have to fingerprint again yes ma'am actually there's a it's like a 60-day period in which we have a um it's a a period that we can um use their same fingerprints but days they actually make us roll them again and do that yes ma'am that's actually statute sorry now M Bernett is going to
263be joining us next week yes ma'am did she have to pay a fee as well will when she comes in she's actually has a schedule to uh be on boarded on Thursday and I'm going to be meeting with her and going through the whole packet of information so so we should add school board members on here correct well you know what and yes you're absolutely right board members would be on here as well under instructional I would say so yes that's a very good point though I will add that okay thank you yes ma'am thank you any other questions it's good thank you all good yeah okay is there recommendation superintendent yes Madam chair I recommend approval of the adjustment of fingerprinting fee schedule for pre-employment and the inclusion of the Department of Children and
264Family Services background screening Clearing House colle you've heard recomend of the superintendent is there a motion move approval second the motion was made by Mr Carl Pur second by Miss Jamie Haynes any more discussion hear none I'll call for the vote Mr Ruben cologne yay Miss Jamie Haynes y Mr Carl persus y Miss Linda cuber yes I right yes thank you thank you all I tried Miss Bernett you they asking for money for you before you even start moving down to 20.04 fdoe uh superintendent bagman thank you madam chair fdoe oig 2020 d702 investigative report the presenter for this report will be Mr Kevin penley our gen General councel along with Miss Stephanie Marchman attorney for gray Robinson um both uh Mr pendley and Miss uh Marchman they will provide information related to the investigative
265report in this matter to our board thank you Dr Balin Madam chair board members uh item 2004 concerns an investigative report by outside Council stemming from an referral that my office received in August of this year regarding fraud waste and abuse the office of Inspector General for the Florida Department of Education requested that uh we conduct an investigation into certain allegations because of the nature of those I felt it was appropriate to refer that matter to outside Council for independent investigation uh Miss Marchman is a shareholder in the Gainesville office of gray Robinson uh and has conducted an investigation and we're presenting tonight her investigative findings and request that the board consider those for final approval and submission to for the Department of Education M Marchman good evening so good to see you all as
266Mr penley mentioned I uh conducted this investigation on behalf of the school board and issued a report which is in your materials on uh October 2020 and uh in conducting the investigation uh reviewed voluminous documentation going back to 2016 uh interviewed uh nine members MERS of the the staff and um developed the the written report and findings based on uh the information I received during the investigation and ultimately I found uh that the district has not engaged in in fraud waste or gross mismanagement as uh was complained of and I provided a copy of uh my report to the Florida Department of Education and we've already received word back that they were dismissing uh the complaint uh upon uh receiving the report that I sent them so I'm here and happy to answer any questions
267you might have about the report um I know it's fairly detailed and includes a lot of documentation but happy to answer any questions okay colleagues go ahead Mr I just I just had one I just wanted to clarify that uh I believe you said in the report by the way it was very uh good and thorough and comprehensive the way you and I think succinct too the way you analyzed each of the allegations or um issues that the complaintant made but uh I believe you specifically said somewhere in that report that you were not making a comment on the U the the termination of the uh former employee or the whistleblower aspects of that is is that yes did you do that did you choose not to do that the no no no the the
268that is correct my investigation was limited to the allegations of fraud waste and gross Management in the implementation of the enter Enterprise re resource planning system um because that was uh what the doe asked us to investigate um with respect to the The Whistleblower allegations um those were not investigated and I had I have no knowledge of of anything related to uh the complainant's employment or what happened to him during his employment thank you you're welcome Madam chair any other questions no I I thought it was very well explained um I I thank you I too thought it was very succinct um and self-explanatory um and very detailed um I'm it must have been quite exhaustive to get all of this together and in the right order but I thank you very much for this
269report it it was um quite enlightening so thank you you're welcome and I I before I went to law school I was a technology consultant so it was actually not as difficult as it might seem so I drew on my um past experience uh and and conducting this investigation but thank you thank you that's awesome are you go ahead Miss H so I too agree that the report was very um thorough but um earlier today during public input we heard um from Mr Kennedy's wife and she made the statement if I recorded it correctly that um he was not contacted you know to be interviewed but yet here in the document you know it does state that he chose um via his attorney not to participate in an interview so you know just to be
270you know transparent and everything and because she threw that out we're in the middle of litigation regarding any of those issues and so I think it would be appropriate that the board not comment on it or ask either of these presenters to comment on as well that's okay thank you very much yeah and I mean I in terms of um contacting Mr Kennedy about participating in this investigation I I did contact him and I have copies of the emails between myself and Mr Kennedy as well as the response from his attorney which was Mr Kennedy will not at this time be agreeing to an interview okay and and thank you for that because it's just you know I just wanted to state that because I figured you had your documentation it's just that was what
271was stated to us and I wanted to make sure that you know that was clearly defined so I hope that's okay and I didn't know we were involved in the middle of it but thank you I think somewhere along the line some of us got left out of some of this information okay any other comments hearing none superintendent baban is there a recommendation yes I I recommend the approval of the investigative report regarding case number 2 202- 07020 as a final order for submission to the Florida Department of Education Education Office of investigators General you heard the superintendent's recommendation is there a motion U Madam chair I move that we accept this investigative report by uh from Stephanie Marchman attorney for greay Robinson second the motion was made by Miss Linda cuber second by Mr
272Carl perses is there any other discussion hearing none I'll call for the vote Mr Ruben cologne yeah Miss Jamie Haynes yay Mr Carl persus yay Miss Linda cuer yes and Ida Wright yes thank you thank you thank you very much thank you superintendent bin we'll go to our next item which is 20.05 annual update to the equity plan yes Madam chair I'd like to call Miss anarie Ren um she's our equity and compliance officer along with Miss Rose Roland our student services um assistant superintendent Dr Gabriel Berea assistant super high school um they will be sharing with us today um an update of our Equity plan and we will welcome any input that you have good evening Madame chair school board members and superintendent baban it is my pleasure to present to you the district's
2732019 2020 annual update to the equity plan the equity plan is an annual report mandated by Florida statute it's a reporting tool that enables the Florida Department of Education to Monitor and ensure the provisions of the Florida Educational Equity act are adhered to and educational resources are equitably distributed the plan evaluates several several areas including student participation in level three courses gender equity and Athletics employment Equity single seex schools and teen parenting programs when looking at student participation in level three courses oh sorry go to the next one the the update evaluates data over a 5-year period and only reflects students who are in grades 9 through 12 taking a level three course so this means students that are in taking a level three course in Middle School are not counted when looking at the
274numbers and percentages for our minority students you'll notice an increase over the 5-year period for all level three courses however we did experience a decrease over the previous year's numbers black student participation increased from 40 7% to 53.9% over the 5-year period but decreased by 71 7.1% over the previous year Hispanic participation increased from 55% to 60.2% over the 5year period but decreased by 5.2% over the previous year when looking at student participation in AP IB and Ace here again we saw an increase in the numbers over the 5-year evaluation period but a decrease over the previous year's numbers black student participation increased from 8% to 10.4% over the 5-year period but decreased by 7.6% over the previous year Hispanic student participation increased from 13.33% to 14.3% over the 5-year period but decreased by 2
2752.3% over the previous year and now I'm going to turn it over to Dr berio to talk about some of the things that his area is doing and in uh good evening everyone in order to make sure that we follow the Strategic plan or align to the Strategic plan we want to make sure that we ensure access and equity for all students uh including um all of our sub groups uh when we enroll students in um AP IB dual enrollment um Cambridge and also CTE courses uh we want to establish uh in order to improve those numbers because even though the those numbers have um we have increased access and Equity uh we know that we can do always do a better job and we want to make sure that um the expectation is that
276for administrators at guidance and guidance counselors that um that we are enrolling those students in in those courses and that when they enroll in those courses they have the opportunity to take exams um to get um either certification or to P to take the AP exam to get college credit and the same thing with IB and Cambridge um we want to make sure that we increase not only the number of students who have um access to those courses and pass a test but we want to increase the percentage which is always a challenge increasing the numbers and the percentages at the same time um we want to utilize data chats to increase access and equity for all subgroups as measured by student enrollment so uh when we see that uh for example there's you know
27714% of Hispanic students or or 10% of U um African-American students enrolled in AP IB andas we want to make sure that that we are increasing those percentages to match uh the other subgroups as well next when looking at student participation numbers in dual enrollment we saw an increase in the numbers over the 5ye period and an increase over the previous year except for our elll students black participation in dual enrollment increased from 3% to 4.8% over the 5-year period and increased 8% over the previous year Hispanic participation increased from 5% to 5.9% over the 5year period and increased .9% over the previous year and for the and for the dual enrollment um dual enrollment is the one level three area that students do not have to take an exam at the end of the
278course if they pass the course they automatically get an acceleration point and they're considered College and Career ready um that's just one of the benefits the other benefits is that they get college credit so the more classes that uh uh the more uh dual enrollment courses a student takes just like AP and IB uh once they get that c or above uh they automatically get that college credit and uh and and you've seen students have graduated high school with an associates degree U and while not every student gets that associate degree the more courses they take when they go to college they they save money um and they're also able to graduate within four years which is always the goal uh so you know we we want the the challenging part with dual enrollment is
279that they have to have the criteria met uh to be able to get into a dual enrollment course so in other words they have to have the correct GPA and most of the time they have to take the per this past year was the one exception where the per wasn't required because of covid-19 uh but we want to make sure that students for them to have access to dual enrollment we want to make sure that we're monitoring their GPA and that that they are taking the per uh uh at at the appropriate scheduled time so that they can take the courses and and while we encourage dual enrollment uh we have students that are taking dual enrollment and AP or they're taking dual enrollment AP and IP and we want to open up those opportunities
280for every student regardless uh or especially because of subgroup but to give them that opportunity for for um College and Career Readiness okay next we'd like to take a look at gender equity and Athletics and Title 9 compliance in 2019 2020 Mainland High School and new Sumer Beach High School were 100% in compliance with all the components of the self-evaluation all of our remaining high schools were in compliance with all the components except component number one and those high schools had to complete a corrective action plan to do um to tell us what they were going to do to become in compliance and those can can be found in appendix G and now Dr Barry is going to talk a little bit about Athletics so so one one of the ways to to um to
281help with gender equity in athletics is uh can be to eliminate the payto playay criteria because then you open up the access for all students and and there's no concern from the students part on well I can't afford that sport or or uh they're worried about the cost and and although we have um systems in place where if a student where currently we do have pay to play if a student is not able to participate because of cost uh all schools have been notified not only this year but in past years to ensure that students are are not participating uh due to cost or or due to not being able to have the funds uh so um it's it the the challenge with PID to play uh that we've received feedback on is that uh
282not all students will come to you to tell you that they cannot afford to play in a sport uh for many reasons and so one of the conversations we have with eliminating pay to play is that then we would have to determine a funding source to be able to help help pay for officials and all the costs that come with Athletics and as you know some sports come with a much higher cost than others um so one of the things we we we you know if if we determine a funding cost we would also ensure that we train School based Administration on the implementation uh uh with the current pay to play we make sure that we provide training through principal meetings to make sure that um there is access in equity when students are
283are um looking to play sports um and then with uh female um students as far as the gender Equity portion we want to offer as many sports opportunities for for for for female students to be able to participate in the sports and this could include increasing the number of sports available to to female students it could also incre uh include uh following um giving the opportunities for freshman teams JB teams and and varsity teams next when looking at employment Equity we compare our student demographics to our employment demographics for the 2019 2020 school year 16% of our student population was black when looking at employment 14.25% of our district level administrators were black 16% of our principles 29% of our assistant principales 9% of our teachers and 19% of our guidance counselors according to the
284data we've done a really good job as a district recruiting promoting and retaining black employees in almost all areas for the 20192020 school year 21% of our student population was Hispanic when looking at employment 7.25% of our district level administrators were Hispanic 6% of our principles 3% of our assist assistant principles 8% of our teachers and 7% of our guidance counselors were Hispanic this is an area we are working to improve upon and now I'd like to turn it over to miss mahany to talk about recruitment good evening chairwoman right superintendent belman and school board members it's great to see you all again seems like I was just up here you were I was yeah as I mentioned during my previous recruitment presentation there's definitely strengthen diversity and it's important for us to recruit teachers
285that mirror the student demographics that are in our classrooms if we don't actively recruit underrepresented populations we are only going to reinforce the status quo this slide lists all of the specific strategies that we are currently using to recruit a diverse pool of candidates So currently we are targeting the recruitment of students and graduates of our historically black colleges and universities and our Hispanic serving institutions uh in the southeast we're doing this through the use of the handshake app the handshake app allows us to communicate directly to these candidates and also to advertise any uh vacancies that we have and upcoming recruitment events um right now we are connecting with 11 HBCU five hsis and seven uncf member institutions through this app in addition we regularly sign up for minority recruitment events as they become
286available as I mentioned last time we had recently participated in the bathon cookman job fair on October 22nd um we are looking forward to the uh 2020 virtual diversity career fair which is November 17th and 18th and then in the spring we plan to participate in the diversity and Ed teacher recruitment fair and also the annual Florida fund for minority teachers job fair um we also build and maintain Partnerships with minority focused organizations to increase our pool of candidates just just yesterday Mr West and I had the opportunity to meet with Mr thadius Collins who's a local representative from the NAACP and we talked about mentoring opportunities and recruitment connections that I will definitely be following up on in addition um we make sure that we have a diverse recruitment team to represent vucha County
287schools in all of our um recruitment events we also publish a in the quarterly a submission um where it's a vucha County Schools advertisement in the National minority update publication and we are currently working at upd updating our minority recruitment web page with our valua County School site um we're collaborating with the Community Information office the web Masters and also I've invited Nick Prince our community or excuse me our minority achievement specialist to also collaborate in that effort this next slide um shows you all of our fall recruitment events as you can see we've been extremely busy and continue to be busy um we participated in the vucha County Job Fair September 9th through October 20th we um advertised and promoted both instructional and non-instructional positions at that time we had over a thousand um
288views of our positions and we ended up with 73 applications from that fair so that was a pretty successful one October 22nd with our bethon cookman Fair we had nine candidates come to our booth we had four applications as a result um the STS and University career Expo we had 31 candidates um come to our virtual Booth we ended up with six applications as a result the setson University career Expo is is interesting because it's candidates um that are freshmen all the way through senior so you get a pretty large um range of candidates that come to that one um and while some of them are not ready to jump into teaching right away we did invite them to sub for us and get some classroom experience under their belt uh October 28th was an
289exciting day um we participated in the Ed week top schools job fair that's a nationwide event and um we had a recruitment team of 10 virtually online and um we had 134 candidates come to our booth that day which was awesome we had a lot from the Northeast who knew that a lot of layoffs are happening in the Northeast with education and it just so happened that it was snowing that day too and it was sunny down here so it um you know the conversation went really well um we're still following up with all of those candidates because that just recently happened um and we're inviting them to participate in the current job fair that we have going on right now um we are hosting a monthlong virtual instructional job fair um where we our
290principes can hire for vacancies they currently have or vacancies that they might anticipate mid year so that's happening right now and it's the candidates that are being put into the platform are being vetted before they're added this Friday we're participating in the UCF fall 2020 virtual um uh education career fair so that's coming up um after Veterans Day and then like I mentioned earlier November 17th and 18th we're participating in the virtual diversity career fair so we've got lots of um events coming up I also wanted to make mention that with the virtual instructional job fair that we have currently going on we have invited the 57 student interns that we currently have in our schools that represent seven different colleges and universities of those 57 22 are self-reporting minority groups so that's exciting um
291we also have invited candidates that we've met at some of these other recruitment events um and any other recruitment leads that we've gotten through our office so that's what I've got now I'd like to turn it over to Miss Roland to talk about our pregnant and parenting teen program right school board members superintendent bin um just a little briefing of our pregnant and parenting students our team parent program at this time we have 17 mothers that service to school I'm sorry okay thank you just a briefing um about our uh pregnant and parenting students our team parent program um we currently have 72 mothers that are enrolled in our programs in Bia County 70 of those young ladies go to child's Academy which is prod is convenient for them because they can take their babies
292with them um at school they can take them and take them to daycare they pick them up and take them home how we do have two young ladies one at Delan high school and one at Mainland High School and those ladies have chosen to continue in a traditional setting and they have a right to do that if they want to so we also take care of them as well when they go to the traditional high schools and they stay in their Zone school um once their babies are born um there's totally of 74 infants that are being served at this point um and there's a couple parent children that have two kids and not just one um but we do provide transportation for the children and the mothers and the buses come with car seats
293so the wom the girls don't have to bring car seats on the buses they are already provided when they get on the bus um so they bring the kids they get on the bus and they just go to school and the students that go to their aone school um they also provided um child care when they find a a daycare that's in route to the school and the funds are paid for through valuchi County Schools to those Bab to go to daycare and the parents to go to school so they pick the babies the mom and the baby up they dro the baby off dro the mom off and the same vers vice versa when they get ready to go home from school they provide transportation for those parents to take those children um with
294them when they go back home and it makes it a whole lot easier for the kids not to have to find a ride to school find a ride to pick the babies up it's all in one um setting they get dropped off at school the baby gets dropped off daycare the baby gets picked up and the parent gets picked and they get they're taken home so it has really worked out well for these children they continue their education they become graduates they can go on and and live you know a a fulfilled life um once they get out of high school and so we do assist with daycare we provide transportation and um a lot of the ladies do go to child's Academy because it's convenient and we do have some that go to um
295St and Traditional School setting and some just don't go to either one they just stay in the school and they kind of handle things on their own but we do provide service for those parents that come um with the children and we make sure they get what they need as far as the baby goes and as a parent so we're working to make sure that those kids needs are met so that they can come become productive citizens in our society um we've all been there some of us have been there you know they made mistakes but you know what they should have to suffer forever making a mistake we want to make sure they um have a a true chance at life so we do support those laters that come into our schools okay and
296now I'd like to invite um Dr Renee Clayton up to talk about our Single Sex schools and classes at Woodward Avenue okay so um Single Sex schools and classes actually we have one school Woodward Avenue Elementary um who has offered Single Sex classes or single gender classes um during the 2019 2020 school year um for grades K through four and that was in collaboration with the research um base um and supported with ston University um 82 males and 9 female students opted in to a single sex class at Woodward um and it has become a very popular program but due to the challenges with the scheduling for face to face and valua live um during covid they did suspend that program for this school year but they are very much looking forward to reinstating for
297next school year okay last I'd like to share some of the district's Equity initiatives for the 20 2020 21 school year we have begun holding monthly Equity meetings with school and District leadership we have recently trained all principles on the new title 9 regulations that went into effect on August 14th we've also now have a title 9 coordinator designate at each school and they will assist with um title n investigations that are student investigations um we released a new lgbtq support guide which can be found on the equity web page and this will be a valuable tool for supporting our lgbtq students we've also continued to implement diversity training for our leadership and our school Guardians and now if you have any questions who would like to start go ahead Miss C I just have
298a quick comment um to help I guess build um female athletes at the high school level um practice schedules need to be good for the boys as well as the girls um sometime and I have discovered a lot of times the boys basketball team for example might always get right after school practice and then the girls have to wait for the boys to finish there there needs to be equity in practice in all sports um it's very important that our athletic directors value the girls Sports as much as the boy sports girls softball is just as important as the boys baseball team um and I have family members and boys and girls and and a and Athletics as well but also I find that those students who are enrolled in the Arts in the equity
299I don't see a lot of equity in the treatment of the band members as opposed to the athletes um a lot of the athletes get a lot of Privileges and things paid for them and the band doesn't um um the football team might get the concessions at the football games but the band may never get that opportunity so their booster uh their band boosters their parent groups have to raise more and more money for the Arts rather than the Athletics and um and sometimes people participate stronger when there's that Equity not just amongst gender and and race of um and in grade and in age it has a lot to do with equal respectability from whether it's Administration um athletic director uh who gets what and who gets space allotted to them at at the
300school sites for example um the dance group might get an extra closet space but yet the drama or the theater group doesn't do you know what I mean so there's equity in that as well in our programs um and that should be all considered and I'm thrilled as much as we invest in our our not only our students but their children as well so it's um I didn't realize that we also pay for their child care on the way to school and and I think that shows compassion for all of our students because they too are valuable so um but thank you for that Equity plan it's always something very much to consider um I do hope we have more Latinos and Latinas um come to our district right Dr bar see Y and uh
301I I think it's showing up much more often here at the de so I'm very much appreci um and as we move forward I would like it also to be um more of an I want quality as well and and it's just not hair color gender or skin color we have a lot of quality and um and and I think our students if they can see themselves in Role Models they will be more successful yes so for example it's was always incumbent of me to teach literature from authors who are from different diverse diversities um you know and oh Sanders s neros was always a favorite author of mine especially younger children so um we also have to do that as well diversify what we present and teach our children uh and not just in
302the month of January or on the month of November but throughout the entire year so I think Equity applies to all of that as well as well so thank you thank you thank you madam chair I'll hush anyone else go ahead Mr person just a just a comment on page 20 of the of the report this is the section regarding um advanced placement students and all of that it it's just I don't know it statistically you know when you look at that 1819 call and where it says U black and it it jumps up from 171 18 290 to 521 like in one year it's called Mainland well I was going to say that yeah and I was going to say that's probably not accurate yeah so you know and then it's because all the
303other years you know things go up but they go up incrementally as they should small small numbers but you don't you don't double Su something you and then um and then as far as the as far as the uh as the drop off you know from last year to this year uh would that be any way related to the fact of covid and we didn't have school the last nine weeks or any of that does that do that enter in where students had to finish the course in order to get know credit or some kids didn't finish it or this includes wondering man it's all Mainland this includes our AP numbers and I think that big jump um reflects Mainland High School yeah and that's what we were kind of assuming yes it does okay
304that explains that and um the other thing uh in the re the recruitment uh you said there's a job fair Friday this yes this Friday is the UCF or is that the UCF no that's the UCF job fair the Valia County Schools one is going on the entire month so the principes have access to a platform called No dot careers and so as we vet candidates who want to participate they are building profiles on the platform so principles can go on and they can interact with the candidates right there so as needs arise throughout the entire month they're able to recruit right from that platform that's awesome uh every time Dr Clayton and I were in a school today and uh every time we're in a school this always seems like there's a a college
305intern in there somewhere and just about every time the principal says oh this person's great I've already talked to them we want to hire them they want to come here I think that's just awesome that's one of the best re re recruiting tools that we have so continue continuing to have interns placed in our school so they can just you know have that personal re reationship with the school and teachers and principles I think it's awesome so and you said we had over 50 yeah we have 57 right now in our schools that's awesome get to to piggy back I agree with you you hit the nail on the head there where you talked about the relationship between the intern and the cooperating teacher because I can speak from my own experience I grew up
306in Miami and so I came here I went to ston and I had all intentions of going back down south and I had such a great experience at Delan Middle School actually Susie Peterson was my cooperating teacher and Paul selli was the principal and Melissa Cel and all them and and you and you still became a teacher and person was the principal yeah and well KUSI came right after yeah KUSI was there right after and it was because of those relationships that I decided to stay and my family thought I was crazy to stay in small town dant but that just goes to show I know that we're always trying to brainstorm incentives of trying to get our interns to stay and really at the heart of it is that relationship that's built because they'll
307stay if they feel like they're part of that team so that's huge well I hate to give pulson nelli any credit but I I I'm certainly glad we're all glad that you stayed here that's that's go ahead Mr and so yeah Equity report is very close and near and dear to my heart and um it's something that uh my very first year was an experience my second year we were in transition and so now we're going into year three of this report and I I'll share with my colleagues that you know we've uh I I've challenged specifically for the Deltona area um looking at ways in which we can increase that uh dual enrollment looking at ways in which we can expand opportunities for CTE uh looking at ways that we can engage our uh
308Latino our black and brown students uh in our school district as well um we we've talked about Latinos in Action which which is a great program uh which we're learning more about and exploring for our school district and so you know these uh actions that we're taking to actually look at these numbers to ident you know that the some of the conversations we've had is you know how do we set tracks Up For Students when they're in middle school so they know what dual enrollment looks like what what they need to do to get there you know how do we identify the students who may be the a Ab students to let them know hey there's the potential for you to take this track whether it's CTE vocational whatever it is a and start to
309identify those students sooner you know my son in 10th grade is now dual enrolled you know how did we take advantage of that well they said there's no protest I mean that it was a no-brainer for our family and so how many other students could have done the same thing and so you know we're having conversations around that right there which you know I'm hoping eventually we we can develop districtwide uh I at least you know I'm only a part of the conversation where I'm at um but but it's those things that actually are going to net that success of students you know seeing the slides I don't even want to look at them to be quite honest with you even though I have studied them because it really doesn't translate to action and the
310reality is that you don't see you know the activity that we do today will reflect two years from now and so um I am we had a great conversation on Friday and we spoke about all of these things as far as the sports and the best practices and and you know I I I think there are best practices uh nationally to help increase that you know the pay to play well like everything else if you pull from one you got to if you if if you're no longer collecting the pool fees somebody's got to pay for the pool you know and so there are also other um things that that uh Miss Ren shared with me that other uh school districts have done to help improve so I think there's you know not only do
311we have a document that we are um sending to Tallahassee but there's actually actions going on to help improve that right there uh and so uh I'm excited about it more importantly I'm more excited about what we're doing to make a difference regardless of how it may seem today so thank you thank you um Miss H anything um so I'm de Downer this report aggravates me every year every year and I have to tell you since I've been on this board this report has not changed that much in almost eight years it is disheartening um I looked at the numbers for my ities in in every category and they may increase by one or two um but then they decrease so I'm I'm just going to go to when we look at um directors we
312have two Hispanic directors and it tells me we have 10 African-American I can't think of a two from last year who are the other eight I'm just asking I know we had Miss Roland and I know me we had Miss Freeman so who are the other eight who do we consider administrators or at the district level as administrators I would have to look at the report as far I I can tell you that I have pulled the report manually as well I did that about two years ago and I can tell you that certain people that I might have or that I know are Hispanic or that I know are African-American we not putting that down this is a they self-report and some people choose not to do that I one person that I knew
313that was a district level administrator checked off every single category um and they have the right to do that okay so when we say District level administrator so what would you consider a level oh I'm sorry that would be um specialist coordin ators assistant directors directors and above and are they aware of the different level I'm just asking is who aware the the staff are there a level are they aware that a district administrator would be a director or Deputy superintendent or area superintendent that's my question for purpose of this of this report um I don't know if they're aware or not I mean even with the with this girls uh every year we always have a problem with the girls and when we come up with all these great ideas and every year we're
314back right back to the same issue with maybe one or two schools again it's not just race it is just this report year after year has remained it has not changed and the report is very structured by fdoe they send a template as to what data they want into the report and I can tell you that in years past I've included extra information or I've changed a graph or a chart and they've asked me to redo it so they are very structured on what they ask us to include in the report and I get that I'm not blaming you um you're only reporting what you receive I'm blaming the district because evidentally it is something we are not doing right for this not to change I don't care how we look at it but if
315every year we we we talk about girls female sports and every year out of the 10 high schools eight to nine of them fail that area then what are we doing wrong and we already know that they can't use competitive cheer so we can't keep using that as an excuse well we've actually started including competitive cheer that was a big push that all of the different districts there was a letter that came up um that actually Mr Beal um came across where OCR designated that competitive cheer was to be included so we sent that up to Tallahassee they never really came out and said yes include it but all the districts started including it so now they're accepting it but they still do not um there's many sports that they don't recognize like our our
316rowing team that we've started they they don't recognize that and I just feel that a lot of girls don't want to really maybe go into wrestling but that is a sport that they say you know we we will include in those numbers um I I do feel as as Dr berio said that our pay to participate is is not helping these numbers at all um and I know personally several girls that have not played Sports because of the pay to participate so do you feel it's too high I I don't I don't think we should eliminate it I think everybody should have some skin in the game so are we talking about reducing it or reducing it to zero well we've talked we I met with um Dr Fritz and we talked about several different
317scenarios and this was right before covid and right before him going out um we talked about tying it into the free or reduced Lune um and we've talked about eliminating it all together so those are things that I think you know he is is looking to explore further upon his return um I know that none of our surrounding districts charge any fees to place Sports so when we try to compare ourselves to simal or Flagler and they're meeting their numbers that may be a reason okay so if that that is the case then okay not a problem um and I'm just looking at when we talk about student athletes and and different things um now some of our schools so I know new samna and I believe SPO Creek both had female weight lifting do
318they not offer that [Music] anymore they do they do I'm say because they had won some titles I know I know SPO Creek had won some titles for their female weightlifters yeah and again if there's volleyball girls basketball softball do they do they accept flag core flag is included flag football and bowling I'm I'm asking Larry Mr Beal to come up the expert okay and don't go far Miss Roland because I haven't even question about the team pregnancy program how does this really fit into this about the equity diversity and equity trying to understand that but go ahead Mr Beal I all right fire away with your question so my question is why why do we struggle as a district every year to meet something that for eight years we have not as it relates
319to female spores I don't think that it's just us struggling I think it's other districts as well okay um part of it is years ago before we put in pay to participate the state the the way the numbers were connected to the schools was totally different it was a 10% value so your boys and girls had to be 10% apart then a number of years after that it went to we're going to change the number on you guys it's 5% now okay we can handle that then it went to 2% a couple years after that and then what in the last five six years ever since I've been doing it that's where we went to your athletic numbers have to match your school demographic that's where it became extremely difficult on everybody because you can
320you can offer all these Sports and you can do all these Outreach programs and bring in all these guest speakers to improve female athletes but if your athletic numbers and females don't match your a your school female numbers you're out of compliance so the number the way the ratio is done is extremely difficult the other side of it is pay to participate please understand that pay to participate really doesn't cover all the cost um we we bring in money with pay to participate we also bring in money with Gates we also bring in money with donations and volunteer organizations but then when you factor in the cost of officials that puts a huge debt in all of your money that's coming into your athletic department then you have to calculate in busing which is another
321big dent and then I know you guys were talking about the pools and I started squirming back there our pool fee has jumped 100% in the last five years and we're strapped to that the reason why we're strapped to that is we only have two sources of pools in our County I don't think you all are going to build me 10 pools I mean I'd rather have 10 stadiums than 10 pools but I'm not going to get either one I I know that I see the writing on the wall it's just not relevant it's not going to happen but the the pools we we rent from splash park in New samna and then we rent from the YMCA and all of our other schools they know they have us over a barrel they know we
322have to rent from them in order to offer the sport so as much as we have sat down as individual School athletic directors and I have sat down with the CEO of the YMCA because we're old classmates it's it's still not going to budge because on his end he has to run it like a business there cannot be a good old boy handshake anymore like there was 20 30 years ago I get that I understand that but we're almost getting to the point and I've told Chris this you're going to put us out of the business because I can't afford a five and $6,000 fee to rent a pool much less eight more pools on top of that so we are in communication and we are talking with the people that we're working with we're
323talking with the officials associations we're talking with the pool rental people we're talking to anybody we can to try to see to understand where we're coming from Unfortunately they all think public education is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and I told them when you all find that please make us aware because we're missing the there is no pot of gold so and you mentioned earlier about the weight liting research all all 10 high schools have a girls weightlifting team yes they offer weightlifting and even some of our schools will call me and say Larry we only have one girl that wants to play golf okay that's fine you put her in on the database and we play one girl we don't have to play a team we can offer the
324sport to that one child and we just make sure that that child gets the number of events that they need so they can qualify for District tournament and state tournament so we have done that in the past with with golf with tennis uh We've even done it trying to start up programs across country we did it at Pearson Taylor a couple years ago we just had a couple kids that were interested we have to start with baby steps we build it as we go okay tell me what you're thinking because I see the wheels turning oh I I don't have an answer tonight um like I said it this report just always seemed to bother and and and again I hear what you're saying I don't have an answer but I would say that we
325we got to start thinking about something because each each year we we can't just always put it down as something we're going to attempt to do I know we had some action plans for the last two years um actually went to two of the rallies as we try to encourage Middle School and High School young ladies to participate in sporting um events but I don't know again I don't have the answer yes Mr perses and then Mr cord well one of one of the things uh that would help uh but again there's always the the drawbacks is if you'll notice uh basketball is always one where we have girls and boys but in high high school but it's I suspect it's because we have it at middle school so we introduced the sport at middle
326school we get them excited and they learn how to play and they say hey this was fun I want to continue to do this at high school U I believe if we had more cross cross country we do at middle school we do at most of them and you'll see that sometimes they'll continue to do it I mean if we could do a few more things at middle school you know just to get some of the interest in and in middle school there's a lot of peer peer pressure as you know but sometimes that peer pressure is is actually good uh and uh if we could get a few more things going there is a cost of course associated with it and time and facilities and all those kinds of things but uh uh I
327know how hard it was to get Middle School basketball started that was back in my day and we fought tooth and nail and we finally got it going and I thought it was the best thing that we ever did U so I'm just saying Larry now and you know this stuff inside out but um um it might be good to have a conversation with the principles what they think might be something that they could do without too much cost and too much effort I don't just throwing out something yeah and I agree but I think it comes back to cost and and where do we get the funding if we don't want to ask for pay to play um where do we get the funding and I guess that's where we had the conversation with
328Community Miss CER um I've been personally involved in girl sports for a while as as well as boy Sports and I have and I said it before a lot of it is school-based and it's either the school the athletic director the coaches who look at girls Sports as something less um that they're not as good if they have girls basketball or girls volleyball or they they coach softball instead of girls Bas boys baseball or boys basketball or football and it's and it's an attitude it's an attitude so if we would promote our girls um that their Sports too are just as important and we do that by scheduling their practices because I know for examp a young lady at one of my high schools wanted to be in um softball she quit because the boys
329got to go to the stadium to practice baseball the girls went behind the school and they had to use the little softball field but they had to weed it before they could play so the girls were forced to weed pull up the weeds out of the field before they could do that and a lot of them left because they said why is it the boys get to go to the better fields and they get the way to get over there and the girls have to stay on campus and play in a much substandard field so there is there's a different attitude and I think and it's we we ourselves at the school level have to change that attitude and I think we would have more for example um Atlantic high school has an excellent girls
330basketball team uh Spruce Creek High School has always had good wrestlers especially female so so is new smna um new smna has had a fabulous girls volleyball team I mean the gym was packed when I went to the girls semi or the quarter finals Regional finals for their their volleyball and and everybody was rooting but that program is being built for a long time and you're right it does take Bab steps does take a while to develop but it also needs uh support from the school and the community for the people to come and pay the fee to come into the game um and it and it's that equal opportunity to make extra money for the team so they can pay for their buses at the concession stand um and I and I think that's
331where we need to start it's that attitude at the campus level that every doesn't matter if you are a Special Olympics if you are a female whether you're a freshman or a senior everybody deserves the same opportunity in the same facility because it's still it's still happening and I think it will improve if we change the attitude the the coaches as well the coaches need to understand that if they teach and they have a girls basketball team or girls volleyball that is just as important and as noteworthy as doing the boys team and and the pros have the same thing they have the same problem uh when you talk about women's basketball pro basketball the LPGA there that same attitude can you know goes to the professional level I think that that would help that
332would help start it and I think new smyna uh was not on that list last year it is it the year before it was on this past year because they had a strong girls basketball team that Atlantic kept beating them sry and so does spr Creek however you know but everybody talks about the football teams we got to talk we here ourselves we got to talk about the girls Sports as well so it's um it's important that we develop the kids in any program that they participate in which they participate because it's that's where we're that's where we will be successful if we celebrate them doesn't matter their gender their race or their age a lot of times kids are put on a JB team and they're very upset because they can't be on the
333varsity um especially if you're a junior if you're a junior sitting on a varsity a junior varsity team they'll they'll quit and and that's that's not fair we need we need to Excel and that starts at the coach thank you mad chair you welcome um and I'm not I don't want to belabor uh because this is really a good Workshop we just ran out of time today but if I never come back to a school board meeting it will be for this report because it really it it bothers me every year and um all I can say Dr baban and when Dr Fritz uh return in in 2021 it really starts with you it starts at your level and you have to set the example of what you want everybody else to do be it
334diversity be equality be whatever it is it has to start at the cabinet level and so when we talk about girl Sports uh the only thing I'll say about that Miss cuber I think we're all guilty because as women I don't watch female sports other than tennis I'm just saying but when we say that I don't think it's a male or female as as a female I don't watch too many female sports and so we too are part of I still say we too are part of the problem and so we we have to find a way to solve the problem um and and it it comes to money but I mean baseball softball basketball is easy for girls and boys right now I know we have Powderpuff football for young ladies so we do
335but those are there other sports that are pretty much M dominated that we don't have an interest for young ladies and again because I don't think we even at our here like you said I don't think we even praise the young ladies for the different sports that they participate in so again it starts here yeah it starts with us Madam chair I don't know if you've noticed in the news too some of our our major universities and Clemson was the most recent one that I read about are actually cutting boys sports to make their title n numbers um if you look up Clemson they actually cut their track and field and their I want to believe cross country in order to make because they weren't making their title N9 numbers as well Y and that's
336sad and again i' say we don't invest our time and money in I mean the fact is football and basketball are the money makers for most higher ed um and and the same thing for K12 I mean they are and unfortunately we don't invest some of that Revenue back into some of our female schools that's the issue anything else colleagues if not thank you very much thank you thank you team I have some cards for public participation um Kevin steel water steel wagon Kevin steel wagon Eden Cohen Maria Trent I feel like I know everybody's sitting in the audience but I'm still call their names Amy Duffy and there's nobody outside correct okay Lacy Ley Lacy Abraham Lopez Julie Percy Terry [Laughter] fer but come on down Mrs F you make all the way answer
337we'll [Laughter] leave please state your name and you have three minutes okay my name is Terry fur and I'd like to bring up the fact that at sebres my daughter played softball and I am sure these things are against the rules but um preseason game she was on the varsity and she was on the lineup um and the coaches pulled her aside took her off the lineup because of a great mind you she has a 4.1 GPA okay there was a mistake in a great they took her off the lineup in front of her team she was hysterically crying she called me the coach said to her you're on my time get off the phone then they proceeded to make her go over to the batting cages where all the every team member playing or
338not was in the batting cage they made my daughter stand outside the batting cage by the fence in front of the kids and did not let her go in the batting cage to practice um which is just absolutely ridiculous on another time a teacher had misplaced one of Cameron's re orts and she got a zero and she ended up with an F okay Cameron explained what happened and went and told the the teacher the teacher's like oh yeah just print it out give it again and her F went up to a 98 okay but instead of listening to that this coach proceeded to tell the whole entire team that my child had made a zero and she had an F so therefore she would not be playing and um trying to remember all the things
339that she said to her um and I don't think that is supposed to be appropriate and when I questioned if other kids grades had been pulled I was not I was refused to answer at first because other kids were coming to my daughter saying oh my God you have like a four GPA we have fs and our classes and and we're getting to play and you're not okay and then um so they humiliated her that way then one time the coach sit up and all the team players were there and she said you're given 100% you're given 100% you're given 90 you're given 90 and she looked at my daughter and said and I don't know what you're given in front of the whole entire team okay when I requested a meeting with the athletic
340director I it was Co um and I requested the meeting and during the meeting I was not allowed to have a video Whatever during the meeting they refused to answer why they had spoke to my daughter they refused it told me it was they were not going to speak about calling my daughter out in front of people they were not going to speak about um the things that they had said about you're not don't know what you're giving all this was refused the coach sent out an email addressing me personally to all the school all the team players parents belittling me and calling me out on a group email to all the parents and when I made a comment about that I was told it was not going to be addressed but and this is
341coach moo at sees and the athletic director Montgomery was very well aware of all this and did nothing matter of fact he was the one telling me they were absolutely not going to address the part of calling Cameron out in front of her whole team about not making her stand to the sidelines while every everybody else was in the batting cage or about them talking about her grades or anything he refused to address and I think I was as a parent you did that to my child I deserved an answer and so did she but instead it got let go and nothing was ever said okay again thank you for that and what we'll do um I'm sure the superintendant Dr baros and we'll speak to her now um and did Larry Bill leave okay
342but Dr barel he's going to assist you right now I think Larry thank you oh and it pay to play let me just say parents do have a skin in the game we pay the 75 then were required to do $300 as a fundraiser my daughter just made it to Regionals and swim I had to pay the $100 hotel fee Drive 6 hours to pball pay the gas pay to eat and then back all out of my pocket on top of thing to watch her for 28 seconds in the pool so we do have skin in yes ma'am yes ma'am Mrs Karen wirick is Miss Karen last but not least Miss Kim short sorry I can't breathe um good good evening chairman W good evening and board members and Dr B Goin um Miss Wright
343I want to thank you for your service we haven't always agreed on everything but I do thank you for that you were the first person I ever met when I came to a school board meeting and I sat down right next to you I don't know if you remember that um I was wanted to talk about a few different things but I want to also first say something about the the pay to play and the sports and the whole thing with the whole Sports and I went to a high school that was so fantastic with an awesome athletic director who you know is probably known in the whole country is probably one of the best one thing that they've done really well at St Thomas Aquinas and they can do that at this point is
344that they have a business partnership with Nike I I think that when we look at things like Avan Health why are we not doing things like that on a grand scale at the district level why have we never thought about trying to tie in have we never asked because we didn't think we could get it because that's the biggest mistake we can make um so when we talk about sports I want I would say that first the other thing is that uh objectives tied to goals meet reality and Miss Wright I totally agree with you that if we do not have uh our schools as part of some kind of school Improvement plan or an objective that we're giving to our principles that they hit numbers that we ask them to hit what's the incentive
345so that does go back to leadership 100% right so that I would say about the sports um about the testing I'd like to say particular I guess to miss Haynes thank you for talking about that the last couple school board meetings and anybody else who's chimed in something was said tonight time is something that we never have enough of and it just sticks with me because I've got teachers coming to me telling me that they're being asked to give formative assessments when the students haven't been taught the material now I know the people in this room are smart and I know the people who work in this District care about kids and I can't imagine being a teacher knowing that my children did not learn something and then having to give them an assessment so
346I need you need just like let that soak in for a minute how would that make you feel in a classroom doesn't cost anything to give them respect like that and so I do feel passionately about that and I do think that we can do better there and I hope that we are I hope we're really thinking about that because data derived from students who never were taught anything that's not a formative right that's a diagnostic so and I don't know all the ins and outs of all the testing but I do know that and um I think to end on I just want to talk to you about the quarantining policy I've got a lot of uh parents telling me that our students who are being asked to quarantine they're not going to be
347allowed to if their let's say their teacher is teaching both right now at the same time modality there I'm being told and I'd like to know if this is true or not that it's a district policy now that if you are asked to quarantine and you are a brick and mortar student you are not allowed to I guess get videoed in on those classes i' I don't I didn't know that was the case I'll be very honest with you my son right now has been asked to quarantine last Friday because he was exposed he is in 5 AP classes in pre-calculus and if this is a policy then we are not following it because I want my child to get instruction at home and he is on those teams meetings so if somebody can tell
348me I just want there to be I want to understand that um and then to end I just want to give a little bit of a um a little plug to Magic of Lights Daytona we were successful VCC PTA in partnering with them there's a $25 ticket it's the best price out there and VCC PTA is going to get $5 for every single one of those tickets sold so if you know you could help me in some way to spread the news on that um we are doing our County schools has put it on all their social media um I'm hoping we can raise a lot of money I've got some plans for it to hopefully offer some students a free bus ride up to Tallahassee during spring break and get to tour a couple
349campuses up there and maybe meet some lawmakers so that's my own personal goal for that money but um I I could use anybody's help with um trying to spread the word on that and I think that's it thank you very much thank you and um Dr bagam you want to address that because we just had another parent call about that last night so the formative assessments Miss short and I apologize earlier when I saw you with the mask I did recognize you if that I would have said hello um when it comes to the formative assessments the intent is not for the students to necessarily know the standards it's to really provide the because we know that the standards many of the our standards they're spiraling right so it's basically be it could before they
350get ready to teach that standard or cluster of Standards just to quickly see where this students are what is it that they know and what is it that they don't know so and and like we said earlier I don't know if you were here when we said this that's not something that needs to be recorded in Gradebook because again it's just a quick check for understanding for the teacher to drive instruction for that day so that they know what students to call at the teacher Center what students just need additional practice that they can put together in a team and they can collaborate with each other and they need extended practice so I I just want to clarify that part now for the quarantining our process is the following we have asked principles to make
351the determination like for example if there's a teacher or group of teachers that needs to be quarantined and students at the same time that we look at vucha live as an option now if the teacher is skilled and can can provide instruction through valua live then there they should be given that opport opportunity that was a message that sent to was sent to All 67 principles and our assistant superintendents have supported that now in the event that the teacher does not feel comfortable with valua live well then we have packets that are prepared that will be given to those students um so we will be more than happy to have a discussion with you further with depending on what division it is so that we can look into that situation a little bit more but
352I I would say uh and thanks thank you Miss core and um Dr baban for um actually dealing because I had apparent the same thing but evidently the message is not clear or we're sending mixed messages or principles are doing their own thing I think we got to be really clear on that um because as the numbers increase we know that we're going to have more children that will probably quarantined and the thought was the whole thought of this live was so that children would have access to instruction if they were quarantined so I do and my my last charge to my colleagues U and Dr baban again like I said during the workshop if we can get Miss Roland um and her team with Advent health and their team and our health department so
353we can start looking at um you know what is the CDC guidelines and how often do we need to look at some of our policies and update them um because both you and I or actually Miss Roland and I and Miss cor and I we heard from a physician last night and who's been intimately involved and he works for Advent Health um as it relates to some of our policies and so we want to make sure that we are following guidelines but we want to make sure that all we we have the right people giving us the right information so we can make the right decisions um and one of them was dealing with the quarantine that if a child was tested and he or she tested negative they should not be sitting out of
354school for 14 days they really should be retured to school within two to five days and so um I just think we we need to look at that and um that would be my recommendation to you all just look at it to update but have the professionals come in um so we're not guessing yeah didn't we start start that in September when Miss core and myself met with Advent health and we were supposed to do it again in October and we we didn't get there so there there is a there is an actual Council that uh was actually put together um in Orange County where they have taken Dr Shu and a few of the other folks and so I I I think it exists I just think uh other Counties have tapped into those
355resources where we may not have we've been solely dependent on the Department of Health and so I think that having everybody at the table uh Lake county is one of the ones that started with that you know quick testing and and all of that and there's been lots of variation you know um you know if you look at Hillsboro they had when they were considering what they were going to do they had medical experts come and advise them uh together with the health department so I could see some value in that just to ensure that um all the best practices are being followed as this as things are changing so um anything else I just wanted to oh yes and can we go back because we do need to vote on our Equity plan is
356there a recommendation superintendent yes Madam chair I recommend approval of the 201920 annual update to the equity plan you've heard superintendent recommendation is there a motion Mo approval second the motion has been made by Mr Carl persus second by Mr Ruben cologne any other discussion hearing none I'll call for the vote Mr Ruben cologne yay Miss Jamie Haynes yay Mr car persus yay Miss Linda CER and ID right yay wow and any so we're at the end of our meeting colleagues who would like to CL start any any last parting words before we depart I would go last if it's okay go ahead Mr persus I just want to wish you the best uh Miss Wright and whatever uh you said you were going to volunteer to head up some already I did I did
357I did my gosh I did you know you need to chill for a while before I I was going to do it tomorrow Mr you don't have to start volunteering we're going to come at you anyway so listen I didn't say I was going to do it tomorrow Mr person I just said I will be know I know it well anyway you are just a Class Act you are just a Class Act and uh just the way you've handled everything not just as chair here for the two or three times that you've been chair here and uh just the way you've handled everything you had a tough year this year with covid handling all these meetings the longest meetings the school board ever had the most meetings this school board ever had there were many
358times I didn't like you at night right but I loved you in the morning I loved you in the morning but U there were some nights I was just like goly I end the damn thing end you know use that gel stop Reuben from talking so much you know I just got I just got here but anyway we love you you you've just been awesome uh the way you and U Anita uh uh you know just got along it it was just it was just so pleasant it wasn't stressful uh uh the way you talk to each other after she won the way you uh at the district advisory committee meeting or anywhere where where we were you always said I want you all to welcome her work with her she's a good person I
359mean you know that just sets you way up there just so many elected officials they don't act like that and I'm not going to mention names but you just know there are there's one a little more prominent than some others that don't act doesn't act like that but anyway it uh U you always say you can it's easy to talk to talk but you got to walk it you got to model it and I think that's what you've done every day that you've been on this board and throughout your life I'm sure so we'll be friends we are friends we'll be friends before we we friends during we're friends after I just want to wish you the ABS the ab absolute best and my wife wanted to make sure that she says she wishes you
360the best too thank you thank Mr pres thank you susanu all the way around go ahead Mr colog and so it was ironic and it kind of hit me that your last call for the vote would be the equity report and uh I want you to know that that um I look forward forward to carrying the uh the torch on that one because I know that it was something that was near and dear to your heart and uh I think that we you know while it may seem that we have not made a lot of improvements we've made a lot of improve improvements top down right now and that Dr balabin is our uh superintendent right now and is a a lady of color who it's about 64 languages and uh has worked with schools
361that had and schools that didn't have and I think that um we've definitely made some steps in the right direction and uh and again thank you for your service thank you this is hard to say goodbye so we're not saying goodbye right well she'll be back we're saying that um you're not going to sit in that seat but you're going to come and support us and you can reach out and chastise us when you don't agree because sometimes we need to be set straight and um and anytime that you have set any one of us straight I know that I've appreciated that and I've appreciated the knowledge that you have imparted and the time that you have taken especially this past year to be the chair in the middle of this I mean no one
362made it easy for you this year and yet you truly did exemplify Grace and compassion all those hours of sitting and listening um you were the calm person you know you stayed on the camera the whole time and you guided all of us and so I have the utmost respect for you for that and as even Mr persus said you know we knew you before we've known you during we're g to you know continue to know you after and um I'm looking forward to hearing like what projects you're going to uh do and even though he says like take a vacation Christmas is coming you know you can have Christmas since we never got any summer um I know I think we all deserve Christmas um but thank you for everything and thank you for
363I've learned a lot and I appreciate that thank you I guess I've worked with you the longest yes it's been six years you've been a a steady a steady hand in so much um a voice of wisdom um many times I've sat here and go shoot why didn't I think of that or she said it's so much better and um because I tend to get emotional you always this the uh very even heal of of all of this so I thank you very much um you remind me of I guess a call to duty and it's rise up and you've always risen up to the occasion to the issue uh you've never ever um I guess hesitated and speaking from your heart and what you truly care about but throughout everything you've always been about
364how we educate children and it's just not um what happens to them in the classroom it what happens to them outside the classroom as well so I I thank you for that for addressing the whole child who's also part of a family who's part of a school community and part of a a community am munist of a municipality and eventually the world but but thank you for your expertise I learned a lot about from you in technology and virtual learning uh thank you for your service in the Flor School Board Association um and running a really clean um election you know in your campaign I was very proud of both you and your opponents so I thank you very much uh for all of that because if anyone truly believes in democracy you most certainly
365do so I thank you and my husband wants to know if you're going does Arthur have to go too so he could call Arthur anytime anytime so when when you come back I want AR Arthur to come with you he will come with me okay good just invite us to dinner well invite us to dinner yeah good thank you but to you but thank you but thank all of you it has been a pleasure from the time I started on the board um when I had Stan Smith and Diane and Candice and Judy they were great colleagues um and then I had John and I had Linda Costello and I had Melanie they too were great colleagues and just like me going through change you all too will go through some changes and one thing
366I told Anita one day we were having a conversation I said the reason it was so easy for me to run because I never had a negative or nasty opponent had I had someone that was probably negative of nasty I probably would have walked away long time ago because that's just not who I am but all of my opponents have been just as courteous to me as I was to them so running for public office for me was never hard because I have not had a bad moment in running and um I do believe Anita will do well um because I will be calling her cuz she's in my [Laughter] district but besides that she had two young men uh that I had a chance to have dinner with that did really well um I
367told her any time give me a call but it is her turn and I think she'll do exceptionally well in the sea but it has been a pleasure it has been a pleasure meeting all of the newbies who we've had since February I don't know if you all bought Co on because we were doing fine until we just hired all these new people now I'm just but it has been a pleasure working with you all um you will do well uh you have great leadership with both attorneys with Mr Doran and and attorney penley I am leaving you all in great hands I expect great things and I will visit and I will work out my three projects like I said but that is it but thank you all Mr D [Applause] all right well
368I hate to be a stick in the mud but I tried to get your attention before we got into the mushy stuff I know we were because we have a piece of business we have to deal with before you get off this board yes sir so um let me just run through it and see if we can knock it out uh as you all uh are well aware um we experienced what could be characterized as The Perfect Storm back in July um when we had already been shut down in March April May we were confronted with how we would open up schools in August um in the middle of or at the very beginning of trying to work through that process uh Dr Fritz uh through no fault of his own obviously uh was diagnosed
369with a very serious medical illness and was forced to uh step back and turn over the super powers of the superintendency uh to whomever you all would select and uh you selected at that point in time Dr Balaban um and um this is all documented in great details so I'm going to do this from 30,000 F foot because we want to get out of here but he we passed two resolutions resolution 22-26 and 2020 D30 um the first resolution took us to August 31st uh Dr Fritz thought he would be back and then he couldn't um in the process of all this Dr Balman there was a lot of confusion about this but she had stepped out of her position as Deputy super intendent and had stepped into the position of superintendent of the beluch
370County schools and although we had Dr Fritz as a superintendent he had stepped out of that role um and was playing no part in it so it wasn't a delegation of powers it was a transfer of powers and to Dr balam's credit uh there was no she did not press the issue of whether she would you know how she would be compensated um because we were at a point of great emergency and we had many things to be focused on uh and to her credit she just dove in and did the job um in resolution 202030 you acknowledged all that and uh directed um chairman Wright and me and Dr Babin to sit down and come up with some resolution of those issues um Dr balaban's uh tenure as superintendent as we know it or
371expect it to be will will run seven months so it was in resolution d26 she her first day superintendent was July 1 um we anticipate and it looks good Dr Fitz seems to be doing well but uh we anticipate that she will serve through January 31st of 2021 um and Dr Fritz anticipates returning on February 1st which of course you know is in the future nobody can totally predict but I think that's the way it seems to be going so uh I prepare a um short agreement um because we have to have something in writing here uh that we need to enter into the District Board needs to enter into a this agreement with Dr bagaman establishing her compensation her benefits uh her tenure and what got worked out in that conference between the three
372of us was that Dr balgan would uh be recognized as the superintendent beginning July 1 of 2020 and would be given a seven-month contract that would end at least tentatively on January 31st of 2021 could be extended if necessary uh her rate of pay would be annualized at $195,000 a year uh and uh um but that that's going to be prated you know for the seven months after which uh assuming Dr Fritz comes back Dr B would step back into the deputy superintendent's role um and so um you know from a financial standpoint the district's actually benefited from this because we never filled the deputy superintendent position uh Dr Fritz is not being paid under his contract for his Services he's being paid through his benefits sick days um that's not to say that there
373aren't you know we're we're still providing him health insurance in those kind of things but um his pay is coming from his uh sick leave and which is has real value because if you don't you know use it because you're sick at the end as everybody knows at the end of uh your career you can cash it out for for money um so so that having been said I had uh distributed uh this uh five-page agreement which really boils down to 7 months 195,000 a year July 1 to January 31 um and if it's the board's pleasure um I would ask that we approve it colleages you heard the recommendation um and based on your directive I met with uh uh School Board attorney and Dr bagin and based on her current salary and based
374on Dr frit salary we came up in between and that's where we came up with the 195 for the prated for the go ahead I move that we approve the contract as negotiated by you and attorney Doran and Dr Alan as stated by attorney attorney for for the contract from July 1st to January 31st of 2021 at the annual salary of $195,000 and whatever else it says in there that's fine the only other thing it says just to be on the record uh the benefits uh the Dr B receiving are the same as she would have received as deputy superintendent uh superintendent normally get a lot more benefits as you all well know defer compensation all I but uh she gets none of that she just gets the benefits that she uh was receiving and
375would continue to receive when she steps back into the deputy superintendent position that's my motion thank you madam chair I have a motions there a second second the motion has been made by Mr car person second by Miss Jamie Haynes any other discussion any discussion colleagues I have a comment okay um Dr balamin you came into um your position at a very precarious time uh a Time the district needed you um and you fulfilled um all of those qualifications I just want to say thank you uh for putting so much together so much in depth uh examination of our operations our finances um you did restore a lot of calm and and reason U to a pandemic that was upon us that no one had any control over so I thank you for your steady
376leadership and I thought that you and Ida were a really good team so thank you very much thank you Miss C go ahead Mr colog and so I'll go back my experience with Dr Babin if you think about it was right really started in June when she started to really step up and um I I could probably say I don't think we can count with one hand Dr balabin of the last 162 days a day that you and I like like we I don't think we make it past one hand whether it's at 7 AM or at 700 p.m. whether it's Saturday or Sunday I don't think we can count with one hand the amount of days we have not spoken through all this craziness hey she called [Laughter] [Applause] you wait wait wait wait
377[Applause] wait you all should see him my case that was a te oh wait Mr persus the answer is yes and so we have both been guilty we've both been guilty but Dr balabin has given to our district every day since she stepped up and I am grateful for that and for those who think this is just a nino5 click be done it has been real so thank you and I am supportive of this motion thank you Mr Mr cologne make sure you earned that one night5 didn't every penny of it any other discussion here none I'll call for the vote Mr Ruben cologne yay Miss Jamie Haynes yay Mr Carl pures yay Miss Linda cuer yes and ID right yay thank you and the vote is unanimous thank you so much well the only
378thing I would say uh just now focusing on you just for 30 seconds um you I've uh worked with a lot of board members over more years than I care to remember or agree to and uh you know any tremendous board members but you have just been one of the most amazing Community servants and just you're such an awesome person uh and your judgment is so impeccable and your ethics and your integrity and you know it's uh in the world we live in right now it really stands out uh and is something to be recognized and uh as much as I'll miss you at these meetings uh I'm going to be haunting you in the future uh for an stake dinner or something with Arthur there you go and uh so I will see a
379lot of you going forward and I'm just so blessed to have you as my friend and I would not have known you but for through this process so um you know I'm excited for you in the fut thank you thank you Mr first Mr dor can I have quick three announcement okay go ahead okay um we do have some positive news 60 seconds or less Mr West I know we sent something out in writing regarding the retirees the information that we received from the state regarding retirees yes M microphone microphone can we verbalize that quickly please for everyone who's listening microphone or you are Mr pendley that's fine um so yes the good news they can't hear you um the good you took me by surprise I thought we were going to be celebrating this
380right okay so the the good news uh when we spoke uh on the phone and Deb and Kevin and I spoke with f FRS regarding um that question as to whether we can actually I'll call it back date to July 1 the uh retirement incentive uh and the good news is that we are allowed to do that uh so um we were very excited about being able to do that and so we have identified all of those folks that retired effective July 1 up until the um the cut off date of I believe it was November the third or fourth okay third um within that retirement incentive window and I don't I'm sorry I don't have those numbers right now but it came up to re 140 something somewhere around that number so they actually
381got to take advantage of that retirement incentive bonus so great news good job board and we actually were able to um do what basically you had asked us to do to to back dat up so thank you that is good news here comes my second announcement Miss Bennett um on behalf of our leadership team here we welcome you and we know that you will do great work for our 64,000 students in our district so we welcome you welcome and last but not least Madam chair we do have a presentation for you that we would like for you to see it reminisces a little bit of some of your your moments with us um Kelly can you put that on please cabinet [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] now [Music] [Applause] [Music] the community have actually embraced
382this idea of men coming out just to greet our children so we have local pastors we have local parishioners from various churches and other organizations to come out and say you know what this is very worthwhile uh event and they want to participate and we welcome our community we want our community to embrace this school as [Music] well in closing I hope your dreams take you to the corners of your smiles to the highest of your hopes to the windows of your opportunities and to the most special places in your heart has ever know go [Music] sharks so miss Wright I I have to share this with you some of you may not know this but when I started here um Mrs Wright wanted to meet with the everybody that was new that started Belia
383County but miss Wright had a request everyone had an hour that she requested but when it came to the deputy superintendent for teaching leading learning she wanted 1.5 hours 1.5 so we met at 7:00 in the morning in on the second floor but immediately in that meeting that I had with Mrs Wright I felt her heart and there was a connection because I knew what was important to her best practices equity for all of our students and I still remember the conversation you had with me what inspired you to get on the board it was your son and you Shar that story with me and that captured my my attention right away and I knew that you were in this for all the right reasons like like all of you so this is what I
384want to share with you people may say you have SED for eight years but the reality is it's been a whole lot more this covid year we have all agreed I think it's seven of us here seven to zero including cabinet okay that each month is equated to a year so if you add it up I don't know do the back for me Mr it's quite a it's a quite a few more than eight years but we want to say thank you Miss Wright for your dedication your commitment there's so many hard work that this board put in behind the scene that a whole lot of people don't know nights and weekends we want to thank you for your commitment for the past eight years to our 64,000 students 7,000 employees we're not going to
385let you get away because you're still going to be part of many projects we have a gift card for you we hope you and your husband can go out and enjoy dinner one night and we want to say on behalf of the entire team here thank you thank [Applause] you [Applause] [Music] thank you all and this meeting is adjourned