Volusia County School Board Meeting 2⧸8⧸2022

001all right we will get started in one minute mr purses can you hear me i can hear you wonderful miss cuthbert yes i heard you loud and clear wonderful i couldn't hear you but i'm sure we could turn it up a little bit perfect we'll get started in just a minute all right we will go ahead and call the school board meeting of volusia county today is tuesday february 8 4 32 pm and we will stand for the pledge of allegiance in the united please of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right welcome everyone to our school board meeting i want to introduce the folks who have the pleasure i have the pleasure of serving with we will start with

002our two folks this time who are virtually attending the meeting for the record there is a quorum present in the board room and we have mr purses from district 4 attending virtually mr persis good evening everyone good evening good evening and next we have miss cuthbert representing district three good uh good evening it's i guess it's still a good afternoon but thank you for allowing me to still be able to be a part of the board meeting thank you wonderful good afternoon next to well not really next to mrs cuthbert we have our board attorney mr ted doran to the right we have our amazing agency clerk miss aaron lieben next to ms levin we have ms anita burnett district 2 representative next to mrs burnett we have miss jamie hayne vice chairman district one

003next to miss jamie haynes we have superintendent dr scott fritz joining us today items for approval on this agenda will be 5.02 15.01 15.02 15.03 there will be several times for the public to participate before we vote on consent agenda items at six o'clock there will be time allotted 15 minutes for public comment for items pertaining to public education in volusia county there will be time for public comment prior to any vote that is taken by the board or board action item and then at the end of the meeting if there are any remaining cards they will be heard then moving on to item 1.02 district vision statement and so this is where we take the opportunity to speak uh of our vision statement and and also the activities that we participated in in the

004last two weeks since the last time we've met so we will start with mr purses thank you mr chair i just want to say that i had the pleasure of being at a pathways elementary school to judge the their social studies fair and i was quite impressed uh with the quality of the project and the number of projects that were there at pathways elementary school i just want to give a shout out to all those students and all the fourth and fifth grade teachers for helping those students as always when you are a judge at a science or social studies fair you always learn a lot so i did there at pathways and i thank everyone there for their warm and kind hospitality thank you mr chair thank you miss cuthbert thank you mr chairman

005um because i've had recent surgery i haven't been able to visit i'm somewhat homebound at this point but i do want to wish um it seems so the envirothon was up this past saturday and it seems to be a um and i've been many times and it usually it always takes place at spruce creek park off of us-1 between new smyrnan and port orange and it's always such a fabulous event and thank you to all of our high schools who attend it's a eye-opening experience and it's very very competitive boy the kids have to work as a team and they problem solve and also um i want to thank caps which is the alumni association at new smyrna beach high school who had their major fund raising spaghetti dinner that again i couldn't go to

006this past saturday they raise funds they give at least 22 scholarships per year ranging from one thousand to four thousand dollars a piece to seniors graduating so thank you for these community projects thank you mr chairman thank you miss cuthbert ms haynes thank you mr colon so we were actually in tallahassee last week and as i had even requested of all of our teachers and staff out there and parents i said you know reach out to our legislators and let's talk about what's happened with the teacher's salary yes we're very thankful that we've raised the beginning teacher's salary but we need to now deal with the compression and our experienced teachers piece so while mrs burnett mr colon and i were there we had a chance to meet with most of our representatives from here

007in our area and they listened because i shared personal experience about what's happened with the raising of the base salary and not putting the funding and i truly believe and my colleagues can say yes or no to this i truly believe not only did they listen but that that is the plan because we also set in a committee meeting for the pre-k through 12 approach appropriations and saw the first round of the budget that came out and i believe we're going to get the flexibility now is not the time though to just stop and say okay it will happen now is still the time in my opinion to send emails and share your story so that we can continue to make sure that they focus on that and that that makes it through the budget

008piece so that we can have the flexibility starting next year that the money will still be in a separate pot i kept saying that please don't mix the money back in with general funds please leave it in a separate pot and allow us then to start with our most experienced teachers and work at boosting their salary and work our way down we also talked about a few other topics and i'll leave some of those to my colleagues but um i thought mrs you know originally miss cuthbert would be here and i bet she's at home and she possibly has red on because i figured she would want to wish everyone a happy valentine's day i'm actually wearing red tonight for another purpose so this week is congenital heart defect week and we have a lot

009of our children that are born with heart defects and they go through a lot of surgeries and they're in our schools and each and every day they're here learning and growing and developing and i didn't realize what the statistics really were but it's like one in 100 children can be born possibly with a congenital heart defect it can be a it can be something minor all the way up to something more drastic such as having a large hole in their heart and parts of their heart not even running correctly so i am i have permission to share this um i have a niece and her husband who are expecting a baby in april a baby girl and they already know that she's going to be born with a large hole in her heart and she

010said i was allowed to share since this is the week she asked everybody to wear red and she even said we're good and we're going to do what we need to do she's very calm about it which i'm very proud of her at her age to be uncalm but if you take a moment tonight and you believe in the power of prayer just say a prayer for them and for the baby because we believe god can perform miracles but thank you miss burnett thank you so yes um miss haynes was very adamant and smiled the whole time up in tallahassee when she was um reflecting on the fact that we needed to have some flexibility for our veteran teachers and other pay areas so but um to reiterate what she said i think we were

011heard i do think we are heard also last week i had the opportunity to go with dr fritz we went and walked a couple of schools um terry t campbell and horizon and i have to say i saw some phenomenal work and every classroom that we saw we saw phenomenal phenomenal work going on however there was one class that i really that really stuck out to me and that was um with mr let me i'm gonna look up his name because i'm bad with names um mr uh kevin morris i believe was the teacher correct dr fritz and um he had his class engaged so well and they were so respectful and anything that he asked was it was just amazing how quickly they did it no questions asked and they were on top of

012things and i it really stuck out to me how well that that class was doing so i was excited to see that and i know we've got a few more planned right dr fritz yes all right so um looking forward to another couple good weeks thanks wonderful thank you so much and so last week we had the pleasure of going to deltona high where the chamber awarded them the school of excellence award for not only having the highest graduation rate in all of volusia and flagler county but i think the bigger celebration was that all of the groups moved up all of the sr sub groups all of the different groups moved up as well and so it wasn't just a celebration of some students who brought this up it was everyone who did and

013on sunday i had the privilege of going to an eagle scout ceremony for a deltona resident along with miss lemire from deland high school he's a deltona resident that attends deland high school in the ib program mr ethan villette and so he earned his eagle scout and so it was a pleasure to be there with him and his family to support him as well so thank you so much superintendent do you have anything great lots lots of great things happening in our schools had the pleasure of walking schools last week multiple times and was able to see some great things at campbell middle school have some great plans for that school as we start to build out their stem program identified some amazing spaces that we think are going to be great we're going to

014focus on an aviation stem for those students at campbell i'm very very excited about that we've had some great progress more moving towards our middle school transformation for next year we've been able to meet with teachers and we've started the work of as far as uh with our principles to form those teams and what they'll look like for next year i'm super proud and we'll be continuously bringing you back some updates on that sure thank you wonderful thank you so much next item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda board does anybody have any changes they'd like to propose for today's agenda mr superintendent do you have any changes that you want to propose for the agenda this evening no sir all right hearing none do we have a motion to approve the

015agenda for this evening i'll make the motion to approve the agenda do we have a second second all right motion's been properly made by mrs burnett seconded by miss cuthbert any discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed say nay all right we have an approved agenda next item up is a recognition for volusia county schools sunshine state scholars mr dr fritz i'm going to ask ms carbonell to come forward and amy monahan uh as they walk forward i'm going to share with you this is one of those great student recognitions and it's not easy but it's a statewide recognition a few of our students actually are able to earn so very proud about this and we'll learn a little more about our students our recipients good evening superintendent superintendent

016brits and school board it's a pleasure to be here tonight about this sunshine state scholar board recognition so tonight i wanted to talk a little bit about what this is and then hand it over to miss carbonell so this is a state program that recognizes our exemplary stem high school juniors in florida in the whole state of florida this is supported by the florida doe and some of the sponsors of this program are lockheed martin a t florida lottery universal studios and sea world my personal favorite in addition this program is sponsored by the florida universities the state universities so we have two award winners tonight and an alternate so the district honorees along with their parents and a teacher who has served as a significant influence in for their for the scholars will travel

017to orlando march 31st through the 2nd of april for an extraordinary two-day program students will be recognized for their academic achievements and will have the opportunity to meet recruiters from the florida colleges and universities the scholars will also be able to attend all kinds of workshops in stem and in higher education the goals of this program are to recognize student achievement and to increase the number of students with outstanding stem credentials and show them what amazing stem programs we have in our florida colleges and universities i want to keep them local so this year's applicants are a testament to our school's quality of instruction and guidance which made deciding our top three quite difficult this year's honorees in addition to having gpas between 4.4 and 4.6 they've already recorded over 500 hours of community service

018as juniors they are not even seniors yet excuse me these students are leaders at their schools and in our county so our high school director carolyn carbonell will introduce this year's winners good evening chairperson mr colon school board superintendent dr fritz and school board members once again we are here to celebrate the wonderful students that we have in our county and the first one i would like to recognize is from deland high his name is akiyo kandam kulate kandam kulate i think his mom and i practiced it a few times out there um dr carr who is running a little late is she here dr carr says that akil is an outstanding student in all areas his love of science is evident in his participation in the science fair and science olympiad team his interest

019in science comes naturally as both of his parents are employed and stem careers akhil hopes to pursue a degree in biology and practice medicine akil also serves as the junior class representative in the ibb club and he is very respected by his peers and his teachers so akil would you stand so the audience can see you [Applause] our second student that we would like to recognize tonight is from spruce creek high and tonight we have dr west porter here representing spruce creek bruce creek high with her student our student's name is rishi patel and he's here representing spruce creek high dr sparker and dr porter said that rishi is a wonderful ambassador for this recognition he is ranked fifth in his class with a weighted gpa of 4.7 he excels in math and science and

020is currently enrolled in five ib courses two ap courses and two dual enrollment classes he is also a tomorrow's leader representative rishi is also very polite and respectful he's a very outstanding young man who is very supportive of his teachers and his classmates so rishi would you stand up [Applause] and the last person we'd like to recognize although he could not be here tonight it's matias cabeza unfortunately matias couldn't be here because he is currently serving at the florida senate as a page in tallahassee so he couldn't be here tonight so matias is involved greatly in the sea breeze campus environment he is a cambridge international student ranking first in his junior class at seabreeze he also has been recognized as a national hispanic scholar in addition he takes part in a variety of campus

021activities including student council and national honor society he holds a 4.57 gpa and is also a current member of the school's sac committee matias also hopes to work in environmental policy to tackle climate issues from a regulatory perspective so although not here if we could all recognize [Applause] let's get some pictures guys foreign perfect congratulations sorry it's okay thank you so much and once again congratulations boards anybody want to make any comments all right we will move on to the next item on our agenda which uh would be uh public participation however we do have a time certain at six so we will revisit that next we have item 5.01 which is addressing the consent agenda is there any any request to remove anything further from the consent agenda for discussion superintendent do you have

022anything you'd like to remove from the consent not from the consent i will actually from i just received a late notice on um actually i do on 18802 802. so we're going to remove that one we're going to have to remove that uh the current members has agreed to volunteer to stay stay but the member that we were going to recommend is unable to fulfill those duties so we have to pull that wonderful uh anybody else have anything miss mr purses miss cuthbert no all right hearing none do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda with the exception of 8.02 which has been pulled by the superintendent i'll make the motion to approve the consent agenda minus 802. do we have a second second motion has been properly made by ms burnett seconded

023by mr persis any further discussion don't we have to see if there's any comments on the public comments on consent agenda there are none thank you thank you for keeping me straight all right hearing none uh we'll call for the vote all those in favor say aye aye aye all those opposed say nay all right consent agenda is approved all right so next up we have superintendent announcements dr fritz we just have two this week uh just a reminder to everybody that the fact fair is next thursday february 17th at 5 30 at heritage middle school another opportunity for our families to come out learn about our choices that we offer in this county and then our next regularly scheduled school board meeting is tuesday february 22nd 4 30 in the sport room very good

024thank you so much dr fritz next item on the agenda is a you don't have any presentations today we do through as action items right wonderful so we will move on to 15.01 presentation on the adoption of instructional instructional materials for mathematics grades k-12. come on up dr asked ms smith to come forward and dr deary this is as board members as you recall we've gone through the process of going through with the adoption committee of our teachers and looking at the instructional materials we've come to you before we presented with you what the recommendation was we followed the process as far as allowing it to have some public hearings and tonight what we're looking at is for your approval and any other questions that you may have wonderful thank you so much and so

025we have we workshopped this topic in the past i know we had one-on-ones on this topic and at the last board meeting there was a formal presentation regarding this and did we receive any significant or any public comment after posting it that you're aware of mr pendley mr pendley uh mr pendley the question was did we receive any public comment regarding the uh posting of textbooks for the mathematics thanks very good uh are there any questions we'll start off with mr persis thank you mr chair uh really i do not i i did have questions but all those questions were answered on the one-on-one uh fantastic pro program i love the process that we use everyone's had a chance to weigh in on it i'm just excited anything to do with mathematics you know mr

026chair i'm all in and i just can't wait for the teachers to get these new materials and get these students excited about learning math because that's what i love too so thank you mr chair i love his excitement tonight all right next up is cuthbert oh thank you mr chairman um did did the district decide upon consumables for it for the um algebra geometry the consumables are already being purchased for the k to five and the sixth through eighth um we have not received the in fact i believe a copy may actually be here in the room with the publisher but we have not seen a final product for the consumable because it was a recent addition to the aga out which means algebra 1 geometry algebra 2 aga that was a recent addition to

027that publisher so we need to really look at that consumable product to make sure that we want to use it that it's will be what we want first okay so then every student will have a textbook or a consumable we we haven't decided which way to go until we see that product okay thank you very much that was that was the one question i had before and i didn't know what your final decision had been but thank you very much all right miss burnett thank you um i think you guys did a great job presenting this at the workshop and at the meeting and at the one on one so i really have no questions thank you um but for mr purses he seems so excited about math maybe he should go back into the

028teaching realm we have jobs for him i was waiting for a comment from him thank you all right i i i actually mumbled a few things under my breath wonderful miss hey thank you mr club i have no further questions this evening i appreciate all the time and effort i appreciate the committees that you put together to review the materials you had outstanding teachers on there and i just appreciate the dialogue that they had and how they were looking at you know as i said last time materials that would work for a brand new beginning teacher as well as an experienced teacher because when selecting materials they have to work for everyone that's going to walk into that room and i'm happy to hear that all of the consumable piece will be coming with the

029k-5 part because i think that's very important especially for our younger students and so thank you for the time and effort you've put into this because i've actually talked to school board members sometimes in other districts that i don't think put as much time and effort into it as what we do because even we make it available for our community and parents to come out and take a look at all of it and that is a needed component and so thank you ladies for everything that you did very welcome all right and i have no questions as well superintendent is there a recommendation there is the superintendent recommends the approval to adopt the specified instructional materials for mathematics grades k-12 for the school year of 2021-2022 you've heard the recommendation of the superintendent do we

030have a motion i make the motion that we approve this all right do we have a second second motion's been properly made by ms hayne seconded by mrs burnett any further discussion all right hearing none all those in favor say aye aye aye all those opposed say no all right congratulations and again thank you for all your hard work i know this has been months and months in the making and now it's time to get that p.o out to the publishers so we can get our books out first now it's time to start working on the contracts that's right yeah let's make it happen thank you so much thank you for your teams as well appreciate it all right next up we have board action item 15.02 which is web filtering software content keeper and

031gaggle yeah board members in public as we start to go down this road this is one that we're actually going to do a presentation on there are some things that i'm not sure that everybody understands but but i want to make sure that people do know this that school systems are one of the most attacked entities out there with by cyber cyber attacks in fact um the average school system has over a thousand that come in a day and so it's very important that we keep our students safe that we keep our staff safe keep their information safe so going forward with this um i've asked dr phillips to come forward today to share a little bit about our efforts to make sure that folks are staying safe dr phillips thank you dr fritz mr

032clone board members so as we look at expanding our one-to-one program from our icp initiative to our um healthy and robust one-to-one program we're making some shifts so with our icp focus uh we're looking at something that was called ami or alternative methods of instruction yes what is icp it's our instructional continuity plan okay so uh if we go into a state or a situation to where we can't have on-campus education happening our icp our instructional continuity plan allows us to go into an alternative method of instruction or ami which allows for us to continue to instruct our students using technology and distance learning in order to do that so as we're growing from that icp response into a full one-to-one program we're looking at putting some things in place there and top top of

033the list is to make sure that our program is safe but we're also looking at personalized learning aligning our technology within the curriculum itself focusing on anywhere anytime learning redefining our learning encompassing and incorporating student safety student empowerment and looking to get our students to a place to where they can learn about from and with technology in order to do that we've been working on putting in some foundational layers so we've already started to shift our focus from traditional i.t to ed tech we're putting in a new technology support philosophy that focuses on instruction and we've already started work on putting in a new ticketing and tech inventory system additionally we're working on digital citizenship curriculum and content with our tll division what we're talking about tonight is our classroom management software content filtering application

034data and use analytics and our student protection software so the products that we're introducing tonight is content keeper and gaggle these two products and organizations have a partnership where they work together and i'll describe that a little bit so when we look at content keeper and gaggle together we're looking at again web filtering classroom management student well-being and student safety and protection so the primary goal for content keeper is to keep our students safe and to secure our internet for our school district and they do that a couple of ways primarily by securing all sources of web traffic so if you look at our environment today we have on-premises computing happening we have mobile one-to-one devices on and off campus we have bring your own technology we have a guest network and we have iot

035or internet of things where we might even have water fountains on our wi-fi now so we're looking for ways to secure all of this traffic for our students so with content keeper we'll be getting this software pushed out to all of our vcs owned devices as well as any devices that come on our vcs network we will not be pushing the software out to student devices that are not owned by volusia county schools it's important to make that distinction but if those devices come on our network this protection and the software will be put in place right here is an example of the mission control center where we can start to see all the layers of protection that we're putting in place on our devices as well as our network so you'll see on this

036slide where we can see some top users of concern so if we get into some danger zones there as well as our tap our sorry our top application utilization uh and our underutilized applications as well as what browsers and other types of elements that we want to pull data out of and start to aggregate or maybe disaggregate that data so that we can glean insights so focusing on student concerns i just want to show one of the differences and one of the reasons we chose content keeper to present to the board is a lot of the other products on the market that are out there only work through chrome and so you'll you'll see on this slide that if a student went on to safari or firefox or edge or duckduckgo other products might not

037see that content that the students looking for content keeper will will see it all because of where it lives in the layer stack or what traffic it's observing the other thing that's unique with content keeper is context so if you see example one those are two very different contexts and other products might show what's called a keyword alert so anytime that that word might show up no matter the context alerts would happen and that utilizes our resources and it takes resources away from situations that we do need to respond to and content keeper does these context clues and really digs in deep there and one thing that's really important to point out is we set up what are called alert trees or notification trees so it's automatically happening so if a situation happens that uh

038content keeper picks up on it'll go over to gaggle for review and then it will go to the alert tree that we have set up so if we wanted to go to our safety and security department the school principal and a social worker for a particular set of clues then that's how we set that up working with these two organizations so this is just a another example of a student audit dashboard so it allows us to if we need to our principal needs to we can drill down into that student's traffic and see what types of things they've been looking for and start to lean towards what's called predictive analytics where we can start to bring different data points in to predict different things that might happen so shifting gears a little bit uh we're

039going to talk about the classroom management piece of content keeper so this is a cloud-based classroom monitoring tool it allows for teachers to view the screens of their students whether those students are on or off campus so if we go into that icp model again teachers will still be able to see what their students are actually doing on their devices even off campus it allows teachers to remote lock devices or if we have a device that goes missing we can remotely lock it through the software it also allows teachers to send one-on-one communications to students so if there's a student off task or a teacher can see that a student is struggling in a certain area the teacher can just message that student directly we can also pull up browsing history and reporting it integrates

040with our sis focus and it also will work across all of our various platforms so our ipads or if we have chromebooks windows devices whatever those platforms are this is just an example of a broadcast that teachers can send to all the students all at once or a redirect and here's just an example of a teacher that's able to see screens on a windows device an apple device ipad a macbook and a chromebook all the same time so if we have students bringing in that byot the teachers will still be able to to see what the students are doing so as i said earlier content keeper and gaggle have a partnership together in order to analyze all the data that's coming in content keeper sends that data over to gaggle in order to review and

041gaggle also focuses on protecting our students on the digital devices that they're on and they work by preventing anticipating and guiding us through the process so while content keeper will grab certain alerts it will actually go over to trained and licensed people at gaggle that will evaluate those alerts in real time and let us know 24 7 if there's something that we need to respond to most incident types that gaggle has been seeing at school districts specifically are drugs and alcohol suicide and harm harassment violence towards others as well as nudity and sexual content one of the great things about this partnership as as well is if there is some explicit content that one student is trying to send to another or anybody's trying to anybody else they will actually block the content and when

042the content is sent to our reviewers it's actually blurred out unless it needs to go to somebody that actually needs to see the content for law enforcement or something like that so it adds a separate layer of protection there just some insights over the last couple years school districts have really seen an uptick in incidents as you can see on this slide here 87 percent increase in suicide or self-harm 104 percent violence towards others and we're just seeing that as we look at social emotional health uh mental health these types of things it's been hard on on kids and staff and this is one of the layers of protection that we can put in place to help um this is just a quick quote from a cio in in cincinnati i basically said um it

043would be really hard or impossible for humans to do all of this work without the advanced ai or machine learning that takes place and right now what we have is some people that are sifting through and doing this work manually there are several districts that are leveraging this partnership they're they're all listed here if anybody would like to see them additionally we have representatives from content keeper and gaggle if the board has any questions for those representatives with that i'm happy to answer any questions thank you are the representatives here yes sir come on up got lots of questions not really come on now thank you all for being here you've come all this way i don't know from where but we appreciate you taking the time to come and join us today board you've

044heard the presentation does anybody have any questions i have miss jamie haynes is haynes is lit up so miss haynes thank you so thank you dr phillips and you did answer a few my questions as the presentation went on but my question is this if we move forward with this purchase does this mean that every device that we have either issued to students or are being used on campuses by students and adults because i'm assuming it's every device correct does that also include devices that adults or students bring on campus and connect to our wi-fi um yes so the software will be pushed out to all of our devices as well as devices that come onto our wi-fi the the byot works a little bit different it works out the network layer so the individual

045device layer i can let rex kind of talk a little bit more he's from content keeper but when we're looking at adults versus students we can also separate how much we monitor that traffic so if there are concerns with maybe employees and how much we monitor or not concerns we we can decide and you know specialize that but i can let rex sanctuary yeah so the the product is designed to be able to to protect the entire network not just from a web filtering but security standpoint so to answer your question the the the tools that we provide are [Music] in some cases there's an agent that actually goes on the district owned device the important piece is we also have other tools that are that are available to monitor the student devices as well

046as secure them so just not to get too technical but there's a lot of filter circumvention tools out there that every kid's probably got about 10 of them so we actually provide a layer of security there as well so yes we will protect all systems but we do have the ability for the the administrators have the ability to give different levels of security or filtering and it works on all device all devices because we see here and i'm a macbook an ipad a chromebook and a correct like a standard laptop yes we have the ability to see all traffic that's one very unique thing about our product okay so i think because i think that's a piece that needs to be very clearly understood by everyone that if you've been issued a device by volusia

047county schools whether you're a student or an adult that it's going to be monitored and anything that you're doing on that device could actually trigger you know like there could be a word that triggers something that sends it on over to have it looked at and everything the only and and i have no problem because i mean we've had the ability for years um you know if a teacher feels like students are clicking out of what they're supposed to be doing and they're because trust me they do it you know we've had the ability on a one-to-one you know knowing that okay like this is the computer number where we could you know go into that computer and we could see where kids had the program pulled up they were supposed to be working in

048but then they had six other tabs behind that and when they think okay the teacher's not watching me i'm actually out here doing this and we did some interesting things some days like when they would do that we just threw up a sticky note in front of them that said shut down the other browsers and get back to work and they're thinking well how is somebody watching me so i do like the fact that a teacher can actually see immediately if they're doing that because the teacher can't stop her reading lesson to go see what they're doing so i like that piece but i think it needs to be very clear to everyone that you're monitored and if i understood it correctly you'll continue to be monitored even if you access things on a district

049issued device at home yes so it works on the the device level for our dish our district issued devices so um we currently have the ability to monitor and pull up any use of our devices whether they're on our network or off our network what content keeper does is allow us to put some more levels of protection in place for prevention as well as well as give us more real time data on that type of use but we in terms of what we monitor it's the same exact level that we've been monitoring and that the student acceptable use policy and the staff acceptable use policy outline okay and then the final thing if i heard you correctly so anyone that walks in to one of our sites whether it be dac or a school site

050if they connect to the internet instead of using their own data with their device their device is now going to be monitored during that time while they are there correct correct all right so now will the teacher be able to see that device would it be added into what they're looking at say in a classroom do we know if it goes to that extent or you'll just be monitoring it so the best answer is yes and no um so it it slightly depends on if this is what we would consider a byot device that's with the student that we know it's that student and they're rostered with the teacher or if somebody just you know brings in a cell phone yes we'll be able to monitor and see the cell phone we can see what

051access point that it's been um set to but we're going to be adding some different layers of protection in place with our guest network that requires credentials and checking things out so that we can have better affinity of who the users are in providing the better layers of protection so yes we will monitor and we'll be able to see the same types of things it'll be a little harder to narrow it down to the exact user on those types of devices at the beginning until we get some more of the guest network protections in place i'll be honest with you this makes me happy because this will help ensure that when students are using devices that they're using them for the right purpose because we've just we've had a lot of kids out there and

052they are they've got they've got the tools they know how to you know i've got this pulled up but i'm really not working in it and this is what i'm doing behind the scenes so i i'm happy to see this and also just to keep us safe because as we know even with some of the key words you had we know that bullying is taking place and i see this as another way because i'm all about zero tolerance for bullying and i see this is another way to cut down on that bullying so thank you yeah absolutely miss burnett thank you thank you very good presentation and i i'm glad that we're putting in some safety measures for our our staff and students too one thing back to the personal devices if i chose to

053go at a school and i did not log on to the internet then you would not be able to see what i'm doing right so if it's a personal device that is not issued by vcs and it's not on our network we will not be monitoring that so uh anybody that might have a parent might have privacy concern issue doesn't want us monitor if they don't come onto our network then our tools won't see that traffic and i'm pretty sure i know the answer to this but just so that everybody out there understands texting does not is not going to be seen regardless right it's more looking onto the onto the browsers correct so texting works over a completely different network even if you're connected to wi-fi it goes through sms and so um our

054network layer tools for the guests that come onto our network no we wouldn't see a text message thank you all right mr purses thank you mr chair excellent presentation uh i my question is the protection of our employees personal information information that's in payroll and health department and so forth you hear about other companies getting hacked and all of these you know terrible situations where companies have to pay a large ransom to get their information back um is are we getting this kind of protection as well um do you want it yeah well that rec center so yes you do by nature of the what our product does you will actually get that protection we don't do any inline malware scanning or security scanning because of the complexities and the bandwidth requirements of k-12 but

055we have tools in place that will for example we will work with the district to be able to block all urls that we do not categorize so a lot of the largest districts in florida use us and they're already using this feature so basically if a zero day malware or ransomware came out and it got through your your email spam system and a teacher clicked on it we would naturally block that because we would not know what that is so yes there are some very good protections in as well as our anti-malware suspicious and malicious categories thank you thank you mr chair that's all i have miss cuthbert thank you mr chairman um i want to thank my other colleagues for asking such really really good questions um and so i'm going to not ask

056similar questions but something a little bit different when we and i do think something like this is very much needed it will save on man hours and we'll we will be able to um look at it i do have a question will there be a history can we go back to four days ago to check to see if something was occurring if something happens six days later is there some kind of recording or is there um a savings account or a safe where these this information is kept so um yes absolutely we can go back and see that type of history as well as alert history but i i actually think gaggle might be better to answer the question about how they might use that history in new alerts so yeah thanks dr phillips so

057the history um from any of the searches that gets sent to us we're gonna categorize those and archive those so whether there's an investigation or an administrator might need to go back just to talk to the student those are all going to be stored in house not only within gaggle but in content keeper as well so administration who has access as well as if you had another reason for investigation you'd have access to all of that as well thank you uh another question are we going to have training sessions for our district staff to be able to use this effectively um yes so um both content keeper and gag will offer uh train the trainer model uh as well as some direct trainings that we can set up so um we'll have some different in-depth

058type training so what the its division staff will have versus what we train our administrators and teachers on will be very different so our teachers will absolutely get training on how to use the classroom management social workers will get different training than administrators but yes our learning technologies team is the one that will be working to set up all the different training pathways that we'll need to set up in order to push the products out okay i would like to know and i think the board and the school district would like to know when this would occur maybe during the summer during pre-planning week so that we can start the the year off very well and so when do you expect if we do vote for this when do you expect this uh program to

059start so we would um be doing a face implementation of the different modules uh within the software so the content filtering piece and protection piece between content keeper and gaggle we would be standing up prior to the end of march so that we can get those layers of protection in place and our current content manager or content filter that contract is expiring in april so we want to make sure that we have these layers of protection in place prior to that expiration then we'll be looking at rolling out the actual training pieces we would like to get administrators trained on the alert part of it so safety and security any social workers any school-based administrators that need training before the end of this year and then work on getting our teachers trained up through those

060training courses throughout the summer okay thank you in my last i noticed i see the initial cost of 1 million dollars now if we is this renewable every year are there maintenance and service fees and is there a renewal cost so i mean we may see the initial cost but what will the cost be to maintain these two companies in the future sure so um that that cost is for three years and then at the end of that three-year term we would we would go into i guess renegotiation for an extension or renewal of that contract so the price of one million dollars is all-inclusive for three years correct correct okay thank you very much and congratulations to gaggle and to um content keeper to create a program that is so much needed especially for

061all school districts thank you wonderful and so i have a trick question for you okay how many devices would you say we have on the network at any given time in our schools just that's a good question mr clone um that's a trick question but i mean as you know the board just approved the purchase of the software for us to find that type of information out content keeper and gaggle partnership will also give us those numbers uh if i had to estimate i would say we have anywhere between 45 and 50 000 at any given time on our network all at the same time altogether we have probably 65 000 devices district-wide at this point in time which you know speaks to the need i have a few really weird questions okay cte devices

062as we know our children participate in cyber patriot and all kinds of things that you guys are designed to block and so the one thing in in working in health care and sometimes we do validations as well and we have to go off network because on network everything gets blocked and you get booted out and then you have to start all over again so will we work with the cte department to ensure because you know ironically those computers are probably the ones that need a lot of protection but they're the ones that the protection can get in the way it's kind of like when you download that amazing new anti-virus at home and then it doesn't let you see anything and then you have to go in there and over time you end up you

063know getting rid of some of you know moving it from high to moderate to low just because it's annoying so dude i mean do you guys how do you guys deal with that do you want it okay so the product is designed for k-12 and providing age-appropriate policies so that also gives you the flexibility to say this group of students is involved in cyber security training and so we can create different policies for them identify them during times of the day when they can actually get to the resources that they need to it also will probably likely give the staff a lot more flexibility because the product is designed to identify your users accurately the first time as well as gives you granularity that you probably don't have today to give you the right policy

064the first time as well so um thank you rex our our plan right now especially when we look at uh cte or project lead the way biomed some of these other types of programs cyberpatriot that we might need to increase access to we're doing a couple things one is we're planning on putting these devices inside of their own network segment um so that we can control what that segment of the network gets access to the students will still need to log on to those machines with their credentials so that we can still see the traffic if anything concerning happens we'll still be able to to see those alerts and we'll still be able to take appropriate action while still allowing access so part of the great thing about um going this direction is it allows

065us to do that type of thing we have looked at our team here in its has looked at literally if there's a product on the market that's similar to this and we haven't looked at it it's brand new because we spent months evaluating every product and this is the one that gives us that granularity to do that type of thing great and then you mentioned that the teachers would have the ability to have conversations with students how do we what and i guess again for both of these i'm more so looking for policies because we're going to need policies to come before the board and so this is going to take altering of maybe some of our existing policies because i can't imagine they align so how is that something we even want is it

066something we even need and is it something we have the ability to turn off is it something that we can go back and store so if i send a message to a student at eight o'clock at night how you know is that message discoverable yeah do you want to answer actually okay so yes you can disable that um it is logged and the everything that is done inside the classroom management system is logged and it can be turned off additionally just so you know it the the monitoring portion can be disabled after school hours as well which is very important so a teacher would not be able to monitor students after hours of that i think there's going to be some policy considerations there the other thing you mentioned was there was the ability to

067broadcast information which sounds duplicative to some of our other programs like school messenger that we use and so i would caution as we look at the implementation of this that we don't create these multiple layers you know we've done really really good with school messenger and i think we have figured it out so while there is the capability of using that as a source i i would yeah absolutely mr colon and i'll i'll elaborate a little bit more on what that broadcast is so um it's it's not like school messenger it's really a teaching tool so if um if a teacher is in their classroom and they're seeing you know maybe they have five minutes before the bell and they want to broadcast to the students in their classroom that are rostered okay time to

068do this or wrap it up they can send a message to all their students in the classroom all at one time as opposed to sending out a huge school messenger or something like that that's like texting your wife on the sofa yeah yeah absolutely we've all done it so yeah our teachers will be able to one-on-one message or they can message to all their students at once if there's use cases um that makes sense for those teachers yeah and then um again just want to reiterate because i think that there is going to be a privacy consideration and i tell you i work in a big organization that if you um if you hook up to the network you're going to get all kinds i mean we we don't even allow the looking up of

069the word you can't go to bass pro shops in my organization because they sell firearms and so um i think that there's i mean i guess my question is do our current i.t policies support the monitoring of not only the adults but not only the students but also the adults and the understanding that while you are on the network your activities are being monitored while you're on the network should you opt not to be on the network then that's your choice and so i want to make sure that our policies are very clear so that we don't have i mean i can tell you right now you know and i work in a large organization where i have docs who say hey i don't want to ever join your network because you guys can you

070guys are going to go through my phone as if we have the time or desire to do that yes so i can break that down a couple of different areas so when we're talking about students we actually have an obligation to monitor under sipa and coppa which are two federal laws that say we have to monitor our students and we have our families that sign the acceptable use policy that falls under board policy for our students for our staff our our policies do say that we'll monitor our staff as well every staff member who's issued a district user account signs the form that says that their activities will be monitored the part that we're working on right now is that guest network part so if people come onto our network and they join our guest

071network there's not a pop-up or a banner currently that says we're monitoring uh that usage and that's one of the elements that we will be putting in place so you know if some of the churches that come on our network or parents ptas sac sporting events if people want to use our network we're going to have that banner where they opt in so that they know that their stuff is being monitored and that's how my organization does that as well all right and that was all the questions that i have anybody else have any questions thoughts feelings or concerns mr superintendent the superintendent recommends the approval for the web filtering software content keeper and gaggle board you've heard the recommendation of the superintendent is there any public comment do we have any public comment cards

072for this topic we don't all right hearing none we will go ahead and do we have a motion to approve mr chairman um i move that we adopt uh purchase uh gaggle keeper listen to me i've already made you a partnership uh content keeper and gaggle at this time for one million dollars for three years do we have a second well second motion's been properly made by ms cuthbert seconded by mrs burnett any further discussion hearing mr chairman yes ma'am um i just want to thank uh the two uh or the like i only see two maybe there are three uh people who came all the way to our school district to answer questions that was very kind of you to to do that and plus to wait you know an hour into our meeting

073so i want to uh personally thank you even though i i haven't had the chance to meet you in person thank you very much for attending thank you all right we'll call for the vote all those in favor say aye aye aye aye all those opposed say nay motion passes congratulations thank you thank you very much all right so it is 5 34 we're going to move on to uh board action item number 15.03 i'm going to ask mr pendley and dr shannon off mr grube i'd come forward thank you dr fritz mr chairman board members this item is a recommendation to dedicate a corner approximately 60 by 90 feet of or 70 by 90 feet of land at mcginnis elementary school to facilitate the water treatment water supply upgrades there at the campus by

074putting in a lift station in the what would be the extreme northwest corner of the property it will allow us to remove the school from current well water a removal of two detention ponds on the property for water treatment that is currently there and to extend the parent pickup loop to the backside of the school so to alleviate traffic on u.s 17. this is a partially grant funded project it has been previously approved for participation in conjunction with the st john's water management district the city of deland in volusia county along with the florida department of transportation as to the right of way there this is a project that is ongoing it's a much larger piece of the project to improve the water sewer treatment there on the north side of deland city and by

075dedicating this small parcel of land for the lift station we will be cooperating with the city and allowing them to install the equipment it'll include fencing and screening appropriate for the project and to house that equipment there for purposes of this water sewer treatment project and so dr shanoff is here to address any particulars but this time it's our recommendation that we approve the dedication of this parcel of mcginnis elementary to the city of deland all right are there any questions mr purses yes uh yes this is a uh much needed first step here to get this thing uh where it needs to be over there uh uh um um uh dr shanoff did we have any input from the principal or the community around the school regarding this item so this would be welcome

076news to the principal because it would alleviate rather regular water testing that we need to conduct and also house just in case we have any issues with the well we have to keep a significant amount of water in storage in the event that we need to go to water a bottled water so this is this is going to put the school on sewer on city sewer city water we will not have to worry about the well or testing the water several times a week so this is good for the school yeah it's it's very good and the other thing is uh the piece about the traffic the parent pickup drop-off yes there's there's a good amount of land in the back of the school that we can utilize once we take down the the existing

077wastewater area and and so then we'll be able to go ahead and move forward with creating a loop uh in the back that will alleviate the congestion on 17. yeah yeah that'll be great it's a it's it's a little dangerous the way they exit that now and they make that left that left turn across two lanes there [Music] but uh you know they don't really have much of a choice so uh it'll be it'll be nice when we get this project all the way completed thank you that that's all i have mr chair thank you miss cuthbert thank you mr chairman i also want to say as one who's lived on well water for a while um it will also um be helpful to have city water in our on our sinks the water fountains

078the toilets because well water tends to stain and corrode pipes so much faster because of the more iron content in them so it would be great for maintenance as well in our appliances and we won't have to replace all the equipment whatever the water touches thank you all right miss burnett thank you um i had a couple of questions and forgive me if i dismissed them but um how would the city access the area to uh it is adjacent to the right eastern right-of-way of us-17 there will be a gate and fence it's my understanding to so that'll access the uh they'll create like a driveway there then yes okay and then um you mentioned it would be partitioned off so that no one from the school and that includes an extra shed or space

079for for um you mentioned equipment i'm taking it that's for the the pinked off areas just for the lift and they needed more space for um a shed or equipment or did i misunderstand something no so the way that the agreement is written is that it's it's a maximum of the 60 by nine excuse me the 70 by 90. they really just need the space to build the lift station and be able to fence in the lift station so there there needs to be a certain amount of distance between the lift station and the fence that surrounds the lift station along with the driveway access to that lift station that's why the ask was 70 by 90 but we do not anticipate that there will be other fixtures associated at this point it's just the

080lift station okay and then one more question please um so you generally there's cost like if if a private citizen wanted to tap into city water versus a sewer there's cost well since we're giving the land are there going to be costs for us to transition to that or no that's kind of the whole project no that's that's not part of this project there'll be no cost for us to go to the city water so there are costs with taking down the waste water area that's that's currently there yes so we will have to incur those costs the re-grading of the retention pond areas there are costs associated with that as well they're also looking at moving the existing lift station that it's very small that's that's in the back and so there are some

081costs that are associated with that but those have been budgeted previously and so we already have those in budget thank you you're welcome zanes thank you i'm happy about the city water in the city sewer for mcguinness but i think probably the piece that i'm the happiest about is that we are going to bring that parent pick up loop to the back because there's been many accidents out in front of that school and um partially because of the way it just works and even when we've held summer school there we've had some bad accidents out there so if we can bring that parent pick up loop around at the back i think i'm i'm personally going to feel a lot safer for the students loading them unloading them and their parents exiting the area and

082not pulling across you know two lanes of traffic that sometimes people just don't slow down for that i appreciate all the time you took into it i appreciate whoever did this getting us this final photo you know so that we could actually see it because it was this was the clearest picture of where that lift station was going so thank you you're welcome that was miss doster who does does a great job and and the board chair came out with us last week to to view the area and so i think um yeah this is a this is a good move and so like he mentioned i did i have a kind of a personal rule of thumb i don't like voting on anything i haven't seen with my own eyes and so i had

083the pleasure of going back into the trees of mcginnis and their la he's laughing at me because they're talking about wildlife and turtles and scrub jays and all kinds of things that being from miami i'm not extremely familiar with and then they took me to the back i have to tell you the story because we've got a few minutes then they took me to the back and said here's the water treatment plant and i said the what and so i guess we've had a water treatment plant on plant in the back of this property with two lawn mower sounding engines that turn on at different hours we weren't sure if they were going to come flying off or what i was way out of my element and so i was able to see not only

084what we were proposing to dedicate but also what we have been doing for years and so for the city folks who don't understand everything they just said basically we've had to test this water several times a week we've had to if there's a drop in pressure something happens to the toilets and i don't know what that is and so it's been quite the challenge over time to to get that and so i have a huge appreciation for the gentleman that was out there who's been doing it for like 20 years and could speak to that water treatment plant i don't remember his name but that was rob brenton there you go so rob thank you and and to his team who've been keeping this school afloat and so i've seen it i can tell you

085it's way in the corner it's way over there significantly away from where student activity is and so i don't see how it could you know be very disruptive to the school day because it's way over there and so uh superintendent do you have a recommendation i do superintendent recommends the approval of resolution 2022 2022-02 dedicating approximately 70 feet by 90 feet which equals 6 300 square feet of school property not necessary for educational purposes to the city of deland you've heard the recommendation of the superintendent do we have a motion i'll make the motion go ahead all right do we have a second i second it motion's been properly made by mr person seconded by ms haynes do we have any further discussion yes i do yes ms cuthbert um i just want to say

086rob brinson is very well qualified experienced gentleman in our facilities department and just to tell you uh to brag about him a little bit he is a new smyrna beach high school graduate so here we have volusia county school graduates staying in our county and working and giving back to their communities so thank you go cudas absolutely all right so we have a motion and a second any further discussion any public comment cards none all right hearing none we'll call for the vote all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed nay motion passes congratulations uh we will take a 13-minute break and resume back at six o'clock for public comment thank you i will reconvene in one minute what's up there it is six o'clock we will reconvene this meeting uh board members

087uh mr persis are you there i'm here i'm here yes wonderful board members typically we do 15 minutes time certain of public comment however we have reached towards the end of our meeting and so is anybody opposed to us going ahead and listening to all of the public comments seeing as we have reached that point in the meeting no objection mr chairman wonderful thank you and so we will go on uh ladies and gentlemen you will have three minutes to address the board there is a timer in the front to let you know when your time is up in order to ensure that everybody has the opportunity to speak same amount of time i will ask you and thank you for being here as soon as you have reached the three minutes first person to

088come up is mr patrick cagle mr cagle welcome to our school board meeting today you okay members of the school board as i'm sure you are aware the vaguely worded sb 148 states an individual should not be made to feel discomfort guilt anguish or any form of psychological distress on account of his or her race violation of this impending statute could lead to discipline or dismissal there is a parallel movement to encourage students to report teachers and parents uh and for parents to bring lawsuits against teachers whom it suspects of inflecting discomfort in the classroom regardless of the outcome such in such lawsuits will cost school districts and individuals considerable money time and distress i would like to thank the members of the school board for responding to my previous letter concerning the bill and

089its ramifications i realize that the board does not have control over what gets decided in tallahassee however i do believe it is within the power and moral authority of the school board to set at ease the minds of parents and instructors it is imperative to do so since polls show most parents are concerned that bills like sb 148 will weaken educational standards it is also the case that many teachers are expressing anxiety contemplating early retirement and or engaging in preemptive self-censorship i would like to ask the members of the school board too number one restate the board's commitment to providing our students with a thorough education said education must inevitably involve evoking some level of discord in our student body number two clarify for the public the way school books are chosen the public needs

090to be informed that teachers are generally required to use pre-approved pre-approved textbooks and that they are logically at liberty to discuss any such topics when relevant or when the time allows in other words it is permissible to lead discussions on the holocaust required by florida state law america's history of slavery racial segregation the us government's policy and treatment of first peoples etc number three state without equivocation that teachers are encouraged to teach as we have always taught that is with respect for students of all backgrounds and for the material that we teach number four teachers have proven their dedication to students and the community these last two years although this should be obvious i would ask the school board to state that excluding evidence to the contrary the board regards volusia county teachers as professionals

091whose loyalty to the united states and its students should not be subject to undue scrutiny or undue assumptions of ideological proselytizing on a personal note i have taught at pine ridge school for 20 years the staffs students and parents are from many different cultural religious and linguistic backgrounds it is a mirror of america's culture and something that we are proud of those of us who teach there are hardwired to respect everyone we do not require vaguely worded bills to compel us to continue doing so as with every teacher i have an obligation to all my students to teach to the best of my ability whenever the material requires me to talk about diff difficult historical and cultural issues i intend to continue doing so thank you thank you mr cagle next up mr doug petit

092welcome dr fritz and school board members my name is doug pettit i come to you today as a concerned citizen and taxpayer i don't represent any groups or specific interests except those of fellow taxpayers and citizens i'm here today total regarding the volusia county schools document entitled the lesbian gay bisexual transgender and questioning support guide i'm fully aware that this document is a guide and is not part of any curriculum i agree that a child questioning their sexual identity is significant and to make such an important decision mechanisms should be in place for them to express themselves comfortably my concern is how the support guide directs this process while law may direct that the the a guide of this nature be available since it has no attribution association with it the first question has to

093be where did this document come from what parent were parents involved in his creation were they allowed to review the document during its development since it discourages parental involvement in several places that doesn't appear to be the case there's also no evidence that the guide comes from any credible source on the issue of sexual identity and mental health and while it cites many local state and federal laws it fails to mention the florida parents bill of rights signed into law in 2021 nor the federal protection of pupils rights amendment passed into law in 1974 and expanded in the guide states the district will continue to provide students teachers administrators and community members the resources needed to make our schools as safe and inclusive as possible interestingly there is no mention in that statement of the

094parents of these children so apparently this inclusion does not involve one of the most important aspects of the children's lives and the district's responsibility the guide also states that it is never appropriate to divulge the sexual orientation of a student to a parent all i can say here is an astounding what apparently the creators of the guide weren't aware of or disregarded united states supreme court acknowledgment in troxel v granville that the interest of parents in the care custody and control of their children is perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by this court i agree that a guide of this nature might be useful in navigating a very difficult situation but the document in question was at best a ham-handed attempt and needs to be significantly revised this time with parents included

095in conclusion within the last few hours i was told that the document has been reviewed removed from the district website that begs the question why and just because it's not publicly available is it still being used within the district has the guide been removed from the public access simply because its existence has become commonly known i would hope that's not the answer but regardless the points the points about parental involvement in such a sensitive issue remain a concern thank you mr petty thank you next up dr jerry pikett welcome dr pikett good evening board chairman members of the board community groups business partners superintendent of schools again i come before the board to express my concerns in regards to the educational inequalities and discrimination of minorities as related to volusia county schools leadership and instructional

096faculty as a concerned citizen and former principal within volusia county schools i encourage this governing board and legal representation to follow up with my sincere request for answers related to my questions it was surprising for me to witness how the organization hashtag fire dr fritz was not only able to get the superintendent to change his position but to also publicly apologize to the organization for his decision previously made i can also add that there was a gentleman who had concerns related to his property tax and a board member interrupted the session to request his information for follow-up consequently both had crystal clear similarities what i'm requesting is simply the the same follower transparency and answers so with my request in mind and the governing board ensuring that my requests are fairly addressed as the example

097is given superintendent you have an assistant principal willie f williams who has served in volusia county schools for more than 29 years with nine of experience as a school principal i'm sorry so my question is does mr chairman yes ms cuthbert who stopped the time please it is our policy that we don't call out individuals thank you so bored uh as you know we don't uh call out individuals and so i'll ask you to please continue uh what did she mean call out persons does she mean it's so personal attacks in other words calling out a name and so you'll address the chair and so avoid any personal attacks please thank you miss cupper so my question is does the district have a formal legal binding that states an employee cannot apply compete and earn

098a position for hire due to litigation simply stated you superintendent and your personnel policies do not allow an administrative point of order mr chairman continue mr pocket you superintendent and your personnel policies do not allow an administrative employee to fairly apply compete and earn a position for hire as the most experienced and best candidate for a new position due to litigation if there is a document that allows such a practice i need your legal representation to provide us a written copy or cease stop and desist discriminating against this man maximizing his fullest potential in the community that he was born and raised you say you are for the people you say you are for this community so take action and do what is right this is a clear example why there is such a great

099divide when it comes down to equality policing order the law and justice in reflection i think about my thousands of sons and daughters and i can see them watching and hearing them say you see dad we told you they don't care about us and they don't care about you either so now what do you want us to do my answer to them is simply this you watch dad stand on the front line alone and willing to die with his truth and will allow the universe to have the last word thank you dr pikett next up elizabeth albert welcome miss albert thank you good evening chair colon members of the board dr fritz members of the audience so i want to talk today start by referencing the workshop it's pretty interesting review of the information a

100different approach that we took today at the workshop i'm very concerned about the time limits on the questions the public oftentimes has similar questions that they want to ask and not allocating enough time for a complete and thorough question and answer session is absolutely poor planning emailing questions leaves the public out of the conversation all together one and one-on-one question and answer sessions further divides um or creates in us against them or in us and them that's not good the public needs to hear the concerns of the board and more importantly the responses from the district i wonder also why the workshop started at 12 30 when typically we begin at 10 o'clock beginning at the 10 o'clock start time would have afforded two and a half hours of additional time for such an important

101topic as a review of the strategic plan and the progress that we have made i want to now shift gears a little bit and revisit the issue of culture i've been speaking to you about culture for several meetings now culture affects all five of our strategic plan goals it's a very important topic one of the goals mentioned specifically the internal stakeholders these are your employees these are the people who are educating our students and supporting that work as well did you know many of your teachers and staff are just barely hanging on did you know that many of your teachers and staff can't see any improvement in the near future did you know that many of your teachers and staff feel as if their concerns are not being addressed many teachers and staff are telling

102us that they don't feel supported by the district and many teachers and staff believe in their site-based administration but they feel disconnected from team volusia so i urge you to make improving uh the culture within our district your highest priority according to dr caldwell who is someone who gave a significant amount of his life to volusia county schools and still does yeoman's work of educating our next generation of teachers hopefully they'll all come and stay 30 years or more in volusia county schools but according to dr caldwell culture is the glue that holds an organization together and we cannot allow volusia county schools to fall apart thank you miss albert next up is kathy knowles welcome back miss knowles good evening um school board i'm here tonight to speak to you as a insurance committee

103member meeting member uh i've emailed um dr fred several times and people asking for these meetings to go back to in person we've had six since school started they've done them all virtually we are now into the heart of this uh verna you know the committee where we really need to meet in person if we can have these meetings our dac meetings and all that in person um roughly there's about 10 people on our side that meet and then however me depends on aeon in florida health kingdom so roughly maybe 15 at the most that come to these meetings and that there's plenty of places that we can meet and spread out and meet but they're being told that um they've been directed to continue these meetings in virtual and i'm here to ask y'all

104to have them change it to in-person meetings so that we can make a decision on insurance that's coming up because right now i can tell you i will not vote right now if we stay this way because i cannot make a good decision for the insurance that's going to affect all these the employees for volusia county thank you thank you miss knowles next up mr john navarro thank you as a teacher at pine ridge high school i have to speak out tonight about around the country there's been an elimination or reduction in the teaching of black history and black culture and i have done some research on supreme court cases that may call into question using the 14th amendment the first one is from the brown versus board of education ruling and this is quoting

105right from the ruling the effect of the separation on their educational opportunities was well stated in the kansas case by a court which nevertheless felt compelled to rule against the negro plaintiffs segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children the impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group a sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn so i think the brownfirst board of education ruling is more than just integrating blacks and whites into the classroom but the culture of the classroom and then i did some further research i have to tell you that my father is a lawyer and my grandfather practiced

106constitutional law so it's kind in my blood but this is what i found from constitutional law on the strouder versus west virginia case 1880 and this is one of the slaughterhouse cases that a lot of people study in law school and from this case it ordains that no state shall deprive any person of life liberty or property without due process of law or to deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws what is this but declaring the law and the states shall be the same for the blacks as for the white that all persons whether colored or white shall stand equal before the laws of the states and regard the colored race for what protection primarily designed the words of the amendment it is true are prohibitory but they contain a

107necessary implication of a positive immunity or right most valuable to the colored race the right to exemption from unfriendly legislation against them distinctively as colored implying inferiority into civil society lessening the security of their enjoyment of the rights which others enjoy and discriminations which are steps toward reducing them to the condition of tomorrow thank you next up shane's story welcome back mr story hey ladies and gentlemen the board dr fritz good to see you again uh kind of a heavy room tonight i came here with a positive note um we had our first ese advisory committee last night and i wanted to come here and personally thank all the members of the board dr fritz i know you had a hand in that as well ms wiles a lot of the staff members of the

108district obviously miss albert and dr howard from vue lita gorilla mary spidell miss galadi a lot of people involved last night and had really really productive conversations last night i think we still have a little ways to go but ms albert did talk about changing the culture and you know those teachers that are kind of hanging on when i came here in november i was one of those teachers that was hanging on by a thread somebody that i know i could get a job elsewhere do just fine but this is what i was passionate about that's why i came here and why i wanted to speak about something it was kind of my my last card to play at that point and what i've seen over the last couple of months and while it's slower

109than i like i have seen progress and i am happy to see it i've seen participation at all levels from view from the district from my co-workers people coming together because at the end of the day this it's not about teacher pay it's not about esc services it's what's best for kids how do we get kid how do we get teachers in classrooms how do we keep them in those classrooms how do we make them want to stay for an extended period of time and the direction that you're moving by addressing these conversations and talking about things like efficiency and some of the other things that we discuss this is how we keep people here this is how we make people feel like they're being heard that they have a voice and it you know

110it's it's good for everybody involved it's best for our children who have quality educators in that classroom it benefits the board because you don't have people that are out there railing against you because you can show like we can make progress we can work together we can make us happy we can make this happen so i really just want to thank all of you again members from board um and i did forget ms hazel um you were a great moderator yesterday we truly appreciate that keeping us in line but thank you all so much i do appreciate it and i like the direction we're adding thank you thank you mr story next up mark irwin mark irwin all right i will bring him to the back here sheila rush jenny diaz all right arlene dieppa

111melinda stewart welcome miss stewart thank you good evening dr fritz chairman colin and board members my name is melinda stewart and i am a bus driver in area five deltona there are two major issues in transportation that i would like to speak about first is our pay we are not receiving a living wage which makes it extremely difficult to pay our bills or to have any kind of lifestyle we are barely managing to live paycheck to paycheck that being said let me tell you about an incident that happened on one of our buses recently there was a high school student that had a verbal disagreement with the driver the driver told the student please sit down and let's get you home safely the student replied who are you to tell me what to do you're

112just a bus driver you're a nobody and making i make more than you do and i just started at wendy's who do you think you are the only thing the driver could reply was wow this driver was really hurt by what that student had said but the fact the student truly is making more working at a fast food restaurant than a professionally trained cdl driver was just sad could you do our jobs as drivers in attendance and would you work for what we are paid the second issue we are having is student behavior for many years now the students have been out of control and we are receiving little or no help from the schools a few years ago i was working as an area driver i was filling in for a strive for a

113driver that was out sick when i picked up the middle school about 15 of those students started jumping around screaming and yelling obscenities at me i was about two blocks away so i turned around and took the bus back to the school a counselor came out and instead of yelling at the students for their bad behavior she yelled at me for bringing them back we need discipline on our buses for safety's sake and we need the schools to help i will end with one major truth if it were not for the drivers in attendance the school system which is already struggling would fail the schools would have no choice but to switch to online learning and we all know what happened the last time we did that please recognize how vital we are to the

114function of the volusia county school system pay us accordingly and give us the help we need to keep bus discipline on our buses thank you thank you miss stewart christine vergare gary welcome hi i'm christine vergari i am a resident of deland and i have a child in volusia county schools and my concern tonight is the gender support plan which i understand also has been removed from the website it indicates that its purpose is to create a quote shared understanding of how to support students authentic gender not clear as to what that means it further asks if the parents are quote aware unquote and quote supportive unquote of their child's transition and a go-to member of the staff is appointed to for that child to go to not the child's parent and there seems to

115be no working together with the parents this clearly runs a foul of the parents bill of rights which was passed this july also genspect an international organization supporting gender dysphoric people warns that teachers and staff cannot replace clinical psychological supervision that many of these children may need i believe it is over 40 some odd percent of these students and please excuse me i will certainly speak again but i was not actually planning on speaking tonight are diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder many have executive functioning disorders many have all sorts of issues adhd that can impact them as you know is a very tumultuous time there has been a 4 000 rise in students specifically girls and very often in friend groups identifying as transgender since 2009. historically that was about point zero zero one

116percent of girls or maybe one in every ten thousand we need to look to what is underlying this contagion and this we need to look at what's going on here before we just take something from san francisco pull it and put it into um into volusia county and that's where it came from thank you miss fergari next up belinda morales welcome ms morales i come here today with a concern that has taken place within this school board's district it was brought to my attention that this poster has been in my child's classroom since the beginning of the school year we believe black lives matter no human is illegal love is love women's rights are human rights science is real water is life i am only finding out of his existence when my child came home

117with questions regarding some of the topics that are written on the poster after questioning my child i asked for a picture to be taken of the poster i was disgusted to know that my child's teacher felt it was necessary to indoctrinate our children let me be very clear with what this poster is saying one we believe in racism two we believe in open borders three we believe in attacking christian views four we believe in abortions five we believe in pushing vaccines now my questions to you all are one what is the school district doing to ensure that this type of behavior is not being forced upon our children two what are the repercussions when a teacher makes these offenses three how are parents going to feel comfortable sending their children to your schools knowing that

118this has been happening under your leadership and four what type of inspections are you going to commit to today to ensure our children are not being indoctrinated by their teachers thank you thank you miss morales mark irwin sheila rush jenny diaz arlene dieppa all right so we will conclude public comment for now we do normally have a time after the board has has had their board comments and so we will revisit these names prior to the close of our meeting all right so we are now on items from the board superintendent our attorney we'll start with mr purses uh thank you mr chair uh good job tonight running the the meeting wish i could have been there in person that i was grateful for the opportunity to be with you all virtually uh don't have

119any comments and uh looking forward to our next meeting and my understanding now we are on the schedule mr chair you may want to just communicate that out what our new schedule is for the year very good we will do that all right anything else mr purses that's it mr chair thank you sir all right ms cuthbert no comment thank you all right miss burnett thank you um i guess i uh just looking forward to the next couple of weeks i like i said earlier dr fritz and i have a couple of uh school tours again planned and i hope to see some more amazing work being done i'm sure i will and i plan on attending um campbell's junior national junior honor society pinning and i think that'll be fun because that's always nice

120to see kids working so hard to get good grades and further pursue educational opportunities so i'm looking forward to that thank you all right liz haynes since we had a group come in do we want to hear them um no let's we'll finish this part and then we'll go to them okay so i'm actually looking forward to friday morning because we're going to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the opening of debary elementary because the year that we were the district was building debary elementary they were also building forest lake elementary and volusia pines elementary all at the same time and so they didn't quite open on time and so we opened at a little bit later date into the school year and i'm going to be there because i actually was on the first teaching

121group that taught at de berry elementary it's just hard to believe that it's been 25 years ago since it opened but i think that's going to be a great celebration we've got some former administrators even that are coming in from out of state to be here that day that had worked there and some teachers so the other thing um i would just like to say dr fritz i i would like listening to all the public input tonight i really in case we don't talk between now and then i'd like to see if we could give the insurance committee the ability to meet in person i know that the insurance piece has been a hot topic for us for many years we tend to get to spring and the work's not done or it's like well

122let's just continue with the insurance that we've had for the past year and i think we really owe it to our employees for all those individuals that are dedicating so much of their time that we consider honoring the request that miss knowles made tonight so that they can meet in person and there's a lot there is there's a lot of other things going on right now out at our schools that i'm also looking forward to mr clone when we started this evening i thought you were going to share what you talked about in tallahassee because we each you know took a topic and you didn't share that topic and so so earlier tonight i talked about the fact that we went up there and we talked about the you know the teacher's salary and we

123asked them to give us the flexibility now that we've reached the 47.5 to start giving raises to our experienced teachers and work on the compression issue so we tag team when we go to meet with our representatives because what we've learned is some school boards don't work well together from other districts but we actually go in and we work well together and we feel that it's best if they see us together on and so we pick the topics that we feel would make the largest impact so the topic the other topic we talked about is those of you that are not in the teacher category all right because we talked about the people that are in the ten dollar to twenty dollar pay range and we asked our representatives to take a look at what

124they could also do for everybody that falls into that category we talked about yes the 15 dollar weight minimum wage was voted in but it was voted in with a five-year window and we can't wait five years to reach that point and so we talked about that and he shared that piece and they were very open to that and what we learned is they are already looking at that piece too so that's another piece that i would encourage each of you to look up who your representative is and send them a message and share your story for what's happening because what i see is when we talk to them and you can truly share a story it means something to the individuals that are up there making those decisions and so i would ask that

125you do that the other thing it's for you dr fritz with that being said are we anywhere yet with non-bargaining and what we're going to be looking at for our non-bargaining staff because we still have nurses campus advisors all of our technology department assistant principals principals and some district staff that are not any part of the unions that are represented and so where are we at for any form of a race for them this year i speak yes first of all let me address the insurance uh that means already been set for in person for march so that's coming up so that ms snead had already communicated that so that's done um regarding non-bargaining we have an impasse hearing coming up and so the idea was to get through that and then move forward with

126the administration and everybody else we felt like that was prudent if the board has a different direction then i'll give you a recommendation very quickly i can't speak for everyone else that's part of why mr door and i wanted that impasse hearing unit to happen sooner than later i didn't realize that that group was also they were considering holding off on them until um i would just i'm going to share my own personal opinion if you know what you're going to do for non-bargaining i'd like to see it sooner than later but that is my own view thank you and so uh board a couple of things and and i'm gonna seek direction from you all as you all know dr fritz's contract is uh due to expire at the end of november and so

127uh as the board chair i would like to put on the next agenda us having a conversation in the public on the agenda regarding that contract so that you can give me direction on how you would like to proceed as you know you know processes sometimes take time and so i think it's something that we at the very least need to have a discussion about and so if there is no opposition i'm going to go ahead and propose that as part of our next meeting so that we can solidify that for the district as well [Music] and so that's really the only thing that i have for tonight um you know there's a there's there's a lot of comments that were made and we typically don't speak to a lot of the comments but one

128of the things when i went to tallahassee and we spoke about with our lawmakers and i'm going to be very very clear you know we get beat up for a lot of things that are mandated give you an example some parents are asking about the lgbt guide that was on our web page well the florida department of education took theirs down a month ago a month ago one month the folks that you hear saying oh school districts are teaching something more than reading writing arithmetic had the guide on their website one month ago when they took it down nicki freed put it up so for all of those folks who are questioning how does this stuff get in the school district how does it volusia county school get at some point it was a mandate

129there was a requirement there was something that came down that said you need to have this there are other districts that miss haynes can attest to there are other districts that also have it i can i can assure you if you knew anything about our legislature okay these aren't folks that probably even knew this was there a lot of folks are getting us about oh well you guys are talking about topics that should be at home suicide this that the other there are five hours and and and school should stick to reading writing and arithmetic we have five hours that by law we have to speak of social emotional learning human trafficking suicide all of these things these are things that were put into law by the legislature and i promise you the legislature is

130not a bunch of raving liberals so when you ask us why do you have this in there as a school district it's because it is a requirement by the law some folks have said to me reuben you guys have crt in schools in the textbooks all the textbooks we use in volusia county schools are approved by the state of florida and i'm going to be very clear the house the senate and the governor's mansion in the state of florida have been held by one party since 1996. so anyone who says that it is in there it's because the florida department of education who tells us what textbooks we can buy and from which folks we can buy it from we don't have a choice and that is not a local matter we don't have a

131choice they say here are the three companies that you can get social studies books from i've had people say to me you know you believe in this guess what in the three years i've been here i've never approved the purchase of any social studies books so what's here is what was here before i got here their school districts are highly legislated there are laws that cover everything that we do there are laws that say these are the only textbooks we can buy so when you think that it is us that are doing these things a lot of these things and this is what i went to tallahassee and said to the lawmakers you guys are putting us in a real bad situation because we have to cover suicide prevention with a sixth grader because you

132made that a part of the law now in my personal opinion and i'm not clinical and i may be wrong but those are that's a topic i want to talk about with my daughter at home and i see a lot of people say shaking their head however we have to follow the law that says you need to provide this mental wellness i said not only that but we're making teachers because we have to provide it to every student we're making teachers who may have had trauma in their own life present this information to students who are not prepared to talk about it but because the law says that the school district has to do it guess what we have to do it i will give you my phone number if you have a question call

133me 386-801-3122 because i can assure you that a lot of the things that you all that folks think that we just do because it's not just because it's because at some point there was a requirement a law a statute a mandate something that required it to be there the only problem is we're the easiest targets okay you can come here you can say call your lawmaker regardless of how you feel about it call your lawmaker you know ms haynes mentioned it and we talked about it when we were in tallahassee with the lawmakers the people who decide how much money comes to the school district yes teachers have been well taken care of yes i wish it was more but in our world you learn to say thank you can i please have more you

134guys are awesome that's the way this works okay however we went up there and said how about everybody else how about our bus drivers i use the infamous line we're competing with bucky's because everybody talks about buckies we're competing with buckys we can't get bus drivers we can't get paraprofessionals that's what we went up to tallahassee to talk about and i can tell you every single one of the members of our delegation are aware of it and they were all receptive to what we had to say but here's the problem is hayne hit it on the head they're tired of listening to fea florida education associate they're tired of listening to school board members because they know we're coming up there to ask for money this is always what we do but when they hear

135your story as the bus driver who's doing it for 11 12 an hour when they hear your story as the paraprofessional who can't make a living that sticks with them because that's not their i mean we're a formality we were one of a bunch of people that were up there asking for stuff but when they hear the story from the bus driver in their district who's not making the money that they feel they should be making that sticks with them when they go to vote and say you know what i agree with this i don't agree with this i agree with this cut not that cut etc it makes them ask questions because they're going to remember your story they're going to be accountable to your story they're not listening to us we go up

136there and talk so again i would encourage each of you to reach out to your legislators they're in the middle of the process as we speak right now you can call their offices you can email them okay they're in tallahassee sometimes they come they may be able to meet with you or you can meet with an aide to tell them your story but the veteran teachers you've got to be active and i'm sure there's lots of opportunities you know with miss albert if you don't know how to reach your legislators you know get out there and talk to them so that they can put a face to the ask because it's easy to say teachers are asking for more it's different when they remember the face of the teacher who says hey i've been here

13715 years and i'm making the same as a starting teacher and i'm the best teacher there is hopefully that would add some conscience to a vote so that's all i have thank you sorry about that everyone i just you know it's just very frustrating sometimes because there's sometimes we just have very little control over some things with that being said if there's no more comments we will move on mr doran i just want to say publicly um because it just so it's all out there miss haynes asked for some information from hillsborough county absolutely nothing wrong with that i don't think it would be a violation if we just gave it to her anyway but to be sure regarding ashley i'm talking about to be sure that there would be no issue i have asked

138both sides the district and the and kathy knowles if they had any objection to the information being provided both sides said they're absolutely for approv they approve of giving the information so you'll get an email tomorrow all board members will get the same information i'm going to copy both kathy knowles and kevin pendley with the information and everybody will have the information so i just want to mention that up front so that in case somebody on the outside saw it happen nobody would nobody could question why or you know whether there was any concern thank you miss haynes so i didn't i didn't remember asking specifically for hillsboro what i had asked was there was a statement made at the last board meeting in public input that we were the second lowest paid district in

139the state of florida for bus drivers and i asked could that be verified in like where we fell on the scale because lots of times people you know they make statements and i just want to i want to see the scale i want to see here's the 67 districts in florida and here's what the starting pay for bus drivers is so that's actually what i asked for but i'm happy to see the hillsborough piece of information okay well i wasn't here at the last meeting as you know my son's birthday but uh i had heard and was provided the information that others thought you were seeking so i'll send that out if you want something else i can approach everyone else you know again but i'm going to give you what i apologize that's actually

140my fault i pull that information and i do have that i will shoot that to you tonight okay give it to me i'll give it to you um it's really all the districts now he has all this all the districts it's not just hillsborough yes sir i will so i apologize i i did have that information and and we we did i did have that so i'll get that to you okay thank you and for the record that will also go to the other side as well it will go to everybody everything goes to everybody always in this context all board members get everything anybody asked for and both sides get a copy at the same time everybody gets it all great thank you so much all right any other questions thoughts feelings or concerns

141mr chair go ahead mr purses hey hey mr chair i just wanted to say uh uh the next meeting will be at 4 30. oh that's right go ahead go ahead say it yeah is that the right meeting will be at 4 30. that was in the superintendent's announcements uh okay and and the meeting after that though that's what i'm getting to the the march 8th is that what it'll be the is march 9th it's been confirmed with council for the district that he's available and so we are locked down for march 9th 6 30 p.m here at the deland administrative complex right and and we're also going to have a school board meeting march 8th though yes yes right and the school board workshop yes correct at 12 30 yes thank you mr chair

142no thank you mr purses all right mr superintendent well i think miss burnett was first okay i just need clarification i heard one board member i did not hear four others are you telling me to put together a recommendation for non-bargaining oh i'll say yes yeah okay miss cuthbert okay thank you very good do you have any other comments yes sir all right so uh hearing none we'll move on to public participation last item of the evening mr mark irwin come on up welcome mr irwin good evening dr fritz and chairman colon and board members my name is mark irwin i'm a bus operator in deltona and i live in deltona just let me start by saying as bus operators in attendance that we're a team but it goes far beyond that we're family we

143are a hurting and a stressed family and when one hurts we all hurt you see we've all stressed and overworked we have days that we're stressed to the point that it's unbearable the buses are overloaded the kids behavior is terrible parents are angry with us and we're short-handed we're running multiple routes and running late our management team is also driving routes and the schools are they're like no help to us they just like getting the kids home and and transport them safely i've seen my area managers and my lead driver trainers just crack rocket all tears from the stress trying to cover all the routes also the drivers in attendance become very emotional due to the stress of just doing our jobs and if that's not bad enough when we get paid and we see

144our paychecks there's even more stress because you see we're making decisions on we're not making a living wage and it's very apparent when you have to decide which bills to pay or whether to buy groceries and then god help us when the rent or the car payment or the house payments do it's just a real bad situation and the stress is just way too much and the answer is really simple if we could just get a living wage it would make it easier to hire and retain our employees and make it easier to pay our bills and that would pretty much solve the problem we're crying out for help because so please hear our cries some of us are having to work two jobs to try to make ends meet which adds even more stress

145that leads to health problems and attendance bonuses that's something else that we really should be looking at as well because there are some of us that have worked this whole pandemic with absolutely no absences and thank you for listening to us thank you mr erwin next up we have sheila rush welcome miss rush good evening board members and chairman coleman colin and dr fritz superintendent my name is sheila rush i have driving the bus for over 20 years i have had the opportunity to go to other counties and work yet i chose to come back home i don't make enough to make a living but i'm here not because of the money cause there's nothing there but it's because of the heart i get up every morning and i put on my safety mask i

146say okay we gotta go out here and challenge it we have to be here for safety and just like my shirt says i'm needed for safety i drive the bus get the kids to and from school safe i go home i have children that i raised in volusia county they went to school they rode the bus all of my kids my personal kids make more money than me everybody's hourly wage is more than mine i was in tears last month when my granddaughter who is 16 years old told me she makes two dollars less than me and i've been driving the bus for 20 years she's at wendy's i think we need a raise i think we should be considered in a lot of things and i would like for someone to hear my story

147as well i'm bringing it i'm presenting it i go to work every day i go for safety and then my question is would anybody else be willing to do what we the bus drivers and attendants get out there and do as a team we are the ball players we always make our captains our coaches and our owners which are the superintendent the school board we make y'all look good we are often told we do a good job but we're not shown with a salary so right now we're asking to be considered and shown and the question is would you all get out there and fill our seats on the bus driving kids to and from school and being treated the way we are and underpaid on overcrowded buses thank you and you all have a

148great night thank you miss rush next up jenny diaz [Applause] welcome ms diaz good evening i hope you understand hello i have an english of a professional level but i'm not i keep working on it but i wrote something and i'm gonna read it i hope you understand today is the day of reckoning we have long endured these poor wages and high responsibilities day to day i come to work even when i'm sick because i know we show on drivers in attendance and i don't want the kids on the streets waiting for long periods of times to be picked up we as a collective perform our duties to the best of our abilities dealing with a lot of times with rudeness and disrespect from parents and students feeling unappreciated in undervalue i have been working

149with b volusia county schools for four years now i make 13 26 per hour sames as a new driver so we cannot continue with our current wages for our health insurance the costs get higher year after year groceries gas house rents everything but the money we make we safeguard the lives of hundreds of children every day that's a lot of risks and responsibilities with us are better we are stay employees we should have the same opportunities and benefits than others we do not have enough employees not because of covet but because of the low wages it's like we want to stay working for volusia county school and you're pushing us to live know what is right and know what is fair thank you for your time thank you miss diaz next up arlene dieppa arlene

150dieppa all right and last but not least miss carol sawyer we will call that the cherry on top i really didn't have anything to say i was putting the card in to try to delay time so they could all get here and speak wait hold on i just want to say though why i'm here let's talk um the school board meeting at 4 30 is okay with the school board meeting but i think public participation should be 6 30 instead of six our bus drivers and attendants we're all doing two and three routes as you all hear and we don't we used to get home at 5 30 now we don't even get out of work until after six so by the time they all want to come here if they have anything to say

151if it's not 6 30 then they can't even make it here and then i would like to say that i listened to miss cuthbert miss haines and miss and reuben colon the last board meeting about emailing the state legislators i have emailed every single one of them i've gotten a couple responses back which is very good and i told i even told dr fritz at the doc meeting last week that i i was telling them to email i sent it out to all the bus operators and all the attendants i asked them all email your state legislator i gave them the email addresses for all of them so hopefully they're all emailing them and i told the teachers at the doc meeting i said that's what i told the bus operation attendance i said you

152should be doing the same thing for your teachers so that's all i have to say thank you for listening thank you arlene dieppa i know some folks came in all right so for the record we have no more cards for public comment are there any other thoughts feelings or concerns from the board before we close this meeting out hearing none this meeting is adjourned thank you everyone for coming